#(even though intellectually i understand it was supposed to)

[aeide-thea]

wot show is so obsessed with architecture and tbh i'm not mad about it???

[hbmmaster]

"thank you mario! but our princess is in another castle!" has got to be one of the most misunderstood quotes in video game history.

like first of all people often misquote it as "sorry" instead of "thank you", which changes the tone pretty significantly. but also there's this way people refer to the line like, as though the player has been tricked at this point in the game? like, "gotcha! this is the wrong castle, idiot! you were supposed to go somewhere else!"

and like. I can understand intellectually that at the time it would have been normal to expect a game to end after four levels. but as someone who's way too young for this game, the idea that world 1-4 qualifies even remotely as a fakeout is so bizarre to me? like obviously the game isn't over after world 1-4. why would it even be called "world 1-4" if there are only four levels? makes no sense. why would any player have that expectation?

and also, this is an extremely linear game! the idea that a player would be actively mocked for like. not using the warp zones I guess? just doesn't add up.

just like, in general, there isn't anything about the design of this game that justifies interpreting that "thank you mario!" in the insincere way people seem to interpret it. to me, it very clearly is supposed to be read as a "good job, now keep going!" not "haha, you thought that was the end but it isn't!" you know

[aventurineswife]

“Think I like you best when you're just with me, And no one else”

Tags: @aseqan, Aventurine x Reader, Ratio x Reader, Sunday x Reader, Romance, Vulnerability, Intimacy, Soft moments, Trust, Aftercare, Emotional Depth, Quiet affection, Established Relationship.

Warnings: Mild Sensuality, Emotional Vulnerability, Light Introspection, Mentions of Past Trauma (subtle).

Aventurine leaned back against the warm, tiled wall of the bath, the water lapping gently around him. The room was dim, lit only by the soft flicker of candlelight, casting shadows that danced over his skin. His left hand, which had been so carefully concealed during their passionate night, was now unguarded, resting on the edge of the tub. He couldn't suppress the rare moment of vulnerability, the cool water soothing his tired muscles and even cooler emotions.

Beside him, your soft laugh echoed as you ran a sponge over his back, the intimate touch a stark contrast to his usual calculated demeanor. The sensation was almost foreign, too tender for a man whose life had been nothing but high-stakes games and cold calculations.

Aventurine tilted his head back, letting the water soak through his hair, feeling the weight of the past few hours—and the weight of everything that came before it—dissolve with each passing second.

“You always manage to make me feel like I’ve won,” he murmured, his voice low but full of sincerity. His eyes met yours, the usual playful glint in them now softened, a flicker of something deeper—a desire to let go, just for this moment.

The sponge moved to his shoulders, working away the tension, the gentle rhythm comforting in its simplicity. He knew the games would resume tomorrow. But for now, in this shared moment of quiet affection, Aventurine let the world outside fade.

"I never want to stop," he whispered, a statement more to himself than anyone else.

Ratio sat by the edge of the bath, his hair damp and hanging loosely around his face. The steam from the water curled lazily into the air, and his body felt heavy with exhaustion, but his mind was quiet for the first time in what felt like an eternity. He glanced over at you, who was lounging back in the water with a serene smile on your face, an expression of contentment that he couldn’t help but admire.

“I suppose this is a form of recovery,” he remarked, though his tone lacked its usual sharpness. His usual intellectual rigidity had softened, a rare moment of calmness settling in.

You reached over, brushing a wet lock of hair from his face. He didn’t flinch at the touch—though he had, at one point in time. Instead, he allowed himself to lean into it, a gesture of silent trust.

"You are... difficult to read at times," you said softly, your voice like music in the quiet room. "But when you're like this... it's hard to believe you're the same person who spends hours lecturing on the importance of knowledge."

Ratio chuckled lightly, though it was softer than usual. “Knowledge is important, yes. But there’s something to be said for understanding the quiet moments as well. Not everything can be solved by intellect.”

The cool water swirled around you as Ratio allowed himself a rare moment of rest. It was a strange thing, this aftercare, but it was a relief. There was something about the intimacy of it—the way your hands moved over his skin, the way you communicated without words—that made him feel like maybe there was more to this life than just the pursuit of knowledge.

He sighed, leaning back with a quiet sense of satisfaction. "Maybe some things don't need to be calculated," he admitted, almost to himself.

The night had unfolded in a whirlwind, a dance between affection and a shared understanding neither had voiced but both had felt. Now, in the quiet aftermath, Sunday found himself still holding you, the rhythmic beat of his heart syncing with yours. His eyes were soft, filled with a rare warmth that contrasted his usual stoic demeanor. He brushed a strand of hair from your forehead, his fingers tracing the delicate curve of your jaw as if memorizing the feeling of your skin.

"Do you feel it?" he asked, his voice barely above a whisper. There was a gentleness to him now, the weight of his thoughts momentarily silenced by the presence of someone who, in this fleeting moment, felt like the embodiment of peace he so longed for.

"Sometimes I wonder," Sunday continued, his gaze unwavering, "if we could create a world where people could just... be happy, without pain, without struggle." His voice was tinged with a bittersweet longing, but he didn't let it show on his face. Instead, he leaned in and kissed your forehead tenderly, the warmth of his lips lingering for a beat longer than necessary.

"Tonight," he murmured, "wasn’t a dream. It was real, and it’s something I never thought I’d find in this life." His words were vulnerable but not weak, a testament to his trust in you. With a soft smile, he wrapped his arms around you once more, letting the quiet of the night stretch on, neither of you needing to speak to understand that this was more than just a fleeting moment—it was something worth protecting.

[a-knight-in-shining-rainbows]

had an interaction a few days ago that i’m still thinking about. I was talking to two students about the Day of Silence protest coming up that friday, and both of them seemed interested but needed more information. Both of these students were disabled with relatively high support needs for communication, processing, and learning. At least one was intellectually disabled.

I explained the basic premise of Day of Silence, and one of the students asked me to repeat myself, explain again. I did this several times, and she was engaged with me, even if she wasn’t processing yet she clearly wanted to know more and was interested in what i was saying. Her para-educator then came over and said it wasn’t worth trying to explain anything to her because she wouldn’t understand.

The para-educator’s intentions were good, she wanted to save me time and believed i may not have known this student was disabled. But to say that, in front of the student, as though she couldn’t hear the comment, is rude at best and downright hostile at worst. Furthermore, to be in a position in which you are the one in charge of helping this person navigate the world, and to believe they only deserve information that you think they can digest, is such an awful way to view someone you are supposed to help. This student was asking me questions, she was listening, and honestly - who cares if in the end she didn’t understand? just because we don’t end up understanding something doesn’t mean we can’t engage with it.

Intellectually disabled individuals and disabled individuals in general are not infants, they’re not incapable of learning or connecting with others. Yes, they may need extra help, and yes, some topics may be too complex for them to tackle, but let the individual decide that for themselves.

TLDR: The person who was supposed to be helping an intellectually disabled student navigate the world decided for that student what they could understand. In doing so, she projected her beliefs about the students abilities and overshadowed the student’s ability to define her own boundaries. Intellectually disabled people deserve the autonomy to decide for themselves what they want to engage with at a given time, not told they are too dumb to understand.

[charmedreincarnation]

Hey guysss! A lot of people have been asking for me to make a challenge for a while now. I honestly didn’t want to, not because I’m against them or anything but because the law will be different for everyone. Sometimes, it feels like tumblr needs a reminder - you are the only person who knows what you need to do to succeed. I wish I could imprint this realization on everyone's minds. I’ve also gotten so manyyyy asks about things that genuinely just feel like your doubts repeating in your mind constantly so I’m gonna talk abt my beliefs bc y’all are spiraling really hard. I get it you want your desires for Christmas and new years. It’s okay take a breath, you're alive and will be okay.

Firstly: at the beginning I used to spend countless time spiraling into depression, constantly changing my methods every time I saw a new success story, and every time I found a new foolproof' tumblr method. Methods that were supposed to guarantee results in a day so when they didn’t I felt rlly useless. It was annoying, to say the least, and I don’t want to help others do the same thing, but really all I can do is reiterate what I always say and hope you apply it to everything!!

A lot of you guys wanted something that didn’t involve the void state, so that’s what this will revolve around! But feel free to make this void orientated if you desire, and I’ll also add a void section so all my babies can eat!

Ok so you’ve over consumed, you have dropped the void, and now have switched to just assuming and knowing that you would wake up with your dream life - embracing states. Great! At first, it will seem like you're doing nothing but you aren’t! For example, I knew I was dwelling in the state of wish fulfilled when I went to work without shedding tears, when I looked in the mirror and didn't think I was ugly because, well, I'm beautiful! I didn't care abt not performing well on a test because I could revise my past etc. this isn’t to say ignore the 3D: don’t do that, please try and make sure you’re safe and okay. But know life is malleable. Slowly, things that used to bother me—my parents, grades, anxiety, self-deprivation—started to fade away. Even though my dream life hadn't reflected in my 3D yet, I felt the switch. That's when I decided, I know what to do.

I also remember finding this cute website a long time ago that I want to share that summarizes it in such a great and simple way.

So Before I knew or understood what LOA was, I found this gem of an article on I am Love'- "How To Shift Into A State & Stay There". I think I have a post abt it somewhere on my blog but I’m too lazy to find it so here it is again.

Basically it explains that the essence of shifting into a desired state and staying there. What resonated with me was her choice to dwell in the state of knowing that her desires are hers, no matter what.

The way she used colloquial language made the content relatable and easy to understand. It's like having a conversation with a friend who's guiding you through hard concepts with “dumbed down” language because at the beginning states made 0 sense to me.

Posts like this really helped me particularly because when I discovered Neville, it required three attempts on my part to not only intellectually grasp his teachings, but also to truly comprehend him as a whole, given his non-contemporary speaking tbh.

I recommend it if you find yourself stuck or not really grasping the law yet (which is more than okay) but, if you're looking to understand the loa better or just learn more give this article a read.

There’s also a particular quote from Neville that really got me to dive into his work after finding this article and it was- “The being that you really are, descended to the weakness of the flesh, causing you to experience the state you are now in. Contemplate another state, and the same being who brought your present form into being will restore and make alive the other state, the state desired. This he will continue to do until his purpose is fulfilled. That purpose is to follow a certain pattern back into the unity of being. You see, in the beginning we were drafted. We did not volunteer to fall into these states. We were made subject into futility, not willingly but by the will of him who sent us. But when we return we will discover that we are the very being who subjected us. We are now the sons, destined to return as God the Father!”

Now that you understand and are ready to apply state, Here’s a routine I’ve created to hopefully help you guys! It is very simple and not time consuming at all.

Scripting and writing: I love writing and feeling like the author of my own story, literally bringing my creation to life. I would write when I felt like it. Whenever I wanted to dwell in my state, I would simply write, "I have my dream life." It's so simple, yet it embodies everything I need. If you’re more of a picture girl, use Pinterest instead. Or both if you prefer it doesn’t matter.

Edward arts' "I am creator meditation": Again, do this whenever you like it. It's one of the few meditations that didn't bore me to death and seemed to work with my ADHD. I also love reading, so I would read his pdf whenever I felt like it and take mental notes. Reading his work was a reminder I was doing everything right, it resonated with me very well.

During doubt and overstimulation: When things get overwhelming, close your eyes and let the emotions pass. They’re just thoughts! repeat the words "I am" until your heart returns to its normal rhythm. It's a simple yet powerful way to ground yourself amidst the whirlwind of emotions. And guess what? You can use this technique for doubt too! So the next time you're feeling overwhelmed, remember the power of "I am". It's a gentle reminder of your existence, your resilience, and your capability to be whatever you want despairs any emotional turmoil.

Thank god: (yourself!!) When reminded of your desires. Thank you god. When you see your desires, (eg:Pinterest, online or you’re just reminded) thank you god! When you see an image of your desires, thank you god! When you dream or think about your desires. Thank god! Always thank the person fulfilling it aka you ;)! If you’re religious just thank the god you actually follow.

Nightly reflections: At night, ask yourself , "What would I do if I woke up in my dream life right now?" repeat this question throughout the night. Then, imagine whatever scene you want. What would you do if you could not fail? What would you do if you had all the money in the world right now. What if you looked in the mirror and saw the most ethereal being and it’s just you? What about if you woke up in your dream house with your dream family and pets? This is inspired by one of the first shifting methods I created that helped me fulfill my imagination before I knew what that meant. When you’re ready to sleep just remind yourself it is done, and drift off into your desires.

As I've always said, I've been a great daydreamer. I knew exactly what I wanted my life to look and feel like. I envisioned my walk-in closet filled with luxurious outfits, waking up in my dream room on a soft mattress with my pets purring nearby. I saw the decor reflecting my personality in every corner of my large, and pretty room. I imagined walking into my bathroom, seeing all my cool Sephora products lined up for my skincare and shower routine. I love taking care of myself because I know I deserve it. I saw myself looking in the mirror, knowing I'm "that girl" who turns heads wherever she goes.I visualized going downstairs in my boujee dream house,and seeing my family stress-free, smiling, and eating well. I saw plans being made on my phone, my friends were excited to see and talk to me. I went to my kitchen, filled with expensive ingredients ready for me to cook meals for my loved ones - because I love cooking. I saw myself checking my bank account and seeing multiple seven figures in my savings, checking, and investment accounts and opportunities easily presenting myself to make more if I wanted. I saw myself running errands in my car, shopping, getting Starbucks, having expensive lunch with friends, and making a trip to Target. Despite the simplicity of the day, I would come home and be like, "Ugh, what a long day!"like that one khloe kardashian meme. What if all this happened today? Visualize and feel the scenes so clearly that it felt like it's already happening.. not just in your imagination.

Most importantly: Define the law for you! Stop parroting bloggers and intertwine your own beliefs with the law. The only principle of the law is that through persistence assumption will harden into a fact. Other than that anything goes except for facts that are wrong.

Here’s old notes I found in my phone lol just so you know what I mean by define the law for you: ignore the writing I was kinda dumb and new to the law 😭😭

Now this is for my void babies if you made it this far.

Read this post.

This is it copied bc the links are wonky sometimes

“My previous method is based on the persistent assumption, which a lot of people don’t know how to do right and it might take some time even for those who have the right self-concept and the mindset, so today I was in the process of manifesting this method.

And I was successful!

This method is for everyone. It’s the easiest Void method.

Do you know that you get into the Void state at night automatically? At that time the whole perceived world disappears for you. Every single perception and assumption you have disappears while your consciousness in the calm and natural Void state.

Use it to your advantage. Now that you know about the Void that you enter when you sleep, the perfect state to manifest anything that you wish to perceive, with no “resistance”, no illusions of annoying solid things around, you only need to remember your scripted starting point in your DR and practice watching it all coming out of the Void.

Practice that scene with your eyes closed, say to yourself:”That is what I perceive. Next time I’m in the Void, I’ll experience this”. You won’t even need to be fully aware of yourself that way when you get into the Void while you are asleep. Your subconscious would do all the work as it now would have the instruction and a clear image of you expecting it.

Personal experience: as I was receiving information on this method, I almost stepped into my DR! I wasn’t even in the absolute void state, I was only creating the scene for this method and I felt it materialise with my senses!

I have great feeling that it’s going to give fast results for others! Try it, teach your subconscious what it needs to bring forth while in the Void, let it do your work for you!”

Lastly, I’m gonna talk abt my beliefs real quick bc the fear of shifting vs manifesting makes me sad for y’all. I understand you don’t wanna leave behind the people you love and that’s not fear to feel ashamed of having! I personally hate the npc mindset a lot of have people have adopted. The only thing we know for sure is that assumptions create realities, and consciousness is the real reality. Everything else boils down to assumptions, except for principles. For example, shifting is not lucid dreaming, even if you assume it to be. That is the principle. I’m just going to copy what I told my mutal bc I’m lazy and need to finish Christmas stuff 😭😭 but Our imagination and the 4D realm are products of our consciousness, which is indeed real. Our view of reality is shaped by our consciousness, since we can't experience everything all at once.

Unless, of course, you shift into a super omnipotent god. Even then, you’d probably still struggle with the concept of infinity because, well, infinity is infinite. And it’s constantly a never exnding expansion. As humans, we're finite beings, and our understanding of the infinite is naturally limited. Because you can’t and won’t ever experience everything at once, infinity is always expanding. Our awareness can be thought of as fragments of consciousness; it's like being a drop of water in a massive ocean. Even though our perception is limited, the infinite is always there, always existing. We simply adjust our awareness to perceive this infinite reality.

And through our consciousness, we are able to tap into other realities or 'multiverses', which give us a broader understanding of existence. This exploration of consciousness and the multiverse is a significant part of my journey into the world of manifestation.

The law of consciousness explains why, when you "shift" or change your perspective, you don't physically move. It's all about altering your state of awareness. This is also why time doesn't really matter in the grand scheme of things. You can become aware of any time or day you want, as long as you choose to be aware of it. It's like having a mental time machine. This law is why infinite universes exist. As long as you can be aware of it, you can assume and embody the state of that person. Whether that's someone with a billion dollars on Earth, or a person who lives in the Attack on Titan world, it's all about your awareness.Our awareness is just a fragment of the larger consciousness – hence the idea of the multiverse. Each universe is a different fragment, a different state of awareness. And we have the power to “shift” into any of these states, therefore shifting into any of these universes.

I’m telling you this bc there’s no need to be afraid of manifesting or being in a reality with robotic versions of the people you love. Ariana grande and Marilyn Monroe for example talk about loa without acknowledging it and we see their success. Neville Goddard and his followers saw each other’s manifestions and I manifest for my friends and they mnaifest for me.

Take a deep breath and let go of the tik tok clone mindsets y’all have they don’t exist. You can manifest and assume anything you want in your imagination. Y’all literally want to manifest things like millions of dollars, revising deaths, living in new countries, having immorality in your waiting rooms, and never aging which is all possible of course. So be for real, why assume and know that you can achieve all that, but it won't manifest exactly how you want? I've also wondered about what happens to the "old version" of people when they manifest their dream life. As far as I'm concerned, they dont exist because you choose not to be aware of them.

I really want to talk about this too, as I've received similar questions and, oh my god, I thought I was alone. I've always been a bit delusional and lived in my head, but when I became conscious of the law, did anyone else feel a sense of self-embarrassment? I don't know what that was, but I'd genuinely feel my soul wanting to throw up envisioning my desires that aren't mine, even though I've always been a daydreamer. It's kind of like when you feel you can't have them or it's strange to envision yourself with something you can't have, so you just purge yourself. 😭

I was thinking back to why that happened and laughing at myself because we need to be serious right now. Why are you getting sick by your own mind? Imagine if Van Gogh, anytime he pulled out a canvas and held a brush, was jump-scared by the brush. Picture him holding out the brush and just staring at the canvas crying because "well, the painting is going to suck 😐," "I don't know what to paint☹️☹️," "I already know it won't be like what I envision in my head 😡😡." Like, bro, the canvas is blank, just fucking paint. That’s why I really like his quote that's like...

“If you hear a voice within you say you cannot paint, then by all means paint and that voice will be silenced.” So If you’re scared of failing, if you’re scared of your desires, or scared of how it will come to fruition, for that reason alone is more so to and manifest it anyways.

But happy holidays guys! make some tea, scroll through Pinterest, read a good book and watch some Christmas films and remember if you can imagine/think your desires you can embody them bc where are you getting it from??

Here are some helpful documents I have read plus a cute vid I saw on insta reels : (let me know if the links are being weird)

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[anxiouspotatorants]

Actually you know what I need to rant about this: while literati is technically a good girl x bad boy dynamic it is written so incredibly well and avoids so many pitfalls and stereotypes that it makes a good girl x bad boy hater like myself (I’m only half joking — I don’t think any trope is inherently good or bad but I tend to dislike most pairings with this dynamic) fall head over heels for their story and relationship.

So much of what makes the two of them work is the contrast between how others perceive them and how they truly are. Don't get me wrong, there are plenty of people who understand who Rory is as a person (Lorelai, Lane, Paris, Richard and Emily to a certain degree for starters), but she's constantly met with the expectation that she just does good and is supposed to make everyone proud 24/7. Stars Hollow as a group especially are big on this, as seen f. ex. through how Taylor takes Rory's one comment about an inappropriate DVD and twists the whole thing into a censorship crusade and makes Rory its poster-child even though she wants nothing to do with it and tells him so repeatedly. But instead of hearing Rory disagree with him (like he would Lorelai and Luke) he assumes that she actually agrees with him - and why shouldn't she when she's the perfect sunshine paragon of good who would never disagree with her elders? Also her grandparents treat her as incredibly fragile and childlike, like she must be too innocent to ever do anything wrong and so whenever she does something it has to be somebody else's fault (usually Lorelai, but occasionally Jess or whoever else was present). Time and time again Rory is treated like something innocent and naive and weak — but not by Jess. He sees her as a person.

And it obviously goes the other way too. Jess is treated like shit by pretty much everyone else. Either people hate him unprovoked or very much provoked (he did do a lot of pranks in his first few weeks and while I'm a Dean-hater I'm not blind to how much Jess picked fights with him), or they’ve simply given up on him. He tells Rory himself that every authority figure he had back in New York gave up on him too, from teachers to principals to his very own mother. But Rory doesn’t treat him like a lost cause, she treats him like the smart, brilliant and asshole-ish teen that he is. By having faith in him she also often holds him more accountable than others. Where f. ex. Lorelai or the other adults just roll their eyes, Rory physically drags Jess into doing his shifts at the diner. While others write him off, Rory chews Jess’ ear out for not helping Luke more and for willfully making enemies out of the Stars Hollow adults.

They don't put each other on pedestals or below each other. Jess doesn’t try to make a sinner out of Rory and she doesn’t try to make a saint out of him. There’s genuine respect between them. They expect each other to have integrity and treat others with kindness and honesty, and the rest is good old chemistry and common interests.

I particularly love how in so many of their scenes (especially pre-relationship) when they spend time alone they just get to be these goofy nerdy kids. They argue about controversial authors and dig through records shops and eat hot dogs and make fun of each other and try to make each other laugh. It’s not just sexual chemistry as it too often is in a dynamic like this (and often uncomfortably sexual when writing teenagers - looking at you Gossip Girl), and not just well written intellectual chemistry — they have platonic chemistry too. A hell of a lot of it actually.

While I don’t think ASP wrote them through a purely deconstructionist lens on the good girl x bad boy dynamic (if she did plan on writing the dynamic at all), there is something to be said about how where many around them treat them like stereotypes they treat each other like people. To so many people, Rory is a perfect small town princess, a little miss sunshine with booksmarts for days but too delicate and sweet for anything with grit and weight. To a lot of the same people and many more Jess is a pathetic brutish and maniacal lost cause, hell personified in a chainsmoking leather-wearing teenager. But to each other they are actual human beings. Kind and mean and flirtatious and scared and reckless and smart. Rory really thinks that with the right motivation and mindset Jess can be the kind who does (and at the end wrote) incredible things. Jess really believes that with a little more practice and support to step out of her comfort zone she can be the amazing journalist she wishes to be.

They don’t have this stupid «we’re so bad for each other but we can’t stay away» thing that too many trope users rely on and don’t even justify in the plot. Everyone else might think they’re not fit for each other, but they knew they were each other’s person from the very first day.

[olderthannetfic]

A common argument I see against constructive or negative opinions (even in For Readers spaces now apparently 🙄) is that they crush people's dreams of being a writer.

And like. I have diagnosed issues with rejection sensitivity, so sharing my work publicly was extremely difficult for me at first. But it was just something I had to get through if I wanted to be a writer. When I was in a university level creative writing class, I was stunned that they wasted a seminar teaching us stuff like you're/your and there/their/they're until I noticed that my classmates found it really useful. I realised 00s fandom taught me better grammar than the actual official school system, say nothing of charactisation, voice, pacing, etc. There were a LOT of resources to help new writers understand writing 101 and avoid annoying mistakes/cliché plots, which you don't really see anymore. I honestly feel like I got an expensive years long creative writing course for free.

And even as a melodramatic and oversensitive tween, I always had the attitude that I wanted my writing to be good, so if people pointed out typos or grammar mistakes I'd just thank them, fix it and remember for next time??? I never once felt "bullied" by legitimate criticism: as someone who actually was bullied a lot IRL, 00s fandom was actually one of the few spaces where I felt comfortable and safe. Whereas tbh I don't always feel comfortable with this modern culture where fanfic writers demand comments in return for creating "content" "for free" but setting strict demands for what kind of comments they want to receive. (And ofc it's for free! It's not their intellectual property!)

Which is all to say, if someone telling you "hey, maybe consider adding paragraph breaks" makes you want to quit writing forever then maybe you didn't actually want to be a writer all that much.

--

I think people mix a whole bunch of dissimilar things.

If you go to art/film/etc. school, you'll need to get used to group critique. It's partly about advice, but a lot of it is about toughening you up for future situations where your audience is not going to care about why a work isn't up to their standards. I think some of these practices actually can be pretty damaging. It really depends on the professor to make them constructive.

A key element is that people who are going through that are usually supposed to already have some experience and be pretty committed, so they aren't going to shrivel up and quit.

When I was a little baby writer, I was indeed pretty sensitive. Even while trying to finish the first draft of a novel, I need cheerleading or maybe goading to put my ass in a chair. The hard part is getting the words out, not making them good. So a lot of negative shit, even if well meant and useful, would just be discouraging.

But...

There's a big difference between having no interest in back seat driving from AO3 comments and opposing all review-ish conversation anywhere, whether it's bookmarks or discord servers or other archives that have more of a culture of reviews than of comments for the author.

I think you can want to improve but not want to do it via AO3 comments. You should still leave readers to do their thing outside of your comments though. Analyzing or reviewing can be a big part of someone's own fannish activity—a positive and fun hobby for them, not just an excuse to yell at the writer.

[queenshelby]

Chemical Reactions (P. 6)

Pairing: Cillian Murphy as J Robert Oppenheimer x Student Reader

Warning: Smut, Age-Gap, Infidelity

Words: 4,905

Note: The fic is spoiler free and my own fantasy and imagination. It is not historically and scientifically accurate.

Previous Parts: 1; 2; 3; 4; 5

“You really want to have this discussion now?” you sighed before reaching for the packet of cigarettes which you kept on the ledge of your chalkboard while leaning back against it. You were still half naked and your bare breasts were exposed.

“Considering the circumstances, I think that we must talk about it now. I understand if you would rather save yourself for someone who…” Robert began to say as you handed him your cigarette and before you interrupting him.

“Listen Robert, the fact that you are married doesn’t bother me and, clearly, it doesn’t bother you either as, otherwise, you wouldn’t have kissed me” you said before snatching the cigarette from his hand again, causing Robert to furrow his eyebrows.

“Now that, too, is presumptuous” he ought to point out in respect of which you laughed.

“Is it though?” you chuckled before expanding on the topic of fidelity. “I suppose your reputation precedes you. Despite, I know about Jean Tatlock and your affair with Ruth Tolman” you told him, causing Robert’s chin to drop. He sighed again and then he asked “how did you know?” to which, of course, you had already formulated a response in the back of your head.

“Women talk. Barbara Chevalier and Ruth Tolman are friends and I have overheard a few conversations between them since living here” you admitted to Robert before handing the cigarette back to him.

“Well, for the record, my affairs with these women are in the past. I have ended them both” Robert explained before inhaling the smoke of the cigarette without realising that, for you, the fact that he had ended those affairs, did not make a difference.

“Dr Oppenheimer, with respect, none of this really concerns me. I am not your wife” you chuckled, causing Robert’s eyes to widen. He was surprised by your attitude towards this topic and now regretted the fact that he had spoken up about it before he even had the chance to be with you, at least that once.

“I suppose we have officially passed the need for formalities, don’t you think?” Robert asked. “So please, call me Robert” he then said and you took him up on his offer while still standing there with the fabric of your dress stacked up over your hips and your bare nipples pointing right at him.

“Alright, Robert” you said before giving him a cheeky smile. “Now, let me tell you something about myself” you then told him and, sure enough, he was keen to hear about your thoughts on the current situation.

“I am a woman who does not believe in love or marriage, both of which are social conventions invented by human kind without any scientific backing whatsoever. In my opinion, questions concerning marital fidelity are minuscule in today’s society where one race is trying very hard to destroy another. We have bigger issues to worry about than our own emotions” you began to explain before snatching the cigarette from Robert’s hands again and continuing with your explanation. “What I do, however, believe in is physical and intellectual attraction giving rise to a connection between two people. I believe that we have such connection but, if you do not feel the same way, then perhaps you are right and this should stop now” you then said before disposing of the fag and stepping towards Robert again who looked both, stunned and confused.

“I haven’t met anyone quite like you and I am astonished by how mature you are at such a young age” he said in an almost whispering voice while caressing your face again gently. He was looking at you with desire and need again before, somewhat expectedly, pressing his lips onto yours for a split second before you pulled away from him once more.

“Unfortunatly maturity doesn’t necessarily translate to experience, as you will soon find out” you blushed, causing Robert to look at you in awe.

“I am sure you will do just fine” he teased, causing you to chuckle and roll your eyes all at the same time before you reached up and pulled his mouth to yours again.

The touch of his warm lips brushing against yours caused a thrill of excitement to rush through you. Robert’s kiss was soft, gentle, and then became more urgent as you opened your mouth to accept his tongue. Even though this was not your first kiss, you almost felt as if it was. This would be a night of firsts for both of you and your heart pounded so hard it hurt as you kissed him back fervently

“Come on” Robert then whispered after pulling away from you and guiding you towards the bed, which is when you quickly shuffled your dress down over your hips and disposed of it on the floor.

“Robert?” you then said with a husky voice before laying down on your back and looking up at him nervously as he disposed of the rest of his clothes as well, expect for his briefs.

“Yes? What is it?” he asked before joining you and hovering over you while caressing your face gently. He looked at you in awe and his eyes were reassuring.

“Take it slow, please” you whispered nervously before reaching up to run your hands through his hair.

“Of course. That goes without saying” Robert reassured you before he kissed you again and, this time around, he was deepening and lengthening the kiss, showing you just how much he wanted and desired you.

As you were kissing passionately, his hands reached around to caress you, causing your mostly naked bodies to rub against each other. Your bare breasts were now trapped against his chest and the feel of his warm body atop of yours caused shivers run down your spine.

Coming up to breathe, Robert eventually pulled away from you a little and, when he did, the tingling sensation he left behind on your lips made you smile.

Robert returned the smile you gave him and the smile that crossed his face warmed your trembling limbs and hid your excited nervousness. Despite the fact that you wanted this man more than anyone you had ever known, you felt somehow unstable when finally being faced with the idea of being intimate with someone else for the first time in your life.

The bravado you usually wore like a shield around him seemed to desert you, and even though you he couldn’t see much more than your face in this position, you felt naked under Robert’s heated gaze. You suddenly worried about your inexperience and you wondered whether this was actually a good idea.

Robert saw the panic of insecurity rise in your eyes, and he reached out to gently push a stray strand of hair behind your ear and grazed your bottom lip with his thumb before bringing his mouth to yours again. It was a slow kiss, deepening as his desire built even further. He knew he needed to go slow with you, take you gently and he hoped he could.

A hot rush travelled through your body as you responded to his kiss and felt his body shift, now enabling to graze his hands over your breasts.

“You are so beautiful” Robert then whispered before allowing not only his hands, but also his lips, to travel and you gasped as, eventually, you felt him nuzzle into your neck and trace your collarbone with his lips.

“That feels nice” you acknowledged as Robert was trailing his fingers over your skin and then you even moaned somewhat inadvertently when he brushed his fingers across your nipples. They surged under his caress and sent piercing streaks of arousal to your core. His caress was like a hot spark, and his touch excited you like you had not believed possible. You did not know how you could withstand his hands on the naked skin of your breasts for long but you knew that you had to try.

As Robert gazed over your naked flesh, you felt a blush creep up your neck. His eyes were so dark and full of lust, unlike anything else you had ever seen before and, just when Robert noticed your nervousness again, he pulled his hands away slightly, giving you some more time.

“Am I moving too fast?” he asked but you shook your head.

"No!” you groaned. “Touch me and kiss me again, please" you begged and you hoped that your voice would sound strong and self-assured. Unfortunately, you could not pull it off, and it shook with pure anxiety.

"As you wish” Robert chuckled before finally cupping one of your breasts and leaning down to slowly and gently swipe his tongue across one hard nipple.

"Oh my god" you whimpered as Robert teased the hard, little bud with his lips and rolled the other stiff nipple between two fingers.

“God, huh?” Robert teased. “I never expected to ever hear this word coming from your mouth…how unscientific of you…” he then joked just as you watched him lean over you.

“Just shut up and keep doing whatever you were doing to me. I am begging you, Robert” you joked for a moment while trying to pull his lips closer to your breasts again, which is when he took your thus-far neglected nipple into his warm mouth. He licked and sucked, alternating between the two stiff peaks, until you trembled and gasped on the edge of something you had never experienced before.

“Fuck, Robert” You felt feverish with excitement. Your mouth was dry, but your body was more alive than it had ever been before. Without him having even touched your mound, it was wet, yet felt as if it was on fire and throbbing with need. Shivers of anticipation shot up your spine, and you sucked your breath in raggedly as Robert dragged his insistent tongue down, letting it trail over your belly and to your navel.

“So perfect” Robert then murmured against your skin as he took his time exploring your body, trailing his fingers and mouth over your belly and thighs, before running them teasingly over the lace of your panties, making you moan loudly.

“Jesus Christ” you cursed, moaned and groaned in pleasure, causing Robert to look up at you and furrow his eyebrows.

“Don’t stop” you demanded as he was looking at you now with a cheeky smile having formed across his face and you tried to squirm up against him to simply gain some friction.

"I won’t, but I want to see all of you before I continue” Robert then said as his voice was thick with longing.

“Okay” you murmured in response, sounding desperate and anxious all at the same time. Your panties were moist, evidence of your excitement, and you were certain that he could smell your arousal as you hooked your thumbs inside the waistband of the lacy panties and wriggled out of them. You felt exposed, vulnerable, but also incredibly excited by the expression on his face, as he watched you offer your body to him. His expression showed eagerness, pleasure and even greed, you thought. There was no sign of the trepidation you had expected to see there.

“Now you” you then winked and, without taking his gaze from you, Robert stripped his briefs off quickly, throwing them to the side of the bed.

When you saw his erection, your breath caught in your throat. This was the first time you looked at a man’s most intimate body part, and in your virgin mind, it appeared impossibly thick and long. Your mound throbbed at the sight of it, but your stomach churned in repressed fear.

Eventually, you decided to proceed and Robert’s hands moved slowly and tenderly over your body again, pushing the anxiety from your mind as they wandered over your contours and cupped your mound gently. You groaned softly as his fingers caressed the lips, wet with your arousal, and then slid between their moistness into the entrance of your pussy.

"You are so wet” Robert then said as he buried his face against your neck while probing your entrance some more.

“Uh huh” you moaned in response as you moved your pelvis in time with his probing fingers. They were curious and insistent and were creating marvellous sensations in your core.

“Oh god Robert. This feels so nice” you eventually groaned as you spread your legs wider but your voice faded as Robert took immediate advantage of your pleasure, dipping his finger deeper inside your wetness. Your hips jerked suddenly at the unfamiliar sensation of being penetrated.

"I am sorry. I will go slow" Robert said, realising that this was too quick and too soon for you and, just as he let his thumb circle and caress the hood of your swollen clit, he could feel the heavy beating of your heart. Its rhythm matched his own, but the throbbing in his groin was wilder than he could remember.

“This feels incredible” you spoke with laboured breath and took every ounce of Robert’s willpower to restrain himself and not plough into you immediately. The scent of your mound was driving him wild, and it looked so good. All soft, swollen and slick with your excitement. It was the most welcoming sight he had seen in a long time.

“I want to taste you. May I?” Robert then whispered and your eyes widened. You knew what this meant and the thought of it alone aroused you incredibly.

“Yes” you thus moaned and, unable to restrain his need to taste your properly, Robert kissed down your body again so that he could let his tongue slide through your glistening labia and taste your delicious essence as his lips sought out your fleshy clit.

"Oh, fuck! Robert. Oh my god!” you moaned, squirming under his mouth. Your nails dug into his scalp to hold him there. You did not want him to ever stop. His tongue was creating sensations in you that you had never experienced before. Masturbation had always been good for you. You knew how to use your fingers expertly to bring yourself to climax, but this was different. It was warmer, wetter and more teasing, with an intense build up that made you want to thrash around and cry out in pleasure and frustration. You rocked your pelvis against his mouth, your inhibitions fading into the background of the sensations he gave you. You moved with him, demanding more as he licked and explored you.

Eventually, a squeal of pure pleasure tore from your lips as your spasms started deep inside. You trembled and gasped at the sensations that raced through your body exploded in a wave of pleasure that radiated back throughout your body again. As the waves of sensation crossed each other, you swore you would pass out. You held on to the here and now, enjoying the wild ride, and when you opened your eyes at last, you found Robert smiling at you.

"Fuck Robert, that was amazing. I had no idea! Is that how it feels for you? I mean, would it work the same way if I did this to you?" you asked, boldly reaching out to caress the rigid cock pressed into your side, eager at the thought of giving him the same pleasure he had just given you. It was hot and hard in your hands, and a small trickle of precum dribbled from the darkly coloured tip.

“Properly” Robert acknowledged and you moved to a better position and bent your head to tentatively stroke the velvety shaft against the side of your soft cheek, before dragging the tip of your tongue over the crown. Very gently, you drew it into your mouth and sucked slowly, lovingly, savouring his meaty thickness. You were surprised by your own enjoyment of this. You had never even contemplated it before.

"Fuck, I won't be able to hold out for too long, if you do that for much longer” Robert groaned after fifteen minutes or so as he watched you latch your soft lips onto his throbbing hardness. You moaned, overcome with the sensation of having him in your mouth and the taste of his excitement.

"Then don't. Cum in my mouth. I am curious about what it tastes like” you said quite honestly after lifting your lips from his cock and looking up at him through hooded lids that only served to stoke the fire of his desire to even higher levels.

"No. I don’t want to cum. Not yet" Robert groaned nonetheless before he gently pulled you from his cock before pushing you back onto your back playfully. "The first time I cum tonight will be inside of you" he then grimaced and a rush of adrenaline shot through you as he moved between your thighs.

“If this is still what you want…” Robert then ought to confirm and you nodded eagerly.

“Yes. It is what I want Robert. I want to feel you inside of me” you told him just as you felt the heat coming off his body when he nudged himself against the moist outer lips of your pussy. You spread your legs, and he rubbed the head of his cock over your slickness. He hesitated for a second before, eventually, leaning forward and supporting himself with his arms.

He then pressed ahead, pushing himself into you slowly and carefully while looking for cues of any discomfort on your face. His attention was focused on the warm, wet feeling of your lips surrounding his cock. They opened slowly to him, and he slowly pushed himself into the velvety depths of you with a pleasurable groan. He hadn't been sure if he had been expecting the barrier of a hymen, given the fact that you admitted that you masturbated, but there was only a small amount of resistance to overcome as he continued to push into you with slow, gentle thrusts.

“Robert! Fuck!” you moaned eventually while digging your nails into his arms and shoulders. Your voice was tremulous and shaky as he filled you and stretched you beyond what you had known.

Hearing your tremulous moan, Robert thrust forward sharply now and groaned as he slid all the way up inside you. You winced and bit the inside of your cheek to stop yourself from crying out. Your breathing was fast and shallow as your channel opened and stretched to take all of him. Despite the soreness and feeling of being overfull, it was a wondrous moment for you, finally knowing what it felt like to have a man buried inside you.

"You are so incredibly tight” Robert gasped at the snugness of you, barely holding onto his self-control. Now that he was in deeper, surrounded by your wetness, he was careful not to move, to let your get used to the feel of him inside you. It almost killed him not to plunge repeatedly into your pussy. His cock felt harder than it ever had and your cries of pleasure, knowing no one had ever made your feel like this, made him feel more virile, more potent than he ever had.

"You don't have to hold back Robert" you breathed into his neck as you clung to him. You wrapped your legs around his hips and raked your nails down his back as he sunk deeper into you. The eyes looking down at you were tinged with concern and fire, but you wanted his desire, his passion, to feel beautiful in his arms. You wanted him to make love to you, but you also wanted him to fuck you. You wanted to experience everything you had heard others talk about over so many years, all at once, even though you knew it was unfair to expect so much from this one man alone.

He moved his hips slowly, sliding his cock back and forth inside you, letting your get used to the rhythm. You moved with him, intuitively pushing your pelvis upwards as he slid into you. Each time he buried himself inside of you, your clit was trapped against the upper side of his shaft. You moaned loudly at the exquisite sensations and ground your mound up against him even harder, pumping back faster, until the sounds of your bodies slapping against each other and the squelching sound of their passionate fucking sent a wave of need and pure lust through him.

"Oh god. Keep going" you gasped, licking his neck and biting at his shoulders. "Don't hold back. Please, I need you to take me” you gasped again, unbelieving that you had said the words that chased around your brain out loud. You felt confident now. You felt safe. And you most certainly felt incredible.

Your words caused the blood to rush through Robert’s veins. He stared into your desire-filled gaze but, when his eyes locked with yours, a deeper connection hit him with more force than he had ever known with another woman before.

"Y/N. Oh god. I want you so fucking much” Robert groaned and since he didn’t usually swear or use the name of the holy lord, his very own words surprised him. Your name tore from his lips as he plundered your body, changing positions twice, before finding himself atop of you again.

His tongue drove into your mouth, sweeping inside, tasting, commanding, and taking what he needed. He could no longer restrain himself and he let himself go, fucking you the way he had wanted to ever since you had appeared in his life. With a growl of pure lust, he pumped his hips, plunging into you over and over. He could not get deep enough.

"Oh god, Robert. Take me” you moaned over and over again as he drove into you. Your body arched and undulated under his fevered lovemaking. The muscles of your channel clenched and spasmed around his length as a great bubble of pleasure rose up from your toes, engulfed you and burst into shards of explosive release that had you shuddering and sobbing.

"Let go for me Y/N” Robert groaned while he pinched your nipples, and you cried out again.

Your face and torso were flushed, your breath raspy, as you writhed beneath him and clawed at him while your body peaked again. You then cried out once more, and he lost it. A roar exploded from him as his body crested and he toppled over the edge. His length throbbed and pulsed, spilling his anguish and a steady stream of cum into you. He collapsed on you gasping, trying to regain his breath.

"Don't move, please" you said, your face still flushed with your excitement. You stroked his hair lovingly. "I like the way you feel inside me” you said while enjoying the little ebbing ripples from your tight walls against his cock. He smiled and kissed your lips softly and you continued this for a while until, eventually, he pulled out of you which caused some of your combined juices to leak from your slit and on to the sheets.

“So how did I do, Robert? Just fine?” you then asked just as Robert rolled to his side, facing you and caressing your face while you thought about this incredible explosive feeling he made you experience just moments ago.

“I actually cannot recall the last time I had sex that good” he gasped. His breath was still laboured as he looked at you and smiled.

“I am sure you say this to everyone” you joked after pressing a quick kiss on to Robert’s lips and before sitting up straight when, suddenly, it hit you and you came up with an idea.

“No, actually, I don’t” Robert said as he watched you get out of bed abruptly. “What are you doing?” he thus asked while you tippy toed across the room before standing right in front of the chalkboard in order to ask him a question.

“Have you figured how to get your hands on enough uranium yet? Because, going by my estimates, I believe that the US will never be able to secure enough for more than one bomb unless they work with their allies?” you then said somewhat suddenly, causing Robert to sit up as well and furrow his eyebrows.

“You know I cannot talk about this Y//N” he told you as you picked up the chalk and began to write down a formula.

“Alright, you don’t have to tell me anything. I do the talking and you take away what you want from it” you said as, still in your naked form, you wrote down a few calculations from your head.

“Y/N, your calculations don’t make sense…” Robert interrupted you until he realised that you were talking about two entirely different substances now.

“We aren’t talking about uranium anymore, are we?” he thus ought to clarify, causing you to chuckle.

“Well, you aren’t talking at all Robert. You can’t tell me anything, remember?” you teased before telling him that it was plutonium which you based your calculations on rather than uranium.

“Plutonium is too fragile” Robert pointed out which is when you dropped the chalk back on to the ledge of the board and shrugged your shoulders.

“Yes it is fragile, but it is powerful and you can extract more” you pointed out while, elegantly, crawling back into bed.

“It’s impractical nonetheless. It will be much more difficult to build a bomb using plutonium” Robert said while sill glancing at your calculations.

“Probably, which is why you need a bunch of people as smart as you are to figure out a way to make it work” you told him, causing Robert to pull you atop of him and kiss you again.

“There is something incredibly sexy about watching you calculate a reaction, completely naked, while talking to me about atoms” he then determined, earning him yet another quiet chuckle.

“If you say so” you teased while giving in to his many kisses and caresses.

“How do you feel about moving to the dessert with me?” Robert then wanted to know, causing you to pull away from him.

“You want me to come on to the project with you?” you asked somewhat surprised seeing that you were not even a postgrad student yet which, in your mind, made you unqualified.

“Yes. In fact, I think I need you” Robert told you nonetheless and with a great sense of determination, causing you to shake your head.

“You don’t need me Robert” you chuckled, seeing that he probably already had a group of well-known scientists on board, none of whom you could compete with.  

“But I do need you and it would just be you and me, working together during the day and then doing this at night” Robert responded to your statement while gently running his hands over your bare skin again in a suggestive kind of manner.

“Just you and me, huh?” you moaned before pushing Robert’s hand out of the way. “What about your wife?” you wanted to know, seeing that, no doubt, she would be there too.

“She has no desire to live in the middle of nowhere for a year or two, because this is how long it will take to make this bomb. She is not coming” Robert informed you while caressing your skin again, teasing you and making you ache with need and desire for him.

“Robert…” you gasped before his lips silenced you gently, kissing you passionately.

“Just think about it” he then told you after your lips drifted apart, causing you to nod.

“I will think about it and, maybe, there is a way you could make this proposal a little more appealing to me” you suggested just before you pushed Robert beneath you and assumed authority over him.

“How?” he asked while feeling your hand gently wrap around his hardening shaft.

“Well, for starters, you could fuck me again” you teased while stroking him.

“Right now?” Robert groaned while, again, you lined the head of his hard member up with your entrance, causing you to nod.

“Yes, right fucking now” you determined before sinking down on his cock, engulfing him completely, which was something you continued for a quite some time.

In fact, you made love for what felt like hours, up until one or two o’clock at night, following which Robert stayed with you, sharing a bed just like any other ordinary couple would until, suddenly, at 6 o’clock in the morning, you were startled by the arrival of someone unexpected, barging into your room.

To be continued…

Please comment and engage. I love getting comments and predictions pretty please!

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[sempersirens]

the fig tree | rotten

pairing: therapist!joel x f!reader

warnings: 18+ mdni. discussion of heavy and potentially triggering topics such as sa, self-harm, infertility, various mental illnesses, self-hatred and drug use. these topics are only mentioned and do not occur in real-time.

chapter summary: a twenty-something, seemingly lost cause, meets her match in the form of psychotherapist: dr. joel miller.

dividers by @saradika-graphics

updates: @sempersirenswrites

series masterlist

Maybe it was time to accept you were never as good as you'd always thought you'd been.

For four long years, you had spent most of your waking hours dissecting epic poetry and papyrology.

Still, the most your degree had done for you was rouse a satisfying disappointment from your mother’s side of the family when they realised you weren’t actually going to be that kind of doctor.

Not to say such in a self-deprecation; you hardly suffered from any semblance of an imposter syndrome. Your mother used to frequently remind you that you were far too vain to not believe in yourself.

It was more of a philosophical framework. Platonic realism. Knowing your muted beauty could earn you a free drink from below-average men who felt their trousers tighten when you addressed them through your eyelashes.

But it wasn't an obvious enough beauty for the attention of the men you imagined exchanging bodily fluids with between stops on the underground.

Besides, you had been a student of Classical Studies; a degree that doesn’t require the intellectual strain of learning Latin or Ancient Greek. The inclusive way for people like you, having attended a run-down state-funded school, to get a glimpse into the Bullingdon boys' and grammar schoolgirls’ fallback plans.

It wasn't even that you disliked Classics; you'd borderline gotten off on reading plays written by men about wicked women; but that was because the brilliant women were always the wicked ones.

You particularly enjoyed the assumptions men made about the female condition – how women were too wet, too porous; couldn’t keep their wombs from wandering. And assumptions they were. No Greek physician ever sliced a woman from chin to cunt to confirm their hypotheses. Although, ancient men hadn't been all too familiar with the insides of a woman anyway.

Sometimes, you thought you would quite simply die if you were reduced to only understanding people through your assumptions of them.

It was just that you could never stop thinking about what people thought. It was all you could ever think about. You wanted to peel people's skulls apart and scream at their horribly grey frontal lobe:

Are you ok? Have I done something to upset you? Do you still love me? Do I look like someone that has been raped? Do you think that girl we just walked past has a firmer ass than me? Do you like my new bangs?

For a short period of time, you'd been desperate to know how your therapist felt and thought of you. There is a sick irony in baring your bones to a stranger in the reclined chair opposite you who never even takes off their cardigan.

You needed to know if your traumas made him sad, or if he saw things that made him think of you outside of your sessions. You supposed he both pitied and admired you in a twisted, surrogate-daughter kind of way.

Then again, he probably wouldn’t have been a very good therapist did he not pity his clients.

At one point you thought you might be in love with him.

You'd met weekly in his high-ceiling office on a busy street. It was a romantic setting to unload twenty-four years of trauma to a kind man wearing a knitted cardigan. The sun would peak through clouds and shine onto the both of you through two large windows, between which sat a Japanese peace lily.

You soon realised he was just the first man to let you speak uninterrupted.

You spoke at him mostly, finishing observations that had been years in the making with “Does that make sense?” Even though you knew it made sense. You were certain, actually, that everything you had articulated came from somewhere deeper inside of you than any man could reach. You just couldn't leave it hanging there like an exposed nerve.

Maybe it was because he didn't speak much that you liked him. Sometimes he would offer anecdotes or remedies for PTSD-induced panic attacks that you both knew you would never use.

In most sessions, you had simply basked in the divinity of being listened to. You wondered if this was how devout Catholics like your grandmother felt at confession, or perhaps it was how all of your ex-boyfriends had felt.

You weren't even particularly attracted to him. He had been ten years older than you, and when your sessions first began, you'd been casually fucking someone a year older than him – but he didn't need to know that.

There were a lot of things you'd decided he didn't need to know. Like the fact you snorted cocaine until your nose bled, sliced into your thighs a couple of evenings a week, and let men use your body to masturbate as a feeble attempt to reclaim your sexuality - as if it had ever been anyone's for the taking.

Had he known the dirtier parts of your life, you feared he would have crossed out the word victim in his black Moleskin notebook and replaced it with bystander.

Maybe he would think you were a pathological liar and diagnose you with a personality disorder. This was something you'd been warned about by the first friend you had made at university.

“My mother is a therapist, you know. Don’t tell them you cut yourself or that you’ve told anyone you cut yourself – they’ll diagnose you with BPD.”

“But I’ve told you.”

“Trust me. They’ll put you on an SSRI and you’ll never be able to orgasm again.”

You were freshly eighteen and had never had a real orgasm anyway, but this terrified you enough to reel in your catalogue of symptoms for the GP appointment you had scheduled later that day.

In the end, you'd buckled and sobbed as the doctor sat adjacent to you. You didn’t mention the self-harming or the suicidal thoughts, but did tell her that you didn’t know where to go from here.

She'd slid a leaflet from the university's self-help website across the table before pushing her chair back and motioning toward the door.

“Call 999 if things get worse," she had said. "But let’s just hope it doesn’t get to that point. A&E is very overwhelmed at the moment.”

So you got on with it. Boats against the current, or whatever. You made the hurt so small and buried it so deep within you and swore you'd never let anyone get close enough to pick at the stray thread to your undoing.

And for a little while it worked. You became what you knew you should be; you presented your face for fucking and never let the door slam on your way out.

These days, you'd felt as though you were slowly becoming rotten.

It started on the surface; a bizarre case of adult acne that no dermatologist could diagnose for love nor money. Blood tests, topical steroids, antibiotics, potentially-baby-deforming drugs. You tried them all to little avail. In the end, it was simply the passing of time that had rid you of the rot.

Next, it had been your womb. Decomposing from the inside out. Your body had made the decision for you that goodness couldn't form in your guts.

The final straw had, embarrassingly, been your heart.

You hated to say it aloud. So much so that you hadn't. But it had been a quiet promise of yours; one you'd kept quietly close to your chest - that your suffering would never turn you ugly.

But here you were, alone and swearing at the wind, the rage beneath your skin growing like a tumour.

You hated it.

You hated yourself.

You hated that you were angry but had never been taught how to be angry, because anger wasn't a pretty emotion; it was one that should be starved and kept in the corner of your wardrobe to rot like black mould.

So here you stood: before a Victorian townhouse with your scarf furiously fighting the wind, droplets of rain threatening your freshly straightened hair, scanning various names scrawled on the building's buzzer.

S. PHYSIOTHERAPY

A & R SOLICITORS

J. MILLER PSYCHOTHERAPY

You bit the inside of your cheek and ducked further into the doorway, pressing the buzzer for the last option.

A voice had answered quicker than you'd anticipated, soon followed by a harsh buzz of the intercom.

"Come on up."

Dr. Miller's office was on the third floor.

You huffed, struggling with the combination of the stairs and attempting to wrangle your wet coat from your back. Amidst your struggle, you hear a door open somewhere above you, followed by a couple of soft and slow footsteps.

Your chin instinctively lifted toward the source of the noise, feet carrying you round and round the spiral staircase.

Light poured around his silhouette from the window behind him. It was ridiculous, actually. The sight was almost holy.

Neither of you spoke as you made your way up toward him. You felt as though you were on your knees beneath him, transfixed in supplication.

The sleeves of his blue cotton shirt were haphazardly pushed up just before his elbows, arms outstretched and fingers wrapped around the wooden bannister.

You were supposed to be actually trying with this one, not fantasising about the ways the veins in his arms probably bulged with his hand around your throat.

After being politely let go by your previous therapist, you'd promised yourself that the colleague he'd recommended to you, Dr. Miller, would be the one to fix you for good.

"Hello." He nodded, not quite managing a smile.

He reached a hand toward you, which you shook with the little strength left in your body.

"Hello." You tried your best to imitate his stoic cadence, your hand still tightly in his.

You let him break the handshake first, playing a petulant, one-sided game to see how quick he would be to scare.

"After you." He gestured to the room behind him. "Take a seat wherever you feel most comfortable."

"If there is any cowboy paraphernalia in that room I am not paying for this session."

"Excuse me?" His eyebrows knitted together, no sign of humour registering on his face.

"Your accent - it was a joke. I mean, I paid already anyway." You fumbled your words awkwardly. "Jokes are always much funnier when you explain them."

He cocked his head slightly. Hesitant to embarrass yourself further, you saw yourself into his office.

The room was dim for a space endowed with Victorian-style floor-to-ceiling windows. It felt like you could get lost in it, hide away, tuck yourself into a corner and be lost for days.

"I have your notes from Dr. Hughes." He said.

"Anything juicy?" You asked, still surveying the room.

You couldn't put your finger on the specifics of his scent, but it was familiar; like passing a man in the street wearing the same aftershave as your father, or a boyfriend you hadn't seen for years.

"I'd like to figure that out myself."

You'd eventually settled on the armchair positioned opposite his own.

You had briefly wondered if this was a test, that he would be psychoanalysing whether you chose the armchair or the adjacent sofa.

Maybe you'd failed already.

For the majority of the session, you'd gone through the necessary motions of admin, confidentiality, and what you eventually wanted to get out of therapy.

"I don't have the ability to fix you, y'know that right?" His question had caught you off guard.

"I know that." You'd replied meekly.

"It's just, I don't know what kind of promises Dr. Hughes made you. We trained together, you see. He had always been more, how do I put this, hopeful than I am."

"Oh wow. Forty minutes into our first session and you're already hopeless?" You were only partly joking.

"I'm a big believer in transparency, and I can see you were meeting on and off for a few years. I'm just intrigued as to what your end goal here is."

You bit down on your cheek, swallowing the ember of rage that was burning in your throat.

"Do you think I do this for fun? Carve out an hour a week to relive my deepest, darkest traumas?"

"Not at all. I just find it interesting that after almost three years of therapy, you still can't use the word rape. You've referred to it as the thing that happened four times already."

The rot crept up your throat, threatening to pour out of your mouth and fill the room with the ugliness that grew inside of you.

"What is this, some kind of tough love therapy?" You scoffed. Was he trying to get a rise out of you?

"It can be whatever you want it to be."

He was kind of annoying, actually.

The two of you sat in silence, defiantly holding eye contact with one another to see who would be the first to break. And when he finally spoke, it was more of a statement than a question.

"That's time. I'll see you at the same time next week."

"How are you so sure I'll come back?"

He smiled for the first time that afternoon.

"I'm not."

[thrashkink-coven]

(should this post be NSFW?? Idk. Tread with caution I guess)

Got to talking to Lucifer about god spousal and astral sex, his thoughts on it, its function. Early this morning, maybe 5-6am I went into a trance. We were sitting on sand, in what kind of looked like a temple, but also some kind of pool. There were swans in the pool. It was dark. Lucifer was braiding my hair, he's never done that before.

And Lucifer, straight to the point as always, asked me directly if I wanted to marry him.

Lol, I don't think so. At least not right now. I think I need to marry my boyfriend before I can even think about marrying my Patron. I get everything I need out of the relationship we have right now. and for some reason my brain finds it kind of strange for us. I don't know if I would ever want to.

Then I asked him what the benefits are to him as the God anyways.

"It's different for everyone, there are bounds that you and I have crossed that others reserve for marriage. If you and I were to be wed it'd be because you wanted it."

I told him that I assumed that all of this, (in reference to our affectionate relationship in general) was mostly because I wanted it."

And he kind of disagreed, which surprised me.

"It's not all you. Remember when Hermes rejected you?"

Yes, desire is needed on both ends I suppose. To which I promptly asked, so why do you...? why with me?

"Do you think a God can experience pleasure?"

I guess I don't really know. Do gods have types, preferences in humans, either aesthetic or even sexual? Beyond intellectually or spiritually, I guess I wouldn't really think so. You don't have a body or the organs that produce sex hormones, you don't have a nervous system. So I don't know what intimacy does to you.

He laughed at me. "Do you not experience these things when you are outside of your body?"

Ironic because this conversation took place in an astral trance. My body is laying in bed, yet I can feel the sand and smell the water. I can feel Lucifer braiding my hair.

Yes but, only through the scope of my understanding, my senses. Right? I cannot gain senses beyond what I am equipped with while in the trance. I feel you, see you, only because I have had a body to feel and see with. You communicate with me through my senses.

"Bravo, my boy. Consider though, that you were born without understanding. These senses you have that I manipulate, you forget, are only energy. Complex energy simulated from your understanding, the feedback from your body, yes, but still, in the end, just a complex wave. A good vibration. It is the only thing your psyche truly understands. The universal language, the vehicle of information. Now comes the debate of the ages, do Gods have psyches? Are archetypes created or discovered? If you want to know the benefit for me, I'd ask you why you want to be loved. Your lover is offering you a complex sequence of energy when he loves you, and you offer it back. I suppose in the end it is all just exchanges, but I like to believe the first part in loving is sharing. He likes what you give to him, I like what you give to me, that's the basic fundamental."

I guess that makes sense.

He tugged my hair. "Now ask me what you really want to know."

???? I did.

And then he starts smiling. "Humans like to be desired, lusted after."

I don't know how to even put into words how it feels to know that a deity is reading your mind. I doesn't matter so I didn't think I should ask.

"You wanna know what my type is? You want to know if I find you attractive? I'll tell you this. You know that I am not a human, I am not sexually attracted to you in the way your reproductive system simulates. But your body, as you know and have learned, is, truly, one of the most hated bodies on Earth. It is a body that fundamentally goes against every doctrine, a body that has historically been systematically controlled and oppressed. One that carries generations of scars and curses, and you've experienced it. Being outcasted, black sheeped and discriminated against for this body. For the space it occupies, for the energy it exudes. And you have somehow still survived, by pure will of pride and determination. And you have made and will continue to make this body into your finest work of art. That turns me on. When you love it, you honor me. When I have the opportunity to indulge it, I revel in it. Every smile on your cheeks is rebellion, every orgasm, every day you grow older, satisfies me. I get off on your freedom."

wow...ok. cool answer ....

[1ichtbringer]

i would love to hear more about your thoughts on choso if you want to share!! i always struggle to connect to him as a character admittedly because i haven't paid that much attention to his character building, so his connection to yuuji is basically front and center to me. would love to know more about what draws people to him though c:

hi, I feel like choso is one of those characters where most readers fell for the character’s facade when they were supposed to dismantle it or something like that :D

to put it simply, the reason I love choso is that, aside from his cool jujutsu skills, he is one of the few full-fledged characters in jjk, a character with a beautifully tragic story on top of that. all in my humble opinion, of course. :)

to show you, what I exactly mean, i will refer to 1. his jujutsu abilities and 2. his character arc and personal story. so, let’s start with the first one.

now, JJK has a lot of characters with super cool abilities and great understanding of jujutsu, unfortunately they just get overshadowed by the power houses like gojo, sukuna etc.

choso is such a case imo. he’s classified as a special grade curse and estimated to be a grade one sorcerer later. he’s a skilled all rounder, meaning he can combat in all ranges, has refined cursed energy control and high durability and strength, even compared to the other death painting wombs. he’s inherited the traditional kamo family CT Blood Manipulation and has arguably perfected his craft, without access to family knowledge, manuals or any battle experience, which is very remarkable.

but the problem with hereditary techniques is that the knowledge eventually seeps through the family boundaries, especially the three big clans seem to be thoroughly informed about each other’s techniques. which is the reason naoya instantly knows how to counter him. additionally, as his parent and because of his own former vessels, kenjaku also knows about the weakness’s of BM, which is a bit of a hardship.

choso can use all common BM abilities, however he also adds some of his own special creations, which is why he can catch off even stronger opponents in his battles despite his lack of battle experience (including kenjaku themself).

even though he looks like the hotheaded, emotional type at first glance, he’s actually very smart and an underrated tactician, seen to be advising JJT several times and coming up with clever plans to aid the sorcerers, even as they prepare to fight kenjaku and sukuna. he also has a remarkable logical understanding of jujutsu, that he seems to have developed on his own since he’s been incarnated for only a few months. I highly recommend you to pay attention to his fighting style or his comments on other people’s fights, it’s always interesting to listen to him. :)

now to his story:

I think since he’s a minor character, who seems rather stoic and unobtrusive on the surface, a lot of people focus on his dynamic with yuji instead of taking the opportunity to look behind his facade. so for a better understanding, let’s have a quick look into his backstory.

as death painting wombs, him and his brothers are the result of kenjaku’s “intellectual curiosity”, essentially conceived through longtime sexual exploitation of their mother, who naturally ends up resenting kenjaku for what they did to her. interestingly enough, choso is the only death painting, who gains memories of his parents and inherits his mother’s hatred for his father.

anyway, at some point, JJT retrieves the death paintings as cursed objects and locks them up in their warehouse, where they basically spent one and a half centuries in imprisonment while they’re fully conscious and alive. we know this, because it’s in those 150 years, that choso works on his jujutsu and also because he remembers his brothers reaching out to him for comfort while they have to live in complete darkness and cold.

once him, eso and kechizu are incarnated, choso, as the eldest, makes the decision to ally themselves with the disaster curses, despite not trusting them. He tells his brothers, it’s because “the future made by cursed spirits is more convenient for them”. We’ll come back to this statement later.

he loves his brothers and looks out for them, but he also has pride and confidence in their strength, which is why he lets eso and kechizu go on a mission without their big brother. unfortunately, it results in them being killed by their own half brother without any of them knowing, leaving choso with a lot of anger and the desire to kill the murderer of his brothers (remember, anger is just a secondary emotion).

after shibuya, where he’s finally confronted the killer of his brothers, only to realize that this mere child, is not only in fact one of his brothers, but has been going through hell without any remaining family, choso adopts yuji as his little brother.

now this is where it gets interesting, because most fans either seem to find his overprotectiveness for yuji extremely strange or endearingly funny, when in reality it’s evident that he has severe guilt and PTSD. not only, because he just failed to protect two of his precious family members the one time he left them out of his sight (even though it wasn’t his fault at all), but because he was the one who suggested to ally with the cursed spirits. in fact, he wasn’t entirely honest about his motivation to join the cursed spirits earlier.

see, the death paintings actually didn’t know anything about their appearances until the moment they incarnated. once they did though, choso quickly realizes a harsh truth about them. he looks quite “human” - human enough, to live among other humans, probably. but his brothers don’t.

eso and kechizu look different, their bodies are not normal. humans will never accept them and they will have to live in great pain, which scares choso, so much so, that he takes the “easy way out” for their sake.

but while he had worried about the hardships his half curse brothers could face among humans, yuji actually had to live through hell on his own, because of his humanity.

when yuji brings up, what he did to eso and kechizu, choso brushes it off quickly by telling him not to worry about it, that it was all a misunderstanding. again, he isn’t being entirely honest here. he actually doesn’t want yuji to worry, because he blames himself for their deaths. he blames himself for his dead brothers and he also blames himself for not finding yuji earlier, even though none of it is remotely his fault.

while yuji believes he doesn’t deserve to walk alongside his friends after sukuna’s rampage in shibuya, choso thinks he is undeserving of walking beside him. after all he killed humans - even though they were never treated kindly by them, deemed to be curses or objects or both their whole life.

yuki’s last words to him are to keep on living as a human. which is ironic, because right from the start, choso is as human as it gets.

he feels hate, but more importantly he feels love. love for his brothers, love for a mother he never met, love for yuji whom he just found, love for the first friend he’s made and who saves him before she dies.

his emotions are his greatest strength, but they’re also his biggest weakness. he is extremely selfless, but also very selfish. he has fears, is flawed and makes mistakes, quite a lot of them actually. he tells naoya that he makes them, so his siblings can learn from his misery and do better. It’s why he’s so tough in the first place, after all he had no one to rely on and had to learn everything by himself. he’s empathetic, oftentimes hiding his true thoughts in consideration for the people dear to him.

when he reunites with eso and kechizu in the afterlife, kechizu is surprised by how apologetic their big brother has become. their big brother, who always knew what to do and what to say without the need to apologise, looks strangely vulnerable now.

and even in his last moments, he still feels as though he didn’t do enough for yuji, despite being by his side in his direst times and giving his life for him. he dies with regrets, like sorcerers supposedly do, but he also dies with gratitude in his heart. gratitude for his little brother, who brought out his most human parts and allowed to stay by his side despite everything he did and like the big brother he is, he teaches yuji one last important lesson: that no one in this world is born with a set role.

[exaltedfuzz]

Goddammit, your last lanamia comic made me cry.. What master storytelling spirits are you channeling that make you know these characters better than the original writers?

Deepest apologies... I have worse planned. Poor Mia. (and Lana... but you'll see why I say poor Mia soon enough, I hope...)

As for writing characters, it really helps to talk to yourself in their "voices" to try and figure them out. Mumble to yourself when you're cooking, when you're walking and nobody's around, but also listen to people speak. When you put what you know into dialogue it sounds way less phony than if you're purely trying to advance plot with ham-fisted exposition... Though you need a bit of that too, if you're trying to drive something. It's good to write stuff down in a script, get a recording app out, say it all (put on a different voice for each character, why not?) and when you stumble over the sentences because they suck to say out loud, rewrite them so they don't. Your most powerful tool in writing speech is speaking. 

Think about the context too, it's dead important. Surrounding events and characters are what keep things grounded... Nothing exists in a vacuum. It's really useful that AA has such a packed world, with so many characters in proximity. Makes it easier to de-vacuum things. I guess the same is true for most fan works. 

Having a start and end point really helps. But, more so in a sense of "where is this character at the start of this scene, and what do they want to achieve". When you're writing "aspirationally" like this, you can get into the groove better than if you have a point A and a point B that you are looking to get to overall. And then considering the dynamics between the characters and taking that into account when understanding how those goals may be compromised, ignored, pushed for... Who has the most power in a scene generally decides what goal is pushed towards. 

Another thing is focalised narrative. Usually when I'm doing these comics (at the moment), I follow Lana, and most of the emotional core is in her reactions to things. You don't want to zero in too much to one character, or you'll end up flattening the rest, but having a core character is a good way to keep things simple. It's tempting to just chuck as many characters as you can into something, but you have to remember that you're then going to have to have them all exist... 

Also, honestly, going back to the source text plenty, and with an eye for specifics, is really useful. Take note of how characters refer to each other, which is a huge thing in AA specifically... And also what humanity is in them. For Lana, for instance, she's quite witty, and quick to make light of herself with that wittiness. ("Oh, this? I cut myself by accident. When I stabbed him, that is. I'm not very good at being a criminal, I suppose.") I try to put this slightly irritating joking into how I write her. With Ace Attorney characters, you're looking at them at very intense points in their "lives", so they're probably acting differently to normal, but picking up on these little things can make all the difference. Obviously, as well, there’s the “that… was probably why she was attracted to me” line. I take this as a reluctance to publicly acknowledge the mutuality of said attraction… (“Intellectually” seems like a Lana-ism to deflect that Ema picked up, to me. Lana doesn’t seem to be very comfortable with who she is in general. She wears her King of Prosecutors medals when Edgeworth seems to think the award is tacky, and even Manfred, obsessed with achievement and perfection, and apparently winner of multiple King awards, doesn’t display his medals. Obviously this is because when they were designed, it was before the idea of King of Prosecutors existed, but I think that Lana pinning her achievements to her chest where they can clearly be seen in order to convince to both those around her and, more pressingly, to herself, that she is competent is interesting.) Her own goals also always come second to Ema. I think she’s probably felt quite suffocated by having to spend her whole adulthood so far being a mother to her.I have a lot of thoughts on her as a character, both in the context of lanamia and outwith. She’s very compelling to me, and although most of the time when I'm drawing her, it's the "used to be so gentle, always smiling" Lana that we never actually see in game, I want to push some of these key aspects of her in game identity into her, so I interpret that "gentleness" as a slight nervousness, and that "always smiling" as something mostly for Ema's sake, so she doesn't have to see her rock crumble, so to speak. Anyway, that's enough on her...

I don't know if you really wanted my dialogue writing tips, but anyway. There they are. I wrote way more than I meant to, so sorry about that, haha! Hope some of this could be useful.

I don't know that I know the characters better than their creators... I only hope I'm doing them and the stories I think they could have lived in justice. Thank you very much for the ask, haha!

[autolenaphilia]

The average tumblr queer hates fascism and terfs, and they should, but because they have zero understanding of what those ideologies actually is, they end up repeating such ideology anyway.

They have zero understanding that it is the transmisogynist bioessentialism that makes radfemism so poisonous. So they call trans women mentioning the words "misogyny" and "patriarchy" a terf, while their use of "afab/amab" reveal that they haven't unlearned any bioessentialism and transmisogyny. I've written about this at length before.

And this intellectually lazy acceptance of reactionary thinking goes far beyond that.

Criticize the institutions of religion and the family on this supposed queer communist site, and you'll get massive cries of protest from these queer leftists. And in content if not form they are basically indistinguishable from fascist rhetoric about how "queer leftists who read too many jewish writers (like Marx and Hirschfeld) are trying to eradicate the vital institutions of tradition, religion, family and community with their soulless materialist globohomo." (Note that the link is to a critical glossary of the alt-right on rationalwiki, so there are slurs galore)

And yes, that is what i'm doing, and I'm very proud of it. Abolishing religion and the family, and all of their sanctified traditions is a very important part of the communist project. The main Jewish writer who convinced me of this is Marx, read him.

"The abolition of religion as the illusory happiness of the people is the demand for their real happiness." Literally read The Communist Manifesto, which openly calls for the abolition of the family. A lot of suppose leftists repeat what the manifesto calls "The bourgeois clap-trap about the family and education, about the hallowed co-relation of parents and child"

It's especially ironic to hear such things from self-described queers, as if family, religion and tradition aren't the most common tools used to oppress queer people.

A lot of reactionary garbage with a superficial anti-capitalist veneer has gotten into the left, which is not new. The just mentioned manifesto spends a whole chapter criticizing reactionary forms of socialism. I have myself used Marx's still valid analysis as my basis to criticize reactionary anti-capitalism.

There has been so much nationalist garbage absorbed by the left at this point that fascist thinking crop up all the time in the left. This is because planting the roots of 19th century romantic nationalism tends to bear the same fruit. And tumblr leftism is the most intellectually lazy kind of leftism.

Like your average pseudo-leftist position on nations is basically ethnopluralism, a neofascist ideology originating in the European "New right" that is trying to sell the old wine of blood-and-soil nationalism in new bottles for a postcolonial world. It's creator Henning Eichberg spent decades trying to sell his Völkisch ideology to the left. With some success, it seems like. Like the neofascist in ethnopluralist clothing position that "every culture has the right to preserve their own culture and tradition from the onslaught of global capitalist culture" is something that you'll see all the time regurgitated by supposed leftists. The one 19th century european/western concept that is seen as universally applicable is nationalism. It's bleak.

I can't even say the far-left cliché of "read theory", because a lot of theory is garbage. Not all of it though. This list comes from my libertarian marxist/"councilist" biases but Nationalism and Socialism by Paul Mattick is good, as is "Third-worldism and Socialism" an excerpt from an early 70s pamphlet by the British organization Solidarity, and the 1989 essay The Universality of Marx by Loren Goldner.

[leroiestmortvivelareine]

The Night Kevin

I think I figured out the whole Kevin thing. It's a strange and twisted tale, so stay with me.

Kevin Day is the haunting mystery at the heart of aftg. The story might be about Neil and Andrew but he brings this almost mystical dimension, sensed rather than seen. Like Edgar Allan Poe's poem - on the surface it's about grief for the loss of Lenore, but the presence of the raven takes it into an unknowable place.

So trying to solve the puzzle of Kevin becomes an addiction. The answer feels tantalisingly just out of reach, if only you could figure out the right questions to ask. Same with all those polycule connections that won't show themselves but won't go away... it's the great unknowable; kandreil isn't supposed to exist in the canon version yet it defies all attempts to erase it. We all know it's there. We can feel it, even if we can't see it. What's driving it? Why does 1 + 1 keep adding up to 3?

Perhaps the clue is in the name. Kevin Day. What's the word that immediately comes to mind when you hear the word 'day'? The word 'night'. Maybe it's a hint that we're only seeing half the story.

Which is how I've always felt about Kevin... that he's only partly real, maybe 30% of a person. I mentioned before about the Perfect Court feeling like splinters and Kevin reminding me of Rei Ayanami, an incomplete soul.

But there's an even better analogy. Pratchett's 'Thief of time', which is brilliant by the way, imagined Time as a female spirit who became trapped in a glass clock. Kind of like Kayleigh, a uniquely talented free spirit who stumbled into something sinister. (Strange that we only ever perceive Kayleigh as a spirit, never a real person. It's even called the Day Spirit award.)

In the book, Time as a not-quite-woman eventually gave birth in a sort of time loop, so her son was born twice. Two bodies but only one soul, split unevenly between them. One boy was almost normal, but the other was so cold and distant he didn't seem fully human. They were both obsessed with time and highly skilled at it, time was their thing; one created clockwork devices and the other could bend time with these weird time-bending monks.

That idea of a split soul is how Kevin always feels to me. As though part of him is missing somehow, or lost.

So where is it? Is there another half of Kevin Day, a Night Kevin, a lost son, if not of Kayleigh, then of the Spirit of exy... who walked in the shadows while Kevin Day was always in the light? Someone with the other half of his soul, with all the fierceness and independence that Kevin lacked?

Someone else whose life also revolved around exy, who was obsessed to the point of singlemindedness, with a gift for exy - but passionate and instinctive, not coldly intellectual.

Someone who was also incomplete, but in reverse. Who was missing all the things Kevin could do... the ability to form bonds with people, depend on them, even ask them for help.

Neil is a knight in Nora's chess symbolism. He is also the night half of the lost boys story.

Look how much they were drawn to each other. Neil who needed to evade capture at all costs but not as badly as he needed to carry around an 'I heart Kevin Day' scrapbook. Kevin who dismissed half the young hopefuls in the country so he could go bullheaded for that kid in Millport.

Even the way they were both attracted to Andrew. That's why kandreil feels so real even in the canon version. It's not Kevin + Neil + Andrew. It's [Kevin/Neil] + Andrew.

An unexpected piece of corroboration is something that always sticks out to me - Riko telling Neil 'I'm going to love hurting you. Like I loved hurting Kevin.' Because if he wanted to intimidate why not mention Jean, who suffered far worse torment? There's many explanations but I think he meant exactly what he said: it would feel the same with Neil as it had with Kevin. Because Neil and Kevin are split souls.

We all understand 'misplaced forever partner' to be a bond outside of all labels we've ever heard before - friend, lover, partner. I think whatever binds Neil and Kevin is in the same category - entirely unique, only existing between those two, and impossible to properly define except to say they're the mirror halves of something broken.

It's beautiful that neither of them could heal until the other did, and that they found the missing parts of themselves almost at the same time.

The queen tattoo was the moment when Kevin became whole. No wonder Andrew was smiling - Kevin had found his independence. That was Andrew's true role in Kevin's life, whether he'd realised it or not, and maybe this was the moment he realised.

And Neil was also feeling complete that night, having learned to depend on someone.

Which is why the final game was the finale, it was the completion of their story, Neil and his mirror soul, no longer broken but healed.

[maxdibert]

These are the comments you received on the James defense post. I’d love to see your responses to them if you’re interested in answering.

what i don’t understand is how someone defending a 15yo james potter (thus apparently making them a classist which u think is tantamount to death lmao) is better than y’all defending snape? like. how is That not fascism considering mans was a literal DE who agreed w the ideals from a young age and also created torture curses that he used frequently enough to become his ‘signature spell’ and also became an adult who went on to bully literal children from his position of authority (and even becoming a kids boggart as well as actively harming other kids) whereas james was a kid who was a bully and went on to die at the age of 21. snape lived til his mid 30s and never stopped being an asshole. so. being a fascist defender of a racist bigot, how are you throwing stones at classists? also. if you’re talking ‘european cultural context’ pls remember this is not post-industrial britain and is a society of its own separate from the trad class system of the muggle world. money might play a role but so does blood politics and james was considered a ‘blood traitor’ which would’ve been a stroke against him during voldy’ speak war era. snape, on the other end, actively supported and endorsed the rhetoric. that’s just one layer to it. u can’t just juxtapose any theory to any context without considering the difference in that society from the one marx envisioned. that’s just lazy work.

You really talk a lot about class and aristocracy and brag about your experience and education and how much of an intellectual you are, but you still don’t understand that classes in the wizarding world are not the same as classes in our world. You use big words, brag about your experience, and clearly assert your moral and intellectual superiority over others, yet you don’t understand the meaning of “eat the rich”, the concept of class, the accumulation of capital, or even what capital and the means of production are. Or, most likely, you understand, but you just manipulate with these words to defend Snape thinking that no one can see it.(If you want to debate more substantially, I can send you my meta about classes from a Marxist perspective in the wizarding world. ( though you’ll probably say I don’t have enough neurones to write anything coherent😄)

Regarding the first person, I’ve already talked about this many times, and they’re mixing up concepts. First of all, I don’t understand what adult Severus has to do with James, because the relationship between James and Severus is limited to their teenage years. It makes no sense to bring adult Severus into the debate because we’re not talking about that Severus. We’re talking about the teenager in a teenage context with a teenage bully.

And, even so, if we were to talk about the adult, we could discuss how the violence inflicted by James Potter probably influenced his character as he grew up, precisely because it left him with a host of unresolved traumas. These include an inability to manage his emotions or deal with stressful situations as a functional adult, due to a significant developmental delay directly tied to his experiences at school and the importance he still places on them as an adult.

In any case, that’s beside the point. On the other hand, these people seem to be willfully obtuse. Rowling didn’t create a world out of nowhere; her world is the British Wizarding World, and throughout the series, she uses analogies for real-world political and social issues (like discrimination against Muggle-borns, which is supposed to be an analogy for racism but comes off as ridiculous, or Voldemort being a sort of Hitler figure but not even reaching the level of a nationalist terrorist party leader, or the werewolves being a disrespectful metaphor for HIV victims). So, it’s based on the real society she lived in, which is specifically post-Thatcherite Britain. For these people to claim that Severus was some kind of fascist racist and then have the audacity to deny that Rowling’s world is connected to the real world—when it’s closely based on real-world social dynamics and constantly shaped by her bourgeois, reactionary perspective—is as contradictory as it is ridiculous and even shameful.

And I’m sorry, but class is something that permeates everything. Class is the trunk of the social structure from which other branches of intersecting social issues emerge. Homophobia is also tied to class; feminism is tied to class; racism is tied to class. All the problems and axes of discrimination in our society have a class-based foundation because the social pillars on which it is built were based on class castes that date back to pre-Medieval societies. The Roman Empire was a class society; ancient Egypt was a class society. Our cultural references are strictly linked to class. Ignoring this and claiming that Rowling somehow created a completely isolated bubble uninfluenced by the politics of a world closely modeled after ours, and with issues she constantly alludes to in her work, is basically not understanding a thing, having the reading comprehension of a monkey on amphetamines, or simply refusing to acknowledge the obvious to avoid re-examining personal prejudices or deconstructing their neoliberal perspective.

As for the second message... Yes, I mean, I would tell them that not only am I an intellectual, but I also studied Law + Political Science, have two master's degrees, and have worked in unions. So, it’s not a matter of what I think; it’s that I literally have qualifications in this. I’m a criminal lawyer and political scientist. It’s not like I’m drawing my conclusions from a handful of Tumblr posts I came across.

They’re telling me I don’t understand the concept of means of production or capital accumulation to defend a character who literally lived off the wealth of his ancestors and used that economic and social capital (because there are various types of capital) to maintain a position of power over others during his school years. A character who, precisely because of his accumulated capital, managed to sit at the top of the social hierarchy without lifting a finger and who had nothing to lose by acting like a tyrant because he had an economic and familial safety net (another type of capital) to fall back on. All this while the character he attacked was on the opposite side: working-class, with no resources or financial support, and zero accumulated or generated capital.

I don’t know what the hell they’re talking about, and it seems quite incoherent to start posturing as a Marxist intellectual while defending abuses of power by the magical equivalent of an aristocrat against someone from the working class. And I’m sorry, but the social structure of the wizarding world functions exactly like the social structure of any society that still maintains class-based castes rooted in aristocracy. Pure-bloods are basically nobles, aristocrats, members of families with great lineages—they’re essentially lords. It doesn’t take much insight to find the parallel, nor does it require much knowledge of British culture; just a glance at how modern European monarchies work makes it evident.

But anyway, what do you want me to say? They can bring whatever meta they want, but I’m not going to change my opinion. My issue with these people is basically this: one knows what their strengths are, and I’m not pretending to be an intellectual or acting like I know it all. It’s just that I literally have experience in activism, paid work, and university-level studies (master’s level) on these topics.

I’m not going to share my opinions about physics, theories on how spells or magic might work, or whether certain things are plausible from a logical point of view because I don’t have the faintest idea about those things. I don’t know math, I don’t know physics or chemistry, and I don’t know engineering. I’m an absolute illiterate when it comes to equations. But I’m not when it comes to political theory. I’ve earned honors in political theory.

So, as you can understand, these people are hardly going to change the mind of someone who not only has expertise but also has a damn university degree. And frankly, I don’t think degrees are everything, but aside from that, I’ve spent 10 years actively participating in Marxist union activism, leading the university union, and I also worked for a year in the field of labor law after finishing my degree. So, I don’t know—they can say whatever they want, but I don’t care.

[xehanortsreport]

i love love love ansem but a lot of it is kinda in spite of how he's written and not because of it.

now, most of this is as a consequence of the franchise simply growing far outside of kh1 and ansem being shifted to a secondary antagonist as a result, but the change in his writing is still stark.

he's always been a darkness obsessed weirdo, but pretty much every game after 1 treats him as only this, or otherwise kind of relegating him to a physical manifestation of riku's trauma. and like, that's fine, he plays the role well.

but in kh1 there's this...mystique, and regal bearing, and a distinct intellectualism around him that kind of gets lost in later depictions. billy zane's performance is equally as dramatic as richard epcar's, but a lot more toned down. (though to be fair to epcar, he seems to adjust closer to this performance from DDD onward.)

he fairly whispers at times, a lot of the power in his voice comes from the restraint and controlled use of volume rather than just kinda. yelling all the time, which he does more of later.

you can tell he was and still is a researcher. he's observant and patient and even cordial, though condescending. it comes across less as uncomplicated malice and more as him just being upset that no one else grasps his magnum opus, no one else can understand him, everyone else is just /beneath/ him.

in later games, his taunts are just centered around "succumbing to darkness" and pretty much every line circles that same drain. but in kh1, it's more like he's gloating about his own superior understanding of the universe, of which darkness is but a piece.

like, just compare his lines from KH1 with his later lines. Here's KH1:

Yes he's throwing out his Darkness Lines, but I can't imagine DDD Ansem saying "perhaps this will enlighten you" lmao. Here is DDD and KH3:

i think a lot of it is because kh1 ansem was supposed to legitimately be a fallen sage king who went mad from The Horrors and like. i will die on the hill of that being a way better character than splitting him between xehanort and ansem the wise imposter. in my ideal world that plot point was never erased. anyway - they still could've kept that cool, cruel intelligence in him a little more.

to their credit, KH3 does kinda backpedal and restore some of his KH1 personality - as previously stated, Epcar cranks back his performance, and they even allow ansem to dabble in science again with his discussion on subject x (wow!) it's not perfect, he still gets pigeonholed into Guy Yelling About Darkness for half his scenes, but it was at least nice to see him with his original personality peeking through before he got banished into the void.

idk how to end this. ansem slaps if you're kh1pilled as much as i am. he should've been the one and only ansem. mad king truther over here.