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misstycloud · 21 hours ago

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Hey! I’m new to your blog so sorry if requests are closed 😅 I missed it if there was something that said so. But do you mind writing a second part to the yandere male harpy x reader? 😄

this is are just one of my thoughts that came to mind but imagine the reader trying to start a small fire at the entrance of the cave (away from the nest obviously) to cook the food. Just the absolute horror on the harpy’s face coming back to see fire in his cave. 😂

Anyway sorry for the ramble and thank you either way if you decide to write for it or not😄

Not super focused on the fire in this but hope it’s enjoyable anyway.

———————

The giant cave opening often brought you trouble. Through it cold winds would blow in and sometimes a bunch of leaves and twigs as well. You’d then be forced to sweep the mess with the broom you had made on your own. The handle was a long, relatively thick branch and the bristles were feathers collected from the giant bird-man hovering over you all the time. His feathers were big and strong, they also fell off. It was just like hair, you supposed.

You’d never forget the expression he made when he noticed you picking up his fallen feathers. He seemed so happy. The male harpy’s face was lit up like a child’s on Christmas Eve and he was constantly cooing happily. You wouldn’t be surprised if this meant you liked him, in his culture.

After witnessing you bringing all the feathers into you arms and searching for more scattered around the cave, the harpy felt true joy. You still hadn’t fully warmed up to him which he did not understand. Did he do something wrong? Was the nest perhaps not satisfactory? Maybe he should rebuild it in the future- with your input of course- so you’ll like it. You hardly ate anything he hunted you and reluctantly slept in his arms at night. It always took a bit of convincing for you to joint him in the nest and cuddle. Sadly, he could understand why you gave in eventually and it was not because you were simply shy, it was because of the cold winds. You waited until you couldn’t take the chill anymore and joined him. The thought stung his heart. He loved you but you hardly considered him your mate. He thought all hope was lost until you began collecting his fathers. Had he finally impressed you? If you liked his wings then he’d gladly give you more feathers. He wasn’t quite sure what you wanted them for but he didn’t care. If you wanted the feathers then doesn’t that mean by extension that you desire him too?

The harpy male made sure you didn’t have to scavenge for lost feather, instead he gave you more directly from the source. On top of that, he made sure to give you the finest and biggest ones since those were the ones you seemed most fond of. It took a lot of effort to stop him from ripping out his own feathers. If he’d continued you fear he would have ended up looking something like a mix between a plucked turkey and a human.

Now, the cave hole always gave you more pain than happiness. It did not help at all; until it did.

Your hunger strike was nearing an end. The nuts and other comfort food you had brought with you before was gone. You had finally eaten it all, there was nothing left but the empty wrappers serving as a cruel reminder of your old life. You would do anything for a spongy convenience store sandwich. This meant you no longer had the privilege of declining the meals Crow presented to you.

Crow, that was the name you’d given the overgrown bird who’d decided to kidnap you and force you to be his mate. It fit him well since he sort of did look like a crow. His hair and wings were a dark colour and he never failed to caw at you whenever you refused to give him attention. He was a bird but honestly reminded you more of a puppy.

You don’t get to say no to the dead animals anymore. No matter how much you try there’s no way you could possibly get down the mountain without dying- or complete paralysis, if you were an experienced climber. It made sense why Crow chose this cave as his home, it was inaccessible without the ability of flight.

When he returned home with a fresh kill you wasted no time. Instantly you were in front of it with your knife ready. It was gross having to cut through the raw meat(especially with all the blood pouring out)but desperate times called for desperate measures. You tried comparing it to cutting up organs in biology class.

Crow was startled when you rushed forward to seize the deer he’d caught. You had never done that before. You always stayed away from him when he ate and chose to accept food from the sack of fabric you had. He had considered taking it away in order to force you to rely on him but never went though with it since he knew how much it would hurt you.

He watched with curiosity as you dug through your belongings. You made a satisfied noise when you found what you were looking for. It was something Crow had never seen before. It was small and had a pointy corners. He doubted it was food despite having zero knowledge about it. You then went over to the nest and crudely pulled out a bunch of branches.

“Caaaaaaww!” He schreeched in alarm. Why would his mate destroy their nest? Crow rushed forward and almost didn’t dare look at the damage. A part of the large nest had now begun to disassemble and more branches were falling out. Not the beautiful nest he’d so lovingly build for his mate! He’d been proud of it too.

“Don’t look at me like that, I need these.” You rolled your eyes in irritation. It’s not like the whole nest has been destroyed or anything, only about 10%. The smallest sticks wouldn’t last your fire so you had to get the larger, sturdier branches. “You can find new twigs later, but I have to eat right now.” Your stomach decided to humour you and gave off a strong growl. “See?”

Ignoring the depressed-looking, overgrown bird who gloomily stared at his ruined work, you piled the wood together and flicked your lighter. After a few failed tries, a fire finally started. You sighed in relief. Bow was time for the grilling, you could already smell the sizzling meat. Having been forced to survive on a diet consisting of almost solely oats, you were ready to have something else.

You thought you would be able to make your food in peace with no troubles at all, but what you didn’t expect was that Crow would freak out and throw himself in the fire. You screamed as he thrashed around on the ground in obvious pain until the fire had gone out. He threw the branches in all directions and made sure to stomp out the last of it for good measure. When he was done he stared at you like you were the insane one who’d nearly burned themselves alive.

“What the fuck?” You exclaimed. What had possessed him? Despite Crow clearly being on alarm, you tried collecting new twigs since you still-because of a certain someone- hadn’t eaten and you didn’t know what else to do. This caused a similar reaction to where he ripped them from you and refused to let you get more. It ended with the two of you running around the cave and him staring intensely into your eyes when you finally gave up. He did not want you to start a fire.

Alright, it was understandable. He ate his food raw and probably didn’t have much experience with flames. But you couldn’t eat raw meat!

Would this mean you’d starve? On the long list of ways to die, it definitely was one of the worse ways. It was slow and painful. Before being kidnapped by a bird-man you were always able to eat when you wanted and even after, you had your oat-mix. But now you were really dead; the only food you had you couldn’t eat.

Crow’s intentions towards you and always been obvious so you never really feared him in that way. However, you were beginning to wonder if he’d actually grown tired of you and wanted to find a way to make you suffer to death. Maybe you should’ve accepted his courting after all? Then you wouldn’t feel so hopeless.

A gentle nudge brought you out of your despair. It was the source of your current misery. He nuzzled your hand carefully before staring up at you with concern. He didn’t know what he did wrong. Form his perspective he saw a threat and got rid of it. He was in the right. Unfortunately, it seemed this made you incredibly sad. Crow saw how you sunk down in the cave floor and refused to look up.

He had no idea what you were doing or why you’d thought it be a good idea to start a fire in your home. He had seen the destruction they cause and couldn’t fathom why you’d want to be near it, but he just wanted you to be happy. A sad mate equals a bad life. Reluctantly, he picked up some former nest-branches and pushed them in your direction.

You had a surprised expression in your face. You had not expected him to do that. Watching him with a caution, you took the wood.

Instead of throwing them away and cawing loudly, he simply continued nuzzling your hand and shivered in delight when you ran your fingers through his hair. You noticed how his feathers ruffled up in pleasure. He sure enjoyed when you petted him in any kind of way. Even when you were done preparing he still didn’t do anything to stop you. You smiled at his sudden compliance.

Perhaps you would be getting a warm meal after all.

#yandere oc #oc #male yandere #obsessed #possesive #misstycloud oc #yandere #yandere x reader #yandere harpy #yandere harpy x reader #harpy yandere #harpy yandere x reader #harpy x mate #Crow #yandere harpy x mate

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writing-for-life · 2 days ago

Text

Tales from the Flat Earth by Tanith Lee

A few thoughts on the supposed similarities with The Sandman—with actual comparisons (and a summary of the most important beats for those who want it)…

[This post is super long. It contains a lot of different thoughts, that’s why I broke it down into three parts: 1. General Considerations, 2. Boroson’s Claims and 3. A beat-by-beat summary of all five volumes of Tales from the Flat Earth. You might want to read this in instalments, or you might want to leave part three if you are still planning to read any of the five volumes.]

Part One: General Considerations

By now, many of you will have heard of Tanith Lee’s series “Tales from the Flat Earth”—not because the world all of a sudden woke up to a literary genius, but because of a Facebook post by Matthew Boroson in the immediate aftermath of the sexual assault allegations against Neil Gaiman. Boroson now made a further statement that he will “delete […] challenges so he can live”. I completely get the exhaustion of a post going viral—been there, got the T-Shirt—but why not just ignore it? Switch off notifications or comments altogether? Actively censoring only the people with different opinions, whom he even admits have mostly been engaging in good faith, because “he can’t do this 24/7”, while leaving up those in agreement (apparently he can do that 24/7)? He might not have thought through how bad this looks, and the irony of a man silencing dissenting voices and trying to control the conversation really shouldn’t be lost on people. But apparently, it is.

Anyway: I have absolutely no desire to defend Neil Gaiman. As should be clear from my blog, I stand with Gaiman’s victims and have done so since last summer when the allegations first broke. I believe those women, for both personal and professional reasons I won’t go into here. And I believe them, whether some author guy tells me I should or not. What grates on me is that this overshadows what’s actually important here, and I’ll get to why in a second.

I love Tanith Lee’s Tales from the Flat Earth and have read them first in the 1990s, and quite a few times since. For that very reason, I wish people would just read her work without trying to engage in a “gotcha” that is still all about Gaiman and not her. She was a great and talented writer who deserves more than now forever being known as “the woman whom Neil Gaiman plagiarised”. And to say it quite frankly: The sexual assault allegations can stand on their own and don’t need a male writer telling us, verbatim, “I have no difficulty believing the accusations against him. Because I know — KNOW — that he has felt entitled to take what he wants from a woman, without her permission, and without any acknowledgement of her contributions.”

I can’t even begin to say how problematic this statement is, for so many reasons. So all I’ll say is:

There is a certain tone-deafness in thinking a sexual assault claim holds even more weight because a male writer says, “See, he did this, so you should also believe that.” We should believe SA victims. Full stop. We don’t need wonky plagiarism or “inspiration without credit”-claims to give them more weight. These two things shouldn’t even be mentioned in the same sentence.

But all of that aside: Read Tanith Lee’s “Tales from the Flat Earth” because you are interested in a writer who crafted imaginative worlds in a florid prose-style that hearkens back to old fairy tales and Arabian Nights. If you only want to read it for a “gotcha”, I might be able to spare you the arduous work, although I strongly recommend you read it to come to your own conclusions (go to the source yourself. And I honestly wish more people did before they just blindly believe things). Again, spare a thought though if Tanith deserves to be “the woman NG plagiarised” to a new audience, because let’s be honest—that’s the only reason why so many people now read her works.

And that’s exactly why I thought so long and hard whether to even write this post, but there comes a point when people who actually know both works in depth need to speak up about the informational conformity bias that now has us at over 30,000 notes on Tumblr alone, all the while the person who put this into the world seems to actively censor anyone who dares to disagree. I get that Boroson’s claim is what a lot of people want to believe right now, but that doesn’t make it more true. Someone even said that “misinformation doesn’t matter in this case because only the result does.” That’s an incredibly dumb and also dangerous statement, but I’ll leave it at that.

Horrible people can create good art. We don’t need to pretend they were always hacks. We have to learn to sit with that cognitive dissonance and can disassociate ourselves from the creator regardless—because he’s an abuser.

Part Two: Boroson’s Claims

With all of that out of the road, let’s have a closer look at all that Boroson alleges in his FB post; quotes are verbatim.

1. “Despite the fact that the main character — a byronic, pale, otherworldly, deity-like character - is the prince of night and dreams.”

Here, we already have the first bit of wrong information. Azhrarn is one of the Lords of Darkness. He is the Prince of Demons. He is evil-aligned. He is not a “prince of dreams”. He is “Night’s Master” because he only walks the earth at night, and sunlight is lethal (oh?) for him. He is really nothing like Dream. One is all about rules and responsibilities, the other is about inconsistency, wickedness, mischief, changing his mind on a whim and treating humans as playthings (which he repeatedly admits himself). You could build a much stronger case for similarities between Azhrarn and Lucifer/Iblis (and Loki if you wanted to go Norse) than Dream, because Azhrarn actually hates the gods, and Lee’s whole series builds very strongly on how he (and then someone else) tries to bring them down. And Azhrarn might be older than gods, but whether he is truly more powerful depends on how you look at it—he even asks them for help at some point. Dream, on the other hand, is more than the gods. They begin in his realm, and they end there when people stop believing. Because gods come from the collective unconscious—and that’s who and what Dream is.

2. “Despite the fact that every time people see art depicting Tanith Lee's main character Azhrarn, they think it's Morpheus from the Sandman.”

This is interesting since the depiction Boroson chose for his FB claim is fanart. If you claim something like this, at least use original artwork, not works that have already gone through 20 subconscious filters. If you look at original art, you get this:

Azhrarn in the middle, Uhlume (Lord Death) to the right, Chuz (Lord Madness) to the left. And in the other picture, Azrharn in his eagle form. Which is just weird, soz. But that’s why he has feathers on his garb.

Maybe there’s a fleeting similarity in the one to the left, but there’s also literally none in the one to the right. And if you have ever read any dark fantasy of the 1980s and 90s (and even earlier), pretty much the majority of male protagonists fitted the stereotype of “pale, clad in black and byronic”. It was a dark fantasy trope—goths read that stuff in droves (I was one of them). And it became even more likely if the hero/antihero/villain was somehow aligned with the underworld. Which Azhrarn is.

And since artists are always influenced by other artworks and their own mental image of a character, have an actual description of Azhrarn’s looks from “Night’s Master”:

“marvelously handsome, with hair that shone like blue-black fire, and clothed in all the magnificence of night.”

But we also get this when he makes a not so great experience:

“He gazed to east and west, to north and south, and the face of Azhrarn, it is truly said, had become white. Long he looked, and long his pallor increased. A mortal man could not grow so pale and live.”

So we can reasonably deduce that he isn’t usually as white as Morpheus in his main form (I don’t know what else to call it)?

There are many other descriptions of a similar ilk. Is this really enough to say they look the same? Really? Instead of admitting that we might be filling in some blanks here if descriptions are so vague?

3. “Despite the fact that the dream lord's younger sibling is Death.”

That one truly made me laugh out loud. Apart from the fact that Gaiman’s Death is older and female (which one could say was a purposeful switch to “hide the tracks” 🙄)—only the least read people would assume this was in any way new or sensational and “borrowed” from any one particular writer. Hypnos (Sleep) and Thanatos (Death) are twin brothers in Greek mythology. And the closeness of Death and Dream in The Sandman (both conceptually and on a relational level) is much more of a mirror of that than the relationship between Azhrarn and Uhlume in Tales from the Flat Earth, because in all honesty: The latter two don’t get on that well, which Boroson conveniently forgets to mention. Their relationships are really nothing alike.

Hypnos is also a deity residing in the underworld, and you have to cross the river Lethe (forgetfulness/oblivion) to get to him. Lee borrows from that idea very heavily when she tells the story of Kazir visiting Azhrarn in Underearth. These are myths, told and retold by hundreds of writers over and over again, including Lee herself.

I don’t even know what to say about this one. It’s so thin that it immediately blows away if you as much as cough at it.

4. “Despite the fact that other members of his family include Delusion, Delirium.... They are not gods but beings older than gods, and when the gods die, Dream, Death, Delusion, and Delirium will remain. This family of immortal, eternal, unchanging beings, who each embody an eternal abstraction starting with the letter D.”

There are only two Lords of Darkness beginning with a D, and they are called Uhlume (Death) and Chuz (Delusion). Azhrarn is Wickedness.

There is no Dream, as I already stated. And guess what? There is also no separate Delirium. So wrong facts again. The character is Delirium’s Mistress (or at least that’s the title of the volume), and in that case, we are referring to her as being the lover of Chuz (so Delusion and Delirium are effectively the same person). And her name is Azhriaz; she is half human, half demon (and something else, but that would be too spoilery) and Azhrarn’s daughter. She looks like this in original artwork (sorry for the crappola photo):

Without wanting to give too much plot away because some of you might still want to read this: There are three Lords of Darkness (or one could argue five—more about that later) in Lee’s Tales, but they don’t all begin with a D—neither if you look at their names (their initials are A, U, C, K and A), nor at their functions (in which case it’s W, D, D, F and L).

Okay, the domains of two Lords of Darkness start with D. Is it really enough to be sure Gaiman borrowed from it, turning it into seven? Or is it perhaps far more likely that this still falls into the realm of literary archetypes? And even if Gaiman did expand on that idea—that’s not plagiarism (which, to say it very clearly, Boroson didn’t explicitly say it was. He just implied it a bit between the lines, and other people who probably didn’t read either ran with it). I don’t think it would even constitute “heavy borrowing”, especially since the characters, their relationships and the stories as such are so, so different.

Why is Boroson’s account riddled with inaccuracies? Why be so wrong in your descriptions of a work you supposedly know so well? I really don’t know. It’s either that he doesn’t know it as well as he says he does (which I can’t imagine, since he’s apparently been going on about this for years), or he purposefully misrepresents it to add more weight to it. Which looks bad to be honest. Or at least as if he’s a bit too taken with an idea and at the stage where he can’t let it go anymore.

5. “[…] description of a character who was clearly the inspiration for Gaiman’s Mazikeen.”

That’s also Chuz. As depicted in the art above, and also here:

One side of him is young and beautiful, the other old. I’ll let you decide if this is clearly the inspiration for Mazikeen:

“So she beheld the entire aspect of his face, one half youthfully bronzed, one half haggardly gray, the rusty hair and the blond, but it seemed to her it was the most natural face she had ever looked on.”

And to say it quite frankly: Framing it like that is a bit dishonest to start with? It’s not the description of “a character”. It’s the volume’s protagonist. Whom Boroson earlier insisted was the inspiration for Delirium (also a bit wonky that one, as I already wrote, since I bet most of the people who don’t know Lee’s work pictured her Delirium as a woman after reading Boroson’s account). But now it’s Mazikeen all of a sudden? Leaving out he’s actually talking about the same character here looks like wilfully obfuscating that neither of it truly holds water, so he’s picking little bits and offers them without context.

Mazikeen is a visual creation of Kelley Jones btw, so maybe Boroson should also take it up with him? The same could be said to everyone who might feel tempted to shoehorn a certain other character (DC’s Destiny) into this, woefully forgetting that Destiny is not a character created by Gaiman. He has existed in the DC Universe years before Lee wrote Tales from the Flat Earth. I don’t hear anyone complaining that Lee stole Kheshmet/Fate from DC because it would be quite frankly idiotic—these are literary archetypes!

6. “The prose, the characters, the narrative strategies, the mythology, the story structure, all of it: Gaiman found it all in Tanith Lee's writing and never gave her any credit.”

The prose is really hard to compare because one is a novel, the other a comic. I really recommend you read both yourself so you get the full picture, but just two examples here:

Tanith Lee:

“A mile from the enameled walls of the city, where the desert lay gleaming like golden glass, a beautiful woman sat in a stone tower, and she played with a bone.

“Will he come to me today?” she asked the bone, rocking it in her arms like a child. “Or will he seek me tonight? All the stars will shine, but he will shine more brightly. For sure, he dare not come by day, for he would outshine the sun. The sun would die of shame, and the whole world grow dark. But oh, he will come. Nemdur,” said the beautiful woman, “Nemdur, my lord.”

Her name was Jasrin; Nemdur was the king whose city stood one mile to the east. Once, he had been her husband.

No longer.”

Neil Gaiman:

As someone who’s read both many times over, my personal assessment is:

They are not very alike. Lee writes floridly, Gaiman is often fairly to the point. Even in Ramadan, which is one (out of 75!) issues that closest resembles the style of Arabian Nights (which is Lee’s inspiration), his voice seems distinct to me—as is hers. Lee’s prose always struck me as great, Gaiman’s as good (I always loved his world building more than his actual writing style). I think Lee’s prose is more accomplished, but that’s personal taste.

Characters: I already expanded on it.

Narrative strategy: This is so vague. Does he mean perspective? Point of view? Other narrative strategies like foreshadowing?

Since I don’t know what exactly Boroson is referring to because he likes to keep it nebulous, I really can’t say, but I don’t think the way the stories are told are in any way alike. And where they seem similar (“Night’s Master”, as an example, is told as interconnected stories in the style of Arabian Nights with a throughline. And of course the Sandman also contains some interconnected stories with a throughline, although they are in no way reminiscent of Arabian Nights to me, bar Ramadan), I seriously have to ask again:

Do we believe only one writer utilises these strategies and/or has a monopoly on them? Because there are truly only so many of them to go around. And we could say that Lee’s “narrative strategy” is hardly unique either. This is just a bit silly.

Mythology: Just no. Both Lee and Gaiman use themes that have been there a million times before them, I already brushed on it. Both lean heavily into existing mythologies, with Gaiman more into Greek, and Lee into Near- and Middle Eastern one (especially Mesopotamian/Babylonian—there are some parallels between her characters and deities like Nergal, Sin/Nanna and Ninazu), although they both also use others. But the bottom line is: Both have expanded on long existing mythologies.

Story structure: Again, what is Boroson insinuating here? He is truly the master of vagueness.

To say it very directly: The story structure is not the same. If you look at The Sandman in its entirety, it’s a clear three act tragedy with a lot of Hero’s Journey thrown-in. The fact that it’s told in 10 arcs changes nothing about that—you can clearly make out Campbell’s stages, like Call to Adventure, Crossing the First Threshold, Belly of the Whale… you name it. This is long enough already, but look at Campbell’s Hero’s Journey, and it’s fairly obvious (and no, the hero doesn’t always have to survive).

Tales from the Flat Earth have a throughline in their five volumes, but they are connected more loosely, with the odd referential throwback. Only “Delusion’s Master” and “Delirium’s Mistress” have an ongoing narrative (of sorts). “Night’s Sorceries” always seemed like an afterthought of material Lee would have liked in volume four but couldn’t fit in. They are all told in a way that hearkens back to oral storytelling (hence Lee saying she was inspired by 1001 Nights), and there is a clear sense of an unchanging, but not personally involved storyteller/narrator all the way through who sometimes even offers commentary.

7. “Tanith Lee was far more progressive about Igbtq+ identities, and that was twenty years earlier.”

Well, for starters: Ten years earlier (“Night’s Master” was published in 1978, the first issue of The Sandman in 1988).

Is Tales from the Flat Earth truly more progressive? I’m not sure. Both were progressive for their time, simply because they wrote about LGBTQ+ characters at all and gave them a voice. And to put it in a disclaimer: I don’t apply moral purity standards to fiction, neither do I believe certain things that would be problematic in real life can’t be written about in fiction (and dare I say: I find that take worrying, for many reasons, but that’s a different discussion). But if we’re talking about “progressiveness”:

A clearly bisexual Demon Prince grooms a child to then seduce him on his 16th birthday—in a time when gay men were often still thrown into one pot with groomers and even pedophiles?

A lesbian queen who basically gets cursed to have sex with many, many men because only a pregnancy can lift that curse (!), finds out she is barren and can only conceive if she has sex with a dead guy, makes a deal with Uhlume who then brings a man back from the dead so she can be impregnated and then, via many many twists and turns, turns into [I’ll tell you later if you really want to know]?

I don’t know, but it’d probably be the same people who find certain angles of the Sandman problematic who would also bolt or get outraged at this? And they would 100% engage in the same type of revisionist readings they now apply to Gaiman’s works if they ever found out that Lee did anything wrong. There is a lot, and I mean a lot, of rape, SA and questionable power dynamics in Lee’s work. But it’s also a work of fiction.

8. In the 1990s, toward the end of her life, she complained in an interview that magazines weren't buying her stories anymore.

[edit: Lee died in 2015, so Boroson’s claim the 90s were “towards the end of her life” also reads a bit weird to me—as if he’s consciously trying to appeal to the sympathy of his readers by portraying her as “the poor woman on her death bed”, when she still lived for another 20 years]

That’s a bit nebulous again. It’s amazing how some people never quote their sources. I am near certain that Boroson talks about this interview from 1998, but I stand corrected if it’s a different one:

Tanith talks about her troubles getting published, but she also says it’s a hard time for everyone right now. Plus, her bibliography also clearly indicates she still got published on the regular, and that the amount of works published in any given year didn’t really fluctuate all that much apart from a burst in the ‘70s (and “burst” refers to the difference of publishing four books instead of two per year), a dip towards the end of her life (when her output was probably affected by her illness) and then the sad thing that always happens when someone dies: Suddenly, there’s another uptick.

Someone even went through the trouble of visualising her published works in a graph:

Courtesy of Das_Mime

Does this honestly look like no one published her anymore?

Now, don’t get me wrong: Of course it is a nice gesture if those more successful put in a word for those who find themselves in a bit of dry spot. But to turn this almost into some conspiracy theory is just a bit weird if I’m honest. It’s much more likely that people are simply not on someone’s radar than that they are actively trying to hinder their career. Writing is hard. Getting published is hard, even if you already have a few published works under your belt. Ask me how I know…

These were the points Boroson made that I wanted to address directly. For those of you who want to get a feel if the story as such is actually in any way similar enough to even call it heavy borrowing, I’ll now do a summary of all major story beats for all five volumes.

Part Three: Tales from the Flat Earth Beat-by-Beat

I assume that most of my followers are familiar with The Sandman, but only a few with Tanith Lee. Hence I won’t do a summary of The Sandman, and once again: You really have to read both works yourself to understand why Boroson’s claims are so far out there. I’m more than willing to discuss and answer questions that come in good faith, but I’ll say it outright: I am not interested in engaging with anyone who just comes here to peddle conspiracy theories and platitudes like “misinformation doesn’t matter in this case because…” if they haven’t even read the works in question.

Just as a quick hint, because that’s where you’ll find the superficial similarities (and that’s my phrasing it with the utmost goodwill):

If you want to compare the entirety of both works, there’s no way around reading both.

For “Night’s Master”, I’d argue you also need to read the entirety of The Sandman, because in a nutshell, it is, at least at first glance, about the heel-face-turn of its protagonist. You’ll need at least Preludes and Nocturnes and The Kindly Ones, but it makes no sense to read them separately, so…

For “Death’s Master”, maybe read The Doll’s House and Season of Mists, because it is partly about a queen who wants to save her land (everything else would be too spoilery, but just so much: The similarities are fleeting at best, and that’s already generous).

For “Delusion’s Master”: Again The Doll’s House and Season of Mists, because at its very core we have a love story that gets torpedoed by a traitor. But other than that, said love story is truly nothing alike.

For “Delirium’s Mistress”: Honestly, I thought long and hard about this. I really don’t know because it is so different from the Sandman that I see absolutely no parallels at all. Maybe read Brief Lives, because there is something in there about parent/child relationships. But they are hardly unique in literature, so once again: I truly don’t know how anyone could find similarities here. And The Kindly Ones would be such an immense stretch that I won’t even go there.

For “Night’s Sorceries”: There are three stories that give a bit of context to the rest. If anything, I’d say read The Wake. But that would actually be insinuating Azhriaz is Daniel, and I’m like… no, massive stretch. If it’s just about loosely connected stories that somewhat fit into a greater narrative, read “World’s End”. But if we’re thinking that’s already a similarity, I truly cry for literary analysis…

Briefly about the world we’re in: The Flat Earth basically consists of four planes: Upperearth, home of the gods; Earth (the Earth of humans before it changed shape); Underearth, home of Azhrarn, Prince of Demons and Wickedness; Innerearth, home of Uhlume, Lord Death. Azhrarn’s kingdom, Druhim Vanashta, houses three classes of demons: Vazdru (most like Azhrarn himself, beautiful and prone to change into eagles and other animals), Eshva (basically mute servants to the Vazdru who can change gender at will) and Drin (ugly, exclusively male creatures and accomplished creators of beautiful and practical things). All three demon kind frequently visit earth to tempt and create chaos.

Volume One: Night’s Master

Night’s Master begins with Azhrarn finding a dying woman and her newborn son, Sivesh, on a hillside. After her death, Azhrarn becomes captivated by the beauty of the child and takes him back to Underearth to raise him (and then promptly seduces him on his 16th birthday). Azhrarn then creates a woman called Ferazhin from a flower for Sivesh (because, you know, Azhrarn thinks it’s good sport to sample a woman. As one does). However, nothing can prevent Sivesh from longing to live on earth because he is human, and the decision to leave Azhrarn for a life in the light offends the Demon Prince. So he consciously tricks him into death by drowning (by chapter three).

The next storyline shifts to a collar (crafted by a Drin) from Ferazhin’s tears because she is inconsolable. We follow the collar around on its journey to different owners (who all meet a gruesome end in one way or another). The final owner, the blind bard Kazir, is the only one not to get corrupted by it, and we conclude the first book with his journey to Underearth to give the collar back to Azhrarn in exchange for Ferazhin, whom he loves without ever having met her. Azhrarn agrees to let Ferazhin go if Kazir can answer a particular question, which he can (not going to get too deep into that, apart from: Azhrarn is rattled, and we’ll revisit it at the end of this volume). Kazir and Ferazhin are happy for a while, but as usual, Azhrarn changes his mind, and by the end of it, Ferazhin is dead (a bit of a nod to Romeo and Juliet in there, but that just as an aside). But lo and behold, Kazir manages to bring her back after a while, and “somewhere perhaps, some dark door slammed like thunder in a city underground.”

Book Two of Night’s Master focuses on Zorayas, who survived the overthrow of her father (a king) as a newborn but suffered severe disfigurement. After the death of the monk who took care of her, she seeks revenge for being raped by a Prince and takes back her father’s kingdom with the help of the Drin. And, as usual, she meets her demise through trickery orchestrated by Azhrarn.

Book Three. Azhrarn’s cruel prank on a young married couple goes wrong, escalates and ultimately leads to humanity teetering on the brink of destruction (the remnants of the husband turn into Hatred and wipe out everything). After seeking intervention from the gods of Upperearth in vain, Azhrarn makes, for once, a sacrifice to preserve humanity’s existence. But does he do so completely selflessly? Could be argued, and I guess Kazir knew, but that’d be too much of a spoiler… Suffice it to say, Earth enters an age of innocence without the presence of hatred and wickedness. Until… 🤣

Volume Two: Death’s Master

Narasen, Queen of Merh, is sexually assaulted by the magician Issak. Feigning cooperation, she manages to kill him. Before he dies, he curses Narasen and Merh, declaring that both will become barren. The curse can only be lifted if Narasen (we have deduced at this point that she is a lesbian because she “doesn’t lie with men”) gives birth to a child, but includes a stipulation that prevents this solution: “Your reluctant womb will never quicken from the seed of living man.” After numerous attempts to conceive, Narasen, driven by her desire to save her land and people, makes a deal with Uhlume to conceive a child from a dead man. In return, Narasen agrees to spend a thousand years in Uhlume’s kingdom. Narasen is poisoned shortly after childbirth.

After Narasen is locked in her tomb with her newborn child Simmu, Uhlume arrives to claim her, leaving the child behind. However, Simmu is rescued by two passing Eshva and lives with them by night. Simmu develops Eshva abilities, like changing gender at will. Eventually, the Eshva grow tired of Simmu and leave him at a temple near Merh, where he grows up among monks and becomes friends and later lovers with a boy called Zhirem.

Simmu and Zhirem eventually become separated and somewhat turn into the tools of Azhrarn (Simmu hates Death because he remembers him coming for his mother) and Uhlume, respectively.

Meanwhile, Uhlume and Narasen don’t get on too well—Narasen sets herself up as Lady Death and constantly struggles for power. To get her off his back, Uhlume grants her permission to spend a day in Merh, where she promptly destroys her city (yeah, after all that trouble…). Upon her return, she gradually takes over the supervision of Innerearth from Uhlume and turns into “Lady Death.”

Azhrarn saves Simmu during Narasen’s attack on Merh. He instructs Simmu to obtain water from the Cistern of Life (a little throwback to volume one). His plan is to kill Uhlume, hence bringing death to an end. The well is guarded by nine virgins called the Golden Daughters—Simmu makes use of his gender-changing abilities and sneaks into each of their chambers as a woman and then takes their virginity as a man. With their virginity taken, the well cracks, and Simmu founds the City of Simmurad (populated by immortal humans) with the golden daughter Kassafeh (too long-winded to get into it all).

Zhirem has embarked on his own adventures and eventually returns to Earth as the magician Zhirek. He agrees to serve Uhlume, who plans to destroy Simmurad, perceiving it as a threat. With the guidance of Azhrarn, who has grown weary of Simmu and Simmurad (you see, Azhrarn is not very consistent and doesn’t abide by rules nor responsibilities like our boy Morpheus 😉), Uhlume lets Zhirek destroy the city by submerging it under water after re-introducing death via creating and killing an insect. Simmu seemingly dies at the hands of Zhirek, who casts him into a well of fire. Zhirek retires into solitude, and Simmu is ultimately saved by Azhrarn, who transforms him into an Eshva and erases all memories of his past.

The story concludes with Narasen effectively ruling Innerearth and giving death, while Uhlume spends most of his time on Earth, finding solace in the presence of Kassafeh.

Volume Three: Delusion’s Master

We’re starting with a tale about Jasrin, the young wife of King Nemdur of Sheve. Because she is jealous of her newborn child, she abandons him in the desert, where he gets killed by dogs. Nemdur banishes Jasrin to a tower, where her sanity gradually deteriorates. She is visited by Chuz, the Prince of Madness (the third Lord of Darkness). Inquiring about her deepest desires, Jasrin expresses her wish for her husband to share her madness. Nemdur awakens with a crazy plan to construct a towering structure that reaches Upperearth (where the gods live). Inspired by the legend of Simmu, he envisions attaining immortality. The Tower of Babyhelu, aptly named “The Gate to the Gods,” grows and grows until it becomes unstable due to its immense weight, causing it to collapse with catastrophic consequences: The fall of the entire kingdom of Sheve.

Azhrarn and a few of his demons are drawn to the commotion, and a conversation between him and Chuz reignites Azhrarn’s disdain for the gods, who had failed to assist him in “Night’s Master”.

Hundreds of years later, we meet 7,000 pilgrims on their journey across the desert to worship the gods at Bhelsheved (Sheve rebuilt). Azhrarn is incensed that his sacrifice to save humanity in “Night’s Master” is credited to the gods. Disguised as a prophet, he reveals that a Lord of Darkness (not the gods) is the true saviour of humanity. For this, he is lashed with a whip and sheds three drops of blood. Azhrarn continues with his quest to destroy Bhelsheved but is unexpectedly diverted by the beauty of a young priestess named Dunizel. Recognising Azhrarn’s true intentions, Dunizel bravely offers to sacrifice herself to appease his wrath. Azhrarn turns into a wolf and bites off her lower arm, but when she encourages him to bite again instead of showing terror, he hesitates. Reminiscing about his own sacrifice to Hatred, he changes his mind, heals her with his own blood, and falls deeply in love with her.

We then learn the story of Dunizel’s mentally disabled mother, who was held captive by the assistant of an astronomer (who was on a field trip to observe a comet passing by). After impregnating the girl, the assistant attempted to abort the child by exposing her to the comet’s energy as it passed. The girl was instead exposed to a rainbow of light captured by the astronomer’s magical engine, regained her sanity and gave birth to Dunizel, who was also affected by the comet’s light. Dunizel’s mother raised her but gradually transformed into a fire elemental and ascended into the sky. The assistant gave Dunizel to a grieving mother from a nearby village, who raised her until she was chosen to join the religious cult (like her mother, she is also part solar being).

We are panning back to the love story of Dunizel and Azhrarn. Dunizel gives birth to a daughter named Soveh, who is initially mistaken for a goddess on Earth and grows at unnatural speed. Through the workings of Chuz though, the truth about the child’s paternity is revealed, and Dunizel dies at the hands of an angry mob (she also comes into contact with one of the drops of blood Azhrarn had formerly shed in the desert). Devastated, Azhrarn takes Soveh, whom he renames Azhriaz, to Underearth. Before he departs, he addresses Chuz and declares their relationship as “un-brothers, un-cousins, and now, un-friends”. He also reveals he will go to war with him and considers it a kindness he has informed him in advance.

The story concludes with Chuz finding Jasrin, who is haunting her tower, and releasing her.

Volume Four: Delirium’s Mistress

So if you waited for this to start with all-out war between Azhrarn and Chuz, you’ll be disappointed. We meet Oloru, a court jester to tyrannical prince Lak Hezoor. Oloru convinces Lak Hezoor to take him on a sightseeing tour of Underearth. It’s not going well—Lak Hezoor is torn apart by Azhrarn’s red hounds. Oloru transforms into a “slender rod of yellow radiation, vaguely purplishly limned” and flies towards the island where young adult Azhriaz has been sleeping since her arrival in Underearth (it’s a been a few years). Oloru, who is actually Chuz in disguise, awakens her, convinces her to escape, and takes her back to Earth. And of course they become lovers.

Kheshmet (King Fate) enters the story, just like that, and in no time, Azhrarn arrives and ends his quarrel with Chuz— also just like that. But to atone, Chuz has to agree to live a mortal lifetime, disfigured, without his powers and truly mad. Azhriaz initially stays with Chuz, but he forgets who she is.

Azhriaz, now without Chuz, despairs. She visits her mother’s grave with Khesmet and decides to embrace her father’s legacy: discrediting the gods. She replaces a king who committed suicide and ascends to the status of a cruel goddess on Earth, conquering much of the world who revels in her cruelty. Her teachings to humanity are that the gods care nothing for them: “Remember, to the gods, you are nothing. To Azhriaz, the Goddess, you are only grains of dust or sand.”

Khesmet arrives to foretell a looming war with sea and sky.

And weirdly, that war starts because a god, whom Azhrarn kissed in “Night’s Master”, awakens and decides that was sacrilege, plus he’s also not pleased with Azhriaz’s activities on Earth. The gods consequently hurl three shards into the sun that transform into three angels—the Malhukim of the gods: Ebriel, Yabael and Melquar. Azhrarn holds the angels at bay while Azhriaz escapes into the ocean aboard a special fish-ship crafted by the Drin, pursued by Ebriel and Yabael. Azhrarn fights Melquar in the air and narrowly avoids incineration. Azhriaz escapes imprisonment in an underwater city when Yabael destroys it with his sword. She receives no assistance from Azhrarn because he lies in a death-like coma in Druhim Vanashta and has been usurped by the demon Hazrond. Eventually, Azhrarn recovers and reclaims his kingdom. Azhriaz is still pursued by Yabael, who conveniently undergoes a transformation and forgets his mission in the process. Then pursued by Ebriel, she travels with Dathanja (Zhirek making a reappearance) and ultimately engages in an eternal battle with the angel. Realising she’ll be otherwise stuck there forever, she convinces Ebriel to stop by revealing her plan to give up her immortality.

Ebriel departs, snd Azhriaz (who is actually called Atmeh at this point, but that’d lead too far) seeks out Kassafeh for a bargain with Uhlume (who is in the process of abdicating to Narasen) to become mortal. She reunites with Chuz, who has paid his penance, and they stay together for a while until Chuz helps her with her final transformation into a mortal woman.

Atmeh/Azhriaz approaches death after 200 years or so, and is visited by Azhrarn, who tells her, “Humanity is my plaything no longer, only a toy for those that are mine under the earth. But you, you are her child. You are hers. You are Dunizel. Not mine. Never mine. Though I made you to be my curse upon the world. Though I made you to be myself. You are Dunizel, that I loved, Dunizel who was the moon and sun together.” Azhrarn expresses his sadness over his inability to cry, and Azhriaz responds: “Each word you have spoken has been a tear.”

Volume Five: Night’s Sorceries

I wasn’t sure if I should even go into this one, because “Delirium’s Mistress” always seemed like the final volume to me to be honest, and it concluded the story for me. “Night’s Sorceries” is a collection of short stories that seem connected to “Delirium’s Mistress” and fill in some gaps (that’s why each of them has an introduction that explains where we are, and when). So I will only go into three of them (there are seven altogether):

“The Prodigal” is essentially about Narasen’s reign as Queen Death.

“Dooniveh, The Moon” is written like a fairy tale about a monk from Nannafir. He travels to the moon on a winged horse, and by the end of his adventures, we witness the wedding of the Moon Queen and the Sun King. And that’s connected how? Well, the winged horse was a gift from Hazrond (who usurped Azhrarn) to Azhriaz.

“The Daughter of the Magician,” recounts the tale of a magician who successfully resurrects the soul of Azhriaz. But the child, named Ezail, ends up being offered as a sacrifice to a monster. And that’s connected how? Well, the monster was created as the counterpart of the winged horse in “Dooniveh, The Moon.” But Ezail regains Azhriaz’ memory and lo and behold, Chuz just happens to appear in the reincarnation of a young boy named Chavir. Together, they decide to take the monster with them and embark on a life together.

The main reason I did include this volume is that it somewhat puts the former four in context. The last sentence of “Night’s Sorceries” is:

“Love is also an immortal.”

Which somewhat suggests that Azhriaz is operating on the same plane as Azhrarn, Uhlume, Chuz and Kheshmet. And we already get hints at that in the other volumes.

In “Delusion’s Master”, Azhrarn says to Dunizel that their child will be his feminine aspect. It’s just ambiguous enough, but we also get this in “Delirium’s Mistress” when Azhrarn wonders about love: “There is no such commodity. There is carnality, our plaything. There is worship, and there is obsession. Death you may perceive walking the world, and Fate, and Delusion, too, in a form that I have kindly granted him. But no man sees love, and no demon sees it.”

So while many of the stories of Tales from the Flat Earth can stand on their own, there is also an overarching theme: Establishing another power that serves to balance out the others: Wickedness, Death, Delusion, and Fate—Azhriaz’ four “sons” (cryptically mentioned in the final chapter of Delirium’s Mistress)...

#the sandman #sandman #tales from the flat earth #tanith lee #neil gaiman #long post #an in-depth look at #Matthew Boroson’s claims #and a full summary of all five volumes of tales from the flat earth #sandman spoilers #tales from the flat earth spoilers

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poetlus · 23 hours ago

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PROMISE — ex!kenma x reader

SYNOPSIS: you and kenma don’t know how to be exes, but you also don’t know how to be together. so, you made a promise to yourself: this is going to be your last time.

WORDCOUNT: 1.4k

A/N: hrrnnng not proofread but ive been through all this.. so source: trust me. probably ooc kenma

You and Kenma had been on and off for.. a while. The two of you didn’t know how to be exes. You didn’t know how to move on. There was so much history, so much chemistry. How could you be as comfortable with anyone else as you were with each other? How could you love someone else as much as you loved him?

Despite breaking up over and over again, the two of you didn’t love each other any less; However, you were starting to get tired of this cycle. You didn’t want to feel like you had the world in your hands one day, and nothing the next. It was exhausting being with Kenma, but it was even more so being without him.

So, you made a promise to yourself. No matter how much you missed him, how much everything reminded you of him, how many times you thought about texting him, you wouldn’t. You weren’t going to go back, this was the last time.

The last time.

“Kenma, I can’t keep doing this. It’s so hard to keep this cycle up. It’s hard for the both of us.. You know it.” The boy was quiet, much like he always was when you were arguing. Quiet and passive. You hated that about him, how he would always let you do the talking. You wanted him to fight for you, dammit. Tell you that you were in the wrong. Keep you. You wanted him to keep you.

“If that’s what you want, okay.” He said, nodding. There was no expression in his face– he was never one to show his emotions. Your lip began to tremble and your eyes welled up. Dammit. There you go again.

“This– yeah. This is what I want. This is what we need.” He nodded once more. You turned around and began walking away. You were hoping for him to shout your name, grab your arm, anything to indicate that he wanted you to stay. But he didn’t.

The next few days were spent in your bed. You didn’t want to go anywhere, do anything, in case you saw him. Seeing him was the worst thing that could happen right now. His recognizable two-toned hair, hearing his soft voice, seeing his gorgeous eyes– the ones you fell for when you first saw him.

Those gorgeous, calm, golden fucking eyes.

You wanted to resent him. You wanted to be angry with him and you wanted to loathe him, but you just couldn’t. That boy, no matter what he did, was an angel. He was your best friend, your anchor. Someone you could go to no matter what, and now that’s gone. Now you had nobody.

Sixteen days.

It had been sixteen days since you and Kenma broke up, and the wound was still fresh. You were still heartbroken. You had been out in public and had seen him, and every time, your heart was torn even further. You kept him unblocked on everything, as did he. You were still easily accessible, and yet he did nothing.

You were mindlessly scrolling through your phone when you looked at the clock. 1:14AM. You should definitely go to sleep soon. You were just about to set your phone down when you got a text from an unsaved number.

You decided to answer it, you had nothing better to do anyway.

(xxx)-xxx-xxxx:

Hey

You:

Who is this?

(xxx)-xxx-xxxx:

Lol, deleted my number?

I didn’t think you were serious.

Ig I was wrong

You:

???

Who is this??

(xxx)-xxx-xxxx:

It’s kenma, sorry

I didn’t think you’d answer

Fuck. What were you going to do? You promised yourself that you wouldn’t get back together with Kenma, but you missed him so fucking bad. You were always the first to break no contact, but it was him this time. Maybe something was wrong? You should at least check if he was okay.

You:

(xxx)-xxx-xxxx:

Sorry

I thought you wouldve had my number saved

You:

No, I really was serious this time lol

But r u ok?

Yeah, use short messages– to convince him you were being genuine about ending the cycle.

(xxx)-xxx-xxxx:

R u?

You:

Yup

(xxx)-xxx-xxxx:

That’s good.

You:

Y did u text me?

Kenma:

Wanted to check up on you

And it’s cold outside

You:

Why does the temperature matter lol

Kenma:

Ok this is gonna sound completely crazy

But

Im outside

Like of ur house

And I was hoping you could talk to me in person?

But its ok if u dont

But I just wanna lyk im sorry

For everything

Is he being serious? He’s outside?? You peeked out of your bedroom window and there he was, a dark figure sitting on the curb across the street from your house. Were you going to go out there? Maybe just for a second. Maybe just to hear him out.

You:

I’ll be out

Moments later, you walked out of your front door in your pajamas and a hoodie. Feeling the cool breeze flow through your clothes made you shiver.

“Kenma?” You spoke, your voice slicing through the cold night like a sharp blade. He looked up from his phone and sat up, walking towards you.

“Y/n,” He said, almost sounding relieved. He walked up to you and you shied away from him, avoiding being too close. Kenma took a step back in turn.

“So, um, like in my text… I wanted to say that I’m sorry. For everything.”

“Kenma, you have nothing to be sorry about. I–”

“No, I do. I wish I had treated you better. I wish I had made an attempt to keep you with me, I wish I did everything differently. I wish I made you want to stay.”

In all honesty, you were shocked with how much Kenma just confessed. You never knew how much he was holding back, or even how much he cared. You knew he cared, but not this much. You never knew such a blank expression was carrying so much emotion.

“I– Kenma.. You were perfect. You’re an angel.” He furrowed his brow and shook his head, a street lamp illuminating his almost frustrated face.

“If I’m so perfect, why do we break up so much? What am I doing wrong?” Kenma reached for your hand and you hesitantly pulled away, pulling him out of his emotional mind. His facial expression softened and he looked sorrowful. “I’m sorry, I didn’t come here to yell at you.. I should go.”

When he took a step away from you, you muttered a small, “wait” Just barely loud enough for him to hear. He turned around silently.

“I want to talk about what we did wrong. And… how we can fix this. Us. Because I hate being without you, and I love you with my whole heart, I really do. I see you in everything, Kenma. I look for you in every stranger I meet and I think about you in everything I do.” Before you could stop yourself, the words were flowing out like a spilled glass of water– and your tears were spilling, too. You wiped your face with your sleeve and as you’re about to continue on, the warmth of Kenma’s body heat engulfs you.

“Oh, honey.” He says as he pulls you closer to him, letting you sob into his jacket. He begins to tear up, too, thinking of something to say. “Why are we doing this to ourselves?” The boy pet your hair and kissed your head until you got quieter, and eventually pulled away from him

You wiped your face once again and looked at him, the moonlight reflecting off of a single tear on his cheek. You cupped his face in your hands and wiped his tear away with a thumb. Instinctively, he leaned into your touch, letting more tears fall. Despite being with Kenma for so long, you had never once seen him cry, nor show this much emotion in general. You felt more connected to him than ever.

“How are we going to fix us, Y/n?” Kenma sniffled.

“Oh, Kenma, I have no idea.” You chuckled as you looked into his eyes. Those gorgeous, calm, golden eyes.

“I promise, I’ll try my best to fix us.” Kenma took your cheek in his left hand. He held his right hand out with his pinky up. You smiled and intertwined your own pinky with his.

“Me too, Kenma. I promise, this is our last time breaking up. We won’t ever again after this.”The two of you sealed the deal with a kiss and another hug, smiling warmly at each other.

“So…” You trailed off. Kenma looked curiously at you. “why were you outside of my house at 1AM? Were you—”

“No.. I was just taking a walk and ended up here— it’s not like that, I promise I wasn’t being a creepy ex.”

“Okay, whatever you say.” You looked at him suspiciously and then broke out into laughter, filling the silence of the night with your love for Kenma.

#haikyu #haikyuu #haikyu x reader #haikyu x you #haikyu x y/n #kozume kenma #kenma x reader #kenma x you #kenma x y/n #works ・゜゜・．

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wizardlover124 · 2 days ago

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dirk the character

dirk's core motivations come from being inadequate. on one hand it's because he's not enough his friends-- he's too neurotic, he's too emotional, but he loves them to death (as he literally says about roxy) and would give anything for them to enjoy talking to him. on the other hand—and this is what this meta will mostly focus on—he's inadequate compared to his older bro (alpha dave). to dirk, alpha dave cannot be a real person-- he's more akin to a fictional character, a completed NARRATIVE. alpha dave made a space for himself in the world-- he was massively successful, had fans, and orchestrated massive plots to fight the condesce all while carving his own creative niche in the world. most importantly, he was the only source of guidance as to "what to be" dirk had.

by definition dirk cannot access any flaws a!dave might have had, because he didn't-- in a well-written story, any flaw is only part of the "character," and it's not like dirk ever really knew a!dave anyway. i think he adopted this mindset for himself and too began viewing his entire life as a story, in which he's a character and not a person. partially because it literally is— alpha dave prepared this apartment for dirk because dirk was destined for something greater, e.g. sburb, and dirk spent sixteen years waiting for his own story to begin. but there's one critical problem here. dirk cannot be enough compared to alpha dave. alpha dave is an IDEAL dirk constantly measures himself up to and at every turn fails-- suddenly, when he's trying to place himself in the hero role he thinks a!dave had, nothing he does is adequate. even normal human flaws become akin to sin. his interactions with his friends just remind him of that-- he can't live up to roxy's desire, he can't seem to get jake to love him, and this complicates things with jane too. he doesn't think he'll be enough—not for his friends, and not for the story that lays ahead of him.

his solution is to turn to the machine. he creates the autoresponder, thinking that is the most "ideal" version of himself—the character that he's been waiting for—and has it talk to his friends instead. but this doesn't work either. if hal is the perfect version of himself, then what use does dirk have in the world? plus, he's completely fucking insufferable-- does that mean dirk is, even at his best, awful? if hal ISN'T the perfect version of himself, that means that dirk's best solution-- the one he's been trying at since he realized this flaw--the machine fails.

dirk spends the rest of sburb, at least i like to think, unlearning some of these ideas. he meets dave in person. he has long conversations with his friends (also in person!) who he . he spends time deconstructing himself as a character and as a person instead.

which brings the real point of this essay: ultimate dirk.

postcanon dirk, who did ALL THAT, learns that actually he was CORRECT— there's been an audience watching him and all his failures this entire time—he IS a character, and so far he's been almost utterly meaningless. he doesn't fight the condesce. he gets decapitated thrice. he fails to save the game over timeline. the one thing he tangibly does, unite synchronization, is barely done by him (arguably hal). this realization undoes every piece of character growth that may or may not have happened. and now his timeline is thrust into irrelevance, precisely because this audience no longer cares about postcanon. so he takes up the role he thinks he was always meant to—he becomes a character. and because he's failed his entire life in becoming the hero, he opts to become a villain—the way he knows that beta dirk, his "previous" version, was to dave—and puts dave in the hero position alpha dave was in before.

dirk is the worst version of himself when he, instead of actually TALKING to the people he's around, holes up into himself and interprets everything through his own narrative. this habit which he had to unlearn is both literally and meta-textually the fucking epilogues. which is also a creative work that he's trying to carve his own space in the world through. the epilogues are dirk's sbahj. dave's story is about leaving beta dirk's shadow, and dirk's story is about imitating alpha dave—still his only point of reference—still dirk's most coveted narrative. this is where his obsession with narrative and relevancy comes from and this is what fundamentally makes ult dirk compelling as a character to me!! anyway how are we doing

#dirk strider #ultimate dirk #homestuck #homestuck meta

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thatrandomsarahchick · 20 hours ago

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I was halfway through writing out a new dcxdp one shot when I accidentally closed tumblr and lost it, and now I have zero motivation to rewrite the whole thing.

What i had so far was this:

Superman responds to an email from Danny asking for help and advice because his parents hate his species and don't know he is that species. Also, he just got made illegal, so how does Superman make everyone like him because he's super strong, but people don't hate him like the ones in Amity Park hate Danny.

Superman does some digging and finds out that the anti ecto acts were hidden in a clean energy bill, talking about harvesting ambient ectoplasm from the atmosphere and converting it to usable energy. He goes to the senators who voted yes and questions them as Clark, only to find that a majority of them are horrified, because the genuinely thought that ectoplasm was a form of pollution, and this would help to clean up the ozone a bit, while providing a cheap, renewable energy source alternative.

The ones that knew about what it really meant are also strongly anti-meta/anti alien. They pretend to be shocked but then go out for lunch together, where they discuss their real thoughts when they think they're out of hearing range.

Meanwhile, Clark tells Danny that he's sending his press liaison, Lois, to meet him. She's very trustworthy and can help him out with some tips, as well as getting the real story out there. Lois arrives just as Pariah is about to take the town into the Ghost Zone, and gets stuck over there. She gets sheltered behind the Ghost shields of a local family, the Westons', and they fill her in on the local Ghost hero Invis-o-bill - real name Danny Phantom. Or, if the youngest is to be believed, real name Danny Fenton.

After they get returned, Lois goes and interviews all of the Fenton family individually. She waits a few days before going off to the park and waiting for Phantom to show up, once he's healed from the battle.

Anyway, that's as far as I got, before I accidentally deleted it. But the rest was gunna be Lois giving tips to regain their trust, telling the Justice League Dark that there were multiple portals to the afterlife open in Amity Park, telling the Justice League to get their buts in gear with making ecto-entities a protected species, and Danny getting to fly up to the Watchtower with Superman.

#dpxdc #dp x dc #dc x dp #dcxdp #danny phantom #danny fenton #dp x dc crossover #lois lane #superman #justice league #justice league dark #anti ecto acts #mini fic #someone finish this for me please #my heart is broken over losing it and i simply cannot do it again

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heal-the-ashes · 2 days ago

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[ Flora Reinhold (Moodboard) ]

My first Flora Friday!

Making moodboards is a hobby of mine. I've just been afraid to post any of them.

First, here's the sources, and then I'll get into my thoughts and explanations for this one.

[Taiyaki and orange]

[Heart orange slice in tea]

[Vinyl saying "I can't tell you everything"]

[Monarch butterflies]

[Flora Reinhold]

[Heart candles]

[Waffles]

[Deer pattern]

[Apple pie]

Background is (and almost always will be) made by me!

First there's three taiyaki there. I think anything with three represents her, Luke, and Layton, or it can represent her, the Baron, and Lady Violet. But I think this image represents Flora, Luke, and Layton. The orange represents Flora herself.

In the tea, there's only one slice of the heart. This could symbolize how Flora's love is always lonely. Just like how anything in tea seeps and brews in water, both her love and loneliness is concentrated and self-contained. I just thought the cup was pretty too. It looks like something she would own.

The record saying "I can't tell you everything"... It's self explanatory, but the fact that it's on a vinyl is interesting. It's supposed to be played. It's supposed to be heard. But it'll never get the chance to do that, or so Flora probably thinks.

Monarch butterflies. Flora is probably seen as the crown princess of St. Mystere. It's also interesting that they: mostly live alone, and also represent rebirth, transformation, and new beginnings. I find it interesting that they also group together when trying to stay warm or when migrating. (Also that they usually land in the same area or even tree after migrating, or so I heard?)

The candles—There's three, they're heart shaped, and they're lit up. A family relationship that both lights up her life and hurts her in the sense that wax is getting burned and melting. Candles are sometimes used as a metaphor for patience or energy, mostly in negative terms because it's usually slowly dwindling away. However, there's always light involved…

The waffles, um. Gonna be honest and say it just looked good and fit into it. Maybe she made them :0 There's also multiple, so maybe she made them for everyone else?

The deer pattern. Deer represent spiritual authority, regrowth, devotion, care, grace, innocence… Also alertness and wariness. But one thing that I learned while researching is that mother deer leave their baby fawn for a few weeks on purpose to protect them. They wait until the kids are old enough to travel with them. Doesn't that sound like someone we know?

And finally, we have the apple pie. I love this one. There's the bow, there's three hearts in it—But also, a section of the pie is perforated, cut to be taken out. One of the hearts is within that section, but it's also not like other images where the slice is actually separated. It's still there. It has a severed connection, but it's still there.

And taking that as a metaphor is really beautiful to me. All of this is really pretty to me, and all moodboards I make have some sort of symbolism to them. I hope everyone likes this one :) I may post more, because... My layton ones.. I have at least like 10+ of them already, this is the newest one I just made today. Anyway :) Happy Flora Friday 🍎

#healsmoodboards #flora friday #flora reinhold #professor layton

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srtafig · 3 days ago

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No Complaints is actually so Jean coded.

“I thought I had somethin'

And that's the same as havin' somethin’”

Jean thinking he had his spot in the perfect court, finding some comfort (?) in his name and place within the Ravens and by Riko and Kevin’s side until everything goes to shit. When in reality Jean never had any power in any of the choices made for him.

“I'd get mad at nothin', blame my dad for somethin'”

Jean is just angry for a lot of valid reasons, but also so much so it permeates and smoothes into sadness. Nothing here is how as a Moreau he is valued as nothing. Jean blames his family for landing him in Moriyama hands and their neglect for his sister’s death. Referencing the end of TSC when he called Wymack and was thinking why his parents didn’t love them enough to protect them (ouch).

“I pull no punches, then feel bad for months”

Kinda self explanatory…Jean doesn’t fight back (anymore) and whether he does or doesn’t he still has to deal with the repercussions of that choice (of the Nest) outside and within the Nest.

“Mm, thought I was raised better, tried to fake better

Tried to blame weather and escape better”

This is where I get interpretive :p

Jean thinking he could protect his sister, that his purpose meant she would survive, that being a Moreau was in service of something than a dead master and a crumbling team. He tried to blame his pain on his parents and the truth (that he know) of what it means to be a Moreau. He also tried to survive by submitting hence “escape better” than maybe say Neil who only fought his “fate” as a Wesninski.

“Hope the skin heals where the pain enters”

Jean peeling himself up over and over again telling himself he must endure even in the face of the dreaded “how much?” question.

“But I finally got sewed up”

He met Renee. He escaped the Nest. He went to USC and became a Trojan.

“I set a time, then I showed up”

Jean admitting he had friends at the end of TSC. He learned to lean on Renee and eventually allowed Jeremy to help him through what will be a shit show (and Cat and Laila eventually).

“Now the weight of the world ain't so bad”

The weight of existence isn’t as heavy as it was in the Nest. The freedom is crushing and exhilarating all at once for him, but it’s not the Nest (which slowly in TSC he comes to realize).

“I saw the end, it looks just like the middle

Got a paper and pen and a page with no space”

This is depressing, but it’s Jean realizing he’ll always have a master. He will always answer to some Moriyama in some capacity. For this I’m referring to his conversation with Neil about finding people to hold on to and how which is a better investment: a man with reasons to not let go or one that was simply told to not let go.

Jeans beginning, middle, and end look the same and he can’t change that; there’s no space on the page.

“I filled the hole in my head with prescription medication

And forgot how to cry, who am I to complain?”

He filled the void of his Raven partner with Jeremy and the other Trojans. Renee and the Trojans become Jean’s source of dopamine (at this point bc we don’t know in canon if he’ll be on meds).

Jean eventually doesn’t have bruises anymore, his body doesn’t forget what happened but the fresh evidence of such fades away.

And at the end of the day Jean realizes that this (being at USC, still an investment) is the best he’s had it and as he says in TSC “more than he deserves” so how is he to complain? (Which isn’t true he deserves the world and more)

ANYWAYS thanks of y’all read this lil breakdown :)

#Jean yves Moreau you deserve all the sunshine in the world #the sunshine court #jean yves moreau #aftg #usc trojans #I am gonna lose my mind when tgr comes out #please dear god (Nora) give him a break #nora sakavic #aftg fandom #Spotify

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unproduciblesmackdown · 2 years ago

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Lackadaisy Enrichment

#in our enclosures!!#video linked as source; which i'm glad to see already has a million views and is trending. That's Right #lackadaisy #WHICH i have been reading since at least '07 when i was thirteen my god b/c this animation is based on the ongoing webcomic #like does its influence show up Directly in some Discrete way i can point to in my art? not very easily probably. And Yet.#the inspiration....i wasn't able to be Regularly Only for at least another year / art done Nonprofessionally Online was novel to me #like wow ppl can make & post fanart of w/e they love huh....didn't know webcomics were a thing & i never really read that many since but.#good god the quality of Lackadaisy at its onset is like this is superb?? this person putting in all their talent and effort???#and Then you get years & years more art and i don't even know what superlatives to throw out abt its quality as it evolves. obsessed w/it..#if i see a new lackadaisy comic page i Will be acting out. obviously this animation is a delight & also stunning. and fascinating to also #juxtapose as a Translation / Interpretation of the comic in a different medium & standalone snippet of Story #and that we're not even quite there in the comic timeline; Taking Notes abt character info we get distilledly here....genuinely love like #take it back to '07 i'm like oh boy can't wait for the dream team to assemble. then a decade later when it did? Oh Boy. that is payoff lol #namely hooray for stitches and mudbug at the field office for every passing gangster. killing one marigold associate but not the other #which seems like a promising start to shootouts w/the other dream team triumvirate. i adore that in canon so far mordecai freckle & rocky #have met but only over a nice brunch. re: all intentions anyways. anyways i'm like Gifs Must Be Made while i'm also so riled afresh abt the #comic that i've been sooo hype for for over fifteen yrs now babeyyy Deservedly. i've done a couple of rereads & ought to do another....#For Interest it'd probably take a few sittings to catch up from the start but there is much to be engaged over....this ongoing story that's #historical fiction prohibition bootlegging cats with plenty of focus on characters & several Mysteries. which i'm better at parsing now lol #like one of the more recent rereads like Oh Of Course x (probably) accidentally killed his y & z took the fall & that's a binding secret...#Not [oh of course] abt the circumstances surrounding a's death & how b & c were involved. nor the ''what's marigold's damage'' mystery #which is great. love to not know things. love that we can readily follow all the emergent drama everyone's wading in nowadays. hell yeah #anyways admire my organized approach to gifs here. four shots each Expressions Atmosphere Action Groupshots #sure might've muddled through gifmaking for this anyways but fr being a huge lackadaisy comic enjoyer for now most of my life helps #and its very Overall Inspiration like. just really getting the [you can really just draw stuff out here] going. fr the art's detail & skill #and that enrichment like i'm gonna have a great time following this. And I Have #you don't expect a crowdfunded indie animation in the mix back then but hell yeah fellas #SIGH ok removing a 4th gif that's broken / not displayed despite reuploading then entirely remaking it. if it's a bug i'll try again later

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sergle · 1 year ago

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I'm thinking abt that pretty fall leaves embroidery pattern post and about how like... it is categorically a repost, it's a reupload. right? a thing that is generally disliked. but because it's credited, it's genuinely boosting the artist in question. and it could ALWAYS be like this. reposting content could ALWAYS be a symbiotic relationship, but because sourcing back to the original creator of something is so uncommon, it's just easier to ask people not to repost it at all. and people still don't understand the difference. or they'll go to the effort of cropping out usernames/signatures to repost something, which is More Effort than literally crediting the creator of something you liked enough to want to repost. Like. I literally don't actually care if my own shit gets reposted, you have to understand. I just don't want it STOLEN. But "do not repost" is easier to write on my art than "you can repost this, but don't alter the image/remove my signature, don't you dare write 'credit goes to the artist' because that is not credit, please link back to my original post or someplace that you can actually find me. please use an actual link/url instead of writing a non-clickable link of my username, because making it text instead of a clickable link cuts the number of people who will go to the effort of visiting my own page in Half." All those aggregate themed accounts, those fuckin annoying as hell instagrams and facebook groups that are like "body positive art we love wamen 💕 hashtag feminism" and then MASS-STEAL plus sized art created by women, if pages like these that always go and steal my older self-portraits and other works... If they just put a link to my prints of those pieces in the text of those posts, or, fuck, my commission info page? I would literally be living on the moon right now. I would have a house on the moon

#there is actually nothing morally wrong with running an account that just reuploads ppl's artwork or their jokes or their cosplays #if you just put a VISIBLE LINK in the description of your post with proper credit then it would be beneficial for everyone #because you can get your little clout or whatever it is you want by putting a bunch of same-category content on a page #but nobody's getting fucked over because if your post blows up then people just get FUNNELED to the source #because it's placed so plainly where everyone can see it #and yeah it's better to retweet or reblog but #on the rare occasion that I see my shit reuploaded on tumblr WHICH IS WEIRD BC I MAKE MY OWN POSTS HERE but anyway #someone making their own post where they upload my stuff. and it's always the floral self portraits so let's say it's a post with all those #if I scroll to the bottom and it says like. Artwork by Serglesinner on Twitter <-- clickable link [Sergle's Prints] <-- clickable link #to my etsy #I'm like oh okay and all the anger leaves my body and I'm like ah I see. and I toss the rock aside #like oh okay so you actually care that a person made these pieces. Instead of posting the caption ''women <3'' or smth #like you've GOTTA die if you do that. but if you just link back #or if you go to the effort of writing like a description with a BLURB? like it's a damn museum. like a light paragraph of info #about what the art is and who made it and their links #I am literally sucking you in a strange and peculiar manner. that is extremely helpful #and maybe other artists don't want this AT ALL and they'd rather people not reupload even if it is credited #but I feeeeeeeeel. like 99% of the time this would solve the issue #reposters could genuinely be helping ppl. sometimes the repost gets more traction than the real thing #as long as it credits the creator then that's an okay thing to happen!#that can land somebody a sale! a commission order! a new fan! A JOB #A JOB!!!!!!!!!!#sergle.txt #I didn't write this eloquently AT ALL what the fuck ever barkbarkbarkbark

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happyk44 · 7 months ago

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Jason who immediately loses respect for people who don't own up to their mistakes vs Annabeth who would rather die than admit she made a mistake

#jason vs annabeth. autism vs npd lol #idk what the outcome is. i don't think they'd fight physically. but jason would get on her ass. and she'd be so fucking pissed abt it #she'd strategize different ways to put him in uncomfortable situations for whatever reason #and he's just vibing through them because he's been uncomfortable his entire life. pretending to be bacon for a monster is not new #anyway jason looking at his dad who's refusing to admit he made some dumb decisions and immediately going this guy is an idiot fuck him #happy talks pjo #npd!annabeth #jason grace #annabeth chase #oh oh annabeth needing everyone to like and trust her and jason's lost respect for her drives her up the fucking wall #she's the only one of the seven who could really be considered friends with all of them and jason's judgy eyes make her want to explode #she 100% rants herself to sleep about things he says. maybe that's where percy and jason's beef arised from #percy recognizing that annabeth is fustrated with jason because jason is blunt and doesn't really know to soften his words.#so now percy is fustrated with jason because annabeth is the source of his personhood right now. meanwhile jason is just vibing oblivious #no social awarenes whatsoever. anyway lol #but oooooo see leo's inferiority complex actually makes him fess up to errors in a way that judges him (jokingly but not really)#even if the error wasn't his fault. but it's his willingness to admit to his mistakes that makes jason really appreciate and trust him #so we have npd!annabeth who can't admit to being wrong because it would kill her ego #and then inferiority complex leo who does admit to being wrong because he hates himself #and when he fucks up he is quick to confess (often in a self-deprecating joke manner) so that no one can say anything that would hurt him #if he kills his ego before other people can even attempt it then he's safe from their judgement in some way #okaaaay bac to studying lol

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egophiliac · 10 months ago

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Hello!! I followed you for your absolutely amazing Twisted Wonderland comics (thank you for making them, by the way-) but I saw you posting about something called Ride Kamens? I haven’t heard of it before, what’s it about? Or if that’s a bit much to ask, where could I find more info about it? It seems right up my alley 👀

Thank you!

thank you! :> :> :> (this is also for the other anon who asked about where to find it, I am honored to be infecting the world spreading interest in this silly game)

Ride Kamens is still doing prerelease marketing and isn't out yet; it's set for "early summer 2024", so a bit yet to go! similar to Twst, it's a mobile game about anime boys loosely based on an existing franchise (Kamen Rider), although it seems like it's going to be more standalone/won't require familiarity with Rider going in.

the (very) basic premise is that your player character has just taken over their late father's role as a secret agent, supporting the city's superheroes by running a secret base disguised as a cafe (plus you have a personal butler for some reason) (the reason is because it's amazing). you also have to help the heroes regain their lost memories, and it looks like it'll have a bit of a route/choice aspect there (not romance, just different endings to the character episodes depending on what you do). the details are kinda hard to tell at this point but the characters seem like a really fun bunch; there's definitely big "idiots with emotional problems" energy which I am extremely into.

all the official info is in Japanese only at the moment, but here's the website and the ride_kamens twitter! (though the twitter is sort of overtaken by posts about the AnimeJapan exhibit right now, whoops.) and I believe some people are already planning on doing translations for it too? lots to look forward to! :D

#ride kamens #joseimuke games are serious business #this is why like 99% of my posts about it so far have been just 'hey it's that guy' :')#the characters look like fun i'm just waiting to properly meet them!#i suspect they're doing a bit of a reverse-twst where instead of familiarity with the source drawing you into the game #they're aiming to get people into rider via handsome animes #we have officially reached the zany gambit phase of the franchise #honestly i have no idea what the actual quality of the game is going to be but by god am i gonna play it anyway because C'MON #i do think it looks like fun though! based on the op it looks like the villains might be turning people into monsters?#and the chaostones are from space or something WHY NOT #(also i was SO happy to see that there's a background that looks like our old friend the Wireworks and Explosion Factory)#(you made it in! can't wait for a character to dramatically explode in you ❤️)#(man i hope nijigao city is just full of toku landmarks)#(round up all the boys for a field trip to the local quarry surely nothing will go wrong there)

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qiu-yan · 5 months ago

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👀👀👀👀👀👀 this is super interesting

[spoilers for golden kamuy below]

you are super right about their backgrounds being similar: as you said, both characters are the lowborn bastards of a high-status man and a low-status entertainer, both characters feel some sort of way about their moms, and both characters commit fratricide. and both characters enact some incredible violence upon their fathers due to said fathers' wrongdoings against their mothers. despite also having read both works, i did not make that connection myself, so i'm very 👀 to see your analysis.

i think you bring up two especially interesting points: [resentment of the "morally pure" socially-sanctioned brother-figure], and [guilt]. i'd like to discuss these in more detail.

long ass reply below.

resentment

i really like your point about the "moral purity" of the brother figures that both jin guangyao and ogata kill, how that "moral purity" is in some aspect only possible because the brother figure holds a level of class privilege that jin guangyao and ogata themselves do not have access to, and how the kills can be said to be driven in part by resentment of said "moral purity."

the last point is more obvious with ogata, who (if i'm recalling correctly) directly complains about yuusaku's "moral purity" in his internal monologue multiple times - and also tries to get asirpa to kill him, just so that she will have violated her no-killing vow, simply because she reminds him of yuusaku. it seems that, whenever ogata encounters someone he sees as "morally pure" in the way yuusaku was, he hates it: he first tries to get the person in question to violate their "moral purity;" then, if he fails to do so, he kills them. this seems to be the result of ogata trying desperately to prove (to who? the world? himself?) that his self-perceived lack of moral purity is in fact normal; that everyone in the world is actually like him.

i'm not as sure about this, but i think you can also say that jin guangyao's murder of nie mingjue was also drive, in some part, by resentment of nie mingjue's socially-sanctioned "moral purity." i think that, to jin guangyao, nie mingjue represented "heroism" - more specifically, both something genuinely virtuous that jin guangyao legitimately admired, and the socially-sanctioned, socially-constructed concept of a "hero" itself. meng yao genuinely wants to be a heroic person - however, for the majority of his life, he's only ever been spat upon by the rest of society as the son of a whore.

but nie mingjue was different. nie mingjue, a respected general and the highborn sect leader of a legitimate great sect, recognized meng yao's abilities. to put it more cheesily, he believed in meng yao when no one else did. that someone both as morally upright and as socially recognized as so would then in turn recognize meng yao must have meant the world to him. it must have felt like nie mingjue was telling him: "you, too, can be a hero."

but then meng yao's circumstances change. he becomes jin guangyao. in the process of becoming so, he commits all sorts of moral violations; due to these moral violations, he loses the faith of nie mingjue. but here's the thing: jin guangyao could not have survived and accomplished what he did without committing those moral violations. nie mingjue can go around following his own moral compass because he's physically powerful and the highborn leader of a still-powerful great sect, but jin guangyao, the bastard son of a whore, cannot do that.

jin guangyao tries to explain this to nie mingjue. he tries again and again to get nie mingjue to see that he's in an impossible position. but nie mingjue refuses to accept his reasoning. jin guangyao says: "if i do what you are asking me to do, i will die." in return, nie mingjue says: "then die."

nie mingjue was the first person to say that meng yao was more than just the son of a whore. yet now, through his repudiation of jin guangyao's reasoning and excuses for his actions, through his refusal to accept that jin guangyao "had no choice," nie mingjue says (in jiggy's view):

"i take back the dignity i gave you before. you in fact cannot be a hero."

"the fact that you are unable to resolve this situation without causing some moral violation is proof that this path was never open for you. such is intrinsic to your nature. such cannot be separated from your very existence. from the very beginning, there was never any place for you here."

this is not what nie mingjue said, but i think it’s what jin guangyao heard.

there are of course a wide number of other reasons as to why jin guangyao ended up killing nie mingjue - nie mingjue tried to kill him on three separate occasions already, nie mingjue put him in an impossible situation, his dad wanted him to kill nie mingjue, nie mingjue insulted his mom, and so on - but i think this resentment played a part, too. and it explains why jin guangyao kept nie mingjue's severed head in his private storage long afterwards.

guilt

or, the feeling some kind of way part. i like the way you contrast them here, in that ogata - despite his best efforts to pretend otherwise - is in fact haunted by guilt, while jin guangyao....is not.

ogata is an interesting character because he seems to be trying to prove two opposite and contradictory points via his actions simultaneously. on one hand, he wants to show that what he believes about himself - that he doesn't feel guilty about killing people, that he doesn't feel it is wrong to kill people - is in fact true for everybody. everyone actually thinks this way. no one feels guilty when they kill someone. that "killing is bad and makes you feel bad" is simply a polite fiction everyone in society has agreed upon. ogata is a normal person - the fact that his parents did not love each other did not affect him at all.

peak ogata moment.

on the other hand, though - what he believes in himself is also a self-fiction he convinces himself is true. it isn't that ogata actually doesn't feel guilty - rather, it's that he's convinced himself that he doesn't feel guilty. "no one would feel guilty about killing their brother" is the claim he aims to prove in order to justify the preceding statement "i don't feel guilty about killing yuusaku" - except this preceding statement, "i don't feel guilty about killing yuusaku," is also a claim he needs to prove.

i think that's why ogata seems to go out of his way to be such an asshole throughout the story. chronic backstabbing disorder, constantly switching sides and thus alienating everyone, and a consistent refusal to bond with any of the other characters unparalleled by anyone else in the story: it's as if he's going out of his way to prove (to the world? to himself?) that he is an aberration. that he is cursed. that gleeful violence is simply his nature, in a way that cannot be changed.

why?

i think it comes down to the idea that [a child of two parents who don't love each other is cursed]. on one hand, all of ogata's actions are directly stated to be for the sake of disproving this idea: he insists that everyone is just as morally corrupt and empty inside as them, he hates genuinely "morally pure" people and goes out of his way to destroy them (as described above), his actual goal is to become commander of the 7th, just to prove to his shitty dead dad that the bastard son can achieve what the dad achieved.

on the other hand, though, i think deep down ogata has actually accepted this idea as truth. deep down, he's convinced himself that since he is a child of two parents who don't love each other, he's fundamentally cursed. the violence in his life, the suffering in his life, the fact that he killed his mom, the fact that his dad refused to acknowledge him even as he slowly killed said dad, the fact that he killed his brother - was all inevitable, due simply to the circumstances of his birth. this way, none of it was avoidable. this way, all of it was fated. this way, he doesn't feel bad about any of it - because he's a cursed child who doesn't feel guilt. so he doesn't feel guilty. so he doesn't feel guilty. so he doesn't feel guilty.

but this is a fallacy. in other words, it's a Cope. because, deep down, ogata does in fact feel guilty about killing yuusaku. ogata is in fact a human being. he wanted his mom to love him, he wanted his dad to love him, he wanted paternal affection from lieutenant tsurumi, he knows he was in part manipulated by tsurumi into killing yuusaku. all of the above bullshit about proving various statements to the world only exists because ogata does in fact feel guilty.

now, as for jin guangyao...i think it's entirely reasonable to argue that he legitimately does not feel guilty. i think it's also entirely reasonable to argue that, while he does feel guilty, his approach to guilt is such that [a jin guangyao who feels guilty] is indistinguishable from [a jin guangyao who does not feel guilty].

in the latter case, jin guangyao approaches feelings of guilt in a manner vastly different from ogata. ogata says: "yes, the thing i did was wrong and unnecessary, but i literally don't even feel bad about it at all. i am someone who doesn't care." jin guangyao instead says: "yes, the thing i did was questionable, and yes, i do feel guilty about it. but it was also necessary; i had no other choice." ogata's reaction to guilt as a result of evildoing is to lean into the evil and deny the guilt; jin guangyao's reaction to guilt as a result of evildoing is to accept the guilt and deny the evildoing.

everything jin guangyao gets criticized for by other characters, he justifies with one word: necessary. i think this is probably how he justifies things to himself as well, as he carries on calmly every day with his feelings of guilt: yes, it was terrible, but he had no other choice. if he did in fact kill jin rusong, that's what he tells himself. and if he did not in fact kill jin rusong (because sect leader yao is not a reliable source), that's probably still what he tells himself in order to cope: jin rusong had to die, every additional day jin rusong lived was an increase in the chances of the incest marriage being discovered. therefore, his death makes things easier. therefore, he was going to have to die anyways. therefore, there is no need to be sad.

so long as the harm caused was necessary, jin guangyao can live with guilt. so long as the harm caused was necessary, jin guangyao has no need for guilt.

but in order for this Cope to work, jin guangyao needs two other things to be true. first, jin guangyao's actions have to be normal. everyone who was put in jin guangyao's position has to behave the same way he does, make the same choices he did. everyone who is forced to choose between their ethics and their life must choose their life. after all, jin guangyao is a normal person: every decision he made was a decision any rational person in his position would have made. all human beings are actually just like jin guangyao. the only reason why their hands are cleaner than his is because they got lucky. that people pretend otherwise, that society pretends that ideals like "i will die for justice" exist, is a polite fiction - one that is only able to maintained because the people who believe in it have never been put in jin guangyao's position.

that someone would choose their abstract moral values over their life, that someone would choose to die for what they believe to be justice - it is not merely unthinkable. it is not permitted.

second, jin guangyao has to be uniquely cursed, such that all of his choices were inevitable. all of his justifications are based on the unique horribleness of his circumstances - he's the bastard son of a whore, his status and life depend wholly on his father's goodwill, his cultivation is weak, he was forced into a secretly incestuous marriage with his own half-sister - the fundamental axiom of all his self-justifications is that, due to these horrible conditions, jin guangyao is always at risk of death. the mere existence of these conditions means that anything jin guangyao does that alienates enough of the gentry puts him at risk of death.

therefore, the idea that [jin guangyao could have been saved had he only made different choices] is not permitted. it is not merely untrue that he might have dodged the incest marriage had he honestly asked his sworn brothers for help, the possibility is not permitted. it is not merely untrue that he might have chosen to kill jin guangshan instead of nie mingjue, after nie mingjue demanded xue yang's execution - the possibility of this is not permitted. nor is it merely untrue that jin guangyao, upon being blackmailed, could have chosen a less drastic option than immediately trying to wipe out the entire jianghu - no, jin guangyao must be trapped, he must have no other choice, so this very thought is not permitted.

thus, perhaps what ogata and jin guangyao have in common regarding their approaches to guilt are the two statements: [i am normal, everyone is in fact like me], and [i am uniquely cursed, so all of my choices were inevitable]. it's just that, for jin guangyao, these two statements are consistent with each other (as the first describes his internal psychology and the second describes his external social position); while for ogata, these statements instead contradict each other (as they both describe his internal psychology).

if they met

i think ogata would hate the public-facing lianfang-zun. this fellow bastard son of a whore, who instead of becoming cursed like ogata, was beloved by the people; who instead of becoming cursed like ogata, went on to become "morally good." and it'd only be when all of jin guangyao's secret murders were exposed that ogata would relax, because then both of ogata's self-beliefs would be proven. he is normal, because even the kindest politician in this world was secretly an unrepentant killer. and he is cursed due to his birth, because this fellow bastard son of a whore is clearly cursed as well - there was no other path available for either of them.

meanwhile, if jin guangyao realized exactly why ogata called him "cursed" - that it wasn't because of jin guangyao's external social position, that it wasn't because of society; rather, ogata simply believes that children of parents who don't love each other are intrinsically broken in some way - it would drive him insane. jin guangyao already has to deal with an entire society of people who think he's inherently unclean due to the circumstances of his birth - and now he has to deal with this edgelord's bullshit too?

thus, jin guangyao would respond with: no, i am not the same as you.

but you did just as much fucked up shit as i did, ogata would reply, so how are you any different from me?

i had no other choice. i wish there had been a different way.

you're lying.

and now both of their coping mechanisms are at risk, so they start biting each other.

meanwhile, if they met while both elbow-deep in corpses or whatever, i think they might instead get caught in a loop of "wow i'm so normal :) and you're so normal too :) :) everyone is like us." and so long as no one asks any clarifying questions then it's all good.

bonus: the moms

i think both of them are using their moms as an excuse to hide the fact that they wanted their dads to love them. at least a bit.

it's a good thing jiang cheng doesn't exist in the golden kamuy universe, because if he ever met first lieutenant tsurumi it would be so joever for him

#mdzs #golden kamuy #jin guangyao #ogata #yanyan speaks #anyways the source for all of this is that i made it up.#i pulled it out of my ass #so feel free to roast me lol

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