#SOCIAL LIFE IS A MYTH ANYWAYS ITS OKAY–

[alottodix]

The urge to write and the urge to not fail at education are brawling in my head rn.

I’m speaking like 4k ultra HD, explosions, strobe lighting, and a budget worth so much more than my wellbeing type of brawl yk

[auckie]

waiting for the beta fish post to drop ill wait however long it takes idc 🦦

Okay. I’m ready. Nothing demotivates me more than losing progress on like. A game, or word document or whatever. A lost ask is like a grain of sand dropped into the ocean.

Anyways!

So betas are often sold in little cups, right? And the people at say, pet smart tell you, ‘yeah a bowl will do’. WRONG! While betas are somewhat low maintenance fish compared to many— a cheap but beautiful option that seemingly needs no filter or heater and very minimal space, it is now widely accepted that this is flat out untrue. Everyone knows males cannot be kept together, but even having just one fish I would highly recommend a ten gallon. May seem excessive but considering that betas do well in high tannin naturalistic setups, you’re going to want to fill this space with plants and hides. What’s more is if you don’t want to do a self filtering tank (which will still require moving water and regular changes/cleanings or refills), it is still generally recommended that you do invest in a filter and heater. I’ve seen some people go about this by using natural sunlight or heat lamps but 1) harder to regulate 2) risks overheating.

I used to keep fish. Betas and a warm fresh water 1 gallon with a few species together. I don’t anymore for a few reasons. Mostly the upkeep, and because for me personally. I just don’t like keeping fish. Any animal that’s bigger than your thumb, if it lives in a cage or tank and spends most of its time in there. This isn’t to say it’s wrong by any means, but like birds…I’ve just come to think ‘yeah we probably shouldn’t be keeping them outside of their natural habitat esp if they’re highly social or mobile creatures. Moreover with long life spans and high social/mating needs.’ Again! Not condemning the practice for others. It can certainly be done right! But it’s often a lot more time consuming and costly than people realize. Now if you’re willing to invest in what it takes to keep the animal comfortable by all means! Aquarium keeping can be super rewarding, and making naturalistic setups makes for beautiful and calming decor. It’s an amazing hobby. Even if you can’t keep something as simple as duckweed alive for whatever reason, artificial hardscapes with plastic plants and such can still look okay. And a ten gallon + tank vacuum + simple filter and heater really won’t cost you much! I highly recommend looking to YouTubers for tank inspiration, and tips!

If you do decide to go for a 3-5 gallon, or some nontraditional choice of habitats, like a large vase. Well I can’t stop you, and that doesn’t t mean your fish will die. It was a common myth not to long ago that fish couldn’t feel pain, and that their memory spans only lasted for 3 seconds. This is false, and luckily not as widely believed thankfully— but it’s a great example of how people will assume that non mammalian animals have simpler needs due to misunderstanding how their bodies operate, simply because of how different they are than say a cat or dog. Not accusing you of this by any means— you may very well be waaay more informed and aware of this than I am. But it’s a necessary disclaimer.

Other easy to keep fish include neon tetra, fantail guppies (but do not mix them with fish who will nip their tails), and the classic goldfish. another disclaimer about the latter: flushing goldfish thought to be dead, or simply tossing unwanted ones into local water ways has caused them to become a highly invasive species in many areas across North America. Do NOT do this. They’re outcompeting native species due to how fucking hardy they are, and growing to insane sizes. The lack of natural predators and peoples unwillingness to fish for them makes for a particularly nasty pest :/

These aforementioned fish save the goldfish will need the same basic things as a beta, but can be kept in mixed sexed groups, and tetras are often kept with great danio, mollies, and even tiger barbs (who are cute but can be a little aggressive for smaller beginner fish). All of these are available at big chain pet stores for very cheap.

If you’re hellbent on forgoing heaters and filters you could try triops (they don’t require much space but love to dig so have some specific substrate needs, and don’t live very long but can be multigenerational and sustained if done correctly. They’re also insanely cute and entertaining to watch), shrimp (so many different kinds!), snails, or even a mixture of these!

There’s also ecojars. Very cheap to make, and very educational! I love microfauna and follow a lot of YouTubers who’ve had great success making both aquatic and terrestrial ecojars from the local environments around them. If you live by the coast, brackish and saltwater jars are a lot harder, but freshwater ones are very simple! Terrestrial ones are basically just vivariums/terrariums you can even stock by going out to forage for things like snails, slugs, isopods, millipedes, etc. Clean up crew critters do well, but larger predatory insects are a bit harder to keep in an enclosed/self sustaining habitat. That brings us to our next options!

If I can sell you out of aquariums for an easier and possibly cheaper or equal price with a lot less upkeep! But. It involves insects so I’m going to put it under a cut in case that is not something you’re looking for. It’s long too, so feel free to ignore it. BUT! If I’m able to wet your whistle please feel free to ask for more info 🤠

Bugs! Well, arthropods. Such as: isopods (I have rubber duckies and they are doing exceptionally well eating nothing but leaves with the occasional fruit or veggie and calcium sources! They cohabitate with spring tails, harmless soil mites, and terrestrial amphipods. There are many much cheaper and hardier species that are easier to find such as dwarf whites, dairy cows, or even local wild caught ones! Another warning is to NOT dump these outside. And be careful foraging for things from outside for them to eat because you never know what’s been treated with pesticides or beneficial nematodes, or is infested with fungus, mold, or harmful pest species like parasites or mites).

Really all you need for any given species is a little container with a few air holes, substrate such as coco fiber, reptisoil, jungle mix, or your own backyard topsoil which ideally has been baked to sterilize. You can also bake pinecones and oak or magnolia leaves for them to feed on. Crush them up and mix them into the substrate, and add either crushed oyster shells or maybe bits of limestone or coral if you have them available. You can buy cuttlefish bone online as well. They love cork bark, but again, I’m sure if you find and bake bark or bits of drift wood, you can make that work too. They loooove to eat moss, and some species will readily gobble up fish food and bee pollen. Josh’s frogs (as well as other brands) make some specific powder blends that I feed mind. I think it’s called bug burger. The general practice is to create a ‘moist side’ and ‘dry side’ gradient so the isopods have a choice of where to go. They have gills but that doesn’t mean they want to always be drowning in 90% humidity. There’s a lot of beautiful exotic species but they get expensive fast, and are often fond of burrowing or hiding in sphagnum moss so you won’t always see them, and well. They’re usually tiny.

Millipedes are very similar— some are huge and beautiful, some even look like giant isopods (pill millipedes), but burrow, so…you won’t get the most visual bang for your buck.

A lot of people are very fond of finding and keeping jumping spiders. They’re cute to look at and fun to feed, but this requires buying feeders (crickets, meal worms, roaches, or fruit flies depending on size and what’s available near you), but that’s not always everyone’s speed. Plus they don’t live very long once they’re adult size and sexually mature. You can buy them as well but, I prefer to just enjoy them outside. Why take a solid guy out of his environment if he’s not gonna live much longer and is doing his part in ridding your yard of gross bitches? They do a NUMBER on mosquitos.

Beetles! Some species stay grubs for the majority of their lives and will be buried until they’re ready to go out and find love, so as much as I love larger species that are fun to interact with, I’m going to lean towards what I own: the blue feigning death beetle

Very silly little beasts. Very low maintenance! They live in American deserts and are covered by a powdery residue that helps them retain moisture. You can make a mix of sand and coco fiber and keep them in an open top tank (I keep mine in a huge fish bowl), and provide them with hides such as cholla wood or cork bark, rocks and even plastic decor. They will eat almost anything and get most of their moisture from their diet. I feed mine cut up fruits and veggies, the occasional roach, beetle jellies, bug burger, chicken feed, cat food (wet or dry), sugar water in little bottle caps with a sea sponge, moss, or cotton ball in them, fish flakes, freeze dried peas, bee pollen, and even like. Leftover bread or popcorn so long as it’s unseasoned. They can go a while without food or water too, so handle neglect well. But so long as you give them a ‘wet sweet food’ and protein at least once a week you should be Gucci. They’re diurnal afaik and will begin moving about when it’s light out. They don’t need heat lamps or anything of the sort.

They rarely bite and when they do it’s because you have food on your hand, and it doesn’t hurt. They can’t climb or fly, and play dead when threatened. Very cute to watch, and hold, and they’re constantly fucking. Sometimes a male will see another male trying to feel up a larger female, and will climb atop them both and start trying to have sex with the male. I’ve seen two males feeling up and trying to go at it with a rock. They’re so funny. But it’s very difficult to breed them in captivity. They live a while tho so hey, you got a while to research and experiment! Because of this, however, most available for purchase are wild caught. And I personally am not crazy about that.

Scorpions! There’s a good amount of largely harmless species that make for great pets! Asian forest and emperor are the first two that pop into my head. They glow under UV light, making them easy to find, and don’t have to eat super often. The one I own loves to run up to the side of its enclosure whenever I walk by, throwing its claws up to show me it means business. I’ve never been stung but I hear it’s like a bee sting. The two species listed are cheap and prefer it moist, and afaik don’t really sting once they’re mature. They prefer to use their claws to do the talking. Below is a random species under UV light:

And finally, the most visually pleasing, long living, and low maintenance yet entertaining things I own: tarantulas. Given that I work at a tarantula breeder and am incredibly biased feel free to ignore this next bit, but also hear me out. I’ve never been afraid of tarantulas, but used to be a bit wigged out by spiders as a kid. T’s, at least the new world species I own, are so. Much more stationary, slow, and just. Nonchalant than most true spiders I’ve kept. You will usually know if and when they’re about to strike.

Orb weavers have never done well for me, but I’ve had some luck with cobweb weavers (they don’t tend to remake their webs every fucking day which helps with setting up a habitat), but they just don’t live very long— and when something has such a short lifespan I feel guilty for keeping it from its primary goal of breeding. Tarantulas, however, can live for up to 20+ years. And you can make money breeding them! But a lot of discords or Facebook groups dedicated to this are. Like full of the most obnoxious people you’ve ever met. Males don’t live as long, they usually croak after sexually maturing and then molting again. If they’re lucky they might make it one more. And they don’t have a great chance when it comes to breeding and surviving. Depends on the breeder controlling the situation. I’ve read that the longest lived one on record was a female Goliath bird eater* clocking in at over 30 years old. That’s a fucking cat. Not all get huge either! There’s dwarf species, and many are arboreal meaning you’re likely to see it often!

The shop I work at, along with most tarantula breeders recommend a GBB as a first time spider. I fucking Do Not. They’re aggressive, cute as spiderlings but less cute as adults, gross (web and bolases and shit everywhere), kick urticating hairs* that drive me nuts. And they just suck.

I have two coworkers who follow me and will strongly disagree but I don’t care because I know I’m right on this one: my top beginner picks are the caribena (formerly avicularia) versicolor.

As slings they are bright blue and so fucking funny. They walk like a cat with mittens on and their urticating hairs are so fucking mild that you won’t even notice them. Their red mouths stick out like a shitty lipstick on their stupid blue bodies and they love to shake their butts before they jump, like a cat but way worse. They’re not terribly fast and their bite is nothing. It’s worthless. They’re…somewhat sensitive and do like to randomly die, but so long as you keep them in an arboreal enclosure with ventilation and a weekly misting? You’re golden baby. They eat well, are arboreal so you’ll always see them, and can be kept in fairly small enclosures for quite some time! Here’s what they look like as adults:

Still pretty! And not scarily massive.

I own an even more sensitive species: the Brazilian jewel tarantula. It’s a dwarf species but stupid expensive and makes a shitty trapdoor so you don’t see it often which is a shame bc they’re beautiful and so adorable. Similar mannerisms and levels of ‘this piece of shit can’t hurt me’. Ideally you won’t be handling them but, well, I can’t blame you if you do bc it’s fun. I don’t own any species that care hurt me bc why would I want to?

For some. More common first time reccs tho, I would probably say the Arizona blonde (very chill and fuzzy. Somewhat more itchy), the Brazilian black (a little less stunning but also pretty chill and fun to watch because they will completely rearrange the furniture of their habitat for no reason), the Chilean rose hair (read previous)— basically any grammastola or brachypelma species. Hamorii (Mexican red knees) look cool. Another controversial pick are cyriocosmus. They have golden hearts on their butts! They’re pricier though, and again, other t keepers act as if they’re hard. They’re not. Most new world species are simple if you just research them— my boss often will balk and laugh when she hears people are buying 1/2 inch slings and putting them in like, 5 gallon tanks. But it’s literally fine. They def don’t need that much space but if they burrow. Look for the hole. Give them enough substrate, keep it moist but not sopping. Ventilation is key. Some people use empty, clear take out bins or medicine vials to keep these things in, and that’s fine so long as there’s air holes. You can use a soldering iron or small drill, or even a pin to poke some into the container, depending on how hard it is. Even larger spiders have been kept in big empty jars and such. You feed them once a week unless they’re in premolt (they get fat and shiny or lose their hair on their asses and may make a molt mat of web, or a little enclosed webbing bubble, or bury themselves and won’t eat during this time which, depending on species, could be a while), or whenever they look skinny!

If they’re arboreal give them a vertical climb, be it a real plant or plastic, cork bark, even aquarium decor. So long as it’s not sharp because tarantulas are surprisingly delicate.

Feed them something the size of their ass give or take, and disable it using little, sharp feeding tongs (grab the head and drop it in near them, or hold it to them at a distance and if it’s moving they’ll usually strike). Some super tiny slings will even eat springtails. Larger, adult T’s can take multiple dubia or even big ass roaches like hissers. It’s kind of sad feeding them off but, the spiders gotta eat 🤷‍♂️ if you’re interested and have any questions on other species, or the ones I listed, lemme know!

Okay. And by far. The least wanted or liked recommendation I have. Are roaches 😔 there’s some beautiful species out there man. Hissers are super fucking docile, but prolific. They hiss when scared, but never bite. They don’t even eat each other in times of duress! They do have spiky leg bits which can scare some people off. But take a look at emerald roaches (which are. Expensive 😶), don’t they look like cool beetles? They’re arboreal! Then there’s the table mountain roach, which SQUEAKS when scared! The domino roach! I’ve posted pics of molting roaches many times— they’re soft and white and have huge, mantid like eyes. It’s very disarming and cute. They’re so much more intelligent than we give them credit for. The roaches I keep at work know when I’m about to feed them and they all clamor at the tops of their bins, and once the feed is in they all grab a bit and run off with it in their mouths like dogs! Many tropical, burrowing species are basically little cows, and many are amazing parents which is a rarity in the insect world!

Most of these fellers can do well in a plastic bin with a top, with ventilation of course. And the usual substrate, hides like cork bark and rocks and moss, misting, and similar feed to isopods and the beetles I mentioned. As for price and availability, well, you’re probably only going to be able to find hissers and dubia unless you have a niche store near you or are willing to have them shipped. And while I love both of them. They are gross. They’re R strategists to a T and will multiply to the point that they require sell offs or regular culling. Which, if you own species that eat them, it can be a win win! But they also are hard to keep clean. So I probably, actually do not recommend them 😞 the less prolific, more beautiful species are cleaner, but more expensive. But hey, I had to shoot my shot, right?

Okay. Well. Thank you for listening if you got this far. Good luck either way and thanks for being patient!

*Goliath bird eaters and any similar named bird eating tarantula do not. I mean they *can* eat birds yeah but that’s just a shocking name that stuck. Don’t let that scare you. But also that species sucks so it doesn’t matter

*pretty sure I put another asterisk in here but I can’t find it and don’t remember what it was for sorry. Shoot me an ask if it was like. Killing you ig

[onereallygoodlambonastick]

rolecall / XG - TIPPY TOES / left right posting up slow switching lanes just like this / only direction i know swerving left right keep me upright / my adrenaline hit the pedal to the ground / 2 lil asians / don't we all deserve it ill tell you how we want it / no you cant deny it / you either like it or bite it / don't ask me if you dont know why / the only direction i know / what goes around comes back around / so when he comes down are you gonna let him pay or are you gonna let him stay

do you know why phonk gets popular on the social medias? because people dream of murder. they just find the most socially acceptable way to do it, because these are people interested in staying people. to those who dream of murder: this is will not kill you. for it did not kill me.

this is why everything i write is a poem.

and i think more of us should dream of murder, or what it takes to end a life. just one is fine. just 1. uno. uno. yi. yichi. one. One. the One. you believe in god? believe in the power of 1.

all for one / one for all. think on it. evoke all might, and evoke his enemy. why?

the universe is interested in this, too.

will you answer it - or shall i?

Dealer's choice.

You want to be cool? Be cool like a dying & a dead body.

I've lived through the age of humanitarian aid - ive seen nice people do nice things. Now I ask: Toni Morrison, what would you do different?

Fushigoro Toji knows exactly what I am referencing, and not only that: he knows exactly what I am aiming for. This is because he was interested in bringing the jiu-jitsu sorcerery world to its knees.

Gojo Satoru was interested in this too.

Now the question is: how?

Gege Akutami failed in his task to honor Gojo Satoru. I name you, Satoru: for all your fans call you Gojo, and I alone will know you. Now who will join you? By this, I mean: who will join me?

Who will speak conviction to action - because by the audre lorde, i Know Archive of Our Own, I know the dynasties of our time, and I know how to tell them from myths, and I know how to tell that from myth-making.

East Asian dragons are built like fishes for a reason.

Weavers in Palestine have still not fled. I need not know why. Why? I know why. Why? You gonna keep asking me shit or are you gonna use that brain two people gave you and the fact it's a muscle and do grindr? Grind on it. Grind. You done? Do it again.

You pissed yet?

You mad, broski?

You either wake, or you don't, unstirred - thus undeterred.

I say this now to honor James Baldwin: no more sleeper agents shall be in my path. Let's fucking dance, or there shall be war.

Sugimoto Saichi knows this so fucking well it made me get up and take a run, because he made me take a blow to the face and I survived it: he says this to a white US-American collector of Ainu artifacts: and do you know what he said? He said this: give up the artifact or I will take you down. Verbatim, by word of the translator on the pirated site on which I read: do you know what happens when negotiations break down?

It's called War. more simply: you, or me. it is an art. that's why "sun tsu" is famous in the white(?) man's world.

Now there is the mythicized World War 3. Chinese-Americans will for sure suffer like they were meant to be born stillborn in its wake. Do you want me to tell you why or will you look up? Current news is distracting for one reason: the news is merely an inch of actual reality that then proceeds to holler down several damaging hoops.

What is more accurate: current news evokes the current state of the world.

Here's a note to clue you in , not that any immigrant nor migrant nor vagrant really needs it, but here's something to piss you off anyway - Japanese-Americans were sent to internment camps. Wanna guess what number world war this was for?

Wanna guess? Or Wanna Know? See what I'm putting down yet? No? Okay.

No more sleeper agents shall be in my path. I say this now to respect the fact James Baldwin aided in my survival. He died already: why do I still feel him here, with me, laughing? It's simple, really. Because he loved Angela Davis: and Angela Davis is still alive today.

And I am right there beside her.

In the first and only book I've read from him, he said this through the mouthpiece of his characters, his loved ones, his chosen ones, the ones that would make him survive, AKA enable, and he said this: I will build a long, long table for folks to be eating off of for a long, long time. And the woman who loved him said this back: I'll go where you lead me.

This book changed the US-American consciousness. He wrote in France. I don't need to read his autobiography to confirm this. Here's why, because I could give less of a shit if you wanted to play devil's advocate: it is because James Baldwin judged he would not survive in The United States of America.

So he wrote in France.

I believe he died there.

Now I ask: will you respect 2024 or will you make someone come after you?

Dealer's choice.

You have been dealt your hand. Your ass is either shown or it will be shown. You either wake, or you don't, undeterred. It is this clear cut because empire has intensified, singing of its war drums: it has been, always, never new, always old, but never interesting, always predictable. It is why all the gongs of dehumanization are on. It is why those who have listened to it all their life are now cold like metal. We know how to be metal. Metal: the one thing that needs heat to shapeshift. Why is winter difficult to survive? This is why historians and social science researchers say the same shit and nobody listens, but they are slightly more likely to be listened to, and that is why people of color, and those of the margins, flood into academia anyway, knowing they will be perfectly tortured.

Do you want me to tell you how I have been tortured?

Do you want to guess, or do you want to know, or do you want me to torture you to make you find out?

There have been people who were shot for less. Of them: Hind Rajab. After or before her, because the order doesn't really matter, not really, only that they were dead where they stood: those two Red Crescent paramedics.

Toni Morrison must be shocked where she is in her lively post-death. She said this to me once, because I read it, and I felt her touch me, because she is real, and when she died in 2015, that is how I knew Donald Trump was fake: I will always be shocked. I will always choose to be shocked. I think anything less is a kind of death.

I have died. But I am still alive. Why? To honor the two people who raised me. One - a dragon herself. The other - a rabbit.

My dad has taught me to think like a prey animal.

Do you want to know why people daydream about shapeshifting into predators?

Do you want to know, or do you want to guess? Follow the path your parents have set you on since the day you were born.

Otherwise this is what will happen: you will never catch up to Martin Luther King Jr. You will not meet Audre Lorde. And you will not be looked at by James Baldwin, though he will see you, anyway.

Do you want to know what happened to the people who made Disco Elysium, or do you want me to fucking repeat myself?

You either wake, or Nanami Kento will never speak to you on his way to get a viet sandwich. And through your mouth will be flies: for you have failed to speak the truth, and honor the one and Only task you were given at birth: take care of thyself.

Number 1 rule of Art of War by a Chinese man:

It is the same rule that KDJ from Omniscient Reader's Viewpoint dances to. This is why every character revolves around him, carnally. Their hunger is real. Their seeing and knowing already there. This is because KDJ is a reader. He knows exactly what potency it takes to kill a character, and what it takes to keep one alive. This is why Shing Shong was successful in their refusal to write a story that comes from domination. Because first: she was disinterested in it.

Because first: she wrote a story. And it was a long one. 500 chapters. And for what?

This is why I want Shing Shong carnally. Why carnally? Well: what do you think? You wanna spend a guess? Come here. Come and find out. Come.

2024 is the year of the wood dragon. Wood dragons are named for their transformations. I've decided. Do you want to know what I've decided, or do you want to guess? If you are impatient, now you will know how it feels like to be in a burning pit, hellish by Japanese standards, tortured, forever and ever, and then perhaps you will have your first rare and individual and selectively acquired taste of what it has meant for everybody else to be colonized, while you stand, alone, mute, wearing the most bodily privilege you have ever seen, never acutely felt, and you will stupid for it - do you know why? Because white supremacy has an adjective placed in front of it, and it is doing something there. White supremacy knows it must first trick the light skinned people. So first it creates an abstract idea: it creates -

What would I have said here? Pull it together for me. I seem to have forgotten. This is the tune of real survival. This is why all people from all walks, all individual tortures, are still interested in community. You find the punk, or it finds you with a crackle of knuckle. It's why cult survivors exist, past being kept like abused animals. Because you will not die at the end. You won't. How do I know this?

Did you fucking read, or were you fucking tone-deaf?

Here it is, though, because I'm being nice: global racial capitalism is a cult with death at the end of it. And you must know by now I am not unique. Because even the worst person alive, objectively, by anybody's standard, got here somehow. And I have killed myself to care. I have tortured myself. I have. I have killed myself over and over and over and over and over and over and over and over and over and over and over and over and over and over and over because ultimately when the rubber really hits the fucking road I believe Ajin: Demi-Human is an relatively optimistic story, because those who have learned to resurrect themselves at will will always be interested in the good fun. Samuel "Satou" Owen is my favorite white-ish man in Japanese manga. This is because, like me, the Ajin writers and drawers were wise: they did not name the unknown substance that brought everybody back to life. They merely places an man obsessed with ways of living, at all costs, in front of it.

Satou-san is a white-Chinese man. He is mixed. What does this tell you? It tells me this: he is of movement. This means he has two feet. If he has two feet, and he is bipedal, and he can wield a gun with the mastery of a guy with chef's tools but in a forest instead of a well-stocked and furnished kitchen, this means he is a person. He likes to fuck around and find out. His white-american father failed to stop him. Why: did he fail in his task because he did not love him? The Ajin makers are clever: they had his white man of a father beat him, first, and then, later, quite quickly, demonstrate that he was a father first, because Samuel's father apologized for hitting him, because he wants to know his son is a wonderful person, and Samuel, so young, a child, stood there, alone, with a smile on his face, dead animals around him and blood on his hands, probably caked under his fingernails.

So now I wonder what it would take for Samuel "Satou" Owen to go back home.

I will write on this - cuz I do be writing - but I'll give you an interesting thought here, because this is what I offer, relief that feels like a slice that cauterizes the wound on the way: Satou's father did not fail in loving him. He failed because he was too kind.

I will teach Satou-san what it looks like to be brutal, but with compassion. And I won't kill him - now why would I do that? Ain't he the most lethal demi-human immortal freak Japan and da rest of the world has ever seen? He came from the United States originally. He only ended up in Japan because he is a video game freak. It's not because he's crazy: it's because, actually, he likes to have fun.

This is why he refuses to take his life so unseriously: he felt the universe slot another coin into his piggy bank. The universe must be interested in him for a reason. Life in the universe needs no reason. It's how we got here anyway. Now you must see the conspiracy? This is why the researcher who named "IBM (Invisible Black Matter)" was called insane and asked for the cigs in his car when three fingers, one by one, were cut off his left hand. He was being serious. So now I ask: will you fucking play?

Those who read of medias that show off their gore, turned like stones, with fresh worms underneath, in that rich, rich dirt: c'mere. You know exactly what I be talking about. Ajin: Demi-Human dances on the grave of Shounen by placing a non-traditional protagonist in the path of a traditional shounen protagonist and Does not make them fight. Instead: they are made to collaborate. Now how were they made to do this? Because at the core of each, was a compassionate core, and so every character was interested in each other as a person.

Read Ajin. It dances. To a music that few hear. Because it takes skill. It is not like Jiu-jitsu Kai-sen. It was not made to be a franchise, because it sought to honor its people that lived in the narrative. The cost: it will never be popular. It is why its second season is the way it is. This is the cost that Ajin's makers incurred. And they incurred it anyway. I have heard them without ever speaking to them personally. This is my skill. So now it is my offering.

Gege Akutami failed in his task to honor Gojou. Do you wanna hear why now? Or am I being registered, like a smaller gong amidst all the gongs of dehumanization right now?

Hey, fans of the Golden Kamuy - y'all get it most, for Sergeant Tsukishima is a secondary character and he has earned many delicious, life-affirming fics on that One and Only site. Each one I've really read got at it hard. Tsukishima writers and lovers and comrades in arms: Do you hear me, or will I go unheard like I have seven years ago?

Will I die, or will you die first? I won't. So Now the question is: will you?

I think, but first, I choose to believe in this one thing: all people know exactly what I am talking about. Because you were born. And now you will die, because empires have never been interesting. They generate dead bodies for a reason. They never have to say anything to dead people. Because, again, they are dead, and there's no way to bring them back to life. That is why eradication is strategic, and that is why slow deaths are more interesting, because it's quite hard to kill somebody without a gun, and so serial killers invent fresh ways to do it - wanna know why? Cuz they be bored, just like I am, watching them do it and choose it like a abused dog might with its ragdoll of a chew toy.

We see the dead people. One of my parents decided to become a doctor, practicing zhongyao, purely because he saw the way his grandfather died. Do you understand the acceleration of skill to mobilize thought to action? He spent 10 years putting himself through his chosen torture - medical school. Or will you sit there, mute in your dead body shame, so totally unmoved you are disturbed by almost anything? Why don't you find a corner in the world where you won't suffer for it. You can try. The last person who went to outer space came back and said never mind, it's actually all here and this is really it.

You can try the ocean. Elon Musk didn't. Wanna know why? It's because the hard, the really, really, truly, back-breaking work, is never done by the toddlers in power.

So now I wonder if Noor Hindi is well. The answer is no. Why?

Will you ask me to repeat what I've just said, or will you Read:

Dr. Alreer said: if I must die, then let me be a story. Of what?

Of what?

We all come from matter. We all know when things die, the matter doesn't disappear. This is some kinda physics law. Astrophysics too. Supernovas and lesser deaths of stars generate elements that compose matter. So do stars when they come into being. Sure. The Ainu peoples knew it first, as did every other peoples native to a land who did not seek to immediately obliterate it. Because they were first interested in their survival, and in that: how to keep surviving. Anyways, this is interesting. Because this means while we are alive at the same time, we are negotiating it all the time. This is why Stands and Jojo's Bizarre's Adventure is Bizarre and so fucking fun. It dances, and it dances visibly. It is called drag. It is called performance for the purpose, on purpose, for interesting reasons. It's why Kujo Jotaro did not die until his daughter would, because he protected her, and she protected him, and they died, but their friend, truest witness, went and finished the task given to him. And so they still lived. So it is bizarre. Everything probably is. It's why people are so interested in convenience, in that quick fix, in that hit of ketamine, in those shortcuts, in taking their lives less seriously, because they already know how serious it is to live in a world like ours, and they already know just how hard it is to meet each other where they are at, because they have struggled in meeting themselves where they are at, which is the deepest fucking pit unique to them, for they are being tortured, even as we speak, because it is individual: but it is not unique. Because I have been tortured. And I am still here, speaking with you.

So are you gonna fucking participate in derogatory theatre, or are you gonna wait till someone like me comes over and whips you where it really hurts? For those who are hung: you know. For those who aren't: too bad, you've got a throat.

For those who don't: we know what happened to them, don't we. They don't get livestreamed. DRC is silent because they cannot make it a football game. People are dead, dying, and are being disabled from living.

So now you either speak, or you remain silent, or as Baldwin said it: uninitiated, or unactivated, or as Morrison said: un-artful. If you do, remain silent or quiet or whatever that really chafes you right now, then you will never know what Audre Lorde was saying when she said We Were Never Meant to Survive. Do you know the three ways to survive in a ruined world, or did Ocean Vuong say it already and you simply refused to clock it and let it travel inside you like a missile that hit Vietnam all those decades ago?

This is the risk I incur. So now I evoke all those who have aided in my survival. I know I am not alone. Do you know why there was not 1 dragon leftover, in ATLA? Because if there was one left, it would not have come out of its cave. It would have stayed there, forever, until it perished. So Zuko's uncle made sure there were 2. Am I understood, or do you see that when I open my mouth and see red, every color of life is evoked? The sun god folks in that iconic scene know exactly what I am talking about. It is why they keep the original fire burning for thousands of years, and this is why one of them looked at Zuko and joked about the masters (real) chewing him up, and their leader said shut up but did not say he was wrong. Because he wasn't.

Their leader does something nice here, which he is by no means obligated to do, but does, because he knows he is not free to abandon it like the sleeper agents have: hey, you might die if you do this. Will you still do it?

That is the risk you incur by coming after me. I make enemies. But first, because I am an dragon originating of the East Asians: I know exactly who my friends are, first. All I ask is for you to not act stupid.

If you insist: well. When the LONG opens its maw, you will be right to be terrified. Why do TIGERS have teeth if not to use them? Praise the knife that goes through the PEAR for you, or you will not eat well tonight, and if you do: know that it will not last.

Karma simply does not come quick enough. That's A-OK. The universe prefers slowness. So now I dance. I gave to it my sixieth spiritual death and it has finally snickered instead of dragging my face through the fucking dirt, asking me to open my mouth and taste the worms which dance in the rain with their entire bodies. It's why they writhe. Now when I laugh it laughs through me and seems genuinely pleased. But what I care about most is this: that I have gotten so good at what I need to do, and what i Want to do, that Nanami Kento now merely inclines his head and walks beside me. And this: that Toji merely glances an eye at me and lifts his chin, smiling, crazed at the edge of pleased, and asks me anyway, despite full knowing in all his rage and all his cool dead & dying & disabled body discernment: hey, how are we gonna fuck em up today?

Treacherous cunt.

I am not a spiritual person. I've merely died spiritually enough times for me to have to use the academic word for it. In me I have, first: the people who saw and shielded me - second: the people who taught me, dancing to their own survivals. I am the friend of Bob. The one who told me to keep writing. Bob, I am proud, and I know you are proud of me. Hey, hi, hello.

This is my dream. My friends are a dream. All of them are. One by one they have stood, and they have stood alone, and now I am there beside them.

I honor all those who aid in my survival. Face me when you shoot me in the fucking face. This is why union leaders are assassinated in their beds, with pregnant people right beside them. This is why small children in the first formally livestreamed eradication campaign call the men in tanks cowards, and mice, because that little girl was just that fun, that interesting. This is why Sugimoto Saichi, at the very beginning of his story/dance, he hesitated when that wounded animal came out and charged him, desperate and mobilized with all its might to clear a path to its survival. Because he saw and he understood in less, but it was still too late. So that is why Asirpa said let me take the shot next time, if you can't do it - in fact, don't even try. For we need heat to survive the winter. Dragons of the East are interested in one thing, and that is people, not god. We come when called. We come when uncalled. It is why we show ourselves when people of a land need rain. 's also why we show ourselves when people of a land don't think they need shit. Do you understand the level of discernment required to do this? My judgement is not divine. I don't give a rat's shit about God. Wanna guess what I give a shit about?

A rat's ass.

But just so you don't the wrong idea, because that is what personally pisses me off the most: I don't believe in God, but I believe in you.

How is this possible? Because I had a parent, and in her, she was a dragon, and she has evoked it enough times, at all the critical moments, for me to follow her example. I will incur the risk now. I have always taken risks, because I've seen what it takes to safeguard and then nurture and then, perhaps, cultivate a life. I was born into the year where dragons have danced and they saw me and I have seen them, and you really should be thinking about Zuko not being stricken down by the last 2 dragons of his time by now. My father is a rabbit - he knows how to respect the world, so that he is to be respected if he cannot be loved. And he still chose to care for me, a weakling. He still chooses it: for we played a poker game, just once, after majiang, and he saw how I dealt my last card and thus understood my entire play and he looked me in the eye when he said:

Don't do that again.

So now I incur the risk. Because I know the cost of what it means to survive in a place like this. The world. The world. People get hurt here.

Duh. Richard Siken is needed no longer. He has said what has needed to be said. He writes, and I write too. I pick it back up, the dead thing at the end of the road. Because in order for it to be dead, it must have been killed.

So I will incur the risk. You are welcome to join me. The time to wait has been over since the first people(s) said, fucking shit fuck help! help! and nobody came, or if they did, they still ended up dying anyway.

i have never been interested in living forever. people who do are interested in having fun. the rest are idiots. the people who have fun usually die first - it is why aang's entire people was eradicated from this earth, from that fiction lifeworld. so now i find it more interesting when the people who have the most fun don't die - and that is why Toji of JJK is ketamine to people. from everywhere. from all walks of life. do you want to know why JJK is popular now, everywhere? I will tell you why now. Because I am being nice, and I am interested in your surviving, your continuous survival, your real tunes. Because I would prefer to be your friend rather than your enemy, but you make your choices, and I will make mine.

Here it is the truth: it is because JJK is interested, at least initially, in what it would look like to wield overwhelming power responsibly, which is to say: meaningfully. It is why Gojo is Japan's animation poster boy right now. He always did like to fuck around and find out. And he found out, didn't he - he found out that his own creator gave up respecting his principles to serve franchise interests, the grinding acceleration of that kind of selected - and chosen - giving in. It is a death. I have grieved it.

Now I stand here, alone.

Now I ask : who is interested in seeing Gojo Satoru still alive, even knowing that he has failed in his task to do what he said he did? Is it because of him, as a character, as a person who lived within the narrative, or is it because of the narrative that either enables or disables his real and true living?

One of the oldest people in my life said this to me recently: I personally believe that there are no shitty characters. Only a story that no longer suits them.

Will you be a story that I can live in?

Or will you be a story that makes me want to come after you and demonstrate to you, selectively, intimately, how you have betrayed me?

Will you, or won't you?

Kong Si-Woo is calling me now. Sorry. Bye. Gong Si-U is the best negotiator I know, and he's telling me to take a break. You can't solve everything by your self, he is saying. That's why you pick your men carefully. And he has chosen. Do you know who he choose?

He chose Toji.

Toji survived after he left the torture pits in that family clan of his.

First, he ended the life of every cursed beast in the family's torture pit to relish the fact he could do it, perfectly alone. His solitude earns the survival of Zenin Maki, and thus the survival of her sister, Zenin Mai.

Second: he met someone who was curious about him there, also perfectly alone in one of the most inhospitable places alive, already similar by then, and earned his respect, unyielding for some reason not known to him, personally, but his ass is shown to me because I have tapped it and I liked the sound that came back.

This is because Kong Si-Woo and Toji have a 10-year history. Adults at that age, making new friends? Color me delighted.

Third: in earning the Korean man's respect: he earned the capacity for real trust, the kind that marks actual fucking solidarity. And then Toji, scorned Japanese man he is, lived for 10 more years with Kong Si-Woo near him and by him, because these are men who when they are killed will live on, until Toji fucked around and found out for the last time --- until, of course, the story itself brings him back to meet his grown son.

Now I ask you: will you be respected, or will you be interested in what real enabling, at all costs, looks like?

Will you give a shit the way Toji does, or will you give a shit the way Nanami does? Will you move the way Sugimoto does, or will you simmer quietly like a jar of moss like Qingming, pirated Dream of Eternity: Yin-Yang Master, softspoken and brutal in his withholding? Will you have fun like Satou Samuel Owen, or will you earn the respect and thus relieve the responsibility of Nagai Kei, at age 17, willingly took on because he saw clearly the danger Satou posed to every normal person alive on the planet, and decided for himself that he would end it now.

Will you be tortured like Suzaku Kururugi, so complete, fans of Code Geass feel it even today, or will you take decisive action to bring the very structures of the Jiujutsu Sorcerer's World down by disavowing the only child you've named for blessing, just so he could have a headstart?

Which character will you relieve of their responsibilities? Can you tell who needs it the most? Do you know what I'm saying here? I am saying I do not need Nanami Kento anymore and he has never needed me to speak. This is because he died in Shibuya, and I am glad he did, because Gege Akutami's writing abilities did too. I would not have survived the Nanami's badly written death the way I could survive Gojo's. Gege must have detected this in some way: he must, even with his franchise of an empire, because even a franchise of an empire comes from people: because he waited to kill Gojou, because he knew everybody seemed to like him, and genuinely love him, in many many lands, and what he did was brutal, and it was genuinely cruel: he bisected Gojou in half instead of blowing a hole through him despite putting him in Toji's killer fit.

It means Akutami was done with Gojou's character, and discarded his personhood, and gave his fans and comrades and enemies crumbs. Enemies of Gojo savored it: but they understood its brutality, and rejoiced because finally the biggest dick did win, as they foretold, because they foretold the death cult that is global racial capitalism, because they have survived, and they don't want anybody else to except for themselves, and their friends, of course. Even our enemies have friends. What does this tell you: it means everybody has the capacity to understand tragedy. Indeed, Everybody else simply understood it for tragedy. Now there's nothing wrong with a nice tragedy.

But is it interesting? Toni Morrison looked me in the eye in one of her interviews and I will tell you what she said to me: she said once you have gotten the jobs you have all trained so beautifully for, you must now go and free someone else. This is not a grab-bag candy game.

Now here's the thing about TRUE FICTION: AND TRANSFORMATIVE FICTION: we can bring him back.

I will do it. Anyway, I will do it. Why? Because I know what it takes to complete a story and respect a character's personhood. Because I learned how to draw first, and then I figured out how to write. Each time, it was a person who bestowed it to me. So now I read Dungeon Meshi and trill with delight. Now she gets it. So now I reread DOROHEDORO!!! Now this one too, she knows it. So now I follow Witch Hat Atelier, not only interested but believing in its conclusion: for Shimomura knows exactly how to dance to make her people dance, too. This is a skill.

Will you dance. You. Hey. Hello. I ask you now: Will you fucking dance? If so, come here. I protect all other/Othered animals. But first, you must show me your teeth, and then second, you must make it known to me you are not my enemy. For I am not god. I am merely a person born into dragon year. So now whenever I open my mouth, I do it knowing the whole world will listen. I stand alone, and I will go unheard, or I won't, and then: I will either be killed, or I will change people along the way. I don't mind either results. Because right now, Tosaki, the man with the mints and the cigarette and the crisp white suit, from Ajin: DEMI HUMAN is my favorite fucking character.

He dies at the end, by the way. He dies with no regrets. I seek to follow him.

Hey - Aaron Bushnell. I evoke your name to evoke your death, because your last words were Free Palestine and you chose to do it, standing there, perfectly alone, despite wanting to become a software engineer, transitioned out of active duty.

You have done your duty. I got it from here. I will not fail Hind Rajab again. Trust me, I won't. You plug it in right by me, or I will know. Now isn't that the real fun?

[idiopathicsmile]

who is Reagan and what did he d

(deep breath)

Ronald Reagan was the 40th president of the U.S. and basically every mess the U.S. is in right now can in some way be traced back to his administration.

To name but a few of the greatest hits:

Deregulating TV and radio, opening the way for disinformation like Fox News to gain a huge foothold among the right and thus greatly widening the partisan divide in this country

Creating and spreading a racist, classist myth that Black people were abusing the welfare system to become rich (if you've ever heard the phrase "Welfare queen" it was popularized by Reagan), and using that to justify cutting welfare a scandalous amount.

Removing any social safety net he could in the U.S., which also led to things like massive amounts of homeless mentally ill army vets with nowhere to go.

Starting the (racist and totally ineffective) War on Drugs.

Creating huge tax breaks and deregulation that helped big businesses and utterly neglected the working class. The massive wealth inequality where the working class earn almost nothing and the rich continuously get disgustingly richer? Those trends really started to go nuts under Reagan.

Doing absolutely fuck-all during the AIDS crisis because his administration basically thought that gay people and needle drug users didn't deserve to live anyway. Reagan didn't even publicly acknowledge it was happening in a speech until six years into both the AIDS crisis and his presidency, at which point more than 20,000 people had died.

Enabling the Iran-Contra mess. Basically, his administration facilitated the buying of weapons for the extremely oppressive Khomeini regime in Iran, in order to use the money to fund violent terrorist groups known as the Contras in Nicaragua, who were making life Hell for the people there. Both moves were illegal, and both moves were obviously going to end in the deaths of innocent civilians, but hey, the Contras were against Communism, so surely it was all A-okay, right?

I am fairly confident I've missed other horrible stuff the Reagan administration did but you probably get the point.

A few things worth mentioning:

Reagan might have had dementia for some or most of his time in office; he definitely had it afterward. So that's why I kept saying "his administration," because it's actually not clear how much of this was him and how much of it was the people around him manipulating him for their own purposes.

He was a former movie star and good at giving speeches. Also, he happened to be president as the Soviet Republic was collapsing largely under its own weight, so he gets credit for, like, defeating communism. He is BELOVED by U.S. conservatives. Also, I don't know, maybe they know about the destructive, cruel policies and think those are great, too.

tl;dr Given the scope of the negative impact he had on our country, my short answer to your question is "one of the worst U.S. presidents in history"

[mrpenguinpants]

Genshin: University AU [V1]

I love modern au. Or any “everything is fine, no one died, it’s just a fever dream” au. Half of me is thinking, damn maybe I should answer this serious- LOL HAHA no. That’s not happening. Time to crack my knuckles and let my brainworms take over again.

Once again, this is 90% crack 10% content. I want to switch up my characters from the last brainworm post but I included Kaeya and Diluc.

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Today’s appreciation post goes to twistedwishes. Hey! I’ve been seeing you pop up a lot lately and thanks for the support 💕💕 I hope things are going better for you and you’re doing alright^^ I feel kinda bad for making appreciation posts on crack fics but hopefully this is somewhat funny haha. 

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Genshin: Holding Hands [V1]

Genshin: When you’re cold [V1]

Genshin: Roommate [V1]

Genshin: Royalty AU [V1]

[Masterlist]

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[taglist]  <- if you want to be added, please read this first.

  @mikeysbike @hanniejji@unionwitch @musekala @twistedsunnshiii @stanzastic @akaasea @xoneaboveallx @adoring-ghost @asheseiler @childelover @dilucsz @dai-tsukki-desu @thicmitten @youaskedfurret @diaxfeliz @wintergreen-aix @dandelily @thegayrubberducky @lovelykittycatmeow @yuunoagivesmelife  @dokidokisama @simpygrimoire @minakohasmanyhusbandos @strwbrry-lia @tigerpriestess @yuu-yuukurotsuki​

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Diluc

Absolute pretty boy who has braincells, but only if Kaeya is not there. In his mind, Kaeya’s presence makes his room loose 40% of their common sense. He can’t prove it just yet but he’s working on it. He majors in accounting but also has a minor in marketing, logistics’ management, fia- he majors everything business related. He’s going to become the next Elon Musk through smarts or by getting the competition drunk. There can be no contest if he’s the only candidate. He’s actually a hard working guy that overworks and stresses way too much. You have daily “Diluc recharge” evenings where he just hangs onto you while you go through your day.

“Don’t fucking talk to me until I’ve had my coffee,” except there is no coffee - he drinks grape juice out of juice boxes and his only energy boost is when he meets up with you - and that’s his constant mood. So he usually only hangs around you and Jean, since she has childhood friend status and is actually an angel. By default, Lisa is added and Diluc doesn’t mind her but if he see’s Kaeya, it’s full on war paint mode. If he's not busy with work or studies, he's usually with you either in your dorm or his apartment.

He has a fanclub and he seriously hates it and tries to do everything in his power to get Ningguang to take it down. Shouldn’t this be against his rights? But she refuses for whatever reason and makes a whole speech about free will. No matter what he does, someone manages to take a picture and it get’s printed in the university’s newspaper. The only bonding time he has with Kaeya is every Monday, where they collect and burn all the universities newspapers before anyone can get their hands on it. You always bring marshmallows to make smores during their arson activities.

“When I graduate I’m going to burn this school down to the ground. That’s not a threat it’s a promise.”

Ningguang

Is secretly the leader of the Diluc fanclub - not that she likes Diluc, she’s in a questionable platonic poly marriage with you and Beidou - but it was the easiest way to gain funds for the student council. Which she is the president of, so rip Diluc the fanclub stays. Ruthless business woman I tell you. But she can run in heels so her danger factor rises by at least 20%.

Majors in social sciences and law but more specifically the political science & government. She saw the Imperial State Crown that the Queen of England wears and says yes, that’s mine now. If she’s not with Beidou and you planning on “how to infiltrate the state government just for lols”, then she’s with Keqing, Ganyu, and Zhongli discussing student council things. Should they or should they not tell the student body that they can see everyone’s search results? Sit back and relax as the school goes into chaos. 

She’s probably the scariest person on campus No, she is the scariest person on campus. She’s the scariest person on campus. But secretly she’s popping 20 aspirins just to make it through a night. She has the digestive system of steel. She still holds the title of "seriously do not try and beat her in a drinking game it's never going to happen" and that's her proudest achievement in life but sadly she can’t put it on her resume. Kaeya is still trying to beat her out of spite but so far it hasn't been working. You’re seriously concerned for her when she get’s challenged but Beidou gives you a way-to-hard slap on the back and cheers her on. If Ninngguang somehow get’s alcohol poisonings she’ll somehow find away to make a profit out of it.

"I'll let him die, I'll get the insurance money."

Kaeya

One day he chugged too much mouth wash, passed out, and somehow woke up in university majoring in law. His idea is that if he is apart of the law, he can therefore stand above it. To be fair, his only goal in life is to say “I am the manager” and he can go live the rest of his life in bliss or as a hermit. He’s secret best friends with you but wouldn't be caught dead beside you. He will stab a bitch if you ever get hurt but will still trip you on the way home. Seriously, you have no idea why people find him attractive. Your guess is it’s the eye patch or the clap of his ass cheeks that keeps alerting everyone.  

He’s apart of the newspaper club and if anyone asks: No, he has no idea who keeps taking all the newspapers and burns them in the back of the campus. Originally, he joined because he was nosy and needed to join some type of club for his resume. He sometimes feels bad for his junior assistant Amber because he keeps tricking her and says that Diluc is secretly a demon that is trying to steal all the jobs and is apart of the lizard government hell bent on eradicating the human race. He even brought out a whiteboard for this joke, he’s dedicated to his job ok? 

The type of guy to try and be humble and say his work is “okay” but will choke a bitch if anyone agrees. He tends to leave everything last minute and says that it’s his drug since actual drugs could land you one year in prison and a maximum penalty of $2,000. You have to awkwardly hold in your concerned mother head shake when you see him speed running his assignment literally right when the professor is walking around to check if students finished. 

“I was taught how to lead not to read.”

Mona

Broke wallet #2. Zhongli is broke wallet #1 but Childe simps for him so is he really a broke wallet at this point? In this essay, I Mona Megistus, will explain why I have the rights to the title “Broke Wallet #1″...

Believes that astrology should be an actual career path but refuses to take astronomy as her major. I can read the stars not a textbook that tells me how to calculate the mass of the sun divided by the fucks I give. Instead she went into Philosophy and cries to Albedo, who is an actual prodigy genius- sir lend some braincells to everyone else please?, that her professor keep turning her paper down because “star reading” is not an academic source.

Fischl wants her to join the occult club because, surprisingly, Mona is very good at telling people’s fates through her crayon sketch ouija board. She thinks first year Fischl is cute but is put off by the cosplay roleplay that she has going on. She would join except that stupid hat wearing gremlin in her lit class would make fun of her if he found out.

You gave her half your lunch one day and bought her a doughnut "because she seemed upset" and "out of the goodness of your heart" whatever the hell that means. She thinks you pensioned it but once that thought comes she takes a bite. Poison from a doughnut is not the worst way to go out, classes are hard enough. She’s waiting for the lord to strike her down anyways. 

“Its not about passing, its about doing better than everyone else.”

Venti

Slept through most of highschool and people question how he got into university. He’s a music major (wow how fucking original is that), and if anyone asks him to serenade someone or just do anything, he’ll do it for the right price. Or if you buy him alcohol because he still keeps getting ID checked. He’s banking on Kaeya actually becoming a lawyer or being on good terms with Diluc so he can finally stop being arrested for looking like a toddler.

Takes one step into classes and quickly nopes out and goes back to bed. Professors have no idea how he hasn't dropped out or failed. He just has some god given talent. He does whine at you to pretty pretty please with a cherry on top tutor him because you're such an angel and would never leave your poor but awesome best friend hanging right? He needs to get this essay down but how he is suppose to explain how the number 10 is symbolic and connects to the universe or the meaning of life. Do you think he can just say it’s apart of his culture and make up some random myth to pretend it looks like he knows what he’s doing? 

He’s honestly going with the flow and put his brain on the back burner all of highschool and only now realizes wait, I actually have to use my brain?

He’s been banned from most club chats since Venti has the no chill card. Someone says “lol I look ugly today.” and he’ll respond "yup, you look like a cow." and he get’s banned. Zhongli keeps a speed run timer on his phone just to document these occasions.

"Sad spelled backwards is das and das how it be sometimes."

Childe

An actual dumbass that somehow does well. He eats sandwiches with the crust off, this heathen. Surprisingly he’s studying to become a physical therapist but most of his experience has come from breaking his own bones. You’re scared how he's going to be if he actually becomes a therapist. If he'll make bets with his patients or try to one up whatever crazy injury they get into. Everything is a challenge to him that sometimes the best way to deal with Childe is to knock him out. 

This man really knows the way to a Zhongli’s woman's heart. Through micro transactions. Mona saw him accidently drop $20 and just shrugged and walked off. She has never been both spiritually and physically offended in her life. She did take the $20 though. As much as you hate leeching on Chile when he’s basically a walking wallet that probably uses bills as tissue paper, you can’t help but give him puppy eyes while planning on how to get into his will. If he even plans on having one, he might honestly write “whoever wins in a gladiator style duel in my funeral’s tournament, they will get my fortune.”. 

Any sport the university offers Childe is probably in it. Which is how he met Zhongli, challenged him to a fight, proceeded to have his ass handed to him, got a backhanded compliment, and screamed to you he was in love and how he found his soulmate. He's secretly very sappy and has cried and watched every Disney and Pixar movie at least 28 times.

"IM NOT TOO SPICY! I’M A TINY BIT ABOVE MILD IF ANYTHING!”

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God if it isn’t Scaramouche, it’s Childe that ruins the aesthetic. This is why I hate you. Why do you people enable me like this, it isn’t even good. This is pretty much a @ yourself moment and I vibe hard with Venti. This entire post was just to make a joke about the clap of Kaeya’s ass cheeks alerting the guards.

This week might slow down since I have classes and assignments. My reply’s are gonna be late too, sorry;; (oh and thank you to everyone that was so supportive and nice when I mentioned it. All of you. Beautiful 💕💕 )

[dragonheart-swtor]

togruta myths togruta myths togruta myths togruta myths togruta myths togruta myths

Okay okay so most of what's in there has been posted already SO instead of getting a direct quote you get me rambling about the stuff that hasn't been finished yet.

So I am currently wrapping up the last of the moon gods, Gandave, and I am going to skip over talking about her because now that I've remembered this exists I'll probably get her finished very soon (given that I'm on break), BUT there are a few gods who haven't been talked about yet who are in the works and have art but not writing.

First up is Valxi, the god of love, who is the only one of these who is going to have to go under a cut when their art goes up, because being the god of love, passionate feelings, lust, and sexuality, they are typically depicted naked, and while it is (in my rendition at least) a very Ken doll depiction of nakedness, Tumblr No Likey that anyway, and I'm not gonna risk getting banished to the shadow realm. You know how it is. Also on the list are Siirde, the god of medicine and healing; Szaltsi, the god of weather and storms; Shizsa, the god of dreams, visions, and prophecies, whose art I would share because I am very proud of their design except Tumblr won't let me; and Vardal, the god of cooking, food, and feasts.

The last two I am proud of symbolism-wise - Shizsa's facial markings include white laid over their eyes, giving the illusion of always looking at the viewer even when their eyes are closed (which they usually are) as a symbol of the dreaming visions that are their domain, and Vardal's fun because his copper ladle is a Key Design Feature and copper is considered a sacred metal to him because it's an antimicrobial and is thus one of the safer things to eat off of.

Szaltsi, who may get shifted over to Zsaltsi I haven't decided (I have to decide exactly how these things are pronounced), is fun because I am tired of having storms always be depicted as the anger of the gods, so I made the executive decision that in Togruta mythos thunder is Szaltsi's laughter - joy, instead of rage (no less dangerous for its strength, but different at least).

I also know there's a chief of the gods' tribe, who is the god of family, tribe, social bonds, and the concept of the social contract, but I haven't figured him(?) out yet.

And then finally, I have been trying to figure out the Togruta afterlife for some time - I kind of want it to be an Eternal Hunting Grounds type concept, but also I feel like it might end up being a reincarnation thing, because I can't figure out how the structure of the former would work, and also the latter would entail being literally consumed by Latsiik and then expelled and reborn as something new, which would fit in with the whole "death is necessary for life" theme Latsiik and Togruta philosophy in general have going on. ...I am talking myself into the reincarnation thing.

[galaxiasus-a]

👫 DARKDRAGONSSSSS

CONTINUE > LOAD FILE // RELATIONSHIP HCS

File Name: @rotshope

the mans. the myths. the legends. my only somewhat normal and wholly healthy ship on my blog aside from ncove

i like briefly touched on this in dms but now i can elaborate on it so when these two first started dating piers' confidence was in the shitter. this is for a lot of reasons (guess which one of them was in the first place) but the main thing is the "i dont get how someone like him can be with someone like me" mentalilty. he knows it and he knows the media knows it so for a hot minute he would literally scoot behind raihan whenever cameras were out. this would usually not work since raihan would shove him into view anyways, he was so afraid of being judged but rai-rai was always there for him anyways /gay. tldr the more he was with raihan the more his confidence grew since raihan would keep him safe from scrutiny. eventually he would go from hiding behind him to actually being at his side

okay so since raihan wants a daughter and piers wants a son theyre going to have two kids in their endgame 💃 i can see the daughter already being in toddler age by the time she gets adopted but for the son piers would want like an actual baby because he wants the full experience (tm). they wouldn't adopt two right away but the daughter would be first and gets the most spoiled life she could ever have oh my god. same goes for the son once hes adopted

piers is so annoying when raihan works out. "i like being alone more" he says but then raihan has his focus on something else and then suddenly he wants allll his attention on him!! whore!!! he on god would have his hands on him at every opportunity even if its potentially dangerous or completely distracting in some cases. like if rai is doing bench presses then piers is either going to sit on his lap or actively crawl to lie right on top of his chest. and its not like hes worried about the thing dropping right on top of him because he knows raihan wont let that happen 😭 and yknow what hes right

i think we talked about this before once upon a time but piers likes to watch raihan scroll through things like social media and stuff where he can see pictures and videos. like theyd be cuddling in bed or sitting together on the coach or just chilling in public and piers would lean on him and watch whatever raihan is watching. piers doesnt have a phone much less a way to look at things like that so a lot of what rai sees piers would be experiencing for the first time. whenever rai scrolls passed something piers liked he would reach out and touch his phone, scroll back up, and actually heart it KSNDFJS. its their own special way of bonding bc then rai can purposely look for things piers enjoys looking at. this is my long winded way of explaining that share one t.iktok account

[notnctu]

cupid’s arrow - h.rj | 7 days

━ sweet greetings from the 7 days fluff series 

genre ❥ slight angst, fluff !!  details ❥ college!au, friends to lovers!au, genderneutral!reader ━ where renjun makes a bet to get you to fall in love with him.  warnings ❥ explicit language, light banter word count ❥ 7.1k  synopsis ❥ The silly boy has no idea what he’s gotten himself into when he makes a bet with his arrogant friend to get you to fall in love with him. Renjun never intends to confess, mainly because his past unrequited loves have demolished his confidence. So a low stakes gamble causes him a great deal of stress and pride, wishing that it was as easy as striking you with Cupid’s Arrow. While he wants your feelings to develop organically, he actually doesn’t know what he’d do if you did end up liking him back. Because to him, you have always been someone unattainable and out of his reach  taglist ❥ @yourmagnanimousholiness​ ; @lovelycharm05​ ; @watermelonxes​ ; @jaehyunsjasmine​ ; @mjlkau​​ <3

a/n ❥ this is author doie ❀!! uhh this came out a little more angsty than i had planned it to be.. anyways its been a long time coming and we’re still working on the requests hehehe uhh keep an eye out for some blog updates bc we are starting school soon :) thanks for sticking with us so far! lots of love for everyone<3

Huang Renjun catches a glimpse of your enchanting figure across the lecture hall and how you effortlessly slide into your usual seat near the front. The tap against the tiny turnout table with your pen, ruffling your hair to only have it fall back in place beautifully, and aura alone suffocates him.

In a three hundred person lecture, all he sees is you. The only person in the room who has his undivided attention and while it might be entirely infatuation by your attractiveness, the mutual friends you two share describe you having a heart of gold.

A heart that is impenetrable. Strong, sturdy, shining metal that no one has been able to get through, but Renjun thinks that it’s because you can tell someone is undeserving. Keen and observant eyes, it’s a good thing that his stares don’t linger for long.

As he walks down the descending steps to sit in the row behind you, he remembers a very drunk night over the past weekend and an idiotic bet that has him punching himself. He wishes that he never agreed, but the liquid pride in him could not bite his tongue.

“(Y/N)?” His friend scorns and Renjun slaps his forehead at the slip of your name. Truthfully, the alcohol is messing with his head and he’s saying things that are no longer in his control. But how could he have possibly let the one secret he holds to himself out into the small crowd.

He mumbles profanities underneath his breath, trying to limit light from hurting his blurry vision, and rubbing his throbbing temples. “Yes, (Y/N).” There is no confidence in his voice at the whisper of your name.

“Dude, (Y/N) is way out of your league.” The headache just doesn’t have an end. He knows this; there is no way you’d ever bat an eyelash at him first. Renjun just likes things that are impossible to him, a poor habit of his.

“I bet I could get (Y/N) to get with me first before you ever can.” Then, Renjun’s eyes shoot open wide and the view of the arrogance laughing in the dimness slowly boils his blood.

Renjun may seem like the weaker link to pick on, but he is not one to give up a fight. While his friend has an advantage, the last thing Renjun would want is for you to fall for a horrendous two faced personality.

He’ll charm your pants off and when he gets what he wants: the victory and your vulnerability, he’ll hurt you. Would you be able to see past his fake genuineness or actually fall for the person he plays so well? Renjun can’t let anyone hurt you if he can prevent it.

“I bet that I can get (Y/N) to fall in love with me.” Renjun stumbles to stand up proudly, making himself bolder and more intimidating. Nevertheless, the drowsiness intoxicates him and he can barely keep his line of vision focused.

He sees the disgusting smirk on his friend’s face and a hand extends out for Renjun to shake. “Okay. Let’s bet on it. If you can’t get (Y/N) to fall in love with you, they’ll be mine and you can’t speak to them ever again.”

“Nice use of claiming someone who barely knows you exist.” The alcohol didn’t take away Renjun’s sharp sarcasm and the constant rolling of his eyes.

Renjun truly has no confidence at the game he decided to engage in, his only motive is to protect you from a bad guy. He wouldn’t even know how to handle the potential chance that you could like him back, did you have the ability to do so?

He never had the intention to confess to you, his heart has been broken all too much already by unrequited loves from his past. And if he had to be honest with himself, his admiration for you has become so strong that even he’s afraid to be someone to taint it.

What are the odds that the entire row behind you is already filled? Renjun’s throat closes when he sees the empty seat right next to you and the professor starting up his presentation. Other students push past him to hurry into empty seats before lecture begins, and his own feet pick him up toward you.

Like a magnetic pull, you attract him with an inexplicable force so naturally. Clearing his throat, he swallows the anxiousness that blocks him from speaking. 

“Is this seat taken?”

This is it. This is the first of many looks you two will share, and Renjun’s heart pounds at his chest to wait for your eyes to meet his own for more than a second.

As if the room falls silent and everything is in slow motion, Renjun captures the very image when you blink up at him with beautiful dazzling gentleness and the utter sugar of your lips curling upwards. And he’s stunned, hoping it doesn’t show on his face.

“No.” It’s a simple reply and nothing worth jumping out of joy about, but he tries so hard to hold back the growing smile of your acknowledgement. You are being polite, but something inside of him feels giddy and like static running through his veins.

“Thanks.” Dropping his bag, he enters the seat carefully and sits with his hands folded together on the tiny table.

You examine the attentive boy, as his focus is trained on the lecture slides and the unprepared professor messing with his mic. Chuckling, “you don’t take notes?”

Renjun is surprised at your sudden interaction, completely blindsided by your friendliness. He wasn’t sure how well that would have worked, but your curiosity speaks for you. “I actually forgot my laptop today.” The heavy device sits in his bag at his feet, but he doesn’t dare take it out after the lie.

The soft ‘oh’ that falls from your mouth is too cute and Renjun clears his throat to bring him back from his daydreams of you. Looking apologetic, he shrugs and pretends to gear his attention back to the professor, who finally starts the long awaited class.

“I can send you my notes for the day, if you’d like.” The kindness in your voice does not go unnoticed, in fact, it causes Renjun to hold onto it for a little longer to fuel his undying crush for you.

“I’d love that—” Perhaps he shouldn’t have used the word love for the strictly friendly gesture. “—you’re a lifesaver. Uh, how should I refer to you as?” Playing dumb is his only way to get to you, for now.

“(Y/N). And you?” You hand your phone toward him with social media popped up to input his user handle.

Renjun introduces himself as his sweaty fingers type, and he wonders if he should have polished up any photos that may have you steering away from him. However when he returns your device, the smile that lights up your face allows him to breathe easily.

“I knew you sounded familiar. You’re friends with Jaemin, right?” Your whisper grows soft as you multitask to make conversation and jot down a few important bullet points from the slides. Renjun tries hard to dissect the information as well, but the boring tone of his professor is nothing compared to his crush finally having conversation with him.

“We’re housemates along with two other people.” His body is able to relax now that he’s broken the wall of introductions. You carry yourself to be more intimidating than you actually are.

When he peeks back over at your concentrated expression, your lip is hidden by your top row of teeth and your quick eyes dart between the monitor and your page. How are you so good at literally everything?

“A small world.” He picks up your every word, “well Renjun, since this class has basically ruined my life, would it be too much to ask if you’re down to study with me?” And despite the fluorescent lights being absolutely dull, they still dust your eyes with an enticing glitter.

He must have been staring for too long because you start your sentence of doubt, but Renjun stammers over his response. The professor isn’t quite happy with the small overlap of chatter and shoots a glare at the two of you.

That’s definitely not a good way to start, but it’s memorable. Renjun motions for your pen, and scribbles in his own font the answer to your offer:

I’d love that :)

Then, his heart soars back into the clouds once again at the grin that settles and your written response:  

Me too <3

How does one get someone to fall for them? If Renjun knew, he wouldn’t still be single and infatuated with someone too good for him. He wishes that it’s as simple as the myths make it out to be, where all Cupid had to do was draw his bow and launch a loving arrow that pierces through the heart — an instant love.

But playing Cupid himself is harder than anticipated. He has no handy tools to assist him with his goals. He just has himself, lacks luster and is invisible. Can he be more painfully boring?

And he looks at you with literal hearts in his eyes. An excitement that awaits him, the true meaning of a head turner. That is you. And all he can offer is his mere presence.

“So how did you and Jaemin meet?” Looking up from your blinding laptop screen, Renjun feels the light tap underneath the table from your foot. He chuckles at the subtly adorable affection, and your own way of showing it.

This has to be the third round of study sessions you two shared, and bit by bit, he falls more and more for you despite it needing to be the other way around. The captivating get-to-know you conversation of favorites all down to your aspirations and goals.

The intelligence of you, your wisdom, your perspective. While he did not have this insight before, knowing it now only makes you more alluring. He can’t believe you’re even sitting with him in his shared living room, just the two of you.

“We met at orientation. He’s persistent.” Renjun laughs lightly and you smile in return, nodding along with his statement.

“Wish I met you guys at orientation. I was never the one to reach out to people first until college forced me out of my shell.” He hopes his ears didn’t deceive him, but Renjun had to do a double take: you said you guys, which includes him, right? You wish you had met him earlier?

But the latter shocks him a bit. If he recalls your first meeting, you were the one curious enough to continue speaking to him. “I would have never guessed.”

“Really?” There is a notable light in your eyes as you tilt your head. “I don’t seem shy?”

“Not at all…” He has to stop himself from going on an incredible tangent about how greatly outspoken you are, it gives away too much on how observant he’s been.  

“I’m good at hiding it then.” You examine the soft shade of pink on the tips of his ears and his averting shy gazes. “What are you good at hiding?”

Your question leaves him speechless and gripping at any ends of answers. There are a number of ways he can go about it, but the truth is not one of them.

What is he good at hiding? His unconditional affection for you. He’s good at concealing every heavy heart beat at your smallest actions. He’s good at keeping a regretful secret bet.

But as those options pop into his head, he doesn’t want to say any of them. So, he opts for a white lie instead and hopes that the hesitation doesn’t sell him out for being a nervous wreck.

“I’m good at hiding what I fear.” You blink at him, clearly intrigued to want to know more.

“You do seem pretty fearless, Huang Renjun.” There is a brief exchange of eye contact and Renjun swears that his pounding heart can be heard in the silence. A smirk on your lips as you return to your work, he’s warm inside from the usage of his full name. And you don’t even realize the effect you have over him.

“So, you and (Y/N) are close. How did that start?” Jaemin jumps onto Renjun’s neatly made bed. The covers are now ruffled and tossed from the impact.

Jaemin isn’t home very often, but in the rare times he has been, it’s always during the study sessions with you. The first time you came over, Jaemin tried not to talk up a storm from seeing a familiar face. He respects Renjun’s relationships, so he tried his best to keep from prying at the boy.

“You finally want to know?” Renjun scoffs lightheartedly, punching his housemate lightly on the shoulder as he swivels around in his chair. With an excited wide smile, Jaemin tugs at his friend’s arm as an endearing sign of persistence. “Okay, okay. We have the same class.”

“(Y/N) really approached you in a three hundred student lecture?” A tone of disbelief settles in Jaemin’s rhetorical question. He cocks an eyebrow, waiting for Renjun to tell some truth.

“Not exactly. I sat next to them and a conversation just happened.” Renjun shrugs as if it’s nothing big, as if it hadn’t been for your curiosity that started this blossoming relationship.

“Spare me the details.” Jaemin sits up to hold Renjun by his shoulders. The pressure feels oddly crushing, like a whole weight dropping on him. Jaemin stares him dead in the eyes. “What are your motives, Huang Renjun?”

His mouth hangs slightly open from the question. “I can’t be friends with (Y/N)?” Almost defensively, Renjun furrows his eyebrows at his friend, but he can tell Jaemin has caught onto his lie.

“I heard that you made a bet with a certain shithead.” Jaemin rolls his eyes at remembering their horrible mutual, a crime to even consider him as a friend. He drops his heavy hands from Renjun’s shoulders and falls back onto the mattress.  

The alarming expression of grave danger, Renjun is screwed. He gulps the gathered saliva in the back of his mouth, searching for a plausible explanation. “I was drunk.” He slaps his forehead at the stupid reasoning as Jaemin shoots upright to begin scolding him.

“Let me explain,” Renjun covers his mouth to halt Jaemin’s excessive nagging. “I like (Y/N), that’s how the bet even came alive. I slipped up and then he was saying all this stuff about (Y/N) being out of my league.”

“Which is true.” Jaemin adds, quite muffled but doesn’t slip past Renjun.

Renjun glares and thanks him sarcastically. “I made the bet to protect (Y/N) from him. He was provoking me by saying that he can get (Y/N) first and since I was heavily intoxicated, I didn’t think before I spoke.”

Jaemin holds Renjun warmly, seeing that his friend needed a hug from the saddened memory. It’s all too obvious how regretful Renjun feels. “So I’m trying my best at carrying the bet because there’s too much at stake.”

A chill runs down his spine remembering the consequences. He just can’t fail. Jaemin pulls away and lightly pats Renjun’s hair. “Cupid has made you into a fool for your crush.”

“He’s made me into a bigger one for thinking I could get my crush to like me back.” Renjun sighs in defeat and groans loudly. Why does this frustrate him so much? Perhaps it’s the lack of ability to actually get someone to like him back.

Renjun has been single for his entire life, not by choice. He’s done the movie cliches of a confession: a bouquet of roses, a poster, a night under the stars. And not one has ever accepted his feelings. He doesn’t blame any of them since he still struggles with finding things to love about himself. What is there to love about him? He can’t seem to find any redeeming qualities worth mentioning.

But you. You, alone, is simply worth an honorable mention. And now that it’s been well over a month of your friendship, he can confirm that you’re everything he’s ever wanted and more.

“Why don’t you start by being (Y/N)’s friend first? Love doesn’t just happen in an instant, no offense to Cupid or anything. I mean.. isn’t it all just a myth anyways?” Jaemin picks Renjun’s falling chin and he can see the glossy eyes of sadness. They swim with frustration and guilt.

Like an epiphany, Jaemin gave Renjun a starting place. For weeks, Renjun racked his brain for an easy solution out of it all. In reality, he didn’t need any wicked form of magic for foul play. He just wants to be by your side for as long as you allow. And a part of him is scared for you to like him back.

You’ve always been too out of his reach. Standing on a pedestal, you’re something unattainable. It’s lucky that you even bat an eyelash at him. He’s admired you all too much, Renjun won’t actually know what to do if you ever did like him back.

This all stems from his inner insecurities, like a recurring thought: what is there to like about him? Or is he even good enough for you?

If someone had warned him that love could become this confusing, he would’ve sacrificed his heart for something less complicated. To feel. To love. Renjun wishes he can remove the love bow that pierced through his chest.

On a random Friday night, Renjun’s phone rings with an unexpected caller ID. He pauses the song he’s been listening to for the past hour to pick up.

“Renjun! I’m sad and drunk right now.” Your voice is incredibly slurred and he can barely hear you with the loud background noise. “Can you come pick me up?”

“Are you over on Third Ave. again?” He despises that place. A house on the corner of Third Avenue right off the interstate from campus that throws weekly parties. These parties are overcrowded with creeps and cheap booze. Unfortunately, you’re favorite place to run away to.

This isn’t his first time coming to get you. Over the past few months of your established friendship, you’ve sent him numerous amounts of drunk texts calling for him. This is the first time you actually called, preluding to a really rough night you’ve been having.

You sigh into the receiver, “you remembered.” like you’re on the verge of tears, he can hear the quiver in your tiny voice.

“I have your location, idiot.” Renjun smiles at your silly drunk reactions, finding you more enduring from the innocence. “I’ll be there in a blink.”

“Okay, I’ll close my eyes so I can open them to you.” You giggle before hanging up and Renjun can’t keep the widest grin off of his face. He’s rushing out his door, not wanting to wait another second to see you.

One thing Renjun realized after finally growing close enough to you is that through all his infatuation, you’re still a human. While he thinks of you in a sparkling cascading glitter waterfall, you’re made of the same softness that Renjun has. You’re not perfect and he needed to stop idolizing you as if you’re some shiny trophy.

No, he’s learned that he needed to love you for who you truly are. And the moment he broke down your layers, the glass tears that fell from your cheeks were real. The pain through your confident façade, Renjun needed to love you at your lowest.

He saw you for you, not the attractive person from his lecture he drooled months over. You are the exact reality that movies are afraid to portray. You’re courageous, chic, charming. But you’re also shy, soft spoken, and silly. You’re like waking up during dawn and marveling in the silence of a sleeping society. You’re also like smiles on a sunny day and living in the moment.

Renjun is lovestruck, wildly in love with all that you are. The only thing that brings down his spirits is the lingering bet he made several months ago and he hates how it’s always gnawing at him. It’s like an echo, bouncing off the walls of his mind. He can’t shake it off. Most of the time, he tries to focus the moment in front of him, but it has him tossing and turning in the middle of the night.

Without much surprise, you stand in front of the overflowing party house with eyes cutely squeezed shut. A friend by your side to wait with you. “Open your eyes.” Renjun yells as windows roll down and he double parks the car.

Your eyes gleam in the darkness and bidding your friend a quick goodbye, you jump into the familiar vehicle and embrace your good friend with a longing hug. Renjun chuckles at your adorable actions, patting your shoulder lightly. Despite the cheerful welcome, the mood immediately shifts when he hears your tiny sniffs and feels the tears on his shirt.

“C’mon, your favorite ice cream flavor is waiting for you at my place.” As he whispers positive affirmations, you can only cry harder into his chest. “You’re not feeling too good tonight, are you?”

It’s way too obvious of a question to ask, he knows. Truthfully, he didn’t know what to say and comforting is not his strongest skill without it turning it into a life lesson. He knows what you need, just someone to acknowledge how you’re feeling and to listen.

“I’m feeling the worst tonight. I don’t want to talk about it. Maybe later?” You pull away from his arms, even if he isn’t ready to let you go. He helps buckle your seatbelt and wipe any remaining wetness on your cheeks.

Your hand briefly touches Renjun’s which causes the boy to freeze at the sudden action. Your hazy smile is unclear, but you lean into him before he can process all the randomness. A kiss on his cheek, the most delicate feeling of lips on skin.

Renjun explodes inside, like hazardous fireworks on a cloudy night. He wants to enjoy it, but his circumstances make it difficult for him to. “Thanks for coming to get me.” Your body slumps back onto the seat, a pout on your lower lip. Renjun shifts awkwardly in his seat, buckling his seatbelt to begin the ride home. He can’t find the words to say.

You’re being too casual about what had just happened, as if you’re ignoring it all. Or you simply have no control over anything that you’re doing. “Let me tell you a secret, Injunie.” The sugarcoated nickname. You’re definitely too drunk at the moment, and whatever you do now will be long forgotten the next morning.

Renjun still doesn’t say anything, relishing in the kiss on the cheek just seconds ago. His fingers lightly touch his face, grazing upon the very part your lips came in contact with. He’s truly through the moon and— “I used to have the biggest crush on Jaemin.” Renjun abruptly steps on the brakes, whipping the both of you in your seats.

His heart is falling, it’s plummeting and he can’t do anything to save it. “I really didn’t expect such a surprised reaction.”

Renjun clears his throat. “I’m just caught off guard.” Not a lie, he really wasn’t expecting a confession and his heart to break right at this moment. “Why Jaemin?”

He knows why Jaemin. He’s a social butterfly with no caution to the wind and a heart made of pure kindness. A welcoming friendly figure that won’t hesitate to feed into someone’s need for words of affirmation. Not to mention, Jaemin has a good few inches above him and looks of a poster kpop idol. Of course, you liked Jaemin.

“He has such a good heart. I guess I just like guys who think of me first, as selfish as that sounds. I don’t prioritize myself, so it would be nice if someone else did.” You fiddle your thumbs and Renjun is impatiently tapping his fingers against the wheel.

The red traffic light before you enacts two different feelings. Renjun wants this ride to end as fast as possible. You want this ride to last forever.

“But, Jaemin is seeing someone.”

Your head ducks down and out the window at the shining streetlamps; you know very well about Jaemin’s love life. “I didn’t expect anything from him. I just liked him for him. He came to pick me up every time I would ask, I guess I have a thing for guys who do that.”

Renjun tightens his grip, heart pounding at your statement. You peer up to look at your friend in the lack of light. His glasses sit low on his nose bridge, a soft cotton shirt hugs his torso, and pajama pants that clad his legs. A mess bed of hair as the cherry on top.

After Jaemin, you swore to yourself that you wouldn’t fall for anyone so easily. All of that was thrown out the window the very first night Renjun came to your saving. Despite contrary belief, your heart is not as impenetrable as people make you out to be. And as tough as you can be, it was too hard not to be the slightest interested in him.

Ever since your first meeting, Renjun has always been cool and collected. He’s a hothead at his best, but too playful for any serious damage. Renjun reminds you of yourself. Like a huge impenetrable wall built against any trouble to enter, he is as guarded as you are. He’s timid, and while you had tried your best to hide your own, Renjun simply embraces that part of him.

Renjun stayed after every tearful night. He’s helped you through every difficult study guide, if anything he saved your failing grade.

Renjun puts you first throughout anything; asking if you want the booth seat at restaurants, strategically walking on the outer side so you can avoid driving cars, always has your favorite snacks without you asking. Every tiny gesture, may you be slightly delusional, seemed as if he loved you. And if he did, you wouldn’t mind one bit because you wanted to love him back.

“What about you? We’ve never really talked about our love lives before.” You speak up in the silence, Rejun being awfully quiet tonight. He hopes you don’t blame him, but everything has been too overwhelming. He is no longer sure on what he wants to do or how to react.

“My love life is too sad to talk about.” He’s never wanted to talk about it with you, in case he’d slip up and say something too revealing. “It’s a long list of unrequited loves. I’ve given up on professing my feelings to someone at this point.”

“What would have to happen to get you to confess?” Your eyes coin a mischievous twinkle.

Renjun feels his palms grow sweaty, a bit nervous with this conversation topic. 

“Something catastrophic.”

Something catastrophic did end up happening. Renjun wishes he could disappear, or if he runs away, would anyone notice?

He stands behind your fuming stance. In any other given situation, Renjun would be more than flattered that you’re standing up for him. However in this case, you’re making a fool out of yourself on his behalf.

“Oh, so you haven’t told (Y/N) about the bet?” Of all the nights Renjun decides to accompany you on a Friday evening, he runs until the one person he never wanted to come within ten feet to.

Truthfully, the night was going well. He ran into a few of his other acquaintances from his club, others from his classes. You held onto his arm the moment you two entered the party, afraid to lose this precious boy in the dense crowd. People walked by and expressed how cute you two looked together.

You poured him drinks that will make his head throb and you busted dance moves that made his heart throb. You were the epitome of a fun time, like an explosion of positive endorphins. Your toothy smiles. Your bright electrified eyes. Your sweet laughter. This was the last beautiful image he had of you before everything came falling apart.

“What bet?” You quickly turn around to face Renjun. His hand scratches the back of his neck and his gaze stays staring at his own feet. Your throat grows tight from Renjun’s hesitation.

“He made a bet with me that he could get you to fall in love with him.” Please stop talking, Renjun begs in his thoughts. He tightens his fist, unable to form words to speak. The thumping of the loud music makes it hard to focus.

“He—” Shaky voice and stuttering… even you are having doubts of Renjun’s character. “He wouldn’t do that.” Your eyes bounce between him and Renjun.

“I hate to be the one to break it to you, but you don't know him very well then.” Renjun’s arrogant friend crosses his arms coolly, a smug smirk unfolding on his face.

“It’s true, (Y/N). I did make the bet and I regret it every waking day.” Renjun finally speaks up, but you’re out the door before he can continue.

There isn’t another thought in his head when he’s running after you; you’re already so far down the road. The secret was bound to be revealed, but he wasn’t ready for it. He was never going to be ready for this day because his first mistake was making the bet to begin with.

He should have thought about you. He should have just swallowed his pride and talked his friend out of it. Was that a choice? Could he have just done that instead of letting it fester into such a problem?

Out of breath and out of mind, Renjun calls out your name. When you spin on your heels to walk toward him, his heart reaches for you. However, you push at his chest and he almost falls backwards.

You’re angry, more than angry. You’re upset. You have every right to be. “What were you thinking, Renjun?” There is a small crack in your voice and he can see your tear stained cheeks under the moonlight. “Am I even your friend? All this time… you had an agenda. Were your actions all fake, then? You wanted to manipulate me into falling in love with you?”

Your words are hitting like large bricks. You are questioning the past five months of your friendship and everything Renjun has ever done for you. A false reality, Renjun didn’t actually give a damn about you. He wanted to prove some odd male status. Could you be any more blind?

“Please let me explain… I was drunk out of my mind that night and the bet I made was stupid. It was before proper evaluation. Does it make it okay? No, I understand that.” Renjun speaks with his hands, clearly panicked and frazzled by the way they waved around in the air. “The bet… I did it to protect you from that guy. I didn’t want him to hurt you.”

“So you hurt me instead?” If someone were to listen closely, they would be able to hear the shattering of two hearts tonight. On this late evening, two hearts are broken under the moon and stars.

But it’s pitiful because the arrow that struck Renjun remains intact. He still loves you, which is why it pains him so much to where he can’t breathe. The information in his head is scattered, like an alarm blaring through his empty brain.

All he knows is that he loves you. You are the one thing he’s afraid of losing. From the first words you two exchanged, his fear that he hid all too well is and always will be losing you.

“That was not my intention ever. I never wanted to hurt you.” Renjun takes a step closer, but you take one back.

“Well you did because your little bet… it worked. I love you, Renjun, so congratulations.” There is bitterness and an inexplicable amount of heartbreak that lace your venomous confession.

All of his life, he thought that if one person liked him back, he’d be the happiest person in the world. Possibly confused at how to proceed with the information, but definitely glad that someone could see any redeeming characteristics in him.

But he feels all the opposite. Your confession keeps his heart broken. If anything, it puzzles him more. “How..? Why would you ever like me?” There were no tricks, no attempts at flirtation, nothing out of bounds of being your friend. He just had himself. And if anyone in the universe were to like him, he’d never expect it would be you.

You groan, growing more infuriated at Renjun. “Because you’re everything I wish I could be. You’re level-headed and insightful. You’re calm and cool, without any necessary arrogance. The way you make me feel… I feel important to you, at least, I thought I was.” Your voice continues to drop softer and softer, “how could I not like you?”

The butterflies could not come at a better time. Hearing you compliment him when he found it difficult to look past his own self deprecation, he’s beyond any levels of shock. Nevertheless, he feels apologetic and knew that this is all too good to be true.

“I’m sorry, (Y/N), for making that terrible bet. But, I need you to know one thing: our friendship was genuine. All I’ve ever wanted these past months is to make sure your sweet smile stays resting on your beautiful face.”

“Why? You didn’t know me! You used me for some … pride gamble. I was nothing to you the day you made that bet.” You shout harsh words at him, and Renjun can’t hold back any longer.

This is what he meant by something catastrophic. When he’s pushed to the edge of a cliff, all his buttons are pressed aggressively. Everything falling apart. The loose ends coming undone all too quickly to grapple. He never wanted it to come to this.

“That-That’s not true! I loved you long before that regretful night! You mean every single moment of happiness to me. You’re every ray of sunshine that kisses my skin, every blue sky that reminds me of good days. You mean everything to me.” Genuine words pour from his lips, hoping that you’ll understand what’s left of his heart.

“You’re confessing?” You gasp, practically dazed at the amount of metaphors he compared you to. “Something catastrophic.” A small moment of recollection and a mumble under your breath, you’re understanding what he meant by the phrase he used several nights ago.

“Yes because I can't lose you. I’m a mess of feelings at the moment, but I just know that I’m scared to wake up to days without you in them.” Renjun pleads, the night air causing goosebumps to rise on his arms. His eyes are full of melancholy and fear as he waits for your response.

And you want to forgive him, but would that mean your heart is being too easy? You feel lingering pain, but your eyes reflect Renjun. “To think I thought you were pretty fearless.” Scoffing, you roll your eyes at him and are completely unsure what to do next.

Nevertheless, you’ve wanted someone like Renjun at some point in your life. You hoped for better days and those didn’t start happening until you two met. Renjun went from being your distant study partner to being your number one person to call. He’s wiped more tears than any boy has.

The difference between Renjun and Jaemin is while Jaemin is known to have an extravagantly warm presence, Renjun’s is hidden underneath all the quietness. Like a breakthrough, getting through Renjun felt like getting through to yourself. You needed him to aid in your own self love.

All you’ve ever wanted is to be seen and Renjun saw you.

“I forgive you.” Renjun can finally breathe and rest his tense muscles. But when he reaches for your hand, you take it away. “But it doesn’t mean we are okay. I’ll approach you when I’m ready.”

It’s not easy to love as it’s not easy to pretend that everything can go back to normal after being hurt. You need him to understand that, would he wait for you? The many others before didn’t.

“Okay.” That is all he can say, in the midst of a defeat, he still wishes that you’d stay by his side. But he wrestles that desire with transparency and having organic feelings. Nonetheless, he values the latter. If you did really somehow manage to love him, you’ll come back when you’re ready. He knows. He understands. He sees you through and through.

And he watches you disappear back into the house to find a friend to drive you home. He loves you, but love can also be consequential.

It’s already midway into the school semester and not that Renjun is counting or anything, but it’s been practically a whole month since the night at the party. He’s done nothing, except sigh in despair and reminisce about the memories before they were ruined.

While Jaemin’s efforts to console him are much appreciated, it doesn’t do much for the fact that you haven’t acknowledged Renjun’s existence for a whole thirty days.

And although he’ll wait a lifetime for you, the question of when he should move on ponders his clouded thoughts. His intensively agonizing desire of wanting to be by your side has dwindled down now. Renjun just wants to see you happy.

“Hey Cupid,” It’s a newly despised nickname coined by the one and only person who knows how to push at Renjun’s buttons — Lee Haechan. Haechan knocks obnoxiously at his door and does not wait around to hear an answer, “get your sad face out here.”

“Go away, Haechan. I’m not in the mood.” As Renjun mindlessly skims over his calendar for important dates, he is pained by the reminder of your upcoming birthday. You had marked it yourself a while back and specifically told Renjun that his attendance is entirely mandatory.

Times have changed now, right? You’ve been radio silent for weeks and as much as he hates to say this to himself: you probably don’t remember making such an assertion. Why would you? You’re most likely not thinking about him anymore anyways and maybe that’s for the better.

“Hey! Lovestruck Asshole, I’m not going to tell you again. Get that arrow out of your ass and come outside now.” Just the demand alone in Haechan’s voice irritates Renjun enough to where he’s storming to open his door.

But what it reveals is not the smirk of his annoying housemate, instead, it is the image of the very first time Renjun ever laid eyes on you and the moment Cupid’s Arrow struck right through his heart. It’s a rush of nostalgia that surges through his veins.

You sit with a hand underneath your chin and elbow pressing into a flat surface for support. The dazed stare of daydream as you’re unaware of your surroundings, yet still waiting for something exciting to catch your attention. And just how lovely you look in the softest rose colored shirt and how your lips, still barely glistening from a quick swipe of your tongue, are slightly agape into an expressionless rest.

All before your eyes trail to the distraction of another body entering the room and for a brief second, make eye contact with Renjun as he’s all the more astonished by your grace. Then like a scene that’s imprinted in his head too clearly, your gaze drops back down to the floor and you’re back to your inner thoughts.

As if the pierced arrow in his heart is triggered, Renjun rediscovers the feelings of a newfound infatuation — a crush. Though baseless except in regards to physical attraction, he’s nonetheless amazed by how quickly you take his breath away… again.

Unlike the first memory, you actually speak to him as you’re now familiar with the starry eyed boy. “It’s been a while.”

The color in your voice that he’s missed hearing is pure music. He clears his throat as if he’s afraid of his own vocal chords breaking from nervousness.

“H-Hey, yeah. It’s been a while.” Renjun repeats dumbfounded that you’re even sitting in his shared living room.

“How have you been?” There you are being polite, but the giddiness still runs like static through his veins at being asked about his well being.

“Lost.” He blurts out the first word that comes to mind. Perhaps, he should stop using words with such heavy implications to friendly gestures. Your head immediately pops up and he scrambles to correct himself. “I mean I’ve been distracted lately.”

“Sadness really does take its course.” You tread lightly, testing the waters with a small grin. The atmosphere is oddly comforting, like feeling you can’t quite replace.

Renjun looks rather rough around the edges, but you don’t blame him since you did show up unannounced. However, the glint in his eyes is much of a delight to see. The way his small mouth curves into the tiniest smile and the gentleness in his regular cadence remind you of past long days full of laughter. The best part of them all — you spent them together.

“My birthday is coming up soon.” Jumping straight to the point of your visit, you stand up to approach him. “I plan to host a small party… and I remember saying a while back that your attendance is mandatory.”

Renjun catches his breath in his throat and he could run gleeful laps around the room if it isn’t for the poorly spaced complex. “So are you still down, Huang Renjun?”

“I’d love that.” He smiles greatly at your offer and as simple as that, your arms wrap around his torso into a long awaited embrace.

“Me too.” You mumble into his shirt and take a deep breath of his lavender scented detergent, “I’m ready. I’m ready to have you in my life. I’m ready to laugh with you. I’m ready to lay in your company. I’m ready to give you my heart.”

As you finish your last sentence, his arms wrap around you too and pull you into a tighter hold. “You have always had mine.”

Renjun can finally remove the arrow that unforgivingly stayed stuck in his heart for the longest time. Your reciprocated love fills up the hole that is left behind. He can now love you with a full and whole heart.

[themollyjay]

The Myths of Forced Diversity and Virtue Signaling.

In my novel Mail Order Bride, the three main characters are a lesbian and two agendered aliens.  In my novel Scatter, the main character is a lesbian, the love interest is a pansexual alien, and the major side characters include a half Cuban, half black Dominican lesbian, a Chinese Dragon, a New York born Jewish Dragon, and a Transgender Welsh Dragon.  In my novel The Master of Puppets, the Main Characters are a lesbian shapeshifting reptilian alien cyborg and a half black, half Japanese lesbian.  The major side characters include three gender fluid shapeshifting reptilian alien cyborgs, and a pansexual human.  In my novel Transistor, the main character is a Trans Lesbian, the love interest is a Half human/Half Angel non-observant Ethiopian Jew, and the major side characters include a Transgender Welsh Dragon (the same one from Scatter), a Transgender woman, a Latino Lesbian, an autistic man, three Middle Eastern Arch Angels, and a hive mind AI with literally hundreds of genders.  In my novel The Inevitable singularity, one of the main characters is a lesbian, another has a less clearly defined sexuality but she is definitely in love with the lesbian, and the third is functionally asexual due to a vow of chastity she takes very seriously.  The major side characters include a straight guy from a social class similar to the Dalit (commonly known as untouchables) in India, a bisexual woman, a man who is from a race of genetically modified human/frog hybrids, and a woman from a race of genetically modified humans who are bred and sold as indentured sex workers.

Why am I bringing all of this up?  Well, first, because it’s kind of cool to look at the list of different characters I’ve created, but mostly because it connects to what I want to talk about today, which should be obvious from the title of the essay.  The concepts of ‘forced diversity’ and ‘virtue signaling’.

For those who aren’t familiar with these terms, they’re very closely related concepts.  ‘Forced Diversity’ is the idea that characters who aren’t neurotypical cisgendered heterosexual white males are only ever included in a story because of outside pressure from some group (usually called Social Justice Warriors, or The Woke Brigade or something similar) to meet some nebulous political agenda.  The caveat to this is, of course, that you can have a women/women present as long as they are hot, don’t make any major contributions to the resolution of the plot, and the hero/heroes get to fuck them before the end of the story. ‘Virtue Signaling’, according to Wikipedia, is a pejorative neologism for the expression of a disingenuous moral viewpoint with the intent of communicating good character.

The basic argument is that Forced Diversity is a form of virtue signaling.  That no one would ever write characters who aren’t neurotypical cisgendered heterosexual white males because they want to.  They only do it to please the evil SJW’s who are somehow both so powerful that they force everybody to conform to their desires, yet so irrelevant that catering to them dooms any creative project to financial failure via the infamous ‘go woke, go broke’ rule.

What the people who push this idea of Forced Diversity tend to forget is that we exist at a point in time when creators actually have more creative freedom than are any other people in history.  Comic writers can throw up a website and publish their work as a webcomic without having to go through Marvel, DC or one of the other big names, or get a place in the dying realm of the news paper comics page.  Novelists can self-publish with fairly little upfront costs, musicians can use places like YouTube and Soundcloud to get their work out without having to worry about music publishers.  Artists can hock their work on twitter and tumblr and a dozen other places. Podcasts are relatively cheap to make, which has opened up a resurgence in audio dramas.  Even the barrier to entry for live action drama is ridiculously low.

So, in a world where creators have more freedom than ever before, why would they choose to people their stories with characters they don’t want there?  The answer, of course, is that they wouldn’t.  Authors, comic creators, indie film creators and so on aren’t putting diverse characters into their stories because they are being forced to. They’re putting diverse characters into their stories because they want to.  Creators want to tell stories about someone other than the generically handsome hypermasculine cisgendered heterosexual white males that have been the protagonists of so many stories over the years that we’ve choking on it. A lot of times, creators want to tell stories about people like themselves.  Black creators want to tell stories about the black experience. Queer creators want to tell stories about the queer experience.

I’m an autistic, mentally ill trans feminine abuse survivor.  Every day, I get up and I struggle with PTSD, with an eating disorder, with severe body dysmorphia, with anxiety and depression and just the reality of being autistic and transgender.  I deal with the fact that the religious community I grew up in views me as an abomination, and genuinely believes I’m going to spend eternity burning in hell.  I deal with the fact that people I’ve known for decades, even members of my own family, regularly vote for politician who publicly state that they want to strip me of my civil rights because I’m queer.  I’m part of a community that experiences a disproportionately high murder and suicide rate.  I’ve spent multiple years of my life deep in suicidal depression, and to this day, I still don’t trust myself around guns.

As a creator, I want to talk about those issues.  I want to deal with my life experiences.  I want to create characters that embody and express aspects of my lived experience and my day-to-day reality.  No one is forcing me to put diversity into my books.  I try to include Jewish characters as often as I can because there have been a number of important Jewish people in my life.  I include queer people because I’m queer and the vast majority of friends I interact with on a regular basis are queer.  I include people with mental illnesses and trauma because I am mentally ill and have trauma, and I know a lot of people with mental illnesses and trauma.  My work may be full of fantastical elements, aliens and dragons and angels and superheroes and magic and ultra-high technology and AI’s and talking cats and robot dogs and shape shifters and telepaths and all sorts of other things, but at the core of the stories is my own lived experience, and neurotypical cisgendered heterosexual white males are vanishingly rare in that experience.

Now, I can hear the comments already.  The ‘okay, maybe that’s true for individual creators, but what about corporate artwork?’.   Maybe not in those exact words, but you get the idea.

The thought here is that corporations are bowing to social pressure to include characters who aren’t neurotypical cisgendered heterosexual white males, and that is somehow bad. But here’s the thing. Corporations are going to chase the dollars.  They aren’t bowing to social pressure.  There’s no one holding a gun to some executive’s head saying, “You must have this many diversity tokens in every script.”  What is happening is that corporations are starting to clue into the fact that people who aren’t neurotypical cisgendered heterosexual white males have money.  They are putting black characters in their shows and movies because black people watch shows and spend money on movies.  They are putting queer people in shows and movies because queer people watch shows and spend money on movies.  They are putting women in shows and movies because women watch shows and spend money on movies.

No one is forcing these companies to do this.  They are choosing to do it, the same way individual creators are choosing to do it.  In the companies’ cases the choices are made for different reasons.  It’s not because they are necessarily passionate about telling stories about a particular experience, but because they want to create art to be consumed by the largest audience possible, which means that they have to expand their audience beyond the neurotypical cisgendered heterosexual white male by including characters from outside of that demographic.

And the reality is, the cries of ‘forced diversity’ and ‘virtue signaling’ almost always come from within that demographic.  Note the almost.  There are a scattering of individuals from outside that demographic which do subscribe to the ‘forced diversity’ and ‘virtue signaling’ myths, but that is a whole other essay.  However, within that demographic, lot of the people who cry about ‘forced diversity’ see media and content as a Zero-Sum game.  The more that’s created for other people, the less that is created for them.

In a way, they’re right. There are only so many slots for TV shows each week, there are only so many theaters, only so much space on comic bookshelves and so on.  But at the end of the day, its literally impossible for them to consume all the content that’s being produced anyway.  So, while there is, theoretically less content for them to consume, as a practical matter it’s a bit like someone who is a meat eater going to a buffet with two hundred items, and then throwing a tantrum because five of the items happen to be vegan.

The worst part is, if they could let go of how wound up they are about the ‘forced diversity’ and ‘virtue signaling’ they could probably enjoy the content that’s produced for people other than them.  I mean, I’m a pasty ass white girl, and I loved Black Panther.

So, to wrap out, creators, make what you want to make, and ignore anyone who cries about forced diversity or virtue signaling.  And to people who are complaining about forced diversity and virtue signaling, I want to go back to the buffet metaphor.  You need to relax.  Even if there are a few vegan options on the buffet, you can still get your medium rare steak, or your chicken teriyaki or whatever it is you want.  Or, maybe, just maybe, you could give the falafel a try. That shit is delicious.

[oidheadh-con-culainn]

What are the major details that confused you about the Hound blurb? The major one that stood put to me was the "way of the farmer opposed to the sword" thing which felt very...un-Cú Chulainn. Also, if you don't mind expanding further, which details didn't you question/be confused by?

and also for anon:

okay so it is like. 2am so there are not going to be any sources here but i can't sleep so here goes!! i will go through this blurb line by line and give youse my thoughts

In 50 BCE,

reasonable. this is roughly the right time period for when the ulster cycle is set. maybe marginally earlier than i'd place cú chulainn, but i'm talking a few years, nothing to get worked up about.

Morrigan, the goddess of war,

fine. normally i'm wary of pantheonising impulses with regard to irish characters (almost none of them can be identified as a god of anything in particular, it doesn't work like that) but tbh the morrigan is like, the most plausible exception to that, so whatever. normally her name has the definite article attached to it because it's kind of a species term as well but whatevs.

has become restless as a long-lasting peace settles over Ireland.

dubious. closest i can think of to peace being reference in any texts is togail bruidne da derga talking about conaire mor's reign being like, prosperous and peaceful and whatever, and even there you've got díberg (plundering/reaving) which is what eventually fucks him over and starts the otherworldly hell spiral situation. that's roughly the right period here but conaire's doom proves you don't have to do much to nudge peace into war, and connacht and ulster are at each other's throats for years before cú chulainn comes on the scene anyway

Deciding the time of peace must end, she chooses Setanta, the nephew of the king of the north, to become her ward.

hmm. i mean. like, this isn't the WEIRDEST choice they could have made. it's still completely made-up, don't get me wrong -- cú chulainn has a lot of different foster parents in different texts and they don't agree with each other but none of them ever mentions the morrígan. but like, they do have a connection of some sort, as evidenced by their conversations. and there's that one moment in the r1 boyhood deeds where little cú chulainn is out on the battlefield and hears her (not sure which name is used here) calling out to him and it like. motivates him to do some deeds or whatever, and i guess you could extrapolate that into some kind of teaching capacity.

so like. could be weirder. if you're gonna pick anyone, you could do worse. still seems weird to me! but not on its own a major issue, i could get past this and consider it a Fun But Unorthodox Creative Decision

(the fact that she tries to seduce him in the táin probably wouldn't get in the way of this considering sleeping with his teachers/foster-mothers is far from unheard of where cú chulainn is concerned)

After a young Setanta slays the demon-hound of Cullan, he becomes known as Cú Cullan—The Hound of Cullan.

weird spelling choices, they could have at least bothered to use the genitive properly. also the hound isn't a demon, it's a ferocious watchdog -- making it sound all Otherworldly and Hellish like this kinda confuses the issue of why he would need to take its place. he needs to take its place because the cattle and people still need protecting because it is a watchdog!! but whatevs, again, it's a brief summary so they can't exactly give us all the details and this is not actively objectionable

As Cú Cullan grows older, it is apparent that an extraordinary power lies within him … and a great darkness.

ugh boring. this makes it sound like he's going to be ~tortured~ and angsty about it. give me an unapologetic murder teen please. is the ríastrad dark? sure i guess, if you're going to be boring about it. it's more like, grotesque neon in my head

When he chooses the quiet life of a farmer over the sword,

this would fucking never happen on like five different levels. obviously like anyone who has ever read anything about cú chulainn can see that this is not in his nature. he is never going to choose a quiet life. this is the kid who tricked his way into taking arms before everyone thought he was ready. also juxtaposed with the "darkness" comment makes it sound like he would Angst his way into this quiet life which. again. have you seen this kid. he is an unapologetic murder teen

the only thing i can think of that might make him temporarily want to walk away is connla's death which... depends where you position that in the timeline really, he does seem a bit fucked up by it and maybe he'd want a holiday although i can see that lasting precisely 5 minutes before someone pissed him off enough for him to murder them. but if he's being raised by the morrígan i can't see him going to train with scáthach so then he'd never meet aífe and therefore connla would never be born so that wouldn't happen. so like. whatever.

but also like. he would not become a farmer. he just wouldn't! it doesn't work! the ireland of the stories is super hierarchical, right? and this blurb has already fucking told us that he's the king's nephew (canon) so we can tell that being a farmer is Not His Place. when we see upper class figures becoming menial labourers in texts, like in cath maige tuired, it's because Things Are Fucked, Shit's Gone Wrong. people don't just decide to change their entire social class on a whim lmfao

if cú chulainn really wanted to turn his back on being a warrior he could probably make recourse to certain other Suitable Professions ... his grandad's a druid so he might have a route into that, though his dad's not so that might fuck things up a bit bc it's one of those things that's usually inherited. he does give "wisdom" in at least one text though and we also know he can write (he carves riddles in ogham in the táin) and he composes verses on various occasions so idk, maybe something in a poetic direction, though again, usually requires two generations of inheritance to be a real poet and not just a lower-class bard. warrior's kinda the main thing he's got open to him tbh. but farming? i'm not a legal expert but as far as i'm aware based on what i have read, that would fuck shit up

more likely an upset cú chulainn would just go off in search of an adventure somewhere conveniently far away until he'd calmed down (alba, or the tyrrhenian sea, or -- if we're going to get early modern about it -- somewhere like india, which frequently gets thrown into the texts with absolutely no cultural context and it's always hilarious)

Morrigan, angry at the betrayal,

of the entire social order, yes,

instigates an invasion of his homeland

i mean. if they intend this to be the táin then.... táin bó regamna does kinda make the morrígan responsible for it? not in the sense of triggering the pillow talk argument that it's in the book of leinster -- it's her getting up to her usual cow-nicking behaviours for shits and giggles. [note to readers: it is probably for more than shits and giggles but did i mention it's 2am]

but all in all, not particularly out of character that she would be at least some way responsible for this so i can vibe with this. echtra nerai also supports the TBR explanation with her fucking around with otherworldly cows and pissing people off so, yeah, whatever. the morrígan engineered this. sure.

and Cú Cullan must challenge fate itself

this is probably a controversial stance but fate feels like a difficult concept to apply to medieval irish texts. like are people sometimes Doomed? yes. there are prophecies, there are gessi, there's all manner of otherworldly fuckery that can trip you up. is that the same thing as fate? no idea. considering cú chulainn comes out alive from the táin though and his doom prophecies don't catch up to him for like, at least another decade, maybe 16 years depending on who you listen to, hard to see how that would apply here

to keep the goddess at bay.

again like she IS causing fuckery in the táin but also it's like... one time. really not the main character. but she or maybe just some crows, hard to say, do get implicated in the death tale so maybe they're doing what people often do and conflating the two? even though there's like 10-16 years in between them?

anyway as you can see i don’t think it’s wholly terrible / i’m not completely thinkshaming it. like, having cú chulainn raised by the morrígan is unorthodox but it could be a fun and creative direction so i don't object to it. making cú chulainn get sad about murder and choose to be a farmer is just fucking laughable tho, and makes me doubt their characterisations in general. so that's offputting and would probably make me think twice about buying it, if that had ever been on the cards.*

and of course sure, their cú chulainn can be a Sad Boy Who Likes Sheep, but that means he's not the cú chulainn of medieval irish lit / irish myth, because that cú chulainn is a feral murder teen who keeps killing his friends and also is way too high social status to ever be a farmer, and whose only relationship to livestock is as the watchdog who kills anyone trying to harm them (which is an important role on a farm! but like. not the same thing as Being A Farmer. mostly because it involves more murder and is essentially just an extension of his role as a warrior. or rather the other way around. he promises to protect mag muirthemne as a watchdog and this like. gets extended into him becoming its sole defender)

this has been my analysis of this blurb i hope you enjoyed it

it's now 2.30am i should try and sleep now that i've exorcised a few thoughts from my head

*as i mentioned in the tags of my other post, i don't tend to read graphic novels due to disability stuff. they're much harder for me to understand and follow than prose, to the point where some are incomprehensible, so i don't really enjoy them. there are a few i've read, but they tend to be short ones, and i'm usually not reading them in order, just admiring the art separately from the text. so it's unlikely i would read a graphic novel of this size anyway.

[marshmallow-phd]

Catching Rain

Part of The Untamed - EXO Wolf Universe

Genre: Wolf!AU

Pairing: Minseok x Reader

Summary: You were more than satisfied with your life. You attended a nice college, had nice friends, a nice boyfriend. That’s what your life was: nice. You weren’t looking for anything more, so what were you to do when this seemingly harmless boy walked into your life and turned your nice little world into one much more dangerous?

Part: 1 I 2 I 3 I 4 I 5 I 6 I 7 I 8 I 9 I 10 I Epilogue

**

On closer inspection, the house in the middle of the field was quite pretty. Simple, white, well kept. A secondary building with metal walls sat adjacent to the house – a garage, perhaps. Waiting on the porch was the man from earlier. Baekhyun. Now you remembered his name. He was joined by a few others – Chanyeol, Sehun, and one you didn’t know – who stared at you in curious wonder. Their eyes were wide and investigative, as if you were the supernatural creature and not Minseok.

“Looks like the cat’s out of the bag,” Baekhyun said with a snicker.

“Or pup, in this case,” said the one you didn’t know. Black hair that fell over his forehead and an upturn sat in both corners of his lips, though he wasn’t smiling.

Minseok merely shook his head as he pushed past them into the house. The screen door shut with a loud slam. You flinched at the noise. Chanyeol sighed as he glanced at you. “Would you like something to drink?”

“Yes, please,” you nodded. He motioned for you to follow him inside.

Through a short front parlor and a cozy living room, he led you into the kitchen where you stood awkwardly. The only noise came from the water flowing from the refrigerator spicket. The ice clinked as it moved around the glass. Your eyes wandered across the large, open space. Sunlight poured in from the windows in the two outer walls. It gave the whole room a yellow hue despite the white and light gray coloring of the cabinets and backsplash. Whoever had last designed this room had done so in a way to make it feel bigger and open, welcoming even. You wondered if there must have been a woman living here to give the finer touches. Minseok hadn’t mentioned anyone beyond his male roommates. The thought of a woman living amongst them made you slightly jealous, but you shoved it aside when Chanyeol held out the glass for you.

“Thank you,” you murmured before taking a sip.

He nodded shyly. His foot tapped lightly against the hard wood floor with his hands shoved into his pockets. He looked everywhere except for at you. Feeling eyes on you anyway, you glanced over your shoulder just in time to see several crops of hair disappear from the hallway entrance.

You scoffed. “You guys act like you’ve never seen a female before.”

“Not one like you.”

Minseok stepped into the room wearing a t-shirt with frayed edges where the sleeves had been cut off and a pair of basketball shorts. As angry as you were with him, the distrust still very much apparent, you were fighting the urge to run to him. What was this stupid, conflicting feeling? Making eye contact with Minseok, Chanyeol ducked his head and hurriedly left the kitchen.

“So,” you crossed your arms after putting down the glass and leaned against the counter, “is this the part where you explain to me what the hell is going on?”

“I will, but not here.”

“No, you don’t get to do that!” you snapped. “You didn’t want to tell me in the forest, so we came back here and now you don’t want to tell me here?”

Minseok shrunk back. “I just meant down here. Can we go upstairs? Away from where the others can hear?”

That suggestion could be accepted. Actually, you felt a little bad for exploding, but could you really be blamed? Given the information dump you were steadily receiving today? “Oh. Okay. Lead the way.”

Minseok’s hand twitched at his side, but he kept it in check as he turned and headed back up the stairs. The top spilled out into a hallway lined with doors. This space wasn’t as bright as the kitchen. Different shades of dark brown covered the wooden floor and plaster walls. No windows gave view to the outside making you feel trapped. “This one’s mine,” Minseok said. He held on to a handle of one of the middle doors and waited for you to come closer before pushing it open. When you saw what lied beyond the door, you nearly smiled.

On the walls were posters of famous soccer players and indie movies you’d never heard of. The bed was made with military precision, not a creased comforter or half-strewn pillow in sight. Against the far wall under a singular window was a desk. The notebooks were stacked in the top right corner, the edges so straight a ruler wouldn’t be able to find fault. Pens and pencils occupied a small cup to keep the rest of the desk clear.

“Not what you expected?” Minseok asked as he closed the door.

“Yes and no.” You stole a glance at him over your shoulder. “It’s very… neat.”

Minseok smiled shyly. He shuffled over to the bed and sat down. If he expected you to take the spot next to him, he was wrong. Instead, you chose the chair. A precaution for yourself.

Neither of you knew where to start. Who was supposed to talk first? What part should even be considered the beginning? Unable to continue in this awkward silence, you jumped in feet first.

“You can really… turn into a wolf?” The words felt like glue in your throat. Creatures like that belonged in fairytales and fantasy films, not a college campus.

“Yeah,” Minseok said. “We all can. All nine of us.”

“All nine.” Oh, great. A whole pack of them. “Even the one’s I met?” Stupid question. He’d already answered that, technically. But Minseok simply nodded instead of calling out the redundancy. “So, were you all bitten or-” You felt ridiculous basing the current situation on myth and legend, but what else did you have to go on?

“We’re all born this way. You can’t be like us from a bite or a scratch. It has to be in your DNA.” He snuck a peek before beating you to the next question. “The moon doesn’t really influence us either. I mean, its easier to see by at night in the forest, but it doesn’t force us to change. We can do that whenever we want. Witches have more of a connection with the giant rock in the sky.”

“Witches! They’re real, too? What else is real? Vampires? Dragons? Goblins?” What kind of world had you stumbled into?

Minseok flinched. “Maybe we should stick to one subject at a time.”

“Right.” That was probably best for your sanity. “So, if you have to be born like,” you gestured to him, “… this, does that mean both of your parents were, too?”

“Just my dad,” Minseok said. “Females wolves are extremely rare.”

“Well, that’s sexist.”

“Hey, we didn’t make up the rules. It’s genetics.” He scratched the back of his neck, twitching his lips from side to side. “I guess I should say that silver doesn’t bother us either.”

Why did you feel relieved at that random fact? It didn’t matter, as that wasn’t the most pressing issue to you. “Earlier you mentioned that it wasn’t you killing the campers-”

“It wasn’t any of us!”

“I believe you.” The words tumbled off your lips. And you realized that it was true. You couldn’t twist the nervous, sweet guy in front of you into a mindless killer. The way he was explaining everything slowly, cautiously, giving you time to understand. He wasn’t hiding anything from you. Not anymore. “I’m just confused when you said it was an omega?”

“Its just a ranking system within a pack,” he explained. “Alpha, beta, MR, omega. Junmyeon’s the alpha of our pack, he’s in charge. Yixing and I are betas, second in command. We help enforce Junmyeon’s word and keep an eye on the younger wolves who like to cause mischief.” He chuckled, as if remembering times when said mischief occurred. “The rest are all MR – Mid-ranking. They all have their own duties should they be needed. Well, except for Jongin and Sehun. They’re the youngest wolves so they get special treatment most of the time. Its okay, though. They kind of make you want to take care of them, the way they are.”

You nodded filing all the information away for later recall. “And the omega?”

“A wolf without a pack. Nine times out of ten they were kicked out for defying the alpha, for putting their own interests ahead of the pack. Without that structure, a lot of them turn feral.”

“Nine times out of ten?”

“It’s extremely rare, but sometimes a wolf will choose to never join a pack in the first place. It’s nearly unheard of though. We’re too social of creatures. Nine-point-five out of ten would probably be a better number.”

You couldn’t help the laugh that came out. Of course he would bring up math in a time like this. Minseok laughed along with you. Eventually, though, it died out, along with the smile that had been growing on his lips. “There’s something else I need to tell you.”

Picking up on his mood, you tilted your head to the side. “I don’t think anything else could take me by surprise at this point.” Minseok stared at you pointedly. Your stomach began to sink. What other little secret could he possibly be harboring at this point? You didn’t think anything could be as shocking as his shapeshifting abilities.

“Have you ever heard the expression ‘wolves mate for life’?” he asked cryptically.

“Yeah?”

“Well-” he shifted, crinkling the perfect comforter in the process. “We don’t know why it happens. Junmyeon thinks its nature’s way of compensating our ‘otherness’ while Jongdae just thinks it’s another level of torture.” An uncomfortable laugh. “But, um, every wolf has their own mate. Just one, that they stick with for the rest of their lives.”

Unable to keep looking at him, you leaned forward, resting your elbows on your knees. “So, are you saying that you all get to pick whoever you want as your mate and that’s it? You claim them because of what you are?”

“No!” Minseok jumped to his feet. Swallowing visibly, he cleared his throat, but remained standing. “No, we don’t get to pick. It happens out of nowhere. Our mates are chosen for us before either is born. And we can meet them under any circumstances. Some favorable, some… not so much.”

You looked up at him “What are you trying to say, Minseok?”

He walked up to you, each step hesitant, each step full of fear. Crouching down, he sighed as he looked into your eyes. “What I’m trying to say, (y/n), is that… you’re my mate.”

At first, you only blinked. The words had to be soaked in one at a time before you could piece them together and understand the sentence as a whole. “I- what? How do you even know?”

Reaching out, Minseok took ahold of your hand. You didn’t fight it. The electricity was practically singing between your skins. “Really, all it takes is one look. A few seconds of eye contact and the pull takes hold. But this feeling we both get when we touch, its confirmation. And then there’s this.”

He pulled your hand closer, pressing your palm against his chest. The heat transferring through the thin fabric was enough to make you sweat, but that wasn’t the point of this exercise. It was the rate of which his heart was beating. As he stared at you with awe, his heart sprinted as if it were in second place of a race and needed to pass just one more runner to win.

“Every time I see you, this happens,” Minseok whispered. “It doesn’t matter how good my day has been, its always better when I’m with you.”

“We haven’t even known each other that long.”

“It doesn’t take long, apparently.”

You frowned, confused. “Apparently?”

A small smile pulled up one corner of his mouth. “I’m the first one in the pack to find my mate. The first one to experience this.”

The first…. You wanted to laugh at the romantic angle your brain was seeing this.

A knock came from the door. Minseok stood up, reluctantly dropping your hand before answering the intrusion. “Yeah?”

Several roommates were standing in the hall, all peering around Minseok to get a better look at you.

“Kyungsoo said it was time for dinner,” one of them said. “And that he could hear your mate’s empty stomach from downstairs.”

“And it took all of you to come tell us?” Minseok questioned as he folded his arms. He shifted to block more of the doorway, shielding you from their stares.

“It was an important job,” another one said.

Minseok looked back at you before sighing. “Tell Kyungsoo that I’ll be down in a second.”

“But-”

The door was shut before the argument could be finished. The rush of footsteps faded in the background until it was only the two of you once again.

“Are you hungry?” Minseok asked. You nodded sheepishly. “You don’t have to go downstairs. You can stay here and I’ll bring it up to. Kyungsoo’s a good cook so whatever he made will be delicious.”

“Actually, I’ll go down with you,” you said, to the surprise of both of you. Everything Minseok had told you was still sinking in. There was too much to process and completely comprehend, but the pieces were fitting together. And you were curious about life here. If you really were meant to be his mate, maybe you should know where that road led. It was the right at the fork. You’d uncovered a sign that gave you a clue to where it was headed. You wanted to follow it.

Minseok waited patiently as you stood up and walked towards him. He let you out the door first. There was a moment where your fingers brushed as you passed. You could feel the muscles in his hand tighten. He wanted to take your hand again – and you almost let him. But you held back. There was still something stopping you. Or, rather, a who.

The noise hit you halfway down the stairs. Being told that nine people lived together and truly witnessing it were two very different concepts. There was no order that you could see. Most of the boys sat around the table, conducting multiple conversations at once that overlapped that you had to wonder how they could understand each other. A few sat in a small booth off to the side in a world of their own. It was the kind of breakfast nook you’d only seen before in home magazines. Two boys stood at the counters, their backs to the chaos behind them.

One of them – sporting a very well put together look and black rimmed glasses – turned and smiled at you and Minseok. “There you are. Glad to see you came down.” He held his hand out to you. “I’m Junmyeon.”

“The alpha,” you said as you shook his hand.

“I see Minseok told you most of it,” Junmeyon said.

“Pretty much everything,” Minseok corrected.

You felt your face contort as you tried to pinpoint where you’d seen this man before. “Wait. Aren’t you a professor?”

Junmyeon laughed. “Yeah, I am. In the literature department. Folklore, to be exactly. But I’d prefer if we kept this between us.” He sent you a wink to show he was teasing. Behind you, Misneok growled, making you jump. “I’m just playing, Minseok.”

“And I’m sure he’ll be playing when he rips your head off,” the other stove-top occupant stated. He held out a plate for you piled high with food. There was no way you would be able to eat all of that. “I’m Kyungsoo, by the way.”

“(y/n),” you greeted back. “It’s nice to meet you.” Taking the plate, you tried to hand it off to Minseok.

“No, that’s yours.”

Not wanting to be rude, you said between gritted teeth, “I can’t eat all of this.”

Minseok pinched his face as if debating on something. “Fine. We’ll share.”

“Are you sure about that?” Junmyeon asked. “There won’t be any left over for seconds. You know that.”

“It’ll be fine.”

Shaking his head, Kyungsoo held on to one side of the plate and added another scoop of rice and meat each. “Just in case.”

After thanking him, Minseok guided you over to the table with a hand hovering over your lower back. Even without the contact, you could feel the heat coming from his palm. Or maybe it was just your imagination filling in. Minseok pulled out a chair for you on the empty end before sitting next you. It was obvious he’d purposefully placed you away from the others.

“Possessive much?” Baekhyun snorted as he dug into a plate of his own.

“I’m sure it’s just instinct.” The comment came from one of the more slender boys – Boys? Wolves? You weren’t sure how to address them properly. Maybe later. Your brain needed a break. The one who had spoken had a very pointed face, but in a way that was still handsome. You weren’t sure if you’d seen him before or not.

“That’s Yixing,” Minseok said. “And the last one to meet, I guess, is Jongdae.”

Jongdae turned out to be the curled-lip one who still wasn’t smiling. In fact, he was the only one not in some level of a cheerful mood as he sat in the breakfast booth. He barely looked at you while everyone else was. Some were even blatantly staring at you as they shoveled in food to their mouths.

“You should eat.” Minseok picked up a fork and stabbed a slice of marinade-covered meat, holding it out for you to eat like a child.

“I can do that myself, thanks.” You took the fork and chewed slowly on the meat. It was good. More than good, really, so you took another bite and another. Soon, you were full, though there was more than half a plate left. You scooted the plate over to Minseok. “Okay, your turn.”

“You’re done? Are you sure?”

“Yes, I’m stuffed.”

Minseok didn’t reach for the other fork he’d grabbed, as if giving you a chance to change your mind. When you made no such move, he dug in. You smiled at the way he ate, enjoying every bite with satisfaction. At the sight of every plate being empty, Baekhyun stood up. “I’m going to watch a movie,” he announced.

“Oh, that sounds like a good idea!” Jongin said.

Yixing asked, “Which one?”

Baekhyun shrugged. “I don’t know. Whatever’s new. (Y/n), want to join us?”

Minseok cut in. “I don’t know if that-”

“I’d love to!” You turned to Minseok and gave him a cheeky smile. It felt a bit defiant. Perhaps he wanted to explain more to you or spend time with you alone in general, but you wanted to know how this group operated together. You wanted insight to their normalcy. Getting to your feet, you picked up the plate, but Junmyeon reached over and took it from you.

“Don’t worry about this. We’ll clean up.”

“But-”

The alpha wouldn’t have it. “You’re the guest. Shoo.”

More than happy with that argument (dishes weren’t your thing by a long shot), you followed the cluster of excited men to the living room. They crashed on nearly every surface – the couch, the chairs, the floor, anywhere they could fit. Minseok approached Jongin and Sehun who had taken a corner of the long couch.

“Move,” he ordered.

“But we were here first!” Sehun whined. Jongin look over to you and then got up without a word, sitting down on the floor with his back against the coffee table.

“Sehun….”

“You’re really going to kick the youngest off the comfortable seat?”

You tried to break up the awkward exchange. Well, it was awkward for you since you were the reason for the discussion. “It’s fine, really. I can sit on the floor.”

“You’re not sitting on the floor,” Minseok told you. To Sehun, he said, “I’m the eldest and she’s a guest. Please move.”

For a second nothing happened. Then Sehun huffed. “Fine.” He got up and joined Jongin on the floor. He lied down on his stomach and pulled out his phone, over it already. You felt bad but saw no point in arguing. Minseok let you sit first and then, once again, sat between you and Chanyeol, who happily occupied the other side of the couch.

Baekhyun flipped through a streaming service until he landed on a superhero movie. Everyone cheered at the choice, then quieted down as he pressed play. Someone turned out the lights so only the glow of the television remained.

Sitting shoulder to shoulder and leg to leg, you were hyper aware of Minseok. Arms crossed over your stomach and fists clenched, you told yourself repeatedly not to reach for his hand or lean on his shoulder no matter how heavy your eyelids were getting. Erik may have hit pause on your relationship, but there wasn’t much of a discussion of lines. You didn’t know the rules of that scenario and what was and wasn’t allowed. But as your tiredness grew, your willpower weakened. After a few bobs, your head landed softly on Minseok’s shoulder. It was too comfortable to move. It felt too nice, too right. Like his shoulder was the one you were always supposed to lean on. And that was when Minseok made a move of his own.

Holding your head up, he adjusted his arm so it was now draped over your shoulders. Your head rested against his chest when he laid you back down. Something vibrated against your cheek. Was that… purring? No, it had to be the booming from the movie. Right?

It didn’t take long for you drift into sleep. The movie was one you’d seen before so you couldn’t use that as an excuse to stay awake. You weren’t sure how long it had been. A slight bopping motion roused you. In the shallowness of your conscious you made out that you were being carried. Carried up stairs… and into a bedroom. While still holding you, that person managed to pull back the covers and tuck you into bed. As the arm slipped away you grabbed hold of the wrist. Through the slightest slits in your eyes you could make out Minseok’s silhouette.

“Shh, it’s okay,” he whispered. “Go back to sleep. I’ll take the couch downstairs.”

“No. Stay.”

He froze at your request. “Are you sure?”

“Please.”

Even in the darkness, you could see him smiling. “Okay.” Shutting the door, he peeled back the covers once more and slid in beside you. Happy wasn’t even close to how you felt when he pulled you in close to his chest. You drifted back to sleep with a smile on your face.

[positivityforlesbians]

Hey, I'm a lesbian and fortunately-unfortunately familiar with Freud. Since he's such a big cultural figure, there obviously are falsehoods floating about things.

This is a letter he wrote:

Dear Mrs [Erased],

I gather from your letter that your son is a homosexual. I am most impressed by the fact that you do not mention this term yourself in your information about him. May I question you why you avoid it? Homosexuality is assuredly no advantage, but it is nothing to be ashamed of, no vice, no degradation; it cannot be classified as an illness; we consider it to be a variation of the sexual function, produced by a certain arrest of sexual development. Many highly respectable individuals of ancient and modern times have been homosexuals, several of the greatest men among them. (Plato, Michelangelo, Leonardo da Vinci, etc). It is a great injustice to persecute homosexuality as a crime – and a cruelty, too. If you do not believe me, read the books of Havelock Ellis.

By asking me if I can help, you mean, I suppose, if I can abolish homosexuality and make normal heterosexuality take its place. The answer is, in a general way we cannot promise to achieve it. In a certain number of cases we succeed in developing the blighted germs of heterosexual tendencies, which are present in every homosexual in the majority of cases it is no more possible. It is a question of the quality and the age of the individual. The result of treatment cannot be predicted.

What analysis can do for your son runs on a different line. If he is unhappy, neurotic, torn by conflicts, inhibited in his social life, analysis may bring him harmony, peace of mind, full efficiency, whether he remains a homosexual or gets changed. If you make up your mind he should have analysis with me — I don’t expect you will — he has to come over to Vienna. I have no intention of leaving here. However, don’t neglect to give me your answer.

Sincerely yours with best wishes,

Freud

In case of female homosexuality, he didn't call it an illness to be cured or a neurotic conflict. He wrote a paper The Psychogenesis of a Case of Homosexuality in a Woman

One can take a look at that. I'm only writing to you because I don't wish for people to be misinformed and buy it when people falsely attribute to someone famous like Freud their own perceptions. Anyway, I want to know specifically what I'm critiquing about Freud and it certainly isn't helpful that people aren't concerned about reality but myths.

Thanks for sharing this letter of his, I hadn't read that before. I was talking about female homosexuality though, he doesn't treat it the same way. He did try to treat the homosexuality of Sidonie Csillag, she was sent to him by the girl's father and the therapy (who we can call today "conversion therapy") was led for four months if I remember well. After that he gave up, he thought she was too opinionated and antagonistic to men, that she was too narcissistic (Freud said that) and infantile, making comments about her physical appearance and intellect, classifying it all as masculine, saying that she had a Oedipal complex and that her suicide attempt was (partly) because she wanted to bear her father's child (??)

He analysed Sidonie (who's really name is Margarethe) when she was 17 or 18 years old but at the same time Freud was concerned with his own daughter Anna, 22, not interested in men either, who would also turn out to be a lesbian. It may also be a reason why he stopped that daily analysis, this and saying she didn't want to be "cured of her lesbian desire". Freud had sexism and homophobia issues (toward female same-sex attraction) and it's okay to point it out. After all, he was still a product of his own time.

[dreamersleeps]

Todoroki Enji and the Egyptian Sun God Ra

(Part Four: Mythological Influences in Boku no Hero Academia) 

Note: ok, so I’m kinda nervous to post this. . . but here we are

So how did I get to comparing the Egyptian sun god Ra to Endeavor? To sum it up, this is the fourth post in a set of analysis and meta about mythological influences in BNHA, so a lot of this builds on top of the info and connections I’ve made previously.

There are quite a few references and influences to Greek mythology in BNHA and personally I was very intrigued with the Hawks and Icarus parallels that kept popping up. In the myth of Icarus, the sun melts the wax off of Icarus’ artificial wings which causes him to fall and drown in the ocean. I saw Endeavor as one of Hawks’ metaphorical “suns”. While I sat on that, I began looking at Tokoyami, since he has a mentor-student relationship with Hawks, and found how he has Egyptian influences in his character design which I wrote about in a post here. 

I began researching and reading through ancient Egyptian myths and information. One of the figures that caught my attention was the ancient Egyptian’s most important god: Ra, the sun god. (He is the falcon headed figure depicted below.)  I quickly found some similarities between Ra and Endeavor. 

This image is from the expereince-ancient-egypt website. 

Before I begin, I’d like to say I am very much aware that BNHA is a Japanese manga series and that the story is greatly influenced by Japanese culture and society. Unless there are very explicit examples (such as the case of Tokoyami) this post is not me saying that Horikoshi intentionally wrote certain characters and aspects inspired by Egyptian mythology. I just like like finding interesting similarities whether they were intentional or coincidental and writing about it. 

That being stated, let’s begin. 

Ra: The Egyptian God of the Sun 

The original source of the image above is unknown. 

So, who exactly is Ra? 

Ra was the Ancient Egyptian sun god. The sun had a special place among the ancient Egyptians, they considered it the source of life. He was... the creator of the universe, one of the most famous deities... 

Ancient Egyptians believed that Ra created himself, and his tears created humans. The setting of the sun means the beginning of the daily journey by Ra, in which he travels by his holy boat to the underworld every evening, to fight the forces of evil represented in a big snake called Apophis, and then returns to a brilliant triumph in the heights of the sky every morning on a new day. The ancient Egyptian saw this as a sign of human resurrection, and also evidence of Ra’s victory over the forces of chaos and evil (cleopatraegypttours). 

Throughout all the websites I went through, Ra was very closely associated with the themes of the sun, life, the underworld, resurrection and victory over chaos and evil.

Let’s focus more on Ra’s journey through the underworld. 

During his life he was required, as the incarnation and representative of the sun god, to maintain the cosmic and social order (ma’at) established by the god of creation. He had to repel the forces of chaos which constantly threatened the order of the world. 

After his d/eath, the king united with the sun disk and his divine body merged with his creator. In his new role he continued to perform the task of subduing the powers of chaos. This active role of the king and sun god necessitated a detailed description of the d/amned, who represent the forces of evil. 

Perhaps you may be starting to see the similarities and connections I began to form between Ra and Endeavor. If not, it’s okay. Sometimes II have to sit on a lot of the information I’m taking in before I see anything. 

Endeavor’s Powers

Endeavor’s fire-based quirk is called “Hellflame.” The list of his named moves are: Flashfire Fist (Jet Burn, Hell Spider, Hell’s Curtain), Karmic Raze - Hellfire Storm, Raging Assault - Hell Minefield, Vanishing Fist, and Prominence Burn. As you can see, there’s a lot of mentions of the word: Hell. 

While we can connect the “hell theme” back to Ra’s connections to the underworld, I would first like to point out what the Egyptian underworld was. We associate fire, suffering and other things with hell, however, this is a depiction that comes from the Abrahamic/Judeo-Christian religions. 

The image above depicts a section of the Egyptian Book of the D/ead with Osiris on the left and the Weighting of the Heart taking place on the right. 

There were many sources that described the extensive processes of the underworld and afterlife so I’m keeping it simple here. Anyways, the ancient Egyptians did not really have a concept of this sort of hell. Instead, after death, a part of the soul would travel through the underworld which was also known as Duat for judgement. They underwent a judgement process that had two parts and if they passed, they moved on to the Reed Fields which was Paradise. Those who failed simply ceased to be.

The “hell” that is probably being referred back to with Endeavor’s quirk and powers most likely was influenced with other cultures, again more specifically those with Abrahamic/Judeo-Christian religions. Despite this difference I do still think that there are other interesting similarities between Endeavor and Ra. 

For example, I’ve already established in a previous post that I like to associate Endeavor to the sun. A lot of this post will rely heavily on what happened during the High End vs Endeavor fight. The move he is using above is called “Prominence Burn.” According to NASA: 

a solar prominence (also known as a filament when viewed against the solar disk) is a large, bright feature extending outwards into the Sun’s hot outer atmosphere

This is the finishing move that helps Endeavor defeat the High End and this is very significant because it is the only move with a name that relates back to the sun. 

In Chapter 188 during the High End fight, Endeavor is even depicted as a fiery sphere of fire and light high up in the sky, very visually similar to the sun. 

If you need more evidence for sun related themes surrounding Endeavor, Ending, the criminal who kidnaps Natsuo describes him as “A fierce solar flare that shines bright.” 

One of Ra’s main duties is to keep order and defeat the “forces of chaos and evil.” Endeavor and the heroes in general sort of view themselves as this force of good and see the “villains” as enemies that have to be taken care of. I don’t agree with the ideas that “all heroes are good, and all villains are bad” and that is definitely not the message that Horikoshi is trying to send. It is because that sort of belief exists that hero society is flawed. Typically, when reading through mythology or religious texts, the themes of absolute good and absolute evil are common. Those are the contexts in which gods and other figures that exist. Humans are flawed and tend to stand somewhere in the in between. 

That being stated, Ra and Endeavor are similar in their ties to the sun, underworld and sense of duty that they must defeat the “forces of chaos and evil” for the sake of everyone else. 

High End vs Endeavor 

Endeavor greatest ambition in life was to become the number one hero. He may act like a hero in the public’s eye but he does not have a “heroic nature” or “character.” He failed and broke his own family for the sake of his ambitions, and arguably, the Todoroki family came in to existence to serve a certain purpose. If he could not become the number one, then he’d make sure that someone with his blood and name would achieve that one day. However the unexpected happened. All Might had to retire and Endeavor was given the title as number one hero. He didn’t earn it. He was given it purely because he was the number two hero. 

Let’s revisit the High End fight. This conflict happens shortly after the Hero Billboard Chart event. Japan is uneasy as their symbol of peace has retired and they do not know whether they can rely on the new number one hero. His family also is conflicted with his new position and how it was given to him. Throughout the fight we take a step in to Endeavor’s thoughts and inner monologue.  

The manga panel above is from Chapter 188. 

The High End is incredibly powerful and even with his powerful Hellflame quirk, Endeavor is having a hard time fighting against it. One of the weaknesses with having a fire related quirk is that it overheats his body so he’s had to rely on using his flames properly and cooling down afterwards. Because of this, he thinks about his family. The family that began because of this very weakness. His memory goes back to Rei when she is young, perhaps at the beginning of their arranged marriage or shortly before. Touya, Natsuo and Fuyumi are young as well. Standing far away and unhappy, maybe even nervous. And lastly, Shouto, the child he wanted to continue his legacy in, activating both his ice and hellflame quirks. He is the only one depicted in his actual current age. 

On top of the very next page we get a scene with the High End Nomu speaking as seen below. 

This Nomu came to fight and defeat whoever was the strongest. Despite it’s ability to speak, it is still mindless, declaring on and on about its power and strength. It does not care about who it is fighting and the destruction that is occuring along the way. The High End has multiple quirks that were chosen specifically to make it as powerful as it could be. Perhaps it was in this moment that something clicked in Endeavor’s mind. 

Soon after, the High End strikes Endeavor multiple times, with one strike later leaving him with the scar that runs down the left side of his face. He falls to the ground and in to the rubble. Chapter 188 ends on this page with the manga panel seen below and everyone is left to wonder whether Endeavor is dead or alive. 

In Chapter 189 we see the effects of the void All Might left due to his retirement. 

If the “villains” can’t be kept in check the public becomes chaotic with fear. A quiet night fell over Japan after All Might retired. People felt like the light was taken away. Then Endeavor gets up. With Hawks’ help he rises in to the air with wings on fire.

And in Chapter 190 he defeats the High End Nomu with Prominence Burn. 

Endeavor and the Dawning Sun

There’s a lot of things going on here. Endeavor basically follows the journey Ra takes every single day to complete his duty. Similar to how Ra “dies” as he travels through the underworld, at one point we are led to believe that Endeavor has been killed by. As most of the battle took place up in the air, Endeavor physically falls when he “dies.” Leading up to the fall, he is thinking about his family and the past. 

While Ra and Endeavor “resurrect” at different points in their journey, they both rise back again in order to fulfill their duty to bring back “order and balance.”

I’ve already written about the falcon/hawk headed Egyptian god Horus and Hawks, however I have yet to address the relationship between Ra and Horus. At some point, Ra was combined with Horus and became known as Ra-Horakhty which means “Ra, Horus of the Horizon.” Ra-Horakhty is most often thought of as the god of the rising sun. It is in this form that Ra rises in the sky to bring the dawn when he arises from the underworld. 

The original source of this image is unknown.

There is a deity (seen above) that appears a lot throughout architecture from ancient Egypt called “Horus-Behdity” who is depicted as a winged sun disc:

The winged sun disc is highly symbolic representing the Union of Horus the falcon God, and Ra the sun god, the union of the Two-Lands of Egypt, and becomes a symbol of rebirth for the kings (British Museum).

Although it is Endeavor who ultimately defeats the High End, it is with the aid of Hawks’ quirk that he is able to land the finishing blow. He rises in to the sky like the winged sun disc: Endeavor as the sun, and Hawks as the wings. I think the depiction of Hawks with his back towards he audience and Endeavor burning them with his flames on the cover of Volume 21 says a lot of things (including the Icarus parallels!). 

Taking a couple steps back, the wording on the pages where Endeavor addresses the nomu and then before uses the finishing move Prominence Burn on the High End is important. 

“Modified human... Noumu! Manufactured one. . . Holder of multiple quirks. . . Obesessed with the pursuit of strength!” (Chapter 190)

“You are... Just like me! From the past, or perhaps from an alternate future. Now burn, and rest for all eternity!” (Chapter 190)

Endeavor is a controversial character that because of his past and the horrible things he did to his family. However, we can not ignore what has been written in the manga. I’m not going to argue or talk too much about my own thoughts and opinions here, but I think it is important to address what happened during this High End fight.

He identifies himself with the Nomu: the power hungry and mindless creature. It’s interesting that he uses the phrases of “manufactured” and “holder of multiple quirks,” and “pursuit of strength” which are words that are heavy with meaning to him: the arranged marriage he purchased, the children he neglected and the “perfect” child he sought after for the sake of strength. 

The train of thoughts that had begun in his mind is expressed outwards. He shouts them out in to the sky. He acknowledges the past (however to what extent is debatable), and even addresses the future. I’m not sure if he’s acknowledging that he may fail to change or that he hopes that he can change what he can. 

He then defeats the High End. Endeavor had been given the number on hero position but this victory is what “establishes” him with the title in the eyes of the public. With the bright light of All Might gone, the public is inspired by a new light, the sun that Endeavor represents bringing a dawn to the night. His victory pose is reminiscent of All Might’s however it is with his other arm that is in the air, he’s slumped over and his legs are barely keeping him up. The flames that usually cover his face and body are gone as well. This is the victory of Endeavor the hero but it could also be Todoroki Enji as a father making a statement. 

I’m not sure if this is him symbolically k/illing the monster he was, or if this is symbolic as to where Endeavor’s journey will ultimately head towards, or if its a representation of hopes that never come true later on. I’m not trying to paint this piece from a pro-Endeavor stance or an anti-Endeavor stance but merely trying to explain how I interpreted the events of the High End fight and the thematic meanings it had as it unfolded. At the end of the day, we all have different opinions and interpretations and you have all the right to disagree with everything I’m writing in this post. 

(The case with Endeavor is very complicated and I don’t want to get to deep in to it here however) We definitely should not forget what Endeavor did in the past but at the same time we should not ignore the efforts and progress he has tried to make. While we must hold people accountable for their actions, it is not wrong for someone to want to change or become better. Endeavor may “fail” or he may be able to “succeed,” whatever either entails or looks like. However even though we do get the depiction of a rising sun, you have to remember that the sun also sets. 

Anyways, what has been established was that this fight is where Endeavor explicitly expressed his acknowledgement of the past (maybe not in its entirety but it is a big first step). And it is directly after this step that we take a deep dive in to what facing the past will look like for Endeavor.  

[whimsywispsblog]

RED

A/N: ANGST! ANGSTTTT!

TW: Blood, gore, graphical descriptions of corpses, panic attacks

Chapter 2- Tears

Working with Hudson wasn't as bad as Rei thought it would be. Granted, he's one hell of a moody bastard, but atleast he let her have her peace instead of glaring at her with those predator eyes like Adler's.

"Mr Hudson! Who is Bell?" Hudson looked at Rei and glanced down at the file she was holding, a little spark of discomfort kindled in his eyes.

"He was one of Perseus' agents who we managed to brainwash using the MK-Ultra. He was the most succ-"

"Mk-Ultra?! I thought that was a myth!" Hudson rolled his eyes, irritated at the girl's sudden interruption. She muttered a small 'sorry', biting her lower lip. Gah, I'm an idiot. Control yourself, dammit.

"What happened to him?"

"He had to be killed." Rei's eyebrows knitted in confusion. Her face tilted slightly, in curiosity. Hudson sighed softly and sat up straight, readying himself to indulge in her curiosity.

"He was a loose end. He could turn his back anytime, we never know." Rei looked back at her file. It had a bloody handprint on it. She ran her hand over the handprint. "Who killed him?"

"His handler, Adler." Rei inhaled sharply. So, he is putting my life in the hands of a man who can kill a person mercilessly. Lovely. Rei started fidgeting with her necklace again- too many questions swirled in her mind. Can I trust Adler? What if he thinks of me as a loose end too? Is that why Hudson wanted him with me? He should never know about my fath-

"What's on your mind?" Hudson stared into her dark chocolate brown eyes. He could see several questions sprouting from her head.

"It's just...He doesn't seem like the kind of guy I would like to work with. He just feels too...too closed off. I don't know if I can trust him." Hudson's lips curled into a small smile. He expected this to happen. "Rei. If you're worried about Adler turning his back on you, remember this: Adler is responsible for you during the mission, after that you're under my wing. You won't be working with him as much as you will with me." Rei gave a small wry smile. I am definitely not the first person Hudson has convinced about Adler's trustworthiness and goodwill.

"Anyway, speaking of Adler, he will come in tomorrow. He will brief you more on Bell if you're interested." Her face dropped into a sullen expression. For one whole week, much to her happiness, the scary-looking Mr Shades never crossed paths with her. It was as if he disappeared into thin air. Where he was, what he was doing, she did not care for it- she just didn't want to meet him and she prayed to every single God to make it happen. For once, the Gods did listen to my prayers!

"And a word of advice: Try not to get into his bad books," Chewing her thumbnail unconsciously, Rei bombarded her head with several scenarios. Wait...he advised me. Does that mean- Oh God, I am already a red flag to him. Fuck.

"Okay. Thank you, Mr Hudson." Back to the theatrics again, huh.

"Also, your flight to West Berlin has been scheduled for tomorrow, 3 am. Don't miss it."

3am?! Goddamit Hudson! Rei dramatically banged her head against the table, earning a small chuckle from the older man.

-

"Is that all we have on her? Nothing more?" Adler asked Sims.

"Nope. That's all we have. She looks pretty innocent to me, Doc. I wouldn't worry about her if I were you." Adler kept skimming through Rei's file for the nth time in the week. He could find nothing about the girl, except whatever Hudson had told him.

"That's exactly what bothers me. It's always the innocent ones." Sims raised an eyebrow at Adler. He wasn't looking at him, he was looking elsewhere. Following his line of sight, Sims finally understood who he was staring at, or more like, glaring at. Rei Ivanov. When he looked closer, it wasn't Rei who was in his line of sight. It was the object that she held onto which Adler threw his fierce glare at.

She was busy playing with her pendant again and in her hands, she held the brown file with the bloody handprint. Bell's file. Stuffing the file into a little owl-shaped bag, the girl left Langely. Adler's eyes trailed after Rei for a bit, till she was out of the man's sight. Sighing deeply he walked back to the office.

"Ah should have got my favourite winter coat." The girl wriggled in her sweater dress uncomfortably.

Back in her home, she immediately rushed towards the kitchen for a cup of hot cocoa. It was a simple yet sophisticated home. Black sofas with pink rugs and fairy lights adorned on the walls. A few pictures of some of the places she had been to during her time as a War Correspondent was neatly arranged on top of the small fireplace that she lit up whenever she felt lonely. Today was one of those days.

Curling on one of the sofas with her favourite cat plushie in one hand and hot cocoa in the other, Rei stared at the fireplace, the fire blazing in its pristine orange. She slowly leaned back, closing her eyes lightly. A lone tear-drop fell off her eye as she slowly started to walk down the memory lane.

Fire.

Screaming.

Fire.

A smell of burnt flesh filled the air. The skin of the burnt victims almost melted away, bones painted with blood-red sticking out of the corpses. Little moths sat on top of the corpses, devouring the flesh. Limbs hanging from a tree or a broken pole, some corpses with a body part missing, others have their intestines splattered out. Suddenly, two bloodied hands engulfed her. Turning around, she saw a man without half a face- his inners sticking out.

Rei gasped for breath as she opened her eyes. She fell off her sofa, her coca spilt on her expensive rug. She couldn't breathe- there was a pain in her chest. Clenching her chest, Rei tried to crawl towards the phone, but she couldn't move. She cried and cried- her tears flowed endlessly from her big doe-like eyes.

"Stop crying. Stop crying." She whispered to herself, slowly focusing on her breathing- her therapist's advice. That did the trick. It took her a good 15 minutes to recover from her sudden breakdown- one she had every night. She looked up at the clock. It was 4 hours to 3 am.

"I should pack, then leave. The maid can clean my rug." She muttered to herself slowly, trying to stand up with the help of the handle of her sofa.

-

"In short, the flight was shit, I am sleepy and I am starving," Hudson chuckled at Rei's extremely irritates answer. He had agreed to pick up Rei, thankfully, and brought her some food too, a sub with a nice cup of hot cocoa.

"How did you know I love cocoa?" Hudson smirked lightly, his eyes glued to the road.

"I am an agent for a reason, Rei." Rei rolled her eyes at the very vague reply. She continued munching on her sub, hungrily and trying to not make a mess in his car, which was extremely difficult for the poor girl.

After a very boring and painful two hours of travel, including pestering Hudson every five minutes with the question 'Are we there yet?'; the duo finally arrived at the safehouse. It was a big rusty monstrous building. It did have an eerie aura to it. Rei looked around the safehouse- it was just a green barren land.

"Come on in Rei, I want you to meet someone." A wave of social anxiety splashed over Rei as she awkwardly walked into the safehouse. Her nails dug deep into the soft flesh of her thumb and her teeth bit into her inner lips, drawing a little blood from the force.

"This is Helen Park, from MI6. She will be the one who will help you around with cross-referencing any intel we get." MI6! She's British, then? Must be an old acquaintance of the team.

Helen was a beautiful woman. She had a certain light charisma that radiated from her- one that was hard not to ignore. She did seem like a person one would immediately open their hearts out to- maybe because of her friendly and warm aura that was strikingly different from Hudson's and Adler's cold aura. Especially Adler's dark and unfriendly one. Rei shuddered at the thought of her first meeting with Adler lightly, but lucky for her, both the agents never noticed it.

Putting on her famous charming smile, Rei politely introduced herself to her, overemphasising her innocent exterior. Atleast my innocent face should keep me out of trouble. She hoped. And just as she hoped, Park did take in her innocent act. Good job Rei!

"Alright time for work," Hudson shouted out to the women. While Hudson was busy talking to Park about some meeting that should happen later, the evidence board had a picture of an old man in black and white, with a few red strings connecting him to other pictures that caught Rei's eye. Perseus.

"Rei, go to that room, there are a few files there. Try to piece together whatever you can. Park, you know what to do." Rei nodded, walking towards the room that Hudson had pointed out to.

It was a dark and dusty room. Cold too. Rei placed her bag on her table and fished through it. She pulled out a few papers that she had kept in her bag. They were some information about the operational Gulags and another tattered picture.

Thank you Rebecca for pulling those strings.

Rebecca, a close friend of Rei's was one woman who could pull several strings to get any amount of information. She knew quite a lot of people in the CIA- a few of them high up the food chain. She got Rei whatever she could get her hands on about the Gulags. And a small photograph of someone by the name Victor Kuzmin.

Taking the files Hudson had asked her to study, Rei kept them in front, the papers of the Gulag and Victor on her lap. "Okay! Time to start my reading on these. Maybe after my homework, I can casually pick a conversation with Hudson about the Gulag. No, maybe not Hudson." Rei kept trying to break her head over who to approach for the info about any recent survivors from the Gulag, but then there would be a high chance that she would be suspected, not to mention, her last name itself would have definitely raised a lot of eyebrows. Especially Adler's antennas, no doubt.

"Interesting, you're into Gulags." That dark gravelly voice. Adler. How the fuck did I not see him come in! Now he's definitely going to doubt me.

"Nice necklace," He exhaled his smoke, closing the door behind him, walking towards the young girl. The girl prayed and invoked all the Gods- old and new-to help her get out of the situation alive and unharmed.

"Ah yes. They pluck on my imagination- the whole setting of it. Quite poetic too- darkly poetic if someone were to write about, you know, a survivor who's been rotting in there for years, now out of the hellhole ready to-" Rei stopped herself immediately. I should have just stopped with poetic. Now he definitely thinks I'm looking for someone and from the looks of it, he might as well think I'm one of them.

"Mhmm. True." He walked closer to Rei, standing right next to her.

"A few days back a certain someone, a sort of a ghost from my past who I believe was rotting in the Gulag, escaped from there. Intel has it that he's one of Perseus'." He now said, looking at the tattered picture of Victor Kuzmin below the papers of the Gulag. Ah. So it was him who escaped.

Rei kept her expressionless facade on. On the inside, she was breaking and churning in fear and panic. She put on her innocent smile with big eyes. "Ah. How unfortunate. I hope you get him soon." Adler kept his steady glare at the girl, a scowl now forming. Sensing the tension, Rei's first instinct was to leave before she accidentally slipped something else, which will be interpreted as further something else by Adler.

"Uhm. It is late. I should get back to my apartment." She tried to slip away from Adler, but he caught her arm, his fingers deeply dug in her skin. The girl slightly winced in pain, looking up at the older man. "Hudson trusts you, but I don't. If I catch you stepping out of the line again, I will kill you."

The girl now put on her bitter face. When the hell did I step out of the line, asshole?! She couldn't stand his arrogance anymore. "And maybe you should try and keep your nose off my life." Never in a million years did she realise that she would regret the words that fell of her mouth. Fool! He's a fucking spy!

"You forget who I am Ivanov. I run the show here." His eyes glanced at the red necklace. Grabbing the pendant to his eye level, he looked back at her. "I won't be surprised if you turn out to be one of them. Advice: If you are, don't let me catch you."

Rei scoffed at the man. "And what, you're little threat is supposed to make my knees go all wobbly and make my lips quiver in fear?"

"They are already wobbly, Ivanov." This man's ego...

"Wobbly out of anger! And I would like to be called Rei if you please!" The girl darkly growled at him, earning a sharper glare from the man.

"Fucking brat," Adler muttered, letting the girl go. Once he was gone, she immediately rushed to the washroom nearby, locking it from the inside. Uncontrolled tears rolled down her eyes. Never had she been this intimidated by anyone in her life. And he is the guy I am supposed to work with. Thanks, Hudson.

Outside the safehouse, Adler lit up another cigarette.

"Weaver, I need you to look upon someone for me. Her name's Rei Ivanov. Also, see if you can find someone in the Gulag by the name 'Ivanov'."

"Alright. I will see what I can get, Adler." Adler ended his call. Looking back up at the skies, he tried to mentally chart a connection between Rei and Stitch, but he could make none.

"Who is she and who exactly is she searching for?" Adler ran a hand over his chin, deep in thought.

[intermundia]

sometimes i think about your post talking about farm life and seasonal depression and how maybe it's only natural because winter is the time when there's no harvest or anything really and farmers of old would just have to .. wait for spring to be productive again and how that translates to today and my soul is just Elated to be finally understood. like, your post brought such clarity for me that i'm more at peace not being 100% productive now that it's freezing balls outside because capitalist implants the idea that if you simply stop and wait you'll be committing some huge crime which is just....... not true at all. i have a right to slow down sweetie fuck off with your capitalist agenda. anyways huge ask but thank you so much for putting into words what i've been feeling for the past 10 years of "adulthood" you're the real og

Ahhh anon, thank you so much for this message!!! I’m so glad that post resonated with you too, I feel very strongly about it. We are so alienated from ourselves and so twisted by the demands of productivity.

If you don’t mind I’m going to throw out some quotes from Time Wars by Jeremy Rifkin, because it was a formative read for me on this topic. He argues that Western Civ has increasingly separated itself from the rhythms of nature through novel time-allocating devices like mechanical clocks and schedules.

For most of recorded history (and likely before), human lives were governed by the calendar, as opposed to a more modern invention, the schedule:

The calendar is past-oriented. Its legitimacy rests on commemoration. Calendar cultures commemorate archetypal myths, ancient legends, historical events, the heroic deeds of gods, the lives of great historical figures, and the cyclical fluctuations of astronomical and environmental phenomena. In calendar cultures, the future takes its meaning from the past. Humanity organizes the future by continually resurrecting and honoring its past experience. The schedule looks to the future, not the past, for its legitimacy. In schedule cultures, the future is severed from the past and made a separate and independent temporal domain. Scheduling cultures don’t commemorate, they plan. They are not interested in resurrecting the past but in manipulating the future. The schedule exerts far more control over time allocation than the calendar. The calendar regulates macro time—events spread out over the year, the schedule regulates micro time—events spread out over the seconds, minutes, and hours of the day. While modern calendars have become increasingly secularized, throughout most of history their social content was inseparably linked to their spiritual content. In traditional calendrical cultures the important times are sacred times and are observed through the commemoration of special holy days. The schedule, in contrast, is associated with productivity. Sacred values and spiritual concerns play little or no role in the formulation of schedules. Time, in the new scheme of things, is an instrument to secure output. Time is stripped of any remaining social content and transformed into pure utility (79-80).

One of the first groups to adopt a schedule were the Benedictines in the 6th century AD (followed not long after by merchants). The core belief of theirs was “idleness is the enemy of the soul” and organized every moment of the day into formal activity with bells tolling to move the monks to the next activity:

Of course, this kind of surrender to the dictates of the hour and its proscribed activity ensured that each monk’s time would be given over to the institution and its guardians. The individual monks were locked into a temporal order so rigidly defined that there was no time left for individual initiative. In this way, the monastery predated the autocratic state by nearly a millennium. To secure proper compliance with the proscribed schedule, the Benedictines developed a tool that could provide them with greater accuracy and precision of time measurement than could be obtained by reliance on bells and bell ringers. They invented the mechanical clock. Lewis Mumford once remarked that ‘the clock, not the steam engine, is the key machine of the Modern Age (82).

The abstract idea of regular time is something that is not innate in human lives. The way serfs organized their days was by sunrise, high noon, and sunset, and by the sermon bell from church. They did not have the same merciless subjective experience of seconds passing without productive work.

The first clocks had no dials. They merely sounded a bell on the hour... By the sixteenth century, clocks were chiming on the quarter hour and some were being constructed with dials to demarcate the passing of each hour. In the mid 1600s the pendulum was invented, providing a much more exacting and reliable timing mechanism. Shortly thereafter, the minute hand was introduced. The second hand did not make its debut until the early 1700s, when it was first used by astronomers, navigators, and doctors to record more accurate measurements. While the idea of minutes and seconds had been conceived back in the fourteenth century by mathematicians, it is important to bear in mind that they did not become part of the temporal consciousness of Western man and woman until they found their way onto the dial of the mechanical clock (85).

Basically, I wish people would stop feeling bad about struggling to work within the restraints and demands of capitalist schedule time, because it is a recent imposition, designed to capture and occupy all available physical/mental space. For spiritual reasons, maybe that is okay, but for capitalist ones? It made me feel crazy to not be able to work like an automaton moving from task to task, but I am not a Capitalist monk. My hours do not belong to god, or to the state, or to a corporation. My hours belong to me.

[highandlowculture]

MEET THE NEW WEST, SAME AS THE OLD WEST

In the second act of Once Upon A Time… In Hollywood, washed-up actor Rick Dalton is on the set of a TV western as his stuntman and best buddy, Cliff Booth is revisiting Spahn Ranch, a former set for movie westerns. The ranch has been taken over by a bunch of hippies who follow some guy name “Charlie”. The heavy of the hippies is a fella by the name of Tex Watson. When conflict arises between Cliff and the hippies, one of the girls runs off to fetch Tex, who’s busy showing a tourist couple around the ranch. Hearing that there’s trouble brewing, Tex snaps to it, galloping across the western landscape on horseback and wearing a black hat. It’s a sweeping shot straight out of a John Ford film. That’s when it clicked for me…

Tarantino has made his third western.

Although there were always spaghetti western elements in his films (especially in Kill Bill vol. 2), QT hadn’t made a full-fledged western until 2012’s Django Unchained. Though entertaining and with an African-American lead, the film is his most straight-forward movie. We know who the heroes are, we know who the villains are. Wrongs are righted with a six-shooter and a hero’s grin. Its followup was another western, 2015‘s The Hateful Eight, a much darker and far less heroic film. All of the characters are flawed if not outrightly fucked-up. If Django Unchained was the sumptuously shot crowd pleaser, The Hateful Eight was the claustrophobic, nihilistic reversal. The western myth of heroes and villains is subverted by an unsavory group of characters who drag each other through snow, blood and racial slurs. Maybe the Old West was a pretty rough place to live in after all!

And now, in 2019, QT transports us to another Old West: 1969 Hollywood.

Fifty years ago. Half a century. Pretty old, right?

Already contentious with reviewers, one of the main debates surrounding Once Upon A Time… In Hollywood is its handling of Sharon Tate and the Manson Family. In the summer of ’69, when Tate, her unborn baby and her houseguests were brutally murdered by three members of the Manson Family, it sent shockwaves throughout Hollywood and America. The utopian dream of the 1960s was over. That’s the sanitized, less complicated history anyway. At the time many people were blaming satanism and Tate’s husband Roman Polanski for his hedonistic ways. Plus anyone deep in the trenches of late 60s hipdom knew that some of the peace-and-love spouting Flower Children might be psychopaths that could turn on a dime. Such darkness was foreshadowed in the music of The Doors and Velvet Underground. As Joan Didion recalled in her seminal work The White Album:

“Black masses were imagined, and bad trips blamed. I remembered all of the day’s misinformation very clearly, and I also remember this, and wish I did not: I remember that no one was surprised.”

Knowing this I find it disappointing just how many reviewers fail to see how sympathetic QT is to Sharon and her friends. They’re shown as cool people with a good vibe (only Roman is shown to be prickish when he speaks rudely to a dog). Sharon and Jay Sebring like to listen to records and enjoy life. No satanism. No orgies. And Sharon’s a generous person. She picks up hippie hitchhikers and buys her husband a Thomas Hardy novel. She relishes the communal experience of watching herself in the Dean Martin film The Wrecking Crew. It’s not just about her. She’s enjoying the connection she’s making with the theater’s audience. On the infamous August night, the film’s narrator talks about how Sharon, in the late stage of her pregnancy, was feeling hot and anxious. In short, Sharon is humanized. She’s a thoughtful, spirited and benevolent presence throughout the film. I think reviewers who view her just as “a Barbie doll” are revealing more of their own lack of empathy than QT’s. And people getting hung-up on how many lines her character speaks have some skewed priorities. As if the only way a person has worth is if they talk a lot. Talking. Talking. Talking. There are so many empty vessels running at the mouth these days. Social media voices bombard us constantly. There’s something to be said for some quiet dignity every once in awhile. Regardless, Once Upon A Time… In Hollywood isn’t Sharon’s film and it’s not a biopic. It’s Rick and Cliff’s film and it’s a western.

If comedy is “tragedy plus time”, then the same can be said for any work of art. The mythology of the Old West often mixed historical and fictional characters. Whether they were Billy The Kid, Wyatt Earp or Butch Cassidy, we’ve seen countless retellings of their exploits, never exactly the same, never entirely accurate. That’s what makes it a myth. A good portion is made-up. Going back to Homeric and Arthurian legends, the foundation of storytelling has always been a collision of fact and fiction, chronicle and embellishment. People make too much of QT altering historic events. Are the Nazis of Inglourious Basterds and the Manson Family of Once Upon A Time… In Hollywood any different than any other mythical villains of earlier works of art? If a filmmaker can’t riff on a fifty-year-old historical event, then what are we really doing here? Do we just want the cinema of Marvel Comics and discreet biopics? QT doesn’t treat history any different than the filmmakers of the 1960s treated the events of the 1860s. Tex Watson, galloping away in his black hat, is a signpost for this. It’s QT’s way of saying: “Every time has its myths, every time has its black hats and white hats”. And the Manson Family, filled with bloodlust and megalomania from the top down, fulfill the role of black-hatted villains quite perfectly.

Does this make Rick and Cliff, two middle-aged white guys who love booze and hate hippies, our white-hatted heroes? Hell, no. With the exception of Django Unchained, that was never QT’s bag. He’s all about the anti heroes of spaghetti westerns and Sam Peckinpah films. Men who have done plenty of bad, sometimes unspeakable, things. They’re only the hero because they wrestle with their past and because there’s always a meaner, badder fella waiting to shoot it out with ‘em. Clint Eastwood’s character in the The Good, the Bad and the Ugly is only “Good” because Lee Van Cleef is so clearly “Bad” (and Eli Wallach “Ugly”). In 1992’s The Unforgiven, Eastwood’s character talks of killing “women and children” in his past. Yet he’s still clearly our hero. The Old West is a morally complex time in which one’s heroism is often defined by a greater and competing villainy.

So when it’s revealed that Cliff possibly murdered his wife and got away with it, he’s stepping into the role of anti hero with a dark past. Is Cliff haunted by his past? Not seemingly. He’s more inclined to shrug it off with a smirk and swig of beer. Shit happens y’know. This makes him exactly the type of guy murderous hippies shouldn’t fuck with. They justify their bloodlust with a self-serving philosophical bent: Entertainers taught them to kill via TV and movies, so it’s okay to kill the people who are involved in making TV and movies. QT makes the bold and provocative choice to not confirm whether Cliff did or didn’t kill his wife, but if he did, he probably wouldn’t dress it up as anything other than a burst of brutish violence that he was lucky to get away with. He loves his dog though, and he’s a good friend. In real life that might not justify liking the guy, but in a western that’s usually enough. Ultimately these character choices made by QT are to set up a mythic showdown between Cliff and the Manson Family. He’s good because they’re bad. It’s the same reason Cliff was shown going head-to-head with Bruce Lee. Masked racism by QT, a known lover of Asian and martial arts films, or a way of building up Cliff’s status to mythical proportions? There was once this ex war hero, who became a stuntman and maybe killed his wife, and he once threw Bruce Lee into a car door on the set of The Green Hornet! Cliff is Paul Bunyan. He’s Bill Brasky. A folk hero for stuntmen and for his time.

And did you hear that one tale about Cliff and the Manson Family…?

Rick’s bread and butter is now guest-starring on various TV shows in which he plays the heavy and gets his ass kicked by the show’s star at the end of the episode. Rick is a boozy, bloated hot mess of a man who’s prone to crying. A lot. His first burst of tears in the film is at the Musso & Frank parking lot, after an agent gives Rick a harsh dose of reality regarding the state of his career. Cliff, always keeping his cool, gives Rick his sunglasses and says, “Don’t cry in front of the Mexicans.” Remember — this is a western. Anyway, if Cliff fills the role of macho, gives no fucks, murderous outlaw, Rick is the contrasting “modern man” or, to use a western term, “tenderfoot”. The film begins with a behind the scenes segment for Rick’s old show Bounty Law. In it an interviewer talks to Rick and Cliff about what a stuntman does. During the interview there’s a quip about Cliff carrying Rick’s load. So right out of the gate, QT brings our attention to the idea that Cliff is the real deal and Rick’s the actor playing a role. This notion is repeated throughout the film (even one of the Manson Girls, “Pussy”, makes reference to Cliff being more authentic because he’s a stuntman rather than an actor). Regardless of whether Cliff murdered his wife or not, he’s an ex military man and war hero, so obviously he’s killed people before. So in addition to taking falls and performing dangerous stunts for Rick, he’s more of a bona fide western anti hero than Rick ever could be. Fittingly, while Cliff and the Manson Family black hats are sizing each other up at Spahn Ranch, Rick is busy acting in a TV western. And Rick keeps crying. A lot. He even cries in front of a little girl who simultaneously coddles and reprimands him. No doubt, Cliff would view this as potentially worse than crying in front of Mexicans. But Rick can’t help himself. He’s both a man of his time and out of time. He can’t roll with the hippies and spaghetti westerns but he’d never last a day in Cliff’s shoes let alone the wild frontier. Even at the end, in which Rick finally gets the chance to become an avenging hero (involving possibly the greatest payoff in cinematic history) if one steps back and thinks of the climactic set-piece, Rick is merely stepping in at the end to grab all the glory after Cliff and his wonderful dog Brandy did most of the heavy lifting. Thus Cliff is yet again carrying Rick’s load.

But this doesn’t mean Rick doesn’t have a victory. He does. It just comes at the midpoint, and it’s the closest thing to a real-life victory in the film. When Rick shows up to play the heavy in the TV western, he’s reached his low-point. Like a different part of the anatomy going into ice-water in Raging Bull, Rick is submerging his face into ice-water in his trailer, struggling with a hangover and hopelessness. Making matters worse, the artsy director shows up and tells Rick he wants him to play a hippie-style outlaw with a fringe jacket, mustache and long hair. The only thing Rick does more than drink and cry is insult hippies. He’s living his worst nightmare as an actor. QT makes another one of his most interesting choices by showing the subsequent scenes from the TV show in the same film stock and style as the main narrative. Thus when juxtaposed to Cliff at Spahn Ranch, Rick’s battle with his growing irrelevance as an actor is given the same cinematic weight. This isn’t just a TV show within the movie — it is the movie! This battle or showdown is just as important as Cliff’s eventual showdown with the Manson Family. Rick struggles. He fucks up his lines. He comes totally unglued in his trailer. This looks like the end of the road for him as an actor. He eventually gets his shit together, embraces the role and goes for broke. It’s a credit to both QT as a filmmaker and Leo DiCaprio as an actor that the villain Rick plays in the TV show ends up being more intense and visceral than the one he played in the main narrative of Django Unchained. Rick’s chops as an actor are restored and he decides to go to Italy and star in spaghetti westerns. He learns to maximize his talent in order to roll with the times.

A protagonist who is at odds with changing times might seem regressive or even reactionary to some people today, but it’s also a hallmark of westerns, especially the westerns of the late 1960s and early 1970s. From Once Upon a Time in the West to Butch Cassidy and the Sundance Kid, an impending future of railroads and industrialization is always treated with uneasiness by the heroes. These changing times aren’t going to include them. Their wild and free ways will soon come to an end. Nowhere is this theme most prominent than in the work of Sam Peckinpah. In many of his westerns, The Wild Bunch, The Ballad of Cable Hogue, Pat Garrett and Billy the Kid, the heroes are viewed as endangered creatures who are all too aware of their fate. The character of Cable Hogue even meets his end when a motor car rolls over him. He’s killed by the modern age! Another Peckinpah film from this era, Junior Bonner, is set in 1972 Arizona but can also be considered a western (creating a template for QT’s western that’s not set in the canonical “Old West”). The protagonist and title character is an aging rodeo star (brilliantly played by Steve McQueen, who perhaps not so coincidentally also appears in QT’s film). In Peckinpah’s film, Junior has lost his edge and returns home to take a breather and maybe get his chops back. His struggle is not unlike Rick Dalton’s. They’re both aging entertainers and they both fear they’re washed-up. And as with all of Peckinpah’s westerns, encroaching progress is a threat to Junior’s simple cowboy ways. All of these above mentioned westerns are filled with a bittersweet quality; a nostalgic snapshot that’s destined to become yellow and brittle. The power of myths is they suggest immortality for our heroes.They might be long gone but they live through these tales. Whether’s it’s the Old West of outlaws in dusty little towns or the Old West of ’69 Hollywood, people once lived in these places and they lived vibrant, foolhardy and sometimes dangerous lives. Maybe they didn’t live or die exactly as the tale accounts, but they did indeed live and they did indeed die.

In his film QT references another “man out of time” western: The Life and Times of Judge Roy Bean. Written by John Milius, directed by John Huston and starring Paul Newman, the film is a highly-fictionalized account of the life of Judge Roy Bean. At the climax an elderly Roy Bean reemerges from a self-imposed exile to have a showdown with businessmen who have surrounded his beloved town with oil rigs. When his enemies ask who he is, Roy Bean shouts “Justice, you sons of bitches!” This is immediately followed by a shootout in which Roy defeats his foes, blows up the surrounding oil rigs and goes out in a blaze of glory. In real life Roy Bean died in his bed after a heavy bout of drinking. What’s most interesting is how QT referenced The Life and Times of Judge Roy Bean. After the climax of Once Upon A Time… In Hollywood there’s a triumphant but wistful epilogue in which one of our heroes is faced with a future that we all know is a fantasy. Over this scene is an evocative piece of music that sounds like it’s from a fairytale and it plays over the end credits. The piece of music is entitled “Miss Lillie Langtry” and it’s the main theme from The Life and Times of Judge Roy Bean. Lillie Langtry was a British-American socialite Roy Bean was enamored with and he even went so far to name the saloon in his town after her. “Miss Lille Langtry” plays over the end credits of Once Upon a Time… In Hollywood and the opening credits of The Life and Times of Judge Roy Bean. But before the credits in Roy Bean we see written in storybook fashion:

“Near the turn of the last century the Pecos River marked the boundaries of civilization in western Texas. West of the Pecos there was no law, no order, and only bad men and rattlesnakes lived there.

…Maybe this isn’t the way it was… it’s the way it should be.”

With Once Upon a Time… In Hollywood, Quentin Tarantino pays homage to a socialite/actress who was tragically murdered before her time and two endangered heroes—one an outlaw stuntman, the other an entertainer—neither of who existed but men like them did. For two hours and forty-five minutes, the onward march of tragedy and time is defeated through a spirited, Old West mix of bravado and audacity. Maybe it’s not the way it was…

But it’s the way it should be.