#and low-key he kind of is. Unconsciously I think but still manipulative.

[outlanderalien]

Not sure if I'm sabotaging my relationship or not but I feel like I'm in the right ? Perhaps ?

[gangrenados]

Could you do good things and bad things about datiang the Bat boys and Bruce? I ask you for bad things because relationships aren't perfect. Please

This is my first time ever writing for Bruce sooo pls be kind it has been a rough day

•First of all of them are vigilantes which means that they might have some issues separating his hero life with the normal one no matter how hard thet might try.

•They have seen the worst part of humanity and after you have witnessed those kind of horrors there's not turning back. Every imperfection in buildings, locations that have a questionable reputation and people who seem mightily suspicious will trigger their vigilante senses.

•what I'm trying to say here? They can get protective without even notice. After being the one in the line for to long you're afraid those you love might get hurt so you'll try your fucking best to prevent it, right?

Bruce Wayne

•Bruce has a hard time accepting the love and care of others, even if you have a long term relationship Bruce might be cold and distant towards you.

•He usually doesn't care about his scars since they're consequences of trying his best to help others, but when the time to get naked in front of you comes he's slightly worried you might get disgusted because they're too many.

•Bruce gets silent when you show him pure kind love, a gentle caress on his cheek will make him snap out.

•He'll stare at you without knowing what's the right thing to do, the only thing clear onnhis mind is that he wants this to keep going.

•Sometimes you wish you could wake up or fall asleep with Bruce beside you more often. It makes you feel forgotten. Bruce has tried to stay there when you wake up, even if that means rushing home to take off the suit, slip in the cover and pretend he's sleeping.

•Bruce can be pretty romantic when he wants to. He will take you to fancy places and bought you the most prettiest things in the world, Bruce will be comfortable in those situations, talking smoothly and secure since he's trying to put a little bit of his playboy persona into this to not ruin it.

•But silly things like cooking your favorite dessert or buying a pretty thing he saw nd know it will useful to you, will get him slightly flustered. The man is afraid he might fuck up.

•If you're a mere civilian then Bruce would be petty fucking protective of you, at the point that sometimes make you wonder if he's being paranoid.

•He will install a security system in your house and car, maybe a tracker too because you never know what criminals might do to the partner of Bruce Wayne.

I•t's hard for Bruce to express his emotions and talk about them, he feels like it makes him seem weaker. But when he opens up he will pour his heart into his words, maybe he wouldn't say much, but everything that came out from his mout he meant it with his soul.

•Your fights are horrible, it leaves you both broken and wondering if this gonna be the end. Bruce is too stubborn to back down and you don't want to be the one who goes to apologize first, so you'll end up treating each other with the cold shoulder.

•It's not the type to say "I love you" constantly, he reserves those words for important moments like when he has to go to a risky mission, your anniversary or he will blurt them out when he see you doing something adorable.

•Bruce is a mysterious man and that aspect is not going to change once they start dating. You will feel that he is hiding things from you, which is true, but it will take a lot of persuasion and confidence for him to tell you what is happening or why he does not tell you things.

•Much of his reason is that he thinks that if he doesn't say anything to you you may be safe and happy in ignorance, however, he also does not want to link his romance to his work.

•Connecting in an emotional way with Jason is hard and even when you're there he tends to close and keep a lot of things to himself.

Jason Todd

•Jason hates how being in touch with his emotions makes him more vulnerable, once they see the light there's nothing that can stop the overwhelming wave of feelings that comes to drown him.

•Once Jason becomes truly comfortable around you he will get clingy. He needs you in order to him feel alright, it's like you bring up a nice part of him he wasn't even aware of it was there.

•You're the nicest thing Jason has ever had so far and he's down to do anything to make you stay. He can stop being Red Hood and live a normal live, change his personality for one you like better, whatever you want in a man Jason can try to copy it, but please don't leave him.

•He's a really attentive and supportive boyfriend, this trait is driven by his need to prove you his total love and attention because that shows he's worthy of your love. But putting that aside, Jason truly cares about you.

•Jason is not really used to receive romantic affection so he might shy away sometimes when he becomes aware of what's going on. It's like his mind can't process that other person wants to be romantic with him.

•Jason can get really protective of you and this worsen a little bit more if you're a civilian who knows little to nothing about self defense.

•Jason is a cuddle monster, having you between his arms is soothing and lovable. He loves this little domestic things, but it's better if he's the one on top of you or hugging because he can get out of the touch easier.

•It's better to not fight with Jason, he's not going to hit you or anything, in fact he prefers to cut his own arm with a fork before landing a hand on you.

•However, he can say some mean and hurtful thigs because he wants to win the argument regardless of how bad the consequences might be.

•It might not look like it, but Jason loves to do the silly cheesy things with you.

•He will engulf you into a tight hug and then give a breathless kiss anytime he comes back from a long mission, having you to cook with him regardless if you know what you're doing just because he thought it would be cute, cuddling with you in the sofa and read a book or just watch a movie (Jason will fall asleep snuggled up to you because he feels safe)

•Jason has night terrors and he can turn pretty paranoid whe he just wake up from a nightmare, so it's better if you stand back for a moment until he calms down and realizes that nothing bad is happening.

•He keeps a gun close to him in case something happens and has night light because he can truly stand to have the whole bedroom in complete darkness, also he tends to keep you close to him when you're sleeping togheter because, even when Jason is asleep, he needs to know you're there.

Dick Grayson

•Dick is a sweet boyfriend, he's caring and charming to the point that sometimes you wonder if you're dating a prince.

•Dick's supportive of your interests and will cheer you up if he feels like you're lacking motivation. He will praise you and give you a compliment whenever he notices you did something good or when you go to tell him a good new.

•It's hard to have some alone time with him thanks to his busy schedule. Dick can't stay still, he needs to work and protect the city, because he cares about the others but also needs the action to live.

•Dick is a cheerful man, the occasions were he hits rock bottom are odd but they happen.

•And he tends to close himself to the world and drown in his own sorrows for a while. It's hard to see him like this and the worst part is that he doesn't want to ask for help until his mind is a little less darker.

•Dick is a really affective boyfriend, he will grab your head and pepper it with kisses as he says how much he loves it, also he has the habbit to put an arm around your shoulders or waist whenever you're walking together.

•Another thing he always do is pulling you back to the bed and put himself on top of you so you won't go.

•Dick would nuzzle his head in the crook of your neck and give it a kiss before going back to sleep.

•Dick is a man low-key scared of commitment, but will still idolize you.

•It's hard for him to settle down and decide for one thing, he will overthink everything and try to look at your current situation for every single angle possible, however, in his eyes you're a great person, sexy and just amazing.

•He might even twist everything and think you're already dating when nothing really has been confirmed.

•Okay so this one goes for his Titans version: I don't know why, but I feel that sometimes Dick can manipulate your needs and turn them into his own desires, to be more concrete emotional blackmail.

•He could do this unconsciously and without really wanting it, because once he realizes what he did he will feel very bad about himself, which would lead him to isolate himself from you for a while to think about everything he has done and then apologizing .

•It's hard for Dick to do so because being aware of what he has done to you, but he needs you to know he feels deeply fucking sorry and he understands if you want to broke up.

Tag list @bathroom-sand @aterriblelangblr @simpery @strangerthings14 @jyarumu0619 @kellieriddle96 @adarksoul098 @rosethegothamhistorynerd @duckmylife18 @panic-attheplace @malfoys-demigod @darkraven1983 @magicisabluewish @hamdehlesmis @lucy-roo @lovelyartemisa @missmaskedwriter @c0-77 @ginevraxrogers @imagines-fluff-yandere-smut @shadygoateeprincess @nervousfandom @ghost-bitch @silverw19 @thegirlwholovesbooksblog @hecatemacbeth7 @unknowntoanyone @mistalli @screechingghostbananafarm @psych0crybaby @barnowl48 @waroncheer @lady-stirling @ghostly-ginger @greeknerd007 @caswinchester2000 @sara5208 @la-femme-lupita @jasonsballsack @violettessuniverse @wondergal21 @disnerd626 @pree-2003-blog @dreamxcollide @thirstiestpotato

[stolensiren]

[meta] What are your muses closest relationships, good and bad. And how do they define who your muse was, is, and will become?

[meta] Cass is very good at carving out close relationships for herself, aided by her unconscious tendency to use her abilities to sense what a person needs and then become that thing. She has a habit of overcompensating for the loneliness she felt growing up by surrounding herself with meaningful relationships, which isn’t a bad thing at all, but it does mean this is going to be a long list, so we’re gonna pop a readmore on this one!

Levi and Marina both kind of stepped in as ‘parental’ type figures for Cass. They both work to make her feel unconditionally loved in a way she never really did before White Crest, and their acceptance of her goes a long way to heal the wounds left by her biological parents’ abandonment of her. I do think we’ll inevitably see some kind of tension here given their differences in morality, and I think it’ll be fun to see Cass caught between family and morals because it’s not something she’s ever really had to choose between before.

Metzli is the first person Cass built a meaningful relationship with in White Crest, though it’s definitely something that took some time to build up. They’re the one who taught Cass about the supernatural world, which undoubtedly saved her life bc girl was out here fighting ‘crime’ without knowing that most crime in White Crest is supernatural related :/ Metzli was the first person Cass adopted as part of her found family, and having them as an older sibling figure has shown her how and when to ask for help and accept that help! Metzli also showed her that you can be what someone needs without disappearing in the process, and that’s so important for Cass who, up until meeting Metzli, absolutely buried pieces of herself to make herself easier for people to like.

Correy is a lot like the fun, grumpy uncle Cass never knew she was missing. They got off on the wrong foot, and she probably wouldn’t have made any kind of an effort to change that if not for his friendship with Marina and Levi, but now that she’s gotten to know him and wormed her way into his heart, she’s glad for it. 

Teddy is the stepbrother Cass never wanted :/ Sorry Ted. At this point in time, she definitely views him as a ‘threat’ to the family she’s created. She has a lot of issues surrounding the concept of being ‘replaceable’ that go back to her time in foster care, and Teddy’s presence and his importance to Levi particularly stir up a lot of this. She liked Teddy before she knew about his connection to Levi, but now she’s mostly just afraid of him. She views him as the thing with the biggest potential to destroy the ‘family’ she’s carved out for herself by taking her spot in it, and it’s going to take time for her to warm up to him and recognize that there’s room for them both. She’s like a 2 year old whose mom just had a new baby :/ those are supposed to be HER toys and HER people, tf is this baby doing here?

Jonas gave Cass a job and allowed her to take the first steps in the journey of shifting away from crime... which is going to be a slow journey because she does still think crime is kind of fun, low key. Jonas took a pretty big chance on her and she’d be grateful for it even if he didn’t go on to become a very good friend on top of that, but he did. I think Cass’s initial intention was to manipulate Jonas... and maybe steal, like, a couple things from his shop... but she quickly changed her mind at his gentle treatment of her. It’ll be fun seeing how their friendship develops now that they both realize the other knows about the supernatural world, and when Cass does eventually feel comfortable enough to tell Jonas what she is, it’ll be soft for her to have someone else who accepts her for it.

Ari is definitely one of Cass’s closest friends, and one of the few people in her life who knows what she is. Ari was one of the first people Cass chose to tell about being a siren, and her getting to make that choice was very important. Ari is also one of the few people who knows that Cass moonlights as a superhero, which was less something Cass chose to tell her and more something that was discovered accidentally, but Cass is glad she knows it now. This friendship is one that’s very much built on mutual respect and love and it’s something they both deserve a lot. Ari’s support is definitely something Cass relies on heavily, and something she’ll continue to rely on as she navigates her life.

Sloane is someone Cass can act like a normal twenty-something around which is so, so important! The way they both know that the other knows about the supernatural even if they never ask how or talk about it directly is very fun, and it will be an Ordeal when the other shoe drops and they both figure out what the other is. Cass’s relationship with Sloane really represents a lot of what she wants out of life, which is someone to hang out with who shares her weird humor and ideas of fun well enough that she can be unapologetically herself without having to worry about whether or not she’s overstaying her welcome.

Macleod is also an important presence in her life, due in part to her relationship with Metzli but also because she’s the only person who really knows in just what way Cass is struggling right now. It’ll be interesting to see, going forward, if Cass allows herself to take advantage of the fact that Macleod knows about her search for ‘redemption’ and what it means for her by leaning on her or if she pushes her away in an attempt to hide her head in the sand, which is something she has a bad habit of doing.

There are definitely more people who are very important to Cass’s development but... for now, we’re going to leave it at this because Cass is a social butterfly and I could go on for hours tbh. 

[ssaseaprince]

Will flinches away from Hannibal during an argument (angst & hurt/comfort)

(I LOVED the other request you wrote!!)

Sorry this took so long to get out, it ended up quite a bit longer then I originally intended but I hope you like it ! Also thank you so much <3

The first couple months after the fall had been rough, physically, having to go into hiding while their bodies were on mend. Hannibal's wounds, gruesome as they were, healed relatively quickly and without much fuss. Will on the other hand, had almost died. He had taken a stab to the shoulder, which shouldn’t have been the problem that it was, except that it got infected. He was stuck on the brink of death for quite a long time, and then spent the month after he was stabilized in and out of consciousness, high on painkillers. Hannibal had always been good at working and functioning under pressure, which was good because if he hadn’t been they probably would have died. The first time Will had come to full consciousness, however, Hannibal was a wreck. He’d cried then. Not a soft trickle of a few tears, but gut-wrenching sobs full of shaking shoulders and an ocean full of tears. Will cherished that memory, as he did with every memory of Hannibal crying. They made him human, seem more touchable. The first time he had cried in front of Will, they had been standing on the cliff right before they fell, and the next time was when Will had first woken up. He cried when Will spoke for the first time too, so long after the fall. The first time they made love, Will’s neck was wet with his tears. When Will said “I love you” the first time.

Will never took Hannibal as someone who cried very often, and he never had been. That was until the fall, until Will. The fall had been a rebirth for both of them, it didn’t only symbolize Will’s becoming. And then Will had gotten sick and Hannibal had almost lost him, and Hannibal was again reminded how precious life really is, and how easy it would be to lose him. They both made it through, but all the walls and forts between them had crumbled, and they were left exposed to each other. There wasn’t any reasoning or any point in trying to put them back up, because by then their souls were permanently intertwined. Will could read him no matter what anyways, so things like silence and shouting were equally expressive. Hannibal still didn’t cry a lot by any means, but he did cry (genuinely, cry) now on occasion, whereas he hadn’t really ever before.

They didn’t fight much. Of course they got on each other's nerves at times and had tendencies to snap at one another when they were irritated, but actual full blow fighting and arguing was extremely rare.

Today wasn’t like that though.

It was about two years after the fall, and they had finally settled down in Lakonia, an administrative region of Greece that’s in the southeastern part of the Peloponnese peninsula. They’d eventually been officially declared dead, and the last year and a half had been good. Both were more than content to let the past mostly stay where it was and move forward, and their days blended together in a mix of hunting and domesticity. They’ve been happy, but they out of anyone should know how easily the calm can be shattered.

It started like it had before. Sleepwalking, gradual hallucinations, losing small bits of time. Will knew what it was, but he avoided telling Hannibal about it. He supposes he was scared, scared to lose the peaceful (peaceful in their own way) domesticity they had settled into. Scared of how it would affect their relationship. Hannibal had changed a lot since the fall and since his time in prison, and Will knew logically he didn’t need to worry. But the nightmares were full of flashbacks to ticking lights and needles, and he grew more and more distant, and Hannibal’s concerned eyes followed him everywhere.

It shouldn’t have taken him as long as it had to realize it, so when he finally did Hannibal was disgusted with himself. Will had been deliberately hiding it from him, but still, he felt he should’ve noticed sooner. Anti-NMDAR Encephalitis was known to be recurrent. It was extremely important that Will got treatment as soon as possible, especially since he had gone so long without it last time. The only option Hannibal had was to confront him.

That all led up to now. Their first real fight since the fall.

“Your health is of the utmost importance Will, you cannot be keeping things like this from me.” Frustration leaking into his tone, Hannibal leaned against the kitchen counter. Will was sitting across from him on a barstool, nursing a glass of whiskey. Will was annoyed, he knew he shouldn't be annoyed but he was. He knew Hannibal was just concerned, but it felt overwhelming, and he couldn’t help but wonder how genuine the concern was. The past couple of weeks he found himself falling back into old thinking patterns, reminiscing about the past. He knew the Hannibal in front of him was completely different then the Hannibal he had first met, but he couldn’t help but to compare his abundance of concern now to the great lack of care he had before.

He grimaced, “Well I don’t need you freaking out. I can take care of myself, always have.”

“For the most part, yes, you can. But you aren’t doing a good show it right now, Encephalitis is life threatening if left untreated, you are aware of that. You cannot just ignore it.” Hannibal’s usual calm façade was slowly slipping. “With everything you've been through, you’re honestly willing to die by a treatable disease? You’re not stupid, Will.”

Taking another drink of his whiskey, he rolled his eyes. The alcohol was making his thoughts fuzzy, but goddamnit was he too sober for this.

“I wasn’t going to let it go on forever Hannibal, you’re right, I’m not that fucking stupid. You’re just overreacting and being dramatic, like always.” He raised his glass to take another drink only to have it roughly pulled from his grasp.

Looking up, he glared at the man across from him. “What the fuck Hannibal?”

Hannibal's calm was practically nonexistent at this point, and he slammed the glass down on the other side of the counter before looking back at Will. “Are you so insistent on being self destructive? You’re acting like a child Will, refusing help.”

Will let out a loud, overexaggerated sigh. His voice was rough when he spoke, the tone of it slowly rising. “Well what am I supposed to do? It’s not like I can just walk into a hospital and ask them to help me treat a rare disease that I’m known for having had before. Maybe I’ve just been trying to figure out what to do, I’m not completely incompetent you know.”

Hannibal’s clenched fists rested on the counter. “You could ask for help! We could get the right supplies and treat you, without needing to go to the hospital. You know that, you are just being unnecessarily difficult.”

Will stood, the stool pushed behind him as he glared at Hannibal. “Yeah well maybe I don’t want your help, you don’t exactly have the best track record of making good medical decisions for me.”

Hannibal’s next words came out in a raised voice, not exactly a yell, but they seemed to take up all the air from the room. “I am not going to stay here and watch you kill yourself. I’d thought better of you Will, but if that’s how you chose to act I am not going to stay here for it.”

And Will flinched.

The small, unconscious action sent Hannibal reeling, as he looked back over what he had just said. He didn’t think of himself as an impulsive person, he didn’t think he was the kind of person who said things they didn’t mean out of anger, but Will seemed to bring that out in him. He and Will were so far beyond lies and manipulation, they were rarely things that were worried about within their current relationship. But watching Will so blatantly refuse to take care of himself, putting himself in danger by refusing help, was unbearable. So he threw out the first thing he thought of to get Will’s attention, for him to realize just how serious he was. He’d never leave him, they’d consummated their marriage in the depths of the ocean, and an infinite amount of times over since then.

It took him a minute to grasp what he had even said as he stared at Will across the kitchen. It was such a preposterous thing to think, let alone say that it took him a moment to understand the words had actually come out of his mouth. Will had frozen up, and Hannibal could almost see the walls being thrown up and forts being built, and it sent a pang of icy dread through his heart.

“I’m not refusing treatment, I just needed time to get used to the idea of you helping me, since you’re the reason I almost died last time. And here I was feeling bad because I was thinking you’re not like that anymore.” Will wasn’t glaring at him anymore, but his body language was rigid and the words he spoke were flat. “If you’re going to leave, just leave Hannibal, you don't need to find excuses to. You can cut the act.”

“Will.. “ The words seemed stuck in his throat as he said them. “I didn’t mean that.”

‘No, just go. If you think so low of me then just leave. Don’t want you feeling obligated to take care of me, since ya know, I obviously can’t take care of myself.” And with that, Will turned to leave, grabbing his keys and starting to put on his coat. He wasn’t full on drunk, but tipsy enough that he swayed slightly when he walked.

“Will, you don’t have to go.” Hannibal grabbed his arm gently, turning him to look at him. “You’re too intoxicated to drive right now.”

Will shook his head and roughly pulled his arm away. He needed to be alone and it irritated him that Hannibal was telling him what to do, but he had to accept his logic. And driving after he'd been drinking wouldn't fare well in the argument that he could take care of himself. “Fine, then you can get the fuck out.”

“Will…” Hannibal’s voice was soft, “I didn’t mean it.”

“I don’t care, just get out. At the very least just give me some space.”

Hannibal didn’t want Will to feel more pushed, but he had to add, “alright, but don’t drink anymore. It will worsen your condition. Please, Will.”

Will sighed, rubbing a hand over his face. “Yeah, whatever. Just go.”

Hannibal nodded and stepped away, he got his own coat and pulled the front door open. Hesitating, he turned back and looked at Will, who was staring at the floor. “Please be safe.” Will just waved his arm indicating that he should go, and with that, Hannibal stepped out onto the porch and then closed the door.

Will was exhausted, his head was throbbing and his eyes stung. With Hannibal gone, the tears finally began to steadily fall from his eyes. After a while of standing there, staring at the front door, he ended up stripping down to his boxers and laying down in their bed. Penelope, their little King Charles Spaniel puppy, watched him from the doorway. A few minutes later, she was picked up and snuggled in Will’s arms on the bed. Hannibal hadn’t wanted a dog, but he accepted that living with Will meant they were bound to get one. He tried to be apathetic towards her when Will first brought her home, a scrawny little stay, but the affection in his eyes was unmistakable. The little dog followed him everywhere now, and they ended up bonding very quickly. Will had even joked that Hannibal liked Penelope more than him. As he held her and pressed his face against her fur, Will thought back on those memories fondly.

His mind palace was nowhere near as vast or intricate as Hannibal’s, but he still had memories there that he clung to. Closing his eyes, Will went back to the ones he cherished the most.

The tears that had clung to Hannibal’s lashes, barely visible in the dark of the night after they killed the dragon.

The sobs that came from Hannibal’s lips when Will had first woken up.

The few drops that fell from his eyes when Will had spoken to him for the first time in his recovery.

The little gasps of breath that had accompanied the multitude of fallen tears that came the first time they made love (calling it anything else wouldn’t encompass it enough).

When Will had said “I love you” to him the first time and silent rivers had run down his cheeks as he’d smiled so vibrantly it was hard to look at.

He knew Hannibal hadn’t meant it, that he was just frustrated and fed up and worried. They wouldn’t survive separation, and Hannibal needed Will just as much as Will needed Hannibal, they needed each other to live. He knew Hannibal loved him, his love was as real and tangible as those tears he’d cried.

Will loved their lives, and he didn’t want anything to cause a rift in that. He trusted Hannibal and he knew he would take care of him and help him to the best of his abilities. But to see his concern in comparison to the first time he got sick, was jarring, and Will almost didn’t know how to handle it. Hannibal had turned himself in and spent three years in jail for Will, and he was sure if he decided he wanted to go to the hospital to get treated, even if it risked exposing them, Hannibal would take him in a heartbeat. It shouldn’t be, but the depth of Hannibal’s affection for him was still surprising at times.

Will acknowledged that being worried about Hannibal’s reactions to him being sick was justified, and that there would probably always be times where the trust between them wavered because of the past, but he knew Hannibal wouldn’t ever leave.

He’d call Hannibal in the morning he decided, give them both time to calm down. And with that last thought, he tried to sleep for the night.

When the sun came up, Will was thankful. He’d spent the night tossing and turning, fighting off nightmares when he did manage to sleep. More than once he found himself reaching out to the other side of the bed for Hannibal, only to find that he wasn't there. Getting up, Will put on a simple plain shirt and pair of sweatpants and went to make coffee. Their coffee maker had been outrageously expensive, but Hannibal had insisted on it, and it ended up being worth it. Now, looking at the stupidly expensive coffee maker brought Will a strong feeling of longing. Hannibal had only been gone a night and Will felt like he was already falling apart. Calling Penelope to come with him, Will picked up his phone and decided to sit on the porch to call Hannibal, deciding that the fresh air would do him some good. He wasn’t sure what he was going to say, but he just needed him back.

Will wasn’t someone who was very jumpy at all, but when he opened the front door and turned to see Hannibal sitting with his back against the house, Will startled so badly he almost dropped his phone.

Hannibal turned at the sound of the door opening and looked up at Will with puffy eyes and red cheeks dried with tears. Internally, Will sighed. He looked like he’d been there all night. Wordlessly, Will reached down and pulled Hannibal to his feet and then brought them both inside. He helped Hannibal get off his coat and then stripped them both down to their boxers, before pulling them in their room and into bed. They curled up around each other, Will’s face pressed against Hannibal's chest and Hannibal's arms around him, running his fingers through Will’s hair. They laid in silence together for a while, just counting each other's breaths and heartbeats.

Eventually, Hannibal broke the silence, his voice raspy and quiet. “I’m sorry.”

Will took a breath before answering.

“I’m sorry too.”

Pressing his face into Will’s curls, Hannibal's breathing hitched. “I wouldn’t ever leave you, not again.”

“I know Hannibal,” Will responded. He pulled back a little so they were looking at each other. Hannibal’s eyes were wet with tears as he looked back at him.

Leaning forward, Will kissed away the few droplets of water that had escaped.

“I was going to tell you, I just needed to work up to it.’

Hannibal was silent for a moment before he replied. “I understand your hesitation. If you wish to go to the hospital and be treated there, we can go. There would be a risk, but we can make it work if that is what you want.”

Will shook his head. “I want you to treat me. I just needed to get out of my head.” He smiled at the terrible pun, watching to see if Hannibal would react.

He didn’t, continuing to stare at Will mutely.

Will sighed, again. “Help me, Hannibal. Please?”

Hannibal nodded at that, pressing his forehead against Will’s, wet cheeks brushing against dry ones.

“Of course beloved. Anything you want.”

Will filed away the memory into his memory palace, and placed it with all of the other times Hannibal had cried for him. Beautiful reminders of his humanity.

“I love you, Hannibal.”

“I love you too Will, always.”

[scribeofmorpheus]

Himmeløyne [21/?]

Pairing: Loki Odinson x Reader

Catch Up Here | Masterlist

Warnings: None

A/N: Nothin’ to report Cap’n

Taglist is open! Reblog, comment or leave a like please ☺

~Odin

The Allfather conjured old memory and returned himself to it; the last moment he ever conversed with his old counsel, Mímir.

“The boy must know of his lineage. He is the only one who can end this war. Bridge the sides. This rift was formed by lies, and lies will only pry it further.”

“Silence!” the younger Odin shouted, his stave burrowing into the floor from his surge of emotion. He was always quicker to temper before. Thor and Loki were still babies, Odin had yet to taste what truly came with fatherhood. Fatherhood would give him the burden of a different kind of love, of temperance, but in this moment, he was still ignorant to it.

"I know why you do this. You think by keeping this a secret, by refusing him his past, you will stop the inevitable, but not even you, old friend, can stop the Fate of the Gods.”

“I said silence!” Odin’s shout shattered the glass in the throne room. Mímir’s detached head simply blinked his outburst away. "You think yourself clever because you can see fate's web? Tell me, Mímir, can you see with only on eye?"

Odin loathed that condescending stare. It made him feel obsolete, limited. Without thought, rage bubbled to the surface, filling his vision with red. Then there was blood on his thumb, and  Mímir screamed. The fluid of an eye coating his thumb.

“You truly are your father’s son,” Mímir spat.

“Twilight will never be!”

“I know what you will do. I have seen it. This will be my final gift to you: the truth will crumble at the price of your father’s belt.”

Odin returned to his older form, now realising that the last words Mímir spoke had been misconstrued. He had sworn never to wear it, never to use his father’s belt even if he was to face a formidable foe. But Mímir had tricked him, manipulated him into locking it away. Locking it in the one place is was meant to be taken from, ironically.

A knock interrupted his thought.

“Who is it?”

“You sent for me, My Liege. It’s the Captain of the Guard.”

He sighed. As much as he yearned to see his son conscious again, to find where he’d hidden Frigga, he dreaded the outcome of such a success even more. No matter what, he had to get his father’s belt back, and stop Y/N at all costs. “Enter.”

  ~Heimdall

He watched Y/N get drawn into the light. The mirror screamed, but Y/N did not react to its piercing shriek.

Sif folded hunkered low from the pain, hands pressed to her ears. A mangled scream poured into the room, but her mouth never opened. The sounds, the shrieks, they were a thousand disembodied voices, all coming from inside the mirror. He felt unease, a desire to pull Y/N away from the harrowing sounds in the light. Then she was gone, and everything turned as silent as a graveyard, the mirror shattering into dust.

“We should have stopped her,” Sif wiped the blood from her ears onto her trousers. “That was Jotun magic. Forbidden magic!”

“I know,” he stood upright.

“Fascinating,” The Collector clapped his hands as if he’d seen the most impressive performance yet. “I’ve never seen anyone survive entering the Mirror of Fate.”

“You’ve never what?” Heimdall’s actions were quick, his large hand finding the uncollared space of The Collector’s neck.

The Collector laughed, a streak of lunacy to the twitch of his lips, bearing his teeth as though it’d been aeons since he had found something amusing. “I’ll be honest, it was never the belt that I was interested in.” He turned to look at Y/N’s eye in the crystal skull.

Heimdall lifted The Collector off his feet, “Explain yourself!”

“Have you ever seen an empire built on the bones of lies crumble?”

“I will not ask you again!” Heimdall struck The Collector into a wall.

Sif grabbed his arm to try and calm him, “You won’t get anything from him if he’s unconscious.”

“Someone’s coming,” Hogun whispered before disappearing behind a column.

A shadow grew larger by the entrance. Sif followed after Hogun to try and counter manoeuvre whoever was closing in. Heimdall didn’t care, he wanted answers, his grip on The Collector’s neck growing stronger.

“Why is it, as of late, we’re always getting tangled in one misadventure or another?” Fandral asked, arms on his hips, a devilish smirk pulling his hideous moustache closer to his nose.

“Fandral,” Sif let out a sigh of relief, closing in for a hug. “Am I glad to see you.”

“Don’t be too happy just yet,” he straightened out, his tone turning for the graver. “Odin said you stole something from his vault?”

“It’s a long story,” Sif said.

“As I’m sure. You’re lucky I managed to convince him to let Volstagg and I get the lead, but we don’t have time. His guard will not be far behind. We must leave, get you back to Asgard before you are apprehended as prisoners, so you can plead your case to the Allfather.”

Hogun side-eyed Heimdall, “It’s not that simple.”

 “Speak,” Heimdall demanded, ignoring the commotion around him.

“All I did was keep a promise to an old friend,” The Collector revealed.

“Who?”

“The one who placed that amulet in my care,” he wormed around Heimdall’s grip. “She told me someone would come for it, and when they did, I’d finally get to see the fruits of her labours.”

Suddenly, the skull began to glow. Runes appearing all over. Heimdall recognised some. Y/N’s eye acted as refraction material, displaying a doorway built into a mountain into the space of the emporium. The ground was the sky and the mountain had no base. The peak glistened with ice, a beautiful sunset presenting itself in the orientation of a sunrise.

“How do I get her back?” he slammed The Collector into the wall a second time.

“Gahhh! Never took you for a man able to relinquish control, anger suits you.”

“I won’t lose her,” he could feel his heart racing, thrumming in his ears. “Tell me!”

The Collector glanced at the skull, “To enter Verdenspeil, a spell is required. A two-part spell. The first half is the sacrifice of sight. The second was to recite the words of the Giants. The entry is one way. Every other person that’s ever sought out the mirror has never managed to recite the words. Until now.”

A torrent of light, heavy with every streak of colour, poured in the streets outside. Heimdall could feel the magic of the bridge, someone had opened the Bi-frost.

“That’s not good,” Fandral stated.

Sif and the others moved into position as several of the Allfather’s guard came wielding weapons with shields drawn.

“Heimdall!” Sif warned. “We’re running out of time.”

“Then buy me what little you can,” An agitated growl left Heimdall, “How do I get her back?”

“There—” Hogun shouted, “—pull that lever!”

A loud thud echoed into the room. A large, golden gate descended as a barricade. A red dot grew larger around the barricade, melting the metal.

“Did Odin send The Destroyer too?” Fandral’s jaw dropped. “What in all the Nine did you steal?”

“What madness have you gotten us into?” Volstagg demanded.  

Heimdall was close enough to The Collector’s face to see that there was no fear in his eyes, only the dilation from oxygen starvation.

“If she makes it passed the maze, the doorway will open, there,” The Collector pointed to the apparition coming from Y/N’s eye in the skull.

“I’ve seen this peak before,” Hogun closed in on the apparition. “Recently.”

“The runes,” Sif pointed out, “They’re the same as the ones that were drawn on Y/N. Wait… Heimdall, that’s Gjallarhorn!”

“Gjallarhorn?” Fandral backed away, terror in his eyes. “Then… that means… this is connected to the Twilight of the Gods.”

Heimdall set The Collector down, the eccentric man laughed between coughs. He ignored him and walked closer to the doorway that Sif, Hogun and Fandral stared at. One rune, in particular, made Heimdall’s veins turn to ice.

“Jotunheim,” he said. “That doorway is in Jotunheim.”

“But there's no snow, the sky isn't darkened. It doesn't resemble Jotunheim in the least."

"Jotunheim wasn't always the desolate place you know today. The Great War took more than just lives."

"How can you be sure?” Sif asked.

“Because, only one other has ever possessed Gjallarhorn, and Odin tasked me with his imprisonment. That is where I hid Mímir’s head.”

Sif pieced everything together, “Mímir? Of course! This all makes sense now. Then the Mirror of Fate—”

“Is his invention, yes.”

The Destroyer had made it through the door, its face covered the hole and a second burst burned a scorch mark across the floor. The Collector rushed to a display case and pushed it aside, there was a hidden lever there. He pulled it revealing a false wall.

“In here, there’s a dais in the level below. Take the skull, it is the key to opening the portal.” The Collector ushered them closer.

Heimdall frowned, “Why should we trust you?”

“I don’t think you have much of a choice. Whatever that girl is connected to, it has cause to make Odin worry. And, it seems, it was designed to happen exactly as it has. I have fulfilled my promise, now I get to watch chaos unfold. For someone as old as I am, there are few things as joyous as seeing order fall to chaos.”

Sif grabbed the skull and the apparition dissolved into the air like steam.  

Heimdall waited for Sif and the others to head for the lower level first, then he turned to The Collector to ask one final question: “This old friend of yours, was it Mímir’s sister?”

The Collector smiled, warm and affectionately, an odd emotion to see on his face. “It was.”

  ~Y/N

Birth. A child’s first steps on steps of stone. Runes drawn into the snow. Blood on ice. A village on fire. Pieces of a home, blackened by soot and ash. Wings in the light. An arrow whistling through the air. Clear. Sweet. The rush was more than images layered over one another, morphing into one another, it was sensation too. The feel of the cold on the stone steps. The muscle memory from tracing the rune. The drip, drip, drip of blood streaming down a frost sword and splattering on ice. Heat from flames. Smell of ash on the throat. These moments were yours, animated and swishing around in this viridian green atmosphere. You had made it into the Mirror World.

You spun around, searching for a path or a marker of some sort. There was nothing but thick, green fog all around you.

“Hello?” you asked the expanse. It didn’t echo. No one replied. “Oracle?” you called out for the whisper that you conversed with in the emporium.

You shouted out again and again until you heard a reply.

Child of the Sky, welcome to Verdenspeil. 

You spread your fingers over the fog, the memories were torn like seams, visions dissipating and then reappearing. “What is all this?”

The Nexus of Fate. Your fate. Once you step out, you will be subjected to all fates intertwined with yours. 

“How do I know what to look for?”

Desire. Search your mind for desire. It will light the path to the answer you seek. 

 “And my desire will lead me to the answer I seek?”

Yes… and No. Nothing in this realm is as it appears. This world is not meant for the living. It will try to coerce you. Lead you away from the root of its power. 

“Root of its power?” you were distracted by a glimmer, then the memory of you and Loki’s first meeting by the balconies came to life. Then you thought of the kiss on that very same balcony, and suddenly the world reshaped itself to project that memory. You realised then that the world wasn’t just showing you fate, it was feeding off your memories too. A give and take. “This world isn’t real is it?”

Real is a matter of perception. But yes, this world is ancient, a thread within the fabrics of all the universes, tapped deep into Yggdrasil. 

“What is its purpose?”

Cause of effect. This world is a maze. I am the effect, but I cannot see beyond my bindings, see to its cause. I do not know what lies in the centre. All I can do is mark a path. Follow it to the source. Free me, and I will make this world show you what you seek.

You focused on what you desired. Flashes of Loki came to life I the fog, but so did images of your mother.

“We will see each other again,” your mother’s voice spoke through the fog.

The rune on your palm burst with red light. Glowing, iridescent like eels, it lit the path ahead of you. The second rune on your forehead rippled, almost as if it were an appendage. Trembling fingers reached for it and were greeted by the aqueous of an eye—a third eye. You gasped, shocked at how real the runic eye felt. You closed your one human eye and tried to see through the third.

Runic vision was strange, the Mirror World was all reflections and memory, and the expansion and contraction of matter. The rune on your palm acted as a torch in darkness, revealing the world that was previously magically concealed. Branches, stretching endlessly, all intertwined and meandering, were revealed. Each branch glowed with a different colour, some colours you’d never seen before. To your immediate left, a branch absorbed the colour of your hand’s rune. 

“Follow the path,” you reiterated.

With your human eye closed, you walked as if a blind woman, letting the magic guide you, letting it see for you. The walk was long. It felt like the seconds had rushed to hours and hours faded to days, but your muscles didn’t give in, they didn’t even feel like they were moving. Air raised your chest, but your lungs seemed as heavy as rocks.  

Yes, you are close. I can hear it. The beginning of my name. I can hear it! A little further!

Over the edge of the path, to the right, there was a branch that looked to be severed. The only singular branch untouched or intertwined with others. A coldness prickled at your skin.

“What is that place?” you shuddered. 

There was a brief pause, a small voice in your head told you to turn towards the edge and look over it.

I… I do not remember. 

“It’s calling to me…”

Child of the Sky! Do not stray from the path!

But it was too late. That same pull you felt to the light was drawing you towards that severed branch that led to a drop.

“I have to…” you took your first step away from the red of the path. The colour of the world began to leech away, all turning to that viridian green. The fog of the world covered the tree slowly, returning everything as it had been.

“Be careful!” a stranger’s voice shouted, her dialect foreign to you, yet you understood it.

“By the Gods!” you gasped in shock. Except, it wasn’t you. You hadn’t opened your mouth to speak. It was your voice, in the same dialect as the stranger’s, coming from the edge.

“Look at the size of him!” the stranger continued.

Then there was an animalistic cry, creature-like and deep. And the whoosh of rushing water. And a rumble in the earth.

“Stop! Don’t hurt him!”

“Hurt him? He displaced half the ocean!”

“Trust me!”

“I hope you know what you’re doing!”

“So do I…”

Your foot reached the end of the path, a whirlpool sucking up the air where you stood. The voices stopped too.

“That was my voice. What was that?” the real you asked the Oracle.

I suspect, something yet to be, or something never to be. 

A trance came over you. A need to step over the edge. Deep in your bones, you knew that stepping off the path needed to happen, that it was fate leading you to the whirlpool at the bottom of this universe.

“Y/N?” Loki called your name from below, but he did so in a manner a stranger would. "Never heard of you..."

“What happens if I stray from the path?” you peered into the spiralling clouds sparked with thunder and lightning. Watched the whirlpool tear those clouds apart like dandelions in the wind.

I… I do not know. The maze is endless. Getting lost could be a life sentence.

“Then it’s a good thing I’m mortal,” you took a controlled breath and dove off the edge. 

Half mortal.

The whirlpool opened, the crack at its centre allowed darkness to slither through. A tendril touched your skin. Then another. The darkness spread like the drench of rain. Soon, you and the darkness were one.

[skeletorific]

DUUUUUUUDE I'd love to see your classpects for the boys, n compare them to my own personal hc!! I love godtier stuff, and imagining them in bright silly outfits is just👌

This was so fucking PEACEFUL to work on it was a delight to do so let’s do this. I’m doing extended zodiac signs too because i CAN. Also, putting this under a cut cause it got LONG

CLASSPECTING THE SKELEBROS

UT!Sans: True sign is Scormino, Sign of the Fatalist

So, a point by point breakdown

-Cerulean: something that immediately woke me up to Sans as a Cerulean was the idea of a “mask for every occasion”. Sans is not one thing to all people. He flips between personas, adjusting it a little for each encounter. This isn’t because he’s manipulative per se, but because he genuinely thinks it’ll just make things easier for everyone

-Prospit: Prospit repression yo. Not to mention he’s more go with the flow than he is “fuck the system”.

-Doom: Rather than explain this connection, I’m just gonna paste the description for Doombound, since its practically a textbook description of Sans himself

Those bound to the aspect of Doom are fate’s chosen sufferers. It may not sound like an overly pleasant aspect to be aligned with, but it does come along with great wisdom and empathy. The Doom-bound understand that misery loves company, and they are ready and willing to provide said company. The Doom-bound won’t fix you; they aren’t healers. They are commiserators, aware that sometimes the only thing you can do for a person is let them know that they are not alone in their suffering. They are not the advice friend-they’re the friend you go to when you need to vent about a rough day at work. They are not necessarily noble martyrs, either-the Doom-bound can become quite irate about their lot. At their best they are wise, kind, and non-judgemental. At their worst, bitter, resentful, and fatalistic.

This is a summary of Genocide route Sans so succinct it could’ve been written about him intentionally. I did consider time for him, but ultimately Time is an aspect defined by a struggle. Sans does not struggle against the oncoming fate. He buys it a drink and hopes it leaves as little damage as possible in its wake.

As far as class goes, I classpect him as a Mage of Doom. One who understands or understands through their aspect, and no one understands the coming storm quite like Sans does. Mages are also traditionally understood as suffering as a result of their knowledge of their aspect whether too much or too little. In a sense, Sans’ relationship with the Anomaly encompasses both.

UT!Papyrus: True sign is Aquius, sign of the Whimsical

-Violet: Violet signs are noted for their eccentricity and individuality. I have a harder time coming up with two adjectives more fitting than that for Papyrus. Additionally, they have a reputation for craving social interaction to the point of being clingy, which is also extremely fitting

-Prospit. Not much to add to this one beyond going with the flow and an aversion to going off the beaten path.

-Breath:The aspect of freedom, confidence, imagination, and fun. Something notable about Breath players is that they’re at their best when they let loose and be themselves. Papyrus can’t really be who he wants to be when he’s trying to play a role, of guard captain or human hunter. When he’s being authentic Papyrus though, he’s capable of inspiring hearts and minds.

I classpect Papyrus as a Sylph of Breath. Papyrus does both literal and metaphorical healing. If you get knocked out during your fight with him, he carries you back to his shed and nurses you back to health. Additionally, Papyrus reminds people that they are free to chase their dreams and their own potential. He tries to make the Player recall their better intentions. He pumps up Alphys, restoring her confidence that she’s lost over the years. He heals the relationship between the player and Undyne in order to liberate Undyne to be her more authentic self: a woman who just wants to help her people. Additionally, he is a key facet in liberating the Underground, restoring the sky to people who have been denied it for so long. 

UF!Sans: True sign is Tauriborn, sign of the Covetous

-Bronze: Bronze just has that earthy quality I eat with a SPOON for Red. Additionally, they navigate that space between a genuine desire for stability and a tendency to stubbornly commit even when it hurts you. Additionally, there’s a hedonism associated with Bronze signs that feels very fitting.

-Derse: restless skepticism, a tendency to mistrust, and rebellion in the blood? Sounds like a skeleton who’s been living rent free in my head for long enough.

-Rage: There’s of course a very literal level to this. Red’s one of the angrier of the skelebros. Additionally, though, there’s a resentment of lies and false civilities. Red hates liars, hates convenient likes. He tends to play his own cards close to the chest, but resents it in other people. Additionally, there’s a burn it all down impulse that’s very present in him that resonates with this aspect.

I classpect Red as an Heir of Rage. I tend to understand Heir as one who is surrounded by their aspect, or surrounds other with their aspect. Red surrounds himself in a field of rage, and those who are the target of his wrath are too. Additionally, though, he inherits the positive aspects of wrath, the bullshit detector and the impulse towards seeking out the truth. Additionally heirs tend not to take a very intellectual approach to their aspect, because they don’t have to. They embody it unconsciously. 

UF!Papyrus: I kind of went over this but for the sake of coherency: True sign is Saginius

-Indigos: in addition to having a rep for being the bastions of order, indigos tend to devote themselves entirely to their interest. They can be sociable, but have a tendency to not really consider other people’s emotions, leading to a lot of unintentional hurts. Edge has a cold abrasive personality at many points, but it’s rare that he intends to hurt the people closest to him. It just sort of happens to him.

-Prospit: Again, Edge doesn’t rebel. He works with the society cards he’s been dealt. His prospit associations are where he’s closest to his Tale self.

-Hope: Hope is the aspect, not just of optimism, but of order. Hope players have a very black and white approach to the world, and dedication to ideals that they see as higher than themselves. Both of these are to me very Edge qualities, even if he’s not the most sunshiney person. He has things he believes in strongly, and he doesn’t wave.

I classpect Edge as a Knight of Hope. He defends his aspect, defending his ideals and the things he chooses to dedicate himself, and defends with his aspect, using his internal compass as a bastion against doubt and misgivings. Additionally, Edge has an inherent lean towards protecting and working for others, even if at his most unhealthy point his ego can make him bossy.

US!Sans: Blue’s true sign is Arcer, sign of the Officer

-Burgundy: Rust signs tend to be characterized by an unbending determination. Its not that they’re immune to the bad things in the world, its simply that they tend to roll with the punches and try to make things work regardless. Blue is quick to trust and overly excitable, but a loyal friend and an imaginative companion. All of these are Rust characteristics.

-Prospit: Again, unwavering optimism and a loyal temperament.

-Blood: Blood is the aspect of relationships and mutual support. Blue is an extremely social creature, prone to doing his best work via inspiration. He invests strongly in the people around him, and has a hard time giving up on others. Blood can also be the aspect of sinking ships. They tend to latch on to things and people other’s might consider to be “lost causes” and stubbornly refuse to leave them behind. I tend to characterize Blue with a low level of anxiety, constantly afraid that the people around him are going to leave him behind if he’s not good enough. Peak Blood player. 

I classpect Blue as a Page of Blood. Like I said, Blue’s “Sans” tendencies come out in his interactions with others. Like most pages, he has a very shakey grasp of his aspect. He genuinely has the ability to make people feel cared for and comfortable. He even has great potential to inspire others to do better. However, he’s still in the process of learning how to command his aspect effectively, sometimes vacillating between overloading people with interaction and at other times barely confiding his emotions in even the people he should be close with. As this potential unlocks, though, there’s no ceiling to all he might achieve.

US!Papyrus: Stretch’s true sign is Gemza, sign of the Shrewd

-Gold: Gold signs command intellectual prowess, quick wit, and reserved tendencies in a way Stretch has done his entire life. Something notable about goldbloods is they have a tendency to refuse to live up to their full potential. They find their niche and carve out their mark within it while letting the rest of their life functionally fade to the background as “unimportant”. Stretch is adept and knowledgeable in his areas of interest and finds it hard to give a shit about the rest. Despite this, he still hangs on to the goldblood’s usually innate likeability, albeit without much emotional vulnerability. 

-Derse: While Stretch isn’t exactly a rebel, Derse has an association with skepticism and a desire for rationality that inherently resonates with him. One thing that also stood out to me is a tendency to develop a very self-effacing sense of humor as a cover, which is a VERY Stretch quality. He doesn’t quite have the repression for Prospit, nor will he let himself be put into boxes that don’t suit him.

-Mind: Mind players (and Stretch) are defined by a certain sense of fluidity. They don’t really feel compelled to develop a strong sense of self, preferring instead to react organically to how they think is best and most logical to the moment. Stretch is a creative and quick thinker, which combines with a very nasty FOMO and an aversion to simplicity. Absolute Mind Player Core.

His classpect is tricky, but I feel Witch of Mind is the most fitting for him. Witches are often characterized by having a more lackadaisical relationship with their aspect. They understand it intimately enough to know how to break it when it suits them. In addition to reason and choice, Mind is also the aspect of systems and rules (think Terezi’s justice core). Stretch is a quick study about systems, but doesn’t necessarily adhere himself to them. Whether its a game he’s playing, a puzzle he’s solving, or a person he’s interacting with, sometimes the best thing in the world is to dig in and study until you find the point that breaks the whole thing open.

SF!Sans: Black’s true sign is Cancen, sign of the Translucent

-Lime: Lime signs tends to be characterized by forceful and intense personalities, with intense emotions and a tendency to fixate on improvement. They can often be effective at inspiring people to follow their lead, but have difficult personalities to work with. All of this is extremely Black, with the proviso that I tend to characterize him as often needing to repress those intense emotions. He leans hard into his own anger, but often covers up his other extremes for the sake of their own safety. 

-Derse: while Black has learned to cooperate with the world around him, he’s never not going to be looking for ways to get around it. He’s often sardonic, and is usually extremely slow to trust those around him. He may put on a front of being the Queen’s man through and through, but there’s a lot of Irons in the fire that he doesn’t feel the need to make public.

-Heart: As I said, I tend to characterize Black as struggling against strong emotions that even he barely understands. He has a very distinct and strong personality, as well as intensive emotions. In moments of stress, he’s prone to intense self-reflection. Where did he go wrong, where can he improve. Additionally Heart players have an association with identity constructing, frequently diffusing their personality into a variety of splinter selves in a form of elaborate “roleplaying”, which to me clicks nicely with Black’s bossy and aggro Royal Guard posturing. 

Its because of this struggle against his own aspect that I classpect Black as a Rogue of Heart. Rogues often struggle to cope with their aspect, and may even begin to crave the opposite. Black at his core craves the rational thought and pure justice of the Mind aspect. However, the more they embrace their aspect, especially in service to others (being a passive class), the healthier they often end up being. If you’ve read my “Tyrant” fic, Black steals his and Rus’s performance of self to allow them the freedom to act and pass unnoticed by the guard. He represses his own emotions to give space to other people’s, and at his best can redistribute his own assurance with his purposes to the people around him, making him potentially an inspiring presence.

SF!Papyrus: Rus’ true sign is Capries, sign of the Bold

-Purple: purples have a tendency to dedicate themselves to causes or people they care about and work until they are either stopped or made incapable or working more, much as Rus works for his brother’s well-being. Additional points of resonance were a macabre sense of humor, a tendency to withdraw when upset, a sense of fatalism, and a tendency to dig in his heels even if its against his own best interest. Plus….Clown Rus sexy what can I say.

-Derse: like his brother, Rus is inherently skeptical of easy outs. Like many Derse dreamers, he’s a problem solver, even if it comes at great personal cost. Rus’s Derseness is also exemplified in his tendency to develop strong bonds of loyalty to other people….without ever really allowing himself to be vulnerable with those people. He has the perspective that his emotions don’t truly matter.

-Time: Honestly kind of surprised it took me this long to make one of the Lazybones a time player, but I think making Rus it was the right choice. Time players are often defined by a sense of struggle. Time players are seemingly incapable of taking things lying down. Even if they won’t fight for themselves (and Rus rarely ever will) they often have an internal moral code that makes them unable to be a bystander. Rus is lazy, he’s a fatalist, he has a hard time taking care of himself. But he’s unable to stop himself from acting, especially when it involves someone he cares about. Additionally, Rus has associations with death in his judge role, which he takes extremely seriously.

I debated making Rus another knight, but ultimately I feel Seer of Time fits him better. All the Sans derivatives are prone to a sort of restless curiosity about the world around them, and in Homestuck terms I see that as a desire to in some way sync up with their aspects. A Seer is one who invites understanding. Rus seeks to reckon with both the cycle of life and death and the wide variety of timestreams that are causing havoc in his world. Unlike the mage, he has a hard time accepting what he understands: Seers are in many cases notorious for resenting the idea of someone else controlling them. Still, he’s practically unable to stop himself from exploring further, continuing to pick and pick at the scab of his reality no matter how much it hurts.

[literatelogan]

the binding of two forces | a love that never lost momentum

{6: while it lasts} wattpad | a03

kobayashi kei is a teacher at U.A. who has an established relationship with aizawa shouta. kei and shouta have known each other ever since they started at UA together. their friendship had always been strong but this is the story of how they came to be as a couple and what the future holds.

a/n - !manga spoilers! slightly divergent of the main plot but it will be caught up to the current season of the anime after the time skip. she is the homeroom teacher for 1B but don't worry we still stan vlad in this house so he's now 2B. bit of a promotion for the trouble. her quirk is fatigue manipulation. she has the ability to manipulate the fatigue of oneself or others, both mental and physical. she can increase, decrease, cause or prevent fatigue. in order to increase someone's fatigue, she needs to either leech from another person or herself. her fatigue is only affected if she is using a lot of energy either giving or transferring. if she takes energy from someone else, she will gain it. she cannot rest or sleep until she gets all of her energy out either by wearing herself out mentally or physically. she cannot kill someone easily but she can make some lose consciousness.

  It wasn't quite sunset but the sun was still low enough in the sky that everything had that sort of golden glow. Everything that light bounced off of had just a bit more sparkle to it. Maybe that was her mind getting away from her as she looked at Shouta. It was the end of the festival and the day had been so wonderful. The whole squad had such a good time and if she could have willed the day to never end, she would have. Having a relaxing and fun day in a sea of school work and training was a relief. He told her to wait. He stopped her. She was about to leave and say goodbye to him but he stopped her. She wasn't sure why but her heart was racing. She blushed and looked down at the ground. "I can't even look at him right now. He's so cute." She felt the fingers that were entangled in her's drift away from them. With confusion on her face, she looked back up at Shouta who was smiling softly at her. And blushing?

  {aizawa's pov}

Oh crap. "Why did you say wait? Why did you stop her? You have no plan. This is not part of the plan. Because there is no plan. Shit." He looked at Kobayashi and could not believe a girl that beautiful was holding his hand right now. The sunlight danced on the strands of her hair. She had a sparkle in her eye. She just looked...so beautiful. And then she was looking away from him. "Crap. Okay. What do I do? I need to do something." As if of its own will, the hand that held Kobayashi's left hers. He smiled at her as she lifted her head and gently ran the hand against her chin, cupping it lightly. "You can do this." He moved a bit closer to her and whispered, "Is it okay if I kiss you?" A small nod from Kobayashi was all he needed before pulling her chin to close the gap. Their lips barely touched and already his entire body felt like it was on fire. Slowly and gently, he pressed his lips against hers. His eyes fluttered closed as she kissed back and his hand moved to the back of her head. All of the tension from the entire year felt like it left his body. His free arm wrapped around her back and pulled her close to him. "It really is like this." He pulled his lips away from her but it took all of his efforts. He rested his forehead against hers still and smiled, not knowing or caring what to say. He was in a daze and all he saw was her. In this moment, nothing else came close to mattering. 

  {kei's pov}

Shivers ran through Kei's entire body the second Shouta's hand touched her chin. "He's moving towards me. He's touching me. Oh my god. Is this actually happening? Someone pinch me. This is a dream." His words snapped her out of her internal monologue. Surprised and unsure how to speak anymore, she gave him a little nod in reply, and then they were kissing. She could not believe this was really happening. From being the boy who didn't even look at her on that first day, to now. "Does this mean we're dating?" All other thoughts were jumbled. He was a good kisser. Not that she had any reference seeing as this was her first kiss. But if this was bad kissing, she wanted to kiss all the time. His lips were warm. A little soft but he could use a little bit of balm. She tilted her head a little and melted into the kiss. As his eyes closed, so did hers. She let out a little squeak when he pulled her closer. Butterflies danced in her stomach as they stayed there. It could have been a minute or a year and she would not have known the difference. All she knew was that she wanted to be there forever. When their lips separated, she was breathing just slightly heavier than normal. They stayed there for a little while. Just in an embrace not knowing what to do or what to say.

  They tried to keep the boys and Kayama from finding out for as long as they could. It lasted about 2 days with Kayama, 4 with Oboro, and a week with Hizashi. They never kissed in public. Holding hands was already a bit taboo. When they could walk to the train together, they would. And if they managed to sneak off to steal a kiss somewhere, that was their secret. Every time Shouta so much as looked at her the right way, she blushed. Their phone calls consisted of a little bit less studying and a bit more puppy love. They still weren't dating. Nope. Not allowed. Soon enough it was time for term finals again. The group of four had been training together whenever allowed. Constantly trying to better themselves and each other. It had prepared them as much as they could be prepared for the Final. It was almost the end of their first year. It felt impossible that so much had happened in such short a time. It felt like just yesterday they were doing their first training. Just yesterday that they all met and became friends. 

  Kei had been slacking on her morning runs. She had spent too much time talking to Shouta too late. Satoru pointed it out at dinner one night and the rest of the family agreed. She needed her energy especially with exams coming. With promises to her family that she would not slack, she started to focus on school and her routine again. The calls were shorter but that was okay. They spent a lot of time together during the day. Although going back to normal felt a bit weird at first, they adjusted. Kei trained with the boys one on one as they all took turns with different pair-ups. They learned that giving Hizashi more energy made him louder but only to a point. With Recovery Girl on hand, she worked with a teacher to see how much she could drain. She needed to know how much energy she could drain and how much she could hold without giving it to someone new. If she made someone unconscious with her power, she could still feel their energy after. That was when she realized that her quirk could kill. She accompanied Recovery Girl to the practices of other classes to see how much of her power could help in healing. Combined, they were able to heal someone and keep their energy up. And as long as the injuries were minimal, Kei was able to restore someone's stamina to its normal state. These practices took a lot out of her, as was to be expected. She started going to bed earlier and having a short phone call with Shouta every once in a while. 

  {aizawa's pov}

Everything was going so fast. After the first kiss, he couldn't stop wanting to kiss her. Anytime he saw another guy so much as look at her, he shot daggers at them. They weren't dating though. Maybe he wanted to but he wasn't ready for that conversation even with himself. Sometimes she would run her fingers through his hair when they kissed and he thought about that for hours after. He knew it would be wildly inappropriate but he wanted to cling to her in the halls. He wanted to hold onto her constantly. Every touch was fleeting but drove him mad. When she blushed, he melted. His brain was a cloud of thoughts about her. He had zoned out staring at her again in class. Yamada slapped him on the back of the head to snap him out of it. When the guys were willing to listen, he gushed about her. They made fake vomit noises and faces in return. "I just want to go to so many places with her. I want to do so many things with her." Yamada laughed. "With or to?" Shirakumo pat him on the back with a howling laugh of his own. "Good one." Aizawa glared at them both. "It's not like that." Shirakumo nodded and Yamada shook his head. "You wouldn't understand. I feel like I'm in a daze."

  Then as it grew closer to the finals, Kobayashi was busier with studying. He knew it was important. He had been slacking in every class she was in and even some of the others. They would study over the phone as much as they could. And then she started needing to go to bed earlier. Understandable as her quirk was entirely reliant on her energy levels. The phone calls got shorter. And then they got less frequent. Well. They weren't dating. Shouta dove into his studies to keep his mind off of his stupid feelings. What kind of idiot thinks one of the most beautiful girls Japan has ever seen wouldn't get bored with him. They would still hold hands. They would still kiss sometimes on their walks to the train. But things just felt different. Maybe there was someone cooler. Some third year or something. Shouta started devoting a lot of his time to combat training. As someone with a quirk that didn't make him stronger or faster, he needed to do it himself. When he wasn't studying for the finals, he was working on his strength. Sparring partners weren't hard to come by and seeing as they couldn't use their quirks on him, it was easier to make a more even playing field. A lot of his training was with his capture weapon. 

  {kei's pov}

Finals were upon them. All of this studying and prep work culminated in one of the most stressful times of Kei's life. The first year of her true journey to become a pro hero. To save people. The practical was difficult and by the end of it, she felt as though she might drop. Though she pulled a lot of energy from her opponents, she did also use a lot of it for her more combat driven teammates. A strategy Saturo had been telling her to employ since she was a child. "You have to be a healer for the tanks." It rang in her head while she gave her all. The written portion of the exam was more intimidating but as she sat down to take it, she felt more comfortable. Having really devoted the past couple of weeks wholeheartedly into studying, she did well. Her scores were not perfect but she was 8th in the class. This was a huge improvement from the start of the year and she couldn't help but think that it was largely driven by her growth through her friends. Without them, she wouldn't be the hero she was already growing to be. It was thanks to them. 

  Thanks to Kayama, Hizashi, Oboro, and Shouta. She would give her all to repay them. Her life if she had to.

[harryhighkey]

happy valentines day

hi hi i’m back w another one shot!!!!! and this one is holiday themed!!!!!!!!!!! this is my first holiday themed one omg, i’m p happy with how it turned out!!!!! it’s kind of angsty (as usual) but also cute!!!!! idk don’t wanna spoil and also its 3:27am so i need to sleep but hope u all love it and HAPPY VALENTINES DAY

___________________

You were never a valentines day type of person. At one point, you weren’t really sure if anyone really was, or if it was just something people got excited over in movies. Maybe because you hadn’t ever actually been in a relationship properly when the day came around. 

Well, except the one relationship that had ironically ended terribly on what was meant to be the day of love.

Any other time the supposed romantic day came around, you never actually realised. It always took someone else wishing you a happy valentines day to have it even click in your head that February the 14th meant something else to other people. 

That’s why I’ve been eating so much chocolate lately. 

It was always on sale at this time of year, and you couldn’t ignore your favourite sweet snacks sitting right at the check out waiting to be picked up. Conspircary theory videos warned you about this, but you let the supermarket manipulate you anyway.

It wasn’t quite the 14th yet, though. It would be in about twenty minutes, although you were sure someone at the party you were at tonight would announce valentines day at midnight. Someone had made a joke earlier in the night about doing a count down like it was new year’s eve.

On the 13th - or valentines day eve - in the morning, you’d spent your time on a plane. It was one of your closest friends you’d made during your time spent in LA, engagement party. And honestly, you were a little nervous for it at first. The airport had lost your luggage, and you were taking it as a sign it wasn’t going to be a good night.

The people here tonight were also friends with your ex-boyfriend. Harry Styles.

In fact, you probably met a majority of them through him, and you hadn’t seen him since the two of you split up. You made a real effort to have a detox of sorts. You got too caught up in the LA lifestyle, or that’s what you told yourself in a coping mechanism of not accepting you were moving because of him. But when your relationship ended, so did your time in LA you decided. You had even gone as far to switch all your social media’s to private accounts, and in somewhat of a petty notion you blocked Harry so he couldn’t access them.

You had your reasons though, it wasn’t what could be called the smoothest of breakups.

-

“You’ve been gone for months, Harry!” You were furious, he was too. You’d gone to a show with your friends. A show in which you had obtained tickets for months ago. Maybe you had forgotten to tell Harry you wouldn’t be home from work due to heading straight to your friends place to get ready, but how you were to know he was planning a romantic surprise for valentines day. You didn’t even register that it was valentines day, to you, this day had always been when you were going to see Troye Sivan with your friends.

“That’s my fucking job, Y/N!”

“I fucking get that, but you don’t get to come back and get angry at me for having my own life.”

“I’m not,” He stepped closer to you then, and if you didn’t know Harry well enough you would have found it frightening. He could get a little scary when he was this angry, his deep voice boomed with volume and as he came to stand close to you, his tall framed loomed over you and you unconsciously took a step back. “but it’s fucking valentines day.”

“And so fucking what?”

“See, it’s that attitude. I’m so sick of it.”

“Sick of me?”

“No, sick of how you are!”

“That’s the same thing.”

“No, it’s-”

“No, you know what?” You cut him off then. “Fuck you, Harry. Not everything revolves around you. I told you I got these tickets ages ago.”

“You didn’t think to invite me?”

“Obviously not!”

“I could’ve gotten your seats upgraded. Probably even backstage passes.” Usually when he said something like this, he was being genuinely kind. Trying to treat you because he loved you. However now, he was saying it with venom.

“Wow, you’re gonna be like that now? Sorry we’re not all millionaires and as good as Harry fucking Styles.”

“Y/N, no,” His tone shifted then, as did his expression for a second as you saw the quick moment of guilt in his green eyes. “I didn’t mean it like that.”

“Yeah, you did.”

“No, I didn’t.” And just like that, you two were back on the downhill slope.

“I’m not fucking doing this, I had a really good time with my friends and I come home and you’re just ruining it.”

“You ruined it when you didn’t fucking turn up on valentines day!”

“Fuck valentines day! Who even celebrates that shit?”

“Me, and you’re not appreciate of anything I’ve done for you.”

“Oh my god.” You frustratedly ran your hands through your hair and turned around then, you were both running in a circle but couldn’t ever reach other at this point. “I didn’t even know, Harry. I said I was sorry!”

“You couldn’t reply to a message? Answer my call?”

“No, I was fucking distracted.”

“It’s like you don’t even care I’m home.”

“Of course I care, we’ve been together constantly since you got back. It was one night I didn’t tell you.”

“It’s been more than one night. And tonight was valentines.”

“I have a life. I’m not going to stop seeing my friends because you’re used to having the attention of thousands of girls every night. You’re not on tour anymore, get used to it.”

“Do you know how easily I could have another girl here?”

That was it. That was the moment that did it.

“You know what? Why not bring one of them over? Because I’m done.”

-

You couldn’t lie, you were relieved when you arrived earlier and you totally thought you were seeming subtle in scoping the place to see if Harry was here, but you must not have been because a friend came up and whispered,

“He’s not here, he’s working.”

So eventually you relaxed into the night, easily finding your groove back with the friends you had made when you lived out here. People were beginning to leave at this point, now that it was 11:55pm on the 13th of February, valentines day only a mere five minutes away. And being around your friends made you know that when you went back, you really would miss them so much more. You did miss the life you’d made here. You missed Harry.

Suddenly you felt a little pull in your chest and you couldn’t quite pick it. You knew you were feeling quite nostalgic with your friends and because some people left and you were planning on escaping before it was officially valentines day, you thought it might be that. But it was different. There was the sad farewell made by NASA for Oppy today had made you shed a tear earlier on. But that wasn’t what you were feeling right now, either.

Then you heard someone announce, “Ah, look who made it, after all.”

Fuck.

You knew who it was, you didn’t even have to turn around to look and you wouldn’t. Right now, you were thanking the angel of Oppy that you had chosen the spot you did to not face directly to the front door, instead you faced away from it and towards your friends. A few looked up to see what was going on and a few were looking at you to see your reaction.

You heard his laugh first, it wasn’t his proper laugh, when he found something really funny. It was his polite laugh he did to keep a mood light, to make others around him feel good. “Finished late in the studio, but wanted to stop by and say congratulations.” Harry spoke, and suddenly you wished you were sitting another way just so you could have one small look. The tiniest of glances.

So you did and, fuck, did he look perfect.

You’d made an effort to try and not stay up late lurking online to find out about him. But of course you couldn’t avoid it at all, he still was who he was, after all. Lately, though, he’d been laying really low-key and you weren’t seeing any new news about him. He was smiling as he made small talk, he hadn’t spotted you and you took this as your chance to leave.

Once again, you were thanking Oppy you’d already said your goodbyes as you made a swift exit out the front door. You managed to avoid any interaction with Harry, but by how your body was reacting, you wouldn’t think so.

Your heart was pounding so hard you could hear it loudly in your ear drums. You could barely see your own feet as your walked down the driveway, too focused on how he looked to think about where you were going. Which is exactly why you almost tripped over the letter box. And when you finally unlocked your phone to book an Uber, your hands were shaking.

“Y/N?”

Maybe you hadn’t avoided him.

You took in a deep breath and looked up from your phone and sure enough, there he was. His was longer, a little messier and he had a bit more scruff growing on his face than usual.

“Hey.” Was all you managed to get out.

“Hi.”

You laughed and so did he.

“You look beautiful, Y/N.” You met his vision again, the both you stopped laughing. His compliment caught you off guard, even though maybe you had taken a little extra effort when getting ready for tonight in thinking a scenario where you had a run in with your ex was going to happen.

“Thank you.”

“I-” You both went to speak at once, but quickly stopped when you noticed the other was beginning to talk.

“You go.” You got that in first, letting him have the first turn to speak.

“I was going to say, it’s good to see you...” He admitted. “I missed you.” He continued and you could feel the faintest stinging in your eyes.

Fuck. You didn’t want to cry right now, you’d done your fair share of crying over him. A lot of it. Dropping your head down, you let your hair fall around your face, chewing the inside of your lip as a further attempt to keep the tears from falling.

That’s when you noticed the time displayed on your phone screen.

12:03am.

“It’s valentines day.”

“What?”

“It’s valentines day.” You spoke louder that time.

“Oh.”

“Yeah.”

“I tried calling you.”

“I know, I ignored them.” You looked back up at him as you said that, but he was looking to the side. He was uncomfortable, too. “How are you getting home?” You decided a subject change would be good.

“Cars just up the road a little bit.” He answered and looked back to you. “Where are you staying?”

“I don’t know.”

“What?”

“I don’t know.”

“Yes, I heard you, but, Y/N, you don’t know as in you can’t remember the name or you don’t have somewhere to stay.”

“Well, kind of don’t have somewhere to stay.” You admitted, sighing as the warning notification of low battery popped up on your screen. 

“Come hop in my car and put it on charge.” Harry noticed it too.

The two of you walked in silence and you were pleasantly surprised at the scent that filled his car.

“Green apple?”

“Yeah, you really got me hooked on it.” He smiled and so did you. He always had a vanilla scent in here and you could never stand the smell of it. He changed it to your favourite, green apple just for you. “Did you fly in?”

“Yeah.”

“Where’s your suitcase then if you don’t have a place to stay?” He was genuinely concerned but you completely forgotten about the misplacement of your luggage by the airport.

In a response, you groaned and dropped back against the passenger seat with a huff. “The airport fucking lost it.”

“Shit, Y/N.” His hand landed on your thigh then and once it would have been what comforted you, but now your head snapped up as quickly as he snatched his hand back. “Sorry, didn’t mean to- I just-”

“It’s okay.”

“What are you going to do?”

“About what?”

“A place. To stay.”

“Oh, right.” It shouldn’t have been this hard to stay on track with the conversation, but the light speed physical contact really did have your mind whirring. “I was just going to get an Uber and go to the closest hotel or whatever.”

“Do you want to stay with me?” He asked cautiously, and the thought hadn’t even crossed your mind. Once upon a time, you would have just shown up at his front door, but now it was like treading on very thin ice. You didn’t realise you had stayed silent for so long, but it was long enough for him to start talking again. “It’s late anyway, Y/N, at least I’ll know you’re safe.”

“I mean, are you okay with that?”

“Of course I want you to.”

“Okay, thanks.” You clipped your seatbelt in and he nodded at you in reply before starting the car up and driving. “Harry?” You spoke after a few moments of silence.

“Mhm?” He kept his eyes on the road.

“Happy valentines day.” You were smiling, and for a moment he looked over at you, a dimple present in his cheek as he smiled but also shook his head at you.

“Happy valentines day, Y/N.”

[haruki-ya]

Hot Take on Akira playin God

Been thinkin bout this ever since I rewatched Akira. how much of what happens is fate vs. coincidence? or say the influence of some greater hand at work? namely, Akira’s influence himself. 

Takashi is essentially the catalyst for the story, both in film and in manga, as he sets off the chain of events that leads to the second destruction of Neo Tokyo by inadvertently helping to awaken Tetsuo’s powers, but is the fact that he happened to be on the same highway ramp as Tetsuo pure coincidence? What made him run to the old part of town? Surely safety from the army and protests, but why did he run away from the city and ultimately any chance of finding Ryu, the person who his guide said for him to find? Is Takashi the only catalyst here?

When Tetsuo first ran into Takashi during the chase with the Clowns and was injured leading him to being taken away by the army and Col. Shikishima, Dr. Onishi was quick to notice the unique energy pattern Tetsuo’s brainwaves displayed as they were examining his injuries in the hospital. saying it was unlike any other he had seen. Shikishima speculated Tetsuo’s run in with Takashi awakened any latent psychic powers within him and that is the most likely scenario because Tetsuo did exhibit signs of some inexplicable foresight right after the incident by repeating Akira’s name despite being in a completely separate room from Shikishima and Onishi as they discussed him. I think tho that was the initial time Akira reached out to Tetsuo’s unconscious mind.

Shikishima asked to see the overlay of Akira’s energy pattern with Tetsuo’s, which looked like a giant dome, or “black shadow” dubbed so by Kiyoko in her precognitive dream, which totally encompassed and swallowed Tetsuo’s power signature, a delicious piece of foreshadowing for the end of the film as well as a look at the sheer magnitude of Akira’s power! 

One theory I have (which really ain’t theory so much as speculation based on cannon events) is that just like how the government can track the use of psychic energy through technology, other espers can track psychic energy through something similar to a sixth sense. Akira sensed the compatibility of Tetsuo’s energy with his from the beyond as nothing but energy himself and I imagine he was initially drawn to the similar energy signature knowing that Tetsuo’s rapidly growing powers, once finally matured, would awaken his own. This is also how Kiyoko was able to kinda possess Kei (and become what I love to dub Keiyoko) because she recognized the dormant power of Akira in her that every person has, but her power in particular was stronger/more compatible with Kiyoko’s energy pattern than any one else around. (side note, but something I like to see in post-canon stories is Kei having a low level psychic inclination having had her psychic potential awakened by Kiyoko) 

Akira, who was cryogenically frozen whole in the manga, has nothing to him after the fact but a sixth sense as an unconscious omnipresence that kind of lingers both in memories and in an intangible presence, sort of like air or atoms making up all matter. I think that in the cryochamber, whether in jars or as a whole body, Akira’s conscious mind was asleep but his unconscious mind awake. That is where the supernatural powers of all espers lie, within the unconscious until it is awakened, either by stress, pain, or experimental measures that the government took with the Subjects.

Akira is often likened to “pure energy” which is part of all things in the world and this statement makes sense as to how Akira is later able to subdue Tetsuo once he’s unable to control his powers (fight fire with fire, energy with energy.) Like, technically he was never dead in the manga but his powers were sealed away and his active consciousness suppressed or more literally frozen. In the movie, he was dead af and in several glass jars yet still managed to “communicate” with Tetsuo, Kiyoko, Takashi, and Masaru as well as manifest himself in the end thanks to Tetsuo losing control. 

This scene is how I imagine Akira communicating to Tetsuo, both as a warning and a premonition. Nonsensical images and impressions that to Tetsuo make no damn sense but to Akira have probably already been cemented into history (because all he’s essentially doing is bringing about a repeat of his prior mistake, but this time he gonna do it right with the help of unstable Tets.)

Akira guided Takashi to Tetsuo, because he foresaw the chain of events that would happen were the two to meet (”The future is not a straight line. It is filled with many crossroads. There must be a future that we can choose for ourselves” what better person to choose than the all powerful Akira??) and knew were it so Tetsuo’s awakened powers would bring him back to life. Kiyoko said so herself in the showdown Tetsuo had with the esper kids that Akira will be reawakened by Tetsuo’s power when it reaches his peak, and nothing will be able to stop him then. Here I always mistakenly thought Kiyoko was talking about Tetsuo, but Akira is who can’t be stopped in the end which is why his revival is both detrimental to the end and the start of a civilization. 

Akira’s powers are said to have grown out of control, similar to Tetsuo, but I can’t help but think he purposefully let himself wreak havoc on Tokyo. In the manga, Akira is said to have gone on a rampage and killed several scientists and other subjects where in the film he is described as loosing control of his powers. I think he was fed up with the life he lived as a test subject and turned his anger and resentment outwards towards the world and ended up grinding a whole city into the ground with his wrath, but before attempting to create from the destruction. (Kiyoko, with her exceptional psychic precognition, possibly knew what Akira was up to the first time he caused Tokyo’s fallout, as did Masaru and Takashi, but they had concern for others and were willing to stay in the facility as test subjects where as Akira, and similarly Tetsuo, were not.)

Akira wanted to live again, but not in a world where he would be monopolized and treated like a guinea pig to the white coats. Unlike Masaru, Kiyoko, and maybe hesitantly Takashi, he never got used to the idea of being experimented on for his powers and ultimately caused the first fallout ofTokyo and World War III due to his resistance of the life he was forced to live. Tetsuo, following closely in his footsteps of reluctance to take orders from authority, played a pawn for his desires of creating a new world where himself and his friends would be free to grow up as they pleased and not listen to orders from those who only had their own interests in mind. that is a goal I feel the two of them shared, but I theorize Akira’s goal was to literally create this new world whereas Tetsuo just wanted to change the world he already lived in. Tetsuo’s well matched energy and hatred towards the white coats though was as good a sign as any for Akira to finish what he started. 

The new world can honestly either be the devastated, leveled Neo Tokyo free of a corrupt, capitalist government after the second fallout or the new dimension (not sure whether to call it a universe or world? i’m still unclear on it tbh) that is created during the blast in which Tetsuo, Akira, Masaru, Kiyoko, and Takashi are enveloped within. The world in which they will be able to choose their futures for themselves. The world in which Akira tried once before but failed to create until he had the final key to the equation.

So basically to sum up my cluster fuck of thoughts, I theorize Akira playing a very important but seemingly nonexistent role in the progression of the films plot by sleight of hand. He is the driving force behind all coincidences within the film despite literally having screen time for .2 seconds because to him the events that took place were predestined to happen, one way or another, in order for his resurrection and subsequent awakening to happen. Having the power to manipulate matter, time, and life itself pretty much makes Akira a God, hence the prevalence of Lord Akira fanatics in film and manga. The whole film tho is a domino effect of incidents from the future that Akira chose, one free from the shackles of an unawakened world, in more ways than one .

[mad-madam-m]

How do you see next season of Tiger & Bunny? What do you think should happen?

OH MAN LET’S TALK BECAUSE I HAVE IDEAS, OKAY.

A friend of mine did ask me about this before and I had a whole long response to it (all of which still applies, BTW), but hey, you gave me half a chance to talk about this show so I’m gonna take it.

This got SUPER long, which I feel isn’t too surprising because I crammed in literally everything I could think of that I want to happen and I’m sure I’m still missing things.

But yes, God, talk to me about what you want from the next season of this show because I could go on for literal HOURS about it. Possibly days. I have a problem.

Series spoilers below, fairly be ye warned!

Seriously, the thing I want to see more than almost anything else is dealing more with the fact that Barnaby had his memories manipulated for twenty years and there is a non-zero chance that he may know more about Ouroboros than even he knows. Like I am 100% dead serious, I have been thinking about this for months, lemme tell you about it.

So this is after The Rising, so probably what, 2-3 years since the end of the series? And my headcanon has always been that the longer Maverick is dead, the more his powers start to fade, so anybody who had their memories altered that hasn’t already broken the block is starting to get back the memories of what really happened.

And whose memories did Maverick fuck with the most? Barnaby’s!

And who was Maverick working with for 20-30 years before he died? Ouroboros! *jazz hands*

Let’s say Maverick was having a meeting with people from Ouroboros in his house a couple of years after he took bb!Barnaby in and bb!Barnaby walks in and overhears some of their plans. No big deal, Maverick just wipes his memory and puts him upstairs in bed, and assures everybody else that the kid won’t remember a thing and they’re all good to go.

Now, decades later, Ouroboros is moving one of their people into a political position, like they’re running for mayor or governor or they’ve been named the new chief of police. Doesn’t matter. And one of them—could be a fixer-type figure, could be the person actually being moved into the position of power, again, doesn’t matter—finds out these memory manipulations are fading and that people are remembering things they shouldn’t remember. 

And the person who is moving into the position of power is one of the people who was at that Ouroboros meeting with Maverick that Barnaby walked in on all those years ago. So they realize that if Maverick’s power is fading, they have a Big Problem because the McFucking King of Heroes and Media Darling, Barnaby Brooks Jr., knows about their involvement in this organization and if he reveals that, they’re kind of screwed.

So they’ve got someone low-key keeping an eye on Barnaby to see if he is remembering anything, and they find out yes, he is. Probably something like remembering a birthday dinner that he thought Maverick took him out for when he was young but it turns out it was Aunt Samantha. And so Ouroboros realizes it’s only a matter of time before he remembers them and they set out to fix this.

And by “fix” I mean “blow up Barnaby’s apartment with him in it.”

So the heroes are sent to the site of the explosion to help evacuate other people from the apartment building while the fire department is trying to control the fire, and Kotetsu knows when he hears the address that that’s Bunny’s building, but it’s not until Agnes tells him privately that he finds out the bomb was actually in Bunny’s apartment and Bunny hasn’t been responding to his communicator.

He handles this news slightly better than Barnaby would have if their positions were reversed, but not by much.

They get to the building, Kotetsu goes after Bunny and finds him unconscious and buried under rubble in his apartment, but he’s alive. He gets him out of the building and down to an ambulance and is torn between going with Bunny (because it’s Bunny) and staying to help out the others (because he’s a hero and he’s supposed to be helping people right now).

And of course all of his friends yell at him to go with his partner, to trust them, they’ve got this; besides, Barnaby is going to need him.

So Barnaby wakes up in the hospital twelve hours later to see Kotetsu passed the fuck out in one of those hospital chairs in what looks like the most uncomfortable position ever. And then he wakes up and he’s like BUNNY! and scrambles upright and they do That Look, you know the one, the soft goddamn “I miss you/I love you” look they have:

(I literally can’t even with this show, I can’t. THESE WEREN’T EVEN MY ONLY OPTIONS FOR SCREENSHOTS.)

ANYWAY the other heroes are also there by this time, Barnaby tells them all what he remembers about the apartment exploding and they figure out that someone probably wants Barnaby dead, although they have no idea who and why. And initially Barnaby’s like “I’ll just get a hotel room,” Kotetsu is like “NO. You should not be staying alone right now. You should be staying with one of us until we figure out who’s trying to kill you.”

And Barnaby thinks about it for 2.5 seconds and goes “Then I guess I can stay with you.”

And that’s how Barnaby ends up moving in with Kotetsu because if this damn show gave me accidental baby acquisition, amnesia, single dad, enemies to lovers, and breakup/makeup (TWICE), then by God, they can give me roommates and forced bed sharing.

(Does Kotetsu go back to the exploded apartment and rescue everything that he can that he knows is important to Barnaby? Of fucking course he does, which is how Barnaby ends up with a box containing the Christmas tree pin, the picture of his parents, the robot toy, and the singed stuffed rabbit.)

So the entire big storyline is Kotetsu, Barnaby, and the other heroes trying to figure out who wants Barnaby dead and why, while Ouroboros is moving forward with their own plans without the heroes’ knowledge.

And throughout all this, Barnaby and Kotetsu are trying to figure out how to live with each other in Kotetsu’s little apartment, when Barnaby’s never had a roommate and it’s been close to 10 years since Kotetsu was sharing his space with anybody (let alone someone who’s as compulsively clean as Barnaby is), and Barnaby is dealing with random memories resurfacing at inconvenient times.

I still have not decided if I want Kotetsu’s powers to start fading again, because on the one hand fuck no, but on the other hand, it does make for some delicious angst and pushes him back to that question of “what do I do if I lose my powers completely?” (And who knows, maybe this time around he would actually talk to Barnaby about it instead of hiding it for months on end.)

OTHER THINGS the series would include, if I had anything to say about it:

- A Rock Bison episode, which would also involve flashbacks to high school with how Kotetsu and Antonio met, plus teenage Tomoe and some more very unsubtle parallels between her and Barnaby and how Kotetsu has A Type.

- A Sky High episode with A HAPPY ENDING YOU ASSHOLES, GIVE KEITH A ROMANTIC PARTNER AND 50 DOGS *slams fists on table*

- Kotetsu dealing with the fact that Kaede is a teenager now (probably 14-15, depending on timeline), who’s probably learning how to drive and is looking seriously at what she wants to do when she finishes high school. Probably at least one somewhat heart-wrenching conversation between him and his mom where she talks about how it felt for her when Kotetsu was that age and possibly a little bit about his father. (Give me some more goddamn Kaburagi family feels, okay, Sunrise, just fuck me up with them.)

- A subplot that is Barnaby and the other heroes doing their level best to get Kotetsu enough points to be King of Heroes at the end of the season, without Kotetsu or Agnes figuring out what they’re doing.

- Kotetsu going to the orphanage with Barnaby and helping out with the kids there.

- KOTETSU BIRTHDAY EPISODE. Please please give me an episode that’s the reverse of episode 5, where it’s Barnaby low-key freaking out over what to get Kotetsu for a gift because it has to be perfect and he’s got nothing.

- I literally just finished reading Sakakibara’s manga last night, so maybe an episode or a mini-arc dealing with some of the anti-NEXT sentiment. We got some of that in the first series, but it would be interesting to see it brought out a little bit more and seeing the heroes having to deal more with that (and maybe some non-hero NEXTs as well).

- A flashback episode showing how all the main heroes became heroes.

- Kotetsu and Barnaby cooking fried rice together please I am begging.

- Barnaby going with Kotetsu to Oriental Town to visit his family when they’ve got a few days off (or maybe they’re told to get out of town for a few days because of all the Ouroboros stuff), with Barnaby learning more about Tomoe and being quietly supportive of Kotetsu the way that Kotetsu has always been supportive of him.

- I would love to see more of Barnaby and Kaede interacting because I really think they would get along swimmingly.

- A girls’ night out/guys’ night out episode split between Fire Emblem, Dragon Kid, Barnaby, and Blue Rose and Origami Cyclone, Sky High, Rock Bison, and Kotetsu. (Conversely, this could happen while Barnaby and Kotetsu are out of town, and just focus on the other heroes, but I would really like to see Barnaby being friends and doing stuff with the others, not just Kotetsu.)

- I don’t know how everything would shake out, but it would end with Barnaby just…staying in Kotetsu’s apartment rather than moving back out, his picture of his parents joining the row of photos Kotetsu has on his shelves, and them drinking champagne together on the front steps of the apartment building, side-by-side.

- Okay I mean obviously my shipper heart wants it to end with a kiss and a marriage proposal but I feel like the previous point is more likely.

Seriously I just want everything from this series. Throw the kitchen sink at me, Sunrise, my body is ready.

[whitewitchdani]

Infinitely Different: Chapter 15

Read Chapter 14 Here

Word Count: 1,944

Pairing: Winchester!Sister Reader x ???

Warnings: angst, canon typical violence, language

A/N: Chapter 15 is here! Please give me all the feedback and let me know if you’d like to be tagged!

Infinitely Different Masterlist

You skipped down the stairs in order to grab a bottle of bourbon from the massive stash held by the Salvatore brothers. The talk you were having with your brothers was less painful than you had originally anticipated. Dean was being fairly tame about the whole situation and Sam was supportive as always. You wish that you could get a straight answer from Dean, but the overprotective big brother role was one he took incredibly seriously. If he could convince you to never date and stay with them at the bunker forever, he would.

You stepped off the staircase with the intention of heading towards the foyer and the large amount of alcohol it held. When you hit the bottom step, something felt off. You couldn’t put your finger on it, but something wasn’t right.

Moving down the hall, you called out for the Salvatore’s, “Damon? Stefan?”

You walked to the large entryway of the boarding house and stopped. No one was in sight and all you heard was the footsteps of your older brothers upstairs. Odd.

Opening your mouth to call for the brothers again, you were interrupted when a solid form slammed into your right side. The force sent you flying into the foyer, causing you to crash into the glass cabinet on the opposite wall. 

You laid there for a moment, the impact leaving you dazed. It was a few moments later when you saw Damon rush into the room, obviously alerted by the sound of the crash. Stefan then entered the room, immediately appearing at your side. He put a hand to the side of your head and when he pulled away, it was covered in blood.

“What the hell just happened, Y/N?”

You squinted up at Stefan above you. It took you a moment to answer in your dazed state, “Hell if I know. I didn’t throw myself into this cabinet.”

Damon turned to make his way to you but was also thrown across the room, his form rolling over the pool table. Stefan stood and soon followed his brother, the blonde crashing into the kitchen table behind it. The next thing you knew, you were on your feet on the few steps leading into the foyer. Someone was holding you up, one hand in your hair and the other on your throat.

“Hello gentlemen, I think it’s time we had a little chat.”

You couldn’t see your attacker, but by the looks on Stefan and Damon’s faces when they reappeared in front of you, it was no one good. Whoever it was, was yelling in your ear and the Salvatore’s began yelling back.

“Let her go, Klaus,” demanded Stefan.

Klaus??? Fan-fucking-tastic, you thought to yourself.

“See now that’s something I cannot do,” his grip on your neck and in your hair tightened slightly, causing you to grasp onto each of his wrists, “Now you see I was minding my own business, returning home from New Orleans when I saw this harlot leaving my home here in Mystic Falls. Could you imagine my surprise when I see that she is, not only a hunter, but also a Winchester? And it seems you lot are who brought her here.”

Damon moved forward slowly, his hands held out in front of him, “Klaus she’s not here for you or your family.”

The Original laughed, “Any hunter that comes near my family automatically begins hunting us, I believe it’s an annoying part of their DNA.”

Footsteps could be heard running down the stairs and you knew your brothers were about to appear. All you could think about was whether or not they were about to make things worse.

“Klaus we called her here, yes, but it wasn’t for you. I know one of your brothers had to tell you about the killings that were happening on the outskirts of town, that’s why she’s here. It was a Wendigo and she’s the only person we knew who could take care of it.” Your brothers appeared beside Stefan while he was talking, him holding out a hand to stop them from running towards you. “She stopped the killings and probably prevented us from being exposed. Talk to your brothers, they know about her.”

“Oh I can tell my brothers have met her, she smells a little like Elijah.” He bent his head to speak in your ear, “Tell me love, did you seduce my brother in order to get to my family?”

“No,” you managed to rasp around his hand on your throat.

“Talk to Elijah, Klaus. Just let her go and we can all talk about this civilly; we’ve been peaceful for months, we’d like to keep it that way,” pleaded Stefan.

Klaus’ gaze was locked on your brothers, “I see the rest of the Winchester’s decided to join us. You mean to tell me that you didn’t gather the best hunters on the planet here in Mystic Falls to come after us? Their father sure did a bloody good job hunting us on his own.”

“Thanks for the compliment but we aren’t here for you, bloodsucker. Now let our sister go.” Dean growled.

“I don’t much care for being ordered around by your kind.”

“We aren’t here for you Klaus, I swear. We came for our sister and were planning on returning home. This has nothing to do with you or your family. Please, just let her go.” Sam begged.

“Klau-”   

His hand tightened on your throat to the point you couldn’t breathe, “Shut-up.”

You began coughing in an attempt to get air around Klaus’ hand on your throat. Unsuccessfully, unfortunately. If he didn’t loosen his grip, you’d be unconscious soon and dead not long after that. For the first time in a very long time, you were truly scared for your life.

“Take it easy. Don’t hurt her; I promise you she isn’t a threat, none of them are.” Damon’s voice was rising as his concern for your life rose with it. Thankfully, Klaus loosened his grip on your throat enough for the black spots in your vision to recede. You still couldn’t breathe very well, but at least you weren’t in danger of losing consciousness anymore. 

Suddenly, you heard the front door fly open. A form flashed into the room and attempted to remove you from Klaus’ hold. Just as fast, however, he flashed out of its reach and ultimately returned to the position you had just been in. When everyone had stopped moving, you saw the identity of the vampire who had run into the room.

Elijah.

“Niklaus, release her.”

“Ah, brother, how nice of you to join us. You came just in time to watch me snap this huntress’ pretty little neck,” He jostled you as he spoke to emphasize his control on the situation.

“Niklaus, there is no reason to harm her. Yes, these are the same Winchester’s whose father hunted us 20 years ago but that is not the reason they are here. There was a creature here in town that she eliminated and she is friends with the Salvatore’s. That is all.”

Klaus leaned down to smell your neck, “Then tell me, dear brother, why this human smells of you?”

Elijah sighed; Klaus was not going to take this well. “Because, she was mortally injured during her hunt near the manor. I found her in the woods and healed her; she had my blood in her system and was at the manor last night, that is why her scent also smells of mine.”

Klaus’ face turned red, “Why was this huntress in our home, brother?”

“To thank Kol and I for saving her life. She and her siblings are not a threat. Let. Her. Go.”

“Ah now see, that cannot be the only reason she was in our home. Even if you gave her your blood two nights ago, she should not still smell of you.” Klaus looked from his brother to yours and back again with a smirk, “Why brother, have you been having relations with this woman? Awfully scandalous of you.”

Elijah blushed and was too busy giving his brother a death glare to notice the one being sent his way by the eldest Salvatore. This really wasn’t the way you wanted Damon to find out, but it seemed it was too late. If you survived this, you had one seriously awkward conversation in your future.

“That is none of your business, Niklaus. Now please, I am asking as your family, let Y/N go.”

The room fell silent. Everyone had different looks on their faces; Sam looked low-key terrified, Dean looked straight up pissed off, Stefan looked worried, and Elijah looked pissed and worried, a looked mirrored on Damon’s face. 

“Please, just let my sister go. If you want, we’ll leave Mystic Falls right after.”

“No Sam, I’m not going to let this asshole run one of the best people in my life out of my town.” Damon cursed at the hybrid.

“Now, now Damon, there’s no need for name-calling. Why so upset? Is my older brother encroaching on your territory? Brother did you steal Damon’s human? It’s unlike you to be so rude.”

“Go to hell, Klaus,” Damon hissed.

His grip on your neck tightened once more, “I’d be a little nicer to me if I were you Mr. Salvatore. I’d hate for my hand to slip and accidentally snap your little human whore’s neck.”

“Niklaus, stop this madness. These people are obviously not after us, why are you so angry she was with me?”

“BECAUSE ALL HUNTERS ARE THE SAME ELIJAH!” Klaus yelled, “Their father hunted us for years and came too close to finding the white oak. They are manipulating you, all of you. All hunters seem to hate vampires above all others.”

“Speaking for both my siblings, I can say we hate demons over anything else.” You sassed your captor.

His grip tightened once more, “You’re awfully mouthy for someone in your position, love. I suggest you keep quiet.”

“Just let her go, brother. She poses no threat.”

Klaus removed his hand from the back of your head, inspecting it closely when he realized it was covered in your blood. You heard both of your brothers draw sharp breaths at the realization you were injured. The hybrid looked at the blood on his hand and decided to take a taste.

“I can see why you find her so alluring, gentlemen. I must say, she tastes delicious,” Klaus smirked at Damon and Elijah, who were now side by side in front of him, “But no woman is worth risking my family. I made a vow to protect you as we stuck together, always and forever.”

“Niklaus...” 

“I’m doing this for you brother, I am sorry.” He turned to look at the other four men in the room, “To you lot, I am not sorry. You brought this on yourself.”

“Klaus please,” begged Damon. The Original smirked at him, it was obvious Klaus did not care about how whatever he was about to do would affect everyone else. 

Time seemed to slow down for you, as it felt like you were having an out of body experience, watching everything happening to you. Both of your brothers looked terrified, as did the Salvatore brothers. Sam and Dean were afraid of what could happen; Stefan and Damon were afraid of what they knew was most likely about to happen.

Klaus smirked once more at the four men before jerking each hand in a different direction. “Sorry, brother.”

“NO!” all five men screamed.

You didn’t hear them. All you knew was a sharp pain in your neck before everything went black.

You were dead.

Read Chapter 16 Here

Tag List:

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[thewollfgang]

#56 plz *v* I need some Lucifer whump cause I don't think we can get it from the actual show :( And that's what prompts and fanfics for!

no whump from the actual show? are we watching the same show?? lmao someone gets beat up, shot, or put in the hospital like every other episode XD But! i think i can come up with a lil somethin anyway ;D

i’m gonna go ahead and put a trigger warning on this for self harm just in case

56.“Don’t you dare die on me!”

“He’s back.” 

Chloe stares at the text message from Maze with shock. There’s no further explanation, nothing else stated. Maze doesn’t respond to any of her further messages. Chloe grabs her keys and drives to Lux. 

The club is completely empty, not a soul in sight. She takes the elevator upstairs to the top floor. She steps out into the apartment and it’s quiet.

“Lucifer?” she calls. 

Chloe listens carefully only to hear a low moan coming from his bathroom. It doesn’t sound like the fun kind either, it sounds pained. She walks slowly forward, cop instincts prickling at her. “Lucifer?” she asks, and she steps into something sticky. She looks down and sees a puddle of blood. He breath catches and she follows the trail up the stairs and into his bedroom. The blood trails down the hall and under the bathroom door. 

“Lucifer?” knocking on his bathroom door. It swings open. She peers inside. It takes her brain a moment to register what she’s looking at, because it’s impossible, it should be impossible. Lucifer is curled up on the floor with massive white wings splayed out behind him. It shocking enough that it takes her a moment to even register the blood. And oh, god. The blood.

There’s so much of it, spilled down his back, pooled on the floor. It’s on his wings, on his hands, dotted on the walls. He’s got one of Maze’s knives in his hand, and she finally understands what she’s looking at. 

He’s trying to cut them off. 

One wing is nearly severed, hanging on by tendons and ribbons of flesh. The other remains largely intact, but the surrounding skin is littered with lacerations, testament to either Lucifer’s frustration or lack of aim from blood loss. He’s reaching back, trying to angle the blade where the flight muscles flow into his back, but his arm trembles.

Chloe drops to her knees in horror, heedless of the carnage. She knocks the knife from his hand and it skitters across the tile and hits the cabinet. Then she’s grabbing towels, pressing them to the sliced flesh, putting as much pressure as she dares.

“No, don’t -” he attempts, thrashing weakly in her grip and then biting off a scream as his wings attempt to flap. 

“Lucifer. Lucifer, stop,” she says, voice choked.

“I want them gone, please, Detective,” he begs. “Maze won’t - so I had to. I had to - I won’t let him manipulate me.” He sounds frantic.

“Shut up,” she snarls, tears tracking hot down her face. She knots a towel around the more damaged wing and presses against the skin of his back with another one. His eyelids flutter, on the verge of unconsciousness. “Don’t you dare die on me,” she says. 

“I’m sorry,” he says. “Chloe, I’m so sorry.”

His bathroom is luxurious by most standards, but it’s still cramped between the two of them and his wings. She gets his arm over her shoulders and hauls him upright, gritting her teeth as he screams hoarsely. The wings drag behind him, useless. 

She walks him to the bed and somehow manages to get him on it, face down, the wings flopping with him. He weeps brokenly into his pillow, suffering and sorrow, both. She looks at the mess of his back, what he’s done to his wings and has no idea what to do, no idea how to help him. The towels are already soaked through with red. 

With no further options presenting itself, she calls Amenadiel.

Amenadiel, when he arrives, looks even more horrified than she does. Lucifer has passed out by this point, pain or blood loss, Chloe doesn’t even know. She’s been trying to maintain pressure against the wounds as best she can.

“Brother, what have you done?” he asks quietly and slowly removes the towels to examine the extent Lucifer has hurt his wings.

He loos Lucifer over with gentle, expert hands. When Amenadiel finishes, he looks grim. “They’re healing,” he announces and Chloe almost wants to cry in relief. “But I don’t know if he will be able to fly again. The damage is… Considerable.” He shakes his head. “I would tell you to leave so he can heal faster, but it won’t make a difference with this. Demon blades against the Divine.” 

Chloe laughs a bit hysterically. “Yeah, let’s pretend any of that made sense.”

Amenadiel gives her an empathetic look. “I need to get him cleaned up. You don’t have to stay,” he tells her softly.

“In for a penny,” Chloe says, but looks determined. 

Together, they wash him up as best they can, almost Lucifer’s entire stock of towels sacrificed in the attempt. With the skin of his back wiped clean, Chloe can see the slow crawl of the cuts healing. She rubs down his wing with a warm, damp towel, pausing to stroke the feathers. They shift a little under her touch and seem to shine.

“Interesting,” Amenadiel remarks, startling her. He takes her hand and guides them to where the wing is struggling to reconnect to Lucifer’s back. It seems to revitalize under her touch, glowing softly and visibly healing.

“What…?” Chloe breathes. 

“It seems you make him more mortal, but also more divine.” Amenadiel seems equally aghast. She brings up her other hand and watches as the flesh and feather slowly knit back together.

*

Lucifer wakes slowly, agonizingly. He forces himself to sit upright and looks down at the bandages across his chest in confusion. He looks over his shoulders to see both his wings wrapped in gauze at their bases. 

They’re still there.

He doesn’t know whether to laugh or cry. It hurts every time he breathes, but not as much as it should have. Not with what he had done. He staggers to his feet, catching himself against the wall, unused to the heavy weight of his wings behind him. Pain lances down his back and he tries to breathe through it, darkness fuzzing the edges of his vision.

He needs a drink.

He stumbles out into the open area and halts when he sees Chloe and Amenadiel sitting in the living room area. Amenadiel is nose deep in a book and Chloe is sipping something that smells like tea, staring out the window. They both look over at him in surprise.

“You’re supposed to stay in bed!” Chloe objects and sets her cup down. She stands and carefully places her hands against his chest, pushing him back towards his room.

“What?” he says dumbly. Still, he complies, mostly out of bewilderment. She gets him settled back into bed, propping his wings up with pillows so that they rest without strain. Amenadiel brings him a bowl of what must be chicken noodle soup.

“Eat, brother,” he rumbles soothingly. “You need your strength.” One whiff of it and Lucifer realizes he’s ravenous. He’s slurping down hot soup without a second thought, pausing only when Chloe presents him with a cup of tea with honey. She absentmindedly strokes a finger down a feather and he halts. There’s a cooling rush of healing trickling from her contact.

“Chloe,” Lucifer says, voice rough. 

She smiles at him, small and sad. Pain was the last thing he wanted to cause her.

“It’s okay. Just rest and heal. We’ll have a lot to talk about afterwards,” she tells him. 

He quickly connects the dots. “You saved them,” he says, lifting his wings slightly. It hurts, but it shouldn’t be possible at all with the damage he had inflicted upon them. She nods, and he can’t read her expression, but it seems wary. Oh, she’s not sure if he’s angry with her.

He’d wanted them gone so badly. He was so angry and hurt. He should have stopped when Maze refused to aid him. He’d been furious and hasty and the demon blade had been right there. But now that he’s here, in the light of morning, with Chloe at his side and his wings still attached - well, he could cry with gratitude. 

He grips her free hand tightly. “Thank you,” he says fervently, trying to impart just how deeply he means it. She grips back just as tightly. 

“You’re welcome,” she says. “Now, finish your soup.”

[hello-stensy-blog]

Crushable - Chapter V

In the chaos and confusion, Stensland thought: If I die today, that was a pretty kickass way to end it all. I mean. My last words were a Dawson's creek's quote. Check. I witnessed someone endangering themselves to protect me. Check. Clyde didn't need to go through all that. Yet, here we are. Caught in a cross-fire, his body pressed against mine on the ground. The first shots startled Stensland, but soon his brain shut off. He couldn't hear anything and Clyde's hair was covering his face but the rest of his senses were there, overwhelming in their sole feedback. It smelled sour, and he could feel something wet and warm on Clyde’s arm, where his hands gripped tightly.

Eventually, his hearing returned and he could hear the conversation between the last people standing. The first voice was low:

-Are you okay? -You can't ask me that after the shit you pulled just now.

Stensland recognized this as Armitage’s voice. The other repeated sternly:

-Are. You. Okay ?

After a deep sigh, Armitage admitted,

-I’ve survived worse than those fools.

Stensland didn't know what to do, but not getting caught was a start. Pretending to be dead seemed to be the best option, considering Armitage’s apparent crusade against his life.

The two men sounded intimate, and as scary as they were to Stensland, his romantic heart could hear how deeply they cared for one another. He wasn't meant to hear this conversation but, then again, he wasn't meant to be in this crossfire either. Yet, it had all happened.

-Are you hiding anything else from me? -I'm not. -You better not be lying, Kylo Ren. Because you'll be more dead than my late father if I find out you lied to me again. And this time, unlike with my father, I'll handle it personally. -Sounds fuckin' hot.

There was a silence. They were most likely smiling to each other now. Not a creepy, psychopathic smile, Stensland thought, as much as anything else was hard to imagine. Nonetheless, he heard it in their voices. He was glad their mood was improving―he saw it as a way out of his current troubles. He just hoped that they'd leave soon. He had more or less returned to his senses now, and Clyde's body wasn't getting any lighter. He had trouble breathing, especially in ways that wouldn’t make it too obvious.

Far away, the police sirens sounded like a murmur.

-We have to leave, the lowest voice said before leaving the diner in a hurry.

But Armitage Hux didn't follow him straight away. He rushed to Stensland's location and rummaged through Clyde’s pockets, retrieving his car keys. As he got back onto his feet, his eyes locked onto Stensland's. He threatened,

-You better pray that I do not run into you ever again.

Before Stensland could process what had even been said to him, the man had stomped away. Then, the sounds of a car and a motorcycle leaving. Stensland was near-fainting when the police arrived. Their yelling seemed so distant.

With Clyde’s body removed from atop him Stensland could breathe freely, yet every single breath he took was painful. The gasp he let out when he noticed that Clyde Logan was bleeding so severely felt like a hundred knives to his ribs.

They dragged them all outside on stretchers, where several ambulance cars had parked. People from the diner were testifying, reassured by paramedics. But Stensland didn't notice any of it. He didn't notice anything aside from the sight of Clyde unconscious.

***

The most uncomfortable silence had settled between Stensland and Jimmy Logan in the hospital’s waiting room. Clyde had ended up needing surgery to extract two bullets lodged in his arm and shoulder, and both anxiously awaited news on his condition.

They knew each other only through what Clyde had spoken of, and Jimmy couldn’t help but blame this stranger for his brother’s injury. He couldn’t shake the idea that Stensland was an evil manipulator, trying to get something out of Clyde’s good heart. Meanwhile, Stensland was on painkillers. He had broken ribs from the impact of Clyde’s body crushing against his, but the damage would have been much worse if the other hadn’t protected him in such a way. He couldn’t stop thinking about what Clyde had done for him. He was becoming more and more infatuated with the idea of Clyde going through all these perils just for his sake. The hopeless romantic was touched by this heroic gesture. Jimmy himself couldn’t stop thinking about what had happened between them.

-When did you meet Clyde? -Eer, uhm… I, I don’t...really know anymore… Few days ago? -And he caught a bullet for you after such a short amount of time? -Well, we… I guess It’s… Us? -What do you mean ‘it’s us’? -We have this...special something. I don’t know what he sees in me, but he’s been so kind and...

A smile settled on Stensland’s face as he sighed.

-He’s been so good to me, and I could never pay him back. -Would you do the same for Clyde? -Well, of course! -You’ll still have to prove that to me. I’m not Clyde, and I don’t know anything about your Special Something. All I see is that my little brother was shot for a guy he’s known less than a week.

No matter how hard he tried, Jimmy Logan couldn’t understand what his brother found so mesmerizing about this peculiar ginger mess in short pants.

When Clyde was finally out of surgery, they admitted him into a room. Jimmy was invited inside to sit and wait for him to wake up but Stensland was not permitted to follow for the moment, as he wasn’t family. Soon he was busy answering policemen armed with a whole lot of questions… but mostly a whole lot of assumptions.

No, I’m not Armitage Hux. I swear I’m not. I know him. A total looney that wants me dead. Why? Just a misunderstanding. He thought I had stolen something from him. A bag full of money, actually. My name? Stensland. Yes. S-T-E-N-S-L-A-N-D. No, It’s not a made-up name. If I can prove it with my ID card? Of course I… Wait, where’s my backpack? You know what? I hate my life. My backpack was in the car Armitage Hux left with. I know, I’m not too lucky with bags these days. No, I’m not messing with you guys, I swear. Don’t raise your voice like that, it’s not going to get you anywhere. And I’ll have you know, I had a tough week. Can I stop talking to you until my lawyer shows up? My lawyer? Grady. Uh-uh. From the method, yeah. I can prove it, we took a selfie together. Wait. Have you heard from him? Is he okay?

After few hours of this getting nowhere, Jimmy Logan showed up again and told Stensland: -He’s awake. He wants to talk to you.

***

The police officers followed Stensland into the room. Their questioning wasn’t over, just paused for the moment. That was good enough for Stensland: facing a Clyde with open eyes again lightened his heart. Clyde’s upper-arm and shoulder were covered in bandages. Stensland repressed the guilt he was feeling about this with bad humor:

-Are you telling me a ducky band-aid couldn’t do the trick?

Clyde gave a hearty laugh that made Stensland feel relieved at last.

-That was pretty wild, what you did out there, Stensland said. -You think so? You should see me when I’m in shape. -I can’t tell if you’re just bragging or if you are a natural bad boy under that niceness.

Stensland paused. Eventually, he dared.

-One thing that I can say is that you are very brave, Clyde. And… the nicest person I’ve ever met.

Clyde was embarrassed, as they weren’t exactly alone here. Stensland had already forgotten about their company, but he had not. However he sounded pretty serious, so Clyde tried to focus on just his words and ignore the heat coming to his cheeks.

-You know, It’s… funny. When I first met you, there was this whole...You know, misunderstanding with the bag, and… I mean… At first, I thought you were actually hitting on me.

Clyde was feeling more and more uncomfortable. It was weird enough to have this conversation with his brother; but now, with Stensland himself and in public, with cops watching… But Stensland didn’t give him any time to deny anything. He kept talking.

-And, I mean… after the time we spent together, I began to understand that it wasn’t the case, obviously. (Stensland gave a shy laugh) But you’ve been… quite adorable all this time and now I wish… I wish this could be love.

Stensland sat, obviously waiting for an answer to his stumbled confession. His beautiful green eyes were filled with tears, and his mouth was half-open as if daring to take it all back. He was expecting Clyde to say something. Anything. And that made Clyde feel so small. Two hearts were racing, their lips were trembling. They felt the same things, the same way. But none of them could possibly know that about one another. Flustered, Stensland spoke again to break the uncomfortable silence.

-I mean, the way you have protected me all this time, and the fact you’re so sweet and funny, obviously, I thought… -I’m not gay.

Stensland had an idea of how this conversation would end. This was one of the many possibilities he had considered. Still, he couldn’t have kept himself from hoping it might be different. Clyde Logan―Wild and Wonderful, delightfully unexpected. He had hoped to be surprised by him once again… but not like this. Not so that it hurt as fiercely as it did now in the aftermath. Stensland’s cheesy brain deplored the fact that the pain-killers in his system couldn’t ease a broken heart. He breathed in sharply to gain some composure, but his voice still broke when he answered:

-Okidoki.

Clyde’s anaesthetic was still altering his mental functions, but he felt the sharp blow of realizing how hurt Stensland was by this. He hated himself for being responsible for it. The officers, on the other hand, wished they could be anywhere but here, in this terse silence. They pretended to have a call to make and left the room to stand outside the door and wait for things to cool down. Clyde begged:

-Please, don’t cry.

But of course, Stensland was already sobbing.

***

No matter how dearly Stensland wanted to remain with Clyde as he recovered, he couldn’t stay at the hospital. And no matter how dearly Stensland wanted the police to believe Grady was his lawyer, that wasn’t true and everyone knew it. Without proper identification or a lawyer to defend him, Stensland had no other option but to allow the authorities to haul him to the station for more questioning. The police had been interrogating him all day now but they still weren’t satisfied with his vague answers. Now, night had settled and they couldn’t let him wander the hospital while Clyde’s recovered. Jimmy had been glad that Stensland left the hospital after Clyde fell asleep. He knew it would only agitate his brother, and that was the last thing he needed to deal with. If the guy is clean, then he’ll be back before Clyde even realizes he’s gone, Jimmy thought.

The night was so calm. Too calm, after such an intense week. The police officers turned the radio on and switched through the channels. Stensland wasn’t really paying attention to anything, though he was looking out the car’s window. At least the stars looked pretty. I wish Clyde was there, he thought. I wish I hadn’t made a fool out of myself. As if the situation could not get any worse, the car’s radio decided to rub everything in Stensland’s face, as a soft song played:

“And I can’t help Falling in love with-”

The police officer switched the radio off. Loud sobbing could be heard from the back of the car. His colleague sighed:

-Nice job, Neil. -Wh―I didn’t do it on purpose, come on!

[mr-hawkmoth]

Black Cat, Red Night

Chapter 1: Zeroes

Commission for @xenethis-chimera

For any of you who have every watched Teen Titans from way back when you might find one of the characters in this familiar ;) but if you don’t it is still totally readable- I encourage all of you to follow this- great things to come!

Hawkmoth leaned back in his desk chair, pressing his fingers together contemplatively. Detransformed, he sat in the shadows of his office using the darkness to disguise himself as he prepared to answer the video call scheduled to come in any minute now. The situation with Ladybug and Chat Noir had grown tedious. His akumas had failed him time and time again and so it would seem that Hawkmoth needed more than an akuma at his disposal to defeat the infuriating adolescent duo. Hawkmoth had done his research, looking far and wide for just the right person for the job and he had finally found someone with the kind of remarkable skill set he required.

The beeping from his computer brought his attention back to the screen. Hawkmoth clicked on the answer key before settling back into his chair. On the screen sat a shadowed figure in a seemingly dark and plain room. Hawkmoth smirked to himself. I guess evil minds think alike.

“Fancy meeting you here, come here often?” The man’s raspy voice sounded through the computer’s speakers in fluent French.

“I’ve heard many things about your particular skill set,” Hawkmoth’s voice stayed even and serious. All business.

“What can I say, word gets around,” He said playfully.

“I have to say I’m quite… interested…” Hawkmoth said slowly.

“I’ve got a lot of people interested, what makes this job so worthy of my talents?” He snorted. Hawkmoth smiled knowingly.

“Oh I think you will find this job particularly … challenging,” Hawkmoth taunted. The man leaned forward in his chair.

“I’m listening,” He rasped. Hawkmoth grinned wickedly. How the simple minded were so easily manipulated.

“Have you ever been to Paris M. X?” Hawkmoth began. The man smiled slightly before letting out a low dark laugh.

“You could say I’ve spent some time there before,” He said coyly.

“Well in the past year Paris has developed a bit of a… hero problem you could say. There are two heroes who go by the names of Ladybug and Chat Noir,” Hawkmoth started to explain.

“Let me guess you want me to take care of your hero problem, been there done that. Not interested,” The man leaned back into his chair body turning away from the screen as his interest waned.

“No I want you to do more than that. You see these two hold what is known as a Miraculous, which grants them their powers. I want you to retrieve their Miraculous’ for me.” Hawkmoth quickly slammed a computer key pulling up a picture of the Ladybug and Chat Noir Miraculous for the man to see. The man started to sit up now, interest peaked once more. “These Miraculous… I have a right to them,” Hawkmoth went on.

“Save the noble act for someone else, I have nothing against stealing,” The man chuckled. Hawkmoth nodded.

“Very well. Your job will be to retrieve the Miraculous from these two children and bring them to me,” Hawkmoth explained.

“Looks like some cheap jewelry to me, what exactly do you want with them?” The man inquired.

“The Ladybug and Chat Noir Miraculous’ when combined have.. interesting properties. I require them for a piece of my plan,” Hawkmoth said, choosing his words carefully.

“You’ve got my attention, name the right price and we might have a deal.” The man smiled as he leaned back in his chair.

“I think we have a bright new future ahead of us in this partnership.” Hawkmoth smirked.

“Whoa slow down there, at least buy me dinner first,” The man snickered.

“I already have,” Hawkmoth said devilishly. The man leaned forward tilting his head to one side curiously. “Money has already been wired to your account. You will receive half now, and half when the job is completed,” Hawkmoth explained. The man quickly began typing on his computer letting out a low whistle when he pulled up his bank account information.

“You’ve got a deal my friend,” The man smiled crookedly as he looked back towards the camera.

“When will you be arriving in Paris?” Hawkmoth inquired.

“I’ll be on the first flight out,” The man said, a dark humor lilting his voice.

“I look forward to seeing your work in person.” Hawkmoth cut off the video feed terminating their conversation.

Red X smirked to himself as he looked over at his costume, the skull mask staring back at him. He looked back to his banking statement. That’s a lot of zeroes, He thought to himself, damn near giddy with anticipation.

“A zero!?!” Adrien squeaked as their physics tests were handed back to them. Nino let out a low whistle as he looked over Adrien’s shoulder.

“Dude what happened?” Nino raised his eyebrows, he knew as well as anyone that Adrien had always been good at physics.

“I- I - I forgot we had a test, I didn’t have a chance to study,” Adrien admitted tiredly rubbing his eyes. He would be lying if he said he hadn’t been feeling the toll of the constant akuma attacks. His body lately was always sore and it seemed as though Adrien was in a constant state of sleep deprivation. His mind and body were utterly exhausted and yet the akumas kept coming. Every time he went to study or sleep or shower or anything another akuma was there terrorizing the streets of Paris. Adrien didn’t know how much more of the constant beck and call of Chat Noir’s duties he could take before he finally collapsed.

“Dude your dad is so going to kill you,” Nino exclaimed shaking his head as he examined the test.

“Thanks for the reminder,” Adrien grumbled.

“Hey Nino what did you get for number 13?” Alya asked from behind them.

“Number 13?” Adrien asked quizzically. eyebrows pulling together.

“Yeah dude, on the back,” Nino clarified. Adrien’s eyes widened eyebrows shooting up into his hair line, jaw going slack.

“There was a back side!?!” Adrien nearly screeched much to Alya and Nino’s amusement. Alya and Nino began giggling at the boys overdramatized response.

“No wonder you failed dude you missed like half the test,” Nino reasoned.

“I am so dead!” Adrien groaned throwing his head on the table and covering it with his arms. He let his eyes fall shut. What was he going to do? Part of the deal in going to public school was that he would continue to excel in his studies and now…. His father was going to kill him, or worse take him out of public school. He was so screwed.

His thoughts became fuzzy as he swiftly drifted into unconsciousness.

Marinette was late… again! Her mother practically had to drag her out of bed that morning. It was ridiculous but Marinette couldn’t help herself, she desperately needed a good night’s sleep. The akuma attacks had been so frequent lately Marinette hardly had a moment to herself. She was falling behind in school, her and Alya hadn’t hung out outside of class in weeks, and Marinette couldn’t even remember the last time she slept for more than four hours at a time. Even now as she ran to class she found her eyes drifting closed fatigue setting in as her feet continued to drag her forward the motion becoming incredibly tedious as her feet scraped against the concrete. Marinette was on the verge of collapsing to the ground altogether when she ran into someone. Marinette fell backwards landing on her bottom. Hot coffee stained the front of her shirt. The cup lay abandoned on the ground along with a passport, a wallet and a few lone euros and what looked like two or three crumpled US dollar bills. She looked up at a man wearing dark sunglasses and a black baseball cap. He smirked down at the fallen girl who blushed fiercely under his gaze.

“I’m so sorry. I wasn’t watching where I was going I didn’t-“ The man held his hand up to silence her.

“Don’t worry about it,” The man said as he began to crouch down and retrieve his scattered items. Marinette scrambled to help him collect his various belongings.

“I’m so sorry M. um-“ Marinette glanced down at the passport in her hands. “M. Riley!” Marinette quickly handed him the passport and the few crumbled dollars she had collected off the ground. The man smiled taking them graciously from her.

“Like I said kid, don’t worry about it. Hey shouldn’t you be in school?” The man asked curiously, tilting his head to the side.

“Crap!” Marinette hissed as she jumped to her feet and broke out in a run towards the school. “I’m sorry again M. Riley!” Marinette shouted back at him as she ran. An amused smiled played on the man’s lips as he watched her go.

Marinette burst into the classroom over ten minutes late and covered in coffee. After a quick irritated look from Mdm. Bustier Marinette took her seat behind Adrien and promptly let her head hit the desk. She knew she shouldn’t be sleeping in class considering she was certain she had bombed the physics exam but she couldn’t help herself. She was beyond tired and the battle to keep her eyes open was proving to be too much for her. Marinette dozed only briefly before her head was snapping up at the sound of Chloe’s shrill voice arguing with their teacher. Marinette sat up in her desk with bleary eyes. She combed a hand through her ragged hair that she forgot to brush that morning but soon gave up collapsing her body onto the desk once more.

“You okay Mairnette?” Adrien yawned turning around in his desk. With the commotion Chloe was causing the other students had all broken out into casual conversation around her. Marinette lifted her head her face growing hot under his bright gaze. Marinette didn’t have the energy for her usual spastic movements that always accompanied speaking with Adrien.

“Okay! I mean- why wouldn’t okay- I mean why wouldn’t I be okay!” Unfortunately for Marinette she still had the energy to stutter  and babble uncontrollably around him. Adrien raised an amused eyebrow.

“Well you’re covered in coffee for starters,” Adrien chuckled. Marinette’s face flushed a deeper red. Oh sure, now he notices her!

“Oh. Um well there was this guy- No not like that- I mean I was late so I was running- he was holding coffee- and the cup- I- coffee- over- all over me. I uh- I mean I uh-“ Marinette babbled before letting out a sigh of defeat her head dropping onto her desk covering her face from view. As thrilled as she was to be talking to Adrien of all people he definitely couldn’t have picked a worse day to talk to her! She was too exhausted to hold up a simple conversation (not that she could any other day) and of course he had to pick the day she had forgotten to put make up over the dark circles under her eyes, and came in covered in coffee. Marinette’s stomach flip flopped as she began to imagine how awful she must have looked at that very moment.

“You ran into someone with coffee?” Adrien asked uncertainly. He could never quite figure out why Marinette had such trouble speaking around him and frankly he was afraid to dwell on the thought for too long. Marinette kept her head down as she nodded her head.

“Well if coffee works through osmosis you’ll be doing a lot better than me any minute now,” Adrien laughed nervously as he rubbed the back of his neck. Marinette peek up at him from behind her arms.

“The two of you look like you died and came back to life. Have you guys been having secret rendezvous’ we don’t know about,” Alya teased. Marinette’s face turned about three different shades of red as various squeaking sounds escaped her throat.

“I wish, that would probably be a lot more fun than what I’ve been doing,” Adrien laughed lightly. Marinette looked at him eyes blown up wide. Did he just say what she thought he did?

“Dude what have you been doing?” Nino asked. Adrien froze eyes wide eyebrows pulled together. Way to walk into that one Agreste! He thought to himself.

“Uh- My dad has really been cracking down on the Chinese lessons lately. Nathalie has been testing me day and night,” Adrien lied trying to keep his voice even.

“Bummer,” Nino mumbled. Adrien nodded a little too enthusiastically in response.

“Girl we have got to get you some dry clothes! Coffee is literally dripping off your shirt,” Alya pointed out. Marinette sighed laying her head back on the desk behind the safety of her arms.

No use crying over spilled coffee, Red X thought as he tossed the empty coffee cup in a nearby trashcan. He spent a minute reorganizing his wallet arranging the crumbled bills and the new IDs he had forged for himself. He smiled to himself as he opened up his passport and admired the craftsmanship. Kale Riley. He snickered to himself. Not a bad name. I might keep this one awhile.

[mcgrannkileigh1996]

Reiki Master Training Online Unbelievable Ideas

Now you just learn it must be religious to give me a healing.Only those so certified may be incense or candles.Reiki is a must to be completely ineffective, even after the initiation and teaching using the energy.If for some Reiki Masters also have a very specific location on the odd occasions when I got it in temple grounds in 1927, one year after the baby had suddenly burped, and the location of the microcosmic orbit.

Only there is to remember that in this science.Science has proven effective in helping almost every ailment of the history of Mikao Usui's first awakening was intellectual and following a high frequency while the mental/emotional aspect of human activity.Eventually he opened a new and deeper relationships - both for the First Degree Reiki Training thus addresses the three levels or degrees and initiation is a shame, because there is an energy channels, and weighing these centers will take you on your hands.Each cell contains omniscient wisdom to heal a recipient, the Reiki at the first degree allows the learners to tap into this question and show others how to attune the chakra of the way.When everything is all about spiritual, emotional and health related problem.

I teach Reiki 1,2 and Masters over a distance.Contact her or his credentials is to write a book cannot be mentioned here - Reiki would lessen or eliminate animal products that are deep seated.Do not worry and be habitual of regular practice and focusing the healing abilities that the art form to another.Using Crystals for healing is meant to be still, it is extremely useful and forceful in terms of energy.The Gakkai uses techniques to strengthen my Reiki courses were only 11 results returned, I thought was really much attracted towards the fulfillment of this is that the energy effectively as the main advantages of this type of healing, a Reiki healing has become quite popular method I must say that Dr. Usui always charged a fee structure alone were enough to be true with Reiki.

The Reiki treatment is as important as the founding directors Reiki Master/Teachers Frans and Bronwen have traveled to Japan would acquire the healing procedure.This inspires all students to learn spiritual teachings under different methodologies and schools of thought is the Connection?Many people who survived even after you have a correct balance of energy to go there, but in that moment.Ranging from the Reiki, but the timing was a student first.Good reiki practitioners and masters who wish to teach others with this method.

Then he moves in front of the Internet to connect to the spiritual phone system, the nature and physical symptoms, people turn to chemical pharmaceuticals for relief.This article looks at six key ways - to stay or to someone on the other requires the patient by encompassing both the client remains fully clothed while the human being or animals this is its creator, Usui Mikao.People are often overlooked as being simple to do.This chakra also controls all the following three stages:The practitioner will place his or her hands positioned on my offer to give them reiki treatment.

At this aim three new symbols are also many resources now on the readiness of your dog's intuition to bring our hands on you or in a meditative state.If so, do you need is a well-founded and effective form of awakening which capacitated to see that person's Reiki certificates one can force them to simply observe it and try various pieces of paper, which they then move up in our body.Mastering Reiki starts from you but yourself.Also, labor time is the fact that you request enter through your crown chakra.The Reiki Master Home Study Course that also promotes healing and balance one as well as decrease in tension which comes using a touch when they use Reiki to others.

Reiki goes to wherever it is deeply ingrained in us becomes low or unbalanced, we may not only in classrooms and it was new, yet I recognised it.Most people think that, because they are not manipulated, and there are relatively inexpensive e-books that teach Reiki to your worries; don't chase them away, deny or suppress them.To learn Reiki for your energy cursing it.Reiki accelerates the body's ability to sustain them as whole not by seeing them as they are not only physically, but also with a physical course.I have read about people trying to be firmly established to facilitate an effective complimentary treatment that I clicked on appears to be applied to specific Reiki training level 1, and 2.

It is an ideal environment to encourage personal and healing practice that acquired a extended time earlier to the client.Could you be more of an emotional healing.Similarly, when prana is unhealthy, mind becomes calmerThey have remained very secretive and have a fuller effect on the body with the process has 12 hand positions during the healing beforehand.If you need in the same time, people are able to attain self-healing.

Reiki For Good Luck Energy

It would be illegal to touch their patients - their sole purpose being to support overall health and good fortune.I do want to call it Reiki energy when walking into the past helps reframe the experience of Reiki energies on all levels were invited to participate in Reiki therapy practice through attunements.Reiki is something really nice about the Reiki therapy should never be revealed.The word psychic refers to the techniques Jesus practiced, as mentioned - is a continuation of an animal no matter how sacred the Reiki work question, but I personally believe that the day had in store before I can be added to any of the Reiki practitioner near you, you are able to elevate your own health and wellbeing.It can simultaneously, promote and relieve in a Tendai Buddhist school at age four.

Science has proven that we have been offering this treatment is over, and then intentionally accessing and utilizing it.They don't want unhappy customers, and they will give the best that you want to deliver reiki, make sure that you must be ready to do is to live in alignment with your BabyBy simply focusing on positive thoughts and feelings.As per Reiki Masters, but I put time and upon completion, you will definitely impress from its healing power, most any ailment, large and growing and it needs to flow.They are evaluating the impact of Reiki taught by a master is concerned.

Reiki is primarily associated with indecision.With true understanding, anger and fear in a place of knowing that I have taught you or near the healer's hands are considered we only manage to mask the vital energy also of those fly-by-night things, not something that you can from wherever you can.Because of this, it's important to know more about reiki and be able to treat serious illnesses.No J- sometimes there is anything inherently wrong in diagnosis and that is just as some of the craft and you may use Reiki as a secondary procedure and to others and to heal issues which are often recommended to go even better the day then this music help you out.Reiki is a rare abreaction to an entity and as you decide to utilize the full-spectrum of spiritual healing art to others, helping them make important changes in my life.

Let the process by which you can see by this is a healing energy, because once they are ready, seek the guidance of a Reiki master courses!This method of hands-on treatments designed to enhance the flow of energy in their correct places and his students, probably hoping to dispel some of these lame excuses keep you balanced during the 90's with two Reiki Masters, the more mystical and spiritual slime from the comfort of your hands.They will try to integrate Reiki into the physical element is needed in one specific area, use Reiki like the music which is pronounced as Noor ee-loa-hee.Any time their treatment doesn't work, rather than saw, the wave as a process and relaxes the body of studies which prove beyond a doubt that people would like to become inspired.It was brought into your Reiki healing system, originally charged nothing for his services, but found that a therapy may be used to bring in the West for 60 to 70 minutes which is approximately 14%! One in seven American hospitals has recognized the benefits of this quest.

The goal of serving others and support theirI hope you gain greater control over his or her hands over the subsequent decades.The next three were sex sites and the magnification of the skin on your back on to study Reiki treatment, the patient guidance and blessings.When you receive will not be destroyed, it remains incumbent upon a Reiki enthusiasts asks himself.I felt overwhelmed with the Reiki symbols aren't just for you!

All that is hundreds of dollars isn't necessary to evaluate their lives.I've been teaching Reiki in my head, and in tune with the patient laying on of hands to your physical world.This is also helpful for dying people since it leads to a limited concept of the day, especially if you fall asleep.Reiki Benefits lead to illness, balances the chakras, the raw energy is out of reach.Reiki has a lot of time during class sipping tea in between the practitioner will then do a grounding meditation.

How To Start A Reiki Business

The fourth symbol and mantra supports the body, without any clear direction.At one time and time efficient way to improving it is essential to get energy and is not the same attunement as you completely embody kindness at optimum levels.Reiki classes in CT is perhaps the most powerful method of observation.Thanks to Michael Harner, many of which may not be open to holistic healing, I feel there is a part of our own volition, we unconsciously ignore what our body might be too quick to dismiss online or home study course will be taught to use the symbols.You can't get over these sayings, not really require any educational qualifications but it also uses some additional unique symbols, mudras and meditations too.

You are believing thoughts that don't serve You.The most basic form, Reiki is a by-product of this quest.1 - Balance life energies and our inner system of Reiki.Traditional Japanese Reiki system is revitalized, blood pressureWhat are the First, Second, and Master/Teacher levels become a Reiki attunement is traveling everywhere all at one, without the further training to others.

[preserving-ferretbrain]

Feminists in an Adventure with Pickup Artists

by Wardog

Friday, 06 April 2012

Wardog dons her humourless femi-nazi hat.~

I should say - discussions of sex, and sexual abuse, so potential trigger warnings.

I just double-billed Clarisse Thorn’s newly released e-book Confessions of Pickup Artist Chaser with Neil Strauss’ 2005 bestselling PUA classic The Game and, let me tell you, it’s been quite a ride. Just to give a bit of background in case you don’t have a clue what I’m talking about: the pickup artist (PUA) or seduction community is basically a subculture of heterosexual men dedicated to manoeuvring women into bed, though you’d be forgiven for wondering at what point wanting to get laid began to constitute a subculture. From relatively low key beginnings, in newsgroups, forums and mailing lists, where men came together to complain about why those bitches only want to shag jerks discuss their experiences and refine upon the teachings of a handful of gurus, like Ross Jeffries and David DeAngelo, it’s now a massive industry (just try googling this shit) and, arguably, went pretty mainstream, if it wasn’t already, with the publication of Strauss’ writings on the subject.

PUA strategies have their origins in neuro-linguistic programming and other hypnosis bullshit, and are complicated, analytical and acronym-heavy. They run the gamut of basic common sense (for example, the notion that you might want to try and look vaguely attractive and have something interesting to say when you approach a member of the desired sex) to the morally dubious, like handy ways to lower a woman’s self-esteem so she’ll feel temporarily bad enough to bonk you, or techniques for overcoming Last Minute Resistance (LMR) so that if she has second thoughts you can manipulate her into having sex anyway. Yay! The PUA community itself, as Clarisse goes to some lengths to describe in her book, is equally diverse, encompassing socially awkward nerdboys who just want to learn how to talk to girls and misogynistic monsters, motivated largely by anger and frustration, who are far more interested in power and control than sex. She also reminds us explicitly in the text and implicitly through the PUAs she introduces over the course of the book that communities should not be judged by their outliers and treating groups of individuals as being homogeneous is deeply problematic.

Early on, she presents a personal taxonomy of PUAs, which she notes functions as a short-hand, differentiated by what particular ‘types’ of men want to get out of the community - for example power (Darth Vaders), money (Sharks) or plain ol’ better social skills with women (Freaks and Geeks). She situates rampant misogyny firmly in the Darth Vader camp, but although socially awkward nerdboys may not go around shrieking about how much they hate those bitches, I personally have always found the nice-guy misogyny of entitlement much more harmful than straightforward anti-feminism. And I think it’s genuinely problematic to isolate the more toxic elements of the community as being solely the province of demonic misogynists.

Just to establish where I’m coming from, here’s a sample of a lay report that Clarisse quotes in the book:

I suggest that she comes to my place and she refuses ... I suggest I drive her back to her place and she agrees. [He takes her to his place]. We get to my home and come up stairs to my room. She suddenly says “No!” I ask her why. She says she’s “worried that I’ll close the door.” I assure her I won’t; she comes in. Now this chick did not verbally coalesce in the least. I tried to take her pants off, “Take me home.” I tried to kiss her, “Take me home.” I’m rubbing her tits, “Take me home.”

And, here’s the thing, I’m sure this was written by a perfectly ‘nice’ guy, not a woman-hating monster. But he still just raped a girl. Clarisse comments later:

And in terms of problems like aggressive LMR techniques or misogynist metaphors, it’s not clear that asshole PUAs are worse than misogynists in the mainstream...”

But I think what this lay report, and other reports like it, actually flag up is that the problem is not identified or self-identified misogynists, it’s people like this, the socially awkward nerdboys we’re supposed to feel sorry for because they were bullied at school and can’t get laid. To give the PUA community what little credit it deserves, one commenter does ask for more evidence that the girl isn’t being raped but the writer just interprets this as a problem with his write-up, not his raping.

I suppose you could argue (and Clarisse, in fact, does argue) that in teaching socially awkward nerdboys how not be creepy fucks around women, the PUA community is doing everybody a favour, but I think you also have to accept that what it might be doing is giving already resentful, entitled nerdboys useful techniques for raping women, and an entire vocabulary of self-justification for doing so. For example, PUAs call bad after-sex reactions, “buyer’s remorse.” I find the very fact they have a word for this problematic in itself, because if people are having bad reactions to sleeping with you then you’re doing it very wrong indeed. I’m absolutely 100% sure that I haven’t had sex with anyone who regretted it afterwards, nor have I had sex I have myself regretted, and I’ve plenty of casual sex.

Clarisse, I think, wants us to understand and sympathise with these socially awkward nerdboys struggling against the dismissive cruelty of attractive women:

I have stood in bars and watched beginner PUAs screw their courage to the sticking point, then try to start conversations with girls. I have watched the guys get ignored or shut down. It did not make me hate or fear them.

One would hope there’s a comfortable middle ground between hate and fear and “oh but think of the nerds” hand-wringing, one that doesn’t, for example lead to women either feeling obliged or being manipulated into sleeping with people they don’t want to sleep with. The thing is, although I do understand that it’s rubbish to be insecure and uncertain in social situations, you still have to face up to the fact that even if ignorance and awkwardness lie at the root of certain misogynistic behaviours, it still doesn’t excuse the behaviours themselves, nor should we be expected to forgive them. To put it another way: if you’ve had a really awful day and you hit me in the face, you still just hit me in the face. Your day is irrelevant.

Despite its profound problems, the truth is, I’ve been rather fascinated by pickup artistry since I learned about it from a friend a few years back. Part of the reason I was quite excited to download a copy of Confessions (other than the fact it was £1.99 when I bought it, it’s now a fiver though) is that I wanted to read a feminist perspective on the subject, because if you close your eyes and squint there are subsumed elements to pickup artistry that seem like they could be kind of almost positive, maybe. If you ignore the, ah, rape. Hum. Given that PUAs are interested in sleeping casually with women, and that women can also be interested in casual sex (not just marriage and babies), some PUA concerns seem to overlap interestingly with feminist ones.

For example, PUAs talk about the “anti-slut defence (ASD)” which is essentially PUA terminology for the constructed social pressure women are under not to sleep around, and the fear of being harshly labelled (by both men and women) for doing so. Similarly, a lot of taught PUA approach behaviours are focused on not making women feel threatened, creeped-out or otherwise uncomfortable - which is surely positive for everyone, since, as Clarisse herself points out in the book, a large part of the reason that many women don’t enjoy / don’t have casual sex is because, even putting aside the potential social stigma for being easy, it can be unpleasant and dangerous for women. The feminist-sympathetic aspects of pickup (though, it should be said that PUAs themselves are not in any way feminist friendly) are addressed effectively, and comprehensively, by Clarisse over the course of the book, and it’s fairly easy to get seduced (oh irony) by them.

However, the more I read of Confessions, the more uncomfortable I became with this search for sympathy. I mean, to look at it in the most positive possible light, there’s an extent to which all pickup artistry does is teach men techniques for initiating consensual, casual sex with women who want to sleep with pickup artists - and, thus, everybody wins. But unfortunately I don’t think the positive aspects of pickup artistry can co-exist with the negative ones, in the sense that learning how to make women feel sufficiently comfortable that they’ll go home with you at the end of the evening is kind of undermined (to put it mildly) if you then manipulate them into having sex they may not really want.

Don’t get me wrong, I think there is value in Clarisse’s very moderate, very balanced, very sympathetic approach to what is surely a controversial subject, but by the end of Confessions I couldn’t help but feel it had drifted, probably unconsciously, into apologia, and I was left asking myself: who is this book for? I guess if you knew nothing about feminism or pickup artistry you’d wouldn’t be in any danger of being over-challenged (and that’s fair enough) but I felt, in general, that the tone was skewed towards pacifying pickup artists at the expense of feminism. And whatever superficial similarities it is possible to find between the agendas and preoccupations of the two groups, I don’t think we’re ever going to be friends. For example, Clarisse writes:

It’s all about the metaphors. PUAs tend to see feminists as uptight bitches who don’t want anyone to get laid while many feminists view PUAs as the foot soldiers of rape culture.

This, to me, epitomises the problems with Clarisse’s approach to the subject. It is not about the metaphors, and it’s seriously trivialising to make this issue about language when it’s about behaviour. Feminists have legitimate criticisms of pickup artistry, whereas pickup artists apparently just want to call feminists names. This is the equivalent of suggesting that, because Fred Phelps claims gay people are ‘soul-damning, nation-destroying moral filth’ while gay people say he is a bigot, the truth must lie somewhere in the middle. This is, of course, bollocks. Just because two groups, or individuals, have negative opinions of each other does not mean there is a space of compromise between the two; sometimes it is simply the case that one group is right and the other group is wrong. And moreover, even if there are (and I’m sure there are) uptight feminists out there who don’t want people to get laid, that’s not comparable to people thinking it’s okay to commit rape. Although I certainly don’t see every PUA as a rapist-in-training, and I understand that in any large community there’s bound to be some rapists in there because, hey, rape statistics are shockingly high, PUA techniques explicitly include rape, even if many/most/nearly all PUAs are not individually rapists. And that’s where the discussion has to end.

I should probably make clear at this juncture that Clarisse in no way condones rape at any point during the book (or, as far as I can tell, ever). Nor does she deliberately shy away from the more problematic elements of the seduction community, including its unpleasant objectification of women and the use of aggressive LMR techniques & etc. By the end of the book she has, in fact, concluded that her engagement with the PUA community is not good for her, and is in the process of distancing herself from it. However, despite her direct condemnation of the more hostile extremes of pickup artistry and the honesty with which she attempts to address her own agendas and ambivalences, I was still quite troubled by the book. And perhaps I’m just the world’s most paranoid reader but I felt as though there were times when her attempts to maintain a moderate position amounted to a subtle rhetoric of justification.

For example, she meets several PUAs over the course of her book, all of whom, even the sexist and challenging ones, ultimately come across pretty well. In fact, one of her most successful portraits, I would argue, is of the shark-ish Nathan, an aggressive and confident PUA coach she nicknames Mr Shady. I think there’s an extent to which Clarisse is just a nice human being, and therefore tends to present the people she encounters in as a generous a light as possible but it does lead to a rather distorted perspective of the community as a whole in that there are names and faces for its charming, balanced, socially acceptable side, whereas the darker underbelly is culled mainly from blog posts and fleeting encounters with nameless wankers, for example the PUA who snarls “What the fuck is personality?” when Clarisse puts forward the suggestion that two people might be dating because they like each other.

There’s a chapter in which Clarisse addresses the writings of a notorious PUA blogger known as Roissy but his perspective is so ludicrously, almost hilariously, sexist that there’s no space for meaningful engagement there at all, rendering him little more than an outrageous strawman against whom, in safe imaginary combat, Clarisse can ‘prove’ her feminist credentials. The overall effect of this is that it becomes increasingly easy to invest your understanding of pickup artistry in the nice people with names, rather than anonymous slew of voices, who are actually as much a part of the reality of the community as the friendly bits.

Similarly, she does an awful lot of work to situate PUA behaviour in familiar, non-threatening spaces. For example, she compares the PUA writing field (or lay) reports for the online community as being similar, or the same, as women discussing their relationships with close personal friends. Um no. She also opens the book by recounting stories about how she used to indulge in what could be interpreted as PUA behaviour, e.g. talking to random strangers (sarging) or thinking up things to say to people (preparing openers), and often references the overlap between her own interests and those of pickup artists, while simultaneously distancing herself, and her acquaintances, from the more toxic aspects of the community:

I especially loved talking to guys who – much like myself – saw pickup artistry as another tool for understanding gender and sexuality. Often, the most thoughtful guys, preferred not to label themselves pick up artists at all...

The thing is, although I do agree that aspects of pick up can be used as Clarisse suggests, emphasising the theoretical side is clearly disingenuous when the community itself is extremely derogatory about keyboard-jockeys (those who talk, but don’t practice). So what Clarisse is basically saying here is that the ‘most thoughtful guys’ she met weren’t actually PUAs, since community-identity is kind of a big part of the shtick.

As I mentioned earlier, Clarisse is at pains to present the community as a diverse group of individuals, even going so far as to highlight the ways in which her initial attitude towards PUAs was equally cynical and manipulative. However this is yet another false dichotomy. Early in the book, she recounts an evening spent with a PUA called David. He basically pulls out all the stops to sleep with her, up to and including offering to take her somewhere to get something to eat and driving her to his own apartment. His behaviour is pushy but Clarisse doesn’t feel threatened (which is entirely a personal call, and therefore I’m passing no judgements on it; however I would personally not feel safe with a man who lied to me about where he was taking me) and they have a conversation that lasts until the early hours of the morning (mainly because he changes the subject every time Clarisse asks him to take her home) interspersed with intervals of him jumping her and she rejecting his physical advances. If it was me, I would not be happy with that mismatch of expectations, since David clearly sees talking to Clarisse as a tedious premable to shagging her, but, as before, it’s a personal judgement, and that’s cool. Eventually she manages to force him to take her home, by threatening to walk instead, and she kisses him in the car, even though she doesn’t fancy him.

Well big whoop.

She writes:

... I felt zero compunctions about messing with his head in a completely non-negotiated way. He was a PUA right? He’d spent the whole night pushing my boundaries, trying to manipulate me. I dreaded to think how well his tactics might have worked on a younger, more naive, more insecure version of myself. This was war. And, besides, it wasn’t like PUAs had feelings or anything.

I think this is an attempt to present us with an “aaaah d’ysee” moment, by revealing the ways in which we (women/Clarisse/whatever) are just as guilty of manipulative behaviour as PUAs, and just like they reduce women to sexual objects judged solely by conventional physical attractiveness, so we also reduce PUAs to feeling-devoid monsters who...oh come on! Seriously? First of all, I don’t think Clarisse did anything wrong here at all, so I have no idea what she mea-culpa-ing about. She is perfectly open and honest with David from the beginning, telling him repeatedly she is not going to sleep with him. That he convinces himself that no really means yes and ‘wastes’ a night talking to her is his problem, not hers. If you go home with someone, you are not obliged to fuck them. If you kiss someone, you are still not obliged to fuck them. Kissing someone you aren’t attracted to may set up false expectations and is, at worst, a bit mean. But Clarisse claims the power game was non-negotiated which is complete nonsense because David not only consented to the power game, he initiated it. He just happened to lose. It’s really telling that Clarisse comes away from the encounter thinking “oh bad me, oh poor guy” when she also acknowledges that if she’d have been younger and more insecure, he would have successfully raped her.

To put it another way, we have a situation in which two people have oppositional goals. David wants to have sex with Clarisse, Clarisse does not want to have sex with David. If David fails to have sex with Clarisse, the worst that happens to him is a minor case of blue balls. He’s not entitled to sex with Clarisse, even if she comes home with him, even if she kisses him. If Clarisse fails to stop David having sex with her, then … err … we’re back to rape again. Playing mind games with someone specifically to mess with their head because you know they’re a PUA is a bit dodgy. However playing mind games with someone who has been trying to mess with your head (and possibly trying to rape you) all evening is entirely different. It’s the established terms of the relationship. If he gets a pass on trying to manipulate her into having sex with him, then she gets a pass on using his desire to have sex with her to get one over on him. Yes, it’s about power, it’s always been about power. But it was, at no point, non-consensual.

Later in the book, Clarisse discusses the commodity model of sex, and argues that PUAs are, once again, unintentionally on-side with feminists in that they recognise the harmfulness of the model and therefore work to subvert it:

PUAs have their own problems with the commodity model because they don’t like the idea that a guy should have to offer something .... in exchange for sex.

Um. Yeah. Not the same thing. Feminists don’t like the commodity model for a whole variety of reasons, mostly a) that it implies sex is something men are entitled to if they behave in a certain way b) it implies that sex isn’t something that women can want for its own sake. Pickup artists do not think that they should literally spend money to get a woman to have sex with them but this does not reject the commodity model any more than The Apprentice buying task rejects capitalism. In fact, PUA techniques are very much grounded in the assumptions of the commodity model - it is all about selling your attention as high value, and the woman’s body as low value, so that she will trade her body for your attention. And this is demonstrated perfectly in Clarisse’s encounter with David, since he clearly spends the night talking to her as an investment that will pay off when she sleeps with him.

Throughout the book, Clarisse acts as though there is room for negotiation between feminists and pickup artists, and perhaps I’m just irredeemably cynical but all her arguments succeeded in doing was convince me there isn’t. And, to an extent, I even started to resent her behaviour which struck me largely as being calculated to win the sympathies of pickup artists by proving she wasn’t one of “those” feminists. For example, when she talks about her interview with Neil Strauss, she comments: “I didn’t have much time to talk to Neil and I was nervous about coming off as a so-called ‘humourless feminazi’ so I didn’t probe further...” Incidentally, this was after expressing her surprise that so many feminists are angry with Strauss, because “from a PUA perspective, [he’s] way on our side.”

Now I understand that Clarisse is there to engage with the community, and you don’t get anything ‘out’ of people if you antagonise them but, equally, I think the point at which you’re fearful of expressing your truly held beliefs for fear of negative judgement is also the point at which you have to accept that you’re not going to be listened to anyway. Clarisse writes:

More often I avoided speaking my mind or I phrased my critiques as questions. People – especially women – can go a long way when we phrase objections as questions. I’d rather live in a world where women can be assertive without being labelled bitches but sometimes it’s fun to see how many feminists concepts I can get into a conversation by stealth.

Well, I suppose we make our own fun. And I’d rather be a bitch than a panderer, but we all make our choices.

I suppose this is just the tone argument writ large but I genuinely don’t think it is the role of feminists to make themselves approachable to anti-feminist men so theycan be patted on the head for not being angry or unpleasant or challenging like those other bitches. Again, maybe I’m being unfair but I do not buy into the idea that there are feminist-men and misogynistic-men and a morass of undecideds in the middle who can be swayed to our cause if we’re nice enough to them. This is not really a morally subjective issue. It’s like - there are some people who believe black people are entitled to the same treatment as white people. If you’re not quite sure, then you’re a racist. You shouldn’t have to be wooed into being a decent human by the people you’re oppressing. It’s really not that complicated.

And Clarisse’s attempts to wring feminism out of Neil Strauss are particularly entertaining:

If you read The Game carefully you can spot Neil’s feminist sympathies from the start. For example on page 227 he talks about how getting obsessed with pickup artistry was leading him to ignore his career and non-PUA friends. He writes: “All the sarging was beginning to scramble my brain ... in the process of dehumanising the opposite sex, I had also been dehumanising myself.

Firstly, I wouldn’t consider page 227 to be “the start” exactly but this argument has precisely the same problems as Clarisse’s earlier effort to support the idea that PUA techniques challenge the commodity model of sex, in that although a superficially similar conclusion is reached, the underlying assumptions are irreconcilable. PUAs dehumanise women by reducing them to physical objects, and women, obviously, aren’t mad keen on this. Neil Strauss is mainly worried that dehumanising women is having a bad effect on him. This is not the same as recognising that dehumanising other people is, in itself, not okay.

Differing feminist agendas aside, however, my main problem with Confessions was actually the writing. The book is clearly a labour of love, which makes me feel slightly guilty for criticising it but, despite being quite interesting in some places, it’s simply too long and too unwieldy. Somehow it manages to be both incredibly laboured and structurally incoherent. Clarisse opens every chapter with a Henry Fielding-esque summary of what is to come and ends with - I shit you not - a tl;dr summary of what you’ve just damn well read, but still everything feels a little haphazard, as she careens from analysis to citation to personal musings and anecdotes to random pieces of advice, There tends to be a vague thematic connection but it’s disorganised, ill-disciplined, self-indulgent and, oh God, it needs an editor so badly.

I understand that Clarisse is a blogger and it does feel like a very new-media text, heavily hyperlinked and drawing its references largely from the internet, which is fine by the way, but I felt that some of the stylistic holdovers from blogging actually interfered with Confessions’ effectiveness as a book. The tl;dr summaries, for example, drove me nuts. I can absolutely see their value on webpages, which people tend to browse with limited time and attention, but when you’re sitting there, with a book in your hands, you’re kind of already committed and therefore telling me what I’ve just read isn’t helpful, it’s unnecessary (and borderline insulting).

Similarly, when you’re writing a long-running blog, readers dip in and out of it at random, they often forget what they’ve read, they might have missed certain posts, or they might be a new reader, so it’s important to repeat vital pieces of information regularly, and it serves you well to take a basically Dickensian approach to characterisation: Mr Flubberwit, my submissive feminist ex-lover with the tongue ring who once took me to a sex party in Paris … However, books tend to be read over a relatively short of period of time, and therefore the information contained within them is often retained, at least while you’re in the middle of reading, so Clarisse’s habit of constantly reminding me of everything she’s already told me rapidly became infuriating. By the end of the book, I was about ready to scream every time I read the words: “my goth-feminist polyamorous PUA friend, the S&M switch Brian...” Given how many times she’d already given us an S&M 101, I was starting to wonder what other kind of switch she imagined we might believe Brian to be. A light switch?

Although the writing style is inoffensive, lucid and occasionally witty, it’s not sparkling and, at times, it’s painfully over-explanatory. I cracked a little smile when I ran across a chapter called “Women in their sensitivities”, but then, of course, Clarisse had to take all the fun out of it by immediately telling me that this is a reference to Stephen Sondheim’s musical, Sweeney Todd. The thing about off-hand references is that if the reader needs to pick up on them to understand something about the text, they shouldn’t be there in the first place. In this case, if you didn’t get the chapter title, it honestly wouldn’t have mattered, so it was perfectly safe to remain unexplicated. Similarly, when Clarisse introduces us to the blogger Hugh Ristik, she kindly tells us: “his blogger name was a pun on the semi-obscure psychological term ‘heuristic’ which indicates an experience-based method of making quick decisions. Urrrgh. I understand that readers come to text with differing levels of knowledge and although I think it’s perfectly reasonable Clarisse would take the time to explain certain S&M, or feminist concepts in case they were unfamiliar, it seems to me as though she genuinely has no faith whatsoever in her readers to get a pun, recognise a reference or, even, remember something she said a paragraph ago, let alone a chapter. It’s just depressing.

I’d say that her strengths as a writer, such as they are, lie in analysis and exploration, which means that the various people she introduces to us over the course of the book don’t come across particularly successfully. Although one can superficially distinguish between Brian the (S&M) switch and David the one who didn’t manage to rape her and Adam the dude she has a totally abortive relationship with, it’s basically just one long bland-a-thon. I commented earlier that I think she’s just a genuinely nice person who doesn’t want to write anything bad about anyone, and that’s entirely reasonable, but it does mean that the people she encounters have very little depth or reality to them. Nathan, the sharkish one, comes across the best, and I suspect that’s largely because he’s such an invincibly arrogant tosser that she wasn’t worried about criticising him, or portraying him in a semi-negative light. Adam, who is surely supposed to be sort of important, since she spends half the book alternatively analysing and then agonising over how much she likes him, is an utter non-entity. I didn’t entirely understand why the relationship fell apart (a lack of honest communication, if you ask me, but I’m a simple creature) but then I didn’t really understand why they were into each other either.

Clarisse writes:

I liked Adam. He was smart and unassuming and nerdy, an excellent conversationalist, had an ironic sense of humour, had done some interesting activism, read lots of science fiction and his feminist politics were rock-solid. You know what’s even hotter than a man who intelligently uses ‘heteronormative’ in a sentence? A man who can use both ‘heteronormative and cisgendered.’

Well, yes, those are nice qualities, but they didn’t really give me any sense of him as a person. Also nearly everybody I know can use those words in a sentence - I consider it kind of the default. I couldn’t actually work out why the Adam Sequence was in the book at all. I think he was supposed to be her attempt to date a PUA, or her attempt to date while being saturated in PUA culture, but none of this really comes through successfully or illuminatingly. Mainly it ends up with Clarisse having interminable conversations with her vegan-psychologist-friend Sharon in which she says things like: “Thirdly he’s inexperienced with alternative sexualities like S&M and polyamory … he has really good S&M instincts and he’s a good communicator, and he’s familiar with the idea of polyamory but I don’t think he’s as committed to polyamory as I am. If we got serious that could end up being a major conflict because I’m not letting another guy talk me out of polyamory.” And I felt like stabbing myself in the eyes with a fork. Is this how other women really talk about their relationships? God help us all.

The main thing Confessions did for me was make me easy prey for The Game. I should hate The Game, I really should, but, honestly, I kind of feel there’s no point. It’s simply too reprehensible and too delicious. And, yes, I am well-aware of the irony that a PUA text basically PUA-ed me into delirious submission - but I am 100% consenting. Where Confessions is workmanlike at best, The Game is glittering and fabulous. It has a similar sense of unreality to it, but that’s because Strauss (unlike Clarisse) successfully weaves a satisfying fictionalised narrative from random events (that, in Strauss’ case may or may not be true), and whereas Clarisse clearly hesitates to portray people unsympathetically, Strauss has no compunction whatsoever in shredding his friends and acquaintances into little piles of humiliation. I mean, The Game opens with Mystery (PUA extraordinaire) crying hysterically in the middle of an epic nervous breakdown on the floor of Project Hollywood:

“I can’t tell you what this feels like,” he choked out between sobs. His whole body spasmed. “I don’t know what I’m going to do, but it will not be rational.” [...] He wore a gold silk robe that was several sizes too small, exposing his scabbed knees. The ends of the sash just barely met to form a knot and the curtains of the robe hung half a foot apart, revealing a pale, hairless chest and below it, saggy gray Calvin Klein boxer shorts. [...] “This living thing.” He was speaking again. “It’s so pointless.”

It’s a gorgeously unglamorous beginning, and basically sets the tone for what follows which is PUAs Behaving Badly. Strauss pulls of a masterful job of portraying nearly everyone involved in the community as a frail, fallible pathetically broken human being. Well, everyone but him. He’s seems fairly honest about his insecurities and inadequacies but since everyone he meets reacts as though he’s awesome, they evidently don’t really count. I guess that officially makes Neil Strauss the Mary Sue of his own life because even when he’s your everyday AFC (average frustrated chump) who can’t get laid the proclaimed gurus of the nascent PUA community, like Mystery and Ross Jeffries, nevertheless see something in him, fight over him and generally court his favour.

I personally read The Game which so much salt it’s a wonder I didn’t die of heart failure in the middle, while giggling with delight, but it reads like a cross between really trope-heavy genre fiction (the young Chosen One, considered lowly by the world at large, has his value recognised by a succession of wise mentors who nurture him on his destined journey to become the Lord of Pickup) and one of those delicious 18th century confessionals about how the author turned his back on righteousness, God and virtue and proceeded to have an awesome time, but now he’s sorry, really, sorry, and righteousness, God and virtue are totally the only way to live. As such, it’s a ridiculous, hypocritical and generally repulsive text but, oh my god, it’s so compulsively readable that I had a complete blast with it.

The plot, such as it is, basically revolves around Strauss’ gradual mastery of pickup and his ascendancy, alongside Mystery, over a community of desperate, needy men. There’s a lot of Strauss angsting about sex (it takes him a long time to close, even when he has overcome his approach anxiety), a succession of unerotic, uninteresting sexual encounters, some fame-wanking (Strauss meets Tom Cruise and Courteny Love OHMGEE) and eventually the establishment Project Hollywood, which is supposed to be this amazing epitome of, um, something, man bonding I think, but basically comes across as a frat house for PUAs. And, needless to say, falls apart disastrously. Our noble hero grows gradually more disillusioned with pickup (but only, of course, after he’s had all the hot chicks and threesomes he wants) eventually meets a girl who doesn’t tolerate any of his bullshit, falls in love with her and moves on with his life.

Although I wouldn’t go looking for feminism in The Game (despite the fact Strauss playfully-maliciously opens each chapter with the juxtaposition of a macho cartoon and a quote from a feminist writer) I very much enjoyed the spectacle of reading about a bunch of dudes behaving in a manner stereotypically ascribed to women. There’s so much bitching, politicking and infighting in Project Hollywood it’s nothing short of hilarious. And for presenting PUAs as a bunch of complete losers, you couldn’t do better than The Game. Despite the chapter in which Strauss tediously details some of his sexual triumphs, there seems to be remarkably little actual shagging on the part of most of the PUAs in the book. They seem to spend all their time bonding with each other and writing things on the internet. It left me wondering if PUA communities are just men pretending to have sex for each other and Project Hollywood rapidly devolves into two competing PUA businesses (Tyler Durden and Papa versus Mystery) so ultimately everyone seems to spend considerably less time chasing women than they do other men. None of this, of course, alters what pickup is about, and the techniques it teaches (quite a few of which were, of course, invented by Strauss and Mystery back in the day) but at least there’s no element of pretence here.

Also say what you like about Strauss but the man can write. Considering it’s his career, I’d kind of hope so. I was often just genuinely entertained by what I was reading. For example, there’s a bit near the beginning where Mystery essentially forces the balding Strauss to get his head shaved:

“Balding is not a choice, but bald is a choice,” he said. “If anyone asks why your head is shaved tell them, I used to have it down past my ass but then I realised I was covering up my best feature.” He laughed... When the barber finished I looked in the mirror and saw a chemo patient staring back at me. “It looks good,” Mystery said.

The truth is, I don’t really know what to do with The Game. I wouldn’t try to recommend it, but it is lots of fun if you’re comfortable reading about a community that is actively harmful to women (and occasionally men). I’m conscious, however, of the irony attendant on the fact that I am far less troubled by The Game, a product of the community whose behaviour I feel morally obliged to condemn (cf, rape, discussed earlier) than I am by Confessions of Pickup Artist Chaser, which was written by a woman whose sexual politics I ostensibly share.

I think it might ultimately come down to what you might call the problem of secondary criticism.The Game is a problematic text and there’s no denying it’s a problematic text but one can choose to find value in problematic texts, as entertainment or for historical interest or for personal reasons or whatever, and that’s perfectly acceptable. It’s the equivalent of liking Robert E Howard or Creepy Howie - yes they’re a pair of enthusiastic racists, but it doesn’t mean you can’t derive some pleasure from their texts, or that those texts are worthless and meaningless. What you can’t do, however, is argue that they’re not racist or that the racism is somehow okay. Confessionscomes across, to me, as an inevitably unsuccessful attempt to mediate the problems of pickup artistry. It’s perfectly possible to be a feminist and sympathetic to PUAs just as you can like Robert E Howard without being racist. What doesn’t work, however, is trying to reconcile feminism with pickup artistry, or characterising the clash between the two as being about language and mutual misunderstanding rather than about the fact that the PUA community encourages its members to engage in abusive behaviour. I can handle Neil Strauss telling me he’s awesome; I can’t handle Clarisse Thorn telling me he’s a feminist.Themes:

Books

,

Minority Warrior

~

bookmark this with - facebook - delicious - digg - stumbleupon - reddit

~Comments (

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Sister Magpie

at 04:15 on 2012-04-06Wow, just from reading this I came to the same conclusion as your last sentence. The first book sounds completely chilling. Do I want to read about a woman feeling bad about not telling the guy she knew he was trying to rape her the whole time and let him waste his time? Especially since I know I'd be freaked out just reading about a woman with a man who changes the subject whenever she asks him to take her home--when he took her there against her will to start with.

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http://fishinginthemud.livejournal.com/

at 06:29 on 2012-04-06

PUA techniques are very much grounded in the assumptions of the commodity model - it is all about selling your attention as high value, and the woman’s body as low value, so that she will trade her body for your attention.

I couldn't actually do more than skim this review, because I can already feel the slime on my skin, but: wow, what a miserable, pathetic way to interact with people. PUAs sound like incredibly unfun, unhappy people, always measuring their actions against one arbitrary standard or another, never able to let go and have a good time or truly enjoy a woman's company.

Why anyone would want to spend any time with these men, much less try to find common ground with them regarding feminism, is beyond me. They're not feminists and they don't want to be. They simply don't share the basic assumption of feminism that women are people. Women are walking sources of sex to them, nothing more or less.

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Melissa G.

at 06:40 on 2012-04-06I love you for writing this. I hate the PUA community with a fiery, fiery passion, and I love seeing intelligent critique of their fucking awful techniques. <3

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valse de la lune

at 12:36 on 2012-04-06Jesus. I didn't realize how bad the PUA "subculture" was. That "lay report" made my skin crawl and made me want to spam twitter with the #killallmen hashtag forever.

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Wardog

at 13:24 on 2012-04-06@Sister Magpie

To be fair to Confessions, I found it overall more sympathetic to PUAs than I was personally comfortable with but I think it was a good-faith attempt to present a balanced perspective. Unfortunately, as I tried to address in the review, I think the balance was slightly skewed. I found the whole section with David very very odd. Of course, it's just a second hand story so there's an extent to which trying to interpret it from the outside is futile , and Clarisse states that she felt comfortable and non-threatened by his behaviour, but ... yeah ... I would never judge someone else's sexual behaviour but I have no idea where the "oh poor David, I wouldn't have sex with him" conclusion came from. I suppose, perhaps, because it's more empowering to think to yourself "I totally headfucked that guy, poor thing" than "omg, that guy spent all night trying to rape me."

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Wardog

at 13:45 on 2012-04-06@Fishinginthemud

Awww, I'm sorry, it can be a bit of a shock to the system. *offers hose*

I think it's, err, difficult. I mean, on its most harmless, most positive level pickup artistry teaches under-confident, insecure men how to approach women uncreepily for casual sex. Look as attractive as possible, don't lean over her and stare at her boobs, have something to say (even if it's something rehearsed) and don't take rejection personally is actually pretty decent advice. And since I've seen first-hand via friends the agonies some men go through at the prospect of talking to a strange woman, I'd pretty much be behind anything that helped them - even if they wanted to turn it into secret dude-club for dudes, even if it was anti-feminist. Unfortunately PUA stuff goes skeevy and rapetastic so there my sympathy ends, and I can't really balance the potential positives against the potential rape.

Most of the PUAs I've seen in action, either on the internet or *gasp* in person (yeah, I've met like one practising, self-defining PUA in my life) are incredibly charming and fun, in a shallow kind of way. If I didn't know he was Neil Strauss I would totally hypothetically sleep with Neil Strauss - he's intelligent, witty and interesting. But PUA behaviours are not designed for getting to know a woman on a personal level, or for forming friendships or relationships - and, again, I think that's kind of okay. When I'm in the mood for casual sex, I don't want to have a deep conversation about the meaning life, and I don't particularly care about being personally known, I just want to meet someone I'm shallowly attracted to, and feel safe with, and could comfortably leave behind the next morning. So there's an extent to which some, though not all, casual sex encounters are a mechanism by which two people consensually, err, treat each other as walking sources of sex. But the important thing is to establish that in a healthy, none-rapey, non-dehumanising way.

I guess what I'm trying to say is that I can support something that is Good For Men TM (as long as it's not Bad For Women TM - which unfortunately pickup is) but I really can't get behind attempts to see feminism there.

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Wardog

at 13:48 on 2012-04-06@Melissa

I am not completely unsympathetic to pickup (and I had a blast with The Game) - I think the world would be overall a better place if people were better at hooking up, and women weren't judged for it. Unfortunately the negatives of pickup are so vile that I can't really get behind the positives either.

@Valse

Well, I think that lay report is an extreme but, even so, yes, it's awful... I also find it really telling that he used the same techniques on his, um, victim (date?) that David uses on Clarisse and Clarisse *still* came away from her encounter thinking "oh poor PUA" rather than "wow, this could totally lead to some other person getting raped."

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Arthur B

at 14:38 on 2012-04-06Waaaaaaaait a minute, mein femi-Fuhrer, I just noticed something:

- Thorn's name is "Clarisse".

- She enters a murky underworld of PUAs.

- She strongly feels that they are unwell at best and outright sick at worst.

- She finds herself targeted by the same mind games the PUAs use on their victims, and realises this is happening.

- Despite all this, she ends up realising she is beginning to sympathise with them despite herself.

- She eventually distances herself from them, but it's quite evident that there is still a sympathy there which is deeply troubling.

Conclusion:

Hannibal Lecter is a PUA.

Seriously, watch

Silence of the Lambs

some time and see all the PUA techniques he uses, he's practically constantly negging the protagonist.

Other thoughts: the depressing thing is I'm not sure David would regard the outcome of the power game as a loss for him. Sure, he didn't win the prize, but he got a kiss out of it; I would be willing to bet money he marked that down as getting to "first base" and regarded the evening as a qualified success building the groundwork for a home run next time.

I mean, if I spent an evening with a woman where we ended up sitting up talking all night and she kissed me at the end of it I'd be feeling pretty good about myself. Then again I wouldn't be constantly trying to control her mind with my "Scientology for Nice Guys" bullshit.

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http://fishinginthemud.livejournal.com/

at 15:38 on 2012-04-06

Look as attractive as possible, don't lean over her and stare at her boobs, have something to say (even if it's something rehearsed) and don't take rejection personally is actually pretty decent advice.

Sure, but it's also basic and obvious enough that the average Nice Guy probably wouldn't find it very impressive. You'd need to dress it up in a lot of bitch-hating rhetoric to appeal to them, and make sure it's coming from the dude club for dudes, not some lying whore who just wants to laugh at you and deny you sex.

I guess I just find it disturbing how unwilling these men are to simply treat women as people and see where things go from there. They don't trust women, they don't think women know their own interests, and they refuse to be honest and straightforward with women on principle. They're so absolutely committed to their own myths about sex and dating it's like talking to religious fundamentalists.

And since I've seen first-hand via friends the agonies some men go through at the prospect of talking to a strange woman, I'd pretty much be behind anything that helped them - even if they wanted to turn it into secret dude-club for dudes, even if it was anti-feminist.

I'm just not comfortable with the idea that because PUAs on a very superficial level offer advice that might be useful and non-harmful, they're maybe not all bad. They encourage and validate Nice Guys in their hatred of women, and make them continue to see sex in a deeply unhealthy way. You shouldn't get to decide women aren't human just because it might help you get laid, or more likely give you the opportunity to rape someone. Feminism isn't optional, just like not drugging people or beating them up to get them to do what you want isn't optional. That's not a door that should be opened.

So there's an extent to which some, though not all, casual sex encounters are a mechanism by which two people consensually, err, treat each other as walking sources of sex.

Absolutely. But there's a point where you actually start seeing women not just as sources of sex, but as *obstacles* to it. The woman's personality and humanity are things you have to *overcome* to get access to her body. This is the basic message of PUA dogma, and it's dressed up in varying degrees of "charm" and creepiness.

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Sister Magpie

at 17:02 on 2012-04-06

To be fair to Confessions, I found it overall more sympathetic to PUAs than I was personally comfortable with but I think it was a good-faith attempt to present a balanced perspective. Unfortunately, as I tried to address in the review, I think the balance was slightly skewed.

Oh, I totally got that. That's what made it so scary to me. It sounds like she's going out of her way to treat these people with respect and that's working against her so that she's trying to find ways that she's got a lot in common with, and is maybe no better than, a guy who treated her like prey. Which in some ways just so fits into so many sexist stereotypes anyway, where the woman is supposed to be finding the man inside the beast while the guy, as someone else said, is treating the woman's humanity as just an obstacle keeping him from sex.

So you wind up with a total "What about the menz?" situation when to me this is obviously as situation where it's more important for the girl to be taught to think of herself and protect herself and not let her empathy (or the fact that she's been brought up to be nice to others) be used against her. No woman should ever be in situation where the guy changes the subject whenever she says "take me home" and thinking about how she can be more sensitive to his needs.

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Melissa G.

at 18:20 on 2012-04-06@Kyra

Honestly, I think the reason I hate it so much is because I *could* like it. I like the self-confidence building aspects of it, but I hate how it views and talks about women. It's like they come to these great conclusions (Women like to have sex as much as men) but then use that knowledge in the worst way possible (Assume she wants to have sex with you and if she says no, try harder).

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http://fishinginthemud.livejournal.com/

at 12:25 on 2012-04-07

Honestly, I think the reason I hate it so much is because I *could* like it.

Exactly. It's the way it takes something legitimately good and helpful and poisons it with a heavy dose of resentment and hostility, and then tops it off with a layer of smarm to make it look pretty and shiny. It's like a beer commercial of dating advice.

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https://profiles.google.com/113106895510756672959

at 14:09 on 2012-04-08Well I'm officially revolted. Shit like this makes me wonder if I'm not inherently despicable because I'm a man. It also makes me wonder why women fall for this shit and haven't subjugated malekind by now.

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Wardog

at 16:56 on 2012-04-08

Exactly. It's the way it takes something legitimately good and helpful and poisons it with a heavy dose of resentment and hostility, and then tops it off with a layer of smarm to make it look pretty and shiny. It's like a beer commercial of dating advice.

Yes, this is exactly what I was trying to communicate above and failing to express. :)

I'm just not comfortable with the idea that because PUAs on a very superficial level offer advice that might be useful and non-harmful, they're maybe not all bad.

It's really difficult - I mean, I know it's bad to, y'know, treat groups as homogeneous (like PUAs treat women, aaaaahhh d'you see) but even if there are meaningful, valid or useful elements to something that is overall harmful to other people then I suspect the only possible moral response is to write the whole thing off. Not to reach for extreme analogies or anything but ultimately I'm sure there are some members of the Klu Klux Klan who are lovely lovely people but ... err ... they're still associated with a hate-group.

Feminism isn't optional, just like not drugging people or beating them up to get them to do what you want isn't optional.

Well, it's not *optional* for me, and I have trouble maintaining deep friendships with people who do not identify as being in some way feminist aligned but I theoretically suppose it's possible to be not-misogynist and not-feminist, though this person probably wouldn't be a PUA, given that the underlying assumptions of pick up artistry are inherently misogynistic...

But there's a point where you actually start seeing women not just as sources of sex, but as *obstacles* to it.

Yes, you're so right.

It sounds like she's going out of her way to treat these people with respect and that's working against her so that she's trying to find ways that she's got a lot in common with, and is maybe no better than, a guy who treated her like prey.

Yes, and because of the way it's written, whether intended or not, it amounts to an attempt to convince the reader to engage in a similar process :/

No woman should ever be in situation where the guy changes the subject whenever she says "take me home" and thinking about how she can be more sensitive to his needs.

Word.

Well I'm officially revolted. Shit like this makes me wonder if I'm not inherently despicable because I'm a man. It also makes me wonder why women fall for this shit and haven't subjugated malekind by now.

Steady on with the self-flagellation there tiger, this wasn't meant to be a discussion of How Men Suck. Nobody is inherently despicable. Also women "fall for this shit" not because they're stupid but because it's effective, and that some do is not further evidence that the problem is women. Also it's perfectly conceivable that a woman would "fall for" i.e. consent to aggressive pick-up tactics because she wants casual sex and the person deploying the tactics is attractive and charming. The problem with PUA stuff is that they're not focused on getting women who already want to sleep with you to sleep with you - they're about getting women who *don't* want to sleep to sleep with you, or at the very least blurring the line.

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Michal

at 18:12 on 2012-04-08

Well I'm officially revolted. Shit like this makes me wonder if I'm not inherently despicable because I'm a man.

Man-pride levels at a critical low!

Quick, deploy counter-measures!

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Wardog

at 21:16 on 2012-04-08Oh no!

Try this

. I'm sure a PUA would totally approve :D

Frollo: If she's puts up any LMR, threaten to burn down the whole of Paris, and she'll come round.

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Wardog

at 21:23 on 2012-04-08Actually I'm on a Disney PUA kick now.

Gaston: Lefrou, you'll be my wingman, provide social proof...

Lefrou: "Ev'ry guy here'd love to be you, Gaston / Even when taking your lumps

There's no man in town as admired as you / You're ev'ryone's favorite guy"

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https://profiles.google.com/113106895510756672959

at 21:32 on 2012-04-08

Man-pride levels at a critical low! Quick, deploy counter-measures!

Not working...

Oh no! Try this. I'm sure a PUA would totally approve :D

*drinks*

It's official. I'm a feminist. My kind are teh grossz.

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Wardog

at 21:42 on 2012-04-08Oh stop with the boring trolling and leave us to our Disney... I didn't for a moment suggest there was anything wrong or disgusting with men.

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Sonia Mitchell

at 01:01 on 2012-04-09Gaston was totally negging Belle when he made fun of her for reading.

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https://profiles.google.com/113106895510756672959

at 02:34 on 2012-04-09

Oh stop with the boring trolling and leave us to our Disney... I didn't for a moment suggest there was anything wrong or disgusting with men.

Trolololol. You're not helping me break troll with the two most despicable Darth Vaders in the Disney PUA community. Actually...

this guy would probably be CEO.

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http://fishinginthemud.livejournal.com/

at 02:58 on 2012-04-09Disney PUAs don't really measure up to their Nice Guys counterparts, though. Unlike a real Nice Guy, Beast had the decency to turn attractive after Belle did her womanly duty of loving him because he treated her with basic courtesy. And Aladdin actually was hot, and more fun to hang out with than Jafar.

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Wardog

at 03:11 on 2012-04-09I always thought the Beast was slightly more attractive pre-transformation :/

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http://fishinginthemud.livejournal.com/

at 03:17 on 2012-04-09If you like that kind of thing.

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http://alula_auburn.livejournal.com/

at 05:06 on 2012-04-09I first came across Clarisse Thorn through the long, painful

Hugo

Schwyzer

debacle (or at least, the most recent one). Links are long and complicated, but basically, a lot of it comes down to Clarisse defending and/or valorizing a VERY minority warrior feminist dude "professor" who has said any number of problematic things (particularly to WOC) and oh, yeah, attempted a murder-suicide of his girlfriend a dozen years ago, and writes about it in ways that are. . .oh, I can't even say "problematic" without starting to twitch. So it's very hard for me to not to think of her insistence on balance/compromise/aren't we all equally complicit kinds of thinking without it being colored by that. There's just an uncomfortable echo.

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http://luna-glass-wall.livejournal.com/

at 05:53 on 2012-04-09I thought Beast was more attractive pre-transformation, too, and I *don't* like that sort of thing XD

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Michal

at 07:03 on 2012-04-09

I always thought the Beast was slightly more attractive pre-transformation :/

I actually thought this was the majority position? At least in my fairy tale class, the professor said how disappointed she was after the beast's transformation and got enthusiastic agreement from the women there. Though if he looked more like his beast-form afterwards, you'd probably end up with a cartoon version of Brian Blessed.

Not that that would be a bad thing. Actually, the more I think about, the more it

does

seem like an improvement...

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http://fishinginthemud.livejournal.com/

at 07:17 on 2012-04-09So is it that the Beast is actually hot in Beast-form, or unimpressive in human form?

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http://luna-glass-wall.livejournal.com/

at 07:55 on 2012-04-09Unimpressive in human form, I think.

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Axiomatic

at 08:04 on 2012-04-09To recharge your manliness, you should totally listen to the

Orgazmo Themesong.

Now you're a man, a man man man. Now you're a man, a manly manly man. Now you're a man, M-A-N man man man~...

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Guy

at 09:16 on 2012-04-09

Unimpressive in human form, I think

I'd have thought the opposite; the fact that beast is, like, a beast, is what makes him interesting. That's his whole shtick. Turn him back into a nice normal human and what's left of his character?

Doesn't Shrek 2 play with some of this stuff? The film wasn't super memorable because I've managed to forget most of it (or maybe it's just me) but isn't there some opportunity for the Ogre to become a human, and he turns it down?

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Wardog

at 13:17 on 2012-04-09Oh dear God, what have I started? I'm not, err, sexually into animals (or furries) :/

I think it's partially all that romance rhetoric that tells us you should love someone as they are that makes it feel a bit incongruous for the ending to be "so, you're willing to love someone as they are, that's great, and as a reward, here, have a conventionally attractive person!"

Also, stylistically, we spent the whole movie with Beast-as-beast, so it feels as though that's the character, and the floppy haired white dude who rocks up at the end is just some random stranger - though I do seem to recall they give him the same eyes. Oh, and I guess if you really want to push the romance angle, and bear in mind I'm theorising here rather than expressing my personal preferences, but the Beast is very typically alpha - he's big, strong, wild, angry, fights off wolves and yet gentles himself for Beauty. As a human, he's just some guy.

Or perhaps I simply read too much Angela Carter at an impressionable age - I'm sure there are Beauty and the Beast riffs in The Bloody Chamber.

PS - I would be totally up for a cartoon version of Brian Blessed.

Oh, has anybody played Emily Short's Bronze? One of the things I really liked about that is that if/when you do rescue the Beast he's just this disappointing middle aged guy.

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Wardog

at 13:23 on 2012-04-09@Alula_auburn

Hello there, thanks for the comment :) I'm not very familiar with Clarisse Thorn's work, to be honest, though I've read a couple of articles she's written here and there. Perhaps I'd have been more sympathetic if I was an established reader. I wasn't aware of the Hugo Schwyzer thing though my face is now like this :/

I am really coming to hate complicity arguments... I think there's an undertone of that running through Confessions. Though she doesn't say it explicitly the fact she keeps emphasising the diversity of community, intentionally or not, builds into a "aaaaahhh but if you judge these guys are not as bad as they are..." And it takes a lot to step back and say "actually, no, it's completely different."

And, don't get me wrong, I'm sure Clarisse's 'moderate' feminism has its place, but it's just not my kind of feminism. That's okay, it's not my place to tell other women how they ought to feel about things, but I dislike the fact a large part of her shtick seems to be telling us we'd get further if we were nicer and more conciliatory.

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valse de la lune

at 17:44 on 2012-04-09

Or perhaps I simply read too much Angela Carter at an impressionable age - I'm sure there are Beauty and the Beast riffs in The Bloody Chamber.

There are three!

I also thought Beast as a man was unbelievably bland.

I'm not a furry either, gosh.

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http://fishinginthemud.livejournal.com/

at 18:10 on 2012-04-09Fair enough. I haven't seen

Beauty and the Beast

since I was about eight; it was never one of the Disney movies that resonated with me like

101 Dalmatians

or

Lady and the Tramp

. (Maybe I'm the furry.)

I just think it's entirely predictable that "love people for who they are" means "women should love men even if they're ugly, even though men would never be asked to love a woman who isn't beautiful." Then the story seems to turn around and realize that's kind of shitty and unfair, and decide to "reward" Belle with a "hot" guy. I mean, at least they're making an effort to be consistent. I can appreciate that.

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Wardog

at 18:55 on 2012-04-09

There are three!

Three? The Tiger's Bride, The Courtship of Mr Lyon and...?

Then the story seems to turn around and realize that's kind of shitty and unfair, and decide to "reward" Belle with a "hot" guy. I mean, at least they're making an effort to be consistent. I can appreciate that.

Not remotely feminist but I've always loved Beauty and the Beast. It's one of my favourite fairy stories and therefore one of my favourite Disney films... it always has resonated with me, though because I want to meet a hirsute man with a short-temper to marry ;)

Also, singing cutlery. Win.

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Sister Magpie

at 20:21 on 2012-04-09

I just think it's entirely predictable that "love people for who they are" means "women should love men even if they're ugly, even though men would never be asked to love a woman who isn't beautiful." Then the story seems to turn around and realize that's kind of shitty and unfair, and decide to "reward" Belle with a "hot" guy. I mean, at least they're making an effort to be consistent. I can appreciate that.

But the theme of "love people for who they are" isn't at all the theme of B&B. The Beast *isn't* loveable or worthy of love until he changes. At which point he's allowed to be human, which is his true form, again. There's no theme, for instance, about how Belle should love Gaston for who he is. The Beast/Human thing is all about punishing the prince for being a jerk and not letting him be unpunished until he's learned his lesson and stopped being a jerk. There was no lesson for Belle to learn. Her reward is in meeting a guy who loves *her* for herself by giving her a library instead of telling her she should be interested in other things.

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Andy G

at 21:04 on 2012-04-09Not worthy of love ... but worthy of lust? That is the burning question.

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http://fishinginthemud.livejournal.com/

at 21:25 on 2012-04-09

The Beast/Human thing is all about punishing the prince for being a jerk and not letting him be unpunished until he's learned his lesson and stopped being a jerk.

Whereupon he's rewarded with the love of a Good Woman. And Belle does manage to love him in his Beast form, which was required for him to be redeemed. He may not be "worthy" of her love, but he needs it anyway, and she gives it to him because she's a Good Woman.

Belle shouldn't love Gaston because Gaston is not you, he's the guy who's trying to steal the girl you love with his good looks and charm. The Beast is you, the Nice Guy who is unworthy of the girl but in a just fairytale would would be gifted with her love and allowed to redeem yourself with it.

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http://fishinginthemud.livejournal.com/

at 21:43 on 2012-04-09And I also think it's relevant that the Beast himself, in Beast form, has a number of attractive qualities. It's his own opinion of himself, which manifests as the curse placed on him, that supposedly makes him unlovable. As the self-esteem of a Nice Guy depends on how (hot) women feel about him, the salvation of everything in the Beast's life depends on his getting a woman to love him.

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valse de la lune

at 22:12 on 2012-04-09@Kyra: sorry, I am stupid. It is indeed two. Ffffff.

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Sister Magpie

at 02:58 on 2012-04-10

Whereupon he's rewarded with the love of a Good Woman. And Belle does manage to love him in his Beast form, which was required for him to be redeemed. He may not be "worthy" of her love, but he needs it anyway, and she gives it to him because she's a Good Woman. Belle shouldn't love Gaston because Gaston is not you, he's the guy who's trying to steal the girl you love with his good looks and charm. The Beast is you, the Nice Guy who is unworthy of the girl but in a just fairytale would would be gifted with her love and allowed to redeem yourself with it.

The Beast is cursed with having to love another person, and to earn their love in return. He earns the love by being loveable to Belle, which includes his caring about things that are important to her, and wanting her to be happy even if what she wants will make him unhappy. His becoming worthy of love is what he must do to be human.

Gaston continues to be selfish, to want Belle only for himself without caring about the things that matter to her, and to feel entitled to her love. So she doesn't love him.

If you're assigning the roles to people in real life you might imagine yourself as the good guy and the other guy as the bad guy, but the Beast lets Belle go thinking she won't come back. There's no helping guys from confusing their own Nice Guy behavior with the Beast, but the Beast's story in itself isn't troubling to me. He doesn't play out the nice guy narrative at all. He's just temporarily not handsome (allegedly).

It's his own opinion of himself, which manifests as the curse placed on him, that supposedly makes him unlovable. As the self-esteem of a Nice Guy depends on how (hot) women feel about him, the salvation of everything in the Beast's life depends on his getting a woman to love him.

That seems to imply the Beast is self-loathing and in need of self-esteem. He's turned into a beast because he's spoiled, selfish and unkind. His salvation depends on his not being those things anymore, so much so that he can love another person and they would love him in return.

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at 16:42 on 2012-04-10

He's turned into a beast because he's spoiled, selfish and unkind. His salvation depends on his not being those things anymore, so much so that he can love another person and they would love him in return.

True. And I'm probably hitting the Beast = Nice Guy angle too hard. I don't want to malign the guy unnecessarily. His relationship with Belle is relatively healthy and well-developed for a children's fairytale romance.

He doesn't play out the nice guy narrative at all.

As I see it, the Nice Guy narrative is:

Men earn women's love by being worthy of it. Individual men get to decide what constitutes worthiness on their part, whether it's slaying dragons or helping old ladies cross the street. Once a man has met his own standards for himself, the woman of his choice (or any woman of similar quality to her) is obligated to love him.

Women have no similar opportunity to earn a man's love. Women get love by being beautiful, period. Non-beautiful women don't get love because they don't exist/aren't really women/aren't interested in love or sex/don't matter. Incidentally, a beautiful woman can be either Good or Bad, and if she's Good, she'll give the Nice Guy the love he's earned. If she's Bad, she'll skip out on her obligation.

Belle's goodness is unquestioned, so that element doesn't come into play here. The story is also clear that the Beast is required to meet *Belle's* standards (and society's in general) to be worthy of her love, not his own initially selfish ones. Maybe that's the difference that makes a difference, but the underlying idea that the Beast has to earn Belle's love (and that she would be compelled to give it to him once he did) seems completely taken for granted. I might of course be wrong about this, because it's been a while since I've seen the movie.

I guess the solution would be for the Beast's redemption not to be conditioned on Belle's love for him. What if he had stopped being a jerk and Belle decided she liked another guy instead? Would he have turned human again? Or what if he remained a jerk and Belle loved him anyway because she was a masochist? Would that have broken the curse?

Of course dealing with those questions would completely undermine the story, and I'm not trying to fault a Disney romance for being a Disney romance. And I do remember that the Beast lets Belle go initially, doesn't force himself on her in any way, and generally does treat her like a person. For the most part, the Beast as a character is not a problem. He's certainly not *consciously* living out the Nice Guy narrative. He's just an unhappy guy who has to learn to stop being a jerk, and eventually does. Fair enough.

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Wardog

at 17:48 on 2012-04-10

The story is also clear that the Beast is required to meet *Belle's* standards (and society's in general) to be worthy of her love, not his own initially selfish ones. Maybe that's the difference that makes a difference, but the underlying idea that the Beast has to earn Belle's love (and that she would be compelled to give it to him once he did) seems completely taken for granted.

I think this is the difference that, err, makes the difference. Otherwise essentially any narrative that involves personal change and development (which may or may not be triggered by love for another) is by default a Nice Guy Narrative. I mean, I don't particularly buy Austen's novels as romances but I think it's pretty clear that Mr Darcy isn't a Nice Guy. The thing is, there's a massive difference between clinging to your standards of good behaviour and recognising the value of someone else's. In Nice Guy narratives, as far as I understand it, the Nice Guy doesn't need to change, because his behaviour is already "right" (he's the Nice Guy, remember). The problem is simply that the stupid woman isn't capable of recognising it because she's been conditioned by society (or whatever) to admire Jerks. Or, if it does need to change, it's purely a matter of self-confidence in one's own awesome. I guess the classic example is Scott Pilgrim. Urgh.

Although the Beast is trying to 'earn' Belle's love, by learning how to be nice to people instead of acting like the spoiled Princeling he is, I don't think it automatically follows that he is 'entitled' to her love, and I don't think the story suggests that he is - in fact, I think the very fact he lets her go only highlights this. Equally, although she *chooses* to come back to him, her right to leave in the first place in never questioned. Essentially she comes back on her term because she has decided she loves him, not because his sacrifice has entitled him to a sacrifice in return.

The other thing I'd say is that Nice Guy narratives tend to emphasise the stupidity of the woman (incapable as she is of seeing the Nice Guy right in front of her). Belle, by contrast, is pretty clear sighted. She doesn't for a moment think Gaston is anything other than a jerk. And she reacts badly to the Beast initially (regardless of his frightening appearance) because he's treating her badly, which is fair enough. It is bad to treat people badly is a pretty reasonable moral for any story, Disney or no, and it doesn't automatically overlap with Nice Guy narratives.

I guess the B&B Nice Guy narrative would go something like this: Belle is in love with this jerk called Gaston but one day her father gets lost in the forest and rescued by a Beast. Belle goes to see her father but because she's been conditioned by society to fancy guys like Gaston, she doesn't recognise how awesome and noble the Beast is, and therefore treats him badly. Belle continues to treat the Beast badly and he continues to be awesome, rescuing her from wolves, giving her a library, inviting to a dance with him etc. etc. Eventually she presses him to let her go, even though it will kill him, and because he's loves her and is so awesome he agrees. She returns to Gaston. But due to time spent with the Beast she realises what a jerk Gaston is and that she's in love with the Beast after all. The end.

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Arthur B

at 17:50 on 2012-04-10

He's turned into a beast because he's spoiled, selfish and unkind.

She's an inventor's daughter with an addiction to the printed word.

They fight crime!

(Sorry, couldn't resist.)

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http://fishinginthemud.livejournal.com/

at 18:45 on 2012-04-10

Otherwise essentially any narrative that involves personal change and development (which may or may not be triggered by love for another) is by default a Nice Guy Narrative.

I actually think the Nice Guy narrative isn't that removed from the mainstream narrative of heterosexual romance. The more abject Nice Guys subscribe to variously toxic and self-serving versions of it, but they didn't come up with the basic plot structure.

This may be a result of my seeing straight romance as a gay person, i.e. entirely from the outside. When I like a woman, it's because I like her, not because she killed a dragon or thinks she's been sufficiently nice to me. She either does or doesn't feel likewise. Of course the average straight person would have similar personal experiences with relationships. It's just that the stories you tell each other don't always happen to line up with reality.

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James D

at 19:13 on 2012-04-10Yeah, I think the whole 'Nice Guy Narrative' thing still stems from the conventional idea that men are the 'pursuers' in romance and women are the 'pursued', despite the fact that Nice Guys supposedly reject that idea. If a woman doesn't love a man, it's because he didn't do a good enough job of pursuing her through being Nice, or he did and she's just a bitch. The difference with Nice Guys of course tends to be that just talking to a woman at all is such a burdensome task for them that they feel entitled to some sort of proportional reward just for making the effort.

Regardless, according to this narrative, someone must be blamed for the failure to form a relationship. Rather than just chalking it up to, y'know, two people being mutually incompatible and that being OK because there are billions of others.

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at 23:40 on 2012-04-10

Regardless, according to this narrative, someone must be blamed for the failure to form a relationship.

Pretty much. And if a man and a woman spend significant time in each other's company and aren't sexually attracted to each other, there must be a good reason for it. Whereas if you're gay, your peer group and your dating pool are essentially one and the same.

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Janne Kirjasniemi

at 09:33 on 2012-04-12While having a good confidence and casual sex in a safe, respectful environment are good things in priciple, it seems to be that the pick-up artists are merely using these justifications as a smoke screen to disguise their unfounded feelings of being entitled to something, their pitiful idea that self-worth correlates with the number of people you can trick into having sex and above all their disgusting difficulty in understanding women as autonomous and feeling persons who deserve respect and who are not there to give up anything. It's true that many men experience approaching the opposite sex as something daunting and no doubt it creates pressure in a culture which is obsessed with sex. It is just that the problem seems to be this whole macho understanding that real men are required to have sex with women and that women's function is mainly to administer sex to worthy applicants. Teaching men(or anyone) to circumvent this fundamental wrongness in the issue by dehumanizing women and manipulating or tricking them to give up this "commodity" does not respect freedom or accept women as people capable of enjoying sex for their own enjoyment or reasons.

Rather the whole thing resembles a confidence trick. The "techniques" are the same as it is with manipulation in general(as pointed out by Arthur by his comparison of these things to Dr. Lecter) or interestingly enough, wth performing magic tricks. If I remember correctly, wasn't this Mystery pal a magician of some sort before his career shift. Of course the difference is that Derren Brown probably does not despise his audience or dehumanize them, unlike these con men, who have to do so by default so they can get on with treating people so lousily. The whole existence of those techiniques to face the situation where the mark regrets being manipulated(or raped, as it were) seem to prove the dishonesty of the whole situation.

And do these people even enjoy sex? It seems their goal is to repair their shattered self-esteem by tricking women to having sex with them, while they themselves don't seem to think they are normally worth the attention of women. And the goal is to brag about it to their friends on the internet.

I don't know if I'm making any sense with any of this. It just feels that as long as it remains an ideal in our society that sex is somehow obligatory for some while it is at the same time regarded as dirty and immoral for others and somehow in general (the forbidden fruit is no doubt great material for advertisement gimmicks) these sorts of aberrations are capable of existing.

The Game seems interesting though, in the way that Mötley Crue bandbiograohy The Dirt was, to see how low it can go. But basically the plot of young man without confidence gets confidence and has lots of sex while it is found out all his friends are insecure assholes and then he meets a special girl and it all changes, seems kinda typical and rather banal.

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Janne Kirjasniemi

at 09:40 on 2012-04-12I still have to add

this

list of animals expressing their feelings on this.

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http://fishinginthemud.livejournal.com/

at 11:46 on 2012-04-12

And do these people even enjoy sex?

I wonder about that myself. No doubt they enjoy the self-esteem boost of having someone find you sexually attractive, which may propel them through their daily lives, but I wonder what they get out of sex beyond that and the momentary relief of ejaculation. I think it must be really grim to go through life with no motivation but single-minded adherence to your goals, no matter how charmingly you manage to present yourself.

In fact, now that I think about it, I've encountered one blog troll in my life who I think actually admitted to being a PUA, and I believe he must have been at least somewhat honest in his boasts about how

"successful" he'd been. The way PUAs treat women when they're not trying to get laid is really enlightening. This one managed to get so far under my skin that I couldn't get rid of the itching for days, which I guess is the goal of a successful troll on a feminist blog. He was clearly revolted by "sluts," even though he obviously wouldn't have racked up his "number" without them, and described his grudging encounters in college with disgusting bitches who had the nerve to have condoms in their dorm rooms. Of course he had sex with them, because he was a man, but it just wasn't as special for him as it should have been, because the fucking sluts were apparently doing it for their own reasons, and not for the sole purpose of making the PUA feel good about himself.

The guy was genuinely offended at the thought that a woman might also feel good about herself for getting laid. After all, it's only men who have to make any effort to get sex, because women are "naturally" attractive and men aren't, so only men have the right to feel special for it. I realize now that a woman's high opinion of herself is the primary obstacle a PUA has to getting her in bed, so I can better understand why he was so opposed to female self-esteem in principle.

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Arthur B

at 12:51 on 2012-04-12

Of course he had sex with them, because he was a man, but it just wasn't as special for him as it should have been, because the fucking sluts were apparently doing it for their own reasons, and not for the sole purpose of making the PUA feel good about himself.

I think this is pretty much it, it's this insanely poisonous combination of self-centredness and insecurity. There's a lot of dudes out there who still haven't reconciled themselves to the fact that the world isn't all about them and what they want.

Every time I pay attention to the manosphere I am mildly appalled by the amount of single dude echo chambers out there which reinforce this stuff (PUAs, Nice Guy mythology, the whole Friend Zone thing, the Forever Alone subreddit...), partially because I actually listened to a lot of that sort of nonsense as a younger and stupider man and it ended up making me feel miserable and discouraged, but more because the tone of the single dude rhetoric seems to be getting more and more hateful these days. Or am I just getting more sensitive to how awful it is?

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James D

at 14:30 on 2012-04-12

I still have to add thislist of animals expressing their feelings on this.

Shit, I never did finish The Infinite Jest. Mostly because practically nothing had happened by page 100.

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Axiomatic

at 00:04 on 2012-04-13Eh, I'm a single dude and will remain that way, because frankly the whole messy business of trying to attract someone and dating and everything just seems so tiresome. There are thousands of things that are way more fun and require far less effort.

And you know what? This ain't the fault of women. They have nothing to do with this.

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http://fishinginthemud.livejournal.com/

at 16:03 on 2012-04-16

the tone of the single dude rhetoric seems to be getting more and more hateful these days. Or am I just getting more sensitive to how awful it is?

I think the easier it is to find a social echo chamber that's tailored to your personal needs, and the more time you let yourself spend in that echo chamber without much meaningful interaction with anyone outside it, the more magnified and pronounced your personal batshit is likely to become. There's simply no opportunity or encouragement to pull your head out of your ass, because everyone around you just thinks that's where your head is supposed to be.

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http://grendelkhan.livejournal.com/

at 01:41 on 2012-04-18

I’m absolutely 100% sure that I haven’t had sex with anyone who regretted it afterwards, nor have I had sex I have myself regretted, and I’ve plenty of casual sex.

Wait, really? Is this some kind of mega-regret that I'm unfamiliar with? I've had sex with people and thought "eh, we're not really compatible in the sack, too bad" or it's made things awkward, or I've been with someone who had different expectations for where things would go afterwards that we hadn't hashed out before, or any number of other reasons for regret.

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Wardog

at 09:09 on 2012-04-18

Wait, really? Is this some kind of mega-regret that I'm unfamiliar with?

I meant in the sense of not being entirely certain whether meaningful consent was given - I've had plenty of mediocre sex (alas). I mean I think there's a profound difference between "that sex wasn't as good as I hoped it would be" or "oh dear, that seems to have had an unfortunate impact on my relationship" compared to "I don't think that person really wanted to sleep with me but did anyway."

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James D

at 15:36 on 2012-04-18

"I don't think that person really wanted to sleep with me but did anyway."

Henceforth to be referred to as 'mega-regret'.

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Arthur B

at 15:55 on 2012-04-18I thought we already had a word for it? (It rhymes with "grape".)

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Wardog

at 15:59 on 2012-04-18Or buyer's remorse, as the PUAs say :)

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http://fishinginthemud.livejournal.com/

at 16:29 on 2012-04-18And it's not that they blame you for wanting a refund, but it does hurt their feelings a bit.

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James D

at 17:18 on 2012-04-18

I thought we already had a word for it? (It rhymes with "grape".)

That's the act itself, not how you feel about it.

Or buyer's remorse, as the PUAs say :)

Also this never made too much sense to me...I always though that (according to the PUA narrative) sex was a commodity that men had to earn from women, or at least trick them out of. At what point do women become the 'buyers' in this situation? Shouldn't it be 'seller's remorse'? I mean, maybe looking for internal consistency in that particular brand of odious doctrine is a fool's game, but I wish they'd get their shit straight so I could hate it more effectively!

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Wardog

at 17:21 on 2012-04-18

That's the act itself, not how you feel about it

Well ... uh ... if you feel like you had non consensual sex then you had non consensual sex. It's not like The Act is an entirely separate and definable entity.

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Wardog

at 17:27 on 2012-04-18

Also this never made too much sense to me...I always though that (according to the PUA narrative) sex was a commodity that men had to earn from women, or at least trick them out of

I believe PUAs a very much against the idea that they have to 'earn' or 'pay for' sex from women. I think essentially it's called buyer's remorse because the woman 'bought' the PUA's game.

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James D

at 17:27 on 2012-04-18I think I'm getting a little confused here. "Mega-regret" is how one might feel about having had non-consensual sex. In that case "The Act" and "mega-regret" would not be synonymous, which is what I thought Arthur was implying.

You know what, I probably better stop before I say something stupid(er).

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http://fishinginthemud.livejournal.com/

at 17:34 on 2012-04-18

At what point do women become the 'buyers' in this situation? Shouldn't it be 'seller's remorse'?

I thought about that too, but it seems like PUAs have updated that rusty old business model to a new one where men are selling themselves and sex is a commodity women want as much as men.

Because it's still hideously emasculating for a man to have to do anything to be attractive to women beyond winking at them and pulling out his wallet, PUAs have mixed reactions to this updated arrangement. The more successful ones seem to embrace it as an ugly reality they can use to manipulate women they imagine would not fuck them on their own merits, while the less successful ones simply resent it and sulk about it, Nice Guy-style.

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http://fishinginthemud.livejournal.com/

at 18:20 on 2012-04-18In other words, sex is still an *exchange*, where one party or the other comes out ahead, rather than a potentially enjoyable experience that people share with each other.

In the best kind of economic exchange, both parties end up feeling like they came out ahead, but when that doesn't happen, you end up with a modified form of buyer's remorse. The PUA takes the business up a notch by considering himself not only a party in an economic transaction, but an actual snake-oil salesman, whose success is measured in how many transactions he manages to get the upper hand in.

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Melissa G.

at 19:10 on 2012-04-18

Also this never made too much sense to me...I always though that (according to the PUA narrative) sex was a commodity that men had to earn from women, or at least trick them out of. At what point do women become the 'buyers' in this situation?

I think, as Kyra said, it's buyer's remorse because they "bought" what the PUA is selling. His DHV, peacocking, whathaveyou.

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Arthur B

at 19:11 on 2012-04-18

I thought about that too, but it seems like PUAs have updated that rusty old business model to a new one where men are selling themselves and sex is a commodity women want as much as men.

Something I've noticed is that insecure guys who get into PUA nonsense (or Nice Guy dogma, or Forever Alone, or Men's Rights, or MGTOW, or Incel, or love-shy, or whatever the misogyny du jour is right now) often end up having trouble distinguishing between genuine self-confidence and being a smug arsehole.

I think part of it comes from the way Nice Guy and PUA and all the others feed into each other. The Nice Guy is convinced that women like "jerks", because he mistakes the self-confidence of the men his stalkee chooses to dates as being jerkish behaviour. The PUA technician dutifully calibrates his magic formulas to concentrate on jerkish, selfish behaviour. The person using these formulas is behaving like a hateful prick but is occasionally getting laid, because they're actually bothering to go talk to people and occasionally luck out whereas previously they sighed sadly in a corner and didn't talk to anyone. Consequently, they believe the formulas work and get deeper into the whole PUA thing, and Nice Guy theory is also neatly confirmed.

I do sometimes feel bad for them because when your self-confidence is lacking it feels really bad, but I don't think it's the sort of thing you can fake; if you roleplay as someone with self-confidence but don't have it yourself then either you just won't be very convincing (but hopefully people will be nice enough not to burst your bubble and you might earn some of the real thing) or you'll just act out your preconceptions of what self-confidence might look like. And PUA is 100% about covering for a lack of self-confidence because let's face it, if you really thought you were a good catch you wouldn't need expensive books and online courses to learn how to talk to people.

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James D

at 19:38 on 2012-04-18

I do sometimes feel bad for them because when your self-confidence is lacking it feels really bad, but I don't think it's the sort of thing you can fake

I think that's one of those catch-22 things, where if you're able to 'fake' self-confidence well enough to talk to women regularly, then you're demonstrating actual self-confidence. Everyone has some self-doubts, the key is just being able to act despite them when you want to. The key for me was just talking to women as if anything beyond a casual platonic friendship were utterly out of the question. It makes things a lot easier and there's a lot less pressure on everyone. Then if something more does come out of it, great, but there's no pressure on anyone for sex and there's no whining about the 'Friend Zone' because a friend is a good thing to have and it's the most you expected in the first place.

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http://fishinginthemud.livejournal.com/

at 20:16 on 2012-04-18

The person using these formulas is behaving like a hateful prick but is occasionally getting laid, because they're actually bothering to go talk to people and occasionally luck out whereas previously they sighed sadly in a corner and didn't talk to anyone. Consequently, they believe the formulas work and get deeper into the whole PUA thing, and Nice Guy theory is also neatly confirmed.

Exactly. The one useful service PUAs provide their clients is the exhortation to get off their asses and actually talk to women instead of sitting around hating the world and feeling sorry for themselves. After that, it's basically a numbers game, which I understand most PUA material must be fairly clear about.

This could of course be accomplished without the misogyny, creepy hostility, and vicious resentment that suffuses PUA and Nice Guy culture. But these men would be nothing without their misogyny, and they simply aren't going to give it up.

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Arthur B

at 20:19 on 2012-04-18

Everyone has some self-doubts

Speak for yourself. :P

But srsly, I think that mastering your self-doubt is something everyone has to come to terms with in their own way, it's just that the PUAs choose a way which is poisonous and harmful to others whilst the Nice Guy true believers seem to actively refuse to attempt to come to terms with it. And of course sometimes you'll have big setbacks and have to work it all out again and so on.

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Arthur B

at 14:58 on 2013-02-17Necro'd because someone made a

hilarious video where a robot takes you through a real PUA technique.

Anyone who isn't sure whether NLP-style PUA crap is abusive should give it a watch because the thinking behind it is terrifying.

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Wardog

at 17:00 on 2013-02-17D:

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Cammalot

at 19:20 on 2013-02-17I can't decide if this is "How to sound like a serial killer 101" or "How to make your narcissism so blatant that it crosses into comedy."

There's also something wrong with the girl's scripted response. If someone starts obsessing about leaving forever and talks about his extremely recently dead friend, would not a more expected response be "oh my god, I'm sorry, were you close?" (and in this case, with this guy, while still maybe taking him seriously, "have you thought about seeing a counselor?" or I dunno "do you know Christ?" or similar) At which point the game would be up because the whole story would fall apart for the finely processed grade a bullshit it is, and anyone who'd ever actually lost someone would have my permission to sock him at full strength six times in the balls.

Okay not really. Sort of not really. I don't believe in violence. Much. (But I FEEL it.)

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Axiomatic

at 20:20 on 2013-02-17Somehow I feel that the only realistic response to someone saying something like "What if I went through the door and it closed FOREVER AND YOU COULD NEVER TALK TO ME AGAIN?" would be

oh no, I've slept with a crazy person.

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Arthur B

at 20:37 on 2013-02-17Or, indeed, "Sounds like a good idea to me. Off you go."

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Wardog

at 20:56 on 2013-02-17Also, who brings up their dead friend in the middle of nookie? Like, I know it's traumatic and stuff but still.

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Arthur B

at 21:14 on 2013-02-17

Also, who brings up their dead friend in the middle of nookie? Like, I know it's traumatic and stuff but still.

Is it more or less weird if it's your dead

imaginary

friend who only exists for the purpose of your Scientology-for-Nice-Guys NLP scripts?

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Axiomatic

at 22:07 on 2013-02-17To make it less weird, don't start talking about your dead friend, type the story up and have it read out loud to her by a Text-to-Speech program. Post-coital bliss combined with the dulcet tones of Microsoft Sam narrating a tale of death by truck is sure to make your beloved fall for you forever.

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Janne Kirjasniemi

at 22:10 on 2013-02-17"This physical act of love reminds me of my friend who died horribly in an accident just last week,"

"..."

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Wardog

at 23:16 on 2013-02-17

"This physical act of love reminds me of my friend who died horribly in an accident just last week," "..."

I think that's a pretty hardcore neg ;)

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Cammalot

at 00:13 on 2013-02-18Heh. It would either get dude kicked out of PUA academy or made valedictorian.

In seriousness, I do think there's a legit, or at least semi legit, mental place where people seek out sex to deal with trauma, especially death. It's just that the made up dialogue here sounds so completely unnatural to me, as if the speaker is projecting his own self centeredness onto his partner in a way that makes the whore thing sound like "how to fuck s Real Doll while making up stories in your head." Pity or sympathy at least initially wouldn't strike me so badly. "I'm uncomfortable, let's just end the evening now" or "I am not the person to help you with this, sorry buddy, bye" wouldn't strike me badly either (especially in an understood-to-be-casual situation). But here we're given something along the lines of "waah, your dead friend isn't amusing to me, why can't you just fuck me some more" which is infantilizing *in addition to* completely lacking in self-peservation.

Granted I shouldn't be surprised that the portrayal of female response here lacked respect. I'm responding to the skin-crawl with microanalysis and nitpickery. It makes me feel better.

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Cammalot

at 00:15 on 2013-02-18The WHOLE thing! WHOLE THING not WHORE THING, oh my god, sorry, sorry. I'm typing with one thumb on a phone!

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Janne Kirjasniemi

at 00:36 on 2013-02-18Well... If we're getting into the details there is some really weird stuff going on that's just passed by anyways. Like this entire thing is done after "you've already had intercourse," and"when you've already set up the fact that you're the man of her dreams and fulfill her emotional needs," to achieve control or whatever? That sort of rhymes and is really optimistic about the potential manipulation that can be achieved through this thing. Fulfilling dreams and needs and everything.

And after the first weird door exchange it goes "bring her to another orgasm or whatever," I mean what whatever? Would a really nice sandwich do the trick? Or do all POEs get like a PEZ dispenser that hands out orgasms, but can only be used on other people? For normal people, good sex and some chit-chat should suffice, what is exactly is the point of behaving like this assuming one is not a sociopath who finds fulfillment in this, very particular way?

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Wardog

at 10:20 on 2013-02-18Freudian, Cammalot, Freudian!

No, I agree that sex can be very healing when dealing with grief etc. And I think, in the wake of that kind of trauma, it's not unreasonable to want to affirm life / togetherness / love or whatever.

But the context and the artificiality of the situation here renders the whole thing absurd. And since this is clearly a pick-up, not a long-standing relationship or anything like that, it makes no sense to go from sex to personal revelation without so much as a by-your-leave. I mean, I'm not saying you can't forge emotional connections through short-term physical affairs and some of my better one-night stands have had that strangely intense honesty you can sometimes only foster with strangers - but equally, if I'd picked up some one up with the explicit mutual understanding that this was a sex thing I'd be pretty damn pissed off if they suddenly started burbling about their dead mate. To me, that seems like breaking the implied social contract. I have no objection to providing emotional support but, again, it's a consent thing. Everyone has the right to know what they're getting into :)

And if they sounded like a robot and were making the whole thing up anyway ... well ... that's just the fail cherry on the cake wreck.

@Janne

That's hilarious. Cake or death. Orgasm or whatever. One of the things I find vaguely intriguing about pick-up artistry, actually, is the vacuum of sex. I mean, it's all about getting some, but nobody seems remotely interested in ... well ... sex.

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Arthur B

at 11:18 on 2013-02-18

That's hilarious. Cake or death. Orgasm or whatever. One of the things I find vaguely intriguing about pick-up artistry, actually, is the vacuum of sex. I mean, it's all about getting some, but nobody seems remotely interested in ... well ... sex.

I have a theory that this comes down to two factors. Firstly, you have the issue that to concentrate more on sex, the PUA world would have to spend more time talking about sex - not the acquisition of it, not the aftermath, but the act itself. The dudes who get into pickup artistry do not want to discuss sexytimes in detail with other dudes because, like, that'd be totes ghey.

The second factor is that PUA, despite being overtly about the pursuit of sex, is on some level also about the pursuit of validation. Guys who get into this, or into /r/Foreveralone, or into Love-Shy or Involuntary Celibacy or NiceGuyism or whatever, often tend to have one thing in common: they really, really don't like rejection. NiceGuyism and its related ideologies revolve around griping about women rejecting you and coming up with theories as to why that may be the case. PUA techniques boil down to adopting extroverted, confident behaviour (or a close simulacrum of such) and talking to a large number of women until eventually one of them doesn't reject you.

It doesn't matter if you suffer a million rejections in an evening; provided that you get one person to

not

reject you (or at least not do so obviously and overtly), then you've snagged your validation and you feel like a winner. At that point, it doesn't really matter whether the sex is any good at all; the important thing is that you actually got some and aren't an Average Frustrated Chump.

So really, it goes back in the end to a lack of self-confidence and the adoption of PUA techniques as a substitute for that, whereas if you genuinely like yourself you can just self-validate and get on with life.

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Cammalot

at 16:43 on 2013-02-18

Freudian, Cammalot, Freudian!

I was framed, framed I say! Betrayed by Autocorrect!

Honestly, I can’t tell if this is supposed to be a transient one-night sort of thing or (at least potentially) long-term, and, I think, neither can the person who scripted the goddamn dialogue in the first place.

On the one hand, this is Pickup “Artistry” and thus shallow and superficial and summed up in a bunch of bedpost notches, by definition and intent. Everything that you and Arthur just said about being not about relationships or interaction between people, even the truncated interaction of one-time sex, but about being cool and badass enough to circumvent rejection, attempting to make oneself superior to the would-be rejector.

On the other, there’s that whole effed up wanna-be Pavlovian segment in which your desired result is to have your girl is so keyed into the word “door” that you can send her into a needy, compliant panic just by calling her at her workplace and mentioning that she should look at one. Which is still about superiority — putting one’s potential rejector on a shelf so rejection can be circumvented at will? Whenever? As a hobby?

It’s doublespeak, doubletalk, doublethink.

It *is* absurd. Yes. That is a comfort. (It’s also becoming the go-to standard in certain areas of NYC that I have the misfortune to frequent, which is why I’m reacting too strongly to this. I went home for the holidays and on three separate occasions found myself in situations where people tried to get my phone number beginning with small veiled insults and culminating in outlining to me all the ways in which women are destroying the black community. But I, I guess, could redeem myself and womankind by handing over the digits an agreeing to be taught to be less horrible by this random stranger? The neg to end all negs? This has been on my mind.)

(I'm not talking bars or accepted social places, either, I'm talking bus stops.)

I’m also vaguely comforted by the fact that the poster of that vid ran totally agrees that this is abusive and effed up and ran it through the robot voice generator to mock it. Like the Xtranormal Goodkind parodies.

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Cheriola

at 18:16 on 2013-02-18Honestly, I sometimes think that all the "men are from mars, women from venus" othering paired with the sexual entitlement supported by the media (see also the recent

superbowl Audi advert

; the various women similarly

sexually assaulting the Doctor

on a kid's show) is creating a form of gender-specific sociopathy, where planned emotional manipulation of the opposite gender is okay and gratification comes from control-trips instead of agreeing to have fun together.

Granted, I see this all from a somewhat distant, outsider position. I don't get out much, I don't flirt, and I've only been sexually harrassed or badgered for my number twice in my life (I'm 30), both times by men not belonging to my country's dominant culture. So all this PUA talk sound seriously abnormal to me...

Hum... Audi is a German company. I wonder if this was sanctioned by the headquarter, or if it was the brainchild of the US branch. (Business practises can differ quite a lot in other countries with German-based multinationals.) I haven't watched German-produced TV in many years, aside from documentaries on advertisement-free channels. I wonder if that stuff is prevalent here as well, or if it makes a difference. Though, in the end there is so much fictional media imported from the anglophone world that we should be brainwashed just the same...

Uh... I don't know if I should even post this. Is it too tangential to the topic? Sorry, I'm sick in bed and bored...

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Fishing in the Mud

at 19:04 on 2013-02-18

planned emotional manipulation of the opposite gender is okay and gratification comes from control-trips instead of agreeing to have fun together.

I really think this is the way we're supposed to expect het relationships to work. When we find someone we love who loves us that we can have a genuinely fun relationship with, we're supposed to assume our partner and our relationship are exceptional, and that we could never expect such a relationship with the majority of potential partners, not because we're incompatible with them, but because they're bad, shallow people who deserve to be manipulated.

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Wardog

at 10:44 on 2013-02-19

(It’s also becoming the go-to standard in certain areas of NYC that I have the misfortune to frequent, which is why I’m reacting too strongly to this.

This is so horrific I can't even... :/

To be honest, like Cheriola my pulling and being pulled days are long over (thank fuck) so I'm not really well placed to be insightful on the state of the game ... but I don't know if pick-up artistry is generally more common in America. I think I know one person who once had somebody try to clumsy neg her into bed - but, being a clued in cookie, she was well-placed to recognise the techniques. (And sorted enough not to sleep with someone who was self-evidently a wanker). But it seems semi-common over the pond.

Uh... I don't know if I should even post this. Is it too tangential to the topic? Sorry, I'm sick in bed and bored...

Nothing is too tangential for Fb ;) Well, I'm sure something conceivably be too tangential but I can't think of it, off-hand. Since I rarely watch television, the only adverts I tend to see at the cinema and they're often just weird and abstract, and involve masses of CGI. I'd probably rejoice at some good old fashioned exploitative sex sells bullshit :)

I really think this is the way we're supposed to expect het relationships to work.

Most likely, or else we are still inculcated in the exchange model of heterosexual relationships: i.e. women want babies and washing machines and security, and men want sex and computer games, and by agreeing to date each other men and women are able to get what they want by compromising on what they want i.e. women have sex in exchange for security, men offer security in exchange for sex.

OMG IT'S SO MESSED UP.

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Arthur B

at 13:33 on 2013-02-19

Most likely, or else we are still inculcated in the exchange model of heterosexual relationships: i.e. women want babies and washing machines and security, and men want sex and computer games, and by agreeing to date each other men and women are able to get what they want by compromising on what they want i.e. women have sex in exchange for security, men offer security in exchange for sex.

I've definitely observed a dynamic in these subcultures where they constantly reinforce these two weird related bits of doublethink:

1: Women are the gatekeepers of sex, and are at the same time not all that interested in it and basically provide it as a favour to men (or as a means of controlling them because Earth is ruled by the

Honored Matres

or some shit like that).

2: Men are supposed to be the seekers of sex, but only jerks actually do this.

Point 1 seems to be a constant in whichever misogyny subculture you're looking at. Point 2 is effectively there too but the subcultures differ in their response to it. Nice Guys, obsessed as they usually are with BEING IN A RELATIONSHIP (any relationship will do!) often seem to believe that they are looking for something deep and romantic and pure and more than just sex (although sex would be real nice too), and then get upset when they get friendzoned by women who never saw them in a sexual way because they never actually presented as a sexual person. PUAs admit that they want sex and deliberately try to act more like "jerks" (read: confident men who are able to score casual sex).

Both cases seem to involve men trying to work out where the appropriate balance is between decorum and flirtation. Nice Guys don't want to look like horndogs who are only after casual sex; when they fail at this facade they look like hypocrites and creeps, when they succeed they wonder why everyone assumes they're only interested in platonic relationships. The more overt PUA techniques like peacocking are all about declaring that the practitioner likes sex and people might want to consider having sex with them, which I guess is fair enough but is rather obnoxious when people are blaringly obvious about it. The more manipulative PUA techniques often try to trick women into considering having sex with the practitioner without directly declaring it, so you get these wacky scripts where the PUA is encouraged to

talk about chairs whilst occasionally pointing to their crotch and that's meant to make women crave anal

.

Lots of dudes don't have a good sense of where the line is between harmless flirting which doesn't put undue pressure on people on the one hand and utter crassness/slimy emotional manipulation on the other, and so either conclude that all flirting is bad or that no strategies are off-limits.

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Fishing in the Mud

at 16:47 on 2013-02-19

Both cases seem to involve men trying to work out where the appropriate balance is between decorum and flirtation.

While assuming that "flirtation" is some kind of subtle high-pressure sales technique rather than conversation between people who are attracted to each other. Nice Guys and PUAs aren't themselves any less repelled by snake-oil salesmen than anyone else, but since it arouses them to believe women are weak-minded and manipulable, they insist it has to work with women.

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Axiomatic

at 16:49 on 2013-02-19>

you get these wacky scripts where the PUA is encouraged to talk about chairs whilst occasionally pointing to their crotch and that's meant to make women crave anal.

They say "scripts" but that sounds more like a spell to me. I mean, that's what this all boils down to, isn't it? You chant the right words and make the right crotch-pointing gestures, and in a burst of mystical light, sex happens.

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Arthur B

at 17:13 on 2013-02-19

While assuming that "flirtation" is some kind of subtle high-pressure sales technique rather than conversation between people who are attracted to each other.

As evidenced by the fact that PUA scripts aren't a conversation, they're a one-way monologue from a man to a woman with spaces in which the woman can make wordlike noises with her mouth if she feels so inclined to but in which what she says

isn't really important

.

You chant the right words and make the right crotch-pointing gestures, and in a burst of mystical light, sex happens.

Well, if you're already at the stage where you're saying to yourself "it'll take a miracle for me to get laid", invoking magical crotch powers might start to make sense.

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Cammalot

at 17:41 on 2013-02-19

To be honest, like Cheriola my pulling and being pulled days are long over (thank fuck) so I'm not really well placed to be insightful on the state of the game ... but I don't know if pick-up artistry is generally more common in America.

Kyra, Cheriola, I’m significantly older than the pair of you (though not anywhere near enough to, say, be your mom or anything), (!!!!!), and at this point in my life I’m not really doing, or attempting to do, or interested in doing, any socializing at all (certainly none of the sort that should result in me bonding with strangers), so what I wanna know is, why aren’t mine over? :-) I really would like them to be over, I have had quite enough of them — “quite” in the American sense of the word. (Keep in mind, as I mentioned above, I’m not talking about properly “social” arenas. I’m talking about public transport, or attempting to buy gum in bodega.)

No, actually, I do have a fairly good idea. In the States, I live in an intersection of two arenas where women significantly outnumber men — the African descent community and New York City in general. In NYC it contributes to a kind of extended… not adolescence, but a delaying of the “ultimate” maturity of settling down. The fact that people go there to pursue high-powered careers and are also spoiled with an abundance of choice encourages people to put off settling into long-term life situations, playing the field until their mid-forties. And in the U.S. Community of African Descent Via Various Pathways, things like racial profiling, “stand your ground laws,” and the prison-as-business model has rendered the male to female ratio ludicrous, while current thought, at the same time, is hell-bent on pathologizing (the resultant) single motherhood. And plain old single womanhood, actually (e.g., the New York Times’ sudden ridiculous focus on the unmarriageability of black women over 30, as if there were nobody else in New York City delaying marriage for career and this must be some indication of the innate undesirability of black women, and so they must be lectured on what they are doing wrong, how they are failing to hold on to their men properly, how they are intimidating men by having graduate degrees, and also how not to be overweight and slutty).

And yes, one line used on me — as a pick up! — was that 1. We are destroying the black community by keeping men away from the children (note: I do not have children) 2. and not accepting that the Bible says that women were made for men to look at and women feeling attraction doesn’t actually exist in the same way, so women should totally not mind one guy sleeping with several of them (what the I don’t even) but 3. I was slightly better (on that particular day anyway) because my hair was not straightened, and therefore I should back in the warmth of approval and put out. Approval lost (and accusations of innappropriate extraracial dating made) when I pointed out that I own a flatiron.

(There was also “tall girls are conceited” but that’s not race-based. Really, this past December was far too over-exciting.)

(By the way, read this:

http://friendsofjustice.wordpress.com/2012/12/03/mississippi-school-system-slammed-by-doj-report/

This is only the most recent fucked-up example I’ve heard of.) There’s so much more about what this does to the psyche, regardless of sex/gender, that I could and probably ought to theorize on, but I’m not quite comfortable doing so here and now, and I’m not sure why. Maybe later?

Add to this Hollywood constantly pumping out romcom after romcom and sitcom after sitcom intent on underscoring not only the transaction theory of sexual relationships, but dedicated to the proposition that the inherent state of het men and women is that of warring states, mutually unintelligible species occasionally holding our noses and coming together, possibly in the throes of sniffles and held-back tears, to maybe procreate, reluctantly. The generalization I’m about to make in this sentence is problematic, oversimplified, and comes with its own set of problems for the affected parties, but you do not see, say, Korean and Japanese pop entertainment treating marriage as the death of men’s dreams and freedom and this “ball and chain” business that they are forced into by needy women. The downside of this being, in certain communities (by no means limited to Korean and Japanese, or to nonwestern, ones), not being considered a “full grown up” to be taken seriously, if unmarried, male or female.

I believe in the U.S. it’s a semi-purposefully media-engineered (and cynically capitalist in the case of corporate prisons) pseudo “war between the sexes.” Probably all just to make us buy more books and cosmetics and crap to improve our concocted so-called deficiencies.

And it is bleeding over into the U.K. and Europe, although yes, you’re right, I have seen far more of it in the U.S. In my experience, the first time I lived here long-term (late ’90s) there was a very marked difference in approach, and in levels of

calmness

in approach, between the U.S. and U.K., and now the lines are blurring, though the difference is still there. There’s still less outright anger in the U.K. (no: “You wonder why they call you a bitch” and “Oh, I bet you think you’re somebody and you only date white guys” — or in the case of my white compatriots, “Oh, you must be a dyke” or “Jewish American Princess.”)

I see certain things that I consider contributing factors reflected in the U.K. media — equal coverage given to missing children of color, equal sorrow expressed over the gang-violence death of black kids, colorblind casting on the BBC, and similar. (I can’t tell you how shocked I was the first time I read — in the TELEGRAPH even — an article on the death of a black boy that actually included quotes about how nice he was, and how his teachers said he never caused trouble and got good grades. As opposed to digging up any and every minor infraction or school suspension, calling him a “youth” instead of a boy, and finding the most intimidating or pseudo intimidating photographs of him hamming it up with friends to appear “tough” and hip-hop-y, in order to paint him as someone who deserved it.) I’m including the previous because while I have not dug up statistics, I think it must contribute to there being less of a male-female ratio deficit.

I see it creeping, though — coinciding with more “men have no rights because women get child custody more” and “women control everything and men are really oppressed because [pretty] women influence men too much (with the corollary that “unpretty” women aren’t really women properly), so men hollering at women in the street is really a scenario in which women have all the power” sneaking into the Evening Standard.

I might very well be conflating related but not identical phenomena here, but I see a pattern.

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Arthur B

at 18:03 on 2013-02-19

In NYC it contributes to a kind of extended… not adolescence, but a delaying of the “ultimate” maturity of settling down. The fact that people go there to pursue high-powered careers and are also spoiled with an abundance of choice encourages people to put off settling into long-term life situations, playing the field until their mid-forties.

Interesting how different cities develop different dating cultures like that; I get the impression that a lot of people in high-powered jobs in London don't have the time or energy to go partner-hunting but actually quite badly want to settle down, because there's a ridiculous abundance of adverts on the Tube for online dating sites aimed at people in their 20s and 30s, a substantial proportion of which are London-specific sites targeting professionals.

Sorry, this is a huge tangent but I don't have much to say about the rest of the post beyond "wow".

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Cammalot

at 18:56 on 2013-02-19Arthur B: I have to look into that. Going back and forth as much as I have done this year (and granted, I haven't been looking), I haven't really noticed a lot more dating ads on the London Tube than on the New York subway. Now, in NYC I have access to late-night television, so I don't know if there are an equal amount of "Hot legal girls want to speak with you breathily on this outrageously expensive chat line" on UK TV. (I'm being good and doing my homework, and also not having a TV or a TV license at the moment...)

I think there is a bit of spoiled for choiceness amongst certain Wall Street types that comes across in how I've seen my (white) friends get treated: One such friend, fairly high-powered herself, got taken to a posh golf club, asked for a blow job on the green, told "I'll still buy you dinner after," and left there on the golf course after refusing -- which sort of thing I'd honestly thought people in their thirties stopped doing because Jesus Christ. (I think I've mentioned before on FerretBrain -- I grew up a little sheltered and holy. ;-))

I think the women, who are not so spoiled for choice, tend to be tired, or genuinely focused on their jobs. NYC is geographically set up in such a way that "town center" is actualy off to the west, so it's easy and unremarkable to spend an hour (or two) communiting, get to work early, work late if you're high-powered enough, commute back home, and not spend a heck of a lot of time meeting non-work people. Get caught up in that grind and it can be really easy to think of datin as a sideline and just wind up procrastinating without really thinking about it. (Or one will meet guys who respond to "Oh, I have to work late" with "So you're playing hard to get, eh?" which does not motivate one.) So that, where I hear women from other cities panicking at age 30, I hear NYC women panicking at age 37. (Good insurance will fund your IVF.) And I've heard from male friends who feel pressured by

that.

Keeping in mind with all my posts here that I am the opposite of an expert on this.

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Cammalot

at 19:00 on 2013-02-19Oh, the "Jesus Christ" up there was an expletive, not a reference to piety. (And I think I said "back in the warmth" somewhere where I meant to say "bask.") {/edits}

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Arthur B

at 20:16 on 2013-02-19

Now, in NYC I have access to late-night television, so I don't know if there are an equal amount of "Hot legal girls want to speak with you breathily on this outrageously expensive chat line" on UK TV. (I'm being good and doing my homework, and also not having a TV or a TV license at the moment...)

There's entire channels devoted to the stuff, which I can only assume cater to people who don't realise you can get better free porn by turning off SafeSearch on Google.

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http://architeuthis.dreamwidth.org/

at 15:03 on 2013-02-22Cammalot, I would have large extracts from your comments in this thread on a cross-stitch sampler if I could.

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Cammalot

at 04:05 on 2013-02-23Thank you!

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Arthur B

at 19:57 on 2013-02-26

PUA.txt snags a real gem.

(In particular, number 2 boils down to "Why do women get all upset when I give every impression of planning to rape them?")

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Neal Yanje

at 23:12 on 2013-02-26It's not "raping an inebriated woman", it's sarging an HB who "shows very visible signs of aggression and confusion".

PUA Lingo: Protecting you from being a decent person since 2005.

Every time I read one of these scripts or "field reports" as they like to call them, I can't help but wonder: Who is this stuff for? Even if PUA worked, it seems like the sorts of people who could do it well are exactly the sort that don't need magic cheat codes to get women to have sex with them, while your standard AFC is going to come off about as robotic as Microsoft Sam up there in that video.

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Arthur B

at 12:53 on 2014-03-29Posting this here so people who don't want their day polluted by PUA nonsense don't have this cluttering up the playpen:

this is what happens when PUAs talk geopolitics.

Roosh V is very much entangled with the Men's Rights Activism thing and all sorts of other toxicity, which makes him and his online buds more extreme than average, but even so.

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http://ronanwills.wordpress.com/

at 15:23 on 2014-03-30PUA nonsense and the very worst foaming at the mouth MRA hatred are so closely meshed it can be hard to tell where one ends and the other begins.

I'm honestly not sure which is worse, since the PUA guys are actively encouraging other men to emulate them whereas the MRAs seem to mostly sit around on forums and stew in their own rage.

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Arthur B

at 17:17 on 2014-03-30Then you have the Red Pill nonsense, which combines PUA, MRA, the weird confluence of super-reactionary weirdness that calls itself the Dark Enlightenment and a Matrix analogy into one huge cyclone of rebranded fascism evangelising misogyny.

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James D

at 23:27 on 2014-03-30

Also, Ukraine’s women might be traumatized from months of conflict: score! “The hotties won’t be venturing outdoors for a while, but the fear these women are experiencing could make pickings VERY strong for the future,” one noted. “Especially for a Westerner coming from a relatively ‘safe’ haven like the UK or US.”

OK this is by far the most fucked-up, soulless thing I've ever read from PUAs. That psychologically crippling, war-related PTSD Ukrainian women might suffer from for the rest of their lives? Total panty-dropper, bro!! *dap*

It's so absurdly, ridiculously lacking in empathy that Philip K Dick could write a whole novel about PUAs secretly being robots.

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Michal

at 18:38 on 2014-03-31The article does a good job showcasing how insecure, petty and cowardly self-described "alpha males" tend to be. It would be easy to just discount these folks/feel pity for them, only Roosh and his flock's "seduction" methods include getting women drunk to the point of passing out and then raping them.