#a fundamental thought the human race has been having for a very long time

[covid-safer-hotties]

Also preserved in our archive

A disgustingly economic discussion that is far more clear about the realities of covid than what our governments are telling us

“There is a huge delusion at the moment that COVID is over and when we talk about it, we say ‘when the pandemic happened’ but actually it is still happening,” he said. “So, insurance companies need to be very conscious of that and to be thinking ahead. Swiss Re has a powerful role across the market to make sure that this is being thought about. “In our view, there are a range of scenarios, but most of them anticipate a return to normality in five to 10 years, depending on your level of optimism. And we think that because of the other more fundamental movements happening around cancer, lifestyle risk and eventually Alzheimer's, to name the three biggest ones, that mortality improvements will also return over the longer term.”

By Mia Wallace

“COVID-19 is far from over.”

A recent Swiss Re report suggested potential excess mortality in the general population of up to 3% in the US and 2.5% in the UK by 2033 in a pessimistic scenario, highlighting the lingering impact of COVID-19 – both as a direct cause of death and as a contributor to cardiovascular mortality.

Discussing the report with Re-Insurance Business, Paul Murray (pictured), CEO of L&H Reinsurance at Swiss Re, outlined some of the key ageing and mortality trends shaping the life and health reinsurance market today. “Of course, we saw excess mortality when we were locked down and experiencing the pandemic but now we’ve returned to normal life, we think it’s over and it’s not. People are still getting ill with the COVID infection and they’re still dying.”

The debate for the market now is how long that trend is likely to continue, and whether its impact will fade over time – with Swiss Re’s recent report offering multiple scenarios into the reinsurance giant’s viewpoint on that question. Top of mind is understanding the key factors driving future mortality trends and changing life expectancy statistics – and how these influencing factors may change going forward.

What are the top trends driving future mortality trends? Pinpointing some of the key considerations driving future mortality trends, Murray underscored the need to look at historical data. “The headline for me is always that there has been a phenomenal period of mortality improvements, of life expectancy extending. This is probably one of the biggest social transformations that the human race has been through.

“One of the main drivers of that has been cardiovascular improvements. Smoking cessation helped a lot towards that in the 20th century and is continuing now as well. There’s also new technology that enables low-intervention cardiovascular surgery, like stents. We’ve shifted from a lot of surgery having to be open-heart and high-risk in an operating theatre to in-and-out in a day with injected stents. It has been completely transformational.”

Where do medical advances go next? The ”plumbing” of the human body and the way it’s protected and healed by modern medicine has been largely optimised, he said, but now some of the benefits of that is starting to level off. Looking to the future, he sees that there is still the potential for some further improvements as a factor driving increased life expectancy, particularly amid improving access to information and education about healthy living choices – and improving intervention techniques.

“When we look forward, I anticipate the area where we have the best chance of improvements is on the cancer side,” he said. “Comparatively to cardiovascular risk, improvements to cancer treatments have been relatively low in the past. Of course, it’s very complex as 'cancer' is a bucket term which combines 200-plus types, but we are seeing some very promising technologies emerging here that will help address that.

“Take mRNA vaccines, for instance, which are not new but became very prominent in the pandemic, specifically as it helped us develop vaccines very quickly. mRNA capabilities, combined with immunotherapy, are currently in trials, and showing very significant improvements in outcomes for cancer patients in specific causes. And we've only really started scratching the surface of that. Looking 10-to-30 years out, which is the duration we have to think about as life insurers, we think that’s a prominent contributor to future improvement.”

Alzheimer's is another pressing area for consideration, he said, as, with people generally living longer, this is becoming a much more significant risk. Due to a myriad of reasons, more people than ever are living with Alzheimer’s today and society is being increasingly challenged to deal with it and to support those living with the disease. “Again, improvements in dealing with Alzheimer's historically have not been that great, and I think this is one area where there's the potential for a meaningful breakthrough, and we're starting to see some signs of that in scientific research.”

Understanding the impact of lifestyle factors on future mortality trends An interesting element shaping discourse in the life and health reinsurance market is the question of the impact of lifestyle factors on future mortality trends. Murray noted that if you characterize overall mortality rates into lifestyle or non-communicable diseases, between 30-40% of mortality is driven by lifestyle choices – including such factors as what you eat, whether you smoke, whether you exercise, how much sugar you eat, and how you manage your stress.

The insured population are typically quite happy to engage with that, he said, and Swiss Re is seeing improvement on those metrics, but there remain large swathes of the overall population who don’t engage in that conversation. As more data emerges over time, he believes the market will start to see stronger connections between activity and outcomes which, in turn, will help it to drive better results.

“An interesting area here is diabetes and Swiss Re is taking a leadership position on this globally,” he said. “We regularly engage with policymakers around the world – with doctors and thinkers on nutrition and food policy in particular – to [highlight] how your diet has a big impact on your health, but also to assess whether the current advice is appropriate for the future.

“Obesity and diabetes continue to increase. That debate has a long way to go, but if it continues to evolve positively, it will have a positive impact on mortality.”

Poor metabolic health drives obesity and diabetes, which are offsetting previous advances made by treating cardiovascular diseases and smoking cessation. The emergence of GLP-1/GIP weight loss injectables has shown early promise in reducing weight and improving baseline clinical risk factors, when combined with long-term lifestyle alterations. Although long-term data doesn’t yet exist on the impact of GLP-1 drugs, in the short term these medications are showing positive results in reducing all-causes, and specifically cardiovascular mortality. In addition, the drugs appear to positively affect a range of other conditions such as cancer, liver and kidney diseases, and even neurodegenerative diseases.

When will excess mortality return to pre-pandemic levels? Underpinning the broader conversation is the big question on the minds of many across the life and health reinsurance market – when, or if, excess mortality will return to pre-pandemic levels. Swiss Re’s recent paper posited both a pessimistic and an optimistic scenario because its role is not to say what will happen, but rather to encourage people to think about the tail risk of the COVID crisis and how it might play out.

“There is a huge delusion at the moment that COVID is over and when we talk about it, we say ‘when the pandemic happened’ but actually it is still happening,” he said. “So, insurance companies need to be very conscious of that and to be thinking ahead. Swiss Re has a powerful role across the market to make sure that this is being thought about.

“In our view, there are a range of scenarios, but most of them anticipate a return to normality in five to 10 years, depending on your level of optimism. And we think that because of the other more fundamental movements happening around cancer, lifestyle risk and eventually Alzheimer's, to name the three biggest ones, that mortality improvements will also return over the longer term.”

Study link: www.swissre.com/institute/research/topics-and-risk-dialogues/health-and-longevity/covid-19-pandemic-synonymous-excess-mortality.html

[starlightkyeom]

some habits are hard to break | feat. jungkook

(where you know that jungkook is the last person you should keep running back to, but neither of you can seem to let the other go.)

pairing: jungkook x fem!reader genre: angst, smut, est. relationship rating: explicit, minors DNI word count: ~12.5k warnings: the relationship isn't healthy (but they're very human), miscommunications, misplaced hope, bad habits, unhealthy coping mechanisms, cheating (reader on unnamed boyfriend), mentions of past trauma (reader), mentions of therapy, mentions of mental health struggles (reader), explicit smut: unprotected sex (don't do this), fingering (f. receiving), oral sex (f. receiving), handjob, semi public sex (behind a closed door at a club), teasing, hair pulling, light choking, i think that's it but let me know if i missed anything

a/n: she is finally here! i did not expect this fic to take me this long, but here we are. thank you to one of my favorite humans @ugh-yoongi for reading this over and assuring me they weren't terrible, just human. this story feels personal to me so that was reassuring.

a/n 2: lauren has asked for a pt 2, so i’ll be writing that after i get through both my collabs due in august 💕 banner/divider credit: my bby @classicscreations who always comes through tagging: @pjmparadise @axialitae

Every single thought is the same. You know better than to send the text sitting on your phone. You know precisely why it’s wrong. You know that nothing is ever going to change.

Here’s the thing. You’re in a healthy, stable relationship with someone who’s good to you and for you. He’s honest and caring, funny and sweet. Despite all of your baggage, he never makes you feel less than, never makes you feel broken. This is the first time in your life that you’ve been able to lay all your shit on the table and have someone accept it unconditionally. And he always does what he says he’s going to. You’re never up waiting at 2 in the morning, wondering where he is because he hasn’t called or texted.

So, yeah, things with him are good, great even.

But…

And that’s the thing, isn’t it? As soon as there’s a but, it’s like you can’t see all of the good. It’s all just a placeholder before what may be the worst three-letter word in the English language. You wonder if it means there’s just something fundamentally wrong with you. Who looks for the “buts” of every situation? Why can’t you just appreciate all the truly wonderful things in your relationship?

Because you’ve had the one thing you’re missing. You know it exists and it’s hard to forget.

Your boyfriend is great, perfect, even, in almost every way that matters. It’s just, you’re not exactly…satisfied. And you know that you could guide him to be better for you in that way. He just seems a bit sensitive about it at times and you don’t want to make him feel less than since he never does that to you.

This is exactly why you’re staring at your phone. Paralyzed because you both want to send the text and know you really can’t. Your body remembers his, remembers the way the slightest touch sent your heart racing. You try to also remember every word he’s ever uttered to you, too, because he’s always been very clear about who he is.

It’s fucked up that you’re even considering it, beyond wrong that you typed those 5 words out in an empty conversation thread. (Even though you usually keep every conversation, you deleted this one after you got serious about your boyfriend. You say it’s to keep the temptation away, but really, how well is that working now?)

You: what are you up to?

Just like that, your need to fill your desires wins out against every other rational thought you have. Part of you hopes that he doesn’t respond. It’s been months since you last spoke and you know he’s got a short attention span. Maybe he’ll spare you having to make a final decision.

Jungkook: out getting some drinks with friends

He doesn’t. His answer comes in far quicker than you expect it to and you get that same feeling in your stomach. Like anticipation mixed with desire. You’re so fucked.

Jungkook: what are you up to?

Tomorrow you’ll look back and realize this is a chance to bow out, to realize that this is a mistake. That you hadn’t sealed your fate when you sent the first message. You could still just bow out and walk away, leave the message unanswered.

You don’t.

You: nothing, just at home alone Jungkook: what about the boyfriend? You: away for work

You know that you should feel bad now. A normal person might realize that this was destructive behavior, that you’re purposely sabotaging your own long-term happiness for instant gratification. At least, that’s what your therapist tells you.

Jungkook: I can be home in 15 minutes, I’m just around the corner

The message is really your last chance, whether you consciously think about it or not. There was no preamble with Jungkook. He assumes you’re texting him so you can come over. And he’s right, isn’t he? You weren’t exactly texting to catch up with someone you weren’t ever friends with anyway. No, you’re both adults and you know what this is. Just like you’ve always known.

You: give me 30 and I’ll be over

Was there really any other outcome? From the moment you opened Jungkook’s contact to start a text, this was the inevitable end. You can pretend that you have control and you were on the fence. But, you know the truth, and so does Jungkook. He knows it from the moment your name appears on his lock screen. This only ends one way, the same way it’s ended countless times before.

Thirty minutes later, after cleaning up and getting dressed, you stand on Jungkook’s doorstep. There’s a moment where you genuinely question if this is smart. Smart is the wrong word, you think. Of course, this is fucking stupid. You could ask 100 people and every single one of them would probably tell you to turn around. So no, this isn’t smart.  The real question is if you’re going to do it anyway.

Jungkook opens the door before you even knock and the question dies. There he is, in baggy sweatpants and a t-shirt, like the true fuckboy you know he is, and your body remembers. It remembers every kiss, every touch, every tremble. It starts to react without your permission.  By the smirk he’s wearing, you can tell Jungkook remembers too.

“Right on time,” he says, leaning against the door frame like he needs the support.

“Are we gonna have a whole conversation out here?” It’s a challenge and a mistake all rolled into one.

He doesn’t answer, just moves aside so that you can step past him. There’s a moment, as you’re stepping past him and glancing around his apartment, of nerves. Of wondering what the fuck is going on. But his apartment hasn’t changed, not that you expected it to, and neither has he.

“Want anything to drink?” he asks, moving around you to the kitchen. He looks back over his shoulder at you, a confident smirk on his lips. “We could do a couple shots.”

“Trying to get me drunk?” you wonder. Still, you follow him into the kitchen.

“No, definitely not.” His answer is swift and his eyes roam over you, appraising. “You just seem a little on edge.”

“Wonder why that is,” you huff out.

Jungkook leans back against the counter, eyes still trained on you. “If you don’t want to be here…”

“I didn’t say that either,” you respond.

There’s this weird tension settling between the two of you and you’re not really sure what to do about it. Not really sure how to get out of your head for even a second. That’s when you feel Jungkook’s hands on your hips, pulling you back against his body where he still leans against the counter.

“I don’t want you to feel pressured,” he says and dips his head to kiss along your jawline.

“I don’t,” you respond.

“Do you want me to stop?” he whispers against your skin as he continues to kiss down your neck.

The only thing that comes out for a second is a hum when Jungkook lightly sucks at the base of your neck where it meets your collarbone. “No.”

“Are you sure?” He’s pulled back now and looking you directly in the eye.

You take a breath and then another when your heart starts to speed up. The only thoughts are of his lips on yours, his fingers grazing along your body. Slowly your fingers trail up his arms and he doesn’t move at all. Just watches you and waits for you to make your decision. Leaves it all up to you.

So you do the only thing you can, the only thing you were going to do once you sent that text. You let your fingers find purchase in his hair and you press your lips hard against his. He’s turning the two of you around in an instant so it’s you pressed into the counter. The kiss is hard and desperate, like you’ve both been starved and this is the only way to solve that. His hands feel like they’re everywhere and it’s still not enough, not completely what you need. Nobody has ever set your body on fire just from kissing the way Jungkook does. It’s bliss the way your brain goes almost silent except for thoughts of him. And you know he’s just as turned on, can feel it in the way he’s pressing against you.

Jungkook kisses down your neck again and you don’t even bother to hold back the moan. When you feel him lightly sucking into your skin before pulling away, part of you wishes he’d do it harder. Wishes he’d leave a mark. Wishes for something to show what you’re doing here tonight without you having to say it. He doesn’t, though, and you know he wouldn’t even if you asked.

Instead he pulls away, smirks at your whimper from the lack of contact, and reaches for the hem of your shirt. He’s still asking permission, so you give it. Your shirt and bra disappear in record time and his mouth is back on. Softly kissing down the space between your breasts and across the underside of one. It’s too much, the way he knows exactly what you need, the way his lip ring teases you as he moves across your skin, the way he stops to just look at you when he knows he’s driving you crazy.

Well, you think, two can play at that game. Before he even realizes what you’re doing, you’re spitting into your hand and reaching inside his sweats and boxers (since he’s annoyingly still clothed). You’re slowly dragging your hand along his length, moving painfully slowly. He groans when you slide your thumb over his tip and pulls back.

“Fuck,” he says and slowly pulls your hand out.

“What?” you ask, actually confused.

“Come on, I can’t fuck you against this counter but if we don’t get out of here, I’m gonna try,” he says and pulls you along into the bedroom.

Jungkook kisses you hard and lightly pushes you back onto the bed. You prop yourself up to watch him quickly undress. You love watching the way his muscles contract with each movement, love the lean lines of his body, absolutely love everything about him. If he sees you watching him, which you’re sure he does, he doesn’t say anything. Instead he leans over you, kisses you hard again as he pulls your pants and underwear off nearly in one motion.

“Eager,” you taunt.

“You won’t be saying that when you can’t walk tomorrow,” he says.

Before you can answer, Jungkook is flipping you over so that you’re on your hands and knees, pressing down on your back so your ass is in the air. You’re a little surprised, because usually he takes his time with you. Not that you’re complaining. He moves on the bed and then you hear a bottle opening seconds before you feel the cold liquid at your entrance. He may be a lot of things, but he always makes sure you’re taken care of.

Despite his words, he still slides into you slowly and lets you adjust to him. His hands grip your hips tightly as he rolls his hips into you almost carefully, like he’s not sure if you’re adjusted. It’s bordering on painful that he’s so still.

“Fuck Jungkook, move,” you whine.

“What’s that?” he asks.

“Just fuck me, please fuck me,” you beg and you hear the low chuckle.

“Thought you’d never ask,” he says and snaps into you hard.

“Fuckkkkkk,” you draw out.

Removing one hand from your hip, he presses you back down into the mattress. You arch your back further so he has a better angle and let the pillow muffle your moans. It mixes with his own groans and the slap of his skin against yours every time he buries himself fully inside you. There’s something frantic about it and you’re sure this is what you’ve been missing. Sure this is what you need. He removes his hand from your hip again and roughly slaps your ass.

“Oh my god, Jungkook,” you yell.

He slaps your other ass cheek and it makes you scream out again. Yes, this is what you need. Someone to be a little rougher with you. Someone who doesn’t treat you like you’re going to break or worry if you can take it because he knows. He knows exactly what you can take and exactly what you like. Him pulling on your hair is only further proof of that.

And then he’s pulling you to him, so that your back is against his chest. The new angle has him hitting deeper inside you, reaching that spot that nearly has you seeing stars. Jungkook moves his hand out of your hair around your neck, gripping lightly.

“Do you like that, baby?” he whispers roughly in your ear.

“Yes,” you moan out.

“Because I fuck you the best,” he continues.

“Jungkook, fuck, just fucking choke me, please,” you beg, unbothered by how much you’re begging him.

That doesn’t need any answer from him beyond his fingers tightening around your throat. It’s the perfect pressure too, just like every other time he’s choked you while fucking. It makes you feel a little lightheaded but also like everything feels that much more amplified. Every hard thrust into your cunt pushes you closer to the edge. Every breath sounds louder. Everything is just more.

He also knows your body to know when you’re close. You almost whine when he removes his hand from your throat because you felt like you were about to come. And then he rubs a thumb over your clit, continues to make sure you come first, like always.

“Fuck, fuck, I’m gonna come,” you shout.

“Come on baby, I wanna feel you come,” he says into your ear.

It’s the only permission you need as you let go. Somewhere, in the haze of your high, you can tell that he’s coming too, that his release comes just after yours. It’s all you can do not to slump against his body, though. His arms are strong around you as he pulls out so that both of you can lay down on the bed.

A few minutes later, after he’s cleaned you both off and you’re lying together in bed, you wonder how you’re going to extract yourself. You’ve never really felt awkward around him, so you’re not really sure why you do now.

“I should be going,” you say and start to sit up.

Jungkook is quick to pull you back down. He meets your look of confusion with nothing but desire. You think, not for the first time, it’s the kind of look that you drown in. The kind of look that ruins you.

“And just where do you think you’re going?” he asks.

“Home?” you offer.

“Why?” he fires back.

“I don’t know, Jungkook, we already fucked,” you say. Part of you is a little exasperated at having to spell it out.

“Do you really think I’m going to let you leave here when I haven’t even tasted you?” he asks.

Fuck.

(He follows through with exactly what he says. It’s slow and measured, like he wants to pull apart every thread you have one by one. Like he wants to ruin you for anyone that isn’t him. Like he doesn’t know he already has.

The lip ring is new since the last time you fucked him and you’re not sure if you’ll even be able to tell when he’s between your legs. Until you’re praising him so loudly you’re sure his neighbors must hear. Or maybe it’s just because he’s so good at getting you off. Even if tonight, he takes his time, brings you to the edge over and over before finally letting you slip over.

It’s the early hours of the morning by the time you’re both worn out. You offer to call a ride, only to have him insist you stay. It’s much too late to be going anywhere when he’d be worried if you were safe or not. So you stay and it’s the best sleep you’ve gotten in awhile.)

The wait is excruciating. Your boyfriend comes home tonight and it’s terrible timing, you know, but you also know that you have to tell him what happened. It isn’t fair to him to just go on without knowing. He’s one of the kindest people in the world, doesn’t deserve this. He’s not broken like you, something you’ve pointed out since the beginning. Maybe those intrusive thoughts were right and you just aren’t built for healthy relationships.

Although you haven’t told many of your friends what happened, you had to confide in a few. Each of them tells you that you shouldn’t tell him what happened. They say that it’s just one of those things where confessing might make you feel better, but it’ll only make him feel shitty. It’s hard to know how he’ll feel. Shitty is probably fair. But, you think they’re wrong about how you’ll feel. Getting this off your chest will just replace one weight with another. Wanting to come clean isn’t about clearing your own conscience. It’s about honesty and him having the ability to make an informed decision.

It actually goes far better than you thought, somehow. He’s hurt, how could he not be? Despite that, he’s calm in the conversation. Instead of breaking it off there and then, which is what you expect, he suggests taking a step back. It’ll allow the relationship to be less defined and maybe less serious. You can’t really believe it when he says that he’s there to work things out with you and give you the space to figure out what you need. It breaks your heart a little bit more, somehow, to see him so patient with you. You don’t deserve it.

Instead of seeing this as a failure, he wants you to see it for what he sees it as. This is just a slip, a step back. There’s been so much trauma in your life that it’s natural for you to have moments where you slip. He’s hurt, yes, he’ll admit that, but he’s not angry with you. At the end of the day, he genuinely cares for you and he’s willing to do whatever it is the both of you need in order to move forward. You both agree that therapy as a couple might be important. However, he insists that it can wait while you sort through how you’re feeling.

Overall, you think you feel okay about it. Things will look different with him for the time being, but you can actually see past this moment in time. That’s new for you. You’re feeling hopeful for the future and you even let yourself imagine a future with him in it. Maybe this isn’t the end of the world after all. Maybe this is just something you actually needed to close a chapter.

Weeks go by. Therapy is back to being once a week, sometimes twice when the sessions fit into your work schedule, and you do trust this therapist. Really, you do. She listens to everything you say and interjects in meaningful ways. It’s clear that she’s actually listening to you and giving you genuine feedback, rather than some previous therapists that only asked how something made you feel. Sitting in that office has forced you to face a lot of deep-seated issues, everything from your childhood to past relationships to the deepest recesses of your mind. Sometimes you don’t really want to relive those moments, but she’s always done a good job of explaining why you need to do the work.

But…

And there it is, again, that stupid three-letter word that brings everything to a screeching halt.

Despite all your therapist’s work, there’s a part of you that doesn’t see the future anymore. Therapy is wonderful and you’re actually really thankful you found this therapist. You’re sleeping better, you feel lighter, and the world doesn’t feel like it’s going to crush you every day. Maybe she’s a little too good at her job, though, because you’re wondering how to move forward. Your boyfriend is perfect…for someone. And you’re not sure anymore if that someone is you.

It’s been weeks and he’s still just content to take the backseat while you do whatever work you need to do. It’s stupid, you know it’s stupid, but you want him to fight for you. You want to see that he is actually upset over what happened with Jungkook. It’s not healthy, you know that and your therapist reminds you it’s not healthy. You’re doing everything you can to make your brain catch up that it’s not healthy. You can’t shake it, though. All the doubts and insecurities creep back in when he still doesn’t seem bothered.

So you do the only thing you can think of, the thing your therapist disagrees with. Well, disagrees with the reasoning, not with the idea itself. You break off the relationship. He tries to approach it in such a way that leaves the door open for you both to come back to it down the road. You don’t want loose ends, so you lie. It hurts to see his face crumble when you say you just don’t love him and he should find someone that does. It’s cruel. You hate yourself for doing it. But you think it’s easier this way. This is too comfortable and you don’t want to string him along.

Then, you make the second decision your therapist disagrees with and text Jungkook. After seeing she can’t make you see her perspective on the break-up, she suggests spending some time alone to learn more about yourself. That’s terrifying. If she could hear your thoughts, surely she would not suggest leaving you alone with them. They’re intrusive and self-sabotaging and just loud, so loud.

Unsurprisingly, Jungkook is happy to hear from you, happier still to know that you’re unattached again. Not that he minds being discreet, he’s happy to confine things to the four walls of his apartment. It’s just that he also likes to get you dressed up and go out. He’s always liked having someone pretty on his arm, even if he’s just at some local sports bar.

That’s not where you end up tonight, though. Your head is especially loud and you want some quiet. Need to get lost in something other than the potential mess you’re making of your life. When Jungkook suggests a club a friend of his owns, you say yes before he even finishes asking. The place is familiar to you and it’s perfect, in all its noise, low lighting, and crowded spaces. There’s no better way (at least as far as you know) of quieting your brain than going somewhere even louder.

It’s easy to get lost, several drinks in, as you press your back into Jungkook on the dance floor. The tight dress that seemed like such a good idea rides up your thighs now, with a little help from the light sheen of sweat covering your body and a little more help from Jungkook’s hands that grip you tightly.

Everything is familiar. You’ve been here before, to this exact club with Jungkook, more than once. And it’s the kind of easy you’re looking for now. As his hand inches further up your thigh, you press further back into him, looking to erase any space between the two of you. Tonight is just to forget and Jungkook is excellent at that.

Maybe if you were a little less drunk, you would stop his hand. You are in public, after all. As it is, you really don’t care. He likes to tease, gets off knowing someone may see, and you’re not in the mood to put a stop to it. Tonight, he seems even more daring than usual. He lets his thumb graze the thin layer of fabric at your core, likely feeling how much you want him. You shudder as his warm breath tickles your ear.

“There’s a storage closet in the back that might be unlocked,” he says, voice low with desire.

And that’s new because you’re certain that of all the times you’ve fucked Jungkook, none of them have been at the club. It’s been close, getting a little carried away under the table in one of the VIP booths, running his hand up your shirt on the dance floor, but you’ve never fucked him here. You’re also a little too tipsy to register that at the moment when all you want is him.

It’s too loud for you to answer him so you just squeeze his hand and nod. That’s all the permission he needs, anyway. Before you can give it a second thought, he’s pulling you off the dance floor and down a hallway. He looks around like he’s not completely sure where he’s going and then sees a door.

The door opens and you’re both in without another thought. Jungkook crowds your space, pressing you against the closed door and stealing your gasp with his lips on yours. Your hands find purchase in his slightly shaggy hair and one of his hands digs into your hip, holding you firmly in place. Like there’s anywhere else you would rather be in that moment.

From the moment his lips make contact with yours, you remember why you ignored your therapist and walked away from your relationship. It’s just a kiss, granted a pretty heated one, but still. It’s just a kiss and your whole body is alive in a way it hasn’t been since the last time you were with him. As he trails kisses across your jaw and down your neck, you can feel the heat he leaves behind with each touch.

Jungkook also never makes you feel self-conscious about the way your body responds to him. Not that your boyfriend, ex-boyfriend now, ever said anything about your moans, but he was also really quiet in bed. And you stopped reacting as much, because it wasn’t the best part of your relationship. Not that you want to be dwelling on that now. Not as Jungkook is working his way down your body, clearly just as turned on as you, eliciting soft moans as he goes.

When he drops to his knees in front of you, you think you may really be done for. He lifts one of your legs and rests it on his shoulder, your dress hiking up around your hips in the process. You lean back against the door for support as his tongue makes contact through the thin fabric. It’s another tease, a Jungkook specialty, and you find you don’t much care. Thankfully, he quickly moves the fabric to the side. The movements of his tongue, fast and slow and fast again, are perfect. Your brain goes blank, just the kind of blank you need. No thoughts except for his tongue on you and the bliss of it. Even the thud of the bass out in the club dulls to background noise. Every one of your senses is present in this moment in a way you haven’t been lately.

His movements quicken and you knot your hands in his hair both to find purchase and to let him know that you’re close. Not that it’s hard to tell by the increase in your moans. He knows what he’s doing and he knows that he’s got you on the edge. You want to tell him that you want to feel him inside you and can’t make yourself speak the words. A second later it doesn’t matter. He slides one finger in, then quickly adds another and your brain goes fuzzy.

He pushes you over the edge too fast, you want to savor more of this moment, more of him. You register that somewhere in your bliss coming down from the orgasm. You need more of him, more contact, more of whatever it is that makes your brain go quiet. You’re catching your breath and refocusing when you notice his pants down around his ankles. Did he get that hard just from getting you off? He’s already pulling a condom on and you’re almost relieved.

“You didn’t think I was done with you yet, did you?” His confidence drips off of him when he’s like this and you wish you were the kind of girl who had something witty to say back. You wish, at least now, that he didn’t affect you like this.

Instead, all you do is shake your head at him. You don’t trust yourself to speak and he doesn’t seem to mind. In one movement, he puts his hands on the back of your thighs and picks you up, still keeping you pressed against the door. The next second, he’s slowly sliding into you, letting you adjust. It’s the only break he gives you before setting a fast pace. Your legs tighten around him and your nails dig into his back. You’re sure they would leave a mark if he didn’t have a shirt on. Part of you hopes maybe they still will.

One of the best parts about Jungkook is that he doesn’t ever need to ask what you want, he just seems to know. He knows what you like and when you want something faster like this or when to take his time. It’s like he’s mapped your body with the way he’s able to hit just the right spots in just the right way.

Your head rolls back against the door, eyes closed and brain numb. Even then, he manages to bring you back to him, kissing up your neck until you meet his lips. The kiss is messy, capturing each of your moans as they escape. Jungkook’s grip on your thighs is as strong as the pace he’s setting and it isn’t long before you’re falling over the edge again.

A pleasant daze settles over you as you do your best to look presentable so that you can leave the club. (You don’t succeed and you definitely look just fucked, but the club is in full swing and the only people who might be able to tell are the poor workers that have to stay sober).

“Do you want to come back to my apartment?” Jungkook asks the question, one hand gripping yours while the other pulls up Uber on his phone to order a ride home.

And it’s kind of funny, how he asks like he doesn’t know the answer. In the time you’ve known him, Jungkook has been a lot of things, but he’s always been confident above all else. So it catches you off guard that he asks.

“As long as it’s okay with you,” you say and he smiles that easy smile.

“Of course,” he says.

You can’t really place the feeling that settles over you at such a small exchange, everything is crowded with the lingering effects of alcohol and sex. But something feels different and you think you like it. Almost like a part of you is waking up.

The next few weeks pass in somewhat of a blur. You’re happier than you can remember feeling in a while, much more fulfilled in all aspects of your life. Despite some reservations that your therapist has, you agree to start seeing her every other week unless something changes. You’re hoping to drop it back down to once a month but understand her hesitance to make such a big change so quickly. It would be a shame to ruin all that forward progress, after all.

Most of your free time is spent with Jungkook, a fact that your best friends are quick to point out with some version of the same cautionary advice. They want you to be careful, want you to remember your history with him, don’t want you to get ahead of yourself. It seems like they just don’t understand. Yeah, you and Jungkook have been here before, multiple times, but this is different and they just haven’t seen that.

Every other time led up to this. It took a relationship falling apart for you to realize that none of the other times with Jungkook were failures, they were just your “right person, wrong time” moments. Now the timing is right for both of you.

You knock on the door to his apartment, surprise take out in one hand, realizing belatedly that maybe you should have given him a warning of some sort. What if he was busy or had already eaten?

“Oh hey, what a nice surprise,” Jungkook answers with a smile as he steps aside to let you in.

Suddenly, you feel kind of silly for the momentary worry that showing up like this would be too much. Jungkook seems like he meets you at each point, so this shouldn’t be any different. It also helps that you’ve known each other for years and you know the way to his heart (through his stomach with only his favorite foods).

The whole thing feels surprisingly normal in a way you weren’t expecting. Jungkook makes small talk as he gets plates from the kitchen and sets them down for you to eat. He offers you a drink from the fridge, gets one for himself, and it’s just…easy. The whole thing with him is easy and you’re so thankful that you took this chance. As it turns out, he’s exactly what you need. Maybe he’s even the reason your last relationship ended the way it did. Not that you would ever say that. For all his outward strength and his image, Jungkook can be surprisingly sensitive. The last thing you’d want would be him feeling responsible for causing other people pain.

You’re not really sure why you do it, but you mention that your friends have a lot of warnings about the relationship. In what should be typical Jungkook fashion, he brushes it, reassures you that you know what’s happening and that’s all that matters. It doesn’t matter what your friends think because you’re both happy and living in the moment. You smile at that. This is definitely the best kind of happy.

Once you’ve gotten plates of food, you settle down together and Jungkook pulls up Netflix. He’s got a whole list of movies and shows that you can pick from, all things he wants to see or thinks you’d like, he tells you. And that’s sweet, isn’t it? That he sees something on Netflix and saves it in case you want to watch it together. It makes your heart constrict a little bit. It doesn’t feel like something you do with someone who’s only casual. Surely his thinking about you, when you aren’t around, is a positive sign.

You sigh happily and let him decide what it is he wants to watch. Not that the two of you ever really finish anything. It’s the thought that counts though. And Jungkook seems to be thinking of you. For a second you wonder if this is just the list he’s created for anyone he has over, you haven’t talked about seeing other people. Until you realize that most of them are thrillers. It’s your favorite genre but probably not good for generally inviting girls over. You really need to stop second-guessing everything with him.

Another few weeks go by as easily as breathing and that small part of you that’s waiting for the other shoe to drop gets even quieter. You’re not even thinking that this feels different anymore because it is different. Instead of late-night (or really any odd hour of the day) texts, you’re making actual plans on when you’re going to see each other. It doesn’t feel like a fuck buddy, it feels like someone you’re moving along with in a different way. There’s a lightness to every space of your life now, a lightness that looks a lot like Jungkook.

Of all the things Jungkook is good at, and there’s a lot, because he’s hyper-competitive and doesn’t like losing, cooking is decidedly not one. That suits you just fine, though. Cooking is an absolute favorite of yours and cooking for someone you care about makes it all that much better. It had taken a little more convincing for Jungkook agree to you coming over and cook for him, he didn’t want to be a bother, but you were glad to be here now.

“I know this isn’t really what we do, but I have a family wedding to go to, for my cousin, and I was wondering if you’d come with me? It’s kind of last minute, I know. I just wasn’t expecting to have to go alone,” you say and Jungkook puts down his fork. You’re nervous again and you’re not quite sure why.

“Sure, why not?” Jungkook says easily.

“Really?” The question is out before you can stop it.

“I like spending time with you,” Jungkook says, “we have fun.”

“We do, yeah,” you agree. “It’s just…it’s like 2 hours away, so I got a room. And you’d obviously need a suit.”

“This may come as a surprise, but I have been to a wedding or two before, so I have plenty of suits. And what kind of idiot would I be to turn down an overnight date with you?” Jungkook is smiling as he says this and it puts you at ease.

“It’s in 2 weeks, which is really soon,” you say. Jungkook pulls out his phone.

“Friday or Saturday wedding?” He’s looking through his calendar to see what he’s got going on.

“Saturday,” you say and he puts his phone down.

“That’s fine, I’ve got something going on Friday, but Saturday and Sunday are all yours,” Jungkook says.

Easy. Everything is just easy. You weren’t even really thinking of asking him to come to the wedding when you decided to cook for him. It just seemed like the right timing to ask and your cousin had just texted you that afternoon asking if she should change the seating chart. Although she said it wasn’t a big deal, you know she’s secretly going to be relieved to not change anything.

Not planning things also really is your motto these days. You weren’t planning to stay over at Jungkook’s when you offered to cook. Yet you wake up in his bed the next morning all the same, like it was a foregone conclusion the second you stepped over the threshold.

You figure now that Jungkook is coming with you to a family wedding as your date, that your friends will get off of your back about him. And most of them do. It’s been over two months of seeing him, which makes it feel more stable. Mostly, they’re happy if you’re happy and know you’re enough of an adult to handle your own life. Most days, at least. It’s just one of your closest friends that’s holding out. Not that he doesn’t like Jungkook, because he does, he’s just also been friends with you since you were kids and he’s seen how this has gone.

“It’s different, Jimin,” you say for what feels like the hundredth time.

“Have you had The Talk?” He doesn’t put quotes around it, but you can hear them in his tone anyway.

“No, we haven’t had The Talk,” you say, matching his tone. “We’re both adults, like actual adults, I don’t think it’s necessary.”

“This time around with him started with you cheating on your ex,” Jimin says in a not-so-subtle reminder. If it were anyone else, you would leave.

“Thanks, I remember,” you bite back.

“I love you, you know that. I just want to make absolutely sure you’re not going to get hurt with this. I need to know he’s in this as much as you are,” Jimin says.

“Can you ever really know that?” The question seems valid enough.

“No, everything in relationships is a calculated risk. But it’s on you to make sure you have all the numbers before doing the calculations,” Jimin says.

“Meaning?” You think you know what he means, but it’s best to be sure.

“Meaning,” Jimin says with faux exasperation, “that the talk will let you know where he stands and allow you to be on the same page. He could lie, but then that’s on him if you get hurt. If you get hurt now, when you haven’t had the talk, that’s on you.”

“Little harsh, Jiminie,” you say, using the nickname to try and soften him.

It doesn’t work and he just shrugs. “We’ve done this song and dance a few times, maybe too many times. I just don’t want to see this end badly.”

“Then have a little faith, he is coming to a family wedding,” you say.

“And some of the way the conversation went makes me a little uneasy,” Jimin admits.

“Just have some faith. This time is different, I can feel it,” you say.

There’s a lot more than Jimin wants to say, a lot more he wants you to hear. But he’s also known you for years and seen you through every one of the Jungkook phases. People change all the time, he knows that. As people grow, the things they want or need evolve. Until you have an actual chat with him, though, Jimin is not ready to say this time will be different. It’s silly because he also knows that you’re going to do what you want, you always have. Not in a bad way, you’re just very stubborn when it comes to listening to advice. All he can do is hope for the best and be there if you need a shoulder. He tries not to think when you need a shoulder. As much as he likes being right, he likes you a whole lot more and he wants this to work.

The wedding goes well, great even. Jungkook is a hot topic of conversation, with a number of your family members gushing over how attractive he is and how good you look together. It gives you a small amount of pride to hear it too, even if it shouldn’t. It’s also good to have someone to retreat to when your family gets overwhelming. The added benefit of them not knowing him is that you both can slip out of conversations much easier. He’s never met anyone in your family and they don’t have as many questions for him. You also did an excellent job of establishing that you and him are very early on in the relationship, so questions about getting more serious are off the table.

Staying in a hotel with Jungkook is also a much better experience than you thought. You’ve stayed at each other’s places countless times over the years, but you’ve never gone away somewhere together. Even though it’s only a few hours from home, everything feels different. Everything feels more intimate.  And there’s something to be said for hotel sex too. Everything is new and more exciting.

You reach out to Jimin the day after you get back to let him know how things went. And you’re a little surprised by his response. Instead of being excited for you that it’s going so well, he asks again if you’ve talked to Jungkook about where you are and where you’re going. It’s kind of a buzzkill and you’re quick to tell him so. But Jimin is stubborn too.

Jimin: I love you, you’re my best friend in the entire world, but I’m scared you’re going to end up hurt Jimin: I’ll be here to celebrate once you talk to him and I’ll say sorry when it’s all cleared up, but until then, I can’t fully support it

That hurts. It’s like he doesn’t realize that in not wanting Jungkook to hurt you, he’s hurting you instead. You shake that thought off as quickly as it comes, though. It’s not his intention to hurt you and somewhere deep down, you know he’s making sense. Jimin has been your go-to person for everything in your life since a matter of months into the friendship. The two of you were able to click in a way you haven’t really experienced with anyone else. So yeah, maybe, on some level, you get where he’s coming from and maybe you’ll understand later. Not right now, though. Right now you’re just hurt and a little angry at your best friend for not supporting you the way you want him to.

(Jimin, to his credit, does think he’s supporting you. It may not be in the way you want him to and you may not see it, but it’s the way he needs to support you. There’s a moment where he thinks that he’s the friend you deserve, just not the one you need right now. So he’ll let you be mad at him as long as you need to. Or maybe he’s been watching Dark Knight too much lately.)

This is where you know you’re not always the best at being an adult. Whether Jimin is right or not becomes irrelevant because you’re more concerned with not letting him win. It’s like he tells you something and you have to do the opposite, just because. Which, really, that’s probably something you need to address in therapy. It’s probably not a healthy approach, but it’s where you’re at for now.

Things feel…a little different. Not good different, either. At first, you were positive that it was just the lingering effects of Jimin being Jimin. Even when he’s not speaking to you, since this is not the first time he’s done this, he’s very loud. But days go by and the pit in your stomach only gets deeper. You can’t separate your own thoughts and anxieties to see if anything with Jungkook is actually different.

When you stop to think about it, though, everything with Jungkook should be different. It’s been around three months now. Three months of you spending a truly absurd amount of time together. Three months of movie nights in, dinners out, random trips to the park. Three months of ending up in each other’s bed every time you went over. Three months of you not seeing anyone else. Was he seeing other people, though? Surely not. Would there really even be time?

But…

That nasty word coming up to haunt you again. But, could you really make any assumptions where another person was involved? After all, your ex had no reason to think anything was wrong with you, no reason to think the relationship was coming to a screeching halt. Yet, it did. It did because you stopped talking to him. Well, you didn’t stop talking to him, you said a lot of words. You just didn’t say any of the ones that actually mattered.

It’s impossible to keep the last conversation with Jimin off your mind. You will never tell him he was right, but you’re also constantly wondering if it’s time for that talk. Lately it’s been taking Jungkook longer to do everything. Longer to text you back, longer in between seeing each other, longer to come out of his phone if he checks it while you’re hanging out (something he never used to do).

And, okay, from the outside, you know how any of those things look. It’s just, you’re still really happy and you’re not really looking to give that up. You think that maybe what’s best, for now, is just to take a slight step back, not be the one to reach out to him and make plans. Either he’ll make plans with you or you will have the final push to have a conversation you should have had weeks ago. (Really, you should’ve had this conversation before you blew up your life, but who’s counting?)

Jungkook: hey, things have been kinda crazy with work, but can i see you tonight?

Which answers that, doesn’t it? You ignore your smarter thoughts, most of which are driven by Jimin’s words playing on repeat, and answer quicker than you should. Even though you offer to stop on your way to pick food up, Jungkook says he’s already picking something up and to just meet him at the apartment.

It’s all different now. Before, when things were only happy, you’d be excited that he knew you well enough to pick up takeaway for the both of you. Now, you wonder if he really has been busy with work. There’s something about the text that implies something’s shifted. You hate it and you want to just go back to before. Maybe tonight will be the perfect chance for that.

It’s not.

The silences are awkward and what’s worse is that you can’t tell if Jungkook feels awkward about it as well, or if it’s just you. Actually, what’s worse is you don’t know which you’d prefer. Then there’s this weird space between you while you’re watching a movie. It’s like you’re not really close enough to cuddle and you’re not really far enough away for it to be a normal, friend-sized space between you. It’s just this awkward limbo and you’re trying really hard not to overthink the space being a metaphor for where the two of you are in this weird relationship.

Jungkook is on his phone a lot throughout the movie too, which only worsens the way you feel. He says he’s still got a lot going on at work, that they’re in very real danger of missing deadlines and he’s so sorry. The rational part of you really wants to let it be that. The louder part of you, the one you know is irrational, can’t leave it alone. At least internally. You know you can’t say anything out loud and have it come across right. Your internal monologue is another story, though.

But, that’s the thing, isn’t it? You made a lot of assumptions about where you were with Jungkook, about what the two of you were doing, about it being a relationship. The reality is you’ve been fucking regularly for months now and haven’t bothered to define things. It was perfect at the beginning, when Jungkook insisted that the two of you knew what was happening and what other people thought didn’t matter. It made you feel like it was you against everyone else. Which should’ve been a clue. A relationship should never put you against the people outside of it. A healthy relationship should be able to integrate into your regular life.

You don’t stay over at his place that night. Jungkook offers and even makes it seem like he wants you to. You might even believe him if he didn’t mention getting up early for work and checking his phone. That annoying voice in the back of your head is shouting danger, danger, danger. The ugly thoughts wonder if he actually wants you to stay at all or if he just doesn’t want to be the bad guy for sending you home.

He gives you a kiss in the doorway and you’re on your way out. The last little bit of positivity in the back of your mind is hoping he’ll change his mind, that he’ll come rushing out and say he’s been stupid. Of course he wants you to stay and of course it’s worth it being tired at work tomorrow because he’s missed you, things have been off, and he wants to make sure he fixes them.

But, he doesn’t do any of those things. The doubts firmly take hold of your brain.

The next day, you’re still thinking over what you want to do when you get an unexpected text from him. He’s got a function after work, the kind of thing where you have to go to a bar and pretend you want to be socializing with coworkers off the clock, but it’s okay because the boss usually buys a few rounds. It’s the kind of thing someone might ask their partner to come to, so they’re not so bored.

Jungkook’s message is clear. He wants to see you. After he’s done with the work function, which he warns might not be until later. So he understands if it’s too late for you to come over since it is still during the week and you have to work tomorrow. He seems genuinely excited when you say you’ll definitely still come over and your heart constricts for a second.

You need to set your phone aside, just for a second, just long enough to let your heart settle back down, because you’ve made up your mind. It’s time (past time, honestly) that you have a real conversation with Jungkook. This last exchange proves it. You’re back to being the girl he calls up after a night out at the bar, the booty call for sex. Admittedly, it is the best sex you’ve ever had, but that’s not the point. For a bit, you were the girl that he made plans with. And, yeah, he’s asking you before he goes to the bar if you’ll be there after. But, the fact is, it’s still same day and it’s not really anything more than a hook-up text.

The text from Jungkook letting you know he’s heading home comes and you take a couple shots to give yourself the confidence to go through with The Talk. You weren’t planning on driving anyway. No matter how this goes, you’re not planning to head home afterwards so having your car seems more inconvenient than anything.

Apparently, Jungkook only beats you there by a few minutes, which might’ve bothered you in any other situation. The way he says it sounds accusatory in your mind. All you can see now is talking before you lose the little bit of liquid courage you have.

“Do you want to watch a movie or do you just want to…” Jungkook asks, trailing off suggestively.

That pit in the bottom of your stomach worsens. The unfinished question hangs between you like a glaring sign saying he just wants to fuck you. It all just feels really cheap and like another waste of your time. Just another in a long line of mistakes. Only one way to find out, though, and so you take a deep breath and dive in.

“Actually, I kind of wanted to talk to you,” you say and that brings him up short.

“About what?” Jungkook asks.

He seems defensive. It’s all wrong. Something in you had been holding out hope that this would go exactly the way you wanted it to. That hope gets harder to hold onto.

“Just…this, us,” you say, hating how you sound so unsure.

“Us?” Jungkook asks and somehow that makes you angrier. Is he being fucking stupid on purpose?

“Yeah, Jungkook, us,” you say with more bite than you intended. “We’ve been doing this dance for, what, like 3 or 4 months? What are we doing, exactly?”

Jungkook’s confused. He gets this look on his face sometimes, like he’s trying to work out a really complex calculus problem and just can’t make things make sense. It makes him look younger, more innocent. It makes you want to protect him. But you can’t afford to think that way, and he doesn’t need to be protected.

“We’re just, I don’t know, we’re hanging out. We’ve been having fun, you know, everything is just easy, which is nice,” Jungkook says.

“Just hanging out and having fun? What, are we back in college?” Your voice raises an octave because, despite all your planning, you really aren’t ready for this.

“I’m not really sure what’s happening here,” Jungkook admits.

“I’m just confused,” you admit in return. “Like we’re always together, we go out on dates. You came with me to a family wedding for fuck’s sake.”

“Yeah, because I like hanging out with you and the wedding seemed important to you,” Jungkook says.

“It was important but still, what is this?”

Jungkook really still looks helpless and you’re constantly reminding yourself not to take care of him. It’s not what either of you needs. “Why does it have to be something defined? Why does there have to be this big deal?”

“Because we’re grown now, because I can’t keep blowing up my life for…” you start, but cut yourself off, quickly closing your mouth again.

“No, blowing your life up for what? For me?” Jungkook asks and you look away, unable to see him looking at you like that. “I never asked you to blow up your life for me.”

“You didn’t exactly turn me away that night either. You knew I was in a relationship,” you say and he scoffs.

“Yeah, I did know. But last time I checked, it’s not my responsibility to make sure you don’t cheat on your partner. I wasn’t the one in a relationship,” Jungkook says.

“No, because you’re never in a relationship, you’re always just having fun,” you say, voice dripping with disdain.

“And what’s so wrong with that? I’ve never been anything but honest about exactly who I am and what I want,” Jungkook says.

“People change all the time! Excuse me for thinking you’d grow the fuck up and realize actually being with someone isn’t that bad,” you say and Jungkook rolls his eyes again.

“What do you think I’ve been doing? I know being with someone isn’t bad. We’ve been having a great time for months until whatever the fuck this is,” Jungkook says.

“And how many other girls have you been having a good time with at the same time?” The question is out before you can even figure out if you want to ask it.

Opposite you, Jungkook rolls his lips together, like he’s trying to give himself a minute before answering. He can have a short temper at times.

“I’m not really sure why the answer to that question matters,” Jungkook says and you shake your head.

“I should’ve known,” you say.

“None though, for the record. Like I told you, I’ve been busy at work. So, I’m either there, working out, playing video games, or with you,” he says and you come up short.

“What?”

“Don’t take that the wrong way,” Jungkook says quickly. “I haven’t fucked anyone else in months, and I haven’t wanted to either. I’ve been having a great time with you. But, that also doesn’t mean this is something more than it is.”

“Meaning?” The balloon of hope pops just as quickly as it formed and you’re feeling even worse than before.

“Meaning,” Jungkook starts. “I don’t want…this. I don’t want to be fighting with you about some bullshit definition of what we are or where we’re headed. I like you, I do. But my answers to those still haven’t changed from the first time we hooked up 7 years ago. I don’t want that super committed relationship with expectations and check-ins and eventually marriage. I don’t want a house and kids and a white picket fence so the dog doesn’t get out.”

“You make it sound like a death sentence,” you say, completely deflated.

“I don’t mean to, it’s just not for me. It’s not what I’ve ever wanted and I’ve never kept that a secret,” Jungkook says. “I mean, I don’t know, maybe it is like a death sentence for me.”

“It feels like a slap in the face,” you admit and Jungkook bristles at that.

“Why? Because I don’t want the same things as you?”

You struggle to find the right words because that’s not what you meant. “Because you must have known it’s what I wanted and yet we still kept going.”

“I guess I figured you heard me when I said, over and over again, that it wasn’t what I wanted,” Jungkook says. “I figured you heard me and you could make your decisions on what you wanted.”

“It just seemed like…” you start and frown. “We’re always together, it felt like more.”

“So you just assumed that it was something more without even asking me about it?” Jungkook asks and gets a glare in response.

“Okay, that’s a little extreme,” you say.

“Is it? I can see it. You’re mad at me, which I get, kind of,” Jungkook admits. “But also, I don’t get it? Because none of this had to happen. If you’d talked to me instead of building it all up in your head…”

“Wow, that was kind of a dick move,” you retort and he shakes his head.

“Or is it a dick move to create a whole relationship in your head and then make me the bad guy for not being on the same page?”

That brings you up short again. Does he have a point? Is that what you’ve been doing all this time?

“I do actually care about you,” Jungkook says. “I know that may be hard to believe, but I do. It’s also really fucked up to create a whole world in your head and then turn me into the bad guy for not being on the same page. I always said we were having fun, that it didn’t matter what friends thought, that we’re just going a day at a time.”

“Because you knew, Jungkook, you had to,” you say. He furrows his eyebrows at you. “You’ve always said things like that and for what? What reason do you have to constantly remind me what this is if you don’t think there’s confusion?”

“Once again, it is not my job to force a conversation you may want to have. Weren’t you just saying we’re not still in college? That goes both ways,” Jungkook says.

Round and round and round in circles you and Jungkook go. You’re mad at him for something that he may not even be able to control, something that you’ve always known about him. And you’re mad that he’s known you probably weren’t on the same page for a while. He’s mad that you’ve had so many of these conversations in your head or with friends without cluing him in. He’s mad that he feels like the bad guy.

The whole fight feels pointless, honestly. You both are mad at the other and maybe you both have a reason to be annoyed. Maybe he has a point and maybe you need to take a step back to examine some of the decisions that you’ve made too. Maybe he’s not the only one bringing this house of cards crashing to the floor.

And maybe that’s not something you want to deal with tonight.

The rational part of your brain knows you should leave and call an Uber straight to Jimin’s apartment. That same part knows that even if he has someone over, he’ll drop everything to make sure you’re okay. He won’t even start the I told you so until tomorrow. Because Jimin can be a giant pain in the ass when he wants to, but he’s got the biggest heart in the world. Going to Jimin’s is absolutely the right decision.

That’s why you call an Uber and head to the bar.

After a few drinks, the empty seat next to you is taken by a stranger with fluffy hair and an easy smile. Despite your protests, he takes over your tab so that you can keep drinking. It’s a bad idea, you know it’s a bad idea, and you don’t really care. You don’t really have any room for good ideas right now.

For his part, he actually seems like a decent guy, if you were sober and present enough to notice. He tells you his name, his job, about his friends. You think he even mentions movies he likes. Nothing about it feels like the normal situation at a bar. Then again, it’s a Wednesday night, not exactly prime time to be out picking someone up.

The next morning, you wake up in a too bright room in an unfamiliar bed and immediately start piecing things together. The conversation with Jungkook and your subsequent decision to get completely shit-faced come rushing back. A sense of shame washes over you. This is the part where some attractive guy, usually one you somehow know, walks into the bedroom, maybe wearing just a towel, and you realize what you did.

Except this isn’t a movie, thankfully, and somehow you’re actually clothed in the bed. You’re in an oversized t-shirt and gym shorts, but you also still have your bra and underwear on. Likely a sign that nothing happened beyond you getting embarrassingly drunk last night. Actually, looking around the room, it looks more like a guest bedroom than the master. Did you actually manage to find a decent guy when you were hellbent on making bad decisions?

You aren’t really in the mood to figure any of it out. Your clothes are folded up beside the bed and, when you get up, you hear the shower running. It’s the perfect time to leave without having to have an awkward conversation. And since you were at your quota for those, you grab your phone from beside the table and slip out, thankfully unseen.

First up, your text thread with Jimin. Which is a mistake, of course you had texted him and of course it was barely coherent. But bless Jimin, honestly, because you see he had taken care of calling you out of work. Actually, bless him for having all your passwords and being able to sign into your email to send the message. You know part of him calling you out is also so that he can carry out his Jimin-approved therapy, but you’ll take it. You’ll even take him telling you he was right.

In a slightly uncharacteristic move, Jimin is waiting outside your door when the Uber drops you off. He’s already been shopping for the essentials and he’s got his arms open for you to collapse into him before even crossing the threshold into the apartment. There’s nothing on his face except for care and concern, which really isn’t surprising. His beating you to your own apartment may be surprising, but him being the best friend you’ve ever had isn’t.

Everything kind of pours out of you at once when you and Jimin sit down on your couch, the tears, the self-loathing, the anger, the confusion, the pain. So much pain. Pain over your ex, pain over Jungkook, pain over past shit that you really thought you were over. It’s like the past months with Jungkook were just a bandaid, putting off the day you would eventually feel everything. There’s no putting it off anymore though. Now you’re in it and you’re so thankful for a friend like Jimin to hold your hand.

He’s surprisingly quiet throughout the whole thing. He listens to your thoughts, comforts you during the gaps in speaking, makes sure you have snacks and something to drink, keeps music playing quietly in the background because he knows you hate the silence. He asks questions that are gentle, nothing too heavy or accusatory. The only time he gets firm is when you cry about not deserving a friend like him.

“Yeah, you can be an asshole sometimes, but don’t ever let me catch you talking that way about yourself,” Jimin says, unmoving. “You’re human and we all make mistakes. We learn and we move forward. I won’t let you be mean to yourself, though. That’s what you don’t deserve.”

Once you feel like you’ve said everything that you could possibly say, Jimin informs you that you’re taking tomorrow off as well and that he’ll be staying over. Just like when you were in college. The order for the night was trashy TV and junk food and no wine for you because you’re still hungover and no talking about feelings at all. You can pick all that up again tomorrow, but tonight is about giving your brain a break.

It takes much longer than you expect to really come to terms with what happened between you and Jungkook. You haven’t seen him since you walked out the door. In fact, you hadn’t even texted him until reaching out yesterday to see if he was willing to meet up. It wasn’t to work through things, though, as much as it was for you to heal. And hopefully for him to heal as well.

The past few months have been some of the scariest and most rewarding of your life. You’ve never really been alone, separate from a partner. You’ve gone from one relationship to the next for as long as you could remember and ignored anyone suggesting to take time nearly as long. The fight with Jungkook had been a wake-up call, an unwelcome one at the time, but one that you can now see the value in. It forced you to really look at yourself, at your choices, at everything that led you to that moment, to learn what you actually wanted.

And you don’t really know what you want, but you think it’s somewhere between your ex and Jungkook. Yes, you want something stable and comfortable, someone that you know and that you can rely on. At the same time, you want someone that will challenge you, excite you, keep you on your toes. It was unfair of you to put all that onto Jungkook. Whatever mistakes he may have also made, you want to own yours. Part of you knew that he was never going to be what you needed him to be and rushed forward head first anyway.

Everything led you to this point now, where you wait for Jungkook to show up. He had replied quicker than you expected and seemed happy to meet, despite you being clear on needing to talk to him. Maybe there were things he needed to say too.

The tinkling of the bell over the door catches your attention and you watch Jungkook walk through the doors, somehow exactly the same. It’s only been a few months, you remind yourself, not like he could change entirely.

The next part feels awkward, how do you greet him? You stand, considering what to do, when he saves you the trouble and goes in to give you a quick hug. Nothing too serious and also nothing too formal.

“Thanks for meeting me,” you say and he smiles.

“Of course,” he says. “I’ve been thinking about everything that happened too, honestly, so it felt like a good time.”

And just like that, it’s easy to talk. Really talk. Jungkook lets you go first and you lay out everything you’ve learned over the past couple months. He lets you make your apologies and makes his own. You’re able to take ownership of the mistakes you make, because you really understand them after months working through your shit, and feel like he’s forgiven you for how you handled things. You know that you can never fully expect to get closure in life, but this feels close. It feels like you can actually close the door on a chapter to move forward.

Apparently he’s been doing a lot of work on himself too. He admits to knowing that you were in deeper than he was and letting it go on anyway, something he’s not proud of and something he hopes you’ll forgive. He’s not there yet but he’s working on better communication, letting partners know what he can give and what he can’t. He’s trying to figure out what it is he actually wants and what he doesn’t. Even though you don’t need him to say it, he also wants you to know that, as cliche as it sounds, it wasn’t you. Not entirely at least. He got so caught up in how good the physical side of things was that he didn’t consider how you were both hurting each other.

Neither one of you is really sure how to leave things. Part of you, and you can see part of him too, wants to ask if there’s a way to move forward as friends. He’s been part of your life on and off for the past 7 years, since meeting when you were only 18 years old. You take the plunge, though, and say that he’s always going to have a place in your heart. You’re just not sure he can have a place in your life, at least not now. There’s a moment of relief on his face. Like he’s happy you were the one to make the call because he isn’t sure he could. He really does have a lot of work to do, he says.

“Do you know him?” Jungkook asks as the conversation is naturally winding down.

You turn your head to follow his eyes on a man wearing dress pants and a nice shirt. He seems caught up in whatever he’s reading on his laptop, slightly shaggy hair slipping into his eyes. You’re about to say no when he looks up and meets your eyes. There’s something…familiar about him. Like you know him from somewhere that you’ve forgotten. Almost like the memory is hazy and you can’t fully grasp it. He smiles, a really nice smile, and then looks back down at his laptop.

“I don’t think so,” you finally answer.

“He keeps looking over here,” Jungkook comments. You look for any sign of anything negative on his face, but it isn’t there.

“Yeah, I don’t know, if I do know him, I can’t figure out from where,” you admit.

“Maybe you should say hi,” he says and you just smile.

“With you here?” you ask.

Jungkook smiles with a shake of his head. He’s standing up the next second. “I actually have to go to an appointment with my therapist.”

“I’m proud of you,” you say and stand as well to give him another hug. Slightly less awkward this time.

“I’m proud of you too, proud of us, really,” he says.

“Take care, Jungkook,” you say.

“You too,” he answers with a smile.

Just like that, he’s heading out the door. He looks back once to smile at you and you wave. You’re wondering if that’s the last time you’ll see him. Maybe it is and maybe that’s exactly how it should be. Things feel better now, easier. There’s no lingering doubts and even though you know you still have a ways to go, you think that you can really do it this time.

But before you can retreat further into your own head, a voice breaks through your thoughts.

“This seat still taken?”

You look up to find the man that Jungkook asked about moments earlier and that’s when it clicks. Yes, you do know him and you finally remember from where. The world certainly works in mysterious ways.

i hope you liked it, it was definitely a ride writing it <3

[rainbowxocs]

Mirror Mirror.

Info: A short story I wrote about Daisy for class. UPDATED TO BE SLIGHTLY MORE READABLE.

If someone were to ask Daisy what her past was like, you would only get bits and fragments. She would rather bury the past than dwell on it too much, retreating into her mind rather than speaking the truth out loud. She was an intelligent girl, and she knew exactly what parts of her she wanted to show to mirror whoever she was looking at. She could act like no other.

But sometimes, one can see the cracks in her façade in sporadic instances. However, she would never show it to anyone. Her life has been filled with people who have fundamentally failed her. Now, as an adult, she can see their words echoing in her mind. She can hear her mother tell her she is a monster. She can hear her guardian threaten to kill her. But admitting this to anyone is a fool's errand; after all, who would listen to the words of someone who is supposedly evil? Someone who will never be able to wash the sins away.

She spends most of her time in front of her bathroom mirror. No matter where she has lived, she has always had a mirror to stare at herself in. It gives her time to think, mostly about how rotten she is. She feels it deep inside of her. She can just barely see it, too, as she stares into her own eyes. She knows deep down that she is horrible, just like everyone says she is, that she is evil.

Daisy stared at herself in the mirror, her hair covering her face. She stared at herself through the strands, looking at every feature of her visage; ever since she had escaped that awful place, her reflection had become less of an escape and instead a peak in her mind. She didn’t recognize herself; she hadn’t in a very long time. She couldn’t even remember who she was half of the time. All she could see was a monster in front of her.

She traced her image with shaky fingers in a feeble attempt to find anything, to prove that some tiny part of herself was still in there, that she was still that sweet, innocent little girl, that she wasn’t broken. That they were wrong; she wasn’t a monster; she wasn’t evil. She couldn’t be right.

She brushed some of her matted and tangled hair out of her face, revealing her eyes, trying to find something in them. But there was nothing; they were empty and devoid of a soul. Tears streamed down her face as she wondered if she was even human anymore. Static filled the room, consuming her and every surface. Her body began to feel numb as her vision blurred. She couldn’t find it. She couldn’t find one spec of herself. She grabbed her face, trying to find anything, but there was nothing. Her breathing began to become slightly erratic as she looked at herself, her eyes darting all over.

She rummaged around her bathroom counters, grabbed sticky notes and a Sharpie out of one of her incredibly disorganized drawers, and began to write on them, shakily covering her reflections one by one. She labeled them, picking out each phrase as if she were painting a picture. She wrote, and wrote, and wrote until her knuckles became white from the grip on her marker. She stumbled backward, taking a look at her scribbly masterpiece.

She could barely see. Her mind was fully in panic mode. Her eyes were frantically scanning the various yellow and pink pieces of paper and their violent scribblings on them. Even her own ramblings did not make sense to her. Who was she if she couldn’t understand the core part of herself? If you can’t think, then what are you? It’s supposed to be, I think, therefore I am right? She felt dizzy; she couldn’t think straight, and her mind was racing.

The static began to fill her vision, almost consuming her and her thoughts. She felt like she was drowning in it. She tried to grasp anything, but it was of no avail. She felt the world around her spinning until all she could see was white, feeling like she had lost control of herself.

She awoke later, feeling the soft touch of her pink bathmat, which seemed to take the brunt of her fall to the ground. She rubbed her eyes and slowly sat up. The static was gone; she had seemed to survive it.

Daisy shakily stood before dusting herself off. That was embarrassing. She had done it again. She glanced at the mirror before looking at it in shock. Pieces of broken glass were all over the countertop, and pieces of sticky notes were clinging to certain parts of the shattered parts. She carefully cleaned up the glass and ripped off all the sticky notes, packing them into a colorful sticky ball before throwing the mess into the trashcan. She couldn’t leave any evidence after all. She couldn’t let any of them know who she truly was.

Daisy looked at the broken mirror, staring at herself through the shattered pieces, before shaking her head and walking out of the bathroom, going onwards to another performance.

[batsplat]

Batsplat, I am not into tennis exactly but this year I have been exposed to a lot of Tennis meta, per se. I love reading through your tennis posts they reveal such a rich human side to a sport, esp the agassi sampras post. Wanted to ask, if you have read Infinite Jest and what you think of it. Additionally, do you see any parallels between motorcycle racing and tennis? Fundamentally different sports, but still crazy in their unique ways. Keep posting, many hugs!!

hugs back to you anon, really am very pleased that post has struck a chord... going to put a pin in the infinite jest half of the ask because I recently got another ask about that book and want to organise my thoughts a bit more. tldr I have a lot of fondness for the thing. I actually reckon being invested in tennis is a bit of a cheat code where that book is concerned, like it kind of gives you something to immediately latch onto... dfw has a reputation for being the writer about tennis - and he does capture something of the soul of the sport, both in IJ and in his essays. in IJ, he makes it feel claustrophobic and inescapable, like a curse of the blood. as it should be. there are many descriptions of the sport itself I love, ways it is integrated into the narrative, the meanings that are extracted from it... I'm not sure there's a concise way to talk about IJ and if anything that feels like it'd be against the spirit of the book, so for now I'll leave you with this: dfw knew ball, but his taste in tennis left much to be desired. religious experience my ass

anyhow, let's transition to the other half of the ask with an IJ quote chosen completely at random

'We're all on each other's food chain. All of us. It's an individual sport. Welcome to the meaning of individual. We're each deeply alone here. It's what we all have in common, this aloneness.’

on tennis and motorcycle racing - I think I do have a bit of a problem in answering this question in that those disciplines are the only two individual sports I have followed closely for a long period. (I suppose f1 is edging itself into that conversation, but that at least is relatively closely related to motogp.) so there is a bit of a 'getting a lot of boss baby vibes' issue here in that... things I feel are similar between the two of them might be equally present in croquet or skimboarding. but, well, I can only talk about what I know. I think they can both be quite lonely sports, though tennis is lonelier. motogp can be circumstantially lonely, tennis is so in its soul. this is because competing in a tennis match is such a fundamentally lonely experience in a way I'm not sure any other sport replicates. motogp is loud - tennis is defined by its silences. motogp is defined by its action while tennis lives and breathes in the negative space. the connection between ball and racquet is infinitesimally brief... the time between points stretches out as a void. a tennis match is a thing of many rhythms, superficially reliable, yet the experience of living through a match eats away at your perception of time. the match is provided structures by its units, wherein each can feel like it lasts a split second or a decade. motogp is fierce and noisy and full of life. tennis is empty

I think you can probably draw numerous fairly trite parallels between the two - the emphasis on one-vs-one duels, for instance, albeit a non-negotiable element of tennis in a way it isn't for motogp. different virtues and tropes represented by different athletes... offensive, defensive, the wild talent, the cunning mastermind, the tenacious and the feeble and the limited and the all-rounder - archetypes of a sort that recur even when the exact way they express their archetypal nature varies between sports. perhaps even a fanbase that neurotically oscillates between yearning for drama and hounding almost anyone who supplies it. there's some ways in which I have to follow the two sports completely differently... for instance, I am far more sensitive to injuries in tennis and tend to get peeved when anyone competes with injury - one of my least favourite things about federer (amongst some sturdy competition) was how big a virtue he made of never having retired from a match, and how it influenced the generations to come. I mostly stand by the same principle when it comes to motogp, but it does force you to readjust your idea of what kind of an injury is acceptable to compete with. (obviously to some extent this is just practicality - I'm sure plenty of tennis players would love to try and compete with broken ankles, but that sort of thing just physically isn't possible in tennis.) motogp is considerably less stressful to follow because of how concentrated it is. there's nothing quite like the death by a thousand cuts that experiencing a drawn-out defeat in tennis inflicts on you

but none of that is particularly interesting or insightful. I actually think following tennis has given me a pretty good grasp of sports psychology because, not to brag, tennis is kind of the sport for understanding derangement. I'm not talking in terms of pure drama - unfortunately, motogp is miles ahead of us on that front. but in terms of actually understanding the intricacies of how competition fucks with the brain... motogp is so macro, races are building blocks of entire seasons, your results in march help determine your standings in november. it's also a lot more mysterious - I can't read as much into motogp results as I can into tennis, not just because of my personal level of expertise but also for the simple fact that there are far more hidden performance variables in motogp, mainly related to machinery. when I talk about how 'clutch' a player is in tennis, I can show you actual numbers to describe what I'm talking about that I can pull up for any player (unlike for instance stats relating solely to title contenders) and have a pretty big sample size and can be used to meaningfully draw conclusions. a big reason why tennis is considered the mental torture sport is because of its unambiguously deeply fucked up scoring system, making use of the units of 'point' and 'game' and 'set' within a single match to ensure that all your effort can be repeatedly rendered meaningless in numerous ways. what this does help us with in analysis terms is that not every point is 'equal' - they might be in literal terms, but the stakes vary drastically. which affects the amount of pressure you are under and what type of pressure it is. to use a very basic example, one measure of 'clutch' performance might be how a player competes in tiebreaks, given that they are inherently higher pressure situations where you can compare those points to the baseline of all the other points. tennis and motogp (+ motorsports more broadly) are kind of on the opposite ends of the spectrum in terms of how many raw numbers like that you will have at your disposal - with plenty of other ball sports like basketball or football or baseball slotting in somewhere in the middle

and what this DOES help you with is that if you are a proper student of tennis... y'know. you'll probably have a slightly more refined understanding of how mentality in sports works. more than just sorting every athlete into two categories of 'mentally strong' and 'choker', which is how a lot of discussion can read. even on platforms theoretically interested in serious sports analysis. how pressure affects competitors... so many motorsport discussions feel oddly naive to the basic concept that competitors may handle pressure completely differently if they are ahead or if they are behind. sometimes you hear motorsports reporting treat mentality as completely irrelevant, outright say that people should stop focusing on psychological factors... which is just not the kind of thinking you get away with in tennis

that being said, the real lesson tennis can teach you is if anything the very opposite: often, performing better under pressure is only very loosely correlated to mental strength. this is a bit of a bugbear of mine so if I've posted this before my apologies, I always have a version of this rant in my brain and genuinely cannot recall if I've put it on here before but... look. say you have two tennis players in a match. say each player is winning roughly 50% of the points, both players managing to drive up their side of the scoreboard. but say that one player, player A has to take a lot more risk to do so - and is aiming for about half a metre inside the baseline in every point. say the other one, player B, can aim for a way more comfortable metre inside the baseline. now say you get to a pressure situation, a tiebreak. tension rises, the muscles get tight, it's harder to swing through the ball... let's say that both of them are suddenly more likely to misfire - and that in every third shot, they will miss their target by over half a metre. even if the pressure has the exact same effect on both of them, player A will end up making more mistakes than player B - and they will be doing so disproportionately in the tiebreak, a high pressure situation. which means that on paper, they are less clutch than player B, even though in reality they have both been affected to the same extent by the pressure of the situation. one simply was always operating with a bigger margin of error, which suddenly became more noticeable in the pressure situation

this is obviously an extremely simplified understanding of tennis and it's never going to be as straightforward as that. the point however is that a lot of what people think is mentality ends up being down to technique. good technique isn't just effective - it's repeatable. it's all about optimisation, right... it's even the little things, like how much your technique asks you to use *force* - there are different muscle movements that are going to be affected in different ways by stress. if your motion always looks the same, then it's more likely you'll be able to repeat it under pressure - if you tend to hit the ball wildly differently each time, then however well you are doing it, quite likely that's going to be tougher to do under pressure. good technique is replicable even under pressure, but having good technique is obviously in itself not reflective of mental strength. in tennis, it is critical how much margin of error players have - both in terms of where they literally aim in shots, and in terms of how much a small deficit in absolute performance will spell relative catastrophe

and again. all of this is extremely basic. but it does feel like... how do I put this diplomatically. sometimes it doesn't feel like everyone's on the same page even with this basic stuff. because at the end of the day, it's going to roughly be the same situation in motogp, right? champions are seen as particularly clutch versus competitors who aren't champions... and sure, there probably is an element of mental strength to becoming a champion (though often that will also be in terms of macro career arcs, key choices and so on, not just performance in the moment) but it's not going to be that simple... because better riders are operating with a bigger margin of error. if you assume that every crash in every pressure situation is a uniform case of choking, then, y'know, this is bad analysis. fans are entitled to their bad analysis, but that doesn't make it any less bad. there is a tendency to just assume that the best athletes are the mentally strongest, rather than just blessed with a wider window of performance, and it can be. slightly galling. icl this a bit of a theme in a lot of the stuff I write, if you know to look for it lol (e.g. here)

reading the passage back it's... well. a bit funny. any tennis fan familiar with my history as a tennis fan will immediately recognise what match traumatised me so thoroughly I still see its shadow everywhere I look. sports, don't you love it

obviously there are more contemporary examples you could pick up on, but this is incidentally something that slightly ticks me off when people discuss valentino's rivals. like, with all love to casey, it is a lot easier to be 'mentally strong' and 'not broken' and bounce back from psychological torture when you have enough talent in your index finger to disrupt the orbit of a small moon. no shit he had better chances of rebuilding his confidence than some of his precursors. the game's rigged! always has been

none of this is to say that mentality doesn't matter in sports, which would be a bizarre stance for me to take. if player A and B had the exact same margin of error in their shots, one of them would still play that tiebreak better - and that's the clutch factor. it's just often harder to tease out than you might think, even in a sport with so many numbers at the tips of your fingers. sometimes you're just not going to be able to tell from the outside at all. that's the loneliness, right - constantly observed, but fundamentally unknowable. and of course, there's far more to get into here... given that tennis does demand more engagement from the outset in matters of psychology. it is a sport that is all about interaction, where every choice you make preempts the choices you believe your opponent is about to make - it's all psychology, all the time. motogp brings the macro dramatics in its rivalries (or, well, one guy did anyway), but tennis provides far more tools to understand said dramatics... it cannot help you understand motorcycle racing, but it can help you understand its psychology. but I think I'll leave it there lol. idk if these are really the parallels this ask was looking for, it's just really how I think about the two. obviously I'm biased in that I think tennis is the most important sport in existence, just like mr wallace. every bit of motogp analysis I write is inevitably shaped by my experiences with tennis, which probably also limits me in some ways. but, y'know. it is what it is. it should also be said that most tennis fans don't understand shit about sports psychology either. we persevere

anyway. yeah. for the parallels between the two. main takeaway - like I said, the game's rigged. always has been

incidentally, here's a passage of IJ I was thinking about recently

Bodies bodies everywhere. A tennis ball is the ultimate body, kid. We're coming to the crux of what I have to try to impart to you before we get out there and start actuating this fearsome potential of yours. Jim, a tennis ball is the ultimate body. Perfectly round. Even distribution of mass. But empty inside, utterly, a vacuum. Susceptible to whim, spin, to force — used well or poorly. It will reflect your own character. Characterless itself. Pure potential. Have a look at a ball. Get a ball from the cheap green plastic laundry basket of old used balls I keep there by the propane torches and use to practice the occasional serve, Jimbo. Attaboy. Now look at the ball. Heft it. Feel the weight. Here, I'll… tear the ball. . . open. Whew. See? Nothing in there but evacuated air that smells like a kind of rubber hell. Empty. Pure potential. Notice I tore it open along the seam. It's a body. You'll learn to treat it with consideration, son, some might say a kind of love, and it will open for you, do your bidding, be at your beck and soft lover's call. The thing truly great players with hale bodies who overshadow all others have is a way with the ball that's called, and keep in mind the garage door and broiler, touch. Touch the ball. Now that's … that's the touch of a player right there.

cutting it off there... obviously dfw being dfw, this paragraph continues another dozen odd pages. (I say this with fondness; unsurprisingly the parts of the book about jim and his father are some of my absolute favourite.) maybe you can guess why I was thinking about it... motogp worships its machinery - tennis has no such affection for the tools of its trade. even when we philosophise the body of the ball, all we can truly access is its emptiness. a ball is like a body because it is empty... that's the illness of a mind touched by tennis right there

[wastedwastelandme]

People I'd Like to Know Better

Tagged by @wind-and-cloud it's so exciting getting these!

Last Song: "Transcendental Cha Cha Cha" by Tom Cardy

Favorite Color: I locked in to purple when I was 10 and my loyalty has never strayed

Last Book: Just opened the first book of The Murderbot Diaries after getting all 7 for christmas and I am very excited. I have been hungry for a new sci-fi series for a while and it's already so fun

Last Movie: After close to 5 years of just kinda having other interesting stuff to do, the release of the 3rd movie finally gave me enough drive to watch Sonic the Hedgehog (2020). I was watching with an absolute zero amount of experience with any Sonic properties and all my knowledge of the movie itself was that Jim Carrey Robotnik has some homoerotic thing with a henchman and Ben Schwartz voices Sonic, and then I watched it and ohmygosh he's just a kid. He's just an incredibly sweet incredibly hyperactive lonely kid who just wants to have fun in his small Earth town and make friends with the humans. Then his human friends fully literally adopt him and now he's their alien hedgehog son and they went and got all his toys from his cave and surprised him with a full attic bedroom and they got him a race car bed!! There were of course a fair share of by the numbers Insert-Joke-Here movie moments, but also the rest of the time it was just having such genuine giddy fun with the whole thing that I can't help but be swept up in it (also people weren't kidding Henchman Stone was truly absurdly gone on his doctor)

Last Show: Speaking of things I'm only getting into years later, WOW Ranking of Kings is a good show. It really committed to how multi-faceted people are just from being people, that they will do absolutely heinous things and lasting harm will be done on purpose and by accident for pride and ambition and greed and grief and fear and duty and ignorance, for their future and for their families and for themselves, and these people will regret and love and laugh and show amazing strength and humility. That kindness and cruelty exist simultaneously but believing in their kindness should always be the desired path. That there is a reason behind every act and that reason can at least be understandable even when it is still unforgiveable or you find the reason lacking, and despite that forgiveness is one's greatest strength nonetheless. That people deserve empathy just from existing as people. And when you have nothing else, just someone believing in you can be enough. This is just such a rich story that banks on your initial familiarity with character tropes to then fill them out in such deliciously beautiful ways

Sweet/Spicy/Savory: My father fights a losing battle against his adult daughter's cravings for sugar

Relationship Status: Steadily single I'd say

Last Thing I Googled: "Can hang dry clothes be put in the dryer anyway?" because I don't want to ruin some new clothes but I'm also fundamentally lazy

Current Obsession: So when I say that I spent the entirety of 2024 watching all of Lupin the 3rd what that means is that every single one of the 366 days of 2024 had me watching one episode/movie/special/ova because when I looked up how long the whole thing was when adding every individual episode/movie/special/ova together there was currently 366 pieces of media, and I thought it would be a fun project to do one every day of the year. And not only did it indeed turn out to be quite a bit of fun but when you do that every day for a whole year the interest doesn't just go away 10 days later so I'm still right in it and probably will be for a while

Looking Forward to: I'm gonna be a bridesmaid for the first time in a family wedding this year, and there's potentially a plan for a trip to Japan at some point in the future too

Tagging (non-mandatory participation): @forcebook @tina-rocket @itmightrain @ellelalee @not-a-princess-but-a-queen @jackthesnacc

[casasupernovas]

Hi

Say if Joan said yes to travelling with the doctor, but Martha didn’t like the idea and gave the doctor an ultimatum who do you think he would choose? Like I want to ship Ten/Martha, but the whole Joan thing is kinda stopping me. Sorry if this is a weird question - I just wanted to see someone else’s thought’s on the matter.

I think he would ultimately choose Martha. Because I'm sure Martha's ultimatum would entail more about her understanding that he's trying to get Joan out of guilt, but ulimately not wanting to be around someone who is racially prejudiced. Martha has already been in a backwards time for too long, we don't want to bring it with them, especially as it wouldn't just affect Martha but the Doctor too. Race is a problem from what we know but she'd definitely start othering the Doctor. I do really think he asks for Joan out of guilt.

Additionally the awareness that Joan could very well become socially aware is a thing but ultimately, that is not Martha's responsibility, and if the Doctor wishes it to be his, then Martha is within her right not to be a part of it. Also I truly believe that the Doctor would regret his decision to travel with her. Firstly, I do not believe Joan has the aptitude to be a companion. She'd probably die on their first adventure. Also Joan is incredibly bland, I think the Doctor would get bored easily.

I think the Doctor offered her a trip because he assumed she'd be more impressed with him instead of the fake. Joan never seemed too impressed with the Doctor from the story to begin with though. Interested but not that interested. And I think he'd get a kick out of showing a woman from 1913 the universe. I also think Joan was probably embarassed to fall in love with a story than a real person.

But ultimately I think he would choose Martha. I think when he talks to Joan, again I think it's out of guilt. When he speaks to Martha outside, she clearly knew what he was trying to do. Remember when John asked Martha why she didn't stop him and Joan falling for each other? Martha saying that wasn't on the list? The fault ultimately lies with the Doctor missing one of the most fundamental aspects of humanity. That is the alien making a massive error. So, he tries to placate it. I look at the scene both ways because as awful and manipulative as it seems, you can't help but feel sorry for the Doctor as you see how he is crashing and burning without realising. He just doesn't get it. But I think Martha does, and would tell him.

I think Martha would have laid it out in this ultimatum if he proposed to want to get Joan to accompany them out of guilt. The Doctor thinks a trip in the Tardis is an adequate thank you, it's partly how he got Martha in the first place. He's not self aware enough to understand why he'd be rejected (even at the end of the Runaway Bride, The Lazarus Experiment and ultimately the end of the series). But Martha. I think the core of Martha's ultimatum would also be that she is here for him.

The Doctor makes many mistakes this two parter, some out of ignorance, some under duress. In the show, when Martha offers to speak to Joan, I think she wantes to try and convince her not to travel with them exactly, but to not to think too harshly of the Doctor. As Joan and John came at her, all Martha did was defend the Doctor. Martha Jones understands him better than most companions in my opinion. I'd think she would want to come at the angle of two humans regarding the Doctor. I don't think she'd convince her, but I think she'd want to lower Joan's hate. And give her something to think abput regarding her society in general.

And I think this consideration, and understanding from Martha telling the Doctor that she would try to help ease his guilt, just not at the cost of her own sanity. And the Doctor would choose her.

[secretcalzonewinnersuitcase]

Didier's basic settings

Didier Bernardo

A descendant of the Sheep Tribe. As the name suggests, she carries the blood of sheep beastmen. Her mother was a half-human, half-sheep beastman, and her father was a human. This makes her a quarter-blooded hybrid. That's why she has far fewer sheep-like features than other beastmen. Aside from her hair texture and horns, she's almost entirely human.

There are many species living in this world, yet people have a foolish habit of ostracizing anything that deviates from their standard of normalcy. After all, they are all just different branches of organic life, all part of the same evolutionary branch of life.

Anyway, Didier was not a genetic anomaly, but she was still the target of ostracism. Sheep beastmen, human. She didn't belong to either side.

Neither sheep beastmen nor humans are fundamentally physically strong species, but Didier was the weakest among them. From birth, she was frail and underweight, and as she grew up, her physical strength remained weak, preventing her from doing many things. For this reason, she spent most of her early childhood in the safety of her mother’s arms, under her protection.

"Mother, how can I survive in this world when I am so weak? I don't know. Everyone in the village scares me... and the other kids don’t really like me..."

"No, that’s not true, my love. There’s a reason everyone is born the way they are. People are beautiful when they learn to love and grow into themselves. Didier, you must love yourself."

But the time she spent with her parents didn't last very long. Her father died of illness shortly after Didier was born, and her mother succumbed to the same fate when Didier was around 7 years old. Thus, Didier became an orphan at a young age. And as a child without a caregiver and with an appearance that was different from the rest of her race, she was even more easily ostracized.

To a child, their parents are their entire world, so, Didier—trapped in an isolated, suffocating community—was left with no choice but to flee.

In this way, she broke free from the confines of the Sheep Tribe’s village and descended into a human-dominated town, a place home to many different races.

With the mindset of a naive child who hasn't even turned ten, she might have thought, 'If I just run away from that place, maybe everything will work out somehow,' but the world outside was far more difficult for a child to survive in alone than she could imagine. She was exposed to the dark side of the world. An innocent child was exposed to raw selfishness, hatred, and violence at every turn.

Immoral adults, realized she was without a guardian, reach out their selfish, worldly, ugly hands to mold the child to their own liking, steeped in selfishness. Everywhere she looked, the world was filled with people who only sought to use her, to threaten her very existence.

The Sheep Tribe’s village had been oppressive in its own way, but at least there had been some sense of kinship among the beastmen. Here, in this merciless human world, things were even harsher, colder, and more brutal.

The helpless child endlessly runs away and wanders around the human village. She begged for scraps to survive and ran as fast as she could to avoid getting caught. There was no time for kindness, no room for a soft heart. Sheep may be herbivores by nature, but in this world, the only way to survive was to become a beast. All that remains for the child is the wooden cross left by her mother.

Even though her family had never been particularly religious, her mother would often call upon God in difficult times, sometimes as a joke, sometimes in genuine desperation. For her, God was just a concept to turn to in times of need, but for the child, it became the only thing she had left to rely on. So she clutched the wooden cross, and prayed to God, 'Please take me to my mother'.

And then, one day, a savior appeared in the life of the young lamb.

A being named Seven (relationship character). He resembles a human but is not one, and appears to be slightly older than herself. He takes in the pitiful young lamb, gives her a place to live, and raises her. By living together, he gave the child who had nowhere to rely on a place to lean on.

The exact age difference between Didier and Seven... was it about 5-6 years? (I should ask the creator again.) Didier and Seven grew up together, forming a close bond like family. Seven became Didier’s guardian, looking after the weak young lamb like a protective older brother, while Didier looked up to Seven with deep trust and admiration and followed him like a real older sibling. To Didier, he was the new object of her attachment and love—her entire world.

'I want to live with Seven even when I grow up. I want to stay by his side for the rest of my life. I want to live for Seven.' Perhaps that’s what Didier truly wished for. But the world, harsh and merciless, did not allow her fleeting stability to last.

Around the time she turned 13, Seven disappeared. He left home one day and never came back.

At first, Didier held onto hope, clinging to her faith in Seven and their unbreakable bond while grappling with her anxiety. 'He must have just gotten lost. Maybe he's busy... Perhaps he went to buy cake for me but the shop was closed, and now he’s stuck somewhere. If I just wait patiently, maybe he’ll come home with my favorite cookies and greet me like always...' But three days passed, and Seven did not return.

Didier could no longer endure the anxiety and fear, she ran out into the streets, searching for Seven. She pleaded with the adults she knew to help her printed crude missing posters and used her small hands to paste them onto telephone poles. One day, when an adult scolded her for putting up posters in the wrong place, the child begged with tears in her eyes, "Seven hasn’t come home. What am I supposed to do?"

That all-too-familiar sense of abandonment came crashing down. She never wanted to feel this way again, but why is the world so cruel? The powerless young child wandered the streets, sobbing in the middle of the road, desperately searching for the only person she had left. Even as she tripped and fell, scraping her knees, even as she was scolded and pushed away, she didn't care, 'As long as Seven comes back, I don’t care about anything else.'

Then, through her tear-filled vision, Didier saw a figure passing by. A girl with striking long white hair. A gloomy black dress, out of place in this era. Her ethereal and otherworldly appearance captivated young Didier. To the young, desperate Didier, she seemed almost like a hidden deity among humans.

With such childish thoughts, she unconsciously reached out and grabbed her hand.

...She shouldn't have done that.

"Please help me find someone. Please help me."

The white-haired girl seemed to be only slightly older or about the same age as her, but her expression was dark and heavy with sorrow. She looked the child up and down with her lifeless eyes before she slowly extended her own hand toward her. It could be called an act of kindness, an offer of assistance, but that hand, that one moment of desperation and trust, would twist her fate forever, dragging her into ruin.

"...Would you like to look for them together until they comes back? That person."

"I can help you. I'll show you how."

The alluring voice and words reached the desperate child. The naive, desperate little lamb was drawn in. For that person, she was willing to do anything.

"I... I can’t do this. Since I was little, I’ve never... "

Didier’s small hands trembled, and the blade slipped from her grasp.

"Can you really just give up like this? Both your willpower and physical abilities are below average. What can you possibly do if you can't even wield this small sword properly? Do you know how scary and cruel this world that swallowed that precious person of yours whole is?"

The white-haired girl gazed at the young lamb with icy eyes. Is it contempt that colors those eyes? Or was it pressure directed at her? The girl, who had long since lost her innocent and childlike spirit, gave off an air of domineering that did not fit her mid-teens physique.

"That's not it, I really can't do it. It's too heavy... this sword. Even with a glass bottle, if it weren’t for Seven, I..."

"Clinging to someone who isn’t here is pointless. You can't reach them anymore."

"...If there is something you want to get back, go beyond your limits. Desperately yearn for it. Throw away all your tears and weakness. Trash them."

The white girl spoke in a heavy voice, as if she, too, was bound by chains of the past.

"In this world, if you have no power, you are nothing. No one listens to your voice. No one cares! ...Do you know why? Because you're useless, you're not worth looking at."

The white girl let out a bitter sneer. Her gaze flickered toward the dropped sword as she rolled her eyes at Didier. Her look was piercing.

"...You can't do it? It seems you're not desperate enough yet?"

The young lamb thought to herself.

'Ah, Mother, you always told me that people are beautiful just as they are, that we should embrace who we are and grow from there.

...But in the end, was I just useless after all? Maybe even that person got sick of me being like this.'

The reason he left was because I was too weak. Because I couldn't be of any help. Because I did nothing but whine about how hard everything was. If I can't even endure this girl's training, if I can't even withstand that girl's one-sided violence under the guise of training, then it's because I'm weak. Because I’m just an idiot who can't even open a glass bottle by myself.

It was a kind of brainwashing. Her chest ached, overflowing with desperation and self-loathing.

"If it’s all because of my weakness, then I hate myself."

A storm of emotions swirled inside her: fury, shame, regret—all directed at herself. In a fit of rage, half-filled with anger and despair, she grabbed the sword and shattered the training dummy infront of her. The beginning of her strength was not determination, not justice, but self-hatred and a desire for destruction.

The white-haired girl spoke.

“...Look, you can swing that sword now. See, you can do it."

'If the reason I can't meet that person again is because of my weakness, then I will cut it all off.'

From that point on, Didier lived for one, singular purpose, to become strong enough to return to Seven. Nothing else mattered. She don't even remember how she spent those days. All that remained was a simple, brutal conclusion... once she return to that person, she will burn this entire place to the ground.

As the days passed, the young lamb, consumed by rage, shattered all the training dummy prepared for him until not even dust remained. The debris piled up like a mountain of corpses, and before she knew it, she had become strong enough to knock down most people. She felt guilty at first, but now she has become numb to it.

'Yes, I can do this. If I can just go back to him, it'll all be worth it.'

Previously, she was merely a knight in service to the white-haired girl serving as a direct guard under the King’s command. It was not until she was 18 that she took up the vacant title of Jack of Intrepidity.

By then, it was hard to find her previous frail appearance as a young lamb. She was nicknamed ‘a wolf in sheep’s clothing’ by her fellow believers. As she becomes an adult, like those immoral adults, she becomes resigned to the world and compromises with reality.

Then, one day, the adult lamb received a proposal from the cult leader.

"...I’ve found that person. Would you like to meet him?"

It happened so absurdly and suddenly one day.

The person I wanted to meet so much, whose name had begun to fade in the endless cycle of death and resurrection. The reason I endured is to avoid becoming weak. To not lose what is precious to me in the face of power. To crave strength to remain useful. To stand firm on my own two feet in front of you. That's why I wanted to show you. The changed me.

"─It seems the young lamb I once knew is no longer here."

But what returned was his cold exterior.

Didier never expected this. Seven could not accept the changed appearance of the lamb. The only image of the lamb he had left was rooted in the past. Worse yet, he was already affiliated with another religious group, and the girl he once knew was nowhere to be found. Yet, I was determined to wait, even if it meant breaking every bone in my body.

'Seven, did you ever even think about me? What was I to you? Why? Is it because I’m not the same as I used to be? Then what was I supposed to do back then? I believed you would accept me, no matter what!... But no, I was wrong. Please, don't leave me behind again. Please. But, but,'

“How could you...?!"

...For the second time, Didier’s world shattered.

Once because of Seven. And once because of her own foolishness. All the love that made her endure this life turns into resentment and hatred.

The reason she want to live becomes the reason she want to kill. The embrace she wanted to be held in suddenly becomes a target for a large sword to stick into. That precious breath, she reach out to choke it. "I don’t care if your God made your body unkillable, I will make it so painfully unbearable that you will wish for death. So tell me now. 'I'm sorry, I'm glad to have met you'."

Staying by God for so long has twisted my mind, clouding rational judgment and making me blindly fixate on a single thing. This way of thinking isn’t healthy, but now is not the time to consider that. I need to hear an answer. "Did I wish for something so grand? All I ever wanted was for someone to protect me."

My hand was strangling the neck of the one i loved, so much force was put into it that the veins in my wrist stood up fiercely. But,

...when I looked at that painful face, I realize, I can’t truly kill him for real, so tears fall down my face.

So I let go. I'm still weak. Tears won’t stop falling down my face. So I knelt down in front of him and weep.

“I still need you, so please.”

This fierce longing, this desperate plea. It’s too heavy for him to bear, so he turns his back on me. With this answer, I have lost both a reason to fight and a reason to live.

'Is it truly possible to be rejected by the world this completely?'

I didn't want to lose what was mine in this cold world, so I tried to hold onto what little I had left, but everything I cherished slipped through my fingers like sand. 'Did I hold on too tightly? Did I crush it myself? If so, then all I can do is blame myself.'

'Seven, at least I can say I was lucky? The fact that I happen to be here, in this place, where death is never permanent. It doesn’t matter how many times I die, i will always return, so I can drag this weak body and remain in this world until the end. I don’t have to cling to survival. Do you know what that means? It means no matter what I can somehow exist in the same era as you. You may not know this, but I've already died countless times. That’s why i don't even remember why I wanted to become strong anymore. I assume it was because of you, but why do you never fade from my memory?' Perhaps it is because you are not my reason for dying, you are my reason for living.

'Other memories from the past have nearly faded away. Now, the soft texture of the cookies in the gift bag and you are the only two things remain in my life.' Just as you are, unable to live freely, all that’s left for me is the punishment for being too greedy for strength. In the end, my selfishness was meaningless. You gave me the world and took it away from me.

'You left a hole inside me.' The berserker who lost the meaning of fighting still couldn't let go of the greatsword. And now, I am forced to face the thing I have always avoided, my own weakness.

My past self, the weak child I used to be, stands before me and said, "Gaining strength isn’t everything. Look at you, your heart has not grown at all since then. You are just a child with a big body."

"No."

I denies those words and throws a fit of rage. The sight of that small mouth spitting words of weakness is so disgusting that I swing my weapon, but nothing gets caught on the blade. 'In the end, isn’t it just myself that I’m mocking?' I collapse to the ground and feels emptiness sinking into my body.

'Seven, tell me, how much longer do I have to fight?

Where exactly is the end of this war?

Please come back before I completely break amidst all these countless deaths. At this point, I can’t hold on much longer.'

Didier’s current status: Since childhood, she has been raised alongside Rika and brainwashed by the doctrine of power. She was shaped to match Rika’s ideals, developing exceptional strength and combat skills. However, her mental strength is extremely low. It is the second lowest after Aruell. Unlike the others, who at least had some level of autonomy in their choices, Didier was half-forced into the cult. She is the only one who has been fully brainwashed into a high-ranking priest/apostle of the cult.

Though her body has grown, her mind remains undeveloped. She is short-sighted and only thinks about what’s in front of her. She gets angry easily, acts impulsively, and is quick to rage. Even if she were to be freed from the brainwashing, it would be difficult for her to return to her former self. Isn’t that to be expected? She has stayed here for far too long. Far too long.

Similar to Aruell, her mental state is deteriorating, gradually reaching its limit. Though she is still struggling for now, it’s uncertain when her mental strength might completely deplete.

She aims to survive as long as possible by utilizing the system of the Victory Church. She seeks a way back, a chance to escape.

tmi: Well, the two are right for each other. But even if they date... or tried to return to the past...? They would still be in a state where they couldn't be happy at all. They don’t know what to do with each other anymore.

(*Original link: https://x.com/Null_Hutsori/status/1605158957739552769

*Disclaimer: The English translation belongs to me.)

[alicerozen]

Kouen takes the seat Anatasia indicated to him, leaning back into it. Terrifying thought that a woman like Alice pretty much killed a god, never mind the implication that each dragon themself is probably worth several Djinn users. Depending on how many dragons they had, conquest would have been on the table for them had the shift not messed with some of their fundamentals, and caused widespread damage.

The best way to tell if a dragon could enter a Dungeon was to simply attempt it, but he'd have to bring along someone who could get a metal vessel so they could clear it and leave and doing that isn't an easy task - both in the sense of finding someone they'll accept and clearing it. Kouen would largely be there just to keep them alive, as if he solved the dungeon for them it wouldn't matter even if he found someone they'd be okay with.

Tapping his fingers on the table, he looks over the map again. It's hard to get an idea for proper scaling, given he arrived via the port and pretty much came right to the castle, but the map showed that each town was very tight together in size. This at least meant that aside from some ideal flat areas with open space around them, dungeons wouldn't be appearing in the middle of towns. This is going to take some planning.

"Well, we can worry about the Daedric in their entirety if or when, hopefully it stays as an 'if', they return. So long as Alice has control of the dragons, as I assume they follow her lead if for no other reason than she killed their previous leader of sorts, we can probably minimize worrying about that. Just stick dumb ones with smart ones for the time being, no dragon goes near an unfamiliar structure alone."

This might be all for naught, as the Dungeons might still work on their old summoning system, and he sure hoped so, but there's too many unknowns for him to just handwave it. Letting out a sigh, he turns his head back to Anatasia.

"Hopefully with all this info, they realize panicking won't help and instead listen to my general directions on how we'll deal with this."

-------------------------------------------------------

Even with the changes, once grown used to it the dragon could still easily add in conquest. Even just the fear of dragons being around could help in some areas, though thats all for a much later date. Anatasia sat in her own seat and nodded. "Yes, that is true. Thankfully there isn't a lot of...Dumb ones, though restless is a better word, it seems like Alice has probably send most of those to guard the towns and cities. So that risk is low for now, though the other worry is them becoming bored and leaving Skyrim. Though they can hide, it won't take long before they are seen." She said with a sigh. "Though that is another worry for a later date."

Anatasia smiled and chuckled at a little at his words, honestly she could only hope that would be the case. It wasn't long until the others started to show up, a few of the different races came and heads. A cat like person, elves and other humans. Honestly was going okay for the most part, no one really seemed sure of what to think of Kouen or the news but they didn't have much choice in it. Then all chaos broke loose at a suggestion from the high elves.

"Are you really saying to kill the high king?!" One of the man, who was introduced as one of the acting heads for the other races who couldn't be there. One of the high elves, Valmir rolled his eyes. "No, what I said was that we shouldn't waste needed powers or resources on. What is probably already a dead person." He explained as Anatasia narrowed her eyes. "His wound is closed and he already seemed to be in a better state." She said and he huffed. "Just because it closed, doesn't mean anything. Did this 'healing' restore his lost blood? Or how are we sure he went go into shock at this new magic?" He questioned Kouen with a raised eyebrow.

[Continuation from here]

Following behind Anatasia, Kouen lets out a sigh.

"Once again, I'm sorry for not mentioning them sooner. I'll give you a run down before we get there so you can judge how the crowd might react. Their name is simple, we refer to them as Dungeons. They can appear anywhere, at any time, and unless it's a special type remains until it's cleared. If someone enters, there's only one way to leave it alive - clear it."

Holding up Phenex's medallion, as well as the sword it was attached to, he continues on.

"Upon clearing, you will meet with an entity called Djinn, and they will judge you to see if you are worthy of their power. If you are, you will receive a metal vessel - like my sword and medallion here - in which the Djinn will live in. However, in order to be accepted one must possess a certain amount of Magoi. This is fundamentally incompatible with your people at the moment in the event they do manage to clear it, not to mention the chaos with your magic being in the state it is making clearing it almost impossible. So from what I know of them, having cleared three myself, and of your situation, I can pretty much promise anyone who enters one by mistake or intention, will die."

Reattaching the sword at his hip, Kouen looks to Anatasia as they continue on.

"If you have any questions you'd like to ask before I address the public, please do. It'd give me ideas of things I might need to address specifically."

[blackswaneuroparedux]

The beauty of music in the world of Schopenhauer

Who was that lad they used to try to make me read at Oxford? Ship- Shop- Schopenhauer. That's the name. A grouch of the most pronounced description.

- P.G. Wodehouse

Like many others I always found German philosophy forbidding and always imagined it as a dense forest of verbose technical words. I always felt I would derive lore pleasure from eating saw dust than read from reams of pages of 19th Century German philosophy. So I was very surprised that the late Roger Scruton, whose conservative philosphical ideas resonate with me strongly, always credited reading Arthur Schopenhauer and other peers like Kant and Hegel as his main influences.

So I took the plunge to try and understand Arthur Schopenhauer first hand. To my surprise he is a pleasure to read. You notice very quickly that he owes much to Kant. So some familiarity with that famous thinker’s views will make reading Schopenhauer’s The World as Will and Representation easier. But straight away you come to a problem. Kant can be an even harder read and made worse because Kant, unfortunately, did not write well. His prose style was as digestible as eating saw dust. But I slogged through it like some Bataan death march. But to others I will say it’s advisable to read an introductory work about Kant rather than postponing your reading of Schopenhauer as you slog through the first and second Critiques.

Schopenhauer’s writings will still challenge most readers, especially if they have limited familiarity with 19th century German thought, but he purposefully wrote for the average educated person of his era - he was not a professor and he didn’t write for professors.

Arthur Schopenhauer’s foundational work, The World as Will and Representation, introduced several new concepts to the Western world of philosophy. He was among the first to provide a moral framework without asserting God as its source, he considered the world fundamentally irrational. He also was the first to incorporate Eastern (Buddhist) thought into a Western system of philosophy.

For these reasons alone he is remarkable, but even more so are his thoughts on beauty which continue to inspire artists and thinkers alike. Let’s take a look at a brief overview of The World as Will and Representation. And especially let’s explore the lofty value Schopenhauer placed on art, and on music specifically; list some of the thinkers and artists he has influenced, and conclude with some thoughts on this engaging work of philosophy.

Music may well be as old as mankind itself, and across the centuries, numerous philosophers have tried to explain our relationship with it. Henry David Thoreau once said music made him feel “invulnerable” and unafraid. In the words of Napoleon Bonaparte, “Music is what tells us the human race is greater than we realize.” Friedrich Nietzsche, a classically trained pianist who composed his first works when he was only 18 years old, exclaimed that without music, “life would be a mistake.”

Few, however, have been as thorough in their analysis as Arthur Schopenhauer. Born in 1788 in what is now Gdańsk, Poland, the German thinker argued that music was the noblest, greatest, and most significant of all artforms. Not only does it rise head and shoulders above other mediums like painting and literature, it is also the only one capable of channeling what Schopenhauer believed was the higher truth that governs the world and everything in it.

His analysis of the medium, found in his all-encompassing book, The World as Will and Representation, was based not on emotion but reason. Rather than ranking artforms by his personal opinion, Schopenhauer judged music through the lens of his philosophical worldview. Though his theories have been disputed several times since his death in 1860, they still provide an interesting and logically consistent argument for why music is the highest form of expression known to man.

Schopenhauer fundamentally characterises the will as a blind drive, an unfulfilled longing fated to always continue and never be satiated. Because this will has no purpose, it can never be satisfied. He fittingly describes this will as a source of pain in the human condition:

“This great intensity of will is in itself and directly a constant source of suffering.”

“All willing arises from want, therefore from deficiency, and therefore from suffering.”

This will is what keeps the world moving constantly, though not progressing toward any end or purpose. Having established the duality of our existence, in seeing ourselves both objectively and subjectively, he continues this idea, positing that this duality must be present in all things. Therefore, the will exists in all things, though in varying degrees. For example, forces of nature, like gravity and electricity, are the will exhibiting itself on the most basic, natural level. This continues into the animal kingdom in the form of instinct, and is finally shown in humans’ ability to think and subsequently act on motive.

Our motives are, necessarily he says, only self-serving, as we can only perceive the world through our own experience. For Schopenhauer, the will always expresses itself through physical action, and therefore our inner thoughts not considered acts of the will.

Ultimately, Schopenhauer’s system hinges on the will being unknowable, and incapable of being fulfilled, providing a rather bleak outlook on humanity. This pessimism is what he is largely remembered for, although nestled within The World as Will and Representation, is his lovely addressing of aesthetics. In this third book, we find beautifully written prose, proclaiming the heights of art of which we humans are capable. 

Considering how pessimistic his concept of human existence is, the fact that he finds beauty and tranquility in art and music is remarkably surprising. Indeed, these sources of beauty are the only wellsprings of peace or transcendence in his conception of a fundamentally harsh and painful human existence, and he writes with sweeping prose on the subject:

“But when some external cause or inward disposition lifts us suddenly out of the endless stream of willing, delivers knowledge from the slavery of the will, the attention is no longer directed to the motives of willing, but comprehends things free from their relation to the will, and thus observes them without personal interest, without subjectivity, purely objectively, gives itself entirely up to them so far as they are ideas, but not in so far as they are motives. Then all at once the peace which we were always seeking, but which always fled from us on the former path of the desires, comes to us of its own accord, and it is well with us.”

The intellect, for Schopenhauer, is considered to be always in service to the will, and one’s thoughts are therefore always tainted by subjective strivings.

Beauty, here, consists in art accurately reflecting the ideas inherent in the world. The mark of genius, which Schopenhauer outrageously and explicitly restricts to men, is in being able to recognise these ideas, and thus transcend their own self interest.  

“This freeing of knowledge lifts us as wholly and entirely away from all that, as do sleep and dreams; happiness and unhappiness have disappeared; we are no longer individual; the individual is forgotten; we are only pure subject of knowledge; we are only that one eye of the world which looks our from all knowing creatures, but which can become perfectly free from the service of man in will alone.”

“(The common man) can turn his attention to things only so far as they have some relation to his will, however indirect it may be.”

He discusses all manner of beauty in the third book, including light, architecture, sculpting, and painting, as well as animal and human beauty. He continues by discussing the aims of the artist, and concludes with music, which he considers to be noble and in a separate class from the representative visual arts.

Schopenhauer likens the elusive, often melancholic feeling that art can stir within us to the one that washes over us when we stumble across an impressive feat of nature. When we climb a towering mountain range, venture into a sprawling valley, or even just look down upon our hometown from the airplane window when we go on holiday, the seemingly endless splendor of the world itself puts one’s own existence into a fresh perspective.

Compared to these awe-inspiring vistas, our daily struggles seem so small and insignificant that they might as well not exist at all. Wrote Schopenhauer: “Whoever now has become so absorbed and lost in the perception of nature becomes directly conscious that he is the condition, the supporter, of the world and all objective existence. In this way Byron says: ‘Are not the mountains, waves, and skies, a part of me and my soul, as I of them?’”

Though this form of ego-death might look intimidating to some, Schopenhauer believed that people ought to welcome and indeed pursue it. For if the Will is intimately tied to our conception of the self, then by losing this sense of self in order to become one with the world around us would logically diminish both the Will and the aforementioned suffering of which it is the cause. Put differently, the more we are able to forget who we are, the freer we become.

The same process, Schopenhauer believed, could be facilitated by art, which tries to find the universal in the personal, the timelessness in the contemporary, and the infinite in the finite. “Losing ourselves” in a beautiful painting or a good book is no different from the feeling we experience when we spend time with nature. “The true work of art,” wrote Schopenhauer, “leads us from that which exists only once to that which exists perpetually and time and again in innumerable manifestations.”

Upon first glance, Schopenhauer’s worldview looks suspiciously like Plato’s. Just as with the Greek philosopher, Schopenhauer made a distinction between something abstract and undefinable  - what he referred to as the “thing in itself” - and its real-world appearance or representation. Hence came the title of his book, The World as Will and Representation. It is through these concepts, this hierarchy of values, that Schopenhauer proceeds to argue why music is the superior artform.

“It stands alone,” Schopenhauer wrote of the medium, “quite cut off from all the other arts. In it we do not recognize the copy or repetition of any idea of existence in the world. Yet it is such a great and exceedingly noble art, its effect on the inmost nature of man is so powerful, and it is so entirely and deeply understood by him in his inmost consciousness as a perfectly universal language, the distinctness of which surpasses even that of the perceptible world itself.”

“Yet (music) is such a great and exceedingly noble art, its effect on the inmost nature of man is so powerful, and it is so entirely and deeply understood by him in his inmost consciousness as a perfectly universal language…”  

“Music is thus by no means like the other arts, the copy of the Ideas, but the copy of the will itself, whose objectivity the Ideas are. This is why the effect of music is so much more powerful and penetrating than that of the other arts, for they speak only of shadows, but it speaks of the thing itself.”

Looking at the other artforms, Schopenhauer found that most if not all of them were merely representations of the thing-in-itself rather than extensions of it. When a painter tries to paint a hand, he tries to paint what he perceives as the perfect hand. However, the perfect hand does not exist in the material world; it only exists in the abstract one, in the form of a Platonic ideal. As such, all that the painter can do is emulate this idea.

Put differently, most artistic mediums are stand-ins for the things that artists want to represent. The painter uses pigments which, when applied on a canvas, depict an object. The sculptor uses clay or marble which, when molded into a particular shape, resemble something other than the material itself. The writer uses words which, when arranged in a specific order, acquire meaning and significance that did not exist before.

Music is different from all other artforms because it alone is an expression of itself rather than something else. Notes and melodies, unlike phrases and colors, do not try to represent anything but can instead be appreciated simply for what they are. Rather than representing the Will through indirect means as depictions of its real-world manifestations, Schopenhauer believed music was a direct manifestation of the Will itself.

Consequently, when we listen to music, we feel as though we instantly connect with a higher truth, whatever that truth may be. “Music,” wrote Schopenhauer, “is by no means like the other arts, the copy of the Ideas, but the copy of the Will itself, whose objectivity the Ideas are. This is why the effect of music is so much more powerful and penetrating than that of any of the other arts, for they only speak of shadows, but it [music] speaks of the thing itself.”

Schopenhauer’s ideas, while hundreds of years old, continue to ring true today. They explain, for instance, why movie soundtracks - a relatively small and seemingly subservient part of the cinematic experience - hold such tremendous sway over audiences. More often than not, acting, editing, and cinematography in fact serve as extensions of the soundtrack, as it is the music and the music alone that channels whatever truth the film is trying to get at.

It must be noted that Schopenhauer was mostly concerned with what we call “absolute” or “pure” music. This genre, which emerged at the start of the philosopher’s academic career and was popularized by the composer Richard Wagner, is described as not being “about” anything. Devoid of lyrics, listeners are able to see the Will for what it really is: an unhindered expression of the metaphysical.

In many ways, Schopenhauer was ahead of his time; a sign of thinkers to come.

His characterisation of the will as an unknowable force is seen in Freud’s revolutionary development of the id, ego, and superego. His writings on art and beauty influenced Leo Tolstoy. His philosophy directly influenced Ludwig Wittgenstein, who is considered the greatest philosopher of the 20th century, and possibly the most influential thinker since Immanuel Kant. Einstein admired him so much kept a bust of Schopenhauer in his study.

Schopenhauer’s legacy is that of inspiring composer Richard Wagner, novelists such as Joseph Conrad, and perhaps most famously, Friedrich Nietzsche. Schopenhauer’s love for the arts is echoed in Nietzsche’s exaltations of them, and in his considering the arts more valuable to humanity than science. He is credited as a framer of existentialism, and his pessimism surely influenced the surliness of French writers in the post-War era.

Though largely overshadowed in his lifetime by his contemporaries, Schopenhauer’s words and theories have endured to inspire thinkers generations later.

Schopenhauer’s work is challenging even for the most seasoned student of philosophy. While I find his writing to be interesting and entertaining, I consider his conception of a blind will fruitlessly consuming itself, and that will being the centre and end of existence to be woefully bleak. I have to - philosophically speaking - if I believe in a divine creator of our existence in this universe.

I believe human life to have more dignity and purpose than the Schopenhauer system allows, as well. Again, it follows if there is a divine creator and we are made in his image then of course there must be dignity and purpose to life.

What I do admire about Schopenhauer, however, is his love and respect for art and music, and his descriptions of the transcendent affect they can have on our moods.

The unrelenting brutality of his philosophical system is reflected in the beauty with which he communicates his thoughts on art; to the extent he found the world to be violent and irrational, he found just as much beauty in art and music.

His words on the powerful influence of music are especially beautiful, and they are among my favourite writings on the subject. Schopenhauer represents to me that there is something admirable in everyone, so long as you are willing to find something to learn and appreciate.

[eyemarked]

potential ending theory: a world without fear

i have a theory about a possible ending of the magnus archives that i think would be satisfyingly horrific, thematically appropriate, and well-foreshadowed. i’m sure that someone has already thought about this basic concept, but my reasoning is a bit elaborate so i just wanted to lay out some thoughts and document my own theory process. 

i think that everyone in the world is going to become fearless like georgie, killing the entities forever. this will also involve the extinction. reasoning under the cut:

(given how many different connections i’m making here, and how long this post ended up being, i’ve bolded important words/phrases in some sections for accessibility. this whole post is the equivalent of a messy red string board, so i hope it makes more sense this way!)

the setup

georgie barker is established in ep 94 dead woman walking to be fearless, and thus immune to the effects of the entities. this trait of hers is due to an encounter she had with the end, which affected her deeply and changed her on a fundamental level, removing her fear.

there’s a fundamental question here that has not been addressed by canon: how and why would an encounter with the end remove a person’s fear in such a unique way? why would the end benefit from georgie’s state of fearlessness?

jon establishes in ep 164 the sick village that “[the entities] can’t be destroyed while there are still people to fear them.”

oliver banks establishes in ep 168 roots that the end will eventually consume all of humanity, leaving the world a lifeless husk and starving the entities to death in the absence of anyone to fear them.

oliver also speculates that “[as] the other Entities grow in their awareness of their own end, the grotesque ripples of their own impossible panic shall glut and feed my master, gorging it to the point where – perhaps it will even surpass the Watcher in prominence.”

note how the phrasing implies a level of sentience and consciousness! according to oliver, the entities themselves can feel fear - specifically, fear of their own death.

various people in season 5, most notably jon himself, have referred to the apocalypse as “the change”.

the extinction, also known as the terrible change, was speculated by adelard dekker to be an emerging power fueled by the human fear of, quote ep 134 time of revelation: “catastrophic change. A change in our world that will wipe out what it means to be us, and leave something else in its place ... leave us something alien and cold. We will press a button that in a moment will destroy everything we have ever been.”

in ep 94, georgie explains that her encounter with the end initially took away all her emotions and left her numb.

the very first adelard dekker statement was a manifestation of the end that initially appeared to be the extinction.

in ep 157 rotten core, adelard dekker speculates that the extinction might be “an existential fear that flows through the others like a vein of ore.”

in ep 168, martin, who had spent the entirety of season 4 studying the extinction, mistakenly refers to oliver banks’ end domain as “the rotten core”.

as established in ep 111 family business, the flesh is a relatively new animal fear of slaughterhouses. it manifests as body horror to humans because animal fear “gets weird [when it] gets mixed all up with human neuroses”.

in other words, if a fear originates in one type of mind, its manifestations can get weird and oblique when applied to a different type of mind.

in ep 175 epoch, while they are in a domain of the extinction, jon indirectly references ep 168: “Everything ends, I suppose. Even this place. Can’t last forever. Eventually… it will die as well.” 

notably, this is seemingly the only instance in season 5 of jon independently bringing up the conclusions made in oliver’s report.

the theory

the extinction is not entirely an entity in its own right (or maybe it is; fear soup!). in fact, the extinction is a manifestation or offshoot of the end, filtered through the minds of the entities themselves.

in other words, the extinction is the “entity” of the other entities’ fear of their own death.

the entities can only die if there is no one left to fear them; the extinction is actually the fear of this scenario - i.e. a world where no one fears them.

when filtered through a human mind, this fear becomes the “extinction” manifestations that we’ve seen in the podcast, in the same way that the fear of slaughterhouses becomes the flesh when filtered through a human mind.

georgie’s encounter with the end in university was actually a manifestation of the extinction; in fact, georgie herself is now a manifestation of the extinction.

georgie’s existence as a fearless human being, completely immune to the entities, is a constant memento mori for them - a reminder to the entities that they are capable of death (specifically, death by starvation). the end/extinction uses her to fuel and feed off this fear.

the apocalypse ritual in 160 did, in fact, kick off the full manifestation of the extinction, in that the state of the world has now gone from “the entities might hypothetically be capable of dying” to “the entities will inevitably die and will eventually be fully aware of this fact.” 

the show will end with the fulfillment of the extinction - all of humanity stripped of fear, as georgie was (and perhaps of other basic emotions as well, in the same way that georgie’s encounter initially left her lacking all feelings). this will kill the entities, but also fundamentally change the nature of humanity forever.

to tie this back around to what i’ve been saying: the extinction is described as the fear that humanity will end, or change in some way to become unrecognizable and alien. and a human race completely without fear would definitely be exactly that.

the thematic relevance and narrative closure

the entities as a metaphor for capitalism has always been in the subtext of the show, but as other, better meta has noted, season 5 has seriously ramped it up and made it much more obvious and present. what better way to resolve the podcast and the problem of the entities than by destroying the entire fear system at its foundations?

demonstrating that individual action and even system-wide reform (i.e. jon's plan in ep 194 parting to take over and appoint "good" people to avatarhood) will not ever lead to real long-term change, and that the only way to truly defeat the system is to rip it out at the roots? 

as well as acknowledging that doing so is far from an ideal solution due to the immediate inevitable harm that the upheaval would cause to countless innocent people, but would potentially lead to a better and safer future for humanity in the long run?

oliver banks’ statement from ep 168 has not yet become relevant. given how big of a game-changer it is in terms of the stakes of the decisions the characters are making, i would be baffled if the finale didn’t involve it in some way.

going by the way that tma’s writing and structure has previously set up its big twists, georgie’s fearlessness should factor into a plot point in a major way. this has not yet happened, and so given how close we are to the finale, it’s got to be a part of the finale if it’s a part of anything at all.

obviously, i might be wrong; all of this could be complete nonsense. but given the amount of setup for the concept that the entities will die if no one fears them, and the fact that this scenario hasn’t been brought up in-podcast as a possibility at all yet, it feels pretty probable to me. at the very least, regardless of whether my elaborate redstringing about the extinction is correct or not, i think we’re getting an ending involving a world without fear.

[tomasorban]

Looking for Monoatomic Gold

In the late '70s, while he was extracting gold from his land, David Hudson, a farmer from Arizona, noticed some materials of strange composition and coloring and precisely in correspondence with their presence, the vegetation was significantly robust and lush. David invested several million dollars in the following decade to understand how to obtain and use with these materials but it was only in 1989 that he managed to obtain more patents on these materials and on the methods to extract them. Although other researchers had made similar discoveries in the same period and earlier, Hudson was the first to inform the public about it so during the early 1990s, he traveled around the United States holding several seminars and conferences on his findings.

The elements discovered by him are in close connection with objects and substances present in history and reading such as the Biblical Manna, the Egyptian MFKZT, the Mesopotamian Shem-an-na, the Philosopher's Stone, the Elixir of Youth, Orgone energy, Prana, Chi, the Holy Grail and the Ark of the Covenant, and to the concepts of modern physics such as superconductivity, Quantum coherence and Bose-Einstein condensate (BEC), a new state of matter discovered thanks the velocity distribution of the atoms and their condensation state.

These elements have been called ORME (Orbitally Rearranged Monatomic Elements) and also Elements in the M state, m-state, Monoatomic Gold, White Gold Powder, ORMUS, AuM, Microcluster and have a fundamental feature that distinguishes them from all the other elements: the orbitals with an electron available for rearrangement, therefore capable of changing shape according to the magnetic field with which they come into contact, a behavior similar to a stem cell. Currently the most controversial is the so-called MONOATOMIC GOLD which was already known to some of the great civilizations of the past: the Jews called it "Manna" or "The bread of God", the Egyptians "Tear from the eye of Horus", the Indians "Vibhuti or Bhasma of gold". It is said that there is Monoatomic Gold in the legendary Atlantis: it is also called a metal of flames, it is a substance with a mysterious property of emitting unique energy, better known as "Orichalcum".

Monoatomic Gold and Alchemy

In alchemy, this substance is the "Golden Chalice" which helps transform the lead of the human mind (the ego, with its negative and closed structures) into gold. It is essential to emphasize that alchemists were not looking for the gold we all know, but the white powder or projection powder that we now call Monoatomic Gold, a transformation of the three-dimensional structure of common gold into two-dimensional gold, to which, already in antiquity, extraordinary powers of levitation, transmutation and teleportation were recognized.

In ancient Egypt, during the gold melting process, there were always small amounts of melted gold in the oven. These remains suffered continuously a process of melting and solidifying from cold to hot, since they were not removed from the oven. Over time, artisans discovered small quantities of white dust where gold waste had previously accumulated. Through this constant alternation of heat and cold, the common gold had become white powder that some of the craftsmen ended up tasting by discovering the most powerful substance capable of altering human consciousness and physiology. Its effects remained for several days to those who had consumed it: also mummies were found in possession of this white powder.

Even in ancient India we find the formula to make the alchemical gold that Hindu alchemists called "Puttah". The most eminent members of some ancient families were used to ingest it regularly in small quantities.

The famous alchemist who made the "Philosopher's Stone" (Stone of Sage), Nicolas Flamel (1330) in his alchemy thesis, writes that mercury and sulfur, various metals are melted in the furnace fire and distilled to proceed with work then the substance changed to black, gray white, green, white, orange and finally became rosy purple stone like poppy flower. And after all, the philosopher's stone was completed: he said that three times in all he converted mercury to gold with the Philosopher's stone.

A mysterious metal appears in the "Takeuchi documents" which Takeuchi Sukune, a Takeuchi family who served the Emperor has been told as an oral message. It is similar to the flickering of the flames but vermillion, never rusting metal. His specific gravity is lighter than gold, its pure substance is softer than iron, a legendary metal that becomes harder than platinum when alloyed. It is said to be "Hihiirokane" which was mined at Mt.Kakakono.

Monoatomic Gold and the Anunnaki

Zecharia Sitchin claimed that an alien race from the planet Nibiru, the Anunnaki, came to Earth in search of gold, and that man was created to serve as a worker in the extraction of this metal. Some scholars have suggested that perhaps the substance capable of saving their world and making them physically healthy and immortal was actually Monoatomic Gold and not common gold: the surprising result of combining the theories of Anunnaki and ORME leads to the almost inevitable conclusion that the purpose of the Anunnaki to arrive on Earth was to acquire the monoatomic elements in order to ingest them and therefore to be able to lead a long life. David Hudson himself argue that the primary form in which gold is found in seawater is in its monoatomic state therefore the first attempt by the Anunnaki to obtain gold would have been to extract it from seawater, in especially the upper part of the Persian Gulf where the Tigris and Euphrates rivers meet.

Sitchin and numerous researchers, including British essayist Laurence Gardner, reached the following conclusions:

The inhabitants of the planet Nibiru came to Earth with the main purpose was to extract gold and precious elements and to have a workforce capable of satisfying their needs they created humanity to which they provided the rudiments of civilization.

They would also have provided the organic and natural equivalent of ORME, the knowledge of its importance and the method by which it could be made and brought internally by the individual to selected individuals (such as kings and patriarchs ..): thus justifying their extraordinarily long life and the reason for their presence in leadership roles.

Monoatomic gold today: the discovery of extraordinary properties

Even today, monoatomic gold, due to its surprising characteristics, is being studied more and more, as it has a completely different atomic structure than the original metallic condition. Traces of monoatomic gold are also found in nature, but metallic gold can be transformed into monoatomic gold only through an alchemical process. These are the very particular physical and energy characteristics of monoatomic gold: It is a superconductor at room temperature and it seems to behave like an energy producer by being able to give, accumulate and receive light / information / energy without any loss. Its electrons merge with antielectrons and form opposite beams of light that rotate around the oval core and, at the same time, it produces an etheric prana vortex, which flows along a double helix through the nucleus of the atom which corresponds to the Kundalini energy. It produces a zero magnetic field (Meissner field, that is, it has the ability to "move" the magnetic field away from itself) around itself, which corresponds to man's MER-KA-BA. Merkaba is the light body of man, which includes spirit, life energy and soul. When they merge they form a unit that produces beams of light in counter rotation and able to overcome space and time.

Monoatomic gold exists only on 5/9 on the physical plane.

Pure monoatomic gold rises on the earth's magnetic field.

It does not wear out and its function and longevity are eternal.

According to the testimony of a group of alchemists, who have taken Monoatomic Gold for years, they have been able to observe the following physiological and energetic reactions (which coincide with ancient Egyptian texts, the Bible and the Vedas):

Regeneration of damaged cells including also brain neuronal cells

Strong activation of the endocrine glandular system especially as regards the pituitary gland, thymus and pineal gland

Significant increase in the flow of light and photons in both the meridian and nervous systems

Strengthening the immune system and increasing self-healing capacity

Increase in superconducting capacity and DNA energy flow

Reversal of the aging process which is significantly slowed down thanks to the energetic repair of the wrong programs in our DNA

Rebalancing and harmonious elevation of the frequencies of the chakras, of the body and of the Kundalini energy

Induction of an emotional balance

Expansion of the level of intelligence

Increase in stress management capacity

Strengthening the ability to manifest one's thoughts

Increased inner peace

Acquisition of greater clarity in the vision of external situations and consequent problem solving skills

Awakening of dormant potential

General improvement of the quality of life at all levels, both physical, emotional, mental and spiritual

[solustalechoy]

Apologies if this comes off as rambling, I'm really just piecing together random thoughts during work breaks.

I do agree that the messaging in the finale probably came off as more confused than was intended, but I think that was a consequence of the heavily shortened season. I would bet that we would have gone a lot more into Wittebane history with a full season 3. And the choose yourself concept could really have stood to be better explained.

Personally, I didn't think we were supposed to take Daddy Titan's words as Word of God, especially since it was established early in the conversation that they were also fallible. His perspective on Belos is still that of an outside observer (albeit, one better informed than most). I interpreted this more as him not having very much time, and telling Luz what she needs to hear right at this moment. Again, with a full season, a deeper discussion would have been warranted, but right at that moment, when Luz was in the absolute depths of despair after spending the whole of season 3 blaming herself and already putting the absolute worst possible interpretation on her own actions? She didn't need a nuanced discussion at that moment, she needed to be shaken like a ragdoll and told "No, you are not as bad as the person who literally tried to commit genocide, now please pull yourself together and stop him from finishing the job!" And it is notable that when faced with the problem of "how do I protect the human race from this realm of evil?" Phillip seems to have jumped immediately to the genocide option, (which really wouldn't serve as a long term solution had he actually thought this through) instead of, say, trying to further the separation between the realms by destroying any gateways (would also be long and tedious process, but probably not any less practical than the genocide option). Phillip justifying himself by saying he'll do anything to protect humanity really comes off like those guys who say they'll do anything for their family but won't lift a finger to help their wife with housework, because they're really just nurturing their personal Action Hero fantasies of stopping an axe murderer.

Also, I actually really liked the religious theming in the finale? Note that my only investment in Christianity is purely scholarly, and I'm not really interested in a sectarian debate. But the point I took away from it is that religious extremists will often lose sight of the very basics of their religion (love thy neighbor, redemption and forgiveness, etc.) in pursuit of destroying what they despise, but [i]that doesn't make those religious fundamentals bad[/i]. Slavers using the bible to justify holding their fellow humans in bandage doesn't invalidate the faith of abolitionists who's beliefs drove their activism. Luz pretty consistently meets fear with kindness, even offering an open hand to the likes of Kikimora, and she doesn't hesitate to put herself in harms way to save the Collector. Those actions read as a lot more Christian to me than Phillip's. So, I didn't read it as "Christianity is only ok when we do it," so much as "Religion is a tool which can be used for good or evil, and what you do with your faith matters more than what that faith is."

I don't really think the fundamental difference between Luz and Phillip is so easily boiled down to "Luz is the Special Protagonist Girl and is thus automatically a Good Person." True, they started at similar places, it's almost like they're Narrative Foils to each other, but Luz throughout her journey has continually chosen to treat everyone she meets as a real person, has chosen to see the humanity (so to speak) in The Other. Phillip didn't, in fact he actively refused to do any such thing. And in a series where the main themes are connections, found family, and finding beauty in the bizarre, that's a pretty crucial difference. In fact, I'd say it's the whole point.

The Owl House has a whole scene where a deity-like figure assures the main character (who he's been omnisciently observing and has decided he likes because of her personal relationship to his son) that she is nothing like the main antagonist (who is a non-believer in him the goodness of magic), because unlike her the antagonist is unquestionably evil. The deity-like figure hand-waves her worries that outside factors could turn her into the same sort of monster as said antagonist, that their motives could be anything alike, and the need for really any introspection at all, because unlike him she is inherently Good. The deity-like figure then resurrects her from death because she is so holy Good and has done so right by his son.

Guess you can take the girl out of catholicism but you can't take the catholicism out of the girl, huh Dana?

[picnokinesis]

I love your fics! What are your genderqueer/genderfluid!Thirteen headcanons?

Ahh hello there!! Thank you so much, I’m so glad you like them! :D

I’m not sure if you’re asking about my headcanons for campervan au thirteen or canon thirteen, since they are slightly different, but I’ll share my thoughts about canon thirteen since I think that’s what you’re after. Although as an amusing sidenote, I mostly hc canon thirteen as agender (with some fluctuation), but campervan thirteen was very insistent that she was genderqueer and I wasn’t going to argue with her hahahahah

BUT YEAH I think you need to look at the Doctor as a whole to understand my thoughts about Thirteen and gender. So, in general, I think the Doctor has no idea what to do with gender and wouldn’t know one if it hit them in the face with a baseball bat. I reckon that gender for timelords is a bit like a sense of style or taste, and not really something that is fundamental to how they function as a society. And so then the Doctor hasn’t ever really thought about it, until they run away and start hanging out with a bunch of British humans, who have a very structured (and constrictive, as far as the Doctor is concerned) gender system, and these humans are like ‘ah yes, you are A Man’ and the Doctor’s probably just like ‘ok? sure whatever’ and doesn’t really think about it. But then the Doctor continues to look like a man for...a LONG time, and so then it’s only when Thirteen comes around that suddenly these humans, who have treated them as A Man for so long, are now like ‘oh, A Woman’ and the Doctor’s like ‘um. No?’ - because as far as they’re concerned, their gender hasn’t changed. Like, their whole body has changed, but...their whole body changes every time they regenerate, so they’re like ‘what is so different this time compared to every other time?’. And I feel like the Doctor was sort of peripherally aware of this whole gender thing, but it’s only when it starts to directly affect them that they’re like ‘oh. hm.’

And so then Thirteen probably has this moment of ‘I’m not a woman, but actually I don’t think I’ve ever been a man either.’ Pronoun wise, I think it’s a bit confusing because I hc that the Doctor is speaking in Gallifreyan a lot of the time, and the TARDIS is constantly translating (because it’s only written Gallifreyan that the TARDIS doesn’t translate). I think it’s quite likely that Gallifreyan wouldn’t have gendered pronouns, as such? I feel like that would make sense, since you’re talking about a race that 1) doesn’t have this structured gender binary in the same way and 2) people’s entire bodies change biologically twelve times in their entire lifetimes. So gendered pronouns would be linguistically obsolete for Time Lords - which means that moments such as in The Doctor’s Wife when the Doctor is talking about the Corsair and flounders a little over the pronouns is probably the TARDIS’s botched attempt to translate such a concept into English HAHA - but anyway, my point it that to an outside observer, the Doctor appears pronoun indifferent, and probably they are, but only because the gendered pronouns are sort of lost on them? Although they are aware of some of the language differences - case in point, The Ghost Monument (where the Doctor must have been speaking in English since the start of series 11 since no TARDIS = no Gallifreyan translation, and I doubt that the translator things that the fam get given would translate Gallifreyan) when thirteen fumbles over the “come to daddy...I mean mummy...”. They’re aware of these things, but they’re just sort of an inconvenience to them. I reckon they get just as frustrated with tenses when trying to speak in English because I reckon Gallifreyan would have a lot more. 

That said, I do feel like the Doctor experiences some gender fluctuation, as I said earlier, although I would definitely see the Master as genderfluid whereas the Doctor’s gender is the personification of a shrug. The Master’s gender is all over the place, but their gender presentation is definitely more of a performance, rather than an accurate portrayal of how they feel, if that makes sense? Ironically, the Master has a much more nuanced understanding of how humans see gender, and enjoys playing with it, whereas the Doctor has no clue what to do with it and just wants to feel comfortable. 

Regarding stuff like dysphoria, I think Thirteen mostly feels social dysphoria, because she’s been used to being treated and seen a certain way, and now she isn’t, and it’s both weird, unnecessary and somewhat distressing. But I also think she probably feels some physical dysphoria too - more so than she’d normally feel when she regenerates into a new body, and I think it would confuse her when it lingers. I think she deals with it mostly by sticking with her usual fashion style (see: the suit she wears in Spyfall, which I adore because it just radiates agender/enby vibes to me, and it’s one of the rare times I’ve experienced gender envy from someone who is afab HAHAHA). But then I also lowkey love the idea of her wearing a binder, or trying out they/them pronouns, or cutting her hair shorter - I feel like the main reason she doesn’t is because she doesn’t know this stuff is an option, or even that the reason she’s got this discomfort is because of that, and these things are the possible solution. In fact, I wouldn’t be surprised if she thought her physical dysphoria was actually just a consequence of Twelve putting off the regeneration for so long, and so she isn’t quite settled right in her new body, as opposed to a gender thing. I would actually love to see her interact with more characters who knew her in previous regenerations - like more of Jack, or other characters, just because I think if they treated her different because she’s A Woman Now, she’d probably actually be able to say ‘ok what is with this? why is this a thing? my body has changed but I’m still the same, and this didn’t happen before, but actually I do feel this discomfort still what is with that???’ and the person would be like ‘ah. hm. how do I explain gender to an alien from a culture that views gender with the same level of importance and permanence as what kind of toppings you like on your pizza’

[fromthedeskofelizabeththird]

Habanero

You're a good girl, well behaved.

Absolutely not the type to rail random guys in nightclubs.

Until you are.

Fandom: BNHA

Pairing: Aizawa x Reader, eventual polyamorous Erasermic x Reader

Rating: Gen

Trigger Warnings: Referenced child abuse, blood

AO3: Here | Want to support me? I have a Kofi

Chapter: 4/16 (all chapters)

You were scared of a lot of things: bugs, dark places, ghosts, drowning and more. Your friends often joked that you were a wimp and you’d bever been inclined to disagree.

There was one thing, however, that scared you above all others. It sent shivers down your spine and left your legs wobbling from under you.

It was the door to your father’s home office.

Your father was a prosecutor and a pretty notorious one at that, famous for the number of guilty verdicts he had achieved over the years. He had an incredible advantage, of course- the same lie detection quirk that he had passed onto you. He spent most of his evenings alternating between his work and home offices, going over the details of cases and preparing for a never ending stream of plaintiffs.

His home office was a near perfect replica of the one in the city, complete with a golden name plaque on the door. You passed it every day, multiple times a day, and each time broke out in goosebumps as if the door watched you in turn.

It wasn’t only the plaintiffs your father needed to find guilty.

Your father was not in the least bit conservative with his quirk. You spent many an afternoon there, jaw clenched and skin crawling at his line of questioning.

Tell me… why were you late?

Tell me… how long did you study?

Tell me… who were you with?

You hated being left so exposed and, in retrospect, you weren’t in the least bit surprised that you ended up vanilla instead of habanero, desperately seeking a simple married life.

The anxiety of standing outside of your father’s home office stayed with you into adulthood, even now that you had your own home. You had started to believe it no longer had an effect on you; that you no longer remembered how it felt.

As you stood outside of the hospital door, though, you remembered clearly.

Hand trembling, you reached up to knock.

━

SEVERAL HOURS EARLIER

“Maybe if I move it that way…”

You scrolled through your calendar and let out a sigh at the appointments already there.

“No good, no good.”

You sat back in your chair and stretched, popping your shoulders and wiggling your toes.

“Maybe…”

You had a moment of inspiration, only to groan and click out of the window.

With the sports festival around the corner, your schedule was on the verge of taking a beating. Between modifying your office hours to make appointments with students to discuss their offers, to making room for counselling for those suffering disappointment, to keeping your usual appointments and open office hours, you were starting to consider bringing a futon and moving into your office for the foreseeable future. You’d known it was going to be a tight squeeze, but hadn’t counted on it being this bad.

You logged out of your computer and climbed out of your chair, giving your back a quick rub before leaving your office. You needed an IV of coffee, but a cup would have to do.

You were still thinking about your itinerary as you passed the 1-A classroom. Normally, between Kirishima, Bakugo and Iida, you heard the classroom long before you passed it. Today, though, it was silent and you peered through the window.

You’d heard that they were going on a trip with Thirteen to the USJ for specialist training and, if their empty desks were anything to go by, had already left. You had taken a tour of the facility during your initial induction and it had taken everything you had to keep your jaw from hitting the ground. You knew that UA was well funded, but it didn’t really sink in until then.

You wondered how they were getting on. Had Bakugou destroyed anything yet? Had Midoriya broken any of his bones?

You were still considering it as you passed the faculty lounge, dragged out of your thoughts by the sound of voices within. It sounded like the principal, though you weren’t sure who he was speaking to. You wondered if it was a private conversation and you should come back another time.

You knocked a couple of times before peeping around the door.

“Sorry,” you said, “am I interrupting?”

You really had heard the principal and he appeared to be sharing tea with All Might.

You weren’t sure you would ever be prepared for the sight of All Might in his skinnier form. Like most youngsters of your generation, you had watched his heroic acts in awe. You hadn’t known he was going to join the faculty at the time of your own job application and still found your heart racing whenever you passed him in the corridors.

You had signed eighteen different nondisclosure agreements after successfully taking on the job at UA, of which well over half related to the Symbol of Peace. You knew that he had been injured very badly and was losing his strength at an alarming rate. Even so, it was difficult to adjust to the reality.

“Ah, (Name), come in, come in,” said Principal Nezu, “we were just sharing a cup of tea, would you like some?”

You wanted coffee, but Nezu had already started to pour.

“Of course,” you said, closing the door behind you and taking a seat.

“You got here just in time,” said Nezu, pushing your cup across the coffee table. “We were discussing the fundamentals of teaching.”

“That sounds interesting,” you said, taking a sip of tea. “You must have a lot of insight.”

All Might twitched beside you, visibly restless. You wondered how long Nezu had been talking.

“Apologies,” he said, setting down his cup, “I should get going. I’ve already rested for far too long.”

He got up and walked towards the door, taking a deep breath before transforming into the muscular form the world knew and loved.

You would never get used to that either.

“So, (Name),” said Principal Nezu, “how are you finding the school? I trust you’ve had support from our staff?”

“Everyone’s been really kind,” you said. “I know they’re busy with their own workloads this term, but they’ve had so much time for me.”

You wrapped your hands around your cup, warmth flooding your fingers. You wanted to explain how grateful you were for the opportunity -that not so long ago your life had been falling apart- but you never got the chance, for the door to the lounge flew open and a student stormed inside.

“Principal Nezu! Something terrible has happened!”

It was Iida from 1-A, dressed in his hero costume and visibly out of breath. Your blood ran cold and you glanced across at Nezu, who had gotten to his feet.

“USJ...there’s been an invasion at USJ! Please help!”

Nezu’s response to the matter was swift and efficient. He turned to you, visibly transformed from the mild mannered principal who had offered you a cup of tea.

“(Name),” he said. “I’m going to gather everyone available. I need you to liaise with the authorities.”

“Of course,” you said, setting aside your tea and whipping out your phone.

“Meet us there,” he said as you began to dial.

“S-sir?”

You weren’t a pro hero; what possible use could you be?

━

His intentions soon became clear.

While your colleagues rushed into the danger zone, you stayed behind with the police, hitching a ride with Tsukauchi to the station once the area was secure.

Time was of the essence. You had read enough crime statistics to know that villain attacks very often came in waves, making the next few hours crucial to the safety of UA. Having a human lie detector on hand during the interrogations was more than a little bit useful.

You only wished you could concentrate.

Everything you knew about the incident came straight from Tsukauchi, so even though you had never actually seen the full extent of the carnage, you knew enough for your imagination to run wild.

You knew that the students had escaped with minor injuries and, while Shouta was badly hurt, he wasn’t dead. You couldn’t stop thinking about it, especially since the only image of the incident you had seen was that of his goggles broken on the floor.

You sat beside Tsukauchi in the interrogation room, silent as they brought in prisoner after prisoner. You only spoke to activate your quirk; only dragged yourself out of your contemplations to ask the same set of questions.

Three hours later, you knew only fractionally more than you did to begin with. The villains you’d caught were blatant throwaways, with no knowledge at all of the man they’d followed into battle or a greater scheme. They’d all wanted to take a shot at the symbol of peace and had no idea how close they had come to succeeding.

“Are you going to be alright?” Tsukauchi asked as interrogations came to a close.

You knew you must have looked a mess, popping aspirin and pinching the bridge of your nose.

“I’ll be fine,” you said, “honestly.”

“I’ll organise a car to take you to UA,” he said, but you shook your head.

“No, no that’s okay. I need to go somewhere first.”

━

Technically, you had two places to go first.

You stopped by the police station washroom to freshen up, leaning over the sink as the migraine set in. You pinched the bridge of your nose and watched as it began to bleed.

You weren’t used to using your quirk for such a long period of time and had almost certainly overdone it. The bleeding began to slow and you switched on the tap, washing away the blood on your face before plugging your nostrils with tissue paper. Unfortunately, you had still managed to bleed on your collar.

Just your luck that you would use your quirk too much on the day you decided to wear your new white blouse. You cursed at your reflection, trying and failing to adjust your shirt in such a way that it wasn’t noticeable.

Even now, you couldn’t concentrate.

You had never crossed paths with so many villains in one day. You had watched your father cross examine witnesses and plaintiffs many, many times, but had never been in his shoes. You hated it.

You knew exactly how they felt when you activated your quirk, recognised the squirming as it crawled through their skin. Part of you had enjoyed it, knowing that their discomfort in that moment did not compare to the violence they had inflicted on others.

Shouta.

The violence they had inflicted on Shouta.

He was a hero, you told yourself. He had signed up to fight those very same villains.

Even so, you hated them for it in ways you’d never hated a villain before.

You thought back to your training and took a deep breath.

“This is normal,” you whispered. “This is normal. This is a negative emotional response to a distressing situation. This is normal, we’ll move on.”

You took another deep breath, but your heart still rattled.

What is it that’s bothering me?

You reached into your purse for your makeup, painting away the shock for now at least.

We can work through that later.

━

PRESENT

And so, there you were, standing outside of Shouta’s room in the hospital.

They’d put him under the care of one of the best doctors in Musutafu, who assured you that surgery had been a success and his life was not in danger. There was a high chance his quirk would be affected by the damage to his orbital floor but even that was lucky, all things considered.

You tapped at the door and let yourself inside, taking in the calm and quiet of the room. Shouta was tucked up in bed and connected to numerous monitors, their steady beeps breaking the silence. You closed the door behind you and crept over to the bed, taking in the bandages that covered almost every inch of his body.

You had always known that heroes risked death and worse on a daily basis but had never seen it in person. You didn’t know how to feel about seeing him bloodied and broken. You had seen this man naked; you’d held onto the arms that a villain had broken. Did it always feel this personal?

You took a seat next to his bed, taking note of exactly how much of him was covered in bandages. You wouldn’t have known it was him if you hadn’t been told otherwise.

You didn't know what you had expected to find at the hospital, only that it would give you closure.

Why, then, did you still feel so uneasy?

You recalled his words from only recently, after you had given him a faceful of pepper spray.

Why would you try and confront a villain without help? You could have gotten yourself killed.

You need to be more rational in these things. Running head on into danger gets people killed.

Why hadn’t he followed his own advice?

Truthfully, you knew exactly why.

He had been well aware of the danger, but made the call anyway. He had analysed the situation and prioritised the lives and safety of his students over his own. It was the right thing to do and the rational part of you knew that, but you didn’t feel very rational right then.

You had to report back to Nezu; had to adjust your schedule ready for trauma counselling. You weren’t the only one who had been exposed to an unprecedented amount of villains that day. 1-A had almost certainly seen too much too soon.

You knew you had to leave, yet felt guilty as you got to your feet.

“I’m sorry,” you whispered, hoping that your words would reach him through the anesthesia. “I have to go...but I’ll be back tomorrow, okay?”

You promised yourself that you’d skip lunch if you had to.

“See you,” you said, leaning over to kiss his forehead as if on autopilot.

Your heart skipped a beat once you realised what you’d done.

Oh God, what were you thinking?

You reached into your purse for your chapstick as you left the room, so focused on painting away the kiss that you didn’t notice his fingers twitch.

[bonesingerofyme-loc]

Let’s discuss Eliksni

This current season, Season of the Splicer, has a focus on Mithrax and the House of Light and Eliksni in particular as a species. Following with the landmark alliance between Caitl’s leftover Imperial Cabal and the Vanguard, now Mithrax has founded the House of Light and reached out a hand of peace to the Last City.

To this end, he has offered his services to the Tower and the Vanguard and in return, Ikora offered the House of Light resettlement within the City limits, under the Traveler.

This is the start of how incredibly poorly thought out everyone has acted in this season.

Ikora offered shelter to the House of Light without Consensus approval - hell, without even consulting with Zavala. She invited aliens into the Last City unilaterally, which, yeah, no shit that’s going to cause friction. 

Mithrax, in the first mission, when we chat with him, Osiris and Lakshmi in the Fallen Quarter, states that he will keep his House here and away from the rest of the City. We then have quite a few lorecards from weapons and whatnot detailing Eliksni out and about, alone, in the greater City. So was that a lie, Mithrax?

I get what the angle is here. I really do.

But allegory is fucking stupid.

There is nothing remotely similar between the Fallen/Human relations in the Destiny universe and hostile relations between nations or peoples on Earth IRL.

I think it’s all too easy for a reader to forget that Eliksni are alien. No matter how different a person’s culture might be on Earth, they are still human. They are still exactly the same as anyone else. You can look at them and see yourself. Their internal existence is, at least if you’re not going full solipsist, the same as your own. And you can bet on that because they’re human. We all grew up on the same planet. We all ate the same things, shat under the same stars, watched the same moon come up at night. It doesn’t matter from which corner of the globe you’re from or the divergence of phenotype, we’re all still human, closer than close. 

Eliksni (and Cabal, and Hive, etc) are alien. They are fundamentally different in a way that two cultural groups on Earth can never, ever be. Their brain chemistry is nowhere remotely comparable, assuming they even have brains in the way we’d describe it. There is no way to bridge the species gap about internal lives and existence - they are intrinsically other. They share none of the same, most  fundamental experiences of being that humans do, just as we do not for them. 

This isn’t to say that an alien can’t be empathized with or treated fairly, what I’m saying is that you cannot, in any way, compare an alien to a human, especially in how a person would relate or react to them.

Take a horrible war on Earth. From any time period. You’re going to have belligerents on both sides, deep-seated dislike and hatred of each other. But these things can pass and there are always, always those who are against it on either side. And they fade away. The scars can remain, at times, but these differences are driven by cultural rivalries and those cultures can fade away or move together. And over time can be lost in the collective visage of humanity, which does not bear a brand on it’s sleeve of ancient allegiance to one or another.

Do you know what cannot ever change? Biology. An alien will always be alien, no matter how close you associate with them or how long. There will always be a deep, fundamental disconnect in some major areas that cannot be crossed because you cannot be them and they cannot be you. 

And this is fine - a human should be human and an eliksni should be eliksni, or insert whatever favorite alien you have there. 

What gets me, though, is when writers treat ‘race’ and ‘species’ as interchangeable. It’s why I tend to take issue with using ‘race’ when referring to fantasy species, especially when there is no interbreeding possible. Dwarves and elves can get a little loosy-goosy there. 

You have these lorecards about Eliksni getting hate crime’d by the human population in the Last City or being shunned or prejudiced against and the r/dtg subreddit is all up in arms about the evil civilians and it’s like look - they’re aliens.

The fuck else did you expect?

This isn’t a case of accepting some human refugees in, this is a group of aliens that for seven hundred years have been the bogeyman for very real and very literal reasons. 

Humans have positive experiences with other humans all throughout life.

Humanity has not had a single positive experience with aliens since we learned alien life exists. I’m excluding the Traveler here, frankly, because it’s a cosmic god. 

For the seven hundred or so years that alien life has been a reality for the human race, they have been devoured, hunted to extinction, brutally sacrificed, used as torture fodder, used to feed eldritch gods and other, lovely, lovely things. 

Is it any surprise that the first time alien faces are seen in the Last City it’s met with hostility? There are zero positive experiences with aliens for all of humanity. The only ones who have had some are Guardians. The face of an alien means death or worse. The face of a human can mean that but again - we know so many humans in our lives, of all stripes. Here though, an alien, any alien, any face that is not comfortably human, means death. Something that the entire population of the Last City was very forcibly and violently reminded of just recently with Ghaul’s invasion and the subsequent slaughters that happened. Did we forget the citizens thrown to the warbeasts to be devoured?

The eliksni of House Light don’t deserve the hostility, of course. But it’s not surprising and really, it’s not the fault of the civilians. The fault is squarely on the shoulders of Ikora for deciding this incredibly poorly thought out move unilaterally and Mithrax for not recognizing that this was going to happen.

Because it goes both ways. Fallen haven’t had a single positive experience with aliens in all their existence, either, remember. For them, any alien, including humans, meant death. The thing with Saint-14 being a demon? Excellent! Perfect in showcasing this dynamic! But the stupidity is in recognizing this and then just going ‘lmao nah just give them free range in the Tower which is infested with Guardians, which they’re going to be terrified of.’ This is the purest of idiocy, a complete failure of leadership on all sides and is really quite insensitive to the needs of both species. 

So is the solution permanent segregation of species? No, but it’s definitely not just letting Fallen wander at whim and go to fucking ramen shops. This is seven hundred years of human-side bias and god-knows how long for eliksni to overcome. 

Aliens aren’t human. It bothers me when they’re treated that way because it’s lazy. This is a unique and fascinating angle in a story, one that is uniquely science fiction. Treating it as just a clumsy allegory for human relations is a waste of text (and also, ironically, a bit insulting to what the allegory is about. Unless you’re cool with implying that some people are as inhuman and inscrutable as literal bug aliens which is a yikes from me, dawg).

Maybe the salient point that Bungie is trying to make this season is that Ikora and Mithrax are complete knobheads and worthless leaders, but I’m gonna hazard that’s not the case.

[pinelife3]

An investigation: if supermodels are so dumb and vapid, how do they pull artistic geniuses?

This is a picture of Nick Cave and his wife leaving the inquest into their son’s death. Their 15 year old boy fell from a cliff after taking acid and becoming disoriented. 

I cannot even conceive of how terrible it must be to lose a child. The drugs and the cliff make it an episode of Skins (or Euphoria for the zoomers) but that’s your little boy. It was a stupid accident and now you never get to see him again. A teenaged tragedy. Unendingly unfair. 

Ghosteen, the 2019 album from Nick Cave & The Bad Seeds, is a complex, existential album in conversation with the death of Nick’s son and his feelings of loss and grief. Nick Cave is an artist - his life’s work is to share how he feels and what he thinks. What he’s expressing with Ghosteen is sorrow and longing - and some larger angst about the purpose of existence.

Through all this tragedy, I’m sure you couldn’t help but notice... who’s the babe with the shiny hair and the fabulous gazongas? That’s Nick’s wife, man! Susie Bick - or sometimes Susie Cave. She was a major model in the 80s and 90s. A model and an artist - it’s actually fitting. 

And what’s more, Susie is the founder of The Vampire’s Wife - a label which has become super popular in the last couple of years. (Fashion people eyeroll The Vampire’s Wife because every dress has the same silhouette, but that’s out of the scope of this blog.)

There is a perception that models are are vapid and unserious. Their job is to look good, keep their mouth shut, and move merchandise. They cannot offer anything profound because their value is surface level. Men and women both push this way of thinking. 

For example, when Brad Pitt was recently revealed to be dating 27 year old model Nicole Poturalski, people were disappointed. Brad Pitt has been a cultural fixture for decades - after all this time, people still find him fascinating. And they expect him to date someone who is equally compelling. Clooney married a human rights lawyer - why is Brad dating someone who makes posts like this on Instagram...

This was Lainey Gossip’s take on the new girlfriend: 

A model, younger, it’s so predictable it’s almost boring.

Nice! I guess we’re all feminists until the woman in question is young and hot. 

It's easy to assume the worst of a person who is unknown to us, but is beautiful and hooking up with someone famous. A million mean thoughts spring to mind. “A model, younger”. That’s scorn. You know exactly what she’s saying: hot but dumb. An uninteresting person. We know what Brad really wants her for... 

If Brad Pitt is compelling to you, how compelling must Nicole Poturalski be to have won and held his attention? Brad Pitt has not been celibate in the four years since he separated from Angelina Jolie, but not until Nicole did we have confirmation of someone who he was definitely seeing. He allowed himself to be photographed with her en route to his French chateau. And what ensued was a weird story - she’s in an open relationship with some old German restaurateur and she has a son? She’s a sugar baby? Why would Brad fucking Pitt get publicly involved with someone who has a messy personal life: why hook up with a married 27 year old and weather months of stories about her open marriage if he didn’t actually like her? Why even be seen with her? The relationship is a little weird - but the reporting on it has been nasty. The new sugar baby angle which has emerged in the last week (late October 2020) is basically calling her a whore. This is the level of suspicion and derision directed at a model dating a public fixture like Brad Pitt. The notion that Brad Pitt would pay for female company or sex is patently absurd. 

If our assumptions about models are correct, why do so many models end up with artistic geniuses? I don’t care about the Victoria’s Secret models who hooked up with the bassist from Kings of Leon. I’m talking about beautiful women who made it with icons, the premier humans of the past century:

MUSICIANS

Nick Cave and Susie Bick

David Bowie and Iman

Kanye West and Amber Rose

Bob Dylan and Sara Lownds

Mick Jagger and Jerry Hall

Mick Jagger and Carla Bruni

Serge Gainsbourg and Jane Birkin

Eric Clapton and Pattie Boyd

George Harrison and Pattie Boyd

Madonna and Jesus Luz

MISC. POWERFUL PEOPLE

Salman Rushdie and Padma Lakshmi

Donald Trump and Melania (lol)

Nicolas Sarkozy and Carla Bruni

Evan Spiegel and Miranda Kerr 

Hitler and Eva Braun (What?! She had a brief career an artist’s model...)

Michael Jordan and Yvette Prieto

Rupert Murdoch and Jerry Hall 

ACTORS (perhaps not artistic icons... but still creative and interesting)

Matthew McConaughey and Camila Alves

Johnny Depp and Kate Moss

Bradley Cooper and Irina Shayk

Bradley Cooper and Suki Waterhouse

Robert Pattinson and Suki Waterhouse

Vincent Cassel and Tina Kunakey

Halle Berry and Gabriel Aubrey

Leonardo DiCaprio and half the VS roster

Huge congrats to all the models with more than one entry on the list. You’ll note that there is a dearth of female icon/male model pairings - this is kind of interesting but not something I feel like getting into.

To some extent, the prevalence of the artist and model pairing makes sense. Men like good looking women. Rich, powerful men are high status and have access to good looking women. Plus, an artist needs a muse.

Many of the models in the list above are actually iconic in their own right. Like, when someone is having a great day on RuPaul’s Drag Race and looking sleek and skinny and flawless RuPaul might compare them to Iman. People pay $10,000 USD for handbags named after Jane Birkin. 

Conversely, in the case of Amber Rose, she became the most desired woman in the hip hop industry c. 2010 because she was with Kanye. And most especially because she broke Kanye’s heart. Everyone wanted the girl from “Hell of a Life”. People point to that song as being about Kim - it was prophetic, yes, but not written about her.

Anyway. Could an icon, a legend, a genius, make it work with someone who had nothing to offer but a fast metabolism and a beautiful face? Do poreless skin and puffy lips make up for never finishing high school? 

Wouldn’t being with someone superficial or unserious mean the artist was fundamentally boring in some way too? This is increasingly the assumption about Leonardo DiCaprio - seen above photographing his 23 year old model gf for her Instagram. Even Reddit mocks him for his age gap relationships with models.

And here’s where I try to make my point: 

Kate Moss’ daughter, Lila, recently had her modelling debut during Paris Fashion Week. It was big news because she’s celebrity spawn - and of course her mother is one of the most iconic models ever. She was eviscerated. 

On The Daily Mail, the comparisons to her mother flowed. What’s interesting is that Daily Mail readers do not like Kate Moss but they will defend her 90s modelling career with their life. They laud her bone structure, her waifish figure. An irresistible, undeniable face. 

It seems silly to praise someone for the shape of their head and the way their skin fits over it... it’s not a talent, is it? Maybe it is! There is no shortage of hot girls in the world - but there may be a shortage of girls with preternatural charismatic beauty. Lila Moss (left above) is attractive - she even looks quite a bit like her mum. Perhaps in the pic above she even looks hotter than her mum (right above). But Kate Moss is more interesting: less perfect - half her eyebrow is missing, she’s less manicured. She exudes some kind of darkness, newness. Lottie Moss, Kate’s younger half-sister, is a similar story. Obviously attractive, obviously interested in modelling - but she’s lacking something. 

Bella Hadid came from a similar-ish background to Lila Moss (Bravoleb parents, frequent appearances on Real Housewives of Beverley Hills in her teen years, groomed by her ex-model mother) but Bella Hadid has it. She may have risen through the ranks due to nepotism and cosmetic surgery but she is someone people want to look at. She is sought after - not foisted upon us. Again, it’s not because she’s the hottest woman on the planet. She is gorgeous, but on top of that, there’s something beguiling about the angles of her face.

What’s this thing that clicks in your head telling you that Kate Moss’s face is more interesting than her daughter’s? It’s an intrusive thought: her skull shape is pleasing, let your eyes linger. A command: you will not forget that face. 

Iman has it. Look at her. On meeting Iman, Bowie said: "I was naming the children the night we met... it was absolutely immediate." How many beautiful women had Bowie met in his life? How many had this effect?

Can you imagine trying to keep David Bowie or Bob Dylan interested in what you’re saying? Or Madonna? Or Michael Jordan? Most of us do not have a single thought in our head which would be of interest to these people. The models I listed earlier transfixed them. Mick Jagger could have romanced every woman on the planet - but he only wanted Jerry Hall (pls disregard affairs so I can make my point). 

When a model hooks up with an artistic genius, it’s illogical to assume she’s vapid or that the icon is with her for shallow reasons. What we should assume is that she is the most interesting woman that icon has crossed paths with in a long time - which would make her very interesting indeed.