#(actually the fact that I have to be describing her with that analogy instead of the other way around is a little absurd)

[notallthosewho-wanderarelost]

Excited for any superhero projects?

Hi Anon! I am, yes. Off the top of my head, in terms of things coming out in the future, I’m very much looking forward to the Thunderbolts movie. And you have good timing because I was just thinking about the Thunderbolts movie yesterday. What If? season 2 looks like it could be very fun, and I’m tentatively looking forward to Avengers 5 and 6. Depending on if they treat the characters well of course- I can’t take another mess like Endgame. Will fully admit that if they let me see Natasha, Wanda (main Wanda, none of this rumored multiverse nonsense), Pietro (ditto), Tony, Steve (an actual in-character version please), and/or Loki again, bring Jane back as a Valkyrie, or write Thor well I might be willing to forgive a lot though.

I’m also pretty excited for Armor Wars since I love Rhodey, though admittedly that excitement took a bit of a hit when I saw the relevant Secret Invasion spoilers. Blade as a character isn’t really my jam, but I am looking forward to seeing Dane Whitman again in that movie, especially as Black Knight, so I’m gonna list that too. And I’m very curious about the Agatha tv show rumors I’ve heard and if we might be getting Billy, potentially with Teddy, and if Wanda might be back.

…Nearly forgot Cap 4! Looking forward to that, with a few caveats. Those caveats being I need them to not villainize Sharon and take back the Power Broker thing, and I… truly have no idea how to feel about Sabra, given current events. I was excited for her inclusion, if dreading the discourse, now I don’t know how to feel about it because the likelihood of her inclusion being tone-deaf is even higher, and said discourse is going to be 100 times worse.

I also still have to watch the Loki finale episode and The Marvels. Very much looking forward to The Marvels; I have mixed feelings on the Loki finale since I’ve gotten a little spoiled for it, but I want to see how it ends just the same.

I’m super behind on Marvel movies, I kind of lost steam after Multiverse of Madness and haven’t seen the last 4 or 5 movies. Of those, I’m most looking forward to watching Wakanda Forever. (That would’ve been Love and Thunder because I adore both Jane and Thor but uh, 😬 I’ve heard about it and I had no faith in Taika Waititi to begin with, so…) After WF I think I’m most looking forward to watching GOTG 3 even though I’m fully aware I’m probably gonna cry my eyes out. Feeling a bit meh on Quantumania sadly, despite loving Cassie Lang in comics, based on what friends who’ve seen it have said, and fully expecting to have to grin and bear it through Love and Thunder.

In terms of unconfirmed projects, I need Eternals 2 yesterday. Also a Shang-Chi sequel and a second season of Moon Knight. The rumored Vision Quest show could be very good or alternately very bad, but I love Vision and he deserves a starring role, so I’m crossing my fingers it happens and isn’t just a retread of Tom King’s Vision because that comic was incredibly depressing. (Adore Viv Vision though, and would love a proper robotic Sparky the dog!) I also saw a rumor a bit ago that we might get a Clea backstory show, which I would be incredibly down for since comics Clea is one of my favorite underused characters, and has a really coolbackstory with a lot of potential for an interesting story. And I love the Young Avengers, so if we get to see them as an official team in the future I’ll be hyped for that.

For non-MCU things, I’m vaguely looking forward to Deadpool 3 despite not being a mutants/X-Men enthusiast because a. Deadpool is just fun, b. the Taylor Swift Dazzler rumors. For DC, The Superman: Legacy casting has me really really excited. I love Superman and it seems like we might actually get a good take on him this time! In terms of things farther down the DC pipeline, I’m a big Supergirl fan so naturally I’m hyped for the planned Supergirl: Woman of Tomorrow movie, despite being halfway through that comic and still unsure if I like or not. And I love Damian Wayne so cautiously excited for the rumored Batman movie featuring Bruce and Dami.

[queen0fm0nsterz]

Also guys, about the locations of the podcasts: they are real places. 100%. They are real places somewhere in the Nowhere - most importantely, somewhen.

Prophetic dreams are very real in Little Nightmares and they are things that often happen: however, I do not believe this is yet the case for Noone. She describes feeling sensations and smells multiple times, something that can only happen if the plane of reality one is in is... well. Real. She also describes feeling Jester's presence as she does with Otto's, who is a real person in the real world alongside her. The fact that Noone isn't currently fully there yet doesn't necessarely mean the places aren't real.

Now, whether she's visiting the past versions of some already existing locations is up to debate (COUGH THE BATHHOUSE COUGH), and that locations and habitants of said locations can be parallels to some already existing ones, but the only certainty we have at this point is that these other places that are being described and witnessed by Noone are real places somewhere. After all, the Nowhere is an incredibly vast place of which we have explored incredibly little.

Would it be so surprising if the places Noone visits are separate from the, like, 3 ones we have visited?

(map is from LN II, the school, and is supposedly rappresenting a region of which we only see a single city.)

And another thing, actually: I have seen many compare the Lady to the Woman in Chains, but honestly, after reading through the transcript of the first episode of TSON made by @softichill... the two sound like the complete opposite of each other, appearence and behaviour wise.

The Woman in Chains is described as having a "stretched back face", therefore causing her to have wrinkles due to how her face is structured, which explains Noone talking about her as being "both old and young". There is no concealing, no mask, nothing to hide her face. She doesn't live in secrecy like the Lady does -- quite the contrary, infact.

And about features: in both her forms, the Lady's face looks the opposite of hers. Either completely relaxed, or... nearly like it's melting.

I have also seen some people try to claim that the "familiar outfit" as a reference to the Lady's kimono, but you must remember who the narrator is. The outfit is familiar to Noone. Not us. It is likely that the Woman is wearing either a nun's dress (Noone mentions seeing three laying on a bed in the Prisoner's bedroom) or something Noone might have seen from the institution she's kept in.

While the Lady does thrive in her occupation, she doesn't necessarely take joy in it like the Woman in Chains (Prison Ward, atp) does. For the Lady, it's much more a matter of survival. She is on the Maw because it's convenient, see as she's in a powerful position. The Woman in Chains is instead happily preparing torture devices to haunt the Prisoners with.

Some parallels are certainly there. Referring to them as being, even metaphorically, the same person... it would mean that the team wrote a very bad analogy. They are nothing alike in any other aspect BUT their occupation. Funnily enough, you could say the Thin Man and the Signal Tower operate in a near identical manner to both these places. He's also the living center/battery of his own mechanism.

Noone also mentions that the Workers seem to be made of shadows, similarly to the Shadow Children. However, it is also evident that these beings are different, as they work and can hold objects much like the nomes. Later, when she meets a living child, she notes that they have black goo in their hair that moves like shadows. If that's the same material the Workers are made of, then this would make them some sort of liquid entities.

Lastly, about the inhabitants themselves: no one else in this Prison is here because they want to be. The Prisoners are not like the Guests, who come on the Maw willingly. The Workers are mindless beings, unlike the Nomes who draw and the Shadow Kids who play just like children. The child and Noone want to leave... and that's understandable.

My friend @chorusofkhonshu smartly pointed this out, so I'm just gonna copy and paste what he said word for word.

"So I thought, if these creatures are made of liquid, it has to come from somewhere. So my mind wandered to the prisoners, their purpose. Perhaps like the Maw and Signal Tower need to absorb people. The Signal Towers thru TVs and the Maw thru the Lady. What if those prisoners are only alive to be bled dry so long as they live. Noone smells the prisoner rotting. All those prisoners have to share some purpose, they might be tortured. Some device that the lady there has. She uses straps and cranks. Masks with spikes in the mouth. It runs on tortured souls."

And just as Noone mentions later on:

Swelling.

If anything... rather than paralleling Six's journey, Noone seems to be living it backwards. Completely backwards.

... Mh.

[markantonys]

today's gawynposting topic is: the "gawyn wants to be a hero" fandom narrative

i think it is complete nonsense to believe he still holds this attitude by the second half of the series, and i will fight brandon sanderson himself on it. we all know that sanderson's characterizations should be taken with a grain of salt at best, and at worst dismissed as inaccurate contradictions of jordan's characterizations, and he simply missed the mark on this aspect of gawyn's character. (in my opinion he struggled with the 3 trakand siblings even more than he did with mat, but that's another topic.) and unfortunately, recency bias makes this the general fandom memory of gawyn, even though it contradicts what we saw of him under jordan's pen.

gawyn's actual arc in this regard is more nuanced. to me, he reads as a representation of a young man who's been fed patriotic idealizations of war ever since he was a kid, and maybe at first he's eager to get a taste of real war, but when he actually does, he's given a brutal and immediate awakening as to the true horrors of war. it is nothing like it was told to him growing up, and he doesn't want anything to do with it anymore, but he's already signed up for it and so he has no choice but to keep going.

and that brutal awakening happens aallll the way back in book 4, the tower coup:

Most frightening to Min, with that blood-masked face and half-glazed eyes, with his body tensed almost to quivering and his hand upflung as if he had forgotten it, he never raised his voice or put any emotion into it. He only sounded tired, more tired than she had ever heard anyone sound in her life.

“If anything happens to them,” he said in that expressionless voice, “to Egwene or my sister, I will find you, wherever you hide, and I will make sure the same happens to you.” Abruptly he stalked a dozen paces away and stood with his arms folded, head down as if he could not bear to look at them any longer.

here min is doing what she does best - completely misinterpreting other people's behavior - but to the observant reader, it's obvious that gawyn hasn't turned into some violent, emotionless psychopath all of a sudden. instead, he's incredibly traumatized by what's happened today and has shut down as a coping mechanism. in fact, his behavior here is very very very similar to trauma behavior rand frequently demonstrates. a later line in this scene even describes gawyn as "brittle, ready to shatter at the wrong blow", aka the same analogy used for rand's whole "hardness vs. strength" arc.

as of today, book FOUR, gawyn no longer has any delusions about battle and heroism and glory. for further evidence, let's take a look at some of his reactions to dumai's wells, this time from his own point of view:

Young, as indeed all the Younglings were—many did not need to shave beyond every third day, and a few still only pretended even that—but Jisao wore the silver tower on his collar, marking him a veteran of the fighting when Siuan Sanche was deposed, and scars beneath his clothes from fighting since. He was one of those who could skip the razor most mornings; his dark eyes belonged to a man thirty years older, though. What did his own eyes look like, Gawyn wondered.

the younglings as a whole are meant to represent young men - boys, really - getting indoctrinated with patriotic ideals to make them eager to join up, and ultimately ending up dead or traumatized beyond repair because of it. these are teenage soldiers being manipulated and used by adults & institutions for their own ends, and yet fandom treats them like they're psychopathic monsters who love to murder their own mentors. jordan literally chose to name them the YOUNGLINGS, guys, like, i think he was trying to say something here.

Once he would have felt regret; he had grown up believing that if two men must fight, the duel should proceed honorably and cleanly. More than half a year of battles and skirmishes had taught him better. He put a foot on the Aiel man’s chest and wrenched his blade free. Ungallant, but fast, and in battle, slow was often dead.

Turning his bay with a sigh, he rode back down to see what the butcher’s bill had been this time. That had been his first real lesson as a soldier. You always had to pay the butcher. He had a feeling there would be bigger bills due soon. The world would forget Dumai’s Wells in what was coming.

in both of these passages, we see very clearly that gawyn has long since lost the idealization of war he grew up with. he is very aware of the true cost of war, and the prospect of future battles fills him with grim resignation rather than eagerness at more chances for Glory. he knows by the ACOS prologue that there is no glory to be found in war, only death. but he keeps on going because he feels trapped out of any other path, and because he feels a responsibility to the younglings and to the white tower.

and so sanderson's TOM passage where gawyn muses about how maybe the reason he hates rand so much is because rand gets to be a hero the way gawyn wants to be - total bullshit. as of the coup and certainly as of dumai's wells, gawyn has been thoroughly disabused of any heroic notions and has no interest at all in being a hero or gaining glory. if we think that incorrectly blaming him for morgase's death isn't a good enough reason for gawyn to hate rand for so long, then i can definitely buy that he hates him because in his mind rand is responsible for overturning the world in a way that caused gawyn all this trauma and loss of innocence and that broke his family apart, but i cannot buy that he's jealous of rand for getting to be the big hero despite being a lowly peasant.

that being said, in AMOL gawyn's characterization is more or less back on track, and his stated reason for going after demandred is because it needs to be done for the good of the last battle and he considers himself someone unimportant who can be risked for the task*. the idea that his motive is Wanting To Be A Hero is a fandom invention caused by that wonky OOC scene in TOM which apparently dictated gawyn's entire characterization forever despite 12 previous books of him not being like that.

*on this note, i came across one more line from his ACOS prologue that broke my heart: the inscription on his spyglass from morgase

“From Morgase, Queen of Andor, to her beloved son, Gawyn. May he be a living sword for his sister and Andor.”

a sword for others' use. that's how gawyn sees himself, because his own mother (along with gareth bryne and many others, i'm sure) taught him to see himself that way ever since he was a child. is it any wonder that gawyn is so self-sacrificial in the last battle without stopping to consider how his death might harm others? a sword is only worth anything if it's useful, and no one mourns it if it gets broken in battle.

of course he knows egwene will be hurt by his death because of the bond, but at the same time, he so deeply thinks of himself as disposable and as a sword meant to protect people who are more important than him that when he is put into a situation where he can sacrifice himself for a chance of saving someone more important (activating the rings which will kill him for a chance of helping egwene escape the sharans; going after demandred for a chance of taking out the person doing the most damage to the light's army without needing to risk more important people in the attempt), he's going to take it. he's a LOT like lan and rand in that way, convinced their duty is to die to protect others, but lan and rand got to unlearn that and live, and gawyn never did. and i am tired of people writing him off as a character meant to embody "cautionary tale of a mediocre white man arrogantly assuming he's more capable than he is" because that is so completely not what his character is actually about, and what his character IS actually about is really fucking sad!

[irithnova]

Can't believe I'm discourse posting again but whatever.

While I may not have 100% been on board with the uh. Rusame edging response post because I have extremely "problematic" ships myself and have described Mongolia and China's relationship as being "married/divorced" so I'm not really any better than the edging shit in that sense, I think a lot of the replies were made in extremely bad faith and some pretty nasty people took advantage of the situation in their own ways.

The person who was vagued about had the right to respond of course and yeah it can be classified as ship hate considering it was put in the tags however people are seriously running over the fact that the poster themselves are Uzbek-Korean so yeah they'd understandably have some complex feelings about Russia and America if you know even the general history. The post perhaps wasn't worded that well and was an attack on rusame simply because of a comedic analogy of the relationship made by a shipper, but that anger didn't just come from like. Absolutely nowhere.

You had people in the comments slinging fucking 4chan lingo at OP (same person who did this supports a well known Zionist in the fandom why am I not surprised) and then much bigger content creators making posts and comments about how OP and their entire friendgroup are nothing more than butthurt sjws who are pushing people out of the fandom (and I can't believe people are still unironically using "sjw" in 2024 I guess anything is possible).

Extremely bad faith actors coming out of the woodworks who have had problems with OP and their friendgroup for completely different reasons using OPs hate post about rusame and the subsequent dogpiling as an excuse to publicly lie about the nature of the friendship and how it broke down. I find it extremely cowardly that months ago, when confronted privately about bad behaviour such as gossiping behind people's backs and confronted with the fact the person she was gossipping with is a prolific emotional abuser and racist, Verta blocked everyone and said she didn't want to get involved in "drama".

Now that someone within the group - a minor no less, who barely engaged with Verta herself during the course of her contact with them group, is being publicly dogpiled by multiple big creators - NOW Verta has the courage to come rear her head, engage in drama be like "they're all a bunch of sjws who hate white people!".

If you want to go back to 2016 for fresh "SJWS/feminists OWNED!" compilations, be my guest.

I find it extremely ironic how Verta is calling OP "fandom police" when Verta herself tried to gatekeep someone's identity/relationship to China....over hetalia art. I guess it's not policing when you want to be a bigot, but it's policing when someone from a certain background has unpleasant feelings towards a ship.

A lot of the vague posting about "WOW I LOVE RUSAME SO MUCH" afterwards I think was also extremely childish considering *gestures to the fact that OP is Uzbek-Korean* so yeah. They made an angry post about rusame that should have been handled privately between them and the person they were vaguing about however they do have some extremely personal reasons as to why they may have strong feelings about it.

It wasn't just an ordinary "rusame sucks and rusame shippers should die lol!" post made by an angry rando who likes perhaps Russia x [different country] and is butthurt at the attention rusame is getting but the way people are responding with "rusame is the beat ship evaa <33" posts in response to it - you'd think that was what OP posted instead of like. An emotionally charged (but poorly handled) post about Russian and American imperialism as someone who's family/countries has been affected by both.

Again I'm not in a place to judge rusame shippers considering the shit I ship and say - you can do what you want and I actually like cold war stuff myself. I just find a few of the responses extremely childish considering the circumstances surrounding why the post was made and a few were absolutely done in bad faith in order to paint OP as being nothing more than an angry sJw!!1 when. Again. *Gestures at Uzbekistan's history with Russia and Korea's history with America*

Also. I'm sorry but rusame is the most popular ship in the fandom right now. You guys will live if (1) child who comes from that background makes an emotionally charged post about it. There's no need for an onslaught of personal attacks and hateful anons. Jesus Christ I received death threats for shipping Monchu and I didn't even respond like that.

[chronicler-of-narrative]

Would love to hear more about Operator!Chronicler and Drifter!Chronicler :) any casual fun facts? Fav colour, drink, or food? (can be as close to Warframe canon or not lol)

Any embarrassing secrets only close friends would know about them? Any notable flaws they need to work on? I always find it fun to explore flaws in ocs when you’re struggling to flesh them out and also cause it can be silly lol!

Ok, starting with casual facts, I'm not sure I have many, but one meta fact is that operator!Chronicler originally started as a sort of character I would play for a warframe lore/worldbuilding exploration series on youtube, though that has unfortunately be abbandoned.

However, I can also mention that operator!Chronicler loves The Orb Vallis, its his favorite place in general and also and especially because of the wildlife.

Drifter Chronicler is still rather recent, but if i Remember any i'll reblog! (Also, the rest of the questions will be under a read more break)

As for embarassing secrets, operator Chronicler's entire character is actually built off of one! I already described it in a story I'll link at the end, but let's just say his past isn't the most honorable one, and that is actually the main reason he goes by that monicker: He doesn't wanna associate himself anyone with his past.

Drifter Chronicler doesn't really experience shame, like at all, there are a multitude of experiments some might consider sily or embarassing. Like that one cycle where he tried to defeat Kullervo by basically catapulting Tamms into his arena, or that time he was testing the jaw strength of Golden Maws and almost dropped Terra (the Rablid, thats how I called her) into one! (I came up with these on the spot, but you get the gist)

As for character flaws, oh boy do I have a lot to unpack.

For operator Chronicler, it's rather simple: He both has a severe guilt complex from his past, and also has a workaholicism issue. He's so laser focused on archival of information that he often loses himself in it and has to be broken out of his daze by others.

Drifted Chronicler is where we get to the main meat of character flows. Drifter Chronicler's time in Duviri didn't impact him the best...Instead of losing his emotions, he lost all sense of boundary. He kept each cycle busy with interesting experiments, so much so that now he literally can't differentiat between what's socially acceptable and what isn't. He'll start proposing very morally dubious plans, not out of any malice, but just because it piqued his curiosity and he still forgets that things won't restart the next morning (a go to example of an experiment like this would be inject a live infested charger with kuva, or exposing a captive batalyst to void-based technology and recording the severity of their pain. He's not doing it because he likes watching others suffer, he does it because he doesn't realize that what he's doing is actually damaging.

I also mentioned that he doesn't respect boundaries, and that also applies to people. Operator Chronicler normally handles the interviews because he knows how to be careful around others in speech, and tries his best to get enough info out of them without potentially forcing them to remember painful experiences. Drifter Chronicler on the other hand? Nope, zero style, zero grace. His conversation style can be best described with the analogy of him being a jackhammer, and the person he's interviewing being a slab of stond. He will ask for the nitty gritty details, ask you to elaborate, be pushy about sensitive issues. And all the while being blissfully unaware of the phsychological distress he's causing go the other party.

So yea. Thank you so much for the ask, and as a little gift, I'll link that small ao3 fic about operator Chronicler right now:

[vifilms]

i have so many thoughts swarming in my mind at the moment. hopefully i can collect my bearings enough to make sense, even if it is just for a moment. first and foremost, i just want to say how wonderfully articulate this piece of absolutely wonderful fiction is. honest to god, from the very start, the message of it became crystal clear from the very beginning until the end. truthfully, it's something i'm so envious of as a writer but as a reader — it was so exciting to read. in the beginning of it, you did an insightful job of showing where sevika is and where she stands. it's quite wonderful to see how you built it in the beginning. for me, it's really this subtle build up in the introduction that really sells you on where the story is heading. a vision so clear, a canvas so clean, you can almost see your reflection in it. you paint such a lovely picture. still, i'm trying to wrap my head around it. like each stroke, with a flick of the brush, the full portrait comes into view as you try to unfold the meaning of it. it could be because i have a very personal and emotional attachment to the concept of this fic but goddamn did it just reel me in.

this was the first analogy which really stood out to me the most.

the dark chocolate she’s nibbling on is cheap and tastes identical to the plastic wrapper it came in, and the burn of the whiskey is only adding to the bitter taste. but at least it soothes her mind. she sighs, flicks off the television, and heads for the shower. the last thing she wants to be right now is even more wet, but the promising warmth of the water will at least soothe some of the pain in her shoulders.

in the beginning, there's a lot of extremely well done imagery but this really stand out the most to me. whether it's intentional (which it's you ofc it is, you and your brilliant mind i'm actually so very obsessed with it) but i love how you did this one moment. it's such a small detail, maybe even easy to dismiss, but i really enjoyed the pairing of the bitterness of the chocolate versus the burn of the whiskey. with the next sequence that follows, truthfully, it's so cinematic with how it falls in line with what happens next. the world building in the first passage is just something i don't think i have had the pleasure in reading in quite some time. personally, i've been on a book tear and this sliver of imagery is well and intentionally placed, it truly makes me feel inspired, more than these so called novels i've been reading. if anything, i'm just convinced i need an ennabear novel in my hands yesterday. the way you introduce and pace your storylines is truly remarkable. it always leave an everlasting impression on me. even changes the way i would normally think to write something and paints it in a new perspective. dear god, i think this reblog is going to be so astronomically long. hopefully, i'll be able to round out what i'm trying to say by the end of it. #raycore.

“it’s okay,” she coos. “would you like a lollipop?” the kid sniffles at this, but lifts her head up and nods at her. sevika digs into the small bag on her waist, pulling out a bright blue sucker for the little one that matches her hair. she takes it in her small hands and unwraps it, eyes sparkling at the sight of the blue raspberry favored sugar. sevika just hopes her parents don’t kill her. with the kid in her arms— who is now joyfully sucking on the lollipop instead of soaking her in tears and snot— she makes her way downstairs. sevika’s no stranger to lost children, and she’s fond of their company. it’s refreshing to hear them describe colors and patterns in the paintings instead of overanalyzing it and telling stupid facts about the artist. and she loves that she can finally give back to the world, bringing the kiddos comfort like she never received from her own parents.

this entire exchange just had me in a mountain of tears for several reasons. for one, act two of arcane, a reunion that winded me. even in this alternate universe, just one fated meeting, i am floored back into the ruins of act two. another thing i want to point out is how sevika's personality really shines through on the dialogue. she's very decisive when she chooses to speak, low-grunts, soft aggression, and sarcastic remarks laced with a tone of concern, and then when she finally drops everything and it's just her kind, beating heart. definition of could kill you but actually a teddy bear. from the get go, you encapsulate all of it so perfectly. this version of sevika is someone who has been burned but you still this softness to her. an act of kindness to someone who embodies the innocence that only adolescence comes with. but as a pure angst lover the last line stuck out to me the most, bringing the kiddos comfort like she never received from her own parents. it's a very subtle, but meaningful drop and if you blink, you nearly miss it. it's the small little details i fear i gravitate to so much but fuck is it wonderful.

“that she is!” the mother cheers. “god bless you, sevika, seriously. i’ll never be able to repay you.” she smiles proudly, not necessarily because she believes in a god, but she’s just glad to get the kid back and hopefully end the conversation soon. “thank you ma’am. it’s no problem, really. it’s my job.”

enna, you’re a fucking genius.

this is just. fucking hell let me collect my thoughts for a moment. alright. honest to god, no pun intended, the way you slithered the concept of religion in is the smoothest i’ve ever seen. it nearly melts into the pages, ink dispersing on the fine lines. each line melting into the other like butter on a pan. again, i’m such a whore for the details and this is such a huge one. this is fucking art. there’s really no other way to describe it. everything seems so well thought out, executed to perfection. i like that we get to know how she feels without her really even voicing it and from that point and moving forward, it sets the tone. again. world building and storytelling — it really is remarkable in the way you’ve managed to weave this web of craft that’s so honed in on.

as they approach the bottom of the stairs, she makes the tough decision to peek over the stretcher, eyes frantically searching around the spot she was only just standing in. and there she is. that little girl with her bright blue hair, now drenched in red. her lips are still blue from the lollipop, but she’s grown pale and cold. and gone. and sevika couldn’t protect her. before she closes her eyes, she takes in the scene one more time. piles of hair tangled together and skin melted into the floor. she’s seen some pretty outrageous things as a security guard, but never this. tears pour out of her eyes, the pain in her body making her wish she would’ve been taken out too. by what, she doesn’t know. she isn’t aware of where she is or what’s going on, all she knows is the pain in the left side of her body, and it’s all she’ll feel for the rest of her life.

the way you described this scene. please, just rip my heart out and put it through the shredder. it would be far less painful. you are so insane for this. and the tie in to the lollipop into dead, cold blue lips, AS IN A CORPSE. too fucking MUCH. my fucking goodness chat, it’s just too amazing i can’t really even be mad about it honestly. i wasn’t expected my heart to be be stomped on like this. poor baby isha. catching everything but a future. I CANT DO THIS. ITS TOO MUCH. but alas i will and i already have fully read this fic but goddamn. gotta respect the game, the angst is too cold, literally. also, i want to note the raw emotion sevika is exhibiting. truly, the way your write sevika is truly refreshing. i keep making canvas metaphors but it feels like you're painting her and as the depth of the story grows so does she, slowly coming out of the canvas until she comes to life. she becomes something really and tangible and it's through the emotinal lense you've chosen to write her in and it really is such a brilliant choice. your writing is shining so bright with this one. truly, i really admire it.

“sevika, don’t worry.” you assure her. “i’ll help you believe.” and the line goes quiet.

honorable mention, i just really enjoy the foreshadowing in this. i also think it's a really good representation of overzealous evangelicials even and how they recruit and almost the kind of desperation that goes with corruput intentions within religion. not that i directly has anything to do with this line, but it took my mind there. maybe it was just my trauma fucking kicking in and i'm getting flashbacks but the weight in this line is fucking destroying me personally.

no matter what you do, you can’t get this woman off of your mind. something about her makes you feel different than how other people make you feel, but you can’t tell what it is or why. you need a plan. you need to talk to her again. or at least some confidence would be handy. but instead of dwelling on it, you decide to go for a walk. the walk doesn’t really work though, it actually does the opposite of clearing your mind. you have nothing to focus on, no work to do, so you just think. your mind runs wild the whole time. you’re so intrigued, so excited yet nervous, you feel like it’s almost a craving. almost, because you’re not really sure what a craving is. not until you meet her, at least.

the gay awakenineneneningggggggg. it's fucking brewing! i don't know if i can even remember mine but this reallt reminds of just having a crush on a girl for the first time, it feel entirely different than anything has ever felt. as someone who figured it out later in life, THIS HITS FUCKING HARD. it's like your entire world is changing. your entire life you have looked through life in one lense but then someone comes along distorts your view. you really encapsulates that feeling, that expierence really well in the plants of doubt in this. truly, it's so beautiful.

huh. sevika at a liquor shop. not necessarily unusual for a person, but forbidden for you. you wonder if this is a ritual for her, if she’s gonna go home and get drunk or something, or maybe if she’s gonna split the bottle with some friends. does she even have friends? you turn around and head in the same direction she does, hoping your paths cross before her quick, long strides can leave you behind. and you eventually catch up to her, pretending you had no idea you’d run into her, you greet her with a “oh, sevika! hey, i didn’t expect to see you here.” except, you did expect to see her here. you already spied her storming out of the liquor store. ugh, you’re such a bad liar. “oh… hi.” she mumbles, a little disturbed by your sudden appearance, and already burnt out from the two people who’ve made small talk with her in the past hour. while you stand in front of her, she raises her eyebrow slightly as if to signal that she’s waiting for you to say something before she walks away.

the chasing!!!! the yearning!!!!! having a crush on a beautiful women and chasing her!!!!! yep, that's the fucking stuff. but also it shows the depravity and loneliness sevika is feeling and ptsd she’s feeling from the events. how her brain is processing the trauma she’s been through. i love that reader just sought sevika out, the pure curiosity hovering inside their head. god, this oc is really just perfect in the way you’ve crafted them.

when she told you, she couldn’t help but break down in heavy sobs. you could feel your heart shatter at this— the story and sevika’s reaction to it. you scrambled from your side of the booth to hers, scooting in next to her and wrapping her up in a hug as she cried. to your surprise, she hugged you back. she hooked her chin over your shoulder, grabbed you tightly in her strong arms, and just let herself go.

oh, this is everything. the raw emotion, the vulnerability, the trust — it’s so genuine it nearly has me crying. the first time you open up to someone, it’s a level of intimacy that can’t quite be matched. once the boundary is crossed, there really isn’t an option to come back from that. it’s a soft comfort, one that feels like a warm blanket you’ve been yearning for all your life. fuck, i love this so bad.

today you’re feeling particularly bold for some reason, you suspect it might be because of your friendship with sevika, but this feels different. well, you know how it feels, but you’re scared to admit it. although you’ll probably be fine, you’re hesitant to say it to yourself out of the fear that you’ll be thrown out of the church. yes, you like sevika, and sure, she is a beautiful woman. but you just can’t bring yourself to say it. to say that you have a real crush on her. to admit that you want her. so instead of saying anything, you use your actions instead. glancing over both of your shoulders, you make sure that nobody important is looking in your direction before you snake your hand forward and wrap your hand around sevika’s. this action is the farthest you’ve ever gone with anyone, and your cheeks are practically on fire with how hard you’re blushing. you wouldn’t be surprised if the whole building could hear your heartbeat right now. sevika adjusts her fingers so that she’s gripping your hand firmly, and you feel so… dirty, almost. you know that this is nothing, but you’re scared and ashamed of what other people might think. but although it initially feels wrong, you settle down when you realize that nobody’s looking— even more that nobody cares— and it feels so right. her hands are surprisingly warm and soft, they feel so welcoming and familiar against yours.

this section is literally making me so insane !!!!! in the best way possible. just another great example of how you’ve been able to really capture what it means to be a disciple of the faith but to feel wrong but it doesn’t. it was never wrong, it was always right. even if the church or your faith has told you to burn for it. anyone with religious trauma has felt this way and fuck, you literally just took my feelings out of my head and put them on paper. there’s nothing more remarkable than your ability make every emotion accessible in such a beautiful form. one that feels very real. i truly love it so much.

you looked up at her from your position on your knees, her torso looking impossibly longer than usual. something comes over you, something that warms up your stomach until you feel so dizzy you feel the need to reach for something to steady yourself. unaware of just how much trouble this would get you in, you end up grabbing for her upper thighs. they’re so thick that your hands are almost completely flat, but they’re sturdy. perfect for grabbing onto.

OKAYDJEDJEIFJCECFMJEUIF THIS FUCKING PART. THIS SHIT. THIS SHIT RIGHT HERE. ON YOUR KNEES LIKE SEVIKA IS YOUR ALTER. THIS IS TOO MUCH. TEWWWW MUCH. okay, let me calm down, just a little. but really. really, really, really — this itched my brain in such a lovely way. i will not be able to get over it ever. i'm pretty sure. the imagery, AGAIN. everything is so entirely connected. the flow of this fic is just insane. i'm seriously in awe. i've read this fic four times already. dw, it will be up to ten by the end of the week. #trust.

sevika studies your words in her mind, hoping that you’d still mean them if you could see the thoughts running wild in her mind right now. she inches closer to you and her nose almost brushes yours. the tension in the room makes her squirm, thighs pressing together in an attempt to soothe the ache between them. somehow, in some strange way, this feels better than sex. better than anything she’s ever smoked, any liquid she could get drunk on. you are her intoxicant. her stronger substance. her higher power. her breath of fresh air in this humid town. you are what she’s been searching for.

her higher power.

this line just fucking crushed me into pieces. i don't think you understand!!!!!! it's crossing the line of my religion vs her. discipleship vs love. it's a choice that no one should ever have to make. love is love. there's not a high power that should hold over the feelings we can't explain, it's just something we feel. something we can never be rid of. something we can't live without. i also love the parallel of reader being the greater vice than sevika's addiciton. you're more than the vices she's using to cope. you are more than just someone for her to get lost in. it's soft and gentle, and mesmirizing. it's inexplainable. it's love. it's truly such a beautiful perspective because it also undoes the idea, by the bigots, that we can choose who we love because we can't. it's not up to choice, reason, and it certainly doesn't offer us grace. love is ruthless, merciless, and often cruel but it can also be the best thing that's happened to us. okay i'm ranting so fucking bad but that line really shook me and i'm going to be thinking about it for the next five business years.

she shuffles under you as she slides her boxers off, and you almost drool at the sight of her bush. it’s just so… beautiful. and intimate. she pats your hips as a signal to scoot off of her, and she spreads her legs before manhandling you to sit your cunt on top of hers. as soon as you connect your cunt with hers, you swear you black out. it all feels so good. she keeps spreading her legs wider to help you get a better angle against her clit, and you can feel it throbbing against yours. you thought holding her hand was intimate, but this is so much more than you could’ve imagined. “fuck, sevika.” you moan, tears crashing over you again and dripping onto her cheeks now. “you’re so beautiful.”

okay. okay. okay. i’m going in sane with love for this. so fucking bad. it’s not even a joke anymore. loving and intimate sensual smut is always gonna fucking do it for me. literally. the beauty of being with a woman for the first time. not being able to control yourself on the uncontrollable wave. it will drown you if you’re not careful and it’s almost tragic. it’s haunting. it’s unexplainable. it’s love. leaving one belief to let yourself drown in what you’ve been told is a sin. it’s the foundation of finding faith in something tangible, something that offers and doesn’t take. god, this is really so fucking good. really perfect from top to bottom. the heartbeat of this story is so strong and i loved every moment of it. you never disappoint. banger, after banger, after banger.

this is truly one of the most introspective fics doing religious trauma and the fight between sexuality and faith so beautifully and respectfully. in the sly details, it really shows the inner battle between the consumption of addiction and how it can derail our lives, how through addiction we can never get through it alone, and also the guilt that comes with picking who we are over who we've been told to be. all of this is truly such a stunner and i don't think i 've read a piece of fiction laced with so much meaning in a while. it's so entirely refreshing. it has really reworked my brain in a way i haven't been able to explain. this is the second night i've been ranting in this outrageously long reblog, my goodness, can't writing anything short to save my life, but this deserved every ounce of love. truly exceptional, enna.

✞︎ ︎YOUR OWN PERSONAL JESUS.

SOMEONE TO HEAR YOUR PRAYERS. SOMEONE WHO CARES.

cw: religious!reader x sevika, inspo from personal jesus by depeche mode, dark themes [drinking addiction, religious crisis, trauma/ptsd, etc.], a mention of isha because i’m evil, as well as religious themes, nasty sloppy dirty sinful dyke sex [body worship + tribbing] 18+ 🧛🏿

word count: 14.1k

i. FEELING UNKNOWN AND YOU’RE ALL ALONE

sad, dull, gray, gloomy, what else could she use to describe it? constant rain, a chronic form of seasonal depression that lingered in the air no matter where she went. her therapist prescribed her some fresh air, but the air is never fresh here. it’s thick with fog, the humidity weighs down on your shoulders and makes it unbearable to trudge through. sure, the sun shines, but it never peeks out from behind the clouds, leaving the town in a dark, unsaturated gleam.

she crosses the threshold into her apartment, hair clinging to the back of her neck and the sides of her face due to a mix of humidity and sweat. her apartment might be more vapid than the outside world, it’s a small box that overlooks the parking lot and a few 24 hour diners across the street. the walls are all white, along with the ceiling and cabinets, and the carpet is scratchy and gray. she hardly has any furniture, a small couch with a tv propped up on a cardboard box facing it. no coffee table, chairs, or shelves, but she doesn’t spend much time out here anyways.

her ribs start to ache, and the growing hunger in her stomach only makes it worse. she scours her cupboards for a snack, and settles for half a bar of dark chocolate and a glass of whiskey. the couch is small and hard and it barely offers any comfort to her tired body. on the tv, the meteorologist blabbers away about the predicted weather for the week. she feels bad for him, the poor guy probably wanted a bigger and better job than this. foreseeing the same weather for 365 days straight. cold, cloudy, wet, maybe snow if we get lucky.

the dark chocolate she’s nibbling on is cheap and tastes identical to the plastic wrapper it came in, and the burn of the whiskey is only adding to the bitter taste. but at least it soothes her mind. she sighs, flicks off the television, and heads for the shower. the last thing she wants to be right now is even more wet, but the promising warmth of the water will at least soothe some of the pain in her shoulders.

a bone-chilling squeak rings out through the bathroom as she twists the faucet on, and the light flickers as if in response to the noise. sevika peels her clothes off, her sweatpants dropping to the floor and her shirt still trying to hang on to her body. her ribs are more prominent than they’ve ever been, and she can see her muscles slowly starting to wither away with how frequently she skips the gym.

steam fills the room, the foggy clouds of it wisp around her as she studies herself until she can’t see her reflection anymore. it’s all blurry— her reflection, the walls, her own hands in front of her face. her left arm has the deepest and darkest scars she’s ever seen, most of them are jagged from the way her stitches were inserted. she can hardly stand to look at herself anymore, so maybe it’s a good thing the mirror is fogged up.

in the shower she only washes herself for a quick second, rubbing a thin layer of soap all over her body and scrubbing her scalp with shampoo. she debates on adding conditioner, but she feels as if she’ll faint if she’s in the shower for another second. the hot water quickly runs out, and sevika only notices how scorching her water was when it switches over to room temperature.

as soon as she steps out of the shower, she wraps herself up in her towel, although there’s not really a point in that due to the holes and strings coming off of it. she makes a mental note to buy more towels, and just as she’s about to mope about another purchase to make, her phone blares an alarm warning her not to be late to her physical therapy appointment.

stumbling out of the bathroom, she trudges half nude to her liquor cabinet, aimlessly grabbing around for something strong. she pours herself a shot, and then another, and fuck, why not a third one? she doesn’t notice the burn as it goes down, her mind instead focusing on the ache in her left shoulder.

she pulls a shirt over her head and shoves her shoes on, finalizing her outfit with her black raincoat. she wears it nearly every day, partially because it’s always cold and rainy, and partially because it’s a good excuse to hide the thick scars that travel all the way up her body. her spine starts to ache as she walks to the clinic, but she doesn’t have money for a car, and she doesn’t know anybody in this town well enough to ask them for a ride.

the receptionist at the clinic doesn’t look up one single time as sevika checks in, and sevika wishes so badly that she could get paid to sit down and look at a computer all day. she takes a seat in the waiting room, slumping back and relaxing her muscles as she waits for her PT to invite her in. the clock on the wall ticks extremely loudly, she notices, but she decides to close her eyes and count the ticks until it’s finally her turn.

ii. FLESH AND BONE BY THE TELEPHONE

static muffles through her radio. she flicks the ashes of her cigarette out onto the pavement, watching as a pigeon across the street skitters around. another few crackles through her walkie talkie go ignored. it’s her break for fucks sake, and she’s only just starting to enjoy it.

“sevika?” her radio booms. she sighs, rolling her eyes and waiting for someone else to respond.

“sevika, we need you inside. your break is over.”

“my break is what? over.” she responds, giggling at her own smartass response.

“your break is over, god damn it. over.”

“roger.” she says, a hint of a smile still in her voice. “i’ll be inside in a second. over.”

she pulls her phone out of her pocket, double checking the new code for the security door. after punching it in, she swings the door open until it bolts shut behind her, and then makes her way to the lobby. the museum is huge, the lobby has floors that sparkle and shine no matter how many muddy shoes cross over them, and the rest of the stories are complete with floor to ceiling windows that are taller than she ever could’ve imagined.

as she crosses through a giant stone archway, her boss nods and waves her over. one of her coworkers is there too, both of them looking stern and serious. she steps into the small circle they’ve formed, lifting her eyebrows quizzically at the two of them. “well?” she asks. “what do you need?”

“what do i need? what i fuckin’ need from both of you is for you to do your fuckin’ jobs.” he spits, literally. droplets of his saliva collect in his beard as he digs into sevika and her coworker about ‘not doing their jobs.’

“what do you mean by that, sir?” her coworker asks.

“do you know how many people i’ve seen walk out of here with souvenirs stuffed into their pockets? that gift shop is gonna be desecrated by the end of the day.”

“respectfully, sir, we aren’t in charge of the gift shop. we only monitor the grounds of the museum, and you’re the one who hired us both to do that.” she says back.

“then go do ya fuckin’ job.” he growls, his thick boston accent shining through his attempt at a serious lecture.

she raises her eyebrows and turns around with her tongue in her cheek, heading up the large marble stairs. sevika can’t argue with that, and she loves her job. it’s easy— all she has to do is puff her chest to intimidate her guests, hand out lollipops to the little ones who are brave enough to wave at her, and occasionally answer a question about directions around the place. all of her coworkers love her, and she’s never felt more secure in her life before.

ascending the stairs, she eyes a beautiful young woman with blazing orange hair wandering into the gift shop and a smile on her face. that’s not the type of person who’d steal, she thinks, and she’s probably right. concealing her eyes are a pair of black sunglasses, and she’s finally thankful they’re part of her uniform now that she’s got direct sunlight hitting every corner of the second floor.

she inserts her earpiece into the side of her head, prepared although not excited to listen to her coworkers chat and complain for the rest of the day. she flicks around until she connects to the private channel, and then continues to stroll around the second floor.

people of all ages wander through the halls. kids being scolded by their parents, awkward adults grasping clammy hands on their first date, seniors leaning on their walkers and canes as they reminisce about famous painters. the community is so beautiful, so important to her, she’d do anything to protect it. this place is like her second home, and she’s made some of the best friends of her life here. not to mention the fact that it’s taken her years to memorize her way around the place, so now it’s even more special to her.

she steps toward the large windows, feeling the warm sun prickle her skin as it sparkles through the leaves of the trees. the muffled sound of laughing families combined with the sight of her people paints a smile on her face, and she closes her eyes and loses herself in this divine moment until she feels something tug on the bottom of her vest.

“yes?” she asks, turning around and smiling down at the kid. her bottom lip quivers and her eyes fill with tears, she makes a mental note that she can’t be any older than six years of age.

“i—” she starts, attempting to blink back tears and inevitably failing. “mmmph!!”

sevika crouches down and wipes the girl’s tears away with her thumbs, ruffling the kid’s fluffy blue hair. “don’t worry, kiddo.” she assures her, “what’s wrong? oh, lemme guess— lost your parents?” the kid nods and sobs some more, attempting to hide her face in her hands.

she scoops her up in her arms, letting her sob into her shoulder. “ughffff!!!!” she pouts, squirming in sevika’s hold. she takes a guess that the kid is either really shy or just mute.

“it’s okay,” she coos. “would you like a lollipop?” the kid sniffles at this, but lifts her head up and nods at her. sevika digs into the small bag on her waist, pulling out a bright blue sucker for the little one that matches her hair. she takes it in her small hands and unwraps it, eyes sparkling at the sight of the blue raspberry favored sugar. sevika just hopes her parents don’t kill her.

with the kid in her arms— who is now joyfully sucking on the lollipop instead of soaking her in tears and snot— she makes her way downstairs. sevika’s no stranger to lost children, and she’s fond of their company. it’s refreshing to hear them describe colors and patterns in the paintings instead of overanalyzing it and telling stupid facts about the artist. and she loves that she can finally give back to the world, bringing the kiddos comfort like she never received from her own parents.

“radio check.” her earpiece says, slightly catching her off guard.

“go ahead.” her teammates all say, mutually praying their boss isn’t about to go on another two hour long rant in their private channel.

“keep your eyes peeled for a little kid with a full head of bright blue hair,” her boss says into her earpiece. “apparently her names isha and she’s five. parents lost her on the second floor and they’re worried.”

sevika looks down at the kid, unnecessarily double checking that her head is painted with blue hair dye. “i’ve got her.” she says. “we’re making our way to the lobby. 10-20?”

“lobby, meet you there soon. over and out.”

“isha!!” her mother shrieks as soon as sevika lands on the bottom step. “oh my sweet ishabear! i thought we’d lost you forever.”

isha’s dad shoots sevika a look that seems to say ‘sorry about her’, but she smiles and hands the kid over. “what’s your name?” her mom asks frantically. just as she’s about to respond, her boss speaks up and whacks her on the back with a proud slap.

“this is sevika. best security in the whole building, ain’t she?” he says, reaching out to pinch her cheek. sevika tries her absolute best to hold back, but she can’t stop a harsh glare from forming on her face as her boss pokes and prods at her like she’s a doll. she clears her throat and shoves him off, but resumes a smile for the parents staring at her.

“that she is!” the mother cheers. “god bless you, sevika, seriously. i’ll never be able to repay you.”

she smiles proudly, not necessarily because she believes in a god, but she’s just glad to get the kid back and hopefully end the conversation soon. “thank you ma’am. it’s no problem, really. it’s my job.”

“it is your job!” her boss exclaims. “and she’s gonna get right back to it.”

before turning away, she gives isha a smile and an explosive fist bump, smiling at the adorable little cub and then parting. her boss is probably the only downside of her job. words can’t explain how much she hates that guy— even hate isn’t a strong enough word. but she ignores it, pushing her hatred to the back of her mind and attempting to continue with her good day.

until an ear piercing scream is let out at the front of the building, and she’s knocked out before she can turn around to investigate.

——

“shit, how many are still in the building?”

“i dunno, man! there are people fuckin’ everywhere.”

“sevika? can you hear me? … sevika, you need to get out of there now.”

groggily, she peels her heavy eyes open and looks around. the scent of pennies fills her nose, a metallic smell so strong it nearly knocks her out again. before she feels like she can hit the floor, her body jerks forward and she sucks in a gasp before she realizes she’s already laying on the marbled ground.

“sevika…?”

“leave it alone, for gods sake, we need to get people out of here!”

her left arm was laying oddly and uncomfortably behind her, and her whole body was absolutely aching. she leans forward and chokes out some blood before looking at the scene before her. windows shattered and glass glistening on the floor, reflecting the light that shines off of the mini fires lit all around. there are people everywhere— or at least the remains of them. shoes and purses and walkers left behind, the suffocating scent of blood and charred flesh, and the sound of sirens blaring all around her.

she tries to breathe, but it seems impossible. her lungs won’t fill with air no matter how many times she gasps, and that number is burgeoning with the way she’s hyperventilating. hot, salty tears prickle her eyes involuntarily, but she blinks them away, too shocked to feel any emotions yet. she groans into the floor as a sharp pain shoots through her body, and the thrashing caused by that pain only makes her feel worse.

deep red and sticky, her blood pools around her. it leaks out of her left arm, which takes her a while to recognize as hers because of the way her elbow is inverted. she recognizes cries of children and shrieks of pain, which is a harsh contrast of the peaceful atmosphere earlier. how much earlier? how long has she been knocked out? and why is she on the floor?

after an eternity, two men in heavy jackets lift her onto a stretcher. she’s facing up this time, and now she can get a good look at the walls around her. they’re crumbling and splattered with blood, world famous paintings that were once hanging from them are now completely destroyed. either torn up or burnt to a crisp.

as they approach the bottom of the stairs, she makes the tough decision to peek over the stretcher, eyes frantically searching around the spot she was only just standing in. and there she is. that little girl with her bright blue hair, now drenched in red. her lips are still blue from the lollipop, but she’s grown pale and cold. and gone. and sevika couldn’t protect her.

before she closes her eyes, she takes in the scene one more time. piles of hair tangled together and skin melted into the floor. she’s seen some pretty outrageous things as a security guard, but never this. tears pour out of her eyes, the pain in her body making her wish she would’ve been taken out too. by what, she doesn’t know. she isn’t aware of where she is or what’s going on, all she knows is the pain in the left side of her body, and it’s all she’ll feel for the rest of her life.

iii. LIFT UP THE RECEIVER, I’LL MAKE YOU A BELIEVER

“sevika…?”

she blinks awake with a gasp, eyes wide as she takes in her surroundings. children’s toys litter the floor, flyers and posters on the wall, bright white lights beaming down on her— and her physical therapist standing about 2 feet away from her. sevika grumbles in embarrassment, trying to shake off her sleepiness as quickly as possible.

her therapist offers a sympathetic smile before waving her back. sevika curses those waiting room chairs for being so comfortable, or maybe it’s just because she doesn’t get much shut eye at home. her back is so weak and achy that she feels as if she’ll snap under the weight of gravity, but she tries to play it cool in front of her poor doctor. she’s already embarrassed herself enough today, she won’t let herself collapse in pain on the floor of the office.

“nice to see you again, sevika.” her PT smiles, “how’ve you been?”

how has she been? what a long list she could go down. first of all, she’s in so much physical pain she can barely sit upright without passing out. next, she hasn’t been sleeping well due to her night terrors, and she’s waken up soaked in sweat and shivering more often than not. finally, if this list has to end anywhere, she feels jealous. of the happy families she sees every day, of the kids with friends, of the adults with well paying jobs.

“i’ve been… surviving.” she says, purposefully ignoring the plethora of problems she has. this is physical therapy, she reminds herself. not the damn loony bin. get ahold of yourself.

“well, surviving is a great start.” her therapist says with a faux smile. “how has the pain in your shoulders felt since i last saw you? better? worse?” and with that, her voice trails off into the distance with sevika zoning out.

her poor arm gets bent in every single direction you can think of, even ones it’s not supposed to. she bites back her screams of agony and replaces them with little pained growls and whimpers. every time her arm gets bent slightly behind her, a shock of pure pain shoots through her spine and leaves her a shivering mess. the pain within her feels electric, like she’s about to burst into flames or something. it’s the worst thing she’s ever felt.

the tears in her eyes threaten to spill more than ever, but by some miracle she manages to hold them back. until she gets back to her apartment, at least.

as soon as she steps through the front door, she makes a beeline for her bedroom. burying her face in her pillow, she lets it all out. her pained scream is barely muffled by the pillow, but she continues to scream until her throat feels like sandpaper and she realizes that she can’t breathe.

gasping for air, she flops over. her vision is spotted and blurry from a mix of tears, pain, and exhaustion. she stares at her ceiling and cries while she chokes on her own staggered breaths, and she barely registers that someone’s knocking on her door until she hears her name called through it.

“sevika? are you alright, hon?” is followed by another few pounds on her door. she doesn’t want her anyone to call the cops, so she slowly and reluctantly rises from bed, grabbing onto her door frame to steady herself.

it’s her neighbor. curse these walls for being too thin.

sevika groans and rolls her eyes before opening the door, trying her best to plant an indifferent look on her face although it looks more like a pout. the old woman smiles up at her, glad to see that she’s alive after that screaming, but sevika can’t return the smile.

“what’s wrong? did something happen?” her neighbor asks.

“nothing’s wrong.” sevika grumbles, lying through her teeth.

“i know that’s not true honeybun, your eyes are bright red and your cheeks are wet with tears.” her neighbor coos. sevika thinks it’s annoying. she doesn’t want anyone’s sympathy.

“i’m alright, thank you.” she says sternly, although her neighbor keeps pushing.

“may i come in?”

sevika doesn’t answer, instead watching as the old lady walks past her and plants herself on sevika’s couch. “come chat with me.” she invites with a warm, grandmotherly smile.

“i’m not in the mood for chatting.” sevika glares.

“oh, dear,” her neighbor chuckles to herself. “i’m afraid i’m too mature to have you groan at me like a teenager. come sit.”

sevika comes up with another response, but it’s not a very friendly one. the angel on her shoulder tells her not to say it, that the poor woman is just trying to help, that sevika’s already been so much of a bother that she should just shut her mouth. but the devil on her shoulder is fed up right now, and sevika always favors the devil.

“i’m afraid you’re not an ounce as mature as i am. you haven’t been through what i have, and you have no place to tell me what to do in my own fucking apartment.” but sevika does listen to the lady, because she takes a seat right next to her on the couch.

her neighbor ignores her emotional outburst and instead asks “are you hungry?”

“no.” sevika scowls.

“tired?”

“exhausted.”

“sad? lonely? you’d do good with a pet around here. or a few plants. i can grow you a—”

“no thanks. i don’t need a… plant. or an animal.” sevika spits.

“hmm. you live a sad life, don’t you. i wonder what you were like before you came here.” her neighbor sighed.

“i don’t owe you an explanation. that’s private.”

“sevika, you can talk to me if you need to. i’m only one door down the hall, retired, it’s just me and my cats. i’ll always be available if you need something.”

“i don’t need anything.” sevika rolls her eyes. “much less your pity.”

“okay, fine then. if you won’t let me help you, i’ll make someone else help you.”

she reaches into her pocket and digs through her wallet, pulling out a thin paper card and handing it over to sevika. “come with me tomorrow. it’d do you wonders.”

“to… church? no thanks, i’ll pa—”

“okay, great. i’ll see you tomorrow morning then.” her neighbor says, rising and making her way to the door.

“i didn’t say i’d come.”

“i’ll pick you up at eight. better set an alarm.”

“i didn’t agree to co—” and sevika gets cut off by the slam of her own door before she can finish her sentence. whatever, when tomorrow rolls around she’ll just ignore her neighbor, pretending to be asleep or something.

she leans back on her couch, staring at the ceiling and wishing she had a pillow to grip onto, to scream into. another thing to add to the list. she stares at the ceiling instead, balling her hands up into fists as rage turns into sadness and sadness turns back into exhaustion.

it takes everything in her not to crawl to bed, but she stands and walks herself eventually. her shoulders sag and her torso slumps forward as she takes one step at a time, her posture making her about 4 inches shorter than she really is. her bed cradles her weight though, and she sighs into her cold, wet pillow once the tension in her body is released. it’s the best feeling ever. and before she knows it, her eyes are shutting, mind going back to that deep, dark memory.

——

7:30am rolls around, and sevika curses herself for waking up this early. now she’ll have to pretend to be asleep in front of her neighbor, and she’s not a good actress. she rolls out of bed, dragging herself to the bathroom to get her day started. she tries to avoid the mirror, but it’s impossible.

she stares at herself for a while, the uncomfortable feeling of someone else looking back at her creeps up on her. she doesn’t look like herself, she doesn’t look like sevika. she looks sick, tired, hurt, starving. the thought of food makes her stomach twist, she hasn’t eaten anything real in over a full day. maybe she should go easy on her neighbor and ask for a home-cooked meal. maybe.

her hair is fluffy and frayed at the ends, and her roots feel eternally greasy. her depression is so bad, she either showers daily in an attempt to scrub the hallucinated blood off, or she won’t shower for weeks. it’s like she can never win the battle.

a knock at the door disrupts her thoughts. “sevika?”

a groan involuntarily escapes her as she silently opens the bathroom door and creeps out into the living room. “sevika, wake up, it’s almost eight.”

she freezes, praying that her movements on top of her creaky floorboards go unobserved.

“sevika, dear, i can hear you on the other side of the door. you’re not fooling anyone.”

fuck. she’s not getting out of this, is she.

with another groan, she opens the door and sighs. the old lady smiles up at her, dressed in some sort of church attire. “grab a coat,” she says. “it’s chilly out.”

what else does sevika have to do, other than follow the orders? she’s trapped now. following this sweet old woman to church on a sunday. something she never thought she’d do. but she yanks a jacket over her shoulders and shoves her shoes on, not bothering to lock the door behind her. she claims she has nothing to lose in there, but that’s just because she lost her own apartment key a while ago.

she almost smiles when her neighbor shoves her into her car. almost. but she’s not exactly capable of that anymore. it’s so luxurious. she has a heater and a radio and a seat. it’s almost like she’s in a spaceship, marveling at all of these features that would make her life so much easier.

her excitement reaches it’s end as they pull into the parking lot of the building, and that pit in her stomach returns as she climbs out of the small car. if her legs worked a fraction of how well they used to, she’d run so far away from this place.

everything about it is repelling her. the building is huge, bright, colorful, everything she’s seen in her recurring nightmares. it smells like dust and coffee, children’s art line the walls, along with some more formal paintings and portraits. the ceiling seems to be made of glass— the kind that shatters easily and can slice your hands up.

the windows are colored with stained glass that portray different scenes. people made of bright colors dance and pose and feast all around them, their dazzling figures being illuminated by the white sunlight shining through the windows. it’s the kind of beauty she was attracted to years ago, the kind that nearly got her killed.

“sevika, come sit with me.” her neighbor says, derailing her train of thought. she practically has to drag sevika over to the pews as she stares at the buildings interior, feelings of fear and comfort flooding through her veins and stunning her.

she’s too busy taking in her surroundings to realize that the service has started, and she’s quickly reminded of how much she hates places like this. a large, beautiful room full of people. a community. something bad could happen at any moment, and she’d be in no shape to help any of them.

small droplets of blood fill her mouth one at a time as she anxiously chews on her bottom lip. she knows it’s a bad habit, but it’s oddly comforting. the metallic taste is just a reminder that she’s still alive, that the blood is still inside of her body instead of splattered across the floor. gross, ugh, don’t think of that.

in an attempt to tune out the preacher’s sermon, she decides to study the people around her. it’s a harsh reminder of past events, she swears she can almost recognize the faces of the dead bodies in them. all ages, young and old. parents cradling their newborn babies, seniors admiring their lover’s white hair, kids swinging their feet out in front of them in an attempt to stay occupied.

she tries to push these morbid thoughts away from her brain, but it’s not easy. it’s her minds default, it’s why she hasn’t stepped foot in any sort of large building in years. by some miracle, she’s survived a bombing once, how on earth could she do it again?

but to her luck, the ceremony is over before she knows it, and she’s about to escape before her neighbor yanks her back by the collar of her jacket. she pouts, rolls her eyes, and turns around to face her.

“meet my neighbor, sevika. this is her first time joining us.”

“nice to meet you, sevika.” and the man sticks his arm out to sevika, awaiting a returned hand shake. she doesn’t return it though, and she doesn’t even look at him. instead she just stares at the floor and says “yeah… thanks…”

her neighbor nudges her shoulder for being rude, but she doesn’t owe anyone anything. she doesn’t know if the man who tried to shake her hand is same guy who’s been blabbering on this whole time, but if it is, she doesn’t want anything to do with him.

“sevika, what the hell was that? i didn’t bring you here to be rude, i brought you here to learn something.”

sevika scoffs with a fake laugh, “i don’t need you to parent me.”

“then stop acting like a kid, let’s go meet more people.”

how was she gonna get out of this? oh well, in only a few hours she’ll be home again, resting and recharging in bed under the covers. she follows behind her neighbor like a lost puppy, not even looking in front of her, just staring down and making sure that she’s following the correct pair of shoes.

you greet sevika’s neighbor warmly, she’s a familiar face you’re always glad to see. sevika’s figure almost startles you when you peek up, almost. but you get yourself under control, asking the sweet older woman “who’s this?”

“this is sevika, my neighbor. it’s her first time joining us today.”

“oh! nice to meet you, sevika.” you smile, keeping your hands to yourself. sevika doesn’t know what to think of you, you’re so… different from everyone else here. you’re not dressed like everyone else, you look more like sevika than you do the others. but she wouldn’t expect someone like you to work at a church, would she? god, how the world has changed.

“nice to meet you.” she says, not bothering to attempt a weak smile, but giving a cordial nod in your direction anyways.

“we hope to see you around here soon. if you need anything, you know where to find me. although, you look like you’re in good hands.” you offer, giving sevika’s neighbor a friendly pat on the shoulder. sevika watches you walk off, wishing she could dissect you a little more. but she doesn’t hesitate to exit the building when her neighbor declares that it’s time to leave.

“are you hungry?” her neighbor asks once they’re in the car.

sevika’s mouth speaks before she can stop herself, “yes. starving.”

“good, you’ll come over for brunch. that wasn’t a question, by the way.” she smiles.

sevika rolls her eyes and almost smiles back. almost. but the ache in her lower back is making it hard to be happy in this moment.

her neighbor’s apartment is quite grandmotherly, to put it nicely. she has two cats— a black ball of fluff named “fluffy” and a skinny, all white cat named “snowy”, both of which were named by her grandchildren. there are plants and paintings and handmade quilts littering her place, every one of them having a story behind it. it’s cute, sure, but a little bit too maximalist for sevika’s enjoyment. at least she has furniture. good quality furniture.

a steaming teacup is placed in front of her seat at the counter, and both of the cats jump up to check it out. in all honesty, sevika thinks it’s kinda gross to live with animals. she doesn’t know where the hell those cats paws have been, and if it were up to her they wouldn’t be on the kitchen counter.

the cats waddle over to sevika, getting too close to comfort in an attempt to investigate the strange woman sitting at their counter. once she’s deemed safe, they raise their backs and point their tails up as if to ask for pets, but sevika scowls and awkwardly scoots away from the strange animals.

“not a cat person?” her neighbor laughs.

“no… not an animal person in general, really.”

“they’re sweet. give ‘em a pet.”

“no thanks…”

“fine. but you better eat up before they eat it for you.” her neighbor says, shoving a tall stack of pancakes in front of sevika. it’s a heavenly sight, and she almost feels bad for eating it instead of staring at the masterpiece for a while longer.

but that hungry pit in her stomach only grows and shoves itself against her stomach, so she has no choice to dig in. not that she’s complaining, and they taste absolutely divine. she grows uncomfortable again, last time she felt divine was the worst day of her life. it’s almost like a curse— one that never lets her feel true enjoyment.

fluffy and snowy meow loudly at her neighbor for food too, so she grabs a small dish and starts plopping some wet food onto it. again, sevika can’t fathom why someone would do that. on the counter? where she’s eating? but it’s not her apartment, so she keeps her mouth full of pancakes to stop the complaints.

she can’t wait to get home. checking the time, she realizes that it’s now afternoon. this has been the most eventful day she’s lived through in a while, and that triggers her anxiety to tone everything down. she needs a drink and a nap, so she thanks her neighbor and heads one door up the hall to her own apartment.

her door is unlocked, just how she left it, and she realizes that the only valuable thing in her apartment might be her liquor cabinet. maybe she should get a lock after all. add that to the list.

she guzzles down some whiskey directly from the bottle before stopping to take a breath. with how much she’s been drinking lately, she barely gets drunk anymore. it’s not fair, she might just have to find something stronger. jesus christ, i’m gonna drink myself to death. before she has a chance to bury herself back in bed, her phone rings. how strange, she hasn’t gotten a call in years. but what choice does she have, other than to lift up the receiver?

“yes?” she groans.

“hello,” you greet, a bit disturbed that someone would answer the phone with just ‘yes?’ “is this sevika?”

“who are you?”

“i’m from the church, we met earlier.”

“oh… okay… so…?”

“so, i wanted to tell you that i meant it when i said i hope you join us again. it was nice to see you, we rarely get any newcomers in this small town but… i can tell that you’re different.”

“okay…” sevika says. there is no way she’s stepping foot in that building again. jesus christ himself could not drag her in there.

“so… you’ll come?”

“i still need to be convinced.”

“easy. but i’ll need you to show up for that.”

“maybe.” she says, and you feel like you can hear a hint of promise in her voice.

“okay, well, have a good rest of your day. i’ll see you soon. maybe.” you say, about to hang up.

“how did you get my number?” she questions.

“helen gave it to me.”

“…who?”

“your neighbor? helen?”

“oh… right.” how could she not know her own neighbor’s name?

“sevika, don’t worry.” you assure her. “i’ll help you believe.” and the line goes quiet.

iv. I WILL DELIVER, YOU KNOW I’M A FORGIVER

that day was the first time you saw sevika, and you wish you could live in that moment forever. she was so soft and so sharp at the same time, and it was surprisingly harmonious. her physical features were striking, she looked almost… scary. but that scariness was easily cancelled out by her gentleness.

her cheeks were thin and sunken, but her chin effortlessly faded into the smooth skin of her neck. her nose stuck straight out of her head, but there was a slight curve to it that made you wanna run a gentle fingertip over it. her eyes were bright and silver, but they were so big and so round. she was tall, sticking up higher than anyone else in the room, but her hips and thighs were so plush and thick, she took up just the right amount of space.

she was just plain gorgeous. usually you’d scold yourself for thinking about another woman this way, but you’d been slowly coming to terms with your sexuality. as long as you don’t act on it.

from the moment you laid eyes on her, you knew you had to guide her. it was like some sort of fate or destiny. here’s this immaculate woman showing up in front of you in desperate need of help, your help specifically. it was a perfect mission, you’d do anything in her power to earn her trust and to help her feel that faith.

by some miracle, she answered the phone when you rang. judging by her previous attitude, you almost expected her to storm back down to the church and smack you across the face. your conversation was unproductive, sure, but it was a good start. well, if she decides to show up, that is. you don’t doubt her, if anything you can just ask her neighbor to force her to tag along again.

the mental image of her floats around in your head all day. what are you gonna do when she does show up? give her some sort of speech? she’ll probably just tune you out like she does to the rest of the world. you wonder why she acts the way she does, there’s no way anybody with a normal life could act this guarded. you just hope she opens up eventually, you’d kill to get to know her.

sevika’s not amused. she doesn’t want anyone’s help, or to pretend to have faith in something that’s all just make believe. really, the only thing she wants is some peace and quiet, and for the pain in her shoulders to lessen. before returning to her den, she sluggishly trudges to the kitchen cupboards, yanking them open in search of some painkillers. to her luck, there are two small pills left, which she quickly downs. she chooses water over whiskey this time, shockingly, because she’s a little bit frightened by drinking herself to death. which is strange, and she wonders why she values her life so much.

no matter what you do, you can’t get this woman off of your mind. something about her makes you feel different than how other people make you feel, but you can’t tell what it is or why. you need a plan. you need to talk to her again. or at least some confidence would be handy. but instead of dwelling on it, you decide to go for a walk.

the walk doesn’t really work though, it actually does the opposite of clearing your mind. you have nothing to focus on, no work to do, so you just think. your mind runs wild the whole time. you’re so intrigued, so excited yet nervous, you feel like it’s almost a craving. almost, because you’re not really sure what a craving is. not until you meet her, at least.

after swallowing her pain meds, sevika crawls back into bed, the heavy feeling of anxiety that settled over her chest slowly but surely fades, and she’s eased into a light afternoon nap. the plain white walls of her room offer some familiar comfort, but the more she looks at them, the more she’s reminded of the hospital. fuck, maybe she should try to decorate the place. and she really does need to go shopping later.

——

she wakes up nearly three hours later feeling more exhausted than before she slept. at least she feels a bit more calm, but the looming feeling of her responsibilities made her groan. another reason why she doesn’t want pets: it’s another mouth to feed, to walk, clean up after, bathe, spend time with. she can barely do those things for herself, how on earth could she do it for something else?

rather than pouting about her responsibilities, she makes the tough decision to get out of bed and get started with her day. get started meaning that it’s almost 6:00pm and she’s only just now attempting to complete her to-do list. and so what? she lives on her own terms. she doesn’t bother brushing her messy hair after her nap, even less to keep it out of her face with a little half ponytail. it never works anyways, the wind whips it all around you until it sticks to the sides of your face with humidity.

so, that’s it then, and she shoves her shoes and her coat on and leaves. the door stays unlocked, of course, and she makes her way down the stairwell and out of the building. there’s a small grocery store on her block which is conveniently located next to a liquor store. if she has the funds after buying her necessities, she’ll stop in there for a treat. actually, she’ll probably stop in there anyways, but she likes to think that she still has some self control left when it comes to drinking.

does she remember what she needed to buy? no. and did she bother to write down her mental shopping list as it came to her? nope! but it’ll come to her. hopefully. she spends the whole walk there trying to focus on what she needs to spend her money on and what she wants to spend her money on. she needs more painkillers, more snacks, some sort of decoration for her place, and… was there something else?

she crosses into the store and she’s immediately greeted by the sound of loud pop music buzzing through the speakers. great, so she’s overstimulated already. she’ll make it quick, she decides, it’s not like she wanted to be here in the first place.

sauntering down the aisles, she picks up everything she needs. at least, everything she remembers that she needs. she grabs a large bottle of extra strength ibuprofen, more bread and butter, microwave meals, milk and eggs, and what else? before she can think of another thing to add, she decides to just leave. if she thinks of anything else, she can always just come back later.

her shoulders sag under the weight of her basket, full of stuff that’ll probably just rot in her fridge. as she approaches the register, she sighs as the man behind it attempts to strike up a conversation with her. she’s not interested, she never has been, and she has no clue why he insists on chatting with her every time she’s there.

she doesn’t respond to the man the entire time she’s there, just staring daggers past him. she doesn’t even muster out a “good evening” or “goodnight”. i mean jesus, even a “fuck you” might’ve been polite. it’s not like she cares.

but she does stop by the liquor store on the way home, as we knew she would. she decides to treat herself, picking up not only one, but two bottles off of the shelf. whiskey and vodka, not cheap but it does the job. the money will come back around anyways. the man behind the counter, this time stoned out of his mind, asks her what she’s gonna do with the alcohol.

“what am i gonna do with it?” she repeats, obviously annoyed and confused. “what the fuck do you think?”

“mannnn, i bet you could make a hundred bottles of homemade mouthwash with this stuff. fucking awesome.”

sevika rolls her eyes and collects the large glass bottles, shoving them into her bag as gently as she can. she has no idea why everyone’s so interested in talking with her tonight, it’s like she’s wearing a glowing neon sign above her head that says “TALK TO ME!”

does she look approachable? happy? friendly? welcoming? no, obviously not. she must not be part of this inside joke the world is playing on her tonight.

so you’re surprised to see sevika when you’re out for your second walk of the night. pacing around in your own house wasn’t working, and all you wanted was some fresh air. well, maybe not fresh, but the temperature definitely did shock you. you almost walked right past her until you recognized her statuesque figure. she was across the parking lot, rolling her eyes and shoving the door to the liquor shop open as she stepped back outside.

huh. sevika at a liquor shop. not necessarily unusual for a person, but forbidden for you. you wonder if this is a ritual for her, if she’s gonna go home and get drunk or something, or maybe if she’s gonna split the bottle with some friends. does she even have friends?

you turn around and head in the same direction she does, hoping your paths cross before her quick, long strides can leave you behind. and you eventually catch up to her, pretending you had no idea you’d run into her, you greet her with a “oh, sevika! hey, i didn’t expect to see you here.” except, you did expect to see her here. you already spied her storming out of the liquor store. ugh, you’re such a bad liar.

“oh… hi.” she mumbles, a little disturbed by your sudden appearance, and already burnt out from the two people who’ve made small talk with her in the past hour. while you stand in front of her, she raises her eyebrow slightly as if to signal that she’s waiting for you to say something before she walks away.

“i’ll see you next week, yeah?” you remind her, not really sure of what to say. partly because the meeting is so sudden, and partly because this woman is breathtaking.

“yeah, maybe.” she agrees halfheartedly.

“i don’t want your ‘maybe’s sevika. i want you to say yes to me.” you challenge, huffing at her indecisiveness. “if you want me to help you, i need a yes.”

“help me with what?” she asks, pretending to be shocked and offended at your words. you stutter, staring up at her with a sorry look in your eyes.

“oh, i’m sorry, i didn’t mean—”

“i’m just fucking with you.” she says, chuckling to herself and offering a small smile. and as if her face couldn’t get any more perfect, you notice a small gap between two of her top teeth. she’s so beautiful you feel like you’re gonna melt, even in this chilly autumn weather.

before you think about what you’re saying next, you blurt out a “tomorrow? can i see you tomorrow?”

she raises her eyebrows at your bluntness, the suggestion seems to come out of nowhere. but what else does she have to do? and she already feels bad for fucking with you all of the time, shouldn’t she just give in and attend whatever stupid meeting you have planned for her?

“i— i guess, yeah.”

“you guess?” you tease. “or you will show up?”

“i will. i’ll see you tomorrow.” she admits with a huff.

“good, i’ll see you tomorrow too then.” you say, and you offer her a small wave before walking past her and continuing with your walk. after seeing her, your mind automatically feels so much clearer considering the fact that she was the one occupying all of your thoughts.

sevika stands frozen in place as you walk away, holding her bag in her hand as she reflects on what she just agreed to. why the fuck would she say yes to that? she doesn’t believe in any of your religious bullshit, and she doesn’t care to try. but it’s too late, she’ll just have to let you down easy when tomorrow comes.

but when tomorrow does come, she decides to go a little bit easier on herself. it’s not like you’re trying to annoy her with all of your beliefs and jargon and whatnot, and she can tell that this actually does mean a lot to you. plus, she’s in a good mood after remembering that she bought two new bottles of alcohol. she even ate a little bit last night and managed to keep it all down, which is a rare occurrence for her. so yeah, it might be a good day.

the sun peeks out just a tiny bit from behind the clouds as she walks herself back to the church, which offers a nice, although minuscule, bit of warmth. you’re already there by the time she arrives, and you greet her with a warm smile and invite her down the long hallway to your ‘office’. it’s not technically a real office since you don’t do too much work other than filing papers and planning events, you just begged them to give you a room that you could sit alone in sometimes.

you don’t have any sort of plan on how you’re gonna convert sevika, or how to at least help her fix up her life a little bit, but you do wanna get to know her. so you start with that. you ask her where she’s from and if she’s lived here her whole life, and you’re surprised to learn that she used to work in new york. all the way across the country.

she hesitates to tell you why she left though, saying she’d rather save it for a later session when she gets more comfortable. which she regrets almost instantly, because she just solidified herself another few meetings like these. she tells you more, like how she was always close with her mother until she passed when sevika was only ten. and how she definitelty inherited some anger from her dad, even though she never liked him.

her childhood was interesting. to you at least. she was just stable enough to keep herself afloat, but unstable enough for her to be left with some sort of trauma. she moved out as soon as she reached eighteen and never looked back. she scoured for jobs that would be good for someone like her, someone broken but strong. resilient, you call it.

the two of you chat for nearly three hours, you asking questions after question and her answering nearly all of them. but the one question that you’re too scared to ask is this: what happened that turned her into… this? she said it had something to do with her job, something that just completely broke her and left her unable to snap back. but what was it? how bad could it have been? what job did she have? was it her fault? but you did agree to letting her tell you on her own terms, so you’ll just have to wait until she’s ready.

eventually your time is up, and you walk sevika back out of the double doors of the small building. she flashes you a small smile, one that you’re already obsessed with, and she turns to leave.

“wait.” you call after her, although she’s only about six feet away from you. “you don’t have a car?”

“no.”

“how did you get here?”

“i… walked…” she says, waiting for you to get to your point.

“all this way?”

“it’s only about a block and a half.”

“but— well…” now you feel bad. you didn’t know that you were forcing her to exercise her exhausted joints and muscles in this weather. sure, maybe she doesn’t mind, but if you were her you’d probably throw a tantrum. “do you want me to drive you?” you ask.

“sure, if you really want to.”

“of course i want to.” you say, and you practically drag her off of the sidewalk and shove her into the passenger side of your car. the drive is short, her building really is just about a block and a half away.

“i’ll see you next week.” you say.

“yeah, see you then.” she responds, and for once it doesn’t feel forced or awkward.

“and tell helen i say hi if you see her. assuming you know who she is?” you giggle.

“yes, i know my own neighbor.” she says, rolling her eyes and chuckling.

“just making sure…” you tease.

sevika just laughs and waves you goodbye through your front window, disappearing into the building and up the stairs. you don’t even register it— to busy with staring at her back— but eventually it hits you that she laughed. this mysterious, guarded woman laughed at something you said. and she spent the last three hours opening up to you about her life. and for the first time in quite a while, you feel like you’re finally good at your job.

——

sevika’s been following through on her promise, meeting you for exactly four weeks now. twenty eight days. you started out with just seeing her twice a week, then every other day, and now you see each other daily. she opened up to you about how much she hates the church setting, how it activates her fight or flight response and brings up old memories, so you switched to taking her to a small local cafe instead.

it’s great. you get to have real coffee, not the burnt stuff from the coffee pot in the church’s kitchen. you’ve also been forcing sevika to eat after learning that it’s been a struggle for her. nothing big, but you make sure she always has at least a muffin or a croissant in her stomach. you pick her up and driving her there too, which is good for her because she can finally relax instead of being worn out from walking everywhere.

she’s taken a liking to you, every morning she’s glad she wakes up because she knows she can see you again. it’s such a strange feeling, but she enjoys it. opening up to you wasn’t as difficult as she thought it would be either. you listen so attentively, and you’re always careful to ask appropriate questions and give her a break without her even having to ask for one.

it’s never been easy for her to talk about what happened in her past, and she wishes she had the ability to forget about it completely. but it’s easier with you. every time her eyes grow wide and teary as she pictures the bodies, you change the topic and point at a cute dog outside of the window. or when she gets choked up, stumbling over her words because the brutality of the situation is just too much for her, you let her take her time.

the most memorable moment for her was when she told you about that kid with the blue hair. everything else, sevika managed to stay under control about. sure, the mangled body parts and the melted flesh was bad, but that fucking kid. her lips were still blue. she’d been so alive only moments earlier, smiling as sevika gave her a fist bump and held her in her arms, and she was gone just like that.

when she told you, she couldn’t help but break down in heavy sobs. you could feel your heart shatter at this— the story and sevika’s reaction to it. you scrambled from your side of the booth to hers, scooting in next to her and wrapping her up in a hug as she cried. to your surprise, she hugged you back. she hooked her chin over your shoulder, grabbed you tightly in her strong arms, and just let herself go.

it’s the most tranquility she’s ever felt, and it put all of her past therapists to shame. immediately after that day, the two of you were bonded. you’d do anything for her. be a shoulder to cry on, drive her to and from her various doctors appointments, and make sure she’s eating.

she’s started to trust you, and she agreed to going back to the church with you a few times a week. instead of taking your usual spot with the rest of the staff and speakers, you sit with her every time. sevika on your left, her neighbor on your right.

today you’re feeling particularly bold for some reason, you suspect it might be because of your friendship with sevika, but this feels different. well, you know how it feels, but you’re scared to admit it. although you’ll probably be fine, you’re hesitant to say it to yourself out of the fear that you’ll be thrown out of the church. yes, you like sevika, and sure, she is a beautiful woman. but you just can’t bring yourself to say it. to say that you have a real crush on her. to admit that you want her.

so instead of saying anything, you use your actions instead. glancing over both of your shoulders, you make sure that nobody important is looking in your direction before you snake your hand forward and wrap your hand around sevika’s. this action is the farthest you’ve ever gone with anyone, and your cheeks are practically on fire with how hard you’re blushing. you wouldn’t be surprised if the whole building could hear your heartbeat right now.

sevika adjusts her fingers so that she’s gripping your hand firmly, and you feel so… dirty, almost. you know that this is nothing, but you’re scared and ashamed of what other people might think. but although it initially feels wrong, you settle down when you realize that nobody’s looking— even more that nobody cares— and it feels so right. her hands are surprisingly warm and soft, they feel so welcoming and familiar against yours.

maybe, just maybe, you’ll hold her hand more often. but for now, this is just a one-time occurrence.

she notices the panicked look in your eyes as you stare straight ahead. she tries to nudge you gently, but you’re in such a deep stupor that you don’t notice it.

“hey.” she whispers, elbowing you a bit harder than last time. “you okay?”

you realize now that she’s trying to talk to you, so you just squeeze her hand and give her a small nod, blinking your eyes a few times and trying to snap back into reality. once the ceremony is over, you stand and walk sevika and her neighbor to the door quickly.

“are you sure you’re alright?” she asks again.

“yeah, it’s nothing.”

“you know that… this works both ways, right?” she says, gesturing between both of your bodies. “if you need someone to talk to, i can listen.”

“i know, thank you.” you start. “but it’s not like that. it’s nothing… bad. i think? but i’m fine. or— i will be fine.” you say, stumbling over your words incredibly hard.

“you don’t seem fine to me.” she retorts.

“i am, thank you though. get home safely.” you choke out, missing a crucial part to your signature goodbye’s.

“…see you tomorrow?” she asks.

“oh, yes! see you tomorrow, i knew i was forgetting something.”

sevika flicks you on the forehead, before turning to leave. “get some rest, then.”

“i will.” you laugh, although it’s forced.

as soon as her and her neighbor are out of sight, you turn around and make a beeline for your office at the end of the hall. your eyes are glued to the floor, purposefully ignoring anyone’s gaze in case they try to chat with you.

the door clicks locked behind you, and you slump down in our office chair. with your head in your hands, you start to cry. the anxiety in your chest is just too much to handle, and you’re so upset with yourself. you’re upset because it felt so good to be that close to her, and you let yourself indulge in something you know you’ll never get to have. you allowed yourself to catch feelings, but you know you can’t go any further. you’ll have to stick with just thinking she’s pretty and sweet and yours, and watch her fall in love with another woman.

worst of all, she’ll probably fall in love with a woman who’s the total opposite of you. someone who’s experienced and not awkward and cool. and not you. and this really hurts to realize.

what are you supposed to do now? now that you’ve admitted how you feel to yourself, what else is there to do? you can’t ask her out on a date, that would be against everything your community believes in. but are you really supposed to just sit here and play along? it’s not fair. your adrenaline is so high right now that all you really want to do is run.

and that's just what you do. you don't even bother to use the exit door down the hallway, you just peel your window open and hop out of it. tears prickle your eyes and the frosty air nips at your skin, but it helps even out your overheating temperature. you’ve walked this route a millions times already, it’s nothing different but the gentle scenery offers a nice place to think.

you think about all of the sweet moments you’ve shared together, specifically about how much it means to you. you’ve never really had a friend like this before. sure, you’re convivial, but having someone like this was so different. she was yours. and you’d gladly be hers if she asked you to, but would she ask you to? would she ever ask someone like you to be hers?

but you also think about how much your religion means to you. you’ve been part of this for so long, working harder to have a strong sense of faith every single day. if you get with sevika, they could cut you off in an instant, and it would’ve all been for nothing. your reputation would be ruined, and if you’d ever wanna start over with another church, you’d have to leave this small town. leave your home.

it’s just not fair. why did god make you this way? for everyone else, falling in love with a man is no problem. they were made the right way, or at least know how to ignore their true feeling really well. was there some sort of secret lesson that you missed? that everyone is in on besides you?

once you get dizzy and out of breath, you find a stump to sit on and reflect. your shoes kick at the dirt underneath you, brain fuzzy as you try to decide on what to do. little bugs crawl around on the ground beneath you, each one of them having a family and a home. i wish i could have a family, you think. you can hear rain pattering on the leaves of the trees above you, but you stay dry. well, as dry as you possibly can be living this close to the ocean.

you don’t even realize how long you’ve been sitting here lost in your thoughts before the sky turns a lovely light shade of orange, and you realize you’d better leave now if you wanna get back before dark. the only thing on your mind as always is sevika.

sevika has been thinking about you all night too, wondering if you’re okay after the way you acted. she won’t push, she wants to give you time to open up to her the same way you did, but she just worries. and she misses the warmth of your hand in hers, although she could tell you were nervous. in her opinion, it was cute. she admires how gentle you are, how you always make sure others are alright before making sure you are alright. but whatever it is, she doesn’t doubt that you’ll be fine.

leaving your window open was a stupid idea, now your entire office is cold and there’s a puddle of rainwater leaking down the bottom of the window and onto the floor. but you’ve made up your mind. you need to call her. you know that she’s infinitely more experienced with these feelings than you are, so she’ll be able to help you, even if those feelings are about her.

she’s about to go to bed early when her phone rings again. she knows it’s you before she even picks up— you’re the only one with her number.

“yes?”

“…sevika.” you sob out, the small whimper of her name followed by sniffles and cries.

“holy shit, are you okay?” she asks frantically, scared that maybe you’re hurt or something.

“well… physically yes. but i just… miss you. i need to talk to you in person.”

“okay, yeah. i’m on my way.” she says, and she practically flies out of her building and down the street to get to you. it’s not late, but the sky is already pitch black due to how early the sun sets. you meet her at the door again when she arrives, and the sight of her instantly calms your nerves. she looks so worried, it makes your heart twist. you’re so in love and it’s all her fault.

she doesn’t hesitate to wrap you up in her arms as you sob into her shoulder, and this gesture only makes you sob harder. because you’re so in love and you think you know which side you’re choosing. and it breaks your heart.

“what’s going on?” she asks, and you realize you’re still standing in the doorway.

“come inside, i’ll explain.”

“okay…” she whispers. “did something happen?”

“i have a question.”

“of course. ask me anything.”

“do you ever…” you trail off, trying to find the right words. “feel like… like you can’t live without someone? and you’d give up anything to be with them?”

“yeah, i guess i’ve felt that way before.” she admits quizzically.

“what’s it called?” you ask, although you already know the answer.

“love?” she guesses.

“sevika, can i tell you something?”

“yeah, go ahead.” she says, worried that maybe you’re about to admit to killing someone.

“i think…” you start, but you get interrupted by tears dripping past your eyes and down your cheeks.

“spit it out,” she prompts. “you can trust me.”

“i think i’m in love with you.” you blurt out, biting the bullet.

“oh…” she says, and she almost steps away from you before she realizes that you’re crying again. so she wraps you in another hug and rubs your back. you grip onto her so hard you can barely breathe, and you cry in her arms for so long that you’re brought to your knees. sevika holds you even after you fall the the floor, keeling before you as your knees give out.

she’s in love with you too, but she didn’t wanna say anything in case it made you uncomfortable. plus, she’s not really into corruption or anything, so she decided to just respect your boundaries. but eventually her joints grew sore of sitting on the floor, so she rose, holding your face in her hands and wiping up all of your tears as they fall.

v. REACH OUT AND TOUCH FAITH

every little thing about her attracted you. sevika was a lost soul, mysterious above all. a woman who needed help and direction but was so strong, you swore she could hold the whole world on her shoulders, no matter how much she’d whine about the pain. she complains about people— how there are too many of them and how they’re all stupid— but she’d give her life in a heartbeat to save them.

you couldn’t crack her, no matter how hard you tried.

she looked down at you with her silver eyes sparkling in the candlelight, her hair falling over her face in a silky curtain. you gasped as her thick hands took their place on either side of your head, each one cupping your cheeks so tenderly although they have a rough exterior. you always knew she was capable of being gentle.

you looked up at her from your position on your knees, her torso looking impossibly longer than usual. something comes over you, something that warms up your stomach until you feel so dizzy you feel the need to reach for something to steady yourself. unaware of just how much trouble this would get you in, you end up grabbing for her upper thighs. they’re so thick that your hands are almost completely flat, but they’re sturdy. perfect for grabbing onto.

she chuckles at your flushed state, huffing out an amused “it’s alright, you can touch me if you want. you won’t burst into flames.”

those two sentences make your cheeks heat up involuntarily. you know what she’s implying, and it makes you feel strangely electric. if you don’t burst into flames by this act of sinning, you’ll burst into flames due to how flustered you are. she does something to you that feels so enchanting, like some sort of spell she’s casted. you’ve been frozen in place for so long that you hardly register the soft caress of her thumbs against the apples of your cheeks. if she were medusa, you’d get turned to stone in an instant.

“sevika, what are you— we should—”

“what are you thinking about right now?” she asks, tauntingly putting an end to your stuttering mess of a sentence.

“uh— medusa. and you. you remind me of her.” you choke out, reaching up and gripping onto her biceps before hauling yourself up.

“how so?”

“i always feel like you put me under some kind of spell. like when i’m with you i’m frozen in place. in a good way.” you respond, your breath tickling her face as you gaze up at her from a closer distance this time.

most of your dizziness has relented, and now you sense something softer in the way sevika gazes at you. like she’s pleading for something she doesn’t know how to ask for. she stammers back, almost hitting the wall, and you grow concerned. the roles have shifted. little do you know, you’re in power now. she feels… weak. and needy. something tingly settles in her stomach, she can’t decipher whether it’s anxiety or horniness.

“sevika?” you ask with concern, slowly walking over to where she’s pressed against the wall. her chest heaves as she breathes deeply, and she shivers when you reach out to grab her hand. “are you feeling alright?”

“i don’t think i can do this anymore.” she confesses, her big, silver eyes growing glossy with tears. “i’m— i can’t do this to you.”

“what are you talking about?” you attempt to soothe, worried that maybe she’s suddenly gotten possessed or something.

“you belong here, sevika. you’re not doing anything wrong. if anything, it’s me who should back off right now.”

“it’s not about that.” she sighs, unable to meet your gaze, her eyes instead settling for your lips. a sight she’s seen many times before in her most erotic fantasies.

“what are you feeling right now?” you ask, your therapist persona settling over you in case she’s about to reveal more of her past trauma.

“i… i can’t say it.” she whispers, now solely focused on the curve of your lips and how they’re still shining from the last time your tongue trailed over them.

“you can trust me.” you whisper back. “always.”

sevika studies your words in her mind, hoping that you’d still mean them if you could see the thoughts running wild in her mind right now. she inches closer to you and her nose almost brushes yours. the tension in the room makes her squirm, thighs pressing together in an attempt to soothe the ache between them. somehow, in some strange way, this feels better than sex. better than anything she’s ever smoked, any liquid she could get drunk on.

you are her intoxicant. her stronger substance. her higher power. her breath of fresh air in this humid town. you are what she’s been searching for.

before she makes another move, she pauses. you’re looking at her with such concern, such love, her heart feels like it’s gonna burst. she theorizes that you’re aware of exactly what she’s thinking, but she has no way to know. sevika wonders how you’d react if she leaned forward and kissed you right now.

you have a sneaking suspicion that she’s thinking of something… lustful right now. it shows in her eyes. wide with pupils big and blown out, and the silver in them is practically glittering. she looks pretty, you think, and soft. and although it’s against almost everything you believe in, you probably wouldn’t mind if she leaned in right now and just—

her lips come crashing against yours, a beautiful harmony of carnal aggression and tender care. gravity suddenly feels about twenty times stronger, and you near collapse in sevika’s strong arms. instead of that, you regain your balance after stumbling and back her against the wall. her back hits it with a thud, and she whimpers into your mouth. she whimpers.

it’s as if everything you’ve ever believed in suddenly floods out of your mind. you don’t care which god sees you kissing another woman with such animal desire. somehow it doesn’t matter to you anymore. all that matters is sevika. her safety, her trust, her pleasure.

for once, you allow yourself to feel this way. although it feels wrong, it’s so freeing. you’re an adult for god’s sake, and you’ve missed out on so much due to the strict rules of the church. you want this, you deserve this. after all, it is technically your job to guide sevika, to make her feel good. how is this any different?

as her lips part, you take the chance to slide your tongue over hers. just a gentle brush, but the warm heat of her mouth drives you crazy. her hands claw at your hips, pulling you closer until there’s no gap between the pair of you. this level of closeness isn’t something you’re used to, but fuck, it feels so right.

you can feel the way her thighs tighten when she squirms and clenches them together, feel her own tits rub against yours through your clothes. the intimacy of the moment almost feels awkward, especially because it’s completely silent other than the sounds of your lips smacking together. but before you can dwell on the embarrassment crashing over you, sevika grounds you by moaning your name into your mouth.

as if you weren’t already turned on, this flips a switch and activates something in you that’s a hundred times stronger. both of you pant when you pull back, staring into the silver pools of sevika’s irises. you need her. now. in every way possible.

“take your clothes off.” you demand. sevika nods momentarily, but she hesitates.

“are you sure? we don’t need to— if you’re not comfortable with it that’s fi—”

“now, sevika.” you huff at her attempt to be gentlemanly, but you know she’s craving this as much as you are.

without another word, she strips herself of her shirt, leaving her in just a black sports bra and jeans. you halt your own undressing to stare at her. and god. she’s fucking perfect. her abdomen carries the remnants of what you assume used to be a thick six pack of abs. and although you can’t exactly see them yet, her tits are wide and heavy looking, her ribs poking out slightly under them.

something that you didn’t expect to turn you on is her happy trail. she’s got a thick line of dark, coarse hair running from her belly button all the way down to—

her pants drop to the floor as you continue to stare at her, and your eyes trail lower and lower until they reach the ground. her thighs look impossibly thicker, and you’re surprised about how much she complains about her body. she looks so strong, like nothing could ever hurt her. and as for being insecure? impossible for someone who looks as good as she does. you’d do anything to make her aware of just how beautiful she is.

as she stands almost naked before you, she peeps out a timid “your turn.”

before you think twice, you tackle her to the floor, crushing her lips under yours and shoving your tongue back into her mouth. she whimpers when she hits the ground, albeit mostly out of pain instead of pleasure. you slightly pull away with a gasp, concerned about potentially hurting her— the opposite of your intentions.

“fuck, sorry.” you groan against her lips. “did i hurt you?”

“it’s alright.” she responds. “worth it to have a pretty thing like you on top of me.”

with that, you’re kissing her even deeper, grabbing onto the back of her head to get a better angle with your tongue. she shuffles slightly under you, bucking her hips up as she unbuttons your own pants. shit, you think to yourself, i’ve never done this before.

your bottoms are quickly discarded, sevika throws them somewhere behind you the second they’re off. you’re dying to get your hands on her tits, but you don’t know how to ask. it’s a good think she can always tell what you’re thinking, because she reaches up to hook her thumbs under her bra and yank it off. and god, you were right. her tits are wide and heavy, they’re so smooth and round with the most perfect brown nipples sitting proudly in the center of each one.

you lean forward to give each one a kiss, just a gentle brush, but it doesn’t really satisfy your craving for her. you pout, you’re so horny that it hurts. no matter what article of clothing she removes, it’s not enough. you just wanna crawl inside of her and live there.

“what’s wrong?” she asks.

“i need you.”

“have you ever had sex before?”

“no. i have no idea what i’m doing.”

“guess it’s my turn to guide you.” she laughs, and although the joke was stupid, you giggle too. you didn’t know it could be this fun.

she shuffles under you as she slides her boxers off, and you almost drool at the sight of her bush. it’s just so… beautiful. and intimate. she pats your hips as a signal to scoot off of her, and she spreads her legs before manhandling you to sit your cunt on top of hers. as soon as you connect your cunt with hers, you swear you black out.

it all feels so good. she keeps spreading her legs wider to help you get a better angle against her clit, and you can feel it throbbing against yours. you thought holding her hand was intimate, but this is so much more than you could’ve imagined.

“fuck, sevika.” you moan, tears crashing over you again and dripping onto her cheeks now. “you’re so beautiful.”

she groans at this, tears washing over her too. she hasn’t felt beautiful in so long, and here you are completely undoing her insecurities. all of the scars on her face, cheeks, neck, arms, and torso get kissed. you trail your fingers along some, your tongue along others. you want her to feel loved. you want her to feel the exact same way that she makes you feel.

“you’re beautiful too.” she admits sheepishly. “i can’t believe i haven’t fucked you sooner.”

this flusters you. it’s hard for you to believe that anyone can just be this confident saying things like that, especially because you’re not used to it. but it feels so good to be desired. to have the woman of your dreams using you to get off.

you’re both so sensitive that it doesn’t take long for either of you to cum. sevika’s catches her first after you tell her how beautiful her scars are, even though she used to believe they were the ugliest things known to mankind. she gasps as she cums, her thick cream leaking out of her cunt and down her ass.

you eventually follow after her when she readjusts, moving one of her hands down from your neck onto your hip. she grinds up into you, and your clit meets hers at such an angle that you cum with a scream. it’s dizzying. you gasp and moan and writhe as your orgasm crashes down over you. considering that it’s your first, you weren’t expecting it to be so enveloping. you were taught that sex was unholy, gross, sinful, and a plethora of other negative adjectives.

but it’s not.

you imagine that this is what heaven feels like, a shock of pleasure that runs through your body and leaves you panting and reeling. and it’s fun. as soon as you come down, sevika’s congratulating you on a good job and holding you close. you cry again, but this time not out of fear, out of certainty. you have it all figured out. you’ve just felt the best sensation of your life and here’s the love of your life smiling up from under you.

and so sevika holds you for another few minutes. yeah, you’re both naked in the middle of church, and yeah you’d be burned at the stake if anyone ever found out. but you wouldn’t mind that, as long as you have sevika with you.

“sevika?” you ask after a long while of silent kisses and tickling breaths.

“yeah?”

“i think we need to get out of here.”

“alright. where to?”

“i dunno. let’s leave the country.”

sevika laughs at this, and it’s a sound prettier than anything you’ve ever heard. something you’ll never get sick of. “fuck, i love you so much.”

but before convincing her to leave the country with you, you drive her to a small 24 hour diner down the street and have dinner together. it’s a real date, although all of those coffee shop meeting have gotta count for something too. you hold her hand across the table, this time not afraid, and share a milkshake just like they do in the movies.

so yeah, maybe things didn’t work out for you with this certain group of people, and maybe it does still take a while for you to get over your fear of societal rejection, but sevika is there for you every step of the way. as your girlfriend. officially.

OK HAIII if you made it all the way through my the treacherous jungle of my yap and you’re reading this, thank you so much!!!! i poured my entire heart and soul (and pussy) into this so i hope u enjoyed hehehe :P special thanks to pluto, rayray, eren, and lyss for allowing me to yap about this fic to them, i couldn’t have done it without you guys 🥹 my favorite people in the world right here, MWAH here’s a kiss from ennabear <3 and another thanks to the rest of my mutuals for putting up with the empty promises of “coming soon” at least it’s actually finished now!! i love all of you, let me know what you thought of this one!!! comments and reblogs are very highly appreciated 🤎🤎

[baeddel]

speaking of trans boys. re: this post: it’s funnily enough been picked up by people i would typically consider my enemies, who tag it with #transandrophobia #transmisandry. you’ll laugh, but perhaps they’re right to tag it that way. if we have to be a theorist of transandrophobia lets at least try and do so seriously.

it’s worth reading the replies to that post from my friends. i may overemphasize the differences between the US and the UK in that post. one of the examples i use, Abigail Shrier’s Irreversible Damage, was actually published in the US and not the UK (by the far-right Regnery Publishing, built on the Regnery fortune one of the heirs to which uses his wealth to fund the activities of the white supremacist National Policy Institute and the Charles Martel Society; how do you like them apples?). but i still think it is the case, correct me if i’m wrong, that TERFs have enjoyed the most success at legal reform in the US pursuing a transmisogynist scaremongering agenda about potential predators, and that TERFs have enjoyed the most success at legal reform in the UK pursuing a #TransgenderTrend moral panic centered around the dangers posed to young cafabs (the two other major areas worth considering apart from legal reform would be medical reform and public attitudes; we wouldn’t be surprised to find the same trend in those areas, but we would also not be surprised to find a different trend).

anyway, the analysis i make about reproductive futurity (where transmascs themselves embody the Child as victims of transgender ideology who must be rescued, their fertility restored) is i think vulnerable to the same criticism made in this post. where sybil says “TERFs view you as a misguided corrupted victim”, and the rest, fig (sybil’s interlocutor) responds that what they are describing “are v much white transmasc experiences” and that black and brown transmascs are instead treated by white women “as threats, due to the intersecting views on manhood/masculinity and race.”

sybil accepts this argument and i accepted it at the time because it makes intuitive sense; this corresponds to how i understand racism to work. but i don’t really like accepting arguments on intuition like this because competing narratives would convince me equally based on the same principles. look at it this way: if we wanted to apply fig’s argument to my post we would say that transmascs of colour cannot embody the Child in this way because white women protray men of colour (even, people of colour quite generally) as dangerous, masculine, predatory, etc. we would bring up a number of examples to prove this, such as the role of ‘masculinity’ in the repressively reconstrued diagnostic criteria of schizophrenia applied to black male radicals in the 60s, the many instances where news writers refer to black 16 year old victims of police shootings as “men”, and so forth. we have a coherent story that people of colour are denied any notion of childhood and are seen to possess a sort of inaliable masculinity.

however, we could also tell the opposite story. there are many discourses where black and brown people figure as Children par excellence. i can’t find it now (frustrating!) but there is a very demonstrative old painting: it has a white woman who is meant to represent Europe nursing several children of colour (one for each ‘race’, as they saw it). this metaphor of mother Europe and her dependant colonies was very common (eg. here {warning: obscenely racist image}; common enough to be mocked in László Moholy-Nagy’s 1925 collage Mother Europe Cares for Her Colonies). further, the notion of the ‘childhood of man’ implicit in discourses about savages and primitives, important to liberal humanist evolutionism, became more than merely a discourse when deployed in eg. the reserve schools of America and Canada and the missionary schools of French Polynesia which sought to save native Children from their own indigineity—this in fact very much resembles our narrative about transmascs and their perverse salvation. in our conversation about this dev reminded me that people conflate “the capacity for self-infantilism and the use of infantilism as a means of social control.” one remembers what Eldridge Cleaver had to say about what he called the emasculation of black men, to such an extent that he analogized black men in America to court eunuchs (this is perhaps the only feature of his thought that stayed with him throughout his transition from black muslim to revolutionary communist to conservative fundamentalist).

you can see how i now have two competing stories that i might find intuitively convincing. both have historical analogues. i don’t want to arbitrarily decide one is the right version over the other without seeing good evidence and hearing good arguments. but even if i did, i should remain mindful that one might predominate in some discourses, might predominate in certain epochs, but may easily become its opposite under different conditions. if it can i’d like to know how, if it can’t i’d like to know why. in any case, it’s significant to me that personally i have never seen TERFs talk about cafabs of colour. of course they aren’t likely to talk about it to me, but this seems to be something that they acknowledge themselves (in a paraliptic way). Shrier confines her discussion to “(mostly white) girls,” by girls meaning trans men, who previously would have “[fallen] prey to anorexia and bulimia or multiple personality disorder“ (citation needed???). i can already imagine the sort of paper you could write about this parenthetical suggestion, (mostly white).

[ribbonstrawberrysurprise]

Hi! I am a big fan of the Tokyo Mew series, and I was wondering if you could do an analysis on the Mew Mew's projected elements and animals and colors, and how they all tie into their powers as magical girls?? I've always wondered if there is a certain mythology or reason behind it, but it seems like the girls' colors are mostly based on their names(Strawberry- red and pink, Lettuce-green, etc), but what about their powers?

Like you said, TMM colors are much more based on their food names than on their animals. (Although, based on that one 4-panel side comic in volume 1, it seems that the colors came first, then the characters were given food names that matched.) There are two seeming exceptions:

1) Mint, but it is relatively common for mint flavored candy and gum to have blue packaging.

2) Berry, whose theme color doesn’t seem obviously related to her fruit. There are a few plants with white berries (snowberries, white beautyberry, etc.), but none that are very common in cuisine or native to Japan as far as I can tell.

Actually it seems to be the opposite (at least for the manga), with characters’ animal parts being colored as to fit with their food/theme color! Zakuro’s ears are colored much more purple than on an actual wolf, and Berry has pure white ears and tail despite neither of her animals being that color irl.

I guess it’s possible she’s supposed to be based on albino plants and animals? Her Mew form does pointedly have pale blond hair and red eyes…

Anyway, as for their powers/elements…

The Mews don’t really have defined elements, with the exception of Lettuce! They more so seem to have different methods of using generic light/emotion-based attacks.

Lettuce obviously has water powers in both the manga and anime. She’s introduced telekinetically controlling a swimming pool, and her attacks are always drawn/animated as water. (Except possibly in ReTurn? It’s hard to tell if LettuSniping Shot is a jet of water.)

Her power is clearly based on her animal and not at all on her theme color. She’s actually one of the few water powered magical girls who isn’t blue! I guess you could also make a connection with her name, in that Lettuce tends to have a lot of water in it (at least Iceberg does), but I’m not convinced that’s relevant.

Ichigo seems to have the power of love/heart/purification, in that her attacks can purify the Chimera Anima. You could also argue something to do with harmony/friendship, as she tends to get upgrades by receiving power from the other girls. Also, maybe healing, considering she brings Masaya back to life? In a way, it seems like the Mew Mews powers are very analogous to the Mew Aqua. As for her animal…. I guess people do love cats? But again, it seems more based in genre conventions than exclusive to Ichigo. Pink is classic love, but it’s also classic magical girl leader.

Berry seems to have the same powerset as Ichigo (logical, since she’s her replacement), at least at first. Her powers seem to be emotion-based, as she’s able to undo mind control with Ribbon Loveberry Check, but the other girls’ words (plus the fact that they attack her classmates first) imply this is true of all Mew Mew powers, not just hers. In ReTurn, however, she seems to explicitly have healing powers, which does seem like a natural direction to go from purification/love. Same as Ichigo for the animal connection. White does seem very associated with purity and healing (at least via association with nurses/doctors). Plus white mage.

Speaking of healing, Ringo pretty much exclusively has healing powers, plus her ability to grant power to Ichigo. Very appropriate for a Mew Aqua powered character! She also has a little bit of a music theme since her mini attacks are named after solfege and involve music notes. Penguins aren’t really associated with healing or music (really, you’d expect ice), nor are red or apples (really, they’re more associated with poison!), plus Ringo was explicitly designed to be a healer so your party wouldn’t get wiped out in the RPG. So, her powerset came first, then her design…

Next up is Pudding! Her element, as it were, seems to be… pudding! Sort of… It really looks more like gelatin than crème caramel. In the anime, she does raise up the ground to protect herself in her first appearance, and her attack animation does show it tunneling through the ground, so I can see why you’d make the argument her element is earth, but she never really does anything with this again. Even when it could really come in handy, like when she's trapped underground. And her attack is edible, as per the manga, so it can’t be clay or something! As for an animal connection, I guess you could say that monkeys are kind of known for eating things, I feel like this is clearly based solely on her name.

Zakuro…. sort of has an element? Her whip is called a “whip of light” in the anime, and in the manga it’s literally a glowing cross-shaped whip. This plus the “Cross” and “Pure” give it definite holy/purification/light vibes. But, in my opinion, this isn’t unique to Zakuro! Mint’s arrows are also pure light/energy, Ichigo’s attack is also very glowy, and Pudding’s… puddings(?) seem to form from light/energy. It seems like rather than a unique light element, she has the normal Mew powerset but used in a way that can cut or tie up the enemies. I can’t say wolves are particularly associated with light. Really, I’d assume dark, if anything, since they tend to be cast as villains? Same for purple…

Moving on to Mint! I’ve seen it claimed that Mint’s element is sound, but she never really does anything sound-based. Sure, her weapon has “Tone” in it, and her attack has “Echo”, but Pudding’s attack has “Inferno” despite having absolutely nothing to do with fire. “Check”, “Surprise”, and “Pop” are also seemingly unrelated to the attacks they describe. As for her weapon being lyre-shaped, yeah! All of the anime-style weapons are based on instruments!

As a a ballerina, she has an association with music, but she isn’t particularly useful in the fight in episode 6 vs Mary McGuire Chimera Anima, who really does attack with music. When she fights the ballerina bird Chimera Anima in episode 9, she doesn’t use music, or even really dancing! She defeats it with the power of Kicking Really Hard. And she does hear the Mew Aqua swan calling for help, but that’s just an extension of the generic “can talk to animals closely related to their infused genes” power that Ichigo and Zakuro also demonstrate.

Really, it seems like her power is just “arrow”. Like Zakuro, she doesn’t have an element; she’s just the one who’s able to aim the best from a distance. I guess when Lettuce steals her thunder in ReTurn, she's forced to upgrade to “a whole bunch of arrows all at once” and hit everything.

All Mew Mews basically have light and emotion based powers that they use slightly differently, with the exception of Lettuce, who seems to actually just generate water out of nowhere. But her powers are obviously connected to her emotions still (see how they manifest when she first awakens them). Them all having the same base power is supported by the way the manga will often not depict each attack individually, instead having each girl say her attack name and then showing the Chimera Anima exploding in a collective burst of light.

In short, rather than individual elements, I think it’s more like:

Ichigo: big finishing move

Mint: long range precision attack

Lettuce: knocking back the enemy? area of effect? (water)

Pudding: holding the enemy in place

Zakuro: cutting through small fry or holding the enemy in place

Berry: big finishing move, healing

Ringo: healing (music)

So, none of their character traits (color, animal, power) are that related? There’s some stuff that seems linked, but overall it seems like they’re most informed by genre tropes. (Also, a lot of the details of their powers were hammered out by the anime.)

[kae-karo]

for the ask game: 27 for kaeya and the huge bread, and then 37, 41, 42 and 49 if you'd like :D

AWE hi hello tyty so much anon !!!! for context (x)

27. How long did it take to write Kaeya and the Huge Bread? Describe the process.

hooooooooooo boy okay so according to gdocs, i started writing it in mid february lmao. and i'm not entirely sure what day exactly i finished, but i did start posting it on childe's bday (july 20), and my usual process is to take a week or two prior to posting a chaptered fic to edit it, so...give or take 4.5-5mo or so to write?

tbh when i run headfirst into longfics like that, i rarely have much of a process lmao. i really don't outline anything, but i'll have usually a few key points i want to hit on throughout the story, or a few scenes/dialogue bits that i'm particularly excited to write, and then i really just work my way from one bit to the next lmao. i really have to write linearly, which sort of helps me make progress cause if i only wrote the stuff i was super excited for, i wouldn't bother to fill in the blanks or figure out any of the other cool stuff that i usually discover along the way

for example, the fact that the irodori festival was going to be a big part of the story/a big part of kaeya's reveal wasn't something i even really uncovered til halfway through writing the story lmao AND actually it didn't even occur to me til long after i conceived the idea for certain plot points that the reason kaeya struggled with not wanting childe to hold him to too-high romantic standards was not only bc he didn't feel like his writing reflected himself as a romantic partner but also cause he's aromantic!

this one was also fun cause i have all these commercial breaks, which started as an excuse to write zhongluc but quickly evolved into an excuse to write some other ships that i otherwise would have no reason or groundwork to write outside the context of this au, but those often got written actually After i worked on most of the main fic (my brain didn't demand linear writing since each one was sort of a Separate story) and also cause the main fic didn't get divided properly into chapters til basically i was done lmao

i also had a snag at one point during that writing period where i deadass wrote a whole scene, then immediately realized i was cramming too much into one single situation, and i actually ended up having to go back and rewrite the whole thing as two distinct scenes lmaoooo

37. Promote one of your own “deep cut” fics (an underrated one, or one that never got as much traction as you think it deserves!). What do you like about it?

i adore this question and i have to limit the number of times i plug my first chaeya fic lmao so instead i will mention a kaeluc fic that got a surprisingly small amount of traction for the fact that it's klk?

our names were meant to have arrows drawn through (x) is a fun lil spring break fic where klk meet as strangers and - in a wildly impulsive move on diluc's part - spend the night together

41. Link a fic that made you think, “Wow, I want to write like that.”

am i a simp for my wife? yes. but she's basically nonexistent on tumblr now so i can do that >:} seriously tho, there's just something poetic about the way she writes, and the first time i read smth of hers i was just. enamored with her writing style? i'm not entirely sure i had a 'this is what i want my writing to look like' vibe exactly (and i'm not sure i've had that really with any fic, per se - i like the way i write! and i know it's influenced by what i read as well, but it's rarely a conscious decision to point my writing in a particular direction)

anyway, that said, sometimes i feel inspired to write a little more poetically and i think it has to do with how lovely her writing sounds to me. she doesn't write for genshin, but if any of u bktdbks follow me, be sure to check out her fics - analog love (x) is a sweet one abt oranges

42. Have you ever received a comment that particularly stood out to you for whatever reason?

ohhhh this is both simultaneously a hard question to answer and a very easy one. the hard answer is: i have the memory of goldfish with amnesia and even the comments i've received that i know have been particularly meaningful to me or particularly poignant have slipped my mind

the easy answer is that, although i can't recall specific examples of exact comments, i do know the things in comments that i've received that genuinely mean the world to me. comments about my stories being immersive or that the reader couldn't put it down, comments about rereading, comments that pick out tropes or ideas or specific things that transcend some of my stories that the reader appreciates, comments that quote favorite lines (especially if, by coincidence, they quote some of my favorite lines from a story). comments that say i got someone into a ship !!!! comments that mention that my story got them through a rough time. comments from serial commenters whose names i recognize from my other fics

idk if this is conceited or smth but some day i would really just love to go print out like. all the comments i've gotten and paste them on big posterboards or smth to hang on my walls. i do not have the wall space for that but perhaps some day i will lmao cause like. idk sometimes my brain just forgets that like. this is from a whole entire real person !!!! who read my words !!! and LIKED THEM and wanted to let me know !!!!! like !!!! holy shit bro !!!!!

49. What are you currently working on? Share a few lines if you’re up for it!

LMAO what am i currently not working on? i keep saying i'll get back to my prince kaeya x many fic some day soon, but ideas keep cropping up and bopping me in the head lmao. perhaps once things slow down a bit for me, i'll have time and energy to swing back to it

currently i'm working on something as a request which i'm not quite ready to share bits of yet (still early stages atm as i am irritatingly busy rn and haven't been able to really get a flow going just yet)

i am also probably going to try to bash out another lil fic of the chiluc variety cause i got a bit of brainrot lmao assuming i have any time!!

so, alas, nothing really to share from a wip perspective atm, but i do still have quite the backlog of completed oneshots (i believe we still have some zhongchi, klk, chaeya, chennett, xiaoven, a surprise that i can't talk about for Reasons, plus some bktdbk and shinbaku on the bnha side)

[send me writing asks from this list!]

[moonssugar]

(sigh). let me preface this by saying i don’t defend jessica drew or miguel or peter b. parker for what they did and how they did so thats going to color what i think about them. before anyone starts shit, im black as well and i do not like jessica drew. i think people have valid reasons to dislike her that arent just chalked up to fandom racism. i also think the movie narrative wise wants audiences to criticize her, peter and miguel, but instead people fawn over miguel and ignore the crimes. its complicated but because all three of those characters are flawed their actions can be critiqued, yes that includes jessica

lets break some of this down starting with the last part

that’s why shes like I can’t help you - its like when youre a little kid acting bad as hell and ur mama is like 'iight wait till ur dad get home just wait’ and youre like 'FUCK’ because u didn’t listen to her and now have to deal with him

you know this actually rubbed me the wrong way for a lot of reasons. one reason is my belief that not only is miguel, the guy in charge of the whole spider society, is fundamentally wrong, projecting his mistakes onto miles and overall making spider society a negative environment. the second reason is parenting and since we’re talking about atsv, mentorship. see this example which is being used as an analogy here is actually a perfect example of bad parenting because — the child in question is living in fear of their father and the mother uses that fear to get the child to obey. the issue here is the use of power imbalance (parent over child) and the use of fear. i don’t believe children should be raised with fear or be afraid of their parents and that makes me anomaly in a lot of ways (see what i did there). the only reason this phrase works is because the child has an instilled fear of their father already but instead of addressing this mothers (and often black mothers, yes ive experienced this as a child) use it to their advantage. 

in the case of jessica whos going to be a mother eventually and was a mentor before that, she never questions why gwen should be and is afraid of miguel, ie she never questions why her boss has 15 year old children and hundreds or thousands of grown ass adults extremely afraid of him. she doesn’t question his violent behavior in much the same way mothers don’t question the father’s violent and intimidating behavior they just use it to control the child if we want to expand that analogy. she doesn’t question the position she’s in, she just either tries to shield gwen from it whiles its looming threat remains (and doesn’t shield miles at all but we’ll get to this in a second) or throw up her hands when “dad” gets home and says “i can’t help you” when shit finally hits the fan. “i can’t help you” meaning “i am not going to intervene” meaning “if miguel gets mad at you then its your problem” meaning “if i intervene i may suffer consequences myself”. she warns gwen...instead of questioning why she warns her and why she’s using it to keep gwen in line with what miguel envisions. she knows what will happen to gwen if she goes back to her own dimension and jessica uses that too. she never questions miguel if his methods or goal or means to an end are good or not. she seems perfectly content with this system. thats one my problems with jessica drew (and why alternatively i love hobie brown so much)

now, i am not ignoring the fact that jessica is pregnant and wants a future for her baby or that peter b. parker already has a mayday and wants to keep her safe from the danger miguel has described to them. i want to point out that miguel is using these to manipulate them into cooperating by implying that they will also loose their family like he did (ignoring the fact that she was never truly that 2099 miguel’s daughter in the first place but whatever). its a good, effective threat but we have to see that it is a threat and that is how miguel is holding everything together: through fear and collective trauma. a structure like that is bound to fall apart in the ugliest and most damaging of ways. jessica is a part of that structure, a quite integral part of it actually since she's so close to miguel. she plays her part and lets it continue.

second thing about why i dislike jessica: we’re all focused on how jessica interacts with gwen because she’s seen with gwen the most but nobody is talking about the fact that jessica willingly lead miles to miguel knowing what she already knows miguel thinks about him and that her shitty boss miguel o’hara physically assaulted — beat up — a black boy, almost killing him on a chase that not only jessica was a part of but fully endorsed and encouraged his friend (her trainee) to help with. a grown black woman allowed a young black boy to be physically assaulted, chased and entrapped on her watch without ever questioning if this was the right path, the right way to do things, morally right or ethically right. of all the characters she looks out for, jessica looks out for miles the least which is astonishing to me. again, shes just a black woman doing her job, right? she threw him under the bus with no hesitation and then did the same to gwen once miles escaped. jessica drew flaked not on just one teenager but two in the same day. this is the biggest and second reason i dislike jessica drew. because if i were in her position i would not tolerate that, miles being an "anomaly" or not, as a black person i would not allow it. i think the violence miles experiences at the climax of this movie is coded in a specific way and thats purposeful. when rio talked to her son, she meant people like miguel and jessica. unfortunately, just because miles has two things in common with jessica doesnt mean she wants to see him succeed. as the old saying goes...you know which one.

completely different rant beneath the cut because this is responding not to op but a reblog from them which got on my last nerve. dont read unless you want to be genuinely angry lol

minor thing: ive been reading tags that are saying “oh yall are just mad jessica wont defend the white girl or cater to the white girl” when the white girl in question is in danger of imprisonment if she returns home and also is a teenager. like what the fuck. im sorry, if jessica drew was actually a good mentor that still wouldnt make her a mammy stereotype but just say you think the idea nurturing black women are just mammies. an adult black mentor taking care of a white teenager trainee isnt what a fucking mammy is holy shit none of yall know what that stereotype is if youre saying that. honestly if thats all you see in jessica maybe the issue is with you actually. showing compassion and intervening with child abuse doesnt make you a mammy if youre a black woman while doing it holy fucking shit rant over

Y’all get mad at Jessica - the black Woman doing her job and trying to hold the multiverse together so her baby can have a universe to live in more than y’all blame Peter, the whites man who knew and trained Miles and still chose to believe he was an anomaly.

Like Peter TAUGHT Miles how to swing and he still was like ‘oh yeah miguel that makes sense yeah miles isn’t suppose to be spiderman’ HOW

[kaypeace21]

Will’s fear of clowns

*Ps -not mine. this is a submission from an anon. tw: for s.a. It’s an interesting submission. ANON-please make a tumblr account already . I’m begging you XD

Hi! It’s me, Lonnie Meth Anon. Back with more depressing thoughts about Lonnie!

I just read your post on Jonathan’s ab*se at the hands of Lonnie, and I second it all. It breaks my heart. But it also got me thinking deeper about Will’s fear of clowns. I think you’re right that part of the horror for Will is that the clown attacks in bed. The bed is, obviously, like you say, a common site for s*xual assault. (Doesn’t El’s picture of “three legged Brenner” also have a bed in it? In a picture with not much else?) The fact that Will needed Joyce to sleep with him for a week suggests he was specifically feeling unsafe in bed, or at night. 

But maybe it’s not just the location of the attack in Poltergeist that Will found so harrowing. Maybe it’s the combination of that location with the fact of a clown being the attacker. 

I think Lonnie might have dressed up as a clown for Will’s birthday one year, and something happened. 

In this instance, I don’t think Joyce would know what happened. I think the incident in her mind would be something like “Lonnie dressed up and Will was scared of the costume”. She might even have thought it was cute. Just a typical little kid fear of something mundane. When she teases him about Poltergeist, she doesn’t actually say the movie was the START of his fear of clowns. Just that he was afraid of that particular clown. The general fear of clowns could have been an older one, going back to when Will was even younger.

Maybe Will even liked clowns, before whatever happened with Lonnie turned them into a source of fear for him. Will has a lion plushie (lions are commonly found in the circus) and the circus seems like the kind of vibrant, colorful environment full of outcast, that a young gay kid would really enjoy. If Will did like circuses and Lonnie poisoned that for him, that’s just another reason to hate Lonnie. But it definitely seems possible. 

Lonnie is a deadbeat dad in general, but we’ve seen before that he’s capable of faking the “family man” act in front of Joyce and their neighbors. We’ve also seen that even though he treats Will horribly, he would also try and keep Will on his side with father son bonding activities, like baseball. And Will’s birthday is one of the few occasions Lonnie makes a half-assed kind of effort, even when there’s nothing directly in it for him. He sends that card, even though it’s late. Maybe Joyce made called him up and made him send it, but she always seemed happy to keep Lonnie out of the picture. She didn’t even want to involve him when Will went missing. And we know Jonathan would never try and facilitate more interactions between Lonnie and Will. So it seems like Lonnie did this of his own accord, when he realized he’d missed the day. Kind of weird. And it’s classic abuser behavior, to make contact on an anniversary date, reminding you they exist and you can’t escape them. Reminding you to keep quiet. Or hoping you’ll miss them, remember the “good times” when they made an effort, and let them back into your life. (Ugh.)

So, anyway, back to my theory. Young Will likes circuses, and the Byers family are poor, so they can’t afford to take him to one, or throw him a party at an ice cream parlor or a bowling alley, like other kids. It makes sense that they would have a party at home instead, and that the family themselves might dress up. We know Joyce made Will’s Ghostbusters costume in season two, and a clown is a pretty easy costume. Most of it is just make up. It’s possible the whole thing was Joyce’s idea, and she made the costume, and Lonnie just went along with it to look like a good dad in her eyes. 

Remember how we see Bob (Will’s new father figure) dressing up in costume for Halloween? Joyce loves it. This is a thing good dads do, to have fun with their kids. That’s also the same episode we see Will scared by a guy in a clown costume, and Jonathan is hyper-protective of him that night. School is okay, but he doesn’t want him trick or treating. (Like he knows that school is a safe environment, but in other contexts, costumes and parties might be a trigger for Will.) Jonathan is convinced to leave Will and “let him have fun” and what happens? The clown attacks. Later that night Jonathan goes to a costume party himself, where he finds Nancy upset and takes her safely home.  Maybe this is how Will’s birthday party ended - with Jonathan finding Will upset, and trying to comfort him. The whole night could be playing out like a parallel to that birthday party, from Jonathan’s perspective. 

What actually happened with Will and Lonnie is up for debate. It’s possible there was a s*xual assault, and that’s why the clown scene in Poltergeist was such a trigger for Will. Or maybe Lonnie thought circuses weren’t “manly” enough for his son to like, and actively tried to scare Will, so he wouldn’t like them anymore. It’s hard to know. Something would have happened though, and probably something pretty formative, because the fear of clowns lasts a long time. 

Something else interesting is that when Mr Clarke is talking about the Upside Down in season one, he uses the metaphor of the flea and the acrobat. Acrobats are a main act in the circus, and, well … fleas. Flea circuses. That’s a thing. Maybe it’s a hint that the trauma that created the Upside Down was circus / clown - related?

Kali, El, and their gang wear clown masks too, when they’re going to confront their childhood trauma, and the child-like Alexei is surrounded by clowns when he is killed at the fair. 

Clowns are just so associated with birthday parties and little kids, that it doesn’t seem like a coincidence to me they’re Will’s biggest fear. Especially as the show keeps dropping hints about Lonnie and Will’s birthday. It feels like there’s more to the story. I have a horrible feeling SOMETHING happened. 

RESPONE (kaypeace):

I think it’s very possible-that maybe he did dress as a clown for Will’s birthday and something happened. We have alexi (paralleled to Will) playing carnival games with kids. Then he's attacked by the Lonnie-look alike : and alexi looks at his wound then stares at all the clowns laughing around him. Joyce and Murray find Alexi bleeding/dy*ng next to a clown statue. As joyce looks in horror and Murray says to her, he was “only gone for a second” (which sounds like something you’d say in relation to a kid you were supposed to watch-running off ). We also had sarah at age 7 die while wearing a gown with clowns on it (Will: it was a 7 the demogorgan it got me). Death of innocence symbolism? Hopper also describes his depression as a cave- he goes through the carnival ride where it mentions a "cave of horrors", which had decor of a tiger and a clown painting. So yeah... whatever happened probably isn't good. So- there may be some symbolism there in relation to Will’s past. Not only because (like I and you have mentioned before) Lonnie is highly associated with birthdays. And canonically we know he mentally scarred jonathan on his b-day. But also, s4’s ‘victor creel’ may be an easteregg to the xmen character victor creed- who had a tradition of tra*matizing family members specifically on their bdays

As another alternative:I could also totally see Lonnie “ruining” circuses for Will because it’s not “manly” to him. Like how Jonathan liked thumper the rabbit-from the film bambi. in the film, Thumper is bambi’s bff, and the hunters are the bad guys who k*ll Bambi’s mother and terrorize all the wildlife. SO yeah- making Jonathan become a hunter, and k*ll a rabbit ,despite this fact, is really messed up. And shows Lonnie has already tried to ‘ruin’ things the boys like. By mentally scarring them in one way or another…

I also mentioned how Will’s bday could even be a trigger for jonathan in a diff post.

if the s4 bts calender hinting it’ll be near Will’s bday and easter it could be relevant to Jonathan.we know in s1 el has tra*matic flashbacks when seeing certain things- coke, closet, cat, etc. And Will in s2 has his ‘anniversary effect’ where memories flood back based on the time of year.But like … Easter has bunnies - could seeing rabbits jog stuff up for Jonathan? El seeing a cat made her have a flashback of brenner trying to make her kill a cat. Would Jonathan seeing like Easter bunny decor jog up a flashback of lonnie making him kill a rabbit? (It happened on his bday too). So Will’s b day being around easter would only fuel that memory. (heck even popped balloons may trigger gunshot symbolism idk). And then for Will there is clowns that could be a tr*gger at a party.

The flea and the acrobat analogy (in relation to Will and circuses is very interesting) and could be foreshadowing- it’s even a title for an episode so I feel like it’s narratively an important hint to …something. similar to a s1 ep being called “the bathtub”.  Also, Will was compared to a circus flea- which were placed in an enclosed space, where heat was applied as they jumped  and tried to escape the increasing temperatures as they burned .Which could relate to my theory about Will having a se*zure due his body overheating due to Lonnie injecting him with m*th.

 If Will’s bday is in s4- I feel like Lonnie will come back in some capacity (flashback or literally). The ‘sorry, I forgot you b day’ card from Lonnie in s2, in Lonnie’s shed Joyce mentioning Will’s b day, the rainbow ‘happy birthday cup’ placed next to Will at Mike’s -while Will explains the supernatural, Lonnie already tra*matizing Jonathan on his bday, etc…

[spike-and-faye]

Hello, I require your infinite wisdom please!! :O So I just finished cowboy bebop and I am so confused like who the fuck was Julia. WHAT was Faye's past. I literally never process tv shows and the bebop was not immune to my stupidity LMAO like... I guess the ending just really confused me, from what I gathered Spike and Vicious were friends? But then they weren't? And Julia dated Vicious but also Spike? And he? Went after Vicious even after Julia had died? I am Confusion. Please help. Thank u...

Oh BABEY I am so glad you asked! :) Be prepared for a long answer and I apologize in advance for how incoherent it will probably be.

ALSO Please note: this show is fucking complicated. I have watched it all the way through several times a year, every single year, for over a decade now, and I am *STILL* finding new shit every time I watch it. It's packed with symbols, motifs, allusions and underlying themes that are just so rich. It is so extraordinarily well-written that it could give a lot of classic literature a run for its money. I'm literally working on an in depth literary/film analysis my husband lovingly calls my Manifesto on the series right now. SO PLEASE don't beat yourself up about not catching everything on the first go round.

HEY BTW for anyone who hasn't finished the show, please know there will be MANY spoilers ahead!

Anyways ~

1.     Spike / Julia / Vicious:

The information we get on Spike's past, including Vicious and Julia, is pretty limited considering how big of an impact they have on the story. We get our first glimpse in Session 1: Asteroid Blues, then again in Session 5: Ballad of Fallen Angels, Sessions 12 + 13: Jupiter Jazz, and Sessions 25 + 26: Real Folk Blues. I recommend reviewing these episodes for you Julia and Vicious fix.

What we know:

Spike and Vicious were both members of an organized crime syndicate called the Red Dragons, which is roughly analogous to the Yakuza or the Mafia. Their positions in the organization are not clear, but there are some images alluding to them being hitmen, and they likely rose up in the ranks as they were close acquaintances of Mao Yenrai, a Capo of the Red Dragon.

Spike and Vicious were close comrades. Spike taught Vicious everything he knew about fighting, and the two had a deep trust in each other. Which Spike fucked up ….

^^Vicious looks hot asf here

Julia was Vicious' lover/girlfriend. One night in 2068 (three years prior to the time we watch in the Bebop) Spike is injured, presumably from a syndicate-related fight and he passes out in front of her door. She takes him in and nurses him back to health and he SIMPS HARD for her. We’re all but told he's in LOVE love with her. They start an affair, and Spike tells her he's ready to abandon the whole life - the syndicate, Vicious, Mao, all of it - and they could run away together.

WELL Vicious finds out about this whole affair, and is DOUBLY betrayed because his literal best friend and girlfriend have been having an affair, and tbh I think he was just as jealous of Spike's attentions as he was of Julia's. (Whether or not it’s a sexual thing for Spike … well … I have my own headcanons about that). SO when he finds out they're going to run away together, he gives Julia an ultimatum: you can either kill him, or I'll just kill you both. Spike had written her a letter about meeting him in the graveyard to start their new life together, which she tears up to hide his location from Vicious. (This is the falling ripped up pieces of paper we see in Spike's flash back in Session 5).

^^ r/gifsyoucanhear

**NOTE: There are those who disagree with this view, (looking at you Cowboy Bebop wiki) instead suggesting Vicious and Spike were buds in the past, but then hated each other once they were both considered as potential successors to Mao. That's why Vicious wanted him dead, and he was enlisting Julia (who he didn't necessarily have a romantic connection to) to help kill Spike since he knew Spike loved her. Personally, I think there is plenty of evidence that Vicious also wanted Julia, and in fact was already with her, when Spike started seeing her. If you want me to cite my sources please send an me an ask about it :)

Spike gets the idea, whether by her just not showing up or word around the syndicate being like YO Vicious wants you dead. Despite Vicious' ultimatum to Julia, he was gunna kill Spike either way. SO he sets up an ambush, and SadBoy™ Spike walks intentionally into their trap. Somehow, he doesn't die, though the entire syndicate thinks he did. (Note Annie's reaction to seeing him alive in Session 5). It’s also implied that this is where he lost his eye.

HIS EYE - possibly the most important symbol in the show so I do have to mention it. In episode 26, he explicitly explains to Faye that one of his eyes only sees the past. (PS this isn't dissimilar to Jet's arm… we can get into that another time). Basically, he's constantly living halfway in the past and halfway in the present, and describes the past like a dream he can never wake up from. Because dysfunctional or not - the syndicate WAS his family. (Again - see his relationship with Annie, Mao, and Vicious (prior to Spike's betrayal)). It's his reminder that Julia didn't run away with him, and that he'd left behind that life for her. (He didn’t know she was being threatened until the final episode). Basically Spike is hyper-fixated on what he had and what could've been.

Not long after this, Spike starts bounty hunting because like? What else is he going to do. He doesn't care if he lives or dies but if he has to be alive, he may as well be able to eat. He joins up with Jet Black on the Bebop.

TL; DR: Spike stole Vicious' lover, Julia, so Vicious made Julia choose between her killing Spike or Vicious killing them both. She instead went into hiding and Spike thought he'd been stood up. He fake died and got the hell outta dodge.

2.     What was Faye's past?

Ok let me start by saying Faye is my wife and my life. HOWEVER I hated her the first time I watched this show circa age 13 because I thought she was annoying/vain/shallow (also because #internalizedmisogyny lol am I right fam). Good news! She is all those things! But she's also very lonely and scared and an amnesiac and secretly a sweetie and she realizes she loves the crew of the Bebop like family.

SO my wife's backstory:

she was born in the 1990s (#only90skidsremember). There's some debate over her race/nationality, but due to the images of her hanging out in Merlion Park in Singapore, my bet is that she's Singaporean. She comes from a wealthy family with a big house, and we see some utterly *adorable* film of her as a child/young adolescent in Session 18: Speak Like a Child. I cry everytime </3

^^ Holla for the representation

In 2014, circa age 20, she and her parents were going into space when the shuttle they were on had some kind of malfunction/accident and it killed an unknown number of people, including her parents. At the time, the technology didn’t exist to be able to save her, so she was put into a cryogenic sleep state. Meanwhile, the Lunar Gate accident occurs, breaking up the moon and causing rock showers on Earth's surface. Most people died, moved to Mars, or settled underground.

She wakes up from her cryogenic sleep in 2068. (Also the year Spike leaves the syndicate.) She's 'woken' by the corrupt Dr. Bacchus who plans on charging her for the years and years of medical debt she's accrued. (See Session 15: My Funny Valentine.) Luckily a lawyer takes interest in her case (Whitney Haggus Matsumoto) and tries to help get rid of her debt. The two fall in love, but turns out Whitney is a Scumbag. He's actually Dr. Bacchus's nephew, and faked his death, writing Faye as the sole inheritor to his will. This means she'll take on all his debts. So baby girl has LOTS of debt at this point.

In the intervening years prior to her joining the Bebop, she gambles, cheats, gains a lot of street smarts, and adopts a very seductive character to get her way. She joins the crew on the Bebop in Session 3: Honky Tonk Women.

TL;DR: Faye is Austin powers

YIKES this is so long I am so sorry. Bitches are obsessed with this show. (I am bitches)

3.     The Ending

Okay I'm going to present this in the way, in my scholarly opinion, would be correct, though there are SO many interpretations other than simply 'Spike died :/".

To understand the plot of the last couple episodes we actually have to go back to Session 5: Mao is instructed* to sign a treaty with a rival syndicate called the White Tigers. (*He's instructed by The Van (Council of identical creepy old men) who are the actual head of the dragon. I think we only see them in Session 26.) Well - Vicious is a Bastard Man and he and his fellow mutineers blow up the White Tiger guys' ship and slit Mao's throat. Before he dies, Mao is like "Gotdamnit if Spike was still here this shit wouldn't have happened." Later in the Cathedral battle, Vicious explains to Spike he killed Mao because Mao 'lost his fangs'. He planned on killing Spike for good her, IMO, so there'd be no rival to take over as Capo for the Dragons.

^^These guys are The Van btw

THEN in Session 25, the Van basically catches Vicious and is like “you killed Mao and now you have to go to Time Out.” The Van also decides to just kill everyone associated with Vicious, just 2 B safe. That's why there's a big ass shootout at the Loser Bar where Jet and Spike are chilling, drinking, (missing Faye and Ed and Ein lol) and Shin (younger brother to Lin, who's helping Vicious overthrow the Dragon) explains all this to Spike. OH and PS JULIA IS ALIVE AND HERE IS HER LOCATION :). (**Notice Spike's reaction at this point is different than his reaction in Jupiter Jazz when he hears there's a Julia on Calisto. Much less excited… hmm…).

SO THEN you know we get some flashbacks of the past as previously explained *and* Julia just happens to run into Faye. She recognizes that Faye is one of Spike's friends from the Bebop (she was keeping tabs on him it seems) and picks her up. Faye doesn't know who Julia is but is like damn bitch I'm a little gay for you. (I mean … that may just be my bi ass projecting, but Faye is REALLY struck with her. Look at how she describes her to Jet, I mean come on.)

 Faye's like, 'we should team up' and Julia says 'no thanks but also tell Spike to meet me at *the place*'. Meanwhile back on the Bebop Spike and Jet are talking and Spike goes on about some dream woman who was his other half. (We assume he means Julia … I have my reasons to doubt this … I have a lot of angry DMs about my opinion here lol but I just do not give a fuck (: I can expand on this in another post or you can refer to the title of my fucking blog haha) Personally, I think Watanabe personally left this specific scene open ended, the same way he does with the ending and various other things.

more like SIMP Spiegel

ANYWAY Faye comes back to the Bebop to tell Spike about Julia, and Jet gets intel from a former cop buddy that there's some shit going down with the Dragons. (Again, the Van is hunting down everyone ever associated with Vicious, including your pal Spike). Bebop is attacked, Faye tells Spike what's up with Julia, and he heads out.

 PAN TO VICIOUS chained up - about to be executed - but what's that!? It's a bird!? It's a pla- no it's just a bird. (With one glowing red eye … hm … reminds me of Spike, also the drug Red Eye. Pls let me know if you have any thoughts on this). Just a bird with a BOMB! Explosion (RIP bird c. 2065 - too soon), Vicious kills the elders, his buddies show up and are ready to go fuck shit up.

this show could not be more of an aesthetic

MMMPhhh okay RAINY CEMETERY. Spike and Julia. She draws a gun, explains why she didn't meet him that day, and then hugs him. Now Spike is not *great* at showing his emotions but he literally just stands there. Maybe it's a stoic expression of how sad he is that he never knew she still cared, when it seemed like she dumped him. Maybe he's finally getting some closure on his past. Maybe the past doesn't mean the same thing it used to. (I'll elaborate later on this).

They go to Annie's to get stocked up on stuff, she lets them know she denied knowing Spike was still alive and hey also the Van was assassinated by Vicious and his guys so. Watch out for that. Then her shop is surrounded by Vicious' guys and she dies :(. Spike and Julia escape to the roof, but she's shot and dies in Spike's arms, and says 'it's all just a dream' :(. (Refer to: Spike living in a dream of the past).

Anyway Jet SAID he wasn't gunna go after Spike but. Jet's parental instincts kick in (oh yeah he was shot in the leg earlier btw) and he goes to Sitting Bull to see if he knows where Spike is. He basically says yeah Spike's about to die somewhere. (I want to do a further analysis on all the Sitting Bull scenes.) Well conveniently Spike returns to the Bebop, eats, tells his story about a tiger-striped cat. (At one point Jet asks if he's going there for her, and Spike is like well she's dead now so whatever). THEN we get to the scene where Faye is like HEY YOU CAN'T GO OFF AND DIE ASSHOLE and he's like ¯\_(ツ)_/¯ I 've been living in the past so I might as well see if I'm living now. (**This will play heavily into my interpretation of the ending). Faye is pissed, shoots the ceiling and he goes off to the syndicate headquarters to fuck shit up.

He basically John Wicks his way through the building, Shin dies, he and Vicious have the big boss battle and whatnot. He kills Vicious and stumbles back out down the stairs and says "Bang!" and collapses. We pan to the sky and see a star fade away.

Well that explains the plot … now here's what I think happened!!! ALSO may I mention, anon - you picked up on something I feel like a lot of people miss out on. Why *did* Spike go back to kill Vicious if Julia was already dead??

Basically, once it became clear that anyone associated with Vicious was being killed, Spike knew they'd hunt him down, and they weren't beneath Kill-Billing their way to him, (i.e. systematically destroying this companions to get to him). And for all his apparent indifference - he really loves his new found family. Jet is literally like an older brother to him. Ed is a little sister. Ein is well … a very good boy. And Faye? Well the relationship is complicated, and I'm not going to get into the 69,420 reasons I ship them here, but I think it is beyond argument that he really does care for her, even if that just in a filial way. He didn't want the syndicates to kill them for their association to him, or in order to get to him. So he did what he had to do to protect them. *AND NO* I am not saying that he didn't love Julia. But it was clear that his desire was no longer to run away with her. I think he genuinely loved and cared about her, but at some point between Jupiter Jazz Pt 2 and now, he accepted that their time together was over. Now he had a new raison d'etre, which is the Bebop.

I think at this point Spike has 'woken up' to reality (as he implied to Faye in their final conversation in episode 26: "Look at these eyes. One of them is a fake, because I lost it in an accident. Since then, I have been seeing the past in one eye, and the present in the other. I had believed that what I saw was not all of reality...I thought I was watching a dream that I would never awaken from. Before I knew it, the dream was all over." (This is from the sub btw I'm too lazy to look up the dub transcript.) He wasn't going there to die, he's going to find out if he's really alive. This line is fucking cool and everything - but it's implications are multitude. I won't go into them all here but basically : what makes him alive now is that he's free from his past. He's alive because he has this new family and protecting them is all he really wants now. Spike was protecting Jet, Faye, Ed, (and Ein) by going and facing the entire syndicate, knowing that their lives would all be in danger.

SO - did Spike die? Well again - Watanabe has purposely and artfully left this open ended. Well, if we're following the symbolism from Sitting Bull, then yeah, the man is as dead as disco, and wouldn't that be a fitting ending? BUT at the same time, Spike always refers to having 'died' before (meaning when he was ambushed by the syndicate, and they all thought he died, and he pretty much did). Don't forget that in  movie (takes places roughly between episodes 22 + 23, and yes, was made AFTER the series but whatever) he like .. DIES dies. He goes to the afterlife and everything. He wakes up to find he's chilling with Sitting Bull, who's like nah it wasn't your time to die yet. So the fact Sitting Bull confirms Spike will die in the final episode, means yeah, Spike is pretty much dead.

BUT -- okay now hear me out -- could this death in the final episode be a death to his previous life? The person he was in the syndicate? Now that he's extinguished the Red Dragons for good, is it not possible that its merely *that* life which has ended? That's the optimist in me saying that, but if it keeps me from staying up all night crying, I guess it'll have to do. Watanabe definitely wants to leave it up to the viewer, so whatever you think, I feel like there's validity to it.

WELL any anon, sorry for the fucking lecture - and believe me, I could've said MUCH, MUCH more - but I enjoyed this question. I always love talking about this show so please all you fuckers feel free to message me or send an ask about anything any time. I am really slow at replying because #life'sAbitch.

Love you all.

SY,SCB <3

[harveyscape]

IM BORED. my top three farscape eps from each season::::::: looking at these i think season two has the best EPISODE concepts (it was hard choosing faves from that season bc i love so many) but season 4 is my favorite for just,,,,,,, the hecking Yearning + domestication in each episode but i dont particularly favor the episodes themselves 

Season 1:

through the looking glass - i always saw this ep as being the first completely filler ep that really felt like farscape with the crew all working together and having a VERY CUTE little laugh about it at the end. i love the vagueness of it, it’s not annoying or cliche??? and i’m particularly fond of the yellow moya scenes like rygel’s like “shall i disrobe so it will be memorable” is one of my fave lines from him.

a human reaction - mY TRASH. MYYYY TRASH. just one of those farscape eps that are so Abstract in concept, they are just Default Faves for me like Always haha. so many good little j/a crumbs, the kiss in this ep is one of my BIG FAVES, i love everything about that scene and the ones leading up to it. LOVE THE RAIN SCENE. it’s probably the very first time john is like ‘maybe Earth bad’ and,,, ‘maybe space girl Good’ and i love that thruline of the show. this ep stands soooooo far apart from the majority of season 1 for me.

nerve: the hidden memory - “THE RADIANT AERYN SUN.” stark isn’t unbearable in his debut episodes woah! i like him as a sad boy who isnt a plot device! love gilina, love her death (rip), love seeing how far john and aeryn have come since they’d last seen her, love aeryn and crais’s interaction in this episode like YES GIRL SLAY, love whenever aeryn has to juggle with feeling WEAK and having to put her big girl pants on to save her himbo, love any interaction between d’argo and aeryn LOVE THAT.

Season 2:

crackers don't matter - the DIALOGUE in this episode is Insane and i LOVE IT i think there are so many line deliveries in this ep that are so memorable and Iconic they all just live in my mind rent FREE. i wish the commentary for this episode wasn’t about the more practical aspects of it because UUUHUUH i genuinely would love to just Absorb the mindset behind it. GOD TIER FILLER. 

out of their minds - i am such a whore for body swap tropes it’s humiliating. another ep with a lot of iconic line deliveries! i love cb playing as john! love that for her! bb as rygel too is amazing i love all their stupid accent switching SO MUCH. love the skeksis love that they joke about them looking like skeksis because it’s jim henson and they can DO THAT. 

won't get fooled again - any time i think about this ep im like man how Opened Third Eye was it to have john just immediately be like “haha ok this is fake lmao” like it’s so SUBVERSIVE in what it does pretty much right off the bat in introducing the moya crew as “normal” humans. eps like these are just ALWAYS my faves in tv series because of how crazy they can get and this one does and i love it so much for that.

Season 3: 

scratch n' sniff - any time i get the moya crew on a pleasure planet or at a rave im like HELLO. :) I LOVE RAXIL she’s such a funky little freak. describing this ep is so weird its like Oh Yeah The Boob Juice Sucking One. JUST JOHN AND D’ARGO BEING BACHELORS, WHAT BLISS. i wish i got more john + d’argo shenanigans in this show ‘cause they are like such a fave together dynamically mwah mwah mwah. <3 

into the lion's den: wolf in sheep's clothing - its a little crazy how much i Hate the first half of this two-parter which is super PANDERY AND BAD and then the last half is like so Insane and such a good close for the season. EVERYONE’S SO MISERABLE. the scorp shots with the imploding ship and the water UGHGUGHUGH <33333 love aeryn in this love her trying to save the Peacekeepers, love JOHN, love the little scientist nerd who works under Scorp i forget his name WHOOPS he has a nice design. THE CRAIS + TALYN DEATH IS SO GOOD;;;; LOVE THAT FOR THEM;;;;; <3333

 dog with two bones - i think the fact that literally no other tv show has pulled THIS MESS off really speaks to the uniqueness of farscape and its ABILITY TO TELL ROMANCE??? theres so much in this that is just like WOWOWOWOW THIS EP IS SO GOOD. the part where they kill the rogue leviathan and rygel is celebrating on the comms and it transitions to aeryn Going Insane in her prowler over everything that’s happening. FIRE. the dog with two bones analogy UGHGUGHGUGH <333333 I LOVE THE AERYN > EARTH THRULINE WITH JOHN SO MUCH ITS JUST AT ITS PEAK HERE WHICH MAKES IT GREAT BY DEFAULT. the coin scene is SOOOOOO GOOOOOOOOD THE ENDING SCENE OF THIS EPISODE IS SOOOO GOOOOOD.

Season 4: 

john quixote - MY FAVE EP OF THE SERIES LOL. love the COSTUMING love the POP CULTURE REFERENCES love that its SEASON 4 love that we GET A ZHAAN CRAIS JOOL AND STARK CAMEO. another conceptually abstract episode so of course i love it lol. love the scene in the end with john and zhaan where he’s kinda a sad boy!!!!! actually funny story about this ep the first time i watched this i was in elementary school still, i grew up on this show this is my Nostalgia Baby series, and did not know what the word “porn” was so like for a very concerning amount of time i always assumed “porn” was an Alien Word and not a real word. BECAUSE LIKE, in context you see chiana holding up a Gooey Boy and going “and this? porn!” and that was all i had to go by the end.

crichton kicks - I LOOOOVE SAD JOHN. I LOVE HIM. I love the character beats we get out of a john that CHOSE THE GIRL over his home and instead of GETTING HER he is punished for it, losing his chance at BOTH OUTCOMES like mentioned in “dog with two bones” despite him having chosen One of the options and not both. love the introduction to 1812 whenever john gets a named thing i am like Yes. :~) my boy, my little man. he’s a little crazy and a little sad.

terra firma - the YEARNING in this ep man!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!! this ep waters my CROPS one of my Biggest Fave scenes is when Aeryn and Jack are in her prowler talking about john and he’s like Do You Wish You Were Human and she doesnt answer and im like LORD!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!! more of that John Not Vibing With Earth Anymore trope which I LOVE. literally all fics surrounding this episode i will SNORT LIKE CRACK. 

[katnissmellarkkk]

Okay, onto my liveblog for chapter two of The Hunger Games :

Katniss’ flashback to falling out of a tree and being unable to breathe is such a good analogy, I steal it all the time in my own fics.

I wish the boy who held her up so she didn’t fall was given a name? Katniss just can’t provide names very easily, can she? 😅

“The odds had been entirely in her favor. But it hadn’t mattered” is actually an amazing quotable moment, someone make an edit pronto 👏

No one’s happy when a twelve year old is chosen but ya know. As soon as that kid turns thirteen, off with them! Fair game! 😭😂😅🙃

Hmmm how many of these kids knew immediately Katniss would volunteer for her sister? The way there was a boy ready to catch her before she fell and the way they all just cleared a path for her...

Katniss’ love for Prim had to be prominent because the other kids all seemed to be aware she would volunteer and Katniss claims this is a completely radical, unheard of thing to do. Sooo yeah. Her school peers probably noticed her a lot more than she realized.

Ooo. I just noticed the word choice in “district twelve hasn’t had a volunteer in decades”

Was there a point in time when Twelve had volunteers?

Awww the mayor being sad that Katniss is probably gonna die because he knows her as Madge’s friend 😭😩🤧.

Awww Katniss got presented a medal when her father died, I forgot 🥺🥺🥺

“Bet my buttons” is the worst phrase in history 🤨😐🤭

I like that Katniss’ dead father still has a reputation around these parts 🤧

Helps my fic writing brain to clock it for future reference

Maybe I’m just not nice but I don’t see how Prim is so wonderful that no one can help but love her. Like idk. I feel like this is just Katniss’ bias leaking through. Which is fine it’s better than some clinically detached narrator I hate those FYI

Omg everyone is saluting Katniss and she’s realizing people adore her 🥰🥰

Also ... does this mean Peeta did the three finger salute to her just before being called himself? Idk random thoughts, ignore me.

Katniss is in danger of crying. If this was me, I’d just be sobbing on the ground already.

Haymitch , the og rebel. Looking right into the cameras and calling the Capitol out.

Also ironic how the first thing Haymitch says to / about Katniss is “I like her!” when he spends the rest of the series pretending he, in fact, does not.

“Oh no, not him” is such a love interest introduction, y’all. Gale never stood a chance.

I like how Katniss considers it bad luck for her that Peeta was called 😅. Like... already taking ownership of the boy, sweetheart?

I feel like this is a good time to remind people that medium height is like 5’10. Stop headcanoning Peeta short. Poor Joshy though.

I like how she has never spoken to Peeta but describes the way his hair falls in waves over his forehead 😭🤧

Seems like Katniss thinks Peeta took being called relatively well.

“He has two older brothers, I know, I’ve seen them in the bakery” why is she already trying to defend herself to the audience like “I wasn’t really paying any attention to Peeta Mellark I just happened to notice he had brothers because I saw them once okay?”

Omg Katniss just outright asserting that Peeta’s middle brother definitively won’t volunteer for him. Girl, you just said you don’t know him or his family 😅😅😅.

“Why him?” Still has such a destined, soulmates feel to it. I know they weren’t destined and that’s what a lot of people admire about their relationship but the writing here has always had such a “this guy right here is her soulmate” slant to it, I’m sorry.

“He’s probably forgotten our only interaction. But I haven’t. And I know I never will.” Still continuing with the soulmate-y narration here, Suz Suz, I see.

Oh my god I don’t even remember this line but it’s so sad 🥺🥺🥺🥺🤧🤧🤧🤧🤧🤧🤧🤧😩😩😩😩😩

“The numbness of his loss had passed, and the pain would hit me out of nowhere, doubling me over, racking my body with sobs. ‘Where are you?’ I would cry out in my mind. ‘Where have you gone?’”

I’m so sad now. 😭😭😭

I like that Katniss said “no amount of pleading from Prim” would affect her mother’s depression, as if Katniss easily believes that her own pleas don’t matter but her sister’s are what’s impossible to ignore.

She really needs to stop putting Primmy on this pedestal though it’s not as cute the second or third read around.

“I suppose now that my mother was locked in some dark world of sadness, but at the time, all I knew was that I had lost not only a father, but a mother as well.” I feel like this is just criminally undiscussed. Katniss didn’t know or understand or grasp what depression even was. Like it’s hard enough for kids to forgive parents who abandon them to mental illness when they’re aware what mental illness is. Let alone if you’re just stuck for months / years, not knowing that your mother was sick, instead thinking she just stopped caring for you.

Omg Katniss saying she couldn’t let Prim go to a community home 🤧. Selfless of her. But also sister worry about yourself.

I’m just kidding, I know it’s her character to only be concerned with her little sister above all else.

Mr. Everdeen hating how coal dust settled on everything in the Seam is such a small but interesting detail.

Omg so the meadow is a common place to find corpses of those who starved to death? We maybe should stop romanticizing it.

I like that Mr. Everdeen took Katniss places with him but was like “Hmm, imma leave Prim home, she isn’t cut out for the hunting life”

Idk Katniss being too afraid and shy to go to the Hob without her dad is such a little kid thing though.

Katniss explaining that she was essentially in the merchants backyard

She was essentially dying in Peeta’s backyard 🤧

Wow, I forgot how blatantly violent Peeta’s mother was

Maybe it’s just Katniss’ perspective but every interaction is just her screaming

Aww, his mother called him a stupid creature, why don’t I remember this.

This is so sad omg.

Poor both of them.

One’s starving to death, the other’s utterly abused mentally, verbally and physically.

What’s a weal?

I always read that word as a welt.

Ok I googled it, it’s a big red swollen mark.

So same thing.

Omg now Katniss is saying Mrs. Mellark hit him with an object weapon. This just keeps getting more and more.... sad.

Honestly I haven’t read the books cover to cover since I was a teenager, some of this is a surprise to me.

I always wondered though how that bread was any good, it literally fell onto the wet ground. 😟🤢

Aww, Katniss saying Peeta would get a full beat down if discovered that he burned the breads to feed her 🥵🥵🥵

Okay but if his mother hit him with an object and his eye swoll up and blackened the next day, that could be another reason why he tossed the bread in her general direction and didn’t look at her. I know it was so he wouldn’t be caught by his mother but also he probably couldn’t even see clearly where she was.

The dandelion symbolism 🤧😅😭🥳

Her sarcasm 🤣🤣🤣

Katniss just keeps comparing Peeta to the loaves of bread 😅😅😅

Also she keeps calling him warm and solid and steady

I’m starting to think unconsciously she was already finding herself attracted to him even here.

Him squeezing her hand reassuringly and her chalking it up to a nervous spasm 🙃

I hope when they got married they got a nice screencap of this shot of them on TV facing the crowd, shaking hands.

Make a nice anniversary photo.

Okay, that’s all for my thoughts on chapter two! 🥳🥳🥳🥳🥳

[freewillacquired]

"Yeah... it's a lit-tle... late thor that..." Nemesis agreed. "I was try-ing... to do that... when they catured ne. I guess... I didn't do... such a great jod." Jod? For the love of god, he wished he could speak like a normal human being! Yeah, there was a lot that Nemesis wished he could do as a normal human being that he knew he never would again. "I'll thind a way... to hold then... ac-count-a-dle... thor their... a-tro-ci-ties," he said, practically growling out the words for all his emotional determination to follow through on that promise.

"O-kay!" Nemesis said with no small amount of enthusiasm. He could use some jokes right about now, and although he knew they should probably wait until they were somewhere safer, he couldn't help but tell her at least one. "What do you call... a na-ked zondie?" Well, he couldn't say "zombie" very well, but hopefully she could understand. "A nudie." With that terrible opener, Nemesis laughed at himself. Man, that really was a terrible joke. If it made her laugh, though, it'd be worth it.

"The way they said it... I donded with it... on a cell-u-lar lethel," he said. "Instead oth kill-ing ne... it is using ne... to nutate. It's using ny ge-ne-tics... to etholthe." Wow, the word "evolve" isn't happening any time soon. "To... nake ne... detter suited... thor... surthithal." Nope, still terrible. For god's sake. Nemesis sighed. "So I don't die." There we go. "Thor others... it's a thatal disease. Thor me... it's like... a chro-nic... ill-ness..." There, that was a good analogy.

He couldn't believe how she was actually taking him seriously on him potentially keeping her warm later on. Sure, if she wanted to curl up next to him, it'd be a lot warmer, but... he just didn't understand why she wasn't completely grossed the hell out by what he was, what he looked like, and the fact that he had freaking tentacles. It made him feel good, though. More human.

And now she was trusting him to lower her into the sewers. Well, okay, here we go, I guess... He held her hands tightly enough to not drop her from too high up, but not so tightly that he hurt her. With his superhuman strength, Nemesis definitely needed to be mindful of such things. He lifted her up off her feet, dangled her over the mangled manhole opening and slowly lowered her down into it, getting onto his knees and then his stomach to get her as low as possible before the drop. She only had about five more feet to go to the bottom. "O-kay?" he asked before letting her go, hoping she'd be okay when she landed.

Wasting no time, so as not to leave her alone down there, Nemesis said, "Stand clear," and then jumped down into the hole, crushing the stone underneath his feet as he landed. Rats squeaked out their protests at having a creature like him so close, scurrying away to hide. Everything down here was dark, moist, and had an objectionable odor, but... honestly... some people might have described him in the same way, so... Moving on...

"O-kay... let's track these tun-nels... out oth the city..." he said, accessing subterranean maps of Raccoon City using his digital retinal display. They'd be helpful in determining which of these corridors might lead out, and which would lead them right back in. "Stay close," he warned Sara, not wanting her to get lost... or dragged off by something carnivorous.

“Well aren’t you a big boy? Are you alone? Or should I be looking out for more soldiers?” (Sara; @mxrvelouscreations

@mxrvelouscreations

Was she talking to him? Nemesis slowly turned to look over one shoulder, and then the other. Yeah, I think she is talking to me! Wasn't she scared shitless? He was. Not of the undead, but of what he had become. After being caught in a small explosion, Nemesis suddenly found that his mental tether to Umbrella had been severed. He could make his own decisions, disobey orders all he wanted, and more importantly... he knew who he was now. His name was Matt Addison, and he hated the Umbrella Corporation with a passion.

"I'n a-lone. Thor now, at least," he said, hating his deep, growling voice. He sounded viciously homicidal no matter how he tried to speak. "Do you need helt? We hath... to leathe... the city. They're go-ing... to de-stroy it soon." Hey, if she wanted his help then great, wonderful. It was one person he could save. And that meant a lot to him after he'd screwed up so badly and inadvertently helped the virus escape into the general public...

[timeclonemike]

Axiom Verge 2: Here We Go Again

So Axiom Verge 2 came out not long ago, but I don’t have a Switch and I don’t trust the Epic Games Store. Rather than wait and possibly get spoiled, I bit the bullet and watched a Let’s Play.

Consequently I can now build on this post. Cutting for length and spoilers right about here.

The Filter: The biggest revelation that AV2 provides is a refinement of the multiverse theory, plus defining some terms from the original game. Trace’s note next to his wheelchair mentions going upstream to the Filter or beyond for answers. As it happens, “upstream” refers literally to the Worldstream, and different universes are connected to each other in a serial fashion. The terminology used to describe the connections is upstream and downstream, with upstream leading towards the Source Worlds that are the progenitors of all other universes. Likewise, the Filter refers to worlds in the worldstream that function as firewalls and safety mechanisms to keep disruptive influences from downstream worlds from traveling too far up, since disrupting one world can damage all of the worlds downstream from that world.

We even get to see the Worldstream or some analog to it when Indra (the protagonist of Axiom Verge 2) travels to the Filter world upstream of Kiengir (which is either upstream of or parallel to Earth) and the background of the rooms is a MASSIVE fractal pattern originating from / coalescing into a singularity off in the distance.

There are also some notes from Trace to Dr. Hammond, his research partner in the cutscene for the first game who took Trace’s revolutionary theory and turned into a way to make Faster Than Light communication and computing technology. Dr. Hammond also finds herself in a unique position to test one of the possibilities implicit in Trace’s theory, namely if the existence of an afterlife is somehow accounted for in the multiverse. One of the notes in the first game says that different instances of a person across the multiverse can survive events that their counterparts do not, but that the survivors have no idea that they even have a counterpart who died.

What happens in the second game is more about what happens to the ones that didn’t make it, because Dr. Hammond is communicating with Indra through the prototype superluminal communicators (called ansibles) scattered here and there, but Indra can also find Hammond’s body and a suicide note in some of Kiengir’s ruins. Dr. Hammond refers to where she is as a sort of “detention center” that she needs Indra’s help to escape from, and this help involves hacking the control computer in the Filter world. An earlier message at an ansible mentions data throttling, which seems to refer to the memory limitations of the ansible prototypes themselves; they can only send so much data over their operational lifetimes.

Except there’s Trace’s original paper and the axioms he starts with, where reality is described as algorithms running a universal / multiversal simulation, and cognition is a sub-algorithm within the parent algorithm. Put it all together and the game all but states that there is an afterlife, but it operates on the same rules as life - it’s an adjacent or related universe to our own and minds / spirits / souls / cognitive algorithms can migrate between those universes under certain conditions even if the material body they used to pilot is no longer functional. At least, that’s what normally happens, but for some reason the transmigration of souls was limited or stopped or throttled. It’s semi-implied but never explicitly stated that there’s a trans-universal system in place to keep the Worldstream stable, and the Lamassu computer network that controls Kiengir is part of that network, and the fact that realities are starting to glitch and break down further implies that this system is damaged or overwhelmed.

Trace’s Motivations: Trace never shows up in the game, and only gets mentioned here and there in a few notes. The game takes place in the 2050s and Trace’s lab accident was in 2005, with Dr. Hammond starting Hammond Corp and making money hand over fist in 2007 by selling the world zero-latency computing technology. Hammond’s suicide note explains that Trace was already exploring the Breach before she started her company, but she hasn’t heard from him in decades and the entire antarctic expedition was just so she could try to find him again. She mentions a few things in passing that come up in the first game, like a device called a Scry that can locate anything in the multiverse, and the term PatternMind which Trace was but Hammond was not.

By itself, this would seem to imply that we don’t know anymore about what Trace saw or experienced that turned him from a pacifist to somebody willing to commit genocide. But there’s another factor in play, one that has nothing to do with Trace at all at first glance.

At a certain point in the game, Indra gets stuck in her alternate drone form until she finds the right upgrade to become human (well, humanoid) again. She can still communicate with people, such as the survivors from Hammond Corp’s expedition and one of the Kazakh members of a Russian expedition that came through the portal and decided to settle a world upstream of Kiengir. However, coming back to revisit those areas and talk to those survivors later may result in them not being in the same spot anymore. Instead, there’s a sort of flying enemy that looks like a miniature version of the first boss of Axiom Verge. People who examined the game’s code found that there is actually an “infection” mechanic involved based on time elapsed since Indra comes in contact with the survivors.

That the survivors turn  into the types of monsters we see in Axiom Verge 1 is significant on its own, but it takes on more importance when we consider the endgame cutscenes. The Kazakhs have settled and colonized an upstream world, while a few of them are staying in an adjacent world where time passes differently; this is explicitly so that they can observe and track the changing of society over long spans of time and direct its evolution. After beating the final boss, Indra decides to team up with Drushka, the leader of the Kazakhs and a name mentioned in one of the notes found in Axiom Verge 1, in order to further her own goals.

Here’s the thing: What we see of the world that Drushka is standing watch in, called The Emergence, looks so similar to what we’ve seen of Sudra as to be almost identical. Given how time is explicitly stated to pass at different rates in different parts of the Breach compared to the worlds in the Worldstream, it isn’t out of the question that the Kazakhs were the ancestors of the Sudrans. The only problem with this theory is that long before anyone from earth showed up in Kiengir, the Lamassu had upstream technology brought in to allow the locals to defend themselves, as part of its broader directive to safeguard the Worldstream from disruption. Some of this technology included Rebirth Chambers - Indra even accesses the Filter through one - which was later destroyed to prevent too much cultural contamination. That technology had to come from somewhere, so either the Kazakhs inhabited a world adjacent to Sudra or downstream from it so there were similarities in art and culture and architecture, or the Rebirth Chambers and other advanced technology were themselves brought to Sudra from upstream worlds and simply shut down rather than completely destroyed after the Sudrans nearly wiped themselves out.

In either case, the important part is how Indra is subtly implied to be some sort of nanotech Typhoid Mary. She might be the actual source of the Pathogen that wipes out Sudra, not Athetos. In hindsight there is a hint to this effect in the first game because after Trace starts getting sick and hallucinating, there is a Rusalki called Ophelia that saves him. He doesn’t have any symptoms for the rest of the game, implying he is cured. If it was something unique to Trace that made him immune, he wouldn’t have gotten sick in the first place and neither would Athetos. Same with him getting better, if Trace could do it so could the original. So it had to be something unique to Ophelia that she couldn’t - or wouldn’t - do for anyone else.

And during Axiom Verge 2′s credits, we see a detailed close up look of Indra’s nanotech-enhanced body. The face and head look a LOT like Ophelia. Not conclusive by itself, but too similar to be completely shrugged off as coincidence.

And that has got me thinking.

I ended my first post pondering what Trace could have found in the Breach or while traveling the multiverse that caused a pacifist scientist to turn to genocide to achieve his ends. It’s possible that nothing could, because he didn’t. Maybe Athetos didn’t release the pathogen on Sudra, the Rusalki did; it’s shown in the notes that they resented the way that the Sudrans crippled them and reduced them basically to talking heads, but still had some influence over what was going on either through manipulating the priests or through exchange of data that the Sudrans were unaware of or incapable of understanding.

Athetos refers to the Rusalki as masters of war just before the final battle of Axiom Verge 1. He might have shown up at Sudra thousands of years prior to the events of the game as Trace, gotten healed, traveled up to the Filter to try to learn more, and then come back after the flow of time had changed to find a civilization on the verge of collapse from a virulent contagion that turned people into monsters. Trace may be a pacifist, but he will still use the Axiom Disrupter and all of its bells and whistles to protect himself in game. It’s entirely possible that the original realized that the Rusalki were trying to escape Sudra and would cause devastation throughout the Worldstream, and he applied his knowledge to create weapons and tools to turn himself into a one man army once he realized he couldn’t cure the pathogen. (Or maybe he did try to come up with a cure, and the Rusalki’s retaliation / interference was what made him realize what was actually going on.)

He doesn’t say any of this before his boss fight because he realizes that Trace and the Rusalki have the advantage now. Trace can keep coming back using the Rebirth Chambers, so Athetos has to come up with contingency plan. The secret ending shows Trace in a Dream Algorithm set up by one of the Rusalki, but Athetos shows up and shoots him, telling him it’s time to wake up. During his boss fight, Athetos shows the ability to manipulate the environment to a certain degree, spawning in new enemies and replacing power cells for the Breach Attractor when Trace destroys them. It’s not clear if this is a result of Sudran tech of being a PatternMind, but whatever the reason, it’s possible that Athetos was doing all of it to buy time.

Time for what?

To hack Trace’s Nanogates so that the Rusalki couldn’t control him anymore.

Trace keels over not long after the final battle, but Athetos showing up with a gun implies that Athetos was able to at least get a Trojan Horse into the nanogates that would wake Trace up when the remote overrides were disabled. Then Trace could wake up, find all his equipment again, and take the fight to the Rusalki before they could cause too much damage to the Worldstream, possibly including Earth.

The only truly glaring flaw in this theory is that it doesn’t account for why Indra would side with a bunch of genocidal robots, one way or another; she refers to the storage bay in Axiom Verge 1 as where “our bodies” are kept, and these are massive war machines, while her humanoid nanotech form is about human sized. The Lamassu refers to some fairly devastating war machines from upstream worlds and the Rusalki might just be those machines; she was heading to the world they were stored in because it might have the technology to restore one of her Apocalypse Arm upgrades - the child Damu that controls her drone body - to a flesh and blood body that can live a normal life.

There is a big gap between trying to help this kid she found and teaming up with sentient weapons platforms to devastate the multiverse. At least as big as the gap between Trace being a pacifist and Athetos committing genocide.

Like so many sequels, Axiom Verge 2 has raised even more questions than it answered.