#any real human beings grappling with mental illness. | Explore Tumblr posts and blogs

gromellette · 2 years ago

Note

what's your thought crime Opinions

how nice of you to ask!

as a disclaimer, this is less about the commonly discussed concepts of mental illness & harmless sexual/romantic fantasies seen under the original post and more about the less than normal kinds of thoughts that can be harder to talk about in a neutral way for a lot of people. proceed with caution, i suppose.

i don't have anything to say about thought crime that hasn't already been said, i think. but i do hold, from my experience, controversial & unpopular opinions surrounding thoughts, desires, attractions, urges, and feelings vs. actions where it relates to violence and sexuality.

i don't immediately reign judgement on people who experience some or all of the above surrounding the likes of incest, pedophilia, necrophilia, bestiality, non/dubious consent/rape, mutilation/murder, etc. these things would be undoubtedly unethical and, to most, detestable to act on, but simply experiencing those feelings & thinking those thoughts & having those urges or desires is not something i'm interested in demonizing someone for. human beings are incapable of controlling their thoughts/feelings/attractions. if we weren't, we would never feel anxiety or grief or anger, people with OCD & intrusive thoughts would eliminate them before they appeared, queer people in conservative spaces and/or grappling with internalized homophobia would simply choose to not be queer. we know this isn't how it works, so why would it be any different for the unsavory ones, the socially unacceptable?

this isn't to say it's just chill that some people sit around having fantasies about certain things; i do think destigmatizing needs to also come with unpacking and rehabilitation where appropriate and measures to prevent violent acts, but the cultural obsession with morality is probably my biggest gripe with the conversation surrounding violent thoughts and violence in general; how morality is the highest priority, the means by which we must categorize the world in terms of "good" people and "bad" people, the end all be all to understanding and solving the issue of violence and, therefore, the only thing that really matters when observing these categorically "bad" people². all this, despite the fact that morality is entirely subjective and does nothing to actually prevent or treat violence because one's perception of right and wrong varies widely from person to person depending on endless variables. contrary to popular belief, the world cannot be broken down into such simple parts; good and bad, right and wrong, just and unjust. the world is nuanced, gray, and not altogether easy to understand.

i'm as passionate as i am about this (and about protecting freedom of speech and expression in fictional media where this topic is concerned too, another conversation altogether) because the shame and dehumanizing that happens in response to someone expressing violent thoughts or compulsions is what ultimately leads to real life harm¹. i believe it's important to foster an environment where people can feel comfortable talking about these things because with that comes feeling comfortable asking for help and preventing violence from the start, which is ultimately what we want, right? to listen to, show compassion for, and aid people with "immoral" thoughts (and predators, while we're at it) is to participate in creating a safe community for everyone³.

punishment begets more violence, not less, and it's troubling how popular the opposite sentiment seems to be. i'm frankly tired of seeing people make black and white moral judgements that are not at all black and white (i.e. thinking about something one has never acted on). it's okay to feel a way about things but, as far as i'm concerned, a person's actions are far more important than what goes on inside their head, or what they choose to write, draw, read, or watch for that matter (unless it's legitimate pornography involving real life parties right like obviously that is very bad because it results in and perpetuates real life harm, lets be reasonable here BUT even in these cases, the answer is not to demonize. there could be cases in which a person might very well be incapable of change or remorse (debatable) and in those cases, sure, but i believe the majority of the time such violence can be not only treated, but prevented by recognizing their humanity and doing what we can to foster it. the ultimate goal being, of course, to prevent violence. but i digress, that is another conversation also lol)

¹ James Gilligan has talked extensively on this topic, the correlation between shame & violence, and how treatable and preventable it really is if we could dispel the notion that predators are inhuman, some sort of separate evil species incapable of treatment and understanding and "deserving" of punishment. His book, Preventing Violence, is a great place to start, or this interview if you can't access it (highly recommend, it is a fascinating read). ² See also James Gilligan. Morality is the Problem, where he talks about morality as a means to justify violence on both sides of the coin.

³ i also feel it necessary to make clear that it's not anyone's, and particularly any victim's, responsibility to bear the burden of showing compassion to or otherwise protecting someone who has harmed or wanted to harm others. i just hope to highlight the importance of recognizing and considering the humanity in those individuals because the most effective way of changing someone for the better is allowing them the space to do so, should they be receptive to it. because monsters don't exist, human beings who do unforgivable things do. and, yes, even those human beings need compassion from others.

#yes i enjoy gilligan and look for any opportunity to share his work is that so wrong #our matching icons btw...... love #grom #asks #is this unpopular & controversial or am i yelling at a wall btw #bc in my circles it definitely is but maybe my circles are just... less open minded? understandably so too like #i understand peoples gut reaction to these things and where it comes from and its obviously a very natural response #i just feel we should try to be more pragmatic & less reactionary in our pursuit of preventing harm #idk let me know what you think if you so desire lol #and ty for letting me ramble!

3 notes · View notes

pyroweasel · 10 months ago

Note

Hazel - ghost. Keet - skin.

Under the readmore, of course -

Hazel - Ghost

(Who or what haunts your OC? What happened? How do they live with their ghosts?)

When it comes to Hazel, this question can be approached two ways. One, the most literal to answer - what haunts him most of all is really his own mind. His mental illness. Eyes and faces in the dark and the constant fear of being watched. By people he doesn't know. By the government. So on and so forth - whatever it is that tickles his paranoia.

But in the spirit of what I think this question is really asking - Hazel is difficult to haunt. He doesn't generally feel guilt. Take royal Hazel, for example - he participates in and propogates the Aqori blackmarket without a second thought. He scorns the lower classes, and thinks that's just how it should be. Deaths that are on his hands were either rightly deserved or not his fault. Even in an accident - say he was somehow responsible for an innocent human losing their life - he wouldn't be haunted by it. He wouldn't feel guilt. After all they should have tried harder not to be in the way or get hurt or whatever.

I think there are only three people capable of haunting him at all - his parents, and Fleece. And even then it's really only Saudade Hazel that I think is sort of Haunted by the memories of his parents. It's a form of grief, in a way - missing their presence. Their support. A part of him shaken by the idea that they have (supposedly) ceased to exist at all while he continues on. In terms of how he lives with it - maybe if he was entirely alone this feeling could build to something less tolerable. But he isnt - and this grief or longing or whatever you want to call it is more of a nuisance than a real hindrance. He lives with it by simply continuing on - what choice does he have?

Fleece, on the other hand, obviously *literally* haunts him in most cases. A physical ghost he can't shake no matter how much he might try. Again, he lives with this because he has no choice and in most AUs he eventually even comes to...well. Enjoy their presence might be too strong of a word.

Then again, what else could it be when their death might be the only one in the entire world to actually haunt him? To make him feel something that sits at the intersection of anger and guilt and grief? This, of the very few things that can make a lasting impression on Hazel, is probably the hardest for him to deal with. Whether he had anything to do with their death or not - whether he was there or not - their absence leaves a hole he cannot fill. Hazel doesn't *do* grief. He doesn't know how to handle it. He refuses to face it, to acknowledge it - and as such it eats him alive.

If he's lucky, he might manage a friend or acquaintance who can help keep him bolstered. Maybe even prod him until he finally faces his own feelings. Maybe he can rely on his parents, if nothing else. But left alone to stew in his own thoughts, left without support - this is likely to eat at his already fragile mental health until he can't cope anymore.

Keet - Skin

(How comfortable is your OC in their skin? Do they grapple with anything that lives inside them—a beast, a curse, a failure, a monster? How do they face the smallest, weakest, most horrible version of themself? Are they able to acknowledge it at all?)

Let's start with the physical. The most shallow reading of this question. Despite everything, Keet is over all fine with his physical appearance. He may even kind of like it, depending on the au - after all, Impostor Keet stays in the form despite not needing to.

But, when you start getting deeper - no, Keet isn't comfortable in his own skin. In any AU you might find him in, he grapples with self confidence - and in most cases his lack of it was sort of programmed into him by family. As the youngest of the seven, he was picked on the most by his siblings - and often subject to the ways they 'punched down' because of their own problems. But I actually think it's his parents that really instilled the worst into Keet. He can handle physical bullying fine - when it's not directed at him from people he's close to, he can shake off verbal abuse and even give as good as he gets.

But he doesn't see himself as worthy of attention, or care - until he experiences it, he doesn't even consider the possibility he ever will. And I firmly believe that's because his parents simply pretended he didn't exist - and when they *had* to deal with him, it was often with rough hands and cruel words. He was "raised" more by his siblings than his parents, and most of the time they didn't even bother to look at him.

And this is a constant grapple, even when he finds affection and love in Fable and even Crim. Despite the strength of his own feelings in return, there will always be a part of him - even if it shrinks to something small - that feels unworthy of their attention. That thinks it must be conditional in some way - that they might take it from him at any time.

And as for acknowledging that, or grappling with it - he can acknowledge his insecurities, but he's still working on facing them in healthy ways. He refuses to turn cruelty onto his partners, and mostly succeeds (albeit not always) - but he tends to self-isolate when it all gets to be too much, rather than talk his feelings out with someone who might listen.

#Ask game #Crow #The second was kind of hard to answer but hopefully I managed most of it gkgn

1 note · View note

realityhop · 11 months ago

Photo

"If somebody says 'Wow that's so dehumanizing to view us as just biological machines,' that's a hell of a lot better than sermonizing us into having bad souls."

— Robert Sapolsky

"Functional differentiation means the differentiation of society into different systems. According to Luhmann, this is what society consists of. It's best understood not as a community of billions of individuals but at its basic level it's constituted by these different systems. This view of society can be roughly compared with the view of the human body--not as a sum of cells or body parts like arms and legs but as constituted by different systems. […] Luhmann proposes that social reality, too, is not created by individual human agents—like kings or some philosophical geniuses—but evolves. The law, science, and politics were not invented from scratch by some intelligent designers: they evolved historically."

— Hans-Georg Moeller, Niklas Luhmann: A Super Theory of Society (2023)

“If the thinkers of the Counter-Enlightenment had any single concern in common, however, it was that the disenchantment produced by Enlightenment rationalism be resisted and indeed reversed by the exercise of human creative and imaginative faculties, as these were conceived by the Romantics and by modern critics of rationalism such as Pascal and Kierkegaard. These Romantic and irrationalist thinkers of the Counter-Enlightenment were modernists in the central role they accorded in their thought to human imagination – in the case of the Romantics, to self-creation – and to will. They differed from the Enlightenment thinkers in their perception of the Enlightenment project as one which brought disenchantment in its wake and in their more or less conscious attempt at a re-enchantment of the world via religious faith or human creativity. On the view advanced here, by contrast, the disenchantment that trails in Enlightenment’s wake is a fate that can perhaps be tempered, but not overcome. It may be tempered by an understanding that the Enlightenment’s ascription to science of a prescriptive authority whereby other forms of knowledge can be humiliated is itself an illusion – the illusion that the diverse forms of human knowledge, or even of scientific knowledge, can be unified in a single system or brought under the discipline of a single method. The idea that there is such a thing as a unitary scientific method, even a scientific world-view, is merely one of the many superstitions of Enlightenment cultures.”

— John N. Gray, Enlightenment’s Wake (1995)

“Consider that scientific methods cannot capture everything. … I think of astrology more as a romance art than as a science. It’s actually a mytho-poetic tradition …”

— Jennifer Freed, Use Your Planets Wisely (2020)

"What we call mental illnesses, then, may be rational body-budgeting for the short term that’s out of sync with the immediate environment, the needs of other people, or your own best interests down the road. … These ideas, if taken seriously, could shake the foundations of all sorts of sacred institutions in our society. In the law, for example, attorneys plead that their clients’ emotions overwhelmed their reason in the heat of passion, and therefore they aren’t fully to blame for their actions. But feeling distressed is not evidence of being irrational or that your so-called emotional brain has hijacked your supposed rational brain. Distress can be evidence that your whole brain is expending resources toward an anticipated payoff. […] You have one brain, not three. To move past Plato’s ancient battle, we might need to fundamentally rethink what it means to be rational, what it means to be responsible for our actions, and perhaps even what it means to be human. […] But it is a scientist’s job to point out that the biology is real and motivate people to grapple with the issues that play out in our social and political world."

— Lisa Feldman Barrett, Seven and a Half Lessons About the Brain (2020)

"In the Enlightenment, science wasn’t just a search for knowledge. It was also a search for how to use knowledge and reason to improve humanity. If the right techniques were employed, the asylum could discipline the inmate, control the passions that might undermine society and the nation at large in a time of rapid change, and help heal the disordered mind. […] We saw that the end of the Enlightenment marked the transition from a single-sexed body to a divided body, with women stigmatized as driven by instinct and predisposed to mental illness. The Enlightenment also marked the development of a divided mind, precariously held together in the brain of the modern, rational worker. This view of the mind, still with us today in the highly stigmatized diagnosis of schizophrenia, was the glue that held stigma and mental illness together. But the study of schizophrenia would inform more than just psychiatry. It also informed a powerful Eurocentric critique of the poor, the nonwhite, and the colonized, and became a tool for branding certain people as potential dangers to society. Even by the twentieth century, doctors sometimes called schizophrenia “the most sinister of mental disorders.”"

— Roy Richard Grinker, Nobody’s Normal: How Culture Created the Stigma of Mental Illness (2021)

"The Mental Health Systems Act of 1980 (MHSA) was United States legislation signed by President Jimmy Carter which provided grants to community mental health centers. In 1981 President Ronald Reagan, who had made major efforts during his Governorship to reduce funding and enlistment for California mental institutions, pushed a political effort through the Democratically controlled House of Representatives and a Republican controlled Senate to repeal most of MHSA."

— Wikipedia, Mental Health Systems Act of 1980

#magic #schizophrenia #astrology #knowledge #reason #science #passion #institutions #mental illness #the Enlightenment #A Streetcar Named Desire #machine

150 notes · View notes

kermittedfelony · 3 years ago

Text

grey skies

Summary: Y/n has recently relapsed with self-harm. Their partner, Wanda, is aware and is there to help them with the urges and the aftermath. Let fluff ensue <3

WARNINGS descriptions of self-harm, cursing, mental health themes.

Pairing: Wanda x reader

Word count: 1936

Hey guys! First real request for @ilovehotactresses !!!! Sorry I haven’t posted much lately, just struggling to find the motivation to write but I promise you I have 2 WIPs and ill gladly take any requests u guys give. Anyway, here’s the story, enjoy!

Love, Kermy <3

Tap, tap, tap.

Your foot, going up down up down up down.

Tap, tap, tap.

Your finger, in rhythm with your foot.

Tap. Tap. Tap.

All you could focus on. Well, all you would allow yourself to focus on at the moment. The movement, the repetitiveness, was a way for your anxiety to (hopefully) leak out of you. Drain from your body and your mind before it got too much and overflowed. If it overflows, your arms, stomach and thighs suffered first. Your confidence and pride came next.

You launched upwards from your seat on the bathroom floor, hands grappling with your drawer, frantically grabbing the blade you hid. Each slice, red flowed. Each slice, you felt your anxiety leak from the wounds, escaping into the open air. After you were finished, you felt lighter. Freer. Less burdened.

But, as always, your high came to an end.

You were left feeling devastated. It had been a 9 month and 24-day clean streak. 9 fucking months. Down the godsdamned drain. You numbly cleaned yourself up, not feeling the antiseptic, and curled into a ball under the covers of your bed. You lay there, mourning the loss of your hard work and commitment.

It was sometime later when you felt hands wrapping around you from behind and the soft vanilla scent of your girlfriend, Wanda.

She talked softly into the space, “hey, what’s going on?”

You gave a quiet murmur in response.

“I didn’t quite here that, wanna say it again for me?’

“I fucked up Wands, I fucked up really bad,” you said, louder this time. Sobs wrenched their way out of your throat, making Wanda hug you tighter before lightly pushing you onto your back so she could properly talk to you.

“What happened y/n?”

You closed your eyes and tried to turn your head away from her, but she held your chin in place, her emerald eyes meeting your y/e/c ones. Tears fell from the corners of yours as you admitted, “I lost my clean streak.”

It took Wanda a moment to know what you were talking about, but when she understood, she pulled you into her chest and held you as tight as she could.

“Oh detka. Oh, my sweet detka.” She cradled you, slowly rocking, as your tears soaked her shirt.

The sense of your failure weighed you down, threatening to pull you down, down, down deep, so you held onto Wanda. You held onto her so tight your knuckles turned white. Wanda herself could tell what you needed, the sensation of being anchored, of not floating away. She squeezed you back just as hard.

“I’m here my love, I’m here. You’re not alone in this, and if I have it my way, you never will be. I know it’s hard, I know it feels like you’re never going to win, but you can do this.” She moved to grab your face and lifted it so you were looking into her beautiful eyes, “You can do this. You’re Y/n fucking Y/l/n! You’re not a failure, you are not a lost cause. You are you; you are human. And I wouldn’t change it, even if I had the whole fucking world begging at my feet. You can do this, and we can do it together, okay?”

You let out a wet chuckle at her enthusiasm and nodded your head. As soon as Wanda got confirmation, she tucked your head back against your chest, gently brushing her fingers through your hair to calm you down. Soon, you felt yourself lulled to sleep, safe and warm in your partner’s arms.

The urges never truly went away. You knew this, had expected it, but goddamn you were hit hard after your confession with Wanda. They were everywhere. Any mistake you made, no matter how small, your brain only came up with one solution:

Just go to the bathroom y/n, you’ll feel so much better

Just one little slice, that’s all you need

Think about how relieving it will feel, you deserve it

Even when you did good, they didn’t let up.

It will never last for long, why not cut and make it end on your own terms

It isn’t even real; you need to cut to bring yourself back to reality

It was never ending. You were stood in the kitchen, these thoughts racing through your head as you stared at your bowl. You were so lost in your mind that you didn’t sense Wanda approaching you, a confused look on her face.

“Maybe I need to morph into a bowl of cereal so that I can get your attention as strongly as it has yours.”

Your head snapped up, “huh? Oh, yeah, maybe,” you forced out a laugh, compelling yourself into motion. You picked up your bowl and threw the contents into the trash; you had poured your cereal and your milk before finding out there wasn’t enough liquid for a bowl. Barely any in fact. And since you had poured as much of the milk as you could, you couldn’t put the cereal back into the box, so the bin it was.

You put your bowl into the dishwasher, dropping it in the process, “FUCK. FUCK this.” You bent to pick up the broken pieces of the bowl, standing up abruptly when Wanda knelt to help you.

In your haste to stand, you almost knocked your head against hers, “hey woah, it’s alright y/n, just slow down.”

Your thoughts were screaming so loudly in your brain that you didn’t notice how hard you were gripping the one shard of bowl you had picked up, the ceramic cutting into your skin.

When you didn’t have a reaction to her words, Wanda tried again, “Hey, babe, you’re alright. It was a just a mistake, and Tony’s rich enough that you can make these mistakes often. You’re okay.”

Her voice managed to penetrate your thoughts and you flicked your eyes to her face. Wanda smiled, glad she managed to get your attention through the tornado that was your brain. She went to grab your hands, and only then noticed the blood dripping from your hand onto the floor. Wanda quickly grabbed the hand that was bleeding and tried to loosen your fingers, to no avail.

“Y/n, honey, I need you to loosen your hand for me, okay?”

At her words, you yourself looked down at your fist, only just noticing the object stuck in your grip. It was then that your breath decided to return, and you took in a deep breath while releasing the vice grip you had on the shard. Wanda gently removed it from your hand and threw it into the trash, before pulling you into a hug. She gently moved her hand up and down your back, trying to calm you down.

You felt at peace in her arms, before the thoughts came rushing back. You jerked back, hitting your back on the kitchen counter. Turning towards the corridor, you hastily made your way back to your room, fully intent on listening to the thoughts.

Wanda, however, had other ideas. She knew what you were thinking, not by reading your mind, but because your thoughts formed a cacophony of sound, and it was impossible to not hear them.

“Y/n, no. You are not going to do that; you are not going to cut again.”

You tried to fight against her grip, words escaping you, but Wanda just held on tighter, “I said no. You’ve done enough damage and I don’t think you even meant to do that. Let’s just go outside for a bit, sit in the sun.”

Wanda gently tugged you along, your arm looped through hers; you could never really argue against your girlfriend. She led you out through the balcony doors and sat you down on the deck. Wanda knew that when things got too loud, which they often did for you, the outside was your sanctuary. Whether it was sunny, cloudy or raining, you would sit outside until you felt balanced again.

“I’m just going to run inside to get some bandages for your hand. Stay right here, I’ll be right back.” Wanda dashed inside, leaving you outside.

As it was Autumn, it took a couple of seconds before you felt the heat of the sun on your face. You turned your head upwards, letting the sun wash over you. It was refreshing, and you felt it all the way into your heart.

True to her word, Wanda returned within a couple of minutes. She quickly cleaned the gash before placing gauze on top and securing it with a bandage.

“Feel a bit better, hm?”

With words still out of reach, you gave a slight nod instead. You felt your shoulders slowly loose tension, and leant against Wanda’s side, your head falling on her shoulder. She took your uninjured hand into her own, her thumb tracing circles along the back.

“What triggered you?”

Some time passed before you finally managed to croak out, “I thought there was more milk but there wasn’t, so I had to throw out my cereal instead. I just, everything was telling me to just get my blade, even though it was such a stupid mistake. It sounds so stupid when I say it out loud.”

“No, I understand. Your brain makes everything bigger than what it needs to be. I get it.”

“Thank you, my love. Thank you.”

Wanda squeezed your hand in response. You slowly opened your eyes and looked up at your girlfriend, seeing her face also upturned towards the sun and her eyes closed. Her skin was glowing in the warm light, and she truly looked ethereal. She felt you staring and dropped her gaze from the sky to your eyes.

“You’re okay, darling, you’re alright.”

You nodded your head, before closing your eyes again and letting your body and mind rest.

The times after that, when the urges plagued your mind so badly you couldn’t think straight, they were easier to deal with. Wanda was there when she could be, but when she was away on missions, you re-learnt how to cope. You knew she would continue to stay by your side, that she truly meant it when she said she wouldn’t change it for the world. You knew you could go to Wanda when you needed, and you could tell her what was going on without judgement.

The light and warmth from the sun was healing, but your girlfriend’s eyes, her smile, her touch. It was purer. Pure enough to make the grey skies disappear.

#writing #wanda maximoff #wanda x y/n #wanda maximoff x reader #mental health #mental illness #angst #marvel #wanda x reader #fanfic #whump

252 notes · View notes

linkspooky · 4 years ago

Note

hey, can you share your thoughts and opinions on dazai osamu's no longer human?(just the book and not in connection with bsd) i read it, i liked it, but i couldnt really relate to it. so im wondering if i should read the setting sun or not. what do you think abt this book?

I don’t think books really need to be relatable to be impactful, but context can help you understand it. In general my advice is the best way to understand a book is to read more books like it. Always, read more books.

Sure, I can write a repsonse to the text though. The book, not the anime. (Ignore the picture of Dazai, he’s just there to look cute.)

The biggest and most important idea in No Longer Human (Ningen Shikakku). The most literal translation of the title being (人間失格) "Disqualified From Being Human. I bring this up, because use of the character in the title has specific meaning.

人 (hito) : human, person 人間 (ningen): human Generally speaking, 人 is used for people, while 人間 is used for humans as a taxonomic classification.

Much like English, the fact that a person is a human is usually a given, because in our world, we call those who are humane “people,” and only humans can be humane. Just like you wouldn’t usually count humans with “three humans” and say “three people” instead, the usual way to count three humans in Japanese would also be 三人 instead of 三人間. “Human society” is 人間社会, etc.

Or to shorten 人 (hito) : human, person 人間 (ningen): human, biological.

So, there’s an extra nuannce there in the translation. The title of the book uses “ningen” as in the sense of taxonomical classification. So, it’s like saying “disqualified from being considered as a part of the human species.”

I go this far in my intro because most consider Dazai’s work to be a response to Dostoevsky’s Crime and Punishment, (he name drops both Dostoevsky and the novel itself). Both of these novels portray society as a whole as an antagonistic force to one individual, who is considered an outsider to that same society. There’s a lot of similarities between the protagonists, both Raksolnikov and Yozo are terminally ill, show signs of mental illness, and both are characters who show incredible self-awareness and moments of self reflection while at the same time being unable to connect to the feelings or identify with the people around them in any healthy way.

To connect back to my little rant on the translation of the title though, what could disqualify a person from being considered a human being? Well, they could commit a crime for instance. Then they’d be classified as a crimminal.

Both protagonists of both novels are crimminals in a sense. However, that’s about where the similarities end. NLH is centrally about the main characters egoism. Society matters so little in NLH, society is just something that hangs ominously in the background to the outsider.

Now there’s another novel by Dostoevsky that similiarly is recorded in a journal format, and is mainly about the main characters Ego. Notes from Underground is considered to be one of Dos’s first existentialist novels. Existentialism (to oversimplify) in a sense of what does existing in this world mean?

That’s why I say the central conflict is not with society itself, but rather within the character’s own head. The outsiders of society only exist within their own heads. Their main challenge is not to grapple with society, morality and law like Raskolnikov but rather to figure out what is inside their own heads and what they live for.

Which is why the protagonists of both novels are terrible egoists. Their main personality trait is their egocentrism, or rather their inability or unwillingness to try to see or understand the feelings or experiences of others. They are first person narrators who only see the world from their own point of view, but they are not objectve narrators. The only thing they can see, the only thing they can relate to, the only thing they can convey is their feelings to the reader.

F. Scott Fitzgerald writes a similiar novel from a similiar point of view in This Side of Paraidse, which shows the journey of one young man born into a rich family who grows up to not only lose the love of his life, but also to squander all his fortunes at the end of the story. However, Fitzgerald drops all pretense on what the story is about. The chapter titles are things like, the romantic egoist, the egoist considers, narcissus off duty, all the way to the egoist becomes a personage.

The book ends like this.

He stretched out his arms to the crystalline, radiant sky.

“I know myself,” he cried, “but that is all.”

It’s an egoists journey to developing a personality. To way oversimplify again, ego is yourself that exists in your own head, personage is what you show to others. At the end of This Side of Paradise, the main character gains himself, while at the end of NLH the protagonist loses himself. It’s the same journey but in reverse, it’s a net loss, it’s tragic.

NLH, This Side of Paradise, and Notes from the Underground are all about egoists who are aware of their own feelings, but aren’t aware of the feelings of others. They’re all ridiculously self absorbed individuals. That’s actually, like, the unreliable narrator trick of the novel.

Yozo is sympathetic yes, he’s an outsider to society, but at the same time Yozo is not the helpless, miserable victim he portrays himself as. He is not the victim to a cruel society, one he comes from a place of privilege and two he becomes a perpetrator. Hence, the whole... crime and punishment allusions. It’s this added complexity to Yozo that’s what makes the book as brilliant as it is. Yozo is someone who is both victim and perpetrator, but he only sees himself as a victim and the story he tells paints him exclusively as a victim.

But Yozo’s central problem isn’t society its himself. His conflict and greatest obstacle is always his own ego. The reason we read the book biographically, is because we see him grow up, or rather fail to grow up. As a kid he is sympathetic, as an adult he’s a pretty serial user of people.

Yozo constantly asks for sympathy, but at the same time he’s not really one to sympathize with others. When he tries to commit suicide with a woman, he reports these events with no remorse at all.

I removed my coat andput it in the same spot.

We entered the water together.

She died. I was saved.

He seems real broken up about it.

That’s also a pattern that repeats again and again with Yozo. If you want to see the real nature of Yozo’s character you should see how he treats both women and children. They exist to make him happy, to soothe his misery, and when they don’t he leaves them.

Like, out of context. What does this sound like.

What a holy thing uncorrupted virginity is, I thought.

I had never slept with a virgin, a girl younger than myself. I’d marry her.

The few times we do meet outside characters we see that Yozo is someone referred to as a crimminal, but refers to himself as a victim.

“Don’t be cheeky now, I for one have never been tied up like a common crimminal the way you have.”

I was taken aback. Horiki at heart did not treat me like a fully human being.

If you read No Longer Human as a response to Crime and Punishment, you could even read the many women that Yozo falls into flings with and then promptly abandons as a response to Raskolnikov and Sonya. For Yozo, each woman he meets is his Sonya, they are meant to redeem him and bring him peace, and whn they don’t he leaves. Yozo someone missing the point that, Raskolnikov loved Sonya because he sympathized with her circumstances and suffering while Yozo really only ever cares about his own suffering.

To bring the discussion back to Notes from the Underground. It’s a story divided into two parts, that really doesn’t work without the second part of the story. In the first part, as we are just fed the main character’s thoughts he looks like some kind of revolutionary philosopher. Then in the second we follow the character though a day in his life and he’s just sort of... socially awkward. He’s not some brilliant thinker, he’s just an outsider who can’t connect with others, like Yozo. The second part is necessary to underwrite the first because in the first part of the journal he looks like a champion, and in the second he’s just pathetic. He’s just some guy. Notes from the Underground also has one of my favorite lines in all of fiction.

"They won't let me ... I can't be good!" I managed to articulate; then I went to the sofa, fell on it face downwards, and sobbed on it for a quarter of an hour in genuine hysterics. She came close to me, put her arms round me and stayed motionless in that position.

The protagonist encounters a young prostitute name Liza, he tries to save her at first, but then turns around and starts to treat her terribly and has a mental breakdown in front of her that ends in this line. She finds him pitiable, and comforts him in that moment.

However, after this moment of comfort he then he goes back to treating her terribly once more. He yells at her, and she grows tired of him. He pays her and she leaves and that’s the end of that relationship.

See it’s a moment that’s simultaneously, a moment of human connection, but also it shows how the protagonist regards other people and why he can’t connect to them. If you only use other people to comfort your loneliness, you’re going to end up alone either way. The same way the Narrator uses Liza, Yozo chronically uses women.

However, at the same time.

“They won’t let me... I can’t be good.”

Is what I consider the most striking lines in all of fiction. It is both an avoidance or responsibility, and at the same time an utterance of the baisc human desire to be good. It's always everyone else's fault, the problem is with other people. Yet both Narrator, and Yozo want to be good people, they want to connect with others.

Yozo and the Narrator are crimminals. They are bad people. (A person who has committed a crime isn’t necessarily a bad person but..) However, being a crimminal does not disqualify you as a human being. They are still people who are suffering. The secondary goal of a novel like Crime and Punishment is to show St. Petersburg as a city where everyone is human, and everyone suffers, good and bad people alike. Yozo and the Narrator are miserable, and there’s humanity in that misery. You don’t have to even connect to their feelings, isn’t it bad to see a person suffering? Doesn’t that elicit an emotional response because nobody wants to see other people suffering and in pain. That’s the basic humanity in these characters. Yozo and Narrator aren’t inhuman. They’re just like... normal people. They are anxious, avoidant. They are terminally insecure. They’re socially awkward. They understand themselves better than other people. Those are all just normal human sentiments shared by everyone, it’s just Yozo and Narrator are so egocentric they act like they’re the only people in the world.

Yet the same, just like the moment Liza sympathized with a man who treated her terribly and only saw her as a prostitute, people still sympathize with miserable people and want to ease the suffering of others. That’s why Dazai writes stories for miserable people.

I am writing a tired story for young readers,

not because I want to be different,

or because I am unconcerned with young readers’ tastes.

I write it rather because I know it will please them.

Young readers are tired and old themselves these days,

and my story can bring them no discomfort and no surprises.

It is a story for those who have lost hope.

(Osamu Dazai, Of Women)

118 notes · View notes

fd-writes · 4 years ago

Text

Protect Your Mental Health

Mental Health means, “a person’s condition with regard to their psychological and emotional well-being” Why in our communities (Black. Brown, and Indigenous) space is not held for us when it comes down to our mental health? Could it be because those spaces weren’t made for us while we were growing up and now, therefore, grapple with taking charge of it, meaning not allowing people to interrupt, disregard, disrespect, abuse, use and manipulate us? Why are we perpetrated to be strong and out of this world beings? This is coded language that we must recognize for what it is, this was said to our ancestors when they were enslaved, strong strapping animals (not even recognized as human beings) while white people were called fair, not meant for heavy labor, and must be protected at all times. This dangerous and demonic narrative is still glaringly alive today and it must be destroyed, torn down and burned, to never grow again.

We all witnessed how Tennis Sensation Naomi Osako withdrew from the French Open citing Mental Health reasons. Now if anyone has been paying attention to this young lady, you can tell that she struggles with these preposterous ineffective interviewing that they subject athletes to. In one interview that I saw, Naomi said, “I’m just really sad right now” it wasn’t because of the game, she was having a mental health crisis, and let me tell you I was so broken for her at that moment because it was so clear that they heard her but didn’t care. After all, in their demonic minds, they were saying, “What does she have to be sad about?” For many of us, these are the same questions posed by our family and friends. And here is the crux of the situation, most of us suffer from anxiety, depression, and mental illness, if you grew up in a religious family you were told to just pray it away. Don’t get me wrong prayer is phenomenal and it does work but God also prompts us to seek out therapists. Now He created them so why do we feel shame for even considering it and Lord knows the church makes it worse, (for many people the church is where their trauma stems from) but this is a topic for another day, coming real soon. So let me tell you why? It is because our families were never encouraged to do so for themselves, so how can they possibly encourage us to do it.

I have learned a lot of lessons during the pandemic and being in quarantine. One of my biggest lessons is taking care of my mental health at all costs and by any means necessary. I currently don’t have a therapist but I am looking for one because I am not ashamed to say I want one. When I look back on my adolescence, teen-aged years, and adulthood, I can see faces of people who I grew up with that I now recognize as battling with their mental health. Comments that the elders would make about people being disrespectful, hardheaded, they are going to die young, they are slow, and the remarks went on and on. I know these words were spoken because they heard the very same things when they were growing up, so it’s learned behavior, a vicious cycle, generational curses, and trauma. Healing wasn’t spoken to them, so how could they speak healing to us. So this is why each of us must get help, you can start here; https://therapyforblackgirls.com/ Do command the space for our peace of mind, protect our mental health, allow ourselves to heal, say no, show up as our authentic self, allow ourselves to be planted, pruned, watered, and bloom. Don’t do it for anybody else, “DO IT FOR YOURSELF” - BECAUSE FOR MANY OF US IT IS A MATTER OF LIFE AND DEATH.

Until My Next Post…We Are To Be Each Other’s Keeper!

Photo Credit: Isha Gaines

29 notes · View notes

lastsonlost · 4 years ago

Text

Crossing the divide

Do men really have it easier? These transgender guys found the truth was more complex.

In the 1990s, the late Stanford neuroscientist Ben Barres transitioned from female to male. He was in his 40s, mid-career, and afterward he marveled at the stark changes in his professional life. Now that society saw him as male, his ideas were taken more seriously. He was able to complete a whole sentence without being interrupted by a man. A colleague who didn’t know he was transgender even praised his work as “much better than his sister’s.”

Clinics have reported an increase in people seeking medical gender transitions in recent years, and research suggests the number of people identifying as transgender has risen in the past decade. Touchstones such as Caitlyn Jenner’s transition, the bathroom controversy, and the Amazon series “Transparent” have also made the topic a bigger part of the political and cultural conversation.

But it is not always evident when someone has undergone a transition — especially if they have gone from female to male.

“The transgender guys have a relatively straightforward process — we just simply add testosterone and watch their bodies shift,” said Joshua Safer, executive director at the Center for Transgender Medicine and Surgery at Mount Sinai Health System and Icahn School of Medicine in New York. “Within six months to a year they start to virilize — getting facial hair, a ruddier complexion, a change in body odor and a deepening of the voice.”

Transgender women have more difficulty “passing”; they tend to be bigger-boned and more masculine-looking, and these things are hard to reverse with hormone treatments, Safer said. “But the transgender men will go get jobs and the new boss doesn’t even know they’re trans.”

We spoke with four men who transitioned as adults to the bodies in which they feel more comfortable. Their experiences reveal that the gulf between how society treats women and men is in many ways as wide now as it was when Barres transitioned. But their diverse backgrounds provide further insight into how race and ethnicity inform the gender divide in subtle and sometimes surprising ways.

(Their words have been lightly edited for space and clarity.)

‘I’ll never call the police again’

Trystan Cotten, 50, Berkeley, Calif.

Professor of gender studies at California State University Stanislaus and editor of Transgress Press, which publishes books related to the transgender experience. Transitioned in 2008.

Life doesn’t get easier as an African American male. The way that police officers deal with me, the way that racism undermines my ability to feel safe in the world, affects my mobility, affects where I go. Other African American and Latino Americans grew up as boys and were taught to deal with that at an earlier age. I had to learn from my black and brown brothers about how to stay alive in my new body and retain some dignity while being demeaned by the cops.

One night somebody crashed a car into my neighbor’s house, and I called 911. I walk out to talk to the police officer, and he pulls a gun on me and says, “Stop! Stop! Get on the ground!” I turn around to see if there’s someone behind me, and he goes, “You! You! Get on the ground!” I’m in pajamas and barefoot. I get on the ground and he checks me, and afterward I said, “What was that all about?” He said, “You were moving kind of funny.” Later, people told me, “Man, you’re crazy. You never call the police.”

I get pulled over a lot more now. I GOT PULLED OVER MORE IN THE FIRST TWO YEARS AFTER MY TRANSITION THAN I DID THE ENTIRE 20 YEARS I WAS DRIVING BEFORE THAT.

Before, when I’d been stopped, even for real violations like driving 100 miles an hour, I got off. In fact, when it happened in Atlanta the officer and I got into a great conversation about the Braves. Now the first two questions they ask are: Do I have any weapons in the car, and am I on parole or probation?

Being a black man has changed the way I move in the world.

I used to walk quickly or run to catch a bus. Now I walk at a slower pace, and if I’m late I don’t dare rush. I am hyper-aware of making sudden or abrupt movements, especially in airports, train stations and other public places. I avoid engaging with unfamiliar white folks, especially white women. If they catch my eye, white women usually clutch their purses and cross the street. While I love urban aesthetics, I stopped wearing hoodies and traded my baggy jeans, oversized jerseys and colorful skullcaps for closefitting jeans, khakis and sweaters. These changes blunt assumptions that I’m going to snatch purses or merchandise, or jump the subway turnstile. The less visible I am, the better my chances of surviving.

But it’s not foolproof. I’m an academic sitting at a desk so I exercise where I can. I walked to the post office to mail some books and I put on this 40-pound weight vest that I walk around in. It was about 3 or 4 in the afternoon and I’m walking back and all of a sudden police officers drove up, got out of their car, and stopped. I had my earphones on so I didn’t know they were talking to me. I looked up and there’s a helicopter above. And now I can kind of see why people run, because you might live if you run, even if you haven’t done anything. This was in Emeryville, one of the wealthiest enclaves in Northern California, where there’s security galore. Someone had seen me walking to the post office and called in and said they saw a Muslim with an explosives vest. One cop, a white guy, picked it up and laughed and said, “Oh, I think I know what this is. This is a weight belt.”

It’s not only humiliating, but it creates anxiety on a daily basis. Before, I used to feel safe going up to a police officer if I was lost or needed directions. But I don’t do that anymore. I hike a lot, and if I’m out hiking and I see a dead body, I’ll keep on walking. I’ll never call the police again.

‘It now feels as though I am on my own’

Zander Keig, 52, San Diego

Coast Guard veteran. Works at Naval Medical Center San Diego as a clinical social work case manager. Editor of anthologies about transgender men. Started transition in 2005.

Prior to my transition, I was an outspoken radical feminist. I spoke up often, loudly and with confidence.

I was encouraged to speak up. I was given awards for my efforts, literally — it was like, “Oh, yeah, speak up, speak out.” When I speak up now, I am often given the direct or indirect message that I am “mansplaining,” “taking up too much space” or “asserting my white male heterosexual privilege.” Never mind that I am a first-generation Mexican American, a transsexual man, and married to the same woman I was with prior to my transition.

I find the assertion that I am now unable to speak out on issues I find important offensive and I refuse to allow anyone to silence me. My ability to empathize has grown exponentially, because I now factor men into my thinking and feeling about situations.

Prior to my transition, I rarely considered how men experienced life or what they thought, wanted or liked about their lives.

I have learned so much about the lives of men through my friendships with men, reading books and articles by and for men and through the men I serve as a licensed clinical social worker.

Social work is generally considered to be “female dominated,” with women making up about 80 percent of the profession in the United States. Currently I work exclusively with clinical nurse case managers, but in my previous position, as a medical social worker working with chronically homeless military veterans — mostly male — who were grappling with substance use disorder and severe mental illness, I was one of a few men among dozens of women.

Plenty of research shows that life events, medical conditions and family circumstances impact men and women differently. But when I would suggest that patient behavioral issues like anger or violence may be a symptom of trauma or depression, it would often get dismissed or outright challenged. The overarching theme was “men are violent” and there was “no excuse” for their actions.

I do notice that some women do expect me to acquiesce or concede to them more now: Let them speak first, let them board the bus first, let them sit down first, and so on. I also notice that in public spaces men are more collegial with me, which they express through verbal and nonverbal messages: head lifting when passing me on the sidewalk and using terms like “brother” and “boss man” to acknowledge me. As a former lesbian feminist, I was put off by the way that some women want to be treated by me, now that I am a man, because it violates a foundational belief I carry, which is that women are fully capable human beings who do not need men to acquiesce or concede to them.

What continues to strike me is the significant reduction in friendliness and kindness now extended to me in public spaces. It now feels as though I am on my own: No one, outside of family and close friends, is paying any attention to my well-being.

I can recall a moment where this difference hit home. A couple of years into my medical gender transition, I was traveling on a public bus early one weekend morning. There were six people on the bus, including me. One was a woman. She was talking on a mobile phone very loudly and remarked that “men are such a–holes.” I immediately looked up at her and then around at the other men. Not one had lifted his head to look at the woman or anyone else. The woman saw me look at her and then commented to the person she was speaking with about “some a–hole on the bus right now looking at me.” I was stunned, because I recall being in similar situations, but in the reverse, many times: A man would say or do something deemed obnoxious or offensive, and I would find solidarity with the women around me as we made eye contact, rolled our eyes and maybe even commented out loud on the situation. I’m not sure I understand why the men did not respond, but it made a lasting impression on me.

‘I took control of my career’

Chris Edwards, 49, Boston

Advertising creative director, public speaker and author of the memoir “Balls: It Takes Some to Get Some.” Transitioned in his mid-20s.

When I began my transition at age 26, a lot of my socialization came from the guys at work. For example, as a woman, I’d walk down the hall and bump into some of my female co-workers, and they’d say, “Hey, what’s up?” and I’d say, “Oh, I just got out of this client meeting. They killed all my scripts and now I have to go back and rewrite everything, blah blah blah. What’s up with you?” and then they’d tell me their stories. As a guy, I bump into a guy in the hall and he says, “What’s up?” and I launch into a story about my day and he’s already down the hall. And I’m thinking, well, that’s rude. So, I think, okay, well, I guess guys don’t really share, so next time I’ll keep it brief. By the third time, I realized you just nod.

The creative department is largely male, and the guys accepted me into the club. I learned by example and modeled my professional behavior accordingly. For example, I kept noticing that if guys wanted an assignment they’d just ask for it. If they wanted a raise or a promotion they’d ask for it. This was a foreign concept to me. As a woman, I never felt that it was polite to do that or that I had the power to do that. But after seeing it happen all around me I decided that if I felt I deserved something I was going to ask for it too. By doing that, I took control of my career. It was very empowering.

Apparently, people were only holding the door for me because I was a woman rather than out of common courtesy as I had assumed. Not just men, women too. I learned this the first time I left the house presenting as male, when a woman entered a department store in front of me and just let the door swing shut behind her. I was so caught off guard I walked into it face first.

When you’re socially transitioning, you want to blend in, not stand out, so it’s uncomfortable when little reminders pop up that you’re not like everybody else. I’m expected to know everything about sports. I like sports but I’m not in deep like a lot of guys. For example, I love watching football, but I never played the sport (wasn’t an option for girls back in my day) so there is a lot I don’t know. I remember the first time I was in a wedding as a groomsman. I was maybe three years into my transition and I was lined up for photos with all the other guys. And one of them shouted, “High school football pose!” and on cue everybody dropped down and squatted like the offensive line, and I was like, what the hell is going on? It was not instinctive to me since I never played. I tried to mirror what everyone was doing, but when you see the picture I’m kind of “offsides,” so to speak.

The hormones made me more impatient. I had lots of female friends and one of the qualities they loved about me was that I was a great listener. After being on testosterone, they informed me that my listening skills weren’t what they used to be. Here’s an example: I’m driving with one of my best friends, Beth, and I ask her “Is your sister meeting us for dinner?” Ten minutes later she’s still talking and I still have no idea if her sister is coming. So finally, I couldn’t take it anymore, and I snapped and said, “IS SHE COMING OR NOT?” And Beth was like, “You know, you used to like hearing all the backstory and how I’d get around to the answer. A lot of us have noticed you’ve become very impatient lately and we think it’s that damn testosterone!” It’s definitely true that some male behavior is governed by hormones. Instead of listening to a woman’s problem and being empathetic and nodding along, I would do the stereotypical guy thing — interrupt and provide a solution to cut the conversation short and move on. I’m trying to be better about this.

People ask if being a man made me more successful in my career. My answer is yes — but not for the reason you might think. As a man, I was finally comfortable in my own skin and that made me more confident. At work I noticed I was more direct: getting to the point, not apologizing before I said anything or tiptoeing around and trying to be delicate like I used to do. In meetings, I was more outspoken. I stopped posing my thoughts as questions. I’d say what I meant and what I wanted to happen instead of dropping hints and hoping people would read between the lines and pick up on what I really wanted. I was no longer shy about stating my opinions or defending my work. When I gave presentations I was brighter, funnier, more engaging. Not because I was a man. Because I was happy.

‘People assume I know the answer’

Alex Poon, 26, Boston

Project manager for Wayfair, an online home goods company. Alex is in the process of his physical transition; he did the chest surgery after college and started taking testosterone this spring.

Traditional Chinese culture is about conforming to your elders’ wishes and staying within gender boundaries. However, I grew up in the U.S., where I could explore my individuality and my own gender identity. When I was 15 I was attending an all-girls high school where we had to wear skirts, but I felt different from my peers. Around that point we began living with my Chinese grandfather towards the end of his life. He was so traditional and deeply set in his ways. I felt like I couldn’t cut my hair or dress how I wanted because I was afraid to upset him and have our last memories of each other be ruined.

Genetics are not in my favor for growing a lumberjack-style beard. Sometimes, Chinese faces are seen as “soft” with less defined jaw lines and a lack of facial fair. I worry that some of my feminine features like my “soft face” will make it hard to present as a masculine man, which is how I see myself. Instead, when people meet me for the first time, I’m often read as an effeminate man.

My voice has started cracking and becoming lower. Recently, I’ve been noticing the difference between being perceived as a woman versus being perceived as a man. I’ve been wondering how I can strike the right balance between remembering how it feels to be silenced and talked over with the privileges that come along with being perceived as a man. Now, when I lead meetings, I purposefully create pauses and moments where I try to draw others into the conversation and make space for everyone to contribute and ask questions.

People now assume I have logic, advice and seniority. They look at me and assume I know the answer, even when I don’t. I’ve been in meetings where everyone else in the room was a woman and more senior, yet I still got asked, “Alex, what do you think? We thought you would know.” I was at an all-team meeting with 40 people, and I was recognized by name for my team’s accomplishments. Whereas next to me, there was another successful team led by a woman, but she was never mentioned by name. I went up to her afterward and said, “Wow, that was not cool; your team actually did more than my team.” The stark difference made me feel uncomfortable and brought back feelings of when I had been in the same boat and not been given credit for my work.

When people thought I was a woman, they often gave me vague or roundabout answers when I asked a question. I’ve even had someone tell me, “If you just Googled it, you would know.” But now that I’m read as a man, I’ve found people give me direct and clear answers, even if it means they have to do some research on their own before getting back to me.

A part of me regrets not sharing with my grandfather who I truly am before he passed away. I wonder how our relationship might have been different if he had known this one piece about me and had still accepted me as his grandson. Traditionally, Chinese culture sees men as more valuable than women. Before, I was the youngest granddaughter, so the least important. Now, I’m the oldest grandson. I think about how he might have had different expectations or tried to instill certain traditional Chinese principles upon me more deeply, such as caring more about my grades or taking care of my siblings and elders. Though he never viewed me as a man, I ended up doing these things anyway.

Zander Keig contributed to this article in his personal capacity. The opinions expressed in this are the author’s own and do not reflect the view of the Department of Defense.

--------

Old story worth a repost SOURCE

43 notes · View notes

gregtroyan · 3 years ago

Text

Radiant Epoch: Chapter 2 - Lyra

All the truly enjoyable things in the world came in two kinds. One kind had only a finite lifespan. With things of this kind, there was a moment one could look back on when they first clearly understood that it contained a whole new world of delights just waiting to be explored.

But with that realization came the silent promise that, if one devoted enough time to it, sooner or later, there would be nothing left of it to explore. And finally, the day would come when it no longer felt like an enjoyable thing at all; and without really thinking much of it, a person would simply cease to pursue it. Ten years ago, Lyra would have unhesitatingly cited her dolls and their imagined adventures as one of the more enjoyable things she knew of. The rather impressive doll collection she boasted as a child was just one of many ways in which her life had been enriched by her family’s vocation as retail merchants, which made novel items imported from far-flung regions of the Hafen Empire and beyond a common sight in her house.

The Lyra of today could not recall when playing with dolls had stopped being an enjoyable for her, but she knew it had been many years since she’d felt the urge to do it, and that, at some point, she began to find it more enjoyable by far to see a little girl’s face light up when told that one of Lyra’s childhood toys was hers to keep forever. Incidentally, indulging this more recently discovered pleasure had ultimately whittled her once-prized assemblage down to a single member: a very unusual artifact of the now badly endangered traditional culture of the Anhelos Archipelago, which had managed to stay on as one of her possessions after losing its value as a plaything by becoming instead an evocative symbol of yet another of her enjoyable things, that being a growing earnestness to learn as much as possible about the world she lived in (an interest of hers which no doubt had its roots in her father’s habit of providing his young daughter not only with unique toys, but also with tales of the faraway lands from which they came).

Things of the second kind were a bit more mysterious to Lyra. They had no clear origin, and the way they felt never seemed to change. It was as though people had just been designed to love certain things. Seeing the world slowly flood with light before a sunrise. The feeling of cool air early in the morning. The melodic chirping of the birds who lived in the mountains surrounding Paach as they took to the skies in anticipation of the sunrise. How clear the sound of running water was at the canal while most of her neighbors still slept, or the way the soil in her family’s garden smelled after she watered it.

Lyra had no idea why any of these things which embellished her mornings made her happy, or how she could feel so certain they always would. Perhaps giving toys to children was another pleasure which, once discovered, would never fade. She had seen no evidence in her seventeen years that adults ever got tired of doing that no matter how old they grew.

Such were the thoughts drifting aimlessly through Lyra’s mind this morning as she lay motionless in her bed, not quite sure she had really woken up just yet, or whether a minute or an hour had passed since possibility of getting out of her bed had first occurred to her.

As the first calls of the birds she had just been thinking of reached her ears, she snapped her eyes open and finally acquiesced to wakefulness, rolling out of bed and making for the chemise she had placed on her dresser last night all in one motion. After donning the garment, she felt around for another item she knew to be on her dresser, and soon found it: a small cylinder, with a tiny hole bored into one of its bases. She placed her finger into the hole for a moment. A faint humming could be heard coming from the object, and then suddenly her room was bathed in a soft red light.

Talises were by now a rare sight in most parts of the Hafen Empire. Most kinds had been banned, recalled, and destroyed within a year of the technology’s debut, after the horrific effects they had on the body became tragically apparent. All that was now left of the promise of a vastly improved world which had been fleetingly attached to these items when Lyra was a little girl were a few trinkets offering mild convenience such as the one she now held, which had been allowed to remain in legal circulation because they supposedly used too little magic to cause any harm.

Most people remained extremely wary of them regardless. In Paach, only a handful of eccentrics owned even a single talis. Lyra’s family owned several, and she had recently started keeping this one in her bedroom as an aid to her morning routine, since at this time of year, it was almost always still dark out when she first woke up. To date, she had felt no ill effect from using it. Her father had even said that “everyone” in the city of Hafen still used talises for lighting at night, and he had brought most of the ones they owned back after one of his annual trips to the capital.

The thought had crossed Lyra’s mind before that, given her father’s obsessions with the latest things to come from Hafen, she and her family probably would have been among the first to die of magic sickness in Paach if their business had been as active as it was now when talises had first been available.

Lyra set her talis back down on the dresser, and, with the help of its light, stepped in front of her mirror and reluctantly began putting on the rest of the outfit she had laid out the night before: a long white skirt adorned with colorful foliate embroidery, and a very billowy coat cinched to the wearer’s body by drawstrings. Her father had procured these for her just a few weeks ago during his most recent stay in Hafen, and had presented them to her with the utmost assurance that they were highly fashionable among young women in Hafen these days.

There was probably no human girl in Paach who owned as much “fashionable” clothing as Lyra. There were probably also few who would have cared to less. By now, her parents had to have known that Lyra was not one to be impressed by whatever strangers living hundreds of miles away found fashionable, but every time they presented something like this to her, they talked on and on about it as though this was the one that would finally make their daughter understand.

Admittedly, Lyra had been slightly more interested in gifts of ornate clothing when she was younger, but as she grew older, she realized that in a town like Paach, “being fashionable” just meant sticking out everywhere you went, stirring up jealousy in the other girls and even some married women in her fairly well-to-do neighborhood, and getting nasty glares from cordillans or any human to whom Hafen culture was still anathema (which, in Paach, was a lot of humans).

Around the same time she had wised up about wearing high-quality imported clothing about town, she also realized that these clothes had always been more for her parents than for her anyway. What better way to showcase their shop’s access to the finest merchandise coming in from Hafen than by displaying it on the person of their lovely daughter? That, and her father liked to be surrounded by anything that might let him imagine he was but a temporarily displaced member of the Hafen bourgeoisie, and not a man born and raised in Paach as he actually was.

Lyra let out a sigh as she finished tying off the cords on her coat. She would be minding the store alone in the morning as her parents attended to some business elsewhere in town, so she had no choice but to assume her role of living advertisement today, at least until they returned. She was already looking forward to stripping these off later in the day and changing into the simple but pretty blue kirtle Tyce had bought for her a few days ago.

“Tyce….” Lyra muttered softly as she turned away from the mirror.

A month ago, that had been just a name to her. The name of one of her best friends in this world, sure, but saying it aloud had really felt no different than saying anybody else’s name. Now, it had become a charm that could make her feel just a little bit happy every time she said it. It seemed like the kind of charm that should wear off after a few uses, but somehow it never did.

Tyce and Lyra had begun dating just a little under a month ago, following an unintentionally romantic evening under the stars. Looking back on it, Lyra was still unable to explain how she’d acted that night. Truthfully, she had felt strange even before Tyce had arrived, like the night was just uncontrollably different, but not for any reason she could pin down. And then out-of-the-ordinary things started happening one after the other. Tyce showed up on time. Geneon did not show up at all, leaving the two of them alone. A perfectly normal and innocent chat somehow immediately brought out her long un-confided dread of a seemingly unavoidable future playing out a scripted life in Paach.

By the time they’d set off for the cave, Lyra had been awash with far more conflicting emotions than she’d been prepared to grapple with on what was supposed to have been nothing more than yet another carefree and relaxing time with her friends. She had been angry at herself for letting herself get so vulnerable for no real reason, angry at Tyce for his ineptitude at handling her vulnerability, angry at herself for being unreasonably angry with Tyce, upset that her tried and true mental routines for reigning in her anxiousness around other people were for the first time she could remember simply not working, and desperately searching for a way to shove all of it aside and just have a fun night — all while her worries about the future seemed far more crushingly valid after having finally been heard by someone else.

But she had also been deeply appreciative, to her own surprise, of Tyce’s unyielding efforts to comfort her in spite of his ineptitude. And when he had hugged her by the waterfall, she had suddenly become irrepressibly cognizant of the fact that she was alone in a beautiful place with someone who had actually grown to be quite an attractive man, who she trusted, and who cared about her deeply. It was like there was been some other Lyra who’d been taking a nap in the back of her mind for years who had been well aware all along of what that meant, and that simple touch had finally woken her up; after Tyce’s words at the cave, she was ready to take the reins, and somehow knew exactly what to do next.

It had been the sort of rash and inexplicable action that Lyra had always believed generally led to no good, but so far, she wasn’t complaining about the results. In fact, just about everything since then when it came to Tyce felt totally new and inexplicable to her. It had become clear to her very quickly that the lexicon she’d been given for understanding it all fell far short of the task. Words like “love”, “passion”, “heartache”, or “lust” seemed hopelessly clumsy in practice for navigating romance. It was like people had just given up on coming up with new names for anything once they got to this part of life.

As Lyra headed downstairs, she laughed as remembered what she’d been thinking about in bed a few minutes ago, and wondered which of the two kinds love was. If she thought about it, it had to be closer to the second kind, but overall, her theory of the good things in life now felt like a much less profound epiphany than it had when she was half asleep.

Shelving the whole idea for some other morning’s idle contemplation, she turned her mind to her plans for the day. Her parents would be out during the morning, and she would be minding the store in their absence. After they got back, it was off to her date with Tyce. Troupe Astral had come to Paach, and Tyce was taking her to see their performance. Year by year, Paach was become more open and integrated into the cultural life of the Hafen Empire, but as far as Lyra knew, getting to see a show like this was a first for the people of the town. She was excited for it, and the fact that they showed up so soon after she and Tyce had begun dating somehow made it feel like the whole thing had been specially timed just for them. Lyra had no doubt that this was a day she would remember for the rest of her life. It was hard to believe that after her date, she had something even more important to do.

Before meeting up with Tyce, she was going to see Geneon.

The one and only problem in Tyce and Lyras’ new relationship was what to do about Geneon. A month ago, Geneon and Tyce had more or less shared the same place in Lyra’s heart. The trio had been best friends for long time now, and tended to spend as much of their downtime together as possible. In fact, as far as Lyra was concerned, the two of them were at this point her only friends, or at least her only real ones. Now, though, all of that was in danger of becoming a thing of the past.

It wasn’t just that Tyce and Lyras’ relationship had changed. Of course they were going to want to spend more time with only each other’s company. That probably would have been a bad enough strain on their friendships with Geneon, but it was something that could have been gotten through with time. From what Lyra had seen of other people’s relationships, the whirlwind of mutual infatuation in which she and Tyce had found themselves helplessly caught these past weeks was probably not destined to remain so overpowering forever.

No, the real problem was the huge fight they’d had when Tyce and Lyra had finally worked up the courage to tell him about “them”. It had been the kind of fight where nobody involved was sure whether they were ever speaking again afterward.

Lyra mostly blamed herself for what had happened. First, they should have told him right away rather than waiting so long. Although in fairness, it wasn’t like they were keeping it a secret from him specifically. Tyce’s mother was the only person who heard before Geneon, and that was only because Tyce had just blurted out the truth like it was no big deal when his mom asked how his night went the morning after their first kiss. For her part, that night had left Lyra’s mind spinning. It was only after seeing Tyce again and talking about it all that she finally came to the conclusion, “This person is now my boyfriend,” and the change was so dramatic and hard to believe that she felt like she needed time before telling Geneon, let alone her own parents.

That said, she had only wanted that time to come to terms with her own feelings. As soon as “being in love with Tyce” felt safely like her new normal, she was ready to announce it to the world. She had rehearsed any number of ways the conversation might go with her parents, and was fully prepared to withstand any resistance to her relationship they might put up.

But somehow, she’d given no real thought to how the talk with Geneon would go. Partly that was because, unlike the talk with her parents, Tyce would be there, too, and it wasn’t like she could just write him a script and tell him to stick to it. Not like they should need some plan of action just to talk to their best friend anyway. What was there to do but explain things and assure Geneon he meant no less to them now than he had before?

Suffice to say it had not gone well. If she was being honest, Lyra had noticed long ago that Geneon probably had feelings of his own for her. It was something toward which she had always feigned obliviousness. He’d never confessed his love for her, after all. How could he? A cordillan orphan, and a human daughter of what passed for high society in their town? It was tragically unfair, but that wasn’t going to be an easy life to make work. Besides, in all those years since she’d first started to wonder if he felt that way, “love” for Lyra had always been something for the future — ideally with a mature, intelligent, and well-organized man from somewhere other than Paach who she was sure to fatefully encounter through her family’s business one of these day. For as long as that had remained true, it was easy to just not think about love at all.

Lyra’s big mistake that day had been assuming, without even noticing she was assuming it, that, because Geneon had not acted on his feelings for her, that meant they weren’t every bit as powerful and turbulent as what she and Tyce now felt for each other. She had frankly expected him to accept the situation, be at least a little happy for them, and soon put to rest whatever feelings he might have had for her before she started dating Tyce. Put simply, she was so wrapped up in her feelings for Tyce that she hadn’t even considered that she would need to take how Geneon felt seriously at all.

It would be the easiest thing in the world to leave things as they were. No one else in Tyce and Lyras’ lives had ever been particularly happy about their longstanding friendship with a cordillan, and it would come as a relief to them if Geneon was out of the picture for good. The one exception to this was Tyce’s mother, Ellen. As a widow who ran her own smithy and casually treated cordillans like humans without finding it unusual, she had long been regarded as an oddball (albeit, owing to the necessity of her labor and her seemingly boundless generosity toward others, a well-liked one).

As for Tyce himself, he was being irritatingly stubborn about the whole thing. It was clear he was still angry with Geneon, and every time he came up in conversation, Tyce would hear nothing of going to see him together, and would just say that Geneon would come around when he was ready. But Lyra knew that might never happen. People had been begrudgingly tolerant of their relationship with Geneon when they were children, but they were getting less so with each passing year. It wasn’t like Geneon didn’t face criticism for getting friendly with humans, either, and given his unenviable lot in life, people not liking the way he did things wasn’t just something he could brush off and go about his business the way Lyra and Tyce did. All of the pressures in their lives were for their friendship to dissolve, and their feelings for each other were the only thing standing against them. It just wasn’t a fight Geneon could be expected to make on his own.

The most frightening moment for Lyra had come last night as she was coming home after finalizing her plans for today with Tyce. She was buzzing with excitement in anticipation of their next date, and at some point, the situation with Geneon had crossed her mind. It had only been for an instant, but the thought had popped up loud and clear, Things change. We’re going to be full-fledged adults soon, and then there’ll be no time for playing around outside of town anyway. Maybe it’s fine this way.

After expressing reflexive disgust at that thought and stamping it right back down, Lyra suddenly realized that maybe this was how most of the adults she knew became so self-absorbed and unconcerned about others. She vowed then and there that she would never become the kind of person who could just say, “It’s sad, but that’s life,” about a dear friend she’d grown up with just because she’d found some happiness for herself. She would go confront Geneon the very next minute she had the chance to, and today, she was going to have about three hours free between her parents’ return from their errands and her meetup with Tyce. Lyra was determined to save their friendship and wasn't going to give up on him.

#RadiantEpoch JRPG Novel Novelization Webnovel Webstory OriginalStory OriginalContent Fantasy SciFi Teenager Teenage Love Drama

1 note · View note

askthewitchlady · 4 years ago

Text

Ajin: Demi-human (season 1) Review

THIS REVIEW WILL CONTAIN SPOILERS

Oh my goodness was this a slog to get through, Three days people, it took me three days to get through 13 episodes Because OMG Setting aside the fact this is some of the ugliest 2d to 3d rig work I have ever seen, I have never seen a show have some much going on with out achieving anything. Ok ok ok let me start this properly.

In the world there are being known as Ajin, these Demi-human beings are rare with only three known cases in Japan, the Ajin are capable of resurrecting from fatal wounds making them Semi-immortal, they also have the ability to summon being known as ‘black ghosts’ which can be used for all sorts of things. There is unfortunately no way of knowing if a person is an Aijin until they suffer some for of mortal injury at that point their body will regenerate and they will live this is the case for Kei Nagai, a high school student studying to be a doctor. While the government of Japan have led people to believe that Ajin are kept in protective custody it is learned that not only are they but most other countries use Aijin as test subjects for medicines and weapons, including life fire testing, because of their regenerative abilities.

Story time

17 years ago during a war in an unnamed African nation the first Ajin was discovered. Reffered to as a soldier of god because he could not be killed the soldier was immobilized and claimed as property of the US government.

Now Kei Nagai is an apathetic highschool student studying to be a doctor on his mothers demand. While to his ‘friends’ he seems like a cheerful if easily taken advantage of boy the truth is he is apathetic and cut off from the people around him seeing only the value they have to him personally. While walking to school he and his friends note another boy their age Kaito sitting outside a convenience store they comment on how weird he is and question if Kei is his friend after Kaito waves to him, Kei denies this and they walk on.

At school the subject of Ajins is brought up because of their value in the medical feild, one of Keis friends shows another classmate a video of Inhumane testing on an Ajin subject. The boy also asks his teacher if the truth about the high reward for an Ajins capture is true. For some reason this startles Kei and his reaction draws attention so he asks if Ajin aren’t really human. His teacher says they are not.

Reminiscing he vaguely remembered the death of a childhood pet, after burying it while trying to console his sister he wonders about death and witness’ something strange. curious about the memory he decides to visit his sister in the hospital and tries to ask her about what she remebers but she refuses to discuss it being outright hostile to him.

still lost in thought and wondering about Ajin as well as flicking through Study cards Kei misses the stop light and begins to cross the street before being hit full on by a truck. the truck drags his body quiet a ways as it skids to a halt and his friends are horrified by what they’ve witnessed, the driver is shaken and climbs out desperate to say that it was Keis fault when to their shock Kei crawls out from under the truck dazed t first he is confused about what happened before quickly realizing and becoming upset he insists he’s human and begs for his friends to believe him however he realizes they only see him as a way to make money by turning him in. in terror Kei screams unintentinally releasing his voice, another unique trait of Ajin that causes a temporary paralasis in those who hear it, before fleeing the scene.

a little later Yu Tosaki and his body guard and assistant Izumi Shimomura of the Ajin control branch of the government arrive to question Keis friends and his mother. As this is going on it is revealed that Kei has fled to a local Shrine and then into the woods beyond, desperatly thinking who might help him he remebers Kaito who had been a childhood friend but whome he’d been told not to be around anymore by his mother. Desperate and worried Kai Might also want to turn him in but feeling alone Kei calls Kaito and the other boy is ready to help his friend filling a duffle bag with supplies and heading out, knocking out a poliece officer who had found Kei Kaito offers his old friend a hand up and they flee the area on a motorcycle.

The Bad

Despite how much I’ve written that happened in the first episode. it not actually a lot. theres a lot of nothing in this show and thats a major problem. I a not against quiet moments, for example Hiyao Miyazaki is very well know for his long silent scenes, but even these scenes serve to tell story in one way or another, I get the feeling either the writer or director of this show wants to emulate that but the quiet scene in the show just don’t accomplish anything. theres also a sense of ‘artistic padding’ where things are added for the art of it, I don’t know if someone in the production team had higher aspirations or if they where just desperate to cover the ugly modles but it doesn’t work.

The episodes feel long but almost nothing happens. or a lot happens but none of it matters or is memorable. The motivations of the antagonist make no sense, and while I have a theory of who he truely is I won’t say untill I do my reviw on season 2 (Which won’t be for a while because this was so hard to sit through)

Kei himself is a terrible protagonist, there are moment whre you think he’ll get better, but he really doesn’t in fact I thought the show was going to pull some kind of switch and make the story focus on the friend Kaito who seems to really genuinely still care about Kei even though they hadn’t been friends for years and who insists even if Kei is an Ajin, he’s still Kaitos friend so that’s all that matters. But Kei leavs Kaito after only a couple episodes

It’s clear that there is something not right with kei from the get go, the first time we see his phone all his friend are listed not by name but number literally ‘friend 1′ ‘friend 2′ and so on, and as the show goes on theres an impression that the creators where trying to make Kei a Psychopath. I’m not talking Ax wielding movie psycho but a clinical psychopath, no empathy no connection to the people around him, a general callous nature and his willingness to use then abandon anyone who might have value. I’m not a fan of using mental illness as a way of making people ‘other’ mental illness is demonized enough, and frankly it’s hard to empathize with a protagonist who openly admits they don’t care about anyone.

There aren’t any real stand out characters either, they all feel like cut outs, you have you deceptively friendly antagonist, you have your to serious government agent, and his body guard who obviously has a crush on him, you have the best friend, you have the friendly granny.

It’s just all been done before and better.

Now about episode 8 a character name Ko Nakano is introduced and for a moment I thought Oh the shows just going to give us a new protagonist... NOPE! he get capture by Kei who keeps him locked in an old shipping truck for the rest of the season, Fuck that noise. honestly Kei gets less and less likeable as the show goes on. He abjectly refuses to get involved with trying to stop the antagonist, Sato’s, terrorist plot even saying openly he doesn’t care what happens to other because he’s found a nice place where he can live a quiet normal life. Kei had in fact been taken in by a kindly older woman who convinced the villagers kei was her grandson from tokyo who had gotten into trouble and was staying with her.

That being said.... There’s a couple good things

The elderly woman is quiet charming, she doesn’t care about the Ajin or what ever other trouble Kei seems to be in she just sees a young man who helped her after she fell and lets him stay. If not for another villager recognizing his picture on the news and reporting him to claim the rumoured reward Kei clearly would have been happy to stay in that little village forever and just live a quiet life.

The opening theme song is pretty good. the CG is frustrating in that in the opening they show shots of characters as they looked in the manga and those drawings are amazing, This would have looked so much better 2d Animated.

The black ghosts are kind of neat.

theres a couple interesting fights with the Ajin, since they recover almost instantly from death they’ll actually kill themselves in combat to resurrect with out their injuries or to even escape grapple or escape the effects of tranquillizers, so that’s neat

I haven’t got much here guys I’m sorry I’m trying but this just, I feel like there might have been something good under all the thick thick thick padding.

Final Thoughts?

I don’t recommend it, even for one watch it’s just a slog, it’s not enjoyable it’s not even a good time killer because it feels like it drags.

Everything from plot point to characters to scene have been done before in better shows, and the aesthetic is just Ugly, terrible CG modles with awkward round movements to avoid collision issues clearly, and the backgrounds look like someone took photos and then put them through the photoshop watercolor filter.

There’s nothing worth reccomending about it, I know Netflix has stuff way better then this so go watch that because this so Not worth your time.

#anime #anime review #Netflix #netflix review #Ajin #ajin demihuman #ajin demi-human #reveiw #So not worth it

5 notes · View notes

recentanimenews · 4 years ago

Text

IN-DEPTH: Neon Godzilla Evangelion, The Horrors of Hideaki Anno

"Something broken or deficient comes more naturally to me. Sometimes that thing is the mind. Sometimes it is the body."

-Hideaki Anno, creator of Neon Genesis Evangelion

"Monsters are tragic beings; they are born too tall, too strong, too heavy, they are not evil by choice. That is their tragedy."

- Ishiro Honda, director of Godzilla

Image via Amazon Prime Video

Horror is born of trauma. The pop-culture monsters we fear and are fascinated by tend to reflect our very real anxieties. Frankenstein tells the story of scientific progress so explosive that it risks leaving humanity behind. It Follows creates a nightmare vision of looming intimacy and the potential for unknowable disease. Leatherface, hooting at the dinner table with his brothers in rural Texas, was the child of economic angst, the crimes of Ed Gein, and of President Nixon's threat of a "silent majority" forcing Americans to reconsider whether or not they really knew their neighbors.

And Godzilla? Well, Godzilla is a metaphor for a bomb. A bunch of bombs, actually. But more important than that, he represents loss — the loss of structure, of prosperity, of control. Godzilla is our own hubris returning to haunt us, the idea that in the end, we are helpless in the face of nature, disaster, and even our own mistakes. We, as a species, woke him up and now we have to deal with him, no matter how unprepared we are.

Hideaki Anno understands this.

In 1993, he began work on Neon Genesis Evangelion, a mecha series profound in not just its depiction of a science fiction world but in its treatment of depression and mental illness. It is a seminal work in the medium of anime, a "must-watch," and it would turn Anno into a legend, though his relationship to his magnum opus remains continuous and, at best, complicated. It is endlessly fascinating, often because Anno seems endlessly fascinated by it.

In 2017, he would win the Japanese Academy Film Prize for Director of the Year for Shin Godzilla, a film that also won Picture of the Year, scored five other awards, and landed 11 nominations in total. Shin Godzilla was the highest-grossing live-action Japanese film of 2016, scoring 8.25 billion yen and beating out big-name imports like Disney's Zootopia. In comparison, the previous Godzilla film, Final Wars, earned 1.26 billion. Shin Godzilla captured the public's attention in a way that most modern films in the franchise had not, returning the King of the Monsters to his terrifying (and culturally relevant roots).

So how did he do it? How did Anno, a titan of the anime industry famous for his extremely singular creations, take a monster that had practically become a ubiquitous mascot of Japanese pop culture and successfully reboot him for the masses? How did Godzilla and Neon Genesis Evangelion align in a way that now there are video games, attractions, and promotions that feature the two franchises cohabitating? The answer is a little more complex than, "Well, they're both pretty big, I guess."

To figure that out, we have to go back to two dates: 1954 and 1993. Though nearly 40 years apart, both find Japan on the tail end of disaster.

Part 1: 1954 and 1993

On August 6th and August 9th 1945, two atomic bombs were dropped on the cities of Hiroshima and Nagasaki, respectively. These would kill hundreds of thousands of people, serving as tragic codas to the massive air raids already inflicted on the island nation. Six days after the bombing of Nagasaki, Japan would surrender to the Allied forces and World War II would officially end. But the fear would not.

Within a year, the South Pacific would become home to many United States-conducted nuclear tests, just a few thousand miles from Japan. And though centered around the Marshall Islands, the chance of an accident was fairly high. And on March 1, 1954, one such accident happened, with the Lucky Dragon #5 fishing boat getting caught in the fallout from a hydrogen bomb test. The crew would suffer from radiation-related illnesses, and radioman Kuboyama Aikichi would die due to an infection during treatment. For many around the world, it was a small vessel in the wrong place at the wrong time. For Japan, it was a reminder that even a decade after their decimation from countless bombs, atomic terror still loomed far too close to home.

Godzilla emerged from this climate. Films about giant monsters had become popular, with The Beast from 20,000 Fathoms and a 1952 re-release of King Kong smashing their way through the box office, and producer Tomoyuki Tanaka wanted to combine aspects of these with something that would comment on anti-nuclear themes. Handed to former soldier and Toho Studios company man Ishiro Honda for direction and tokusatsu wizard Eiji Tsubaraya for special effects, Godzilla took form and would be released a mere eight months after the Lucky Dragon incident.

Image via Amazon Prime Video

It was a success, coming in eighth in the box office for the year and it would lead to dozens of sequels that would see Godzilla go from atomic nightmare to lizard superhero (and then back and forth a few times). America, sensing profits, bought the rights, edited it heavily, inserted Rear Window star Raymond Burr as an American audience surrogate, and released it as Godzilla: King of the Monsters! It was also very profitable, and for the next 20 years, every Japanese Godzilla film got a dubbed American version following soon in its wake.

Years went by. Japan would recover from World War II and the following Allied Occupation and become an economic powerhouse. But in the late '80s, troubling signs began to emerge. An asset price bubble, based on the current economy's success and optimism about the future, was growing. And despite the Bank of Japan's desperate attempts to buy themselves some time, the bubble burst and the stock market plummeted. In 1991, a lengthy, devastating recession now known as the "Lost Decade" started. And the resulting ennui was not just economic but cultural.

The suicide rate rose sharply. Young people, formerly on the cusp of what seemed to be promising careers as "salarymen," found themselves listless and without direction. Disillusionment set in, both with the government and society itself, something still found in Japan today. And though people refusing to engage with the norms of modern culture and instead retreating from it is nothing new in any nation, the demographic that we now know as "Hikikomori" appeared. And among these youths desperate to find something better amid the rubble of a once-booming economy was animator Hideaki Anno.

A co-founder of the anime production company Gainax, Anno was no stranger to depression, having grappled with it his entire life. Dealing with his own mental illness and haunted by the failure of important past projects, Anno made a deal that would allow for increased creative control, and in 1993, began work on Neon Genesis Evangelion. Combining aspects of the popular mech genre with a plot and themes that explored the psyche of a world and characters on the brink of ruin, NGE would become extremely popular, despite a less than smooth production.

The series would concern Shinji Ikari, a fourteen-year-old boy who suffers from depression and anxiety in a broken and terrifying world. Forced to pilot an EVA unit by his mysterious and domineering father, Shinji's story and his relationships with others are equal parts tragic and desperate, and the series provides little solace for its players. Anno would become more interested in psychology as the production of the series went on, and the last handful of episodes reflect this heavily.

Image via Netflix

After the original ending inspired derision and rage from fans, Anno and Gainax would follow it up with two sequel projects (Death & Rebirth and The End of Evangelion), and NGE's place in the pantheon of "classic" anime was set. Paste Magazine recently named it the third-best anime series of all time. IGN has it placed at #8 and the British Film Insititute included End of Evangelion on their list of 50 key anime films. The exciting, thoughtful, and heart-breaking story of Shinji Ikari, Asuka, Minato, and the rest has gone down in history as one of the best stories ever told.

So what would combine the two and bring Godzilla's massive presence under the influence of Anno's masterful hand? As is a miserable trend here, that particular film would also be spawned from catastrophe.

Part 2: 2011

"There was no storm to sail out of: The earth was spasming beneath our feet, and we were pretty much vulnerable as long as we were touching it," said Carin Nakanishi in an interview with The Guardian. The spasm she was referring to? The 2011 Tohoku earthquake, the most powerful earthquake in the history of Japan. Its after-effects would include a tsunami and the meltdown of three reactors at the Fukushima Daiichi Nuclear Power Plant. The death toll was in the tens of thousands. The property destruction seemed limitless. The environmental impact was shocking. Naoto Kan, the Japanese Prime Minister at the time, called it the worst crisis for Japan since World War II.

It took years to figure out the full extent of the damage. Four years after, in 2015, 229,000 people still remained displaced from their ruined homes. The radiation in the water was so severe that fisheries were forced to avoid it. The cultivation of local agriculture was driven to a halt, with farmland being abandoned for most of the decade. And though the direct effects of it varied depending on how far away you lived, one symptom remained consistent: The inability to trust those who'd been sworn in to help.

"No useful information was being offered by the government or the media," Nakanishi said. Many voiced a fear that the government had not done its decontamination job properly or would not continue to help them if they returned to their former homes near Fukushima. Some felt the people making decisions were far too distant to truly understand what was going on. Many thought that the government had underestimated the danger. In a survey taken after the Fukushima meltdown, "only 16 percent of respondents ... expressed trust in government institutions." In most of these stories, citizens stepped in to help, feeling as if they had no other choice. Eventually, his approval ratings dropped to only 10 percent and Naoto Kan stepped down from his role as Prime Minister.

And what of Godzilla and Anno at the time? Well, the former lay dormant, having been given a 10-year hiatus from the big screen by Toho after the release of 2004's Godzilla: Final Wars. And though he'd show up in a short sequence in Toho's 2007 film Always Zoku Sanchome no Yuhi, they kept good on their promise. But Godzilla fans did not have to worry about a drought of Godzilla news. American film production company Legendary Pictures was busy formulating their own take on him, having acquired the rights a year before.

Meanwhile, Anno's post Evangelion life consisted of ... a lot more Evangelion. Though he'd direct some live-action films, his most newsworthy project was a series of Rebuild of Evangelion titles, anime films built with different aims (and created with a different mindset) than the original series. Departing Gainax in 2007, these would be created under his newly founded studio, Studio Khara.

Image via Netflix

And while it's obvious from the contents of Evangelion that Anno is interested in giant monsters and giant beings in general (Evangelion is pretty chockful of them), this fascination would only become more open. In 2013, he'd curate a tokusatsu exhibit at the Museum of Contemporary Art in Tokyo, one that showcased miniatures from Mothra to Ultraman to Godzilla himself. About the exhibit, Anno would write:

"As children we grew up watching tokusatsu and anime programs. We were immediately riveted to the sci-fi images and worlds they portrayed. They put us in awe, and made us feel such suspense and excitement. (...) I think our hearts were deeply moved by the grown-ups' earnest efforts working at the sets that dwelled deep behind the images. (...) The emotions and sensations from those cherished moments have lead us to become who we are today."

For the presentation, he'd also produce a short film called A Giant Warrior Descends on Tokyo, with the monster based on a creature from Hayao Miyazaki's — his old boss and an inspiration to Anno, along with the man that Anno would accompany on a trip to the Iwata prefecture to show support for communities wrecked by the Tohoku earthquake — Nausicaa of the Valley of the Wind manga. It was directed by Shinji Higuchi, an old collaborator of Anno's at Gainax who had served as Special Effects Director for Shusuke Kaneko's stellar Gamera trilogy in the '90s.

And though Higuchi would shortly go on to direct two Attack on Titan live-action films, their partnership would continue. Because in 2015, Toho announced they would team up to co-direct Godzilla 2016.

Part 3: 2016

Hideaki Anno has often thought of the apocalypse.

In an interview with Yahoo! News in 2014, he'd tell the interviewer he "sincerely thought that the world would end in the 20th Century," and that his fear of a nuclear arms race and the Cold War had heavily influenced Evangelion. However, his creative process isn't just permeated by man-made threats. "Japan is a country where a lot of typhoons and earthquakes strike ... It's a country where merciless destruction happens naturally. It gives you a strong sense that God exists out there."

This focus on earthly intervention by a divine presence is definitely a theme in Evangelion, but it also applies to Godzilla, a borderline invincible behemoth that was created to remind man of its mistakes. It's this kind of provoking thoughtfulness (among other things) that might have alerted Toho Studios of Higuchi and Anno's potential proficiency in re-igniting the slumbering Godzilla franchise. "[W]e looked into Japanese creators who were the most knowledgeable and had the most passion for Godzilla ...Their drive to take on such new challenges was exactly what we all had been inspired by," Toho would say of the pair.

Image via Amazon Prime Video

It was a few years in the making, though. After the creation of Evangelion: 3.0 You Can (Not) Redo, Anno fell into depression, causing him to turn down Toho's 2013 offer of the Godzilla project. But thanks to the support of Toho and Higuchi, Anno decided to eventually take them up on it. However, he did not want to repeat how he felt past filmmakers had been "careless" with Godzilla, stating that Godzilla "exists in a world of science fiction, not only of dreams and hopes, but he's a caricature of reality, a satire, a mirror image." Higuchi was also passionate about the project, saying, "I give unending thanks to Fate for this opportunity; so next year, I'll give you the greatest, worst nightmare."

Rounding out the NGE reunion with Shin Godzilla would be Mahiro Maeda, a character designer who would provide the look of Godzilla, and Evangelion composer Shiro Sagisu. Sagisu's music often includes motifs from Evangelion and the work of Akira Ifukube — who scored many classic Godzilla films — and is a great match for the monster. It's powerful stuff.

youtube

Anno's main concern was rivaling the first Godzilla, a film that remains effective to this day. So, in order to "come close even a little," he "would have to do the same thing." Thus, after over 60 years of monster adventures, Shin Godzilla became Godzilla's first real Japanese reboot, following a long line of films that were either direct sequels or had ignored the sequels to become direct sequels to the original. It would carry many of the same beats — monster arrives, people struggle to figure out how to stop it, they eventually do. The end. But unlike many Godzilla films, in which bureaucratic operations took a backseat to the scientists that would eventually figure out how to stop (or help) the Big G, they were front and center here.

And the depiction was often less than kind.

Instead of confident and sacrificial, the politicians found in Shin Godzilla are ludicrous in their archaic behavior, seemingly more concerned with what boardroom they're in than the unstoppable progress of the beast destroying their city. Most of their actions are played for comic relief, a tonal clash with the stark backdrop of the 400-foot-tall disaster walking just outside their offices. Multiple references are made to the Tohoku earthquake, the tsunami, and the Fukushima meltdown — including the waves that follow Godzilla as he comes ashore and the worry over the radiation Godzilla leaks into the land he travels across. One plot point even includes Japan grappling with the potential use of an atomic bomb on Godzilla from the United States, showing that over seventy years after the end of WWII, nuclear annihilation remains a terrifying prospect.

In the end, only a team organized by a young upstart that's mostly free from the processes of his slower, befuddled elders can save the day. That said, "save" isn't really the right word. Echoing Anno's statement that Japan is "a country where merciless destruction happens naturally," Godzilla is only frozen in place, standing still in the middle of the city, a monstrous question left to be solved. Whether it's Godzilla or a disaster like Godzilla, it is a problem that you must deal with, prepare for, and rebuild after. It will always be there.

That said, the film isn't just a parody of quivering government employees out of their depth in the face of a cataclysm (distrust in the goodwill of authority figures is a theme also omnipresent in Evangelion). It's also a really, really rad monster movie. Godzilla is a scarred, seemingly wounded creature, his skin ruptured and his limbs distorted. He is not action-figure ready, even as he evolves into forms more befitting of total annihilation. As the Japanese military increasingly throws weaponry at him, he transforms to defend himself, emitting purple atomic beams from his mouth, his back, and finally his tail. Higuchi and Anno's direction is often awe-inspiring, whether the camera is tilted up to capture Godzilla from a street-level view, or panning around a building to face him head-on. Godzilla feels huge.

Image via Amazon Prime Video

Its this combination of ideas and execution that would cause Shin Godzilla to sweep the Japanese Academy Awards in 2017, and, excuse my pun, absolutely crush it at the box office. But an incredible movie wouldn't be the end of it. In fact, while Shin Godzilla was a successful Anno creation, it hadn't yet gone to battle with Anno's other most successful creation.

Not yet anyway.

Part 4: 2018

A few months before Shin Godzilla's release, Toho announced a "maximum collaboration" between Godzilla and Neon Genesis Evangelion, a team-up that first manifested itself in art and crossover merchandise. Art with the logo for NERV (the anti-Angel organization from Evangelion), with the fig leaf replaced by Godzilla's trademark spines showed up on a subsite for the Shin Godzilla film.

Meanwhile, video game developers Granzella and publisher Bandai Namco worked on City Shrouded In Shadow, a game where you played as a human trying to survive attacks from various giant beings, including some from the Godzilla universe and some from Evangelion. And though this wasn't specifically tied to Shin Godzilla — Godzilla looks much more like his design in the '90s series of movies, a monster style that was the go-to branding look for years after — it did make the idea of the two franchises co-existing in similar spaces a little less alien.

The big one came in 2018 when Universal Studios Japan declared that the following summer, it would be home to a meeting of the two titans in "Godzilla vs Evangelion: The Real 4-D." This ride/theater experience would give audiences a firsthand look at a clash between the EVA units and Godzilla. However, just as the horror of the original Godzilla had been diluted through various sequels that saw him becoming Japan's protective older brother, and just as the crushing melancholy of Evangelion feels a little less sad when you see Rei posing on the side of a pachinko machine, this ride would also be a reframing experience.

Godzilla is a threat, at first, as the Evangelion units zip around, blast him, and try to drop-kick him. But then, out of space, Godzilla's old three-headed foe King Ghidorah emerges. The golden space dragon provides a common enemy for the group and they work together to eliminate it. Godzilla, seemingly forgetting why he showed up to the ride in the first place, trudges back into the sea. He is now a hero, his spot as Earth's Public Enemy #1 seemingly neutered.

To this day, news of theme park attractions that bear the Shin Godzilla design consistently pop up, including one ride where you can zip line into Godzilla's steaming open mouth! But Toho doesn't seem open to a live-action sequel that many see as the obvious next step (though they would produce a trilogy of anime films that take place in a different monster timeline). Instead, they opted for beginning a kind of Godzilla shared universe, like the extremely popular Marvel Cinematic Universe. And Anno and Higuchi have moved on to their next revitalizing effort: a reboot of Ultraman.

Wes Craven, the director of A Nightmare on Elm Street once said, "You don't enter the theater and pay your money to be afraid. You enter the theater and pay your money to have the fears that are already in you when you go into a theater dealt with and put into a narrative ... Stories and narratives are one of the most powerful things in humanity. They're devices for dealing with the chaotic danger of existence." The creators at Toho certainly gave people that with Godzilla, just as Anno did with Neon Genesis Evangelion.

Image via Amazon Prime Video

But horror films are also entertainment, and soon these monsters are sequel-ized and commodified, losing their edge to the point that new minds are brought in to reboot them and help them move forward. It's a process we've repeated since people began telling stories to one another thousands and thousands of years ago. They help us confront the worst aspects of ourselves and of our worlds. It's what makes them vital. We need them. Like the next evolution of monsters sprouting from Godzilla's tail in the final frame of Shin Godzilla, the horror genre reaches out, grasping for fears that we have and fears that will one day come.

For more Crunchyroll Deep Dives, check out Licensing of the Monsters: How Pokemon Ignited An Anime Arms Race and The Life And Death Of Dragonball Evolution.

Daniel Dockery is a Senior Staff Writer for Crunchyroll. Follow him on Twitter!

Do you love writing? Do you love anime? If you have an idea for a features story, pitch it to Crunchyroll Features.

By: [email protected]

#Anime #News #Latest in Anime News by Crunchyroll!

6 notes · View notes

dragoon-of-all-trades · 5 years ago

Text

Demiurge x Reader - The Devil’s Contract (Chapter 1?)

A/N: First ever reader insert regarding a character I didn’t expect to like at all, but I have a thing for butler types—and demons.

Also, understand I’ll be writing loosely on what I know about this series from the anime I’ve seen and the manga I’ve read (which is not all of it as of late). Before the pandemic hit, I’ve not been able to read a whole lot even if I work at a bookstore, so be aware of that. I'm trying to write an insert again just to get back into the idea of doing so. I got super burnt out not too long ago, but I seem okay if I wrote to this? So I don't know. I'll see how far motivation goes.

The majority of this will probably end up on my AO3. I’ll post the link to that place eventually, but this is the first, full chapter. Nothing too gritty in it yet, so just enjoy what I’ve managed to do. Also it’s 7 AM, and I want to sleep now!

Desc: He promised you a solution to your misery, and you sold your freedom for it. Forced into his twisted experiments with the veil of hope to manipulate your heart, you begin to wonder what feelings are even true anymore. Do you love him, or do you want to see him fall to a horrible fate for all he will continue to do to you?

Warnings: Implied Miscarriage, spousal abuse, murder, bad BDSM etiquette

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

The sights were becoming a blur, the sounds around you flickering in and out like a candle flame fighting the harsh roar of a raging windstorm as you were dragged out of one of the taverns within the walls of the Roble Holy Kingdom. The grip on your tattered cloak went from flaccid to aggressive as the two men responsible to your current movements heaved you out into the dark.

The ground embraced you, the mud that had accumulated from the long, rainy night nearly causing you to choke on its unwarranted urgency to strangle you when you thought not to close your mouth upon the ill desired heave out of the pub. Oddly enough, while your body was stricken down with the countless amount of liquor you had ingested, you felt no yearning to fight even the earth as it did its best to demean you.

“A…d…st…ay out!”

The words were hard to keep together. They faded in and out of the world like a dream, but you knew what they meant even in the state you were.

A sigh huffed through your nostrils as you found what strength you could to heft yourself up and out of the mud. Even in the mud’s sullied surface, you could just make out the pathetic caster you had become: a woman who had only justified her reasoning behind the occult just to bring back what was lost nearly a year ago. Your fingers curled, grappling the soiled earth in overwhelming disappointment and it was there in weak and weary frustration you slapped the image away with the wrapped palm of your hand.

Don’t look at it. Don’t even bother. You could mourn over what no longer was, but why bother wasting the time in regards to your own humanity?

All dead ends, but you’d find something. You had to. You heard the rumors, and it was your only chance at hope. In your mental collapse, alcohol summoned you to its sweet embrace, and you couldn’t deny its alluring melody. It was a detour, but you had to forget the world around you even for a moment.

Movements slowed and ever sluggish, your fingers slid about the tattered edges of the hood that your black cloak had and moved it over your head to keep yourself from at least getting sick in the downpour that continued before attempting to find your way home.

Seventh tier…Eight tier…Tenth tier…whatever the fuck any of these damn things could even begin to mean, none of it was allowing you to hear the sweet laugh or urgent cry of the baby you lost well before you even had the pleasure of such memories. Just even hearing a phantom cry of such in the middle of the night always roused you from the deepest of sleep, prompting you to hurry to the crib only to find it bare as always.

It was cruel. The gods could willingly mock and enjoy in your misery, but if that was how it were to be, you would do anything to try and work against their so called rules and bring the dead back to life even if it was beyond most casters’ abilities when it came to doing so without a person’s body nearby.

The door to your house coming into view, you only had the strength to lean on it for a time to try and still the agony both mentally and physically ripping through your body like an uncontrollable wildfire that would see you burn for your bad choices. You moved your lip inward, trying to still its quivering before finally finding the courage to venture indoors and not have the world see you fall apart yet again.

Closing the entrance with your back to it, you took a quivering inhale to taste of the grime that had accumulated in the old building given the months of neglect. It wasn’t a taste you wished to experience once more. It was home…a place that was lifeless after abuse from the manipulative spouse you once had, a place where a crib held no soul and a bedroom once shared by two lovers now lay barren and cobwebbed with great neglect…. It was hell.

Head tilted back, you lost what meager strength you had and collapsed to the floor ever slowly to bring your knees to your chest and just weep. The alcohol easily destroying that mask you put on day by day, allowing the gods their victory laugh at what they had reduced you to.

By day and without such influences, you were to yourself, staying in the corner of any tavern or social gatherings, reading up on any and all spells while silently working your experiments on dead animals just to see if you possessed the ability to master raising the dead to life with a body before trying without. Everybody saw you as a recluse while others excused your behavior to a grieving mother who weaponized her sorrow into quiet anger.

Heaving from the overwhelming guilt and sadness you were coddled by, your eyes opened slowly to the darkened hallway laid out before you. You hadn’t bothered lighting any of the candles to keep the lights going, allowing the mere lightning that flickered on occasion to be the light source for your needs at the time. As you attempted to focus on the staircase just past the living area you could have sworn you saw a shadow flash from one of the nearby windows that looked like a winged creature attempting to gaze inward. It was from a window that wasn’t in your view, and all you could see was its reflection from the lightning there on the floor ahead, prompting you to stand to your feet and venture forward to make sense of it.

To the staircase’s banister, you used it to place what strength you had into it before turning to gaze at the glass you thought you saw the shadow from only to see the twisted tree limbs playing with you as their outstretched, wicked shadows appeared like sharpened claws of demons desiring to pull you under into the abyss. You huffed to yourself, turning your attention to the staircase’s top, knowing that was where you had to go.

“Get it together, y/n,” you coached, wiping away your tears with a heavy sniffle before ascending the wooden stairway to your bedroom.

Down and to the left…

Remembering to do such a thing brought you nearly to your knees once more. You had moved most of your belongings out of the master bedroom and put them all into the extra space you had with that cursed item…

Why did you do that? Motivation, perhaps? The very idea of even going in there seemed all the more less appealing but what was the better option? Would you want to sleep in a bedroom full of nothing but horrible memories of how the vile brute who dared call himself a man slapped you around when able or would you venture to the room where a memento from the innocent part of your union was to be found?

You sighed, hand on the doorknob to which you turned. That agonizing creaking sound of the door on its hinges made you squirm as you ventured into the bedroom to endure a heaviness of dread that you weren’t alone. The empty crib on the left of the room just near the arched window design while in the usually empty chair opposite of it sat someone…

Upon the next lighting flash you could just make out the slender, tall appearance of a man—no—an elf of some kind grinning wickedly with his legs crossed and his fingers intertwined with one another upon his lap. He wore an elegant, red suit you had never seen before, striped in a lighter design with a red tie and white undershirt. How the hell did he manage to get in here?

“H-Hey…Who the hell—!” You stopped yourself from powering up one of your abilities as you noticed something felt off about the way he was smiling. It looked very unnatural, as though his mouth were truly wider than normal. No smile was that wide on a person or an elf… He looked and felt unnatural, and then it was there you noticed the metal tail that he had curved to the right of him. It was spiked at the end, making you narrow your eyes to wonder if it was some sort of illusionary spell or enchanted. Quietly detecting magic showed it was very much nothing of the sort. It’s…real…! you mentally gasped in horror.

“Oh, have I come at an improper time?” the creature asked, his foot merely moving to and fro in a sort of idle sitting pose.

“You’re a demon,” you said without haste, keeping your distance.

The creature grinned even wider, if that were even possible as he tilted his head back. He was wearing glasses, making it impossible for you to see beyond the bright sheen of them whenever the lightning reflected on him to give you a better look over of this being. All else you could make note of was his black, slicked back hair. He had no eyebrows either to make note of, making his appearance all the more unnerving.

“Demiurge, if you please.” He motioned to the side as if he was offering for you to sit beside him but there was no place of which you were able unless you took to the floor. “And your name?”

Your heart raced given how calm this creature was. You had heard stories of him…Women, men, children—all of them were disappearing without a trace late at night, and some rough descriptions were a creature with webbed wings. If the illusion you thought you saw earlier in the hallway was actually him, then it had to be the one demon venturing about the kingdom kidnapping whoever he could. A lot of folks claimed they saw these people leave seemingly of free will, like he was a siren who could sing some sort of mythical song and entrance others to follow without need to raise a finger. If he got his hands on your name, you would be done for as the link between you both would be set.

“Why do you want my name, demon?” You were already nervous, but you couldn’t say there was much to surrender in the grand scheme of things. If he killed you, then that would be that. You could at least possibly be reunited with the child you never had the chance to hold. But demons were never that merciful…

It was there he moved from the chair. Hand to his chest with the other bent graciously behind his back, Demiurge bowed as his spiked tail bent at the end to express even more so that it was an appendage he had control over. “Forgive me, y/n. I was trying to be polite.” He raised his head, the lightning showing that wicked grin to you in the wretched darkness. “To my understanding, you were looking for me?”

Your eyes widened as you instinctively took a step backward. How did he know so much? Yes, you were looking for him but did he know why or did he not care? Demons were always creatures to be leery of, even if you wanted to use them in your grander schemes. If the gods would not answer your pleas, perhaps a demon with unknown power might? They were said to love their deals and contracts, so you had to try even if it could mean your very soul.

“So it is you,” you murmured in the dark, relaxing your posture but refusing to let your walls crumble around you. “You’re the one who has been taking people from here.”

Demiurge hummed with a shrug, standing upright with both arms behind his back. “Mm, are you wishing to join them? I would be honored to allow that to happen, but it would be quite the waste.”

Great. Even a demon didn’t want your wretched soul. What had you even become at this point? “What do you mean a waste? Am I wasting your time, demo-eh-Demiurge?”

“If you were unworthy of my time, I wouldn’t be here.” He turned, venturing over to the empty crib, making your heart squeeze in your chest.

“Don’t touch anything!” you begged more than demanded. Your voice even did its best not to sound shaken. You didn’t know this demon’s level, but even trying to discretely sense it, you flinched and had to stop or else the alcohol combined with that knowledge would make you faint. That alone disturbed you. Given how calm he was, he knew he was in more control than you were.

His head turned eerily in your direction. That smile…why was it so haunting? It remained affixed to his features. You were reminded how unnaturally wide it was that you began to think someone took a knife to the corners of his mouth to etch it wider cruelly.

Regardless, he didn’t listen. One of his arms reached into the crib and pulled out the toy bear that had remained in its place since the day it was bought. “You grew quite powerful because of this tragedy?” He looked it over, rubbing his palm carefully over the dusty toy to sense what he could from what he saw.

He said tragedy as though he were paraphrasing a simple act of life. Of course, a demon was cruel, immortal, unloving—a human’s death would probably be as significant to him as it were for you at seeing a bug suffering out in the harsh climate.

“It was my baby. She was my life, and I lost her because of carelessness.” You embraced yourself, turning away from the demon’s condescending smile. “Have you ever desired or had any of your own?” It was weird having such a personal conversation right here and now, but the alcohol made you weak-willed. You needed somebody to talk to—anybody. You’d take him, if he would be so inclined to humor you.

“No.” The answer was very simple and you thought that to be the end of that conversation, but he continued. “I wouldn’t mind a child, if it suited my needs and ends.” Demiurge clicked his nails together, nails that were contained under the black gloves he wore.

“Of course,” you sighed. Why did you even bother to try to have a meaningful conversation with a demon of all creatures? “That’s how it is for your kind, I imagine.”

The heels of his black shoes tapped against the floorboards as the demon came closer to you. You were so emotionally exhausted you didn’t care to be on edge anymore even if every step he took was jarringly calm and reserved. He already said he didn’t want you as he took the others, so in a weird sense, you felt safe. Your head lowered, it was there the demon urged the toy into your field of view.

The lightning flashed and the thunder rolled as your fingers slowly accepted the toy. In your intoxicated state, you began to feel woozy. All of that attempt to put up a brave front, and you were losing yourself again. His hand gripped your shoulder, making you feel the prick of his nails ever slightly into your skin but you could hardly sense whatever level of pain you were supposed to as you were. Wobbling back and forth, you fell backward only to have the firm chest of the beast to support you.

His arms moved inward, crisscrossing upon your chest where he kept you in some form of faux support. The embrace was so cold and lifeless, yet you’d take any shape of comfort no matter how false it was. The sound of his mouth opening as he softly inhaled to form his thoughts made you quiver, soon feeling the hot breath of those words caress your ear and breathe down the side of your neck. “You murdered him, didn’t you?”

Hearing that sentence, your eyes widened as you brought the old bear unwittingly to your chest to embrace it rather tightly—like a child needing to be comforted for being called out on a lie that they tried to cover up.

“Mm, I see,” the demon hummed in wicked delight as he moved his right hand to maliciously rake his fingers through your hair as if he were calming you—no—petting a stray dog he perhaps found. “Care to tell me more about that, my little pet?”

You hadn’t noticed in the moment his other hand was covering the place where your heart was, perhaps enjoying every quickening, frightened thump of it as it beat wildly in your chest. He was even rocking you ever slightly like a woman would a child that they were trying to get to sleep. Whether or not that was his intention, you couldn’t say.

“He just…” The words wouldn’t come out properly as you recalled glimpses and broken pieces of that day. “…He laughed and…scolded me…the…the blood…” The words of bile that he spat, the crude remarks of how a bitch was better at reproducing than you…It all came to ahead as you fell to your knees, crying and screaming with the stuffed toy embraced all the more as each horrific sound of flesh being cut started to ring out again and again.

Demiurge knelt down with you, keeping his depraved embrace on you. The metal tail swung around cautiously, curving about near your knees as though he were trying to be supportive in some manner but you were too tired to care anymore if it were true or not. His hug was unnaturally tight, as though he were trying to put his entire weight on you but you had little idea as to how much your sorrow was fueling him with great ecstasy.

“You want your baby back, my pet?” His hand began to rub against your head once more as if to calm you and bring you back to yourself. “I might be able to arrange that.”

Teary eyes widening, you clutched the stuffed bear all the more when you heard that promise, nails nearly tearing through the seams to the stuffing. You were willing to try and use a low level demon to sacrifice for your own bidding in need to resurrect your child’s soul, be it him or any other demon he may know and willingly surrender to you. Now he was just offering you salvation?

You fell forward, stopping your complete collapse with one hand to the ground being mindful of his tail. “You…You can do that…?”

He released you, taking back to his feet and walking to the window in the bedroom with his arms crossed behind his back yet again. “I do believe I said I might be able to.” His metal plated tail flicked back and forth like a cat ready to pounce on its prey. The disturbing sight fazed you little, as you wanted answers to his promise. “There are a few experiments I am holding at my farm for my Lord, you see, and you have intrigued me with a possibility that I would like to give you the honor of.”

“I just need a vessel!” you exclaimed, scurrying to your feet as you hurried up behind him. You nearly fell, but you merely staggered forward on your knees and grabbed onto the tail end of his coat, tugging in desperation. “Any vessel!”

He gazed over his shoulder as the moonlight haloed that evil grin. “Any vessel, you say?” He cupped his chin in thought before turning completely to unfasten your grip on his coat. Removing your hands from him, he began to straighten his attire with the first ever frown you’d ever seen him dawn. After he felt his tie was back in order as well, the malicious smile reappeared. “I might be able to provide that for you, but you must agree to give me something in exchange. You cannot receive something for nothing, you know.”

Demons and their deals, this you knew all too well and were prepared for it. “I will do anything you ask!”

Demiurge tilted his head in curious delight as he extended his hand. “Work under me. I can tell you suppress your powers for your own gain, and I want them under my control—I want you under my control.”

Upon him saying such a thing, a metal collar materialized in his open hand as the chain magically untwined and soon concluded in the other. The collar glowed an ominous set of runes you had never seen before but they gave off quite the warning in design. “Wa-Work for you…? What is this…?”

“You said you would do anything to get your baby back, my pet. Is that not true?” As he spoke, you could see those sharp, jagged teeth. They were more pronounced than before, showing his mounting excitement all the better.

It was true. You couldn’t deny your own words no matter how hazy your mind was. You nodded, wiping away the tears that continued to still trail down your cheek.

“Then do as I say. Work under me and my Lord, and I will aid you in your needs.”

He shuffled the shackle inward to his wrist before opening his hand again. Honestly, the piece was so large you could easily maneuver your head in and out of that contraption. You weren’t even sure what it was he was getting at, but you were desperate. To stay home and feel nothing but sorrow, regret, and trauma every day you stepped foot through those doors, or to leave and possibly find salvation? It was an easy answer at the time.

Biting your lower lip, you reached forward and grabbed his hand to shake it to form the deal. Touching a demon such as that was a death sentence. You basically sold your soul to the devil as he had you marked.

His grip tightened, refusing to let you leave it as he grinned widely to show off his fangs as they clenched together in rousing delight. You heard the chain moving but thought nothing of it till you felt it crawling on your other arm like a snake. Panicked, you tried to remove yourself from the demon’s clutches, but he refused until the shackle’s cold, metal train managed to embrace your upper body and keep you pinned.

His grasp released, you fell backwards onto the hard floorboards while fighting in desperation to get free. The collar itself moved from the demon then and it opened at the ends like a jaw of a monster about to clamp down on your throat. You screamed, hoping it wouldn’t end this way—end in a lie. You were partially relieved to find that was the case as the enchanted object bit down behind your neck, locking the mechanism in place. It was there it shrank, fitting your neck perfectly and what once was so full of life went limp and lifeless, allowing Demiurge to take the chain into his grasp.

“Like it, my pet?” The demon asked, standing above you with one arm resting behind his back while his open hand kept the end of the metal links. His thumb rubbed against the enchanted ore in twisted delight. “I have been working on this during my experiments, and as part of your contract, you will wear it at all times.” He shifted his glasses up the slope of his crooked nose. “It will keep you restrained and in my care.”

“What…is this…?” you asked, having never seen inanimate objects come to life as that.

“I can explain that later, but for now…” Demiurge paused, clearing his throat with his fist near his mouth as if to be polite in the act. “On your feet!”

His voice vibrated loudly in your ears, urging your body to act abnormally at his command. At first, you had no desire to move, but the moment that spell was triggered you felt your bones and muscles ache in retaliation to your resistance as you were forced like a puppet on a string to beckon to the call of its puppeteer. Your back arched inward, leaving your head to rest there on the floor, your body nearly making a perfect U-shape till the rest of you managed to follow to make it less painful for you to endure.

“You…You can control anybody with your voice alone?” you panted in disbelief when you were soon standing as he instructed.

“For lesser beings, it is an easy spell to utilize for my needs when they’re being stubborn little sheep.” His fingers coiled along the chain rather sadistically as he continued to rub the metal links yet again. “Dare I use it once more if you don’t listen to your Master?”

So that’s how he did it. It wasn’t a siren’s song or anything like that, it was a spell only he knew. “N-No,” you stammered, trying to keep your footing.

Demiurge’s brow wrinkled curiously, that frown returning. It was hard to say what was more unnerving—the cold, malicious smile or the exasperated, despicable frown. “No, what?”

You were confused, what did he want you to say? “Umm, no sir…?”

His sweet caressing of the chain soon tightened into a fist as he took the train of the collar and smacked it against your face as punishment. The harsh bite of the item made you flinch and whimper in response, your hand coming up to stop the idea of him doing it again even if he had no intention of doing so unless you disobeyed him once more.

“No, Master,” he corrected.

He wanted you to say it. You could just see that chain waving back and forth in his grasp threateningly, him willing to use it as a whip if need be. Tasting the blood in your mouth, you coughed and did your best not to allow that copper sensation to bubble forth worse than before.

“No, Master!” you spoke in haste.

Demiurge sighed in such a manner that was reminiscent of euphoria, those words giving him all of the control he so desired. His fingers uncoiled from behind his back, latching onto your cheek to get a better look at you. “Shhh,” he whispered, his thumb intentionally rubbing the place he struck to cause you more pain. Every time you tried to pull away from the unwarranted touch, his grip merely tightened as he tried to keep you still. Releasing your cheeks, he caressed the bruising area with his index finger, trying to put on a sweet façade of how he didn’t meant to do it. “Don’t force my hand, pet. You may very well be strong for a human, but against myself, I could use a single spell and see you burn alive. You don’t want that, do you?”

His tone turned into a form of fake comfort once more. No, piteous. That’s what it was…a mere demon who doted on you with pity, trying to make it sound sincere. “You promised me my baby, dam—M-Master.” You had to catch yourself, remembering that you weren’t in control anymore. “Take me to where you can fulfill this promise.”

“Mm,” he hummed, tapping his index finger on the side of his crooked grin. “I did promise that, didn’t I?”

Was he going back on his word? He better not have. Demons were malicious and spiteful, enjoying in the torment of others, but they usually kept to their promises if it benefited them somehow. If he wanted to keep you under his control, he would do as you asked.

“I did, however, say I might be able to do that,” Demiurge reminded you as he started to venture towards the door with you in his grasp. “Let’s head to my farm and see if that’s possible, shall we?”

#demiurge x reader #overlord demiurge x reader #overlord anime #overlord fanfic #overlord demiurge #dragoon-of-all-trades writing #demon #demons #exophilia #angst #drama #comfort #comfort and pain #master/pet #master/slave #semi-sfw

10 notes · View notes

scripttorture · 5 years ago

Note

Hi I know you mentioned a lot on the tortures don't abuse animals but it is in fact established with lots of material that animal abuse is an early sign for someone being a serial killer. Some of these serial killers actually even do torture their victims before they kill them. I know that it may not be the same thing but there has to be a link in this case right? I haven't seen you mention this or if it really sets things apart for some reason.

There seems to be a genuine question about torturers buried in here so I am going to choose to ignore the focus on animals. And I am going to remind you that I find bringing up animals in a discussion of human suffering horrendously inappropriate.

No there is no proven link. And what you are describing is legally classified as abuse not torture; which in this case is significant.

The legal definition of torture essentially boils down to this: the type of abuse does not matter but the abuser must be a government employee, at work and they must be aware that what they are doing will cause their victim pain. They must also be doing it for a particular motivation; to punish, force a confession, attempt to obtain information or to terrorise.

Something that a lot of people don’t seem to get is the difference in scale between abusive individuals and torturers.

You are talking about someone who might spend a maximum of 2-4 hours a week hurting other people.

I am talking about groups of people who spend 6-9 hours a day, every day for years, hurting and killing other people.

The difference in scale is important. You are talking about, at most, dozens of victims. I am talking about hundreds of thousands.

Torture is a function of organisations. And these organisations systematically screen out the mentally ill and anything they view as ‘deviant’.

Similarities in individual cases do not amount to a proven link. Correlation is not causation.

Take a moment to think back over whatever material you have read on serial killers. When it established this ‘link’ did it give you a sample size? Did it discuss the statistical method used to come to this conclusion? Did it take into account confounding factors?

Did it provide a clear definition of the term ‘serial killer’ and did it apply this term consistently? For instance, if the term was defined along the lines of ‘someone who has killed more then five people’ did the researchers include any of the following: soldiers, guerilla fighters, executioners, gang members.

Did the definition, in practice, amount to anything more then ‘a white man of a certain age who killed some people in ways we as a culture find particularly strange or abhorrent’?

The research on torturers is severely lacking. I am more then willing to admit that. We do desperately need more research to understand these people and figure out how to rehabilitate them.

But assumptions about what they ‘should’ be like, especially assumptions that look for some internal ‘flaw’, do not help.

The researchers studying torturers have never asked whether they hurt animals. In much the same way that they haven’t tried to conduct a statistical study on their favourite colours. It seems an irrelevant questions and one that is very rooted in cultural assumptions about appropriate behaviour.

I have never read an account of or by a torturer that described animal abuse.

I think the fixation on animal abuse is rooted in Western assumptions and fictional tropes. It’s the constant stream of movies which shows both the ‘good’ and ‘bad’ guys torturing people, and then identifies the bad guy because they’re the one who was mean to a dog.

Anon the truth, so far as I can tell from the research we have right now, is that there is nothing inherently wrong with or ‘weird’ about torturers.

Looking for these inherent ‘differences’ is natural, I suppose. It’s us delineating. It’s how we tell ourselves that we are different, we are better, we would never do that.

But that is not true.

When we look for these inherent differences, whether the focus is abnormal behaviour, or mental illness, or neurodivergence, what we’re essentially looking for is some ‘proof’ that torturers are inherently sub-human.

Torturers are people too, and so far as we can tell they are normal.

A desperate search for some difference, some inherent evil, does us all a disservice. It stops the rest of us from examining ourselves and really grappling with our own potential for violence. It gets in the way of identifying factors that encourage torture. It writes off torturers as inherently irredeemable.

These tangents take us away from an honest and systematic examination of violence in society and our own capacity for violence. They take us away from the disease, the wound. It’s like demanding a thorough examination of the knife before looking at how to stop the bleeding.

Torturers are not isolated individuals who decide to inflict pain on others.

They are people who get pressured by and chewed up by systems that encourage violence.

They’re under-trained recruits, fed the message that the only way to ‘get intel’ out of people like that is beating the shit out of them. They’re soldiers sitting with a life-time of dehumanising racist messages and deciding that these prisoners deserve to be punished. They’re police officers who are only ‘doing their job’ by making sure the homeless don’t dare stray into that part of town.

Violence and abuse for torturers is not an individual decision. It’s a response that is lauded and encouraged by their colleagues, their superiors, by the fiction they have grown up with.

By the toxic message that it’s the way ‘real men’ deal with the situation.

The comparison doesn’t stand up Anon. And while I do cover forms of abuse that are not torture on the blog the distinction is often important.

A world without torturers is not necessarily a world without serial killers. In the same way that a world without war is not necessarily a world without street crime.

Even if the comparison did stand up, how sure are you of these ‘established links’? Are you absolutely confident that the data has not been cherry-picked? Are you confident that it has been rigorously analysed? Are you confident the sample size is big enough to draw conclusions?

Because I’m not.

Availableon Wordpress.

Disclaimer

#writing advice #tw torture #torture apologia #torturers #behaviour of torturers #writing torturers #serial killers

53 notes · View notes

storyinmypocket · 5 years ago

Note

It’s not that i’m sexist, I just remember a time, when I held the door open for a girl, and she began to scream and cry. “You oppressive piece of shit,” she began to say, and when I tried to calm her, she kicked my way. I used self defense, and moments later she was on the ground. The cops were called, and I’m writing this from prison now. It’s not that I hate women, just a selective few, the ones who abuse the system, and many of them do.

Wow. Wooooow. I don’t know what I did to merit this charming attempt at trolling, but okay. Okay. Let’s do this, because picking apart something this goddamn ridiculous is a nice easy exercise in critical thinking skills for when someone hits us with an actually plausible story. And maybe while I’m at it, address the fears of some cis guys who legitimately worry that something like this could possibly happen to them.

Today on Things That Definitely Never Happened, Ever:

1) If the truly implausible occurs and someone starts screaming and crying about you being oppressive for you opening a door, they’re probably dealing with PTSD or some other really unfun mental illness. Unless, of course, you were one of those assholes that sees a woman, sees a door, and immediately tries to race her to said door so you can be all gentlemanly when the woman in question is clearly able to open it for herself. At that point, a woman is justified in telling you to fuck off. If you reach the door first, you can hold the door for the person after you, but “I see you appear to be a woman and I must run past you to be a gentleman!” is a dick move. But even then, screaming and crying is a disproportionate response and generally a sign that the person is Not Okay and you need to proceed accordingly.

2) If someone is that severely unwell, do not try to calm them. You are a stranger who just triggered the fuck out of them, and any further interference will not go well for either of you. This is when you say, “Okay, sorry, whatever,” and you back away. You do not attempt to further interfere with the person. Let me provide some advice that gets drilled into the head of pretty much every woman I’ve ever met for when something sketchy happens: immediately go to a well-lit place with people. If she follows you, you have witnesses. If she doesn’t, at least you can find an uninvolved person (ideally another woman, but sometimes you have to take what you can get) to go check on this woman and her meltdown. Do not call the cops for mental health issues if you can help it -- that’s how people die. On the other hand, if it’s a white woman, her odds are better than most, so... There’s that?

3) Let me get this straight. Let’s be absolutely clear, Nonny. You say, in this little fairy tale, that she kicked your way. While screaming and crying. Not that she made contact, she just... kicked your way. Mid-meltdown. So, um. I’m not getting a real sense of threat here. I’m not getting that she roundhouse kicked you in the face, or even that she went for your balls with clear intent to harm. Which was it, Nonny? Which made-up thing was it? Was she attacking you with clear intent, or was she having a meltdown and lashing out because you wouldn’t back the fuck off while you “tried to calm her”? And then you “used self defense” (what does that even MEAN? did you strike her? grapple her? fucking trip her?) and she was on the ground moments later. Why was that an appropriate use of force? If she’s crying and screaming and melting down, what was PHYSICALLY PREVENTING YOU from getting the fuck away from her? Why did she need to be on the ground? Why were you even still in her space when she was flipping out? So many questions. If this bullshit happens to you? Throw your manly pride out the nearest window and get the fuck away.

4) More questions. The cops were called. Who called them? Were there other witnesses? Did she call them, after you put her on the fucking ground? Did you call them because this lady just attacked you? The passive voice there is really interesting to me, because I’ve generally seen it as a sign of one of two things: either there’s so much trauma involved in this that you’re dissociating hard, or you’re making shit up as you go along and you have no idea what you’re talking about. I’m leaning towards the second one, because...

5) You can’t use Tumblr from prison, dipshit. And I mean, I wouldn’t use a contraband cell phone for the purpose of going to some random person’s Tumblr and telling them my “victimized by teh wimminz” story, but maybe that’s just me.

6) It’s not that I hate men. Just a select few. Because the really neat thing about human nature is that women and men both make up stories to make themselves appear unjustly wronged, in more or less equal amounts. False reports of rape, that terror of cishet men everywhere, happen in the same ratio as false reports of literally any other crime. And society is in many cases still skewed in favor of believing men. So if this feels mean, and harsh, and like I’m putting someone who theoretically could be an innocent victim in all this through the third degree, questioning every detail, picking apart the specific wording they used: welcome to the experience of many, many rape victims. Welcome to my experience, and why I don’t tell random men about the times I was raped.

So, gentlefolk, if you’re concerned about any of this implausible nonsense happening to you, let me tell you, as a mentally ill person: if a woman who is a stranger to you is melting down, do not attempt to calm the woman, because my experience has been that men try to do that by moving closer, and that is the opposite of helpful. Put some distance between the two of you. Don’t go all fucking Ender Wiggin on her if she does attack you. Remember that the purpose of self-defense is to get you away from the threat, not to prove your dominance over it. These are lessons that women are taught over and over, for how to deal with a Random Scary Guy. Apply them to Random Scary Women, as well.

I don’t particularly want men to live in fear. I don’t want anyone to live in fear. I want to live in a world where this shit doesn’t happen and where victims, both men and women, are given the benefit of the fucking doubt and we don’t re-traumatize them when they talk about what happened to them. But that’s not the world I’m living in right now, I’m not Nonny’s friend or loved one, and I didn’t fucking ask, so... Here we are. Just you, me, and this here steaming pile of horseshit.

#rape cw #seriously what the shitting fuck #Anonymous #sometimes people talk to me

7 notes · View notes