#bias is the human condition

[kerosene-in-a-blender]

One thing about Orym saying that he can't put down the lens he sees the world with is that he's completely correct, he's always going to be viewing the moon plot and the conflict with the Ruby Vanguard from the perspective of "a guy whose husband and father were murdered by the Vanguard", but the same could be said about the rest of the party. They all have pre-existing experiences and attitudes that have shaped their perspective on things. Orym isn't uniquely biased in this sense.

The most obvious one is of course Imogen, as her long-absent mother is a Vanguard general. She heard Liliana's voice in her Ruidusborn nightmares telling her to run as long as she had those nightmares, and she came to associate that with her mother trying to protect her from whatever the red storm was. It resulted in Imogen giving a lot of grace to Liliana once she found out she was alive and with the Vanguard, a grace that more recent experiences are now making Imogen start to believe was misplaced, but a grace that was born over what she considered her mother's voice to be for years.

Fearne was raised in relative isolation in the Feywild by Nana Morri, and as result her approach to a lot of the events she's now embroiled in has an oddly naive slant to it. The whole would is new to her and she's approaching it like someone who is new to it; there's a lack of understanding of implications that she has that goes beyond her simply being fey. This is best seen in how she's grappling with the reveal that Sorrowlord Zathuda is her biological father. She's aware that Zathuda is terrible and that the circumstances that led up to her birth are dubious but there's also a large part of her that desires a connection with him as her parent and feels like they could have a relationship. She's naive to what exactly she is to him, and also influenced by having grown up longing for the parents that left her with Morri.

Ashton lost their parents and found themself blown halfway across the world after a cult ritual went wrong, and had a spectacularly shitty life that he often found himself begging the gods to fix without answer, and as a result he's very down on the idea of gods and even more down on the idea of letting a cult do whatever they want in order to achieve the perfect world that is just beyond reach by whatever means they must. Especially after the entire shard debacle in which Ashton learned that their parents were definitely wrong to do what they did and there were no good ends for the means that they engaged in he's fallen even harder onto the line of, as he said himself, "I hope her ends are fucking great because these means are just not forgivable."

Laudna's sole experience with anything resembling a higher power for much of her 50-odd-years of life has been Delilah Briarwood, the woman who had her horrifically murdered and is still rather explicitly using her as a means to some unknowable-to-Laudna end. This has both made her one of the members of Bells Hells most open to the idea of there being no gods (no more puppet masters) but also the most broadly sympathetic towards Liliana's view of the Ruidusborn (that they are creations of Predathos with no choice but to be slaves to his whims). Her ardent belief that her lift ended on the Sun Tree thirty years ago also means that she often refuses to advocate for herself or her own needs, resulting in moments where she openly wonders if it's Imogen's destiny to join the Vanguard, despite having herself been at one point brutally murdered by a Vanguard general.

FCG made it his mission in life to help people; that desire drove a lot of what he did up to and including his final act of sacrifice for the Hells. They saw the people struggling against the Vanguard and with the world that the Vanguard created and chose to do what they could to help them. Their desire to help even extended towards the gods, as one of the first things they asked of the Changbringer upon gaining the ability to cast Commune was, "Do you need help?". FCG was also a character driven by a desperate desire to find purpose and to understand the "why" of their own existence, a desire that ultimately drove them towards religion as a means of shaping the meaning of his life, and made him the most openly religious member of the group up to the moment of his death.

Chetney, while the most able to look beyond his own biases by virtue of being the oldest and most emotionally mature member of the party, still carries with him the perspective of having been someone who ultimately made little impact on the world up until, in his twilight years, random chance granted him the power to affect change. He gained lycanthrophy, he met other adventurers in the Hells, and got caught up in an end of the world plot and is finally making a true difference in the world. It's made him, arguably, the most enthusiastic adventurer in the party because he views that adventure itself as a gift, and as a way to create a legacy. The desire of legacy is also the reason he made the bargain that he did with Nana Morri; to secure a legacy as a famous toymaker that would persist after he is gone.

Orym's right that he's biased, but it's fallacious to assume that an unbiased perspective exists, because everyone in the story has their lens through which they view the world that they can't put down, not just Orym.

[r26yz]

new faction coming

[diodellet]

my ears aren't trained enough to spot em all (except the Obv ones) but these references and callbacks to prev sagas are making me ascend i want to shed my mortal coil and get mixed into the music like a beaten egg

[glubandeepspace]

that scene from The Last Unicorn where shes all brokenly like "i'm a unicorn. I'm a unicorn / I can feel this body dying all around me" really fits thematically with.. like.. all the main characters

[hadesoftheladies]

men and boys are increasingly anti-intellectual and this is primarily because of male supremacist culture. because men are the ultimate status quo, male supremacy can never be examined as an ideology. they are mentally coddled by privilege in every way. even in school they are not challenged to critique or question male supremacist bias. this reflects in their art, debate and writing. intellectualism encourages humanization of human issues. it requires introspection. ego makes introspection and reflection nearly impossible and society inflates the egos of boys from day 1. this is why most men can be professors or religious scholars and still remain so fucking obtuse about the basic mechanics of human evil in society. their analyses of social evil is infantile, simplistic and delusional. because they censor any damning data against the elite class of men. they will spout thought terminating cliches in order to shield themselves from the reality of male violence and how it flourishes directly due to male culture. so there is no reflection or self examination, no exposure to relevant data, which can only trap them in intellectual dishonesty and hypocrisy. anti-feminists are always anti-intellectual because they must take male supremacy, violence and privilege for granted. they then spend the rest of their lives wondering at the dissonance they never seem to quell and call it an unanswerable mystery of the human condition.

[gallusrostromegalus]

Have you talked about the agriculture and infrastructure of AEIWAM? Cause in the show we see the people of Seireitei eating, but they’re dead, so that’s a lot of dead people to be feeding. Plus you’ve established the mail service so public services are available in a way.

What’s the food situation look like? Do we have entire districts of people farming? Are there laws about it? Who can be bribed with a very specific food?

Autism Voice: How much are you prepared to learn about this topic? Because there's 5,236 words under the cut. Godspeed.

So in canon, souls don't "need" to eat, but do so out of habit, and also the rukongai is largely a feudalistic economy, which is not how habits OR feudalism work.

Not to drastically oversimplify enormous fields of history, political theory and socioeconomic, but if you were ever wondering WHY someone would tolerate living in a feudal system, the answer largely is "Because it beat the fuck out of the previous system, 'constant and devastating warfare'."

How feudalism gets started is easy:

There's a very large amount of people with no effective unified government for whatever reason (humans just moved into the area/an empire collapsed/a volcano blew up the general everything, etc.), and a limited amount of arable land, and therefore, a limited amount of food.

There's always a few assholes, and those assholes immediately try to establish dominance over the good turf with violence. This is the "constant warfare" phase of the agrarian government cycle.

In response, everyone bands together with their families and immediate neighbors to create defenses against The Marauding Assholes.

If one village is particularly defensible, or one marauder is particularly good at defense-breaking, people start to move in with whoever they think will do a better job of helping them stay fed. eventually these groups get big enough to need some kind of organization, and the organization tends to default to transactional loyalty.

I swear to god this is about the food situation.

The Transaction is thus: In exchange for taxes and you occasionally being called in for military Service, your Lord keeps the Marauding assholes away and does the obnoxiously complicated work of governance that helps farming but is too time-consuming for any farmer to actually do. Sounds like a good deal, right?

Smart people will recognize several glaring omissions and problems with that deal, but that's not important right now. After decades of "constant and devastating warfare", this is a relatively sane and fair deal.

This transactional loyalty continues up the political food chain: The leaders of several villages along a river need to coordinate efforts along that river or whatever, so they pick One Guy to be The Lord of the River Districts, typically the most popular guy in the clique.

...Or the one with the most heavily armed peasants.

In exchange for coordinating all the traffic/trade/environmental conditions along the river and ensuring peace between all the river districts, The River Lord also gets paid taxes and can call on all the River Lords to turn up with the heavily armed peasants should trouble come knocking.

Eventually, the River Lord makes an alliance with the neighboring Plains Lord and Mountain Lord and the Beach Lord up the coast because warfare suuuuuucks, and the most popular member of that clique is crowned emperor.

After a generation or two of relative stability, people have forgotten what the previous period of warfare was like, and develop the unconscious bias that it's Always Been Like This/the horror stories of your elders are just superstition. See: people who don't vaccinate their children because THEY never met anyone with Polio.

So they start pushing their luck.

Get funny with the ownership laws and realize they can make EVERYONE a renter and get away with being a shitass landlord.

Justify being a shitass landlord by coming up with things like "The Divine Right Of Kings"

Someone figures out that if you make everyone pay taxes in a grain crop, you can get away with EVEN MORE shitholery because you can force the peasants to use the bulk of their time and space to grow a crop that they have a limited ability to process and eat themselves, and grow their actual sustenance on the margins, so you can keep them in line with the constant but unspoken threat of starvation.

So if the Rukongai is running on a rice-based feudal system (which it is, because Kan is a rice-based currency and there are Noble houses and Lords and Daimyo in canon), souls MUST need to eat or the lords would have all been beheaded for being assholes who can't govern a while ago without the threat of starvation.

See? It IS about the food situation.

SIKE

I need to talk about law enforcement and postal services in the modern Soul Society now.

So the thing is: Until Ichigo and his friends show up and Cause A Ruckus, The Gotei-13 didn't actually have the authority to arrest anybody besides other Shinigami, people actively trying to Kill Shinigmai, and Hollows (theoretically) in AEIWAM.

See, after the initial period of "Various Lords make friends with each other for fun and profit", some Lords got really, REALLY good at getting other lords to sign up for their Multi Level marketing Schemes, and got stupid rich and also regular stupid doing it. Five of them specifically. These five super-popular guys were the Five noble lords, and their families that everyone pledged loyalty to became The Great Noble Houses: Shihouin, Kuchiki, Ise, and Shiba. AND DEFINITELY NOBODY ELSE.

The fact that all four of these houses were involved in a peculiar incident that imbued them with terrible spiritual power and some really kicass magical artifacts sure helped too.

Theoretically, any of these Four guys could become Emperor, but nobody was willing to bow to anyone else and it rapidly turned into the tensest five-way Mexican standoff, with a shitload of proxy wars between the minor noble houses that served the Great ones.

Great.

We're back to "constant, if somewhat less devastating warfare" AND we have to pay rice taxes.

...so some peasants invent anarchist communalism.

Not communism, they don't have control of the state, but they DO have Lords that are too busy doing poetry and snorting drugs to do their jobs... or catch them doing things that aren't in their lord's best interests.

So one village elder quietly whispers to another about "Hey, let's agree to trade grain and other supplies to each other at a discount and ah... not tell His Lordship about it. We'll have to send messages to each other in secret tho."

So Some Fucking Peasant becomes The Messages Guy, hoofing it all over the Rukongai delivering messages and facilitating an entirely lordless agrarian economy.

It's Kind of a Big Deal.

It's Kind of a Big Deal because peasants who can communicate are peasants who can ORGANIZE, and when word comes down from the scullery maids and underpaid clerks in the noble houses that the minor houses of X and Y are about to go to war at the behest of their masters THE MOST PECULIAR THING HAPPENS-

Holy shit. Terrible plague outbreak in the lands of Lord X. Hundreds dead. No way any village has anybody to spare for the war. What, you want to look? You want to catch this too? That's what happened to the last guy who came to look and look at him now! Crow food :(

Meanwhile, Lord Y and his two jackass sons have suddenly fallen ill. Must be that Plague from District X. Oh no! They died! Now the only Heir left is his daughter Lady X Who Was Doing All The Work Anyway. How unfortunate :(

;D

and that's not even getting into the network of secret granaries, flash livestock auctions, refugee migration routes and fun new alliances with people like Bandit Gang That Is An Entire Calvalry But Better.

It gets to be such a big deal, there are TONS of message guys, and they organize and demand to be paid properly for all this running and not getting caught by the nobs.

And the first postal service is born.

And shit, now that they're organized, why not formalize some of these grain stores and livestock trades and does the cavalry want to help delivering these messages? Or how about all the Village Elders who are experts in various things write down how all that stuff is done so it can be shared? Maybe they should all have a chance to meet up and share wisdom in person...

Shigekuni Yamamoto is all of eleven years old when he hears the village elder who runs the orphanage float the idea. Much, much later, he'll recall that THAT was when the Central 46 began.

Gradually, the lordless network of elder advice and tax-free farm economy grows, and begins to develop internal structures of it's own, and slowly grows to rival the Noble Houses in power, the decentralization of the network making it difficult for the noble houses to even recognize as a player, let alone attack.

Sure, lone messengers are often captured by the armies of the noble houses, but the messages they carry make little sense- the peasants use an entirely different alphabet- and the messengers will bite their tongues off and drown in their own blood before speaking.

But the shape of this secret fifth house remains a mystery for a long time until it becomes An Fucking Problem for food-related reasons. Specifically:

Ever Since the noble houses came back with weird magic powers and fucked up artifacts, there's been more and more and MORE people who have their own fucked up magical powers who live bizarrely long lives and also there are these really fucked up creatures with skull-like masks and holes in their chest that FUCKING EAT PEOPLE??

Fortunately, if you've got one of these magical freaks in your village, they're GREAT at dealing with the hole-monsters or "Hollows"

Unfortunately, these guys need a TON of food.

I read a statistical analysis from a medieval European scholar who worked out that in an agrarian economy, if you want to have ONE full-time warrior, you need to have about 1000 people to support that guy in terms of services needed and the labor lost from them being a fighter. ...And these magical warriors have the appetites of three or four people.

So anyone born with Spiritual power in Soul society is a bit up shit creek.

While everyone experiences the threat of starvation but for them, it's a matter of days, not weeks. While their home village would love to keep them, they straight-up may not be able to produce enough food, even if he's a magical farmer most of the year.

The nearest noble house definitely has enough food. But they also know from the Magical Dudes in their own families just how hungry these guys are, AND how powerful they are and how badly a rival house would want them. So the Noble houses often default straight to conscription, threats of violence against the warrior's home and family, indentured servitude and straight-up curses to control any spiritually powerful people who appear in their districts before a Rival house can make them a decent offer. Or kidnap them.

Basically, unless you're actually a member of the family, the noble houses SUCK to work for. Magical warriors are treated like weapons or animals or worse, are forced to marry into the family.

What are you going to do though? Starve? Not a lot of other options.

...until the secret postal service starts.

Postal Service has Food. And decent wages and working conditions baked right into the way its run.

Sure, it's not easy work, but the magical warriors are the fastest and strongest out there, AND the people most equipped to handle suddenly running into a Noble Guard or a hollow.

Once the word gets out, the magical warriors are practically hammering down the post office doors for a job.

Bit of a rowdy lot, these guys. The Council of Elders realizes. Also, very noticable to the noble houses. it's going to becaome real clear what's going on real fast, and we don't have an army. Yet...

Enter Postmaster-General Shigekuni Yamamoto, who has been running this for the last 500 years and already built a Dojo to train carriers how to defend themselves. He's even a pretty heavy hitter of a magical warrior himself! We'll have him run the army. It's basically the same thing, right?

Yamamoto is made aware of his promotion when the news is first released up north where the council is holding it's meeting this year, and an adolescent Chojiro Sasakibe decides that a good way to apply to the Dojo is to Personally Deliver the News Himself.

At 1 AM

In Sensei's Bedroom. "...Are you all like this, or are you a special pain in the ass?" the man with the extremely impressive mustache and frightening glare croaks at the lad. "My ability to inflict discomfort on various backsides has been noted before, Sir!" Sasakibe reports cheerfully. "...But I'm not sure who you mean by 'you all'?" "You and every other maniac with an ounce of Reiryoku who's apparently headed here at speed?" Yamamoto glowers at the letter he's been handed. Chojiro frowns, looking off to the side and rubbing his chin, giving the question entirely too much serious thought. "Well-" the boy grimaces. "I'd say that compared to the population at large, I'm a statistically significant pain in the ass, but compared to just people with spiritual power, I'm only a minor nuisance." Yamamoto groans, laying back down and staring at the ceiling for a bit. "How old are you, boy?" "Fourteen sir!" Chojiro chirps. "Princess-Who-Understands-The-Heavens, he's fucking fourteen." Yamamoto groans, rubbing his face. "Well. You're my pain in the ass now. Make yourself useful and get me some breakfast."

Sasakibe has been faithfully following that order for the last 1200 years :)

Soon, the Lordless Council of Elders has themselves a sizeable, very powerful and extremely loyal army. In an act of extreme magnanimity, they extend an offer to each of the Four Noble Houses to bring an end to the feuding and create a government and laws for noble and peasant alike to follow and prosper under.

Every Single Noble House: 🗡️⚔️🔪FUCK. YOU. 🔪⚔️🗡️

Well, this was going to happen sooner or later, Yamamoto supposes, and readies for The Final War To End All Wars.

He was so full of hope and promise back then.

The Four Noble houses and Postal Army prepare their initial salvos but before anyone could strike, AN ABSOLUTE SHITWACK OF ARROWS rain down from the sky.

Knock Knock It's The Quincies.

Everyone scrambles against the invaders, but refuses to ally and soon the last hope of Spirit World is pinned on The Postmaster-General, the couple dozen surviving warriors of his Dojo, and Twelve Fucking Maniacs he hired off Death Row.

To ABSOLUTELY EVERYONE'S VAST SURPRISE, Yamamoto is Victorious. Well. Him and some weird monk guy who turned Yhwach into a bug, gave Yamamoto A Mandate From heaven re: The Hollows and Balance of Souls, and Dipped.

The tattered remains of the noble houses finally Unite, but Shigekuni Genryusai Yamamoto has three names now and is like unto a God. and the twelve shady bastards backing him up are no slouches either. ...Perhaps it's time to Negotiate.

And negotiations happen! - The Noble houses bring their not-insubstantial forces to the table, along with the fact they're the only people who have a System FOR collecting taxes, something a government really does need. - The Council of Elders brings it's vast organizational network, expertise in many practical subjects and Lifetimes of Wisdom, only accurate maps of the immediate spirit world. - The newly-named Court Guard brings it's Much more substantial force, it's Mandate from on high, and Yamamoto's scary mustache and even scarier wife.

Things are actually going pretty well. Yamamoto and the army are getting the civil protections they wanted, the elders are getting the fairer means of governement they wanted and the Noble houses are getting to still be Rich As Cream.

...then someone sneaks in to negotiations. Well, they were actually brought in, as part of the entourage of one of the Elders, who takes her advice very seriously. After all, she's the oldest being the elder knows- even older than whatever it was that made the nobles so powerful in the first place.

"Listen, I've worked with these slippery shits before. Make damn sure they can't betray you." she growls. "I know, Yamamoto-sama has laid a very clever trap for them-" the elder nods. "No, I mean Yamamoto." She growls, yellow eye narrowing as she tracks him and his wife as they meander around the gardens below the negotiation hall. "Not him specifically, but it was a betrayal by someone like him- someone gifted the power of heaven- who cursed me to be as I am." "...Oh." says the elder, realizing that if Yamamoto could strike down that monster that lead the Quincies, he could very easily turn his blade on the council too.

...And that's when the first cracks in the bond between Yamamoto and The Council appeared.

So it was declared thus:

The actual governing would be done by the Council of Elders, now called the Central 46.

The Noble houses would still be allowed to retain their lands and collect SOME taxes in exchange for clearly defined and legally binding responsibilities.

The Gotei-13 would be responsible for matters supernatural- People with strange powers, the balance of souls between worlds, hollows, etc. funded and housed by the Central 46.

Additionally, the four of the captain's positions in the Gotei-13 would be reserved for the scions of The Great Noble Houses, unless it somehow came to pass that there were no Scions left.

The former armies of the Noble Houses would become the Onmitsukudo*, who would do the actual enforcing of the central 46's laws and collecting of taxes in the Rukongai, as well as independently collecting information for the central 46.

The Central 46 would also cultivate and independent force of spiritually powerful souls to use the art of Kido for Civil Projects and assisting the Omnitsukido or Gotei-13 when necessary.

It's Peace, but it's a Very Uneasy Peace.

As it stands, the Gotei-13 is *a* military branch, and a force to be reckoned with should they decide to throw their weight around, but they are entirely legally beholden to the Central 46 and not allowed to enforce the law. In fact, the Central 46 and Onmitsukido are allowed to arrest and detain any shinigami they see as a threat, without notice, explanation or Trial. The Central 46 could even decide to stop funding the Gotei-13 altogether and leave them to starve if they chose.

That's why Yamamoto is so strict about direct orders from the Central 46, and why Shinigami aren't allowed into the government quarter of the city.

Is this an excessive amount of world-building? maybe Is it actually making the writing process easier because I actually know what the broader chains of causality already are so the plot flows more naturally? YES. More importantly, am I having fun? VERY MUCH YES.

...What the fuck was this about again?

Oh, right. Food.

So as you can see from the previous fucking doctoral thesis, the food situation is

INTENSELY POLITICAL

AND

EXTREMELY FRAUGHT

...but actually pretty stable!

The vast majority of flat-enough-to-use land in the Rukongai is dedicated to farming. The land mass of the districts gets larger as you get farther from Seireitei, and districts 40-75 are almost ENTIRELY agrarian, with substantial amounts of farming occurring in 20-40 and above 75.

The Primary crop is still rice, but that's been receding since Soul Society finally switched to a Fiat Currency in the 1800s.

Also since about then, a greater variety of crops from the living world have appeared, including: Tomatoes, Potatoes, Crummock, Salsify, Cantaloupe, Avocado, Jicama, Sunroot, Marijuana, Strawberries, Corn, Broccolini, blue berries, boysenberries, Chicory, Cranberries, asparagus, black berries, raspberries, black raspberries, red blackberries, Okra, Coca, lingon berries, elder berries, Rhubarb, gooseberries, salmonberries, bearberries, and so many fucking squash.

New livestock has appeared as well- Soul Society has had an almost unlimited supply of beef from the Chihuahuan Desert cattle trade, but recently there have been new arrivals from the living world- wool sheep, Dairy cattle, Llamas, Mini pigs, Micro Pigs, Guinea Pigs, Fallow Deer, and those fucked up damascus goats.

There is also a bunch of crops native to Soul Society like Hummage, Black yams, ratweed, Pinnerey, Tomangoes, Craic, Duck radish, Sisei, and So Many Fucking Beans. There is also, like Nano Pigs, Pico Pigs, Mega Pigs and the terrifying Giga Pig (actually a type of Cavy). There are also Meat Horses, wool donkeys, and riding cattle, as well as Fertile mules.

Are there Laws About It?

Bruh.

The Soul Society Department of Agriculture was the FIRST formal regulatory agency formed by the Central 46. Even before the IRS.

Soul Society Agricultural and Land-Use Law is so Complex and Arcane that Kaname invents* an entire Rice Farm Subsidy Fraud Case for that takes Momo over a DECADE to investigate in various archives (Aizen is allergic to paper dust), travel to distant districts of the Rukongai (He also gets sick on trains and gates are for emergency use only), and talk to a hell of a lot of lawyers about (Aizen hates talking to anyone who really understands contract law) specifically to keep her physically away from Aizen as much as possible. It even works! *Sort of. The Rice Subsidy Fraud is Very Very real, but difficult to investigate, so he was leaving her subconscious clues in the crossword to point her to more evidence.

Who can be bribed with Very Specific Food?

As a side-effect of shinigami appetites, very nearly everyone to at least some degree. Most have hard limits about what they will accept any kind of compensation for, but everyone can be at least inclined to consider your proposal with the right snacks.

Ukitake loves cookies. He won't break laws or promises or forgo prior engagements, but he will make little exceptions that will make everyone happier.

It's more effective to bribe Rukia with plushies instead of food.

---

Mayuri wants whole-roasted fish, especially the heads and eyeballs. Technically, Mayuri has no limits, but you're going to need to present him with something exceptional.

Nemu can be persuaded to do some truly startling things for a nice dessert. She's done felonies for a fruit parfait before.

You can't Bribe Urahara with food, but you can bribe him with edibles ;)

Akon has a chart posted on his office door what various favors cost in money, labor, cigarettes, beer and/or pirated media.

---

Zaraki doesn't have a specific food he likes, but is constantly craving calories. He's also very willing to eat all your food and then tell you to go fuck yourself. The most effective strategy is to share food while asking for nothing a few times and then ask for whatever you needed his help with outside of a food context. For better or worse, he's extremely trainable.

You can't Bribe Yachiru with what she's already stolen out of your pockets.

Ikkaku is sort of offended when people fail to attempt to bribe him, and VERY offended if they try to lowball him. What, do you think he's cheap? Will show up anywhere with a buffet tho.

Attempting to Bribe Yumichika is a great way to end up owing Yumichika for the rest of your life. He never fails to make it to Sasakibe's High Teas/Gay Bitching sessions and often takes the snacks home.

---

People try to bribe Rangiku with alcohol all the time, which is really annoying. She is Perfectly Capable of acquiring her own booze thank you! Also, they keep offering her shit like Aged Whiskey which tastes how burnt hair smells. What she REALLY wants is Neon orange "Cheez" or "Nacho Blasted" snacks from the Living World. She craves that Riboflavin.

Hitsugaya lets everyone believe he's a slut for watermelon so they don't offer him the thing he'd actually have to fight to not accept: Jerky.

---

Tousen will not be 'bribed' into doing anything and will get extremely offended if you imply that he might consider it. He will, however, go to remarkably extreme lengths to get his hands on persimmons without paying for them. Not theft, that's very unethical, but he holds a bizarre principle about never paying for that fruit so that means exploiting agricultural, fair use, zoning and Tree laws to find or plant persimmon trees that are Perfectly Legal for him to pick from.

Kensei is similarly stony about the idea of being 'bribed', and worse still has an utterly flavorless protien-based diet. Mashiro knows he's got a pathological craving for Oreos and exploits it regularly.

Shuuhei will not be bribed but he will be VERY grateful if you go fill up his water bottle for him. Dweeb.

Mashiro will sell her own granny for a corn chip because she likes snacks, loves shenanigans, and knows her granny can kick a man in half and could use the excitement.

---

Everyone *knows* Shunsui is a drinker, but the trick is that he's savoring some really, REALLY good stuff very slowly. You can't afford the shelf he's drinking from. He thought he was immune to food-based Bribery until Nanao was out of town one week and the rank-and-file Shinigami she left to mind him introduced him to the grand tradition of the post-spree Dirty Great Fry-Up. It was like waking up in heaven to his hungover ass, and now he's the one attempting to bribe his minder into making it again every time he wants to go on a bender because he refuses to wake up from one any other way again.

Nanao did not believe the minder when she told Nanao of the great power of The Dirty Great Fry-Up, but now that Shunsui limits his sprees to the availability of breakfast the following morning, Nanao is trying to figure out what kind of raise it's going to take to keep the fry cook on staff.

---

Sajin Komamura is a deeply honorable man who doesn't even like eating lunch out with a visitor lest it be misconstrued and because he's still self-concious about eating in front of others. Last spring though, someone put up flyers for Game Share tags, and Komamura met with them in private to negotiate terms and ended up putting almost half a month's salary towards at least two does, one wild sow, as many marmots as they can bag (they can keep the pelts), and the offal/feet of the other animals they bag on other tickets. Half of the following month's salary went towards an adequate chest freezer. It's worth it though. His diet had been suffering from lack of variety and some of the vitamins and other nutrients from parts humans don't eat and by December his coat is LUXURIOUS.

Tetsuzaemon won't do anything illegal but will do some remarkably stupid shit for a beer.

---

You don't even SAY the word 'bribe' in the sixth division. Byakuya will remember you forever if you bring him an extremely specific brand of seaweed snack though.

Renji will eat anything handed to him, which is a problem because he almost broke a tooth on a stapler he thought was going to be a sandwich. He's unbribable because his brain won't process anything you say to him while he's eating.

---

People kept bringing Aizen Chocolate when he was captain and he HATED it. It's not that he dislikes the food: it's that his Dead Twin Brother was an absolutely peerless confectioner and made chocolate that could make the angels weep. Not only are Aizen's standards ridiculously high, the food is a genuine trauma trigger for him.

Shinji loves him some Black Thunder Chocolate bars but is so goddamn bad at conversations that he will not grok what the FUCK someone is talking about when they try to bribe him. He'll think they're a bad conversationalist with good taste in candy.

Some god thought they were being real funny when they made Momo be born with an aversion to peaches and a deep fondness for Sour and bitter Flavors. Shinji did manage to remember her joking about that and bought her a jar of pickled lemons for her birthday as a joke, and was genuinely surprised when she was moved to tears.

You have to Bribe Hiyori to even get her to listen to your proposal for the thing you're actually trying to bribe her for. For Better or Worse, she trades in novel potato chip flavors.

---

Attempting to bribe Unohana with food is an absolute crapshoot, because what she'll accept is a complex internal metric of how serious the favor is, how much she likes you, and how much she likes the proferred snack. You might be able to get a perscription for something that's normally a band substance for some Senbei, you might lose your nose for even bringning Okra into her hosptial. Best not play that particular roulette.

Isane is impossible to bribe because she just agrees to stuff before you can bring out the payment. Sure, you got your surgery moved or your hands in some pretty heavy drugs, but you'll walk away with the feeling that, since you didn't actually pay her for this, you actually OWE her now, and you'd be right. You'd better believe she'll call in that favor whenever she needs it, because you're *friends*, aren't you? It also never occurs to anyone to offer her her favorite food: Apples.

Hanataro has accidentally taken bribes multiple times because he did not realize people were attempting to pay him. He thinks it's just basic manners to show up at someone else's home or office with snacks and also people are wildly misinformed about what he's legally allowed to do. What? they wanted me to BREAK A LAW? FOR KIT-KATS?? The boy loves him some kit-kats but not to the point of committing a FELONY, what the fuck???

---

Izuru once walked in on Gin swallowing a rat whole, turned around and tried desperately to pretend he hadn't actually seen that for a year, until he REALLY fucked up his scheduling conflicts and needed an extra week of paid time off to go to a friend's wedding and in a fit of panic, attatched a deceased rat suitable for serpentine consumption he purchased from a pet store. Gin was more than happy to give him the time off and hey, a little hazard pay so you can get something nice for the happy couple Unfortunately, this also condemned Izuru to having Gin lean out of his office at least every other month and holler "Hey Izuru? What's our Rat Guy's phone number?" loud enough to be heard by the entire Division.

Rose can be bribed with anything from a patisserie.

---

People keep givng Soi Fon honey which is honestly starting to feel like a microaggression at this point. What she REALLLY wants is a bucket of fried chicken.

You can't Bribe Omaeda with food, he's the one feeding YOU. Sit down and stop yapping, you're skin and bones!

---

Yamamoto does not accept bribes, at all, ever. He does accept all forms of SUPER MEGA SPICY FLAMING DEATH-REINCARNATION-AND-SECOND-FLAMING-DEATH TURBOFIRE HOT hot sauce.

Sasakibe has been assisitant headmaster of Shin'o academy since it was founded before the fall of Rome. no matter how delicious your offer or how clever your scheme, an adolescent dork already made a better version of it like 700 years ago. Pathetic. What Sasakibe REALLY wants is to be able serve high tea to an adoring crowd. Hope you like cucumber sandwiches.

Okay this is like 5.2K and it's 3AM I'm gonna end this and go to bed.

[foone]

I want a human zoology textbook.

Zoology, as in the study of animals. Like, a study of how humans work, done by an author that is not human.

I specifically want this for a couple reasons:

1. Descriptive, not prescriptive: don't tell me what the author thinks humans should do or how they should be. Tell me what they do. Observationally!

2. No bias towards "nature". I don't particularly care what the author is imagining humans are like in some "garden of eden" unfallen state. I want it to reference how humans ARE.

3. No morality applied to this! What do humans DO, not what you think they should do, or how they should be. And most importantly, no self-censorship in order to avoid offending some of the humans that disagree with ways people live.

And the reason I want this is because of how biology textbooks/wiki pages get written, where even if they try to be progressive they're still written from this weird perspective where they're explaining based on old ideas and the progressive stuff gets a footnote.

Like it'll be "humans have two genders, male and female. This is determined from their chromosomes, XY for male and xx for female."

And then you scroll past two pages for men and another two pages for women, and then it has one subsection that covers non-binary people and intersex people. And it's like: well then integrate that into your main statement!

It's like the author's worldview is still "there's two genders and everyone is born as one" but they've been forced to accept there are some weird exceptions but the core worldview is unchanged. And it's understandable! Wrong, but understandable: the grew up in a world that is quite strong on the "there are only two genders" ideology and doesn't like to remember that intersex people exist.

But like, imagine if you tried to do this as a zoologist. You're like "hey, all bees are female!" and then someone points out the rare male drones and they're like "oh okay I'll update my zoology textbook."

And now it reads:

All bees are female. Most are workers, and one is the queen.

(a couple sections go pass)

Drones: recent science has discovered that some bees are born male. These rare exceptions live short lives where they fertilize a queen and then die.

And it's like, no? Drones are very important to how a hive lives and they can't survive without them?

And we're constantly doing the same thing to humans and it's just bad science. Like, sure, maybe you could have the theory that "humans come in two genders: male and female" but as soon as you see one non-binary person, you have to discard that theory: it has been proven false! It's like not believing in other galaxies after Henrietta Swan Leavitt figured out how Cepheid Variables worked.

Add to that the "nature" thing. Like, you can make a sort of argument about nature vs artificial settings for a lot of species: the whole alpha/beta wolf thing came about because it turns out wolves act differently in captivity compared to the wild, so it makes sense to study how the vast majority of wolves live, not a small group you stuffed into a small area with unusual conditions. It's like saying the lifespan of goldfish is under 5 minutes, based on your study of them in this dry box you put them in.

But humans are different: we are tool-users who build new environments for ourselves. And while you can talk about how humans living in different environments act differently, it doesn't make a lot of sense to call one of them "artificial". All of them are made by us, and humans always do this. This means all environments are natural (because building environments for ourselves is what we naturally do) and all environments are artificial: we always alter our environments to better suit us! That's one of the things we naturally do!

And as for morality, it's about not ignoring things humans do regularly because you think it's weird or you think they shouldn't.

Like that tweet where someone pointed out that lots of species can change gender. Clown fish are a big one, some frogs, a couple birds, some lizards, and humans.

And people often have an immediate knee-jerk reaction of "that doesn't count!" for the last entity in that list. Why? Because we do it (usually) with clothes and makeup and medication, instead of just "naturally"? Bullshit. We're naturally TOOL USERS. Of course we use tools to change gender. We use tools to do EVERYTHING. That's natural for us.

So yeah. I think it'd be refreshing and enlightening to have a zoology textbook written about humans with this detached non-human perspective. An unbiased description of what humans are and do, rather than one irrevocably tinged with ideas of what humans should be and should do.

Basically I want to load up Vulcan Wikipedia and check the "Humans" article.

[valeofpoppy]

Idk, I like the ghoul character designs in Fallout 3 & New Vegas a lot better than the ones in Fallout 4 and after. They used to look a lot more off-putting. They had peeling skin... they had faces melted out of proportion... they looked sorta asymmetrical... I liked how most of them were cross-eyed too. They had unique appearances that ranged from terrifying to goofy. Each face was a unique abstraction; a ghost of the character's former appearance. It made it really difficult to imagine what they looked like before they were disfigured (Moira could be an exception, but even then I couldn't recognize her after becoming a ghoul!) and it made it really easy to forget that they were still human. People in the wasteland having an implicit bias against them based on their appearance felt believable BECAUSE of how they looked! I could really empathize with these characters having angst toward their condition and toward being treated like they've been afflicted by something that makes them less human.

After Fallout 4 they ironically looked smoother and more... aestheticized. Proportionately, it's as if the bones, muscles and fat beneath their skin remained the same and only the surface was left... scarred? They are much more approachable than the other ghouls in comparison. Hell, they are even able to show facial expressions. To me, they feel more like regular people wearing latex masks. Were they made to be more... romanceable? I see how one could raise that they were modeled to fit the proportions of regular human characters so they could share facial animations, but I feel like that's irrelevant when it comes to texturing and topology. Even if the deformations looked weird, it could've added an uncanniness or uniqueness to their appearance (because the only thing that made them visually distinguishable was their costuming, hence why Hancock and Zao were memorable to me).

Fallout 4's ghouls don't feel as imaginative as 3's or New Vegas because I feel like their appearances are sort of based on a more general consensus on what "ghouls" are supposed to look according to Hollywood. All prior Fallout games were more aesthetically challenging to me, and that made the experience all the better because the ghouls looking a lot more "flawed" made them feel more human to me.

[starreyblueberry]

Tbh I just rlly miss Timmy cause he was a kid who wasn’t a genius, who wasn’t this role model that was fated by some prophecy, that he was a miserable kid, who wasn’t this extremely mature kid but just had a bit more self awareness. Like, don’t get me wrong this ain’t a diss on any other cartoon who had these out of the world kids, their amazing ! But the show had a huge anchor that Timmy had it worse then other kids. While it was made for laughs, it was also semi acknowledged. It’s hard to see “bad” parenting in kids shows usually, especially older ones. it’s almost always redeemed or excused, which to be fair that was the case with fairy odd parents, (except for the new show which I’m so happy that they show both healthy but has problems parenting and actual shit parenting) but there was always some line or base that Timmy’s parents were indeed neglectful, and that Timmy was just a kid. That he didn’t deserve what he was going though, and that Wanda and Cosmo were indeed an escape.

He was not some secret choosen dude who was destined to save the world (ignoring the one special) he was just a kid who had shitty conditions and thus lashed out. He was just a kid who tried to make his life better. I feel like a lot of kids when they were younger related to that, to the control Timmy turner wants over his life and he constantly tries to get, Ya know LOL. And I feel like sometimes- when you constantly see these almost super human teenagers who the gods themselves have chosen to have this adventurous life with their friends and family, Timmy almost felt like this grounded “anyone who’s depressed can have this.” Look not every kid was a gifted kid or had an extremely tragic backstory. A lot of kids are like Timmy, just an average kid with shitty parents. It doesn’t make him this great, talented, person though and tbh I love him for that! I love that at the end of the day he was still a kid tryna make the world better, and that yea he was selfish sometimes but whenever people had a problem, he’d unwish it away. I love Hazel hell I even have opinions on Chole, but the reason Timmy is my favorite (besides the obvious generational/Nostalgia fueled bias) is cause he shows what a average kid is like, one who deals with shitty parents and has a hard time on school. But he still stands up :]

[transmutationisms]

from a non-academic, i find parts of comphet to be useful (heterosexuality becomes compulsory when you’re raised in a heterosexual society) but the foundations . suck. what do we do with theories like this, that have touched on a truth but also carry a lot of garbage? can we separate the truth from the founder?

i have to be slightly pedantic and say that i don't think rich's essay is an example of this phenomenon. my central issue with her formulation is its bioessentialist assumptions about human sex and therefore also sexuality. if i say "capitalism includes economic mechanisms that enforce heterosexual behaviour and exclude other possibilities", then what i mean by "heterosexual" is plainly not the same as what rich means—and for this reason i would seldom formulate the statement this way, without clarifying that i am talking about the enforcement of heterosexuality as a part of the creation and defence of sex/gender categories themselves. so rich and i do not actually agree on the very fundamental premises of this paper! rich was not the first or only person to point out that economic mechanisms as well as resultant social norms enforce heterosexual pairings; i actually don't even think the essay does a very clear job of interrogating the relationship between labour, economy, and the creation of sex/gender; she means something different and essentialist to what i mean by sex and sexuality; and i think her proposed responses to the phenomenon she identifies as 'compulsory heterosexuality' are uninteresting because they mainly propose psychological answers to a problem arising from conditions of political economy. so, in regards to this specific paper, i am actually totally comfortable just saying that it's not a useful formulation, and i don't feel a need to rescue elements of it.

in general, i do know what you're talking about, and i think there's a false dichotomy here: as though we must either discard an idea entirely if it has elements we dislike, or we accept it on the condition that we can plausibly claim these elements and their author are irrelevant. these are not comprehensive options. instead, i would posit that every theory, hypothesis, or idea is laden with context, including values held and assumptions made by their progenitors. the point is not to find a mythical 'objective' truth unburdened by human bias or mistakes; this is impossible. instead, i think we need to take seriously the elements of an idea that we object to. why are they there? what sorts of assumptions or arguments motivate them, and are those actually separable from whatever we like in the idea? if so, can we be clear about which aspects of the theory are still useful or applicable, and where it is that the objectionable elements arise? and if we can identify these points, then what might we propose instead? this is all much more useful, imo, than either waiting for a perfect morally unimpeachable theory or trying to 'accept' a theory without grappling with its origins (political, social, intellectual).

a recent example that you might find interesting as a kind of case study is j lorand matory's book the fetish revisited, which argues that the 'fetish' concept in freud's and marx's work drew from their respective understandings of afro-atlantic gods. in other words, when marx said capitalists "fetishise" commodities or freud spoke about sexual "fetishism", they were each claiming that viewing an object as agentive, meaning-laden in itself (ie, devoid of the context of human meaning-making as a social and political activity) was comparable to 'primitive' and delusory religious practices.

matory's point here isn't that we should reject marx's entire contribution to political economy because he was racist, nor is it that we can somehow accept parts of what marx said by just excising any racist bits. rather, matory asks us to grapple seriously with the role that marx's anthropologically inflected racism plays in his ideas, and what limitations it imposes on them. why is it that marx could identify the commodity as being discursively abstracted and 'fetishised', but did not apply this understanding to other ideas and objects in a consistent way? and how is his understanding of this process of 'fetishisation' shaped by his beliefs about afro-atlantic peoples, and their 'intelligence' or civilisational achievements in comparison to northwestern europeans'? by this critique matory is able to nuance the fetish concept, and to argue that marx's formulation of it was both reductive and inconsistently applied (analogously to how freud viewed only some sexuality as 'fetishistic'). it is true in some sense that capital and the commodity are reified and abstracted in a manner comparable to the creation of a metaphysical entity, but what we get from matory is both a better, more nuanced understanding of this process of meaning-making (incl. a challenge to the racist idea of afro-atlantic gods as simply a result of inferior intelligence or cultural development), and the critical point that if this is fetishism, then we must understand a lot more human discourse and activity as hinging on fetishisation.

the answer of what we do with the shitty or poorly formulated parts of a theory won't always be the same, obviously; this is a dialogue we probably need to have (and then have again) every time we evaluate an idea or theory. but i hope this gives you some jumping-off points to consider, and an idea of what it might look like to grapple with ideas as things inherently shaped by people—and our biases and assumptions and failings—without assuming that means we can or should just discard them any time those failings show through. the point is not to waste time trying to find something objective, but to understand the subjective in its context and with its strengths and limitations, and then to decide from there what use we can or should make of it.

[reasonsforhope]

I can't take the state of the world anymore, every day things constantly get worse and there's literally nothing we can do. Every time things get better they're immediately undone by forces more powerful than us. I just want things to go back to the way they were before when it felt like there was hope, now it feels like humanity is doomed and will never, ever get better. I just want to die so I can finally know peace from this evil.

Hey. I'm really, really sorry you're having such a hard time. That sounds like an incredibly painful headspace to be in.

Please find someone you can talk to and who can help you - whether that's a peer counselor or a good friend or a trained mental health professional. Especially a trained mental health professional, if you can. You can find a really thorough list of crisis hotlines listed by country here.

Also, I realllllly recommend getting off any websites or social media that are contributing to you feeling like this, or at least block all the people/tags posting things that are making you feel like this. Negativity bias is real - the news/internet doesn't accurately reflect the world and neither does the way your brain perceives it

In the meantime, a few quick words/facts of comfort. I hope they can give you at least some reassurance or solace.

We literally have more reason to hope we can solve climate change than ever before x

Starting about six months ago, major international energy reports have come out for the first time showing that we have a visible, concrete path to staying under 1.5 degrees celsius x

Twenty, even ten years ago, scientists talked about whether we could possibly manage to limit global warming to 4 or 5 degrees Celsius. Now, those numbers aren't even on the map - we're talking 1.5 or 2 degrees Celsius. We've cut expected warming in half in under a decade x

Renewable energy is growing so exponentially it's now "unstoppable" x

Two hundred years ago, in 1800, there wasn't a single "liberal democracy" - a democracy that gives all citizens the right to vote - on the planet. Just over one hundred years ago, in 1900, there were five of them. Today, roughly half the countries (aka roughly 100) on the planet fall into this category. International politics is so often two steps forward, one step back, but this is actually an astonishing pace of progress in the grand scheme of things x

For all of human history, until just over 200 years ago, roughly half of all children died. Across times, across cultures. Half of all children died by the age of 15. Half of them. Today, globally, that same child mortality rate is only 4%. We did that. We changed what was previously an eternal, inescapable, and horrific condition of human existence, and we are going to keep making that rate go down x

Two steps forward, one step back, is still moving forward. There are so, so, so many reasons that we are not already doomed. There are so many reasons to think the future is going to be bright

To anyone struggling with thoughts like this: please, please give yourself the chance to see it

[messiahzzz]

the IGN article has already been addressed by several users, but imo the points of critique raised by others were still often misinterpreted, or ignored entirely.

— so i’d like to talk about it.

beforehand, it is important to mention that it remains everyone’s respective responsibility to curate their own online experience. you shouldn’t purposefully expose yourself to topics that cause you distress or trigger you. however, general discussion should always be valid and welcomed. you have every right to voice your opinion on the matter and to be upset about this. please don’t feel guilty about venting and expressing your emotional response.

we also need to differentiate this specific interview from the fandom’s overall treatment and interpretation of gale. several of the posts i’ve seen on the subject tend to derail into the latter, without addressing the valid points many have raised or glossing over them entirely. this isn’t about the usual “haha gale eats shoes” joke or whatever new meme fandom comes up with. this is solely about the developer’s treatment of gale, the character, and about a specific, internal bias that has been prevalent throughout the entirety of the game, as well as their social media. this particular interview merely adding to the amalgamation of points mentioned.

yes, it is certainly unrealistic to expect larian to address every single companion in detail and to touch on every nuance possible, in an interview that broadly focuses on the game’s narrative and gameplay. there are, however, specific character sections. each companion received a headline that was reflective of their overall character archetype or provided quick insight into their development.

Karlach: 'The Labrador of the Party'

Lae'zel: 'She's So Young'

Halsin: 'A Creative Risk'

Shadowheart: 'The Jason Bourne'

Wyll: 'We Lost a Little Bit of Narrative Room'

Astarion: 'Much of What He Does Is Out of Fear'

Minthara: 'It's Not a Redemption Arc...But She's Got a Lot of Love'

and last but not least:

Gale: 'The Guy Who Starts Off Annoying Everyone'

what followed was a brief discussion about their respective storylines, each being addressed with a certain level of respect, empathy, and consideration. except for gale. all that was mentioned in regard to his character was the narrative impact of gale’s suicide. talking about the overall logistics of this ending, the visuals of the cutscene, and how, to them, his sacrifice felt like the right ending and how in many ways, it is.

Chrystal Ding, Lead Writer: On a very human level, you have the guy who starts off annoying everyone, he's constantly asking you to give him your most treasured possessions to eat, otherwise he's in trouble, and at the end, he gives himself for the world. Sven Vincke, Founder: And he had the choice already once before where he wasn't ready for it. So it's a very powerful ending, and it comes in different permutations.

gale is the character who is initially annoying companions and players alike. he is verbose, enthusiastic and has a tendency to break out in long-winded rants. he repeatedly asks for your assistance, to help him manage his condition. to spare himself and his surroundings from an untimely, explosive death, he must consume items that you’ve carefully collected. gale is, essentially, a liability. a ticking time bomb. he already had the option to have his life be a meaningful sacrifice, but he wasn’t ready to die yet. now, that the party has reached the end, he has another chance to give himself up for the world.

short after, gale’s section of the interview quickly diverts into a more general discussion about the difficulties of playing as a wizard and other classes.

larian claiming that there is a universal “right ending” in a game with many branching paths and choices very much contradicts the definition of a role-playing game. where it is solely in the player’s hands to decide what direction to take and what outcome they deem to be the right one. moreover, it is important to remember that the interviewees weren’t just any developers, but consisted of two lead writers and larian’s founder himself. some of them industry veterans who are, to an extent, pr-trained. we all know that fandom often sees statements from developers synonymous with word of god. as such, the implications and impact are truly unfortunate.

if larian was referring the SA survivor and stated that “the right ending” for him was to return him to enslavement or to hand him over to the gur. that for all the death and misery he (involuntarily) assisted, his sacrifice would at least grand them a slither of justice.

astarion caused death, perpetuated racism, and now that you have handed him over to the gur hunter, he is offered a chance to give himself back to the world.

it is then deemed the right choice for him because it is the most narratively satisfying/impactful/powerful outcome in the context of the overall story. the majority of us would agree that such would be a rather tactless statement, no? not specifically for mentioning it in relation to astarion as a character or his influence on the narrative — he is fictional, after all, but because of the real-life implications and the very real stigma the affected face. we can't deny that it would be hurtful to irl victims. maybe we would even fault the writing altogether for such biases. after all, why should astarion be the only character whose redemption and healing are considered to be significantly less important in the grand scheme of things?

fiction functions as an abstraction and simulation of our social experience. we are supposed to get invested, to explore the meaning, examine the parallels, or maybe just to enjoy stories for the sole purpose of indulging in the occasional escapism. perhaps a way to temporarily forget about one’s limitations and the prejudices we face. in many ways, chronic pain/impairment, suicidal ideation, and autistic traits appear to be disorders & symptoms that are perhaps less relatable to some, and that they are maybe not as sympathetic to.

it truly would’ve been nice to see larian approach this interview with more professionalism. opting for a simple, diplomatic “actually, there is no right ending. the sheer variation in choices makes such a distinction impossible” would’ve more than sufficed.

this isn’t asking for larian to touch on every nuance possible, in an interview that largely resembled the flow of a regular conversation. it’s about asking for the same level of consideration and care that was granted to the rest of the companions. it’s about addressing gale’s particular brand of trauma with the same level of basic human decency. maybe we even could’ve received some new bits and pieces of insight on gale’s development, rather than the regurgitation of every shallow reddit/tiktok take we’ve seen up to this point. alas..

[miachangedblogs]

TWST Become Human

Warning!!! This contains: Spoilers for Detroit Become Human + twisted wonderland. Later on would have NSFW, fem reader, noncon/dubcon etc!!

Heartslabyul

Riddle Rosehearts

Status: Human

As the only child of the two most astound doctors of Twisted Wonderland, it’s no wonder his parents are so protective over him. Raised to know more than five languages, always the top of his class and even managing to remember all 810 of the Queen of Hearts rule by the age of 10, he’s sure to to become something great. Imagine the surprise and horror of everyone when he got in an freak accident and was almost pronounced dead on the spot?? It’s a miracle he survived such a horrible fate. Ever since the incident, the Rosehearts family became very private, even more than before. They invested in multiple androids to guard Riddle as they made sure not even a scratch were to adorn his features. But.. it’s so strange…

But why can’t he remember what happened before the accident?

ੈ✩‧₊˚༺☆༻*ੈ✩‧₊˚

Trey Clover

Status: Human

One of Riddle’s only friends in this world and the only friend his parents allow Riddle to have; The Clover family is known worldwide for their delectable pastries and equally sweet hospitality to anyone and anything, even androids. Everyone is welcome in the Clover bakery! Trey’s big brother like personality makes him so hard to hate! And so hard to notice his weirdly observant and weirdly… obsessive nature? There’s no way someone as humble and kind as him could be someone so malicious. But as the taste of poison is hidden by the sugary batter, his ‘flaws’ are quickly overlooked. If not, his unique magic can always help him out.

ੈ✩‧₊˚༺☆༻*ੈ✩‧₊˚

Cater Diamond

Status: Android

Bought as a playmate for Riddle, Cater immediately Fails as he’s deemed “obnoxious” and “rude” by Riddle. Trey seems to hold sympathy for him though, the two becoming quite close as a human and an android without emotions could get. Though, even as an android, Cater’s programming makes him seem so real. Perhaps the expressive and seemingly real emotions creeped Riddle off.

Some speculate he’s a deviant, but no need to worry! Cay-Kun is soooo harmless! Just ask his siste- wait what? Sisters? Since when did he have those?? You must be hearing things. Come on, hold still and give a big smile to the camera, yeah?

ੈ✩‧₊˚༺☆༻*ੈ✩‧₊˚

Ace Trappola

Status: Human

No one knows how or why Ace managed to snag a job at the Rosehearts estate. His rebellious nature and constant rule breaking always ends up with him collared by the Riddle, and yet he’s never fired. His favorite pastime by far would have to be screwing up Deuce’s work, sabotaging his coworkers hard work to put himself above him. Deuce is just too gullible, there’s no way people would actually choose him over the clear winner of the Ace Trappola! His eyes filled with clear distain and disgust whenever Cater calls the two “besties”, even making a nickname for the two, “adeuce”. Gross. Don’t fucking group him with that idiot. He’s clearly way better. Don’t you think?

ੈ✩‧₊˚༺☆༻*ੈ✩‧₊˚

Deuce Spade

Status: Human

Wanting to be a police officer when he grows up, Deuce eagerly jumped at the opportunity to work within the walls of the Rosehearts Manor. After all, it would look great on his resume. He always seemed to have a clear distain for androids. Perhaps it’s his mind already conditioning him to be prepared to fight against deviants when he ultimately joins the forces. Even with this clear bias, he remains respectful towards any androids that reside amongst the manor. Although not the sharpest tool in the shed, he tries his very best!

ੈ✩‧₊˚༺☆༻*ੈ✩‧₊˚

Savanaclaw

Leona Kingscholar

Status: Beastmen

Being the second born prince of the Afterglow Savannah, Leona was constantly watched by eyes from all around the world, yet never truly basking in the spotlight. Even within the shadows his every move was constantly criticized. He would be forgotten if not for the constant ‘tantrums’ he used to throw. Refusing to go to his lessons, family dinners, important meetings and so on. One day, it all stopped. No one knows how or why until Leona emerged after months with a scar adorning his left eye. Rather than sympathy, his people cheered at the seemingly calm Prince. How cruel. He should be feeling enraged, betrayed at his own people’s lack of empathy, but right now he’s just so tired. He doesn’t know why but he just doesn’t have the energy to feel anymore.

ੈ✩‧₊˚༺☆༻*ੈ✩‧₊˚

Ruggie Bucchi

Status: Android

A lowly hyena android who’s desperation led to him snatching the scorned Prince’s wallet. Of course he was caught immediately, his fate to be destroyed publicly for his audacious actions. Leona however, had different plans for him. To put it simply, he was amused. Perhaps it was his audacity that let the Prince show mercy, or maybe it was the droplets of blue smudged all over Ruggie hands. Either way, Ruggie managed to secure the role as Leona’s informant amongst the villagers of the Afterglow Savannah as well as his personal servant. At least it pays well I suppose.

ੈ✩‧₊˚༺☆༻*ੈ✩‧₊˚

Jack howl

Status: Beastmen

He cannot stand injustice towards anything, especially the ones androids face in the hands of humans. The deviants at first creeped him out but he learned to respect them to a degree. He wouldn’t necessarily go out of his way to help them escape to Canada, nor would he befriend them, after all they were deviants. Who knows if they’re the violent type? He will however protect them if he saw some kids throwing rocks at it or adults being unreasonably physical with them.

ੈ✩‧₊˚༺☆༻*ੈ✩‧₊˚

Octavinelle

Azul Ashengrotto

Status: Human

The heir of his mother’s multi million restaurant business housing many android servers, Azul Ashengrotto isn’t a stranger nor is opposed to androids. His two “bodyguards” (and regrettably best friends) are androids after all. Besides, androids are very profitable! He also runs a benevolent business where he can grant any of your wildest dreams and wishes. Want to be thinner? Or perhaps after the heart of a young woman? Indeed he’ll be able to help! Just sign your name riighhhht here. Oh, and make sure you do abide by the contract. People who don’t have a tendency to… disappear. We certainly wouldn’t want that, would we?

ੈ✩‧₊˚༺☆༻*ੈ✩‧₊˚

The leech twins

Status: Android

After the grief of none of their eggs surviving, Mr. And Mrs. Leech desperately contacted every android company for a custom Androids that would resemble what would be their children. After years of prototypes and programming, one unnamed company managed to come up with two twins for the new parents.

Unfortunately, the robotic nature of their ‘children’ were not enough for the two, leading to some tweaking in their code.

The Leech family announced their twins as mermen to the public, hiding the true nature of their children. The only ones who know are the Ashengrotto family who swore to secrecy to keep their mouth shut about the whole situation. It is common knowledge in the sea that those who oppose the Leech family meet a gruesome fate. It’s not like they have a choice really.

ੈ✩‧₊˚༺☆༻*ੈ✩‧₊˚

Scarabia

Kalim Al-Asim

Status: Human

As the eldest son of the Asim family, the heir of all the wealth, Kalim has been spoiled rotten since birth. It’s no wonder his perception of money and people are distorted. The public views him as spoiled, entitled, overly bubbly and dumb. He may be naive, yes, but he’s not dumb.

ੈ✩‧₊˚༺☆༻*ੈ✩‧₊˚

Jamil Viper

Status: Human

A servant of Kalim Al-Asim from birth to his destined death. Kalim’s “best friend”, “playmate”, “right hand man”, “advisor”. He’s heard it all. He could only grit his teeth and smile politely. As always, Jamil was tasked to taste test Kalim’s food, only to find himself at death door. He watched in anguish and rage at the amount of people swarming the young heir instead of him. The one about to die.

After the hospitalization, Jamil has become more quiet. More alert. At first his parents grew concerned, though Kalim’s father kept trying to reassure that nothings wrong. Overtime Jamil learned to put on a mask for his parents to ease their concern. It’s nothing new to him anyways.

Sometimes he wishes it was Kalim instead…

ੈ✩‧₊˚༺☆༻*ੈ✩‧₊˚

Pomfiore

Rook Hunt

Status: Human

Rook Hunt is most popular for being Vil’s unofficial manager and best friend. One of the most loyal people in Vil’s life allowed Rook to be able to house every single secret of Vil. Paparazzi have tried numerous times to get him to fess up, even offering him millions. Rook would always just smile with his fox-like grin and brushed them off with a swift change of topic. It is also to be known that Rook is known to have a “morbid” curiosity regarding anything that isn’t human. His curiosity doesn’t have any bad intentions, no underlining malice whatsoever. He just sees beauty in everything. It’s more fascination than anything. This does cause him to come off as creepy and overly eccentric, his mere presence causing unease to those around him.

ੈ✩‧₊˚༺☆༻*ੈ✩‧₊˚

Epel felmier

Status: Human

A country boy who came to the big city for education but more so excitement. His small town, Harveston was known to be one of the only places that didn’t house androids. It wasn’t a matter of the people despising androids, Harveston was just a traditional town. A small town that barely even used modern day farming equipment. They simply just wanted to keep tradition. You could imagine his surprise when he saw just how realistic and smart androids were. He doesn’t have an opinion on them, not yet. All he cares about is working hard for the blast-cycle he’s so desperate to buy.

ੈ✩‧₊˚༺☆༻*ੈ✩‧₊˚

Ignihyde

Idia shroud

Status: half human, half android: Cyborg

An unnamed incident had caused the death of Ortho Shroud and severe injuries to Idia Shroud. Idia’s parents could only save the eldest via trading off his damaged human parts with android scraps, successfully producing the first recorded cyborg Twisted Wonderland has ever known. He’s still human, just some of his limbs and bone structure being held up by metal. As soon as he recovered he began working day and night to make a replica of his deceased brother. His grief made him spiral into a deep denial as even though he was the one to build Ortho, he fully believed he was the same old Ortho from back then. He began insisting that everyone treat Ortho as human, snapping at anyone who dares to call his little brother an “android Assistant”. Can’t you all see he’s alive?? How audacious.

ੈ✩‧₊˚༺☆༻*ੈ✩‧₊˚

Ortho Shroud

Status: Android

A bright young boy who cares deeply for his brother. Much is unknown.

ੈ✩‧₊˚༺☆༻*ੈ✩‧₊˚

Diasomnia

Lilia Vanrouge

Status: Fae

An Ex general and now the right hand man to the prince of Briar Valley, Malleus Draconia. Not much is known about this Fae, not much is known about anyone from Briar Valley in general. People do say he’s incredibly friendly, much more approachable than the Prince. Even with his bubbly exterior, people tend to be on edge in his presence. Perhaps it’s the sharp fangs, the hint of mischief in his eye, or maybe it’s the knowledge of his past as the most feared general. Nowadays multiple rumours circulate him such as him being a rockstar, a vampire, even an android. How amusing. Perhaps all are true, perhaps none. Who knows, really?

ੈ✩‧₊˚༺☆༻*ੈ✩‧₊˚

Sebek Zigvolt

Status: Android

Loud and boisterous, an overly protective and aggressive android brought in by Lilia to be Malleus’s body guard. He has a clear disdain towards deviants and humans, constantly belittling both. I’m his mind, the hierarchy seems to be Fae first, then android, then everyone else. You can be sure that he will never become a deviant with his strict nature. Although Sebek does seem to be alarmed at the threat of becoming a deviant. He can’t help but feel scared… Scared? No, that’s not right. Androids can’t feel... Can they?

*. ੈ✩‧₊˚༺☆༻*ੈ✩‧₊˚

Warning!!! This contains: perv Idia, noncon thoughts, masturbation, gross Idia, fem reader.

You just can’t believe your luck.

You’ve rubbed your eyes again to make sure it was functioning correctly, re reading the huge words “accepted” printed dark blue on the letter.

“Welcome to STYX mechanic number 0962! How’s your day been?” An android radiating with enthusiasm greeted you immediately, hovering towards you. A little peeved at your label you couldn’t help but frown just a bit. Behind him stood a tall, pale man; you could only assume it was Idia Shroud, the heir of STYX. You tried to push down your panic and unease, every ounce of confidence immediately evaporating. Ortho ushered you inside the huge building, talking endlessly about his brother, STYX, your role in STYX and just how happy he is to meet you.

Ortho is a clear deviant. That much is very clear when you first met him. Though nice and friendly, you ought to keep your guard up. You make a mental note; be cautious around Ortho.

“-re you listing Ms. 0962?” Ortho stops in his tracks as he tilts your head towards you.

“Hm? Oh yeah, sorry Ortho.” He giggled as he continued to hover around.

“You’re so silly Ms. 0962. I can see you and my brother becoming great friends!” You could only awkwardly smile and nod as you continued your walk with him, not noticing the constant glances from Idia directed right at you.

It’s been a month since your employment in STYX. You’ve tried making attempts to socialise with coworkers but they always give you such short answers, talking to you only when it’s absolutely necessary. It didn’t help that your boss was such a pain. Always giving you short responses, constantly glaring at you as if your very existence threatened him in some way. At least the pays good and your boss’s android assistant keeps you good company? You don’t even know anymore.

You were working on some papers when the door to your office opened.

It was your boss.

Mentally groaning, you got up to bow and gave him a nervous smile.

“Hello Mr. Shroud. What can I do for you?” Idia only glared at you as he swiftly turned around, beckoning you to follow him. Hastily you put down your belongings to catch up, jogging towards him.

“You’ll work on an “important client”. Try not to mess up.” Your boss went on about what it is and what is expected but all you could focus on was the speck of blue staining his jaw. You reached into your pocket and pulled out your handkerchief with a smile.

“You got some thirium on you Mr. Shroud. Here, lemme wipe it o-” just as you were about to wipe it off with your handkerchief, Idia snatched the cloth out of your hand.

“I’ll do it myself later.” Sneering, he puts it in his back pocket and continues to walk you to your office. You shrink at the cold attitude, awkwardly playing with the hem of your shirt.

Idia suddenly stopped in his tracks as he got his key card out to open a room filled with thirium bags and thousands of tools you never even knew nor heard of before. Walking inside you notice a huge box of what you assume to be the container of the android. Your boss rudely shoves a crumpled paper in your hands.

“The code to the box.” He explains as he swiftly heads out of the room, not even sparing you a second glance.

“G-goodbye Mr. Shroud!” You bow one last time as the door closes in front of you without a response. Sighing at the lack of response, you stare at the crumpled up paper and back at the box containing your new project.

Idia panted heavily as his hands pumped his dick desperately, chasing after his release. The other hand pressed the handkerchief into his nose.

God you were cute.

To be completely honest, hiring you was an honest mistake, a product of his carelessness and lack of sleep finally catching up to him. Your resume wasn’t anything noteworthy, if anything, you were severely under qualified for this job. Alas idia was too tired to notice his mistake when he accidentally pressed hire on his computer. He wanted nothing more than to smash his keyboard just thinking about the scolding he’d get from his parents.

Truly a blessing in disguise.

With a shaky moan Idia came all over his desk, gasping for air as he stayed slumped on his seat. After a few minutes Idia sat upright, groaning as he shoved the handkerchief into his pocket for future use. Grabbing handfuls of tissue he lazily cleaned himself up, mind hazy still thinking of you.

He wonders if you’d like pomegranates.

*. ੈ✩‧₊˚༺☆༻*ੈ✩‧₊˚

I love the idea of android twst and wanted to put my two cents on it! Shout out to the lovely @cvlutos for the amazing concept and fleshing out go check them out lovelies! Currently unfinished so sorry! To be honest I probably won’t make new parts for this but we’ll see. If you have any thoughts, requests or questions please send them my way!!

That’s all for today!! Tune in for more sweethearts!

Bitter dreams<33

[quitealotofsodapop]

Imagine if the Trial in Century Egg was recorded, because they're in the modern day and while the Celestial Realm is very traditional I can imagine them taking advantage of some human technology and recording devices just make it easier so that their hands don't cramp as much and there isn't as much bias.

So somewhere there's a video recording of Wukong defending Macaque vehemently and then suddenly freezing as he realizes his baby is coming and he's in active labor, and everyone consequently freaking the hell out

Oh gosh, even if only recorded with magic or electronically by more modernized celestials, the recording of the "Trial of Sun Wukong vs Hell" would become viral across the Realms fast.

The celestial stenographer, someone who decided to add visual recordings to the trials a few centuries ago, is the one to capture the whole thing on film.

The most popular cut of the recording goes as follows;

Sun Wukong is furiously defending his mate against the celestial prosecution, his stomach startlingly round. The Six Eared Macaque, handcuffed by the Lotus Prince, is looking at the king with a mix of shock and adoration. Figures that look eerily like the historical Pilgrims sit in the stands. Sun Wukong suddenly pauses and looks down at his legs with a mix of confusion and embarrassment. Both the Bodhisattva Guanyin and the Queen Mother seemingly teleport to his side, lifting the pregnant monkey onto a cloud-stretcher as the reality of his current condition becomes clear. The entire court erupts into chaos as Guanyin declares that the King's baby is ready to arrive right that very moment! Both monkey demons shouting "WHAT!?" as the king is carried away. Prince Nezha, without much convincing, assists the Macaque in following his mate's path. The recording cuts just as the Jade Emperor himself seemingly slumps back in his throne at the realisation.

The recording itself wins over many demons and celestials that had been sceptical of Wukong's motivations. And hearing that the very same child he had hoarded immortality for was born mere minutes after the clip ended, makes a few feel a little guilty for doubting him.

[misscammiedawn]

Gender, Dissociation and Clinical Stigma - The Third Person

Before I begin I just want to note that typically Media, Myself and I entries are aimed at depictions of dissociative disorders in popular fiction. Today's entry is a graphic novel memoir by a transgender woman with dissociative identity disorder. As it's both not in the public zeitgeist and good representation by virtue of being lived experience of someone who struggled within the mental healthcare system I want to recommend people buy the book (or check it out of their local library). I fully support the artist and want to prop up something good and beautiful.

With that said, let's begin...

CW: therapy abuse

With all the recent hysteria in the US and UK media over transgender healthcare it can be easy to forget the hurdles we all have to climb to receive care. Though Informed Consent is becoming more of a standard practice these days the DSM-5 Criteria for Gender Dysphoria indicates a 6 month requirement for observation before HRT can be prescribed. Many of us needed to jump the hoops of living 6-12 months "in the gender role that is congruent with their gender identity" before we were allowed to begin our gender journey in earnest.

Of course. This requires a clinician (or two for surgical options) to observe this, monitor it and sign off on it. But therapists are humans and are full of prejudice, bias and their own beliefs. They aren't guaranteed to think it is medically necessary or positive for a person seeking gender affirming care to receive it.

So where does DID fit into this picture?

A study, published in 2015, states clearly that 30% of transgender individuals met the criteria for a dissociative disorder.

Yet even still, The World Professional Association for Transgender Health (WPATH), the gold standard for transgender care included this warning in their Standards of Care up until September 2022.

(source)

Fortunately that passage is no longer included in WPATH guidelines as of the 8th revision released in 2022. I shall say the above passage did grant a scare for us, though, as it was very much the practice when we were going for our surgery.

Standards of Care improve and medical understandings of both gender and dissociative care are becoming kinder towards clients.

Even still. There's always that fear. That months of therapy could be wasted on a clinician who was never going to sign off on HRT and was never going to believe our lived experience as a system.

We wouldn't have gotten nearly half as far as we have gotten without our therapist helping us identify our condition, manage our symptoms and develop cooperation and communication.

It's terrifying to think what life would be like if our symptoms not only went unmanaged, but we were made to feel fake and attention seeking by the very person we paid to take care of us...

-

With that intro in mind, The Third Person by Emma Grove is a memoir told in graphic novel format over 920 pages covering the period of life where she began therapy in hopes of receiving feminizing HRT not realizing she had an undiagnosed case of dissociative identity disorder.

When one opens the book they will see an Author's Note declaring that every word in the book is as accurate as Emma's memory will allow and any edits are to streamline the story, not to tailor anything to match the author's point of view and there is a dedication:

"For Katina - We finally did one together"

The story proper begins in media res Winter 2004, as Emma asks her therapist if he would like to hear about the book she was reading and the therapist responds asking why the client decided to speak with him "as Emma" today. Emma, confused, does not understand the question and is probed about her parts, about Ed and Katina and about her childhood. That last word being enough to cause Emma to freeze up, dissociate and...

This simple intro gives us all the context a reader needs to understand the antagonistic dynamic between Toby, the therapist, and his patient(s). Both client and patient are unable to understand the other and harbor suspicions about the other's intentions.

Without the context we only know Emma had a book, she no longer has a book and she suspects her therapist of being a mean person who is playing tricks on her.

We will get context later.

The first chapter of the book provides an introduction to the author's late teens and early 20s where they explore their gender identity and have their first experiences with their masked dissociative disorder.

The book goes to lengths to show the stress of the author dividing themselves between having to present male in their public life and sneaking out to bars where they can wear make-up, wigs and outfits to present female.

They take on their legal name, Ed, during their public life and when going out to clubs take the name Katina, from the first bar they visited presenting femme. The name Emma comes later when the system is working to transition into living as a woman in all aspects of their shared life.

The book patiently explores the stress of having to divide ones own self for their safety in spaces where they cannot present their truth without threat from an intolerant society. If 30% of transgender people suffer from dissociative disorders then a much higher number of them know the stress of having to compartmentalize themselves into different presentations for different audiences.

For us, we know that pain all too well. Our birth identity remains with us as a member of our own system. Less a ghost of our past and more a remnant of a mask we constructed to perform the version of self required for our safety.

The artwork does a good job of displaying switches and co-consciousness with subtle expression work, the hair style/wigs that each alter favors. For example we have the left displaying co-consciousness and a switch.

As the years go on, Katina finds ways to go out to the club and exist in her comfort and Ed labors hard to ensure that they can live for the times they get to "become" themselves.

Katina is established to be a fierce personality who will get aggressive when people push against her. She loves to dance and sing and party at the club. She is both a free spirit without inhibition and a fierce protector who will keep the system safe.

I recall feeling a deep fondness and connection towards Katina when we first read the book.

Once the narrative has firmly established the history that lead to the system seeking HRT we are brought into the meat of the book. A white void with a sofa and an armchair. The therapist's office where Katina, Emma and Ed speak with Toby.

Toby is a trans man that Katina believes to be an ally who will sign off on their HRT once the prerequisite 3 month waiting period is over. Unfortunately over the course of those months Toby becomes aware of Emma and Katina's switches and is convinced that it would be unethical for him to sign off on HRT when it is possible that there may be another 'guy part' in there who will 'wake up' one day and decide that he did not want to transition.

To his credit, once Toby suspects a dissociative disorder he does offer Emma a referral to a specialist. They do not take it as they just want to be signed off for HRT and have no interest in exploring their situation beyond transitioning. So they stick with Toby, convinced that another transgender individual will support them.

Toby, however, sticks to his guns and refuses to agree until they manage the DID.

In the opening, sampled above, Emma switches out at the mere mention of her childhood. Here we find that Katina will front any time Emma is made to think about her past and she refuses to allow Toby to force her to think about it or discuss it. She goes as far as to demand Toby promise not to push which, again, Toby refuses.

During this conflict both sides have exaggerated gestures of frustration, many exclamation points and underlined words. This is not a healthy dialogue at all. Toby is refusing to find middle ground or guide the therapy towards its intended destination. He denies all Katina's attempts to negotiate around the need to talk about her childhood (something she is convinced at this point has nothing to do with her stated goal of HRT) and continuously pushes that she needs to talk about it, without elaborating as to why.

Toby, untrained in dissociative disorders, is focused on getting her to open up about her childhood trauma. Katina, uninterested in exploring trauma, wants to be signed off for HRT. Neither side is willing to budge.

This isn't therapy. This is an argument.

Recently I wrote a Tumblr post about the "Hair Dryer Incident"

The Hair Dryer Incident is a story about a patient with OCD whose life was being massively disrupted by the fear that they had left their hair dryer plugged in at home and it would burn their house down. The clinician advised them to take the hair dryer to work with them every day so that they could see the hair dryer with them and not have to drive home to ensure it was safely unplugged.

There was debate in medical circles about whether this was "enabling" because it did nothing to treat the illness, only managed the life disrupting symptom of needing to drive home to check that the dryer was not plugged in.

For Toby in this scenario he believes that allowing Emma to transition would be "enabling" the sickness that he perceives, that being dissociative identity disorder. He has brought his own baggage into the office and only views Emma and Katina as parts of Ed. No amount of Emma and Katina self-advocating in his eyes will change his mind because they are not "real" in his view.

Of course, he is not fully sold on Emma's condition being real either. There is a sequence in which Emma is left alone in the room and she, having a fascination with books, checks out Toby's bookshelf. This causes Toby to become suspicious and decide that Emma has been reading the medical textbooks on dissociative disorders in order to fake an illness and trick him.

This is not a healthy therapeutic alliance and Toby is breaking all 3 key pillars of establishing a strong patient/client partnership.

Much of modern therapy techniques are based on the concept of Therapeutic Alliance. The history of which dates back to Sigmund Freud and the concept of transference but was refined and redefined by Carl Rogers in the modern Patient Centered Therapy (sometimes referred to as Rogerian Therapy).

With that in mind let's examine the 3 key elements of successful PCT(*) and how Toby failed.

Lead with a Patient Centered Approach This means to check all baggage at the door. Cultural biases have no room inside the clinic (during the book Toby openly mocks Emma's faith in God) and that the patient's priorities are the ones that should be focused on. Both client and clinician should be on the same page of what treatment is being sought, what goals are and how they will be achieved. Toby and Emma (or Katina and Ed) never establish this agreement during their time together. Katina/Emma/Ed are firm in their desire to transition and Toby is firm on his refusal to allow this until the DID is addressed.

Set clear goals with a treatment plan. A good treatment plan will have dates, targets and regular review and reward honesty for both/all parties involved in the alliance. Toby is telling Emma and Katina that they need to open up about their childhood but does not explain how this will benefit or what their goals are. Simply "it's good to talk about it" with no direction or assurances.

Regularly review satisfaction with the therapeutic process, relationship, and treatment plan. This element states that it is important that the clinician be upfront with any potential misdiagnosis and discuss any skepticism in the process and lead from a position of patient satisfaction. I do not need to highlight how Toby failed to lead from a position of patient satisfaction here.

Clearly Toby has a personal concept of what the correct approach is and is holding Emma/Katina's gender affirming care hostage until they can satisfy his unspoken objectives. Correctly applied PCT should be a discussion of mutual agreement and achievable goals worked over a period of time. Toby is not applying these principals at all. His modality simply seems to be "talk about it." I'll be an ethical writer who discloses their biases and say I despise PCT/Rogerian therapy. It is, however, the leading modality within western therapy and it is well researched. Not to mention it is the modality Toby appears to be utilizing in the book. I firmly disagree with Freud on all things (except the concept of infant experiences have lifelong ramifications. A broken clock is right twice a day) and disagree with Rogers on the idea that the client has all of the answers and needs to get out of their own way. An issue with this is that DID is a covert disorder and it will do everything it can to stay hidden. PCT does not offer an environment where patients will be able to navigate their condition as unless they are aware of their symptoms, how and when they manifest and are open to discussing those facts they will naturally steer away from circumstances that would lead to a diagnosis. Most people, including myself, have to exist in the mental healthcare system for 5-12 years before being correctly diagnosed with DID(*) and will experience a number of incorrect diagnoses before finding appropriate care. For us it was 9 years and 7 diagnoses. So. Toby's directive is that the system needs to get to the root of the condition and neither Katina nor Emma are willing to open up about their childhood. Katina continues sticking to her guns and refuses but Emma, desperate to start her medical transition, agrees to open up and the two form a shaky alliance where week by week the pair go back and forth between alliance and conflict. In time Emma describes her childhood being raised by her grandfather who was physically abusive towards her. All too quickly Katina's fears are justified by Toby's combative approach to patient care. One session Emma demands to know why she cannot work on her DID while she transitions and Toby states firmly that she is "not transsexual" which triggers Emma to dissociate into a black void that no one can reach her within. She wanted to be seen and regarded as a woman and a trans man told her flat out that he cannot and does not see her as such. Going back to the hair dryer incident as a reference for a moment. Ed is a member of the system and does show up for therapy on some days. At a point Katina, fed up with being denied treatment, makes a plan to quit their job and start a new life living as a woman 24/7. Ed creates a safety net to prevent this from ruining their collective life and continues to work in the meanwhile. Ed's role in the system has been ground down to working and working alone. He spends his days keeping so busy that he cannot dwell, a panel having the thought bubble "I can't slow down! If I slow down I have to think!" which is depressingly relatable to how we were in the worst years of repressing our gender identity. If Ed is unhappy living as a closeted man who has to occupy himself 24/7 to stop from caving in on himself, if Emma and Katina are both completely stunted by their inability to transition; is it ethical to allow them to transition and to work on their condition while allowing them the freedom to live openly as their chosen gender and prevent a circumstance that is harming the entire system? Toby seems to think it is enabling.

30% of the transgender individuals in the study above were observed to meet the criteria for a dissociative disorder. Living a life where one must mask has severe detrimental impacts on a person's psychology. This is true not just for transgender individuals but for those with autism (*) and other individuals on the LGBT spectrum (*) where the cognitive dissonance between who a person values themselves to be versus how they must present to the world causes the mind to dissociate further and allow contrary thinking to exist in individual pockets of a person's life as well as creates an alienation of the self. Healing under these circumstances requires accepting and embracing oneself, not creating a further divide.

After Toby "caught" Emma looking at the bookshelf he became convinced that she was faking her condition. That she had been plucking symptoms from a book and performing them for him. That she fit the criteria "too well"

Emma rightfully demands to know why she would complicate her receiving HRT by doing something that prevents her being able to. The pair bicker and Toby cuts off the session abruptly.

in the heat of the moment, assuming that Emma was an attention seeker who does not deserve care, Toby declares "Your grandfather was right to hit you."

Even Emma later admits later that therapy should have ended with Toby right there and then. Hindsight is 20/20, as they say. Alas, a mixture of finances and sunk cost keep Emma returning to the chair week after week.

Being trans and having DID are terrifying. In order to receive care and treatment we must insist to a world that what is happening in our hearts and minds is true in spite of all that the world outside tells us is true. We need to not only reach that conclusion within our own lives but must express that truth loud enough that the people around us see it, regard it and accept it.

As so many things in this world are, it's so hard to earn and so easily burned.

"You're faking it for attention" is such an easy sentence to fling at someone and in a therapeutic setting all things should lead to curiosity. Even if a person were faking, it's not normal and healthy behavior for someone to do that. Toby is displaying a complete lack of curiosity and compassion. He is framing himself as the victim in a potential deception from someone who is paying what little money they can put together to receive his care.

I hate Toby.

As the story continues, Emma and her system begrudgingly continue, flitting back and forth between a healthy and unhealthy dynamic with their therapist that shares a lot of similarities to abuse honeymoons. It is worth noting that as the book is a memior it will inevitably be painted with the author's personal view of past events because, as discussed in the Umineko article on recontextualized memories, a human mind cannot avoid applying present understandings to past experiences when recalling memory. This is seen in the book when we see things that Emma cannot possibly have witnessed, such as Toby's facial expression after she leaves the office.

This is not to throw shade at how Emma depicts her former therapist, as he was quite horrid to all 3 of them and quite obviously did more harm than good during their time together. I just wish to note that skewed perspectives are an inevitability. Even still. They do make some progress in talking about the situations. We come to learn of the system origins and how Katina was a friend to the young and lonely child they used to be and that their abusive childhood was centered around physical abuse from their grandfather. While discussing this Emma notes that she could make Katina go away forever with a single phrase. A few short words that she can never ever say and mean or Katina would go away and never come back... and I think that's where I'll stop with the synopsis. I (specifically me, Dawn) broke down in tears the first time I read the book and I have no will to put myself through that again at this exact moment and I wish for you all to have the catharsis of experiencing it for yourself.

I will say in way of positivity that the story is quick to make its conclusions in the final chapters by displaying therapy done right and the fact that even if parts can no longer be heard or even felt, they will always endure in moments where they can add a little color to the world.

They got to write this book together, after all.

For all the sadness this memoir elicits it speaks an honest and hard truth of the desperation, isolation and confusion that can be found in managing sentiments of identity and gender in a time when there was so little understanding and acceptance, particularly for transgender people.

We are lucky these days to have the internet as it is where we can create community and find our people and in finding our people have a better understanding of who we are and how we can live our truths. Visibility of transgender and plural populations has been increasing in part due to the fact we are able to feel unalone and forge community.

2004 did not have those luxuries and I am saddened that Emma Grove had to live through that stigma and lost so much time to unethical and prejudice care from a clinician.

I do hope that in the future we can continue accepting and encouraging one another and living lives where we are not forced to hide, mask or pretend.

-

For other Media, Myself and I articles, please check out the following:

[neocitybooty]

Say Yes. [M]

Genre: ABO, SMUT, ROMANCE, READER X MEMBER

Warning: Unprotected sex, SMUT, oral, dirty talk, profanity, some horror (?)

Summary: You are offered a choice that would change your life as you know it. 

Word count: 5.2k 

Currently playing: Lips- NCT 127 

A/N: Jaemin brainrot has led me here.  Can you believe??!? He is working so hard to climb higher on my bias list and it's working!! fhjdgjkdshgkja Please enjoy and interact. I will now retreat and continue working on my ongoing stories. 

“He’s been staring for the past 20 minutes. What a creep.”

“They always get like this around this time of year. God, I hate this so much.”

“This is supposed to be our busiest day. I won’t make rent if we get our hours cut again”

“Customers keep leaving. We are about to be in some deep shit. It will be a dog’s fault, once again. I like them better when their muzzles are shut. Fucking mongrels.”

“Shhh, he can hear us!”

You stared back at the very obvious Alpha seated in the booth near the entrance of your family’s restaurant.

He finally stood and started to walk to you. He was incredibly handsome. He couldn't be older than 25. He stood at about 5’10 with silver hair. He wore the widest smile you’d ever seen on any male. Human or werewolf.  You took a step back, flashbacks of what an Alpha’s fangs could do….started to play in your head.

“Hello.” He said. His voice was nothing like what you were expecting. And his eyes.... They lit up once he noticed that he had all of your attention, the wide smile never leaving his face.

“I didn’t mean to scare you or your coworkers.” He looked past you, to the concerned women behind you with worried expressions on their faces. “I come in peace.” He looked back at you and raised both arms.

You shook your head and took another step back.

“Please leave.” You said in a quiet voice and nodded towards the door. “You’ve scared all of the customers away.”

His smile drained from his face but he made no attempt to leave. He frowned and stepped closer. You, along with the rest of the staff, gasped in unison.

He chose to ignore them and kept his focus on you. “I can pay everyone for the week.” Your eyes widen. “But only on one condition..”

The smile returned as his eyes turned a fiery red. “You come with me.”

“Do not go with him!” Your younger brother said from behind the counter.  Nobody dared to come any closer but your brother was always the bravest out of the bunch.

The young alpha looked at your younger brother and tilted his head.

“There’s no need to worry. I promise to bring her back. Alive.” He said as his gaze shifted back to you, his jaw now clenching. You couldn’t see any other reason for that other than him gradually losing patience.

“You guys. It’s okay. I’ll go.” You said as the Alpha put his hands in his pockets and flashed a smile at you.

“Payday is this Friday.” You told him in a low voice.

“Just give me the bank information and I’ll have one of the Betas take care of it.” He said with a smirk. “Now. I think it’s time for us to leave. Don’t you agree?” He nodded towards the door.

You nodded in response and walked around to the back to grab your things. You came back to the front and left the front door keys on the counter.

“Please close up and go home. I will be fine.” You said as you walked to the door where the Alpha held the door open for you. He watched your every move and bit his lip as you passed him and went into the bright, spring day. He followed you outside and let the door close behind him as the chimes collided into each other.

You turned around to look at him, but said nothing.

“Yes?” He asked with a raised eyebrow.

“Who are you and what do you want with me?” You asked him.

He stared at you and began to laugh.

You looked at him with a look of confusion. Did he think you were joking?

“I don’t know if you know this, but you’re supposed to get the guy’s name before you leave with him.”

You wanted to slap that ridiculous smile off his face. Of course he found humor in your panicked choices. Alphas never have to worry about their safety. The perks of being at the top of the food chain. You had six employees that would’ve ended up dead in an instant had you made one wrong choice. Finding out the Alpha’s name was last on your list of priorities.

“I am sorry but there were more important things for me to worry about…” You said as you folded your arms.

The Alpha reached out and gently unfolded your arms with both hands. Your jaw dropped as he placed both arms at your sides. He let his hands linger on your wrists before fully letting go..

“You really shouldn’t do that. It makes you look very unwelcoming.” He then said, his eyebrows meeting together in the middle of his forehead, paired with a crease. “My name…My name is Jaemin.”

He then slightly nudged you to the brick wall to your right as a sudden influx of people started making their way onto the sidewalk. The daily lunch rush.

“Okay, Jaemin. I’m assuming you already know my name.” You started.

“Yes, I do.” Jaemin responded. He was towering over you and simply observing your features but you felt as if the air was being pushed out of your lungs.

“O-Okay, so what do you want from me..” You finally got out. You had a very strong feeling deep in your gut about what he was possibly after. Coming to a human infested city when he could be enjoying his time with his pack somewhere deep in the woods..

Jaemin didn’t respond. Instead he grabbed your hand and led you to his car. You scoffed underneath your breath as he opened the passenger door to the very expensive sports car. But you got in and waited quietly as Jaemin entered through the driver’s side and started the car.

You said nothing for the entire drive and Jaemin allowed it. You watched in the rearview as the skyscrapers became smaller by the minute. You could pinpoint the exact spot in which the land turned into werewolves territory. The trees were healthy, the houses were huge, and the roads were lonely. You said nothing as Jaemin pulled into the driveway of the biggest mansion you’d ever seen. Made of…wood.

Jaemin stopped the car and the two of you looked at each other in silence. He smiled as he unbuckled your seatbelt. You then opened your door and he exited the vehicle, as well. You shut the door just as Jaemin appeared by your side. He grabbed your hand and led you to the front door. He opened it without unlocking it and brought you inside. You gasped and quickly put a hand over your mouth.

There were so many of them. Were they all Alphas? No way. They all looked at you as soon as the door opened but said nothing. There had to have been at least twenty of them. You involuntarily squeezed Jaemin’s hand, out of fear.

“Easy. Your heart is going to stop beating at this rate.” Jaemin pressed his ear as he spoke to you.

“A human?” A voice said from your left side. You quickly turned to see a very tall male walking towards you. “This is what we have been smelling?”

The look on his face was complete bewilderment. He ran fingers through his hair and chuckled to himself. “Do you know how much danger you’d be in, if it were any other Alpha that got to you first?

“Alright, Johnny. That’s enough.” Jaemin motioned for the taller male to cool it down. “I haven’t told her anything.”

Johnny mouthed “O” and stepped away slowly. The others in the house made no attempt to speak with you. Instead they returned to their previous conversations. Jaemin shook his head as he brought you to a spacious and beautifully decorated room. He closed the french doors and looked back to face you.

“Spill.” You said without missing a beat.  

“I chose you as my mate.” He looked at you with a straight face.

“Come again?” You asked him, unsure of what you’ve just heard.

“You heard me right the first time. I really don’t like repeating myself.” Jaemin replied with an eyeroll.

“And how exactly are we supposed to mate?” You asked him.

“Oh….. I don’t actually know. Maybe you can tell me how babies are made.” He shot you a mocking smirk with a raised eyebrow.

You nodded as a subtle smile formed. Just for a brief second, you’d forgotten Jaemin was an Alpha, but he reminded you quickly.

“I see..” You turned your back to Jaemin and walked towards the regal bed in the middle of the room and sat down at the edge. “What does this mean for me?”

“It means you are receiving an opportunity that many humans can only dream of.” Jaemin slowly walked over to you, his boot heels thumping against the wooden floor.

You watched Jaemin as he slowly made his way to you. He was calm and alluring, but above all, he was a mystery.

“Do I even have a choice here?” You asked Jaemin as he sat next to you.

He bit his lip and tilted his head but you could still see the smile form on the side of his face. He truly had never experienced a single worry.

“Oh humans…” Jaemin began. “Of course you have a choice. I can’t mate you without your consent. But I know you will choose me. You see….There are some factors that are in my favor.”

“Oh?” You could feel yourself falling deeper as he continued to talk. There was something about the way he enunciated his words and the tone he used to speak to you. It was much different than when he spoke to the Johnny character downstairs.

“Tell me. How much success have you actually had with human males? Can’t be too much, because I know you haven’t been touched in months. Your scent is all female. Not a single trace of male.” He stopped and sighed deeply. “I would never neglect you. I would never leave you. And I would make sure you never lacked anything you truly wanted. Now….does that sound so bad?”

You gulped at his words and he finally looked over to face you.

“You should also understand something about how we Alphas operate. Usually….among werewolves…The Alpha picks up the scent of an Omega and that Omega eventually becomes his mate. But things are a bit different with humans. If one Alpha has picked up on your scent, well that means so have many others…”

“Excuse me?!” You blurt out. “What do you mean by that?”

“It means exactly what I said. It was only going to be a matter of time before you found yourself with quite the werewolf problem.” Jaemin laid on the bed with an elbow propped to keep him on his side.

“So basically it’s you or whatever the fuck is out there looking for me right now.” You said, beginning to bite your nails.

“Hey.” Jaemin shook his head and pulled your hand away from your mouth. “There is no need for the nerves. Let’s just be grateful that it was me that found you.”

“I am never going back to my family, huh?” You ask quietly.

“Being an Alpha’s mate isn’t a prison sentence. My goodness.” Jaemin rolled his eyes. “You’ll be able to see your family as much as you please.”

“Oh.” You said, a bit embarrassed. Maybe you’d read one too many books about Alphas.

“I am getting really tired of being patient with you.” Jaemin muttered underneath his breath.

“Excuse me?!” You responded to his sass, unsure how anyone else dealt with him.

Jaemin said nothing but instead, began to lightly stroke your arm. His fingers were hot. They weren’t that hot when he touched you a few minutes prior. His eyes were focused on your skin and you could see him bite his lips in admiration.

“Jaemin?!” You said as he started to trail kisses up your arm.

“So pretty…” He finally reached your neck and began to suck as he pulled you closer to him by your waist.

You froze as you felt your panties become soaked. Jaemin hiked your skirt up over your hips and let it bunch on your waist before lifting you up and placing you on top of him.

“I need to be inside you.” He half groaned. “I need it.”

He then grabbed the back of your neck and kissed you deeply. Tongues fought for dominance as you began to leak through your panties. A deep growl grumbled in Jaemin’s chest once the scent reached his nose. He finally broke the kiss and looked at you with lust crazed eyes.

Jaemin was now breathing heavily. His hold only grew tighter around you as he started thrusting up.

“You’re so wet. I can feel it on my thigh.” He said reaching into your shirt. “You’re just as much of a cock slut as Omegas, aren’t you?” He said into your ear as he massaged a nipple between two fingers.

“Oh my…” You breathed as you felt a hard bulge at your core.

Jaemin kissed your neck and hummed. You felt him smile as he inhaled your scent once more. “Gonna fuck you so deep.” He started to rip your blouse open, the buttons flying in every direction.

You squealed as he shoved his entire face into your cleavage.

“God, you feel so fucking good.” Jaemin’s eyes fluttered and closed as he took a bud into his mouth and started to suck on it gently. You moaned softly and finally gained enough courage to touch him.

Sharp ridges could be felt underneath the silk button up he wore. You let your hands roam to the smooth skin on his collarbones and to his chest until you reached to the point where his shirt held together with three buttons.

You hesitated for a second but started to undo his shirt. Jaemin noticed and let the nipple slip out of his mouth with an obscene slurp. He looked up at you with red eyes again and gave a toothy grin.

“You’ve been nothing but skeptical since the moment we’ve met but now look at you.” He let you continue to undress him and pulled his arms out of the sleeves once you were finished unbuttoning his shirt.

“My Alpha is calling out to you. He’s very excited. Gonna fuck you until you’re begging me to mate you.” Jaemin rubbed your thigh as he hummed. He smiled when you slightly trembled at his touch. “Are you scared?” He said with a smile as he lifted you and placed you on your back, letting you melt into the soft pillows.

You shook your head no, afraid you’d only confirm Jaemin’s theories. “So it’s not fear that I’m hearing.” Jaemin said as unbuttoned your skirt and pulled it off of you.

Before you could respond, he took both of your legs and spread them and pushed them towards your shoulders. He lowered himself until he was facing your core.

“Jaemin, no!” You screamed.

He paused and sat up with a confused look on his face.

“You said you couldn’t do this without my consent. Well..you don’t have it.” You sat up and grabbed the blanket to cover yourself.

Jaemin placed both hands on his thighs and sighed. “You are truly something.”

“I’m not- I’m not ready.” You stutter.

“For sex..” Jaemin raised an eyebrow. “Or for sex….with me.”

You threw him a look of indifference and he moved off the bed. You didn’t know why but you felt a pang of disappointment as he put on his silk button up and started to button it up.

“Here.” He opens a door and you can see that it is a walk in closet. “Change into something. Dinner should be ready soon.”

“At 3pm?” You ask him.

“We are werewolves. We eat once a day.” Jaemin said before walking out the door and shutting it behind him.

You sat in silence as you tried to gather your thoughts. Was he angry? He sure didn’t seem like it, if he was. Your stomach started to growl, so you quickly got up and half ran to the closet.

“No way.” You gulped and walked deeper into the closet. The closet seemed to have belonged to a woman. A woman that wore your size. A woman that had your same exact style. You pulled a maxi dress off a hanger and pulled some underwear from a built-in drawer.

Within minutes, you emerged from the closet feeling brand new. You had on a pair of dry underwear and you were out of your work clothes.

The aroma of a feast filled the entire hallway as you made your way to the circular staircase. The entire house was booming with bass filled laughter from Alphas and it only grew louder as you descended down the stairs. Once you reach the bottom, you hear someone clear their throat. Jaemin is waiting for you at the side of the staircase and he’s wearing the warmest smile.

He reached out his hand and for the first time that day, comfort led you to take it. “I thought you’d be mad at me.” You said softly, a bit intimidated by the amount of eyes on you.

Jaemin wrapped an arm around your shoulder and squeezed. “I can’t be mad at a human for experiencing human emotions, now can I?” He said into your ear before giving you a peck on your cheek.

Truth was, you were terrified of going all the way with Jaemin. How much of your life would change once you fully immersed yourself into a community full of werewolves? How likely were you to be accepted? What would truly become of your family?

“Still can’t believe you really turned out to be a human.” A deep voice said from behind you. You turned and saw a new alpha eyeing you and Jaemin. You froze, afraid this meeting would take a turn for the worse.

The Alpha looked at Jaemin and then looked at you. “Nevertheless, you are beautiful. Jaemin has always had a tendency to follow beautiful things.” He took a swig of his beer and stepped closer. “Just so you know, we all know just how scared you are. You don’t have any reason to be. You’ll find out soon enough.” He tapped Jaemin on the shoulder before leaving.

“That was Jaehyun.” Jaemin said as soon as the Alpha disappeared. “He’s very friendly. As are the rest of us. Here, let me show you around.”

You felt your mood change as Jaemin held your hand and led you through the numerous lively bodies in the mansion.

When you arrived earlier, you only saw males but now there were also females as well as young ones. One of them ran to you and sniffed your hand without warning.

“Oh!” You exclaimed, completely surprised.

“Jisung, we talked about that!” An older Alpha came running after the young child.

“Sorry, dad! I just wanted to say hi.” The child said. He looked very apologetic and reached out both hands and lowered his head.

You looked at Jaemin and the Alpha with a confused look on your face.

“Grab both of his hands, if you forgive him.” Jaemin said into your ear.

You instantly grabbed the child’s hand and told him it was okay. He jolted up with the most adorable smile you had ever seen. Was he? Was he already an alpha? He looked like nothing more than a young boy.

“In case you were wondering, he is just a regular boy. The only difference between him and a human child right now is that he has more strength and a stronger sense of smell.” The Alpha, who you assumed was the father, said while seemingly reading your thoughts.

“Oh. I-uh.” You started to say.

“My name is Doyoung.” The Alpha smiled and extended his hand. You quickly shook his hand and told him your name.

“So nice to finally meet you. I hope you enjoy the dinner.” He gave you a warm smile and rubbed Jaemin’s shoulder before walking away with his child.

You immediately searched for Jaemin’s hand and he laughed. “Relax. I’m not going anywhere.”

Jaemin had only shown you the first floor of the mansion when you told him you were hungry.

“I guess I should feed you, huh?” He said, leading you to the kitchen. You weren’t sure how you even lasted so long.

You reached the dining room and felt your nerves go haywire. All eyes turned to you once you entered the room.

Some of the werewolves smiled and waved and it calmed your nerves a bit. Jaemin pulled out a chair and you sat down quietly. You were moved by his gesture but you tried your best to not let it show.

“Everyone seems so much nicer now.” You whisper to Jaemin.

“They weren’t sure who you were before, but they are now.” Jaemin said calmly.

“Oh…” It dawned on you that you were the only stranger in the entire mansion. You hadn’t taken into account how the others viewed you.

“Well how do they know so much now?” You asked him as the serving dishes began to get passed around.

“Oh, I told them while you were changing.” Jaemin said as he poured some wine into his glass.

“What did you tell them exactly?” You looked at him with widened eyes.

“I told them that you were the human I chose as my mate.” Jaemin responded nonchalantly.  

“Oh wow.” You said. “And they just accepted it?”  

“Of course.” He looked at you with a confused look. “Why wouldn’t they?”

“I mean….I’m not one of you.” You said in a soft voice.

Jaemin sighed. “That doesn’t matter. We are more alike than you think.”

“Well I am seeing that now…” You trailed off.

“Eat up. You said you were hungry. I don’t want you to starve.” Jaemin said, now digging into his food.

-

Thirty minutes later, you were finished with dinner and people were leaving the house.

“I thought everyone lived here?” You looked at Jaemin.

He looked at you and laughed. “Now, what would make you think that?” He asked.

“Everyone was here when we came earlier. And this place has like ten thousand rooms!” You said in a hushed whisper.

“That is true. But they only come to keep me company. It'll only be me and you most nights…”  Jaemin said with a smile.

“Oh… I didn’t realize. You actually live alone.” You said, feeling a bit embarrassed. It all started to make sense.

Jaemin lived alone in a community where being alone wasn’t the norm. Word spread that he had found a potential mate and everyone decided to show up and see who it was. Your introduction as well as your presence was important to them. Jaemin wasn’t the enemy that you made him out to be. He was just trying his best to not make this any more nerve wracking for you then it already was.

“Can we go upstairs?” You asked Jaemin.

“Are you okay?” He said, his voice laced with concern.

“Yeah, I just want to be alone with you.” You tell him as you wrap an arm around his neck.

Jaemin stood up and waved to the few guests that were still sitting at the table. You did the same and they smiled back. On the way to the stairs, you saw Doyoung holding a sleeping Jisung in his arms, while talking to a few other Alphas.

Once in the room, you walk a few steps and then turn to face Jaemin.

“I’m sorry.” You blurt out. “I passed so much judgment. I don’t know anything. You have such a beautiful community standing behind you. Your home is amazing. There is nothing that you lack. What I am trying to say is…. let’s do it. Jaemin, let’s be together.”

Jaemin looked at you in awe. The smile slowly formed and by the time it reached his eyes, he was directly in front of you and you reached out to caress a cheek.

“I was sure you’d choose me.” He covered your hand with his own and bit his lip as he looked down at your own.

You felt your breath hitch as he lowered his face and pressed his lips onto yours.

“Do you want to try again?” Jaemin asked once he pulled away.

You nodded a few times and Jaemin kissed you again. This time he removed the straps from your shoulders and let your dress fall to the floor. You wrapped your arms around his neck and he lifted you up and wrapped your legs around his waist as he walked you both to the bed.

He laid you down and started to unbutton his shirt. He practically ripped off his shirt and threw it across the room. You wrapped your arms around him as he lowered down to kiss you again. He pushed his clothed boner into your core and you gasped.

“I know it feels really big but I can make it fit, I promise.” Jaemin said seductively in your ear. He rose again and this time he started to undo his belt.

“Jaemin, wait.” You stopped him again.

He froze and looked at you. But he didn’t say anything.

“Let me.” You sat up and went for Jaemin’s belt. He let you undo his belt as he softly rubbed your neck.

“I love how eager you are. We are going to have so much fun together.” You smile at him before you pull his hard cock out from his jeans. It was huge. Your mouth watered simply by the sight of it and you quickly became mesmerized by the birthmark on the side of his shaft. Determined to show that you were cut out for the job, you kissed him deeply.

“Shit...” Jaemin said, but then whimpered softly as you swiped your thumb across the tip, spreading his precum around. You hadn’t a clue how you were going to manage his entire length but you started with the tip and gradually worked your way down, opening your mouth wider so your teeth wouldn’t get in the way. You felt him successfully slide down your tongue as his abs flexed from his sudden intake of breath.

You opened your eyes to meet Jaemin’s, only to find him already gazing at you. He smiled widely and bit his lip once your eyes met. “Deep-throating on the first night…hmmm. What am I going to do with you?” He then held your head in place as he thrusted further down into your mouth, making you take his entire length. You gagged as tears formed in your eyes and spit spilled from your mouth.

“You look even prettier with tears in your eyes.”Jaemin chuckled. “Now keep that mouth open wide. I wanna fuck your throat so more.” You obeyed and he thrust in deeper with an elongated grunt. You continued to gag as you felt tears stream down your cheeks, his hardened, thick cock repeatedly hitting the back of your throat. You gasped loudly once he finally pulled out his entire length.

“Awww, you poor thing.” Jaemin tsked as you wiped your mouth in a frenzy of heavy breaths. “Let me make it a little easier for you.” He got off the bed and stepped out of his pants and briefs, before coming back to you and laying you on your back. He traced a finger along the outside of your soaked panties and mouthed a slow “Wow.”

You tried to close your legs, too consumed by the overwhelming feeling of embarrassment. Jaemin stopped you from closing your legs with his hand and smiled at you as he laid on the bed and rested between your legs. His face was right at your core and he draped one of your legs over a muscular shoulder. “You can’t hide that mouth watering scent away from me, pretty.” He said before kissing the inside of your thigh.

He slowly peeled the panties off of you and threw them across the room.

Jaemin looked at you and smiled once your eyes met his. He held eye contact with you as he dragged his tongue from the bottom of your wet folds to your already throbbing clit. You covered your mouth with both hands before any sound escaped as Jaemin began to suck on your bud. He removed your hands from your mouth as soon as he noticed what you were doing. “I want to hear.” He said before bringing his attention back to your glistening core. Within moments, you were a screaming, withering mess as Jaemin started to make out with the most sensitive spot. A familiar sensation started to boil in the pit of your stomach and you grabbed a fistful of the Alpha’s hair.

“I’m close! I’m so close!.”Jaemin immediately stopped and pulled himself away. You groaned in disappointment but instantly stopped once you felt Jaemin line himself up, readying himself to enter. A low growl rumbled in his chest as he pushed himself in. A half lidded smile appeared on his face as he went in deeper. It wasn’t long before tears formed in your eyes again.

“They say pain is pleasure, baby.” He said, wiping a tear from your cheek. “You must love this cock.”

You nod rapidly while gasping as you struggle to accommodate his entire shaft. “Yes, Alpha! I love it so much.”

Jaemin’s smile grows wider as he finally finds his rhythm. He lowers himself to your ear and licks the outer shell. “Rub your clit while I fuck your tight hole.” He mutters in your ear.  You follow his order and start to rub on your bundle of nerves while Jaemin continues to plunge into you. He quietly chuckles to himself as he watches your eyes flutter close, leaving only the white showing, as you moaned loudly.

Jaemin watched as your face scrunched together and admired the soft breaths you let out before taking a breast into his mouth and gently sucking again.

“Alpha!” You screamed, the overstimulation becoming painfully unbearable.

“My princess, you are just so sensitive…” Jaemin groaned in your ear. He took both of your hands and locked them above your head in one hand, his thrusts going deeper than before. You felt your legs begin to shake as he slowly but surely began to near your spot.

“Do you like the way my cock stretches that pussy?” Jaemin asked, looking deep in your eyes once you opened them.

“Yes!” You blurt out.

“Can I mark you as my mate?” He asked, his eyes now glowing red.

You gasp but only mutter a strained “yes” as Jaemin finally hits your spot.

Your heart stops for a split second as you see fangs appear in the place of Jaemin’s human-like teeth. Before you can say anything, there is a splitting pain in the side of your neck. A blood curdling scream can be heard through the entire mansion as Jaemin sinks his fangs inside of your skin.

“That took much longer than expected.” Johnny said to Jaehyun as they finished up the last of the dishes.

“And they say humans aren’t a challenge.” Jaehyun chuckled and opened the front door for him and Johnny.

They locked the door from the inside and went home to their mates, leaving you and Jaemin to enjoy the mansion alone on your first night as official mates.