#but . at least its not friendship and at least there is actual consent and discussion of boundaries

[fuckyeahaplatonics]

Aplatonic culture is feeling kind of smug about the fact that you won't face the struggles people have in friendships because you're nonfriending

[shegeekery]

Reparenting Loki

I want to talk about a dynamic in the Loki/Mobius relationship (in the Loki TV-series) that I've seen touched on but not really discussed in depth.

Note to Lokius-lovers: nothing I say here in any way precludes a healthy romantic relationship. They're both consenting adults, after all, and this wasn't a formal therapist-client relationship.

There's a technique in therapy called "reparenting". The idea is that trauma and behaviors caused by bad parenting can be addressed to some extent if the therapist assumes the role of a "good parent".

I think we can all agree that the "All-Father" was crap as an actual father. Odin knew that Loki took after him even more than Thor did, but many of those shared traits were things that he tried to hide from everyone, while Thor better represented the image he wanted to project. The result was a cruel favoritism, which was picked up by Thor and the rest of the Asgardians. Frigga's love and support wasn't enough to counteract that cruelty, particularly in a strongly patriarchal society like Asgard.

Side note (because I'm that kind of geek): there were so many similarities between Odin and Loki (Odin's friend and blood-brother rather than his son) in the old Norse myths that some scholars have suggested that Loki was at one point simply an aspect of Odin. There's also evidence that the stories as they came down to us were manipulated by the Christians who committed them to writing to shoehorn Loki into something more like the Christian Devil.

Anyway, getting back to our guys... Within the context of the TVA, Mobius represented an authority figure to Loki, who had a long history of rebelling against (or betraying) authority for obvious reasons.

I think the first turning point in the relationship for Loki was:

Loki: I am smart!

Mobius: I know. Loki is rarely left speechless, but his only response to Mobius's simple affirmation was a very un-Loki-like "Okay..." He didn't know how to respond because he wasn't used to that kind of thing, particularly from someone who had power over him. It happened again with:

Loki: A villain.

Mobius: That's not how I see it.

The dynamic between these two people throughout Season 1 was like that. Mobius's genuine love (whether you read it as romantic, platonic, fatherly, brotherly, or a mix of any or all of these) for and non-judgmental acceptance of Loki was apparent from the start, but of course Loki's experiences during his very long lifetime made it nearly impossible for him to trust that until Mobius's actions convinced him that it was real. Learning to trust Mobius also allowed Loki to see himself in a new light.

For his part, Mobius consistently modeled what a good father would have been: loving and accepting, yes, but still able to apply "tough love" when that was warranted. Mobius didn't put Loki into the bad-memory loop to punish him because he was angry (though he was angry, or at least a bit hurt and disappointed). He was just trying to force Loki to acknowledge a truth about himself so that they could move forward — and it worked!

Mobius's instincts and experience as an actual father to two boys, one reasonably well-behaved and the other a mischievous troublemaker, served him well in this, even if he didn't consciously remember his life on the timeline.

Mobius all but confirmed this when he said:

Mobius:  I see a scared little boy, shivering in the cold... 

It's also significant that when Loki brought this up later, he called it "patronizing", which we usually use to mean "condescending", but can also mean "supporting" and has its root in the Latin word "pater" (father).

I see the hug in episode 1-5 as a sign that the reparenting had taken hold, and that Loki, while not completely healed (it would take a lot more than that!), was at least in a place where he could trust someone, accept love/friendship, and think beyond his own wants and needs.

By Season 2, the relationship between the two men was evolving into one of equals, but even then Loki still occasionally looked to Mobius for guidance. Mobius's approval had become important to him. When Loki witnessed the firm but compassionate way in which Don dealt with two boys who were so like himself and Thor (despite being a stressed-out single dad rather than a god-king with tremendous resources at his disposal), he had to have seen that this was at the core of who Mobius was. Moreover, Loki — and any viewers who had similarly survived a traumatic childhood full of emotional abuse and neglect — probably guessed that Don himself was a survivor who was determined to see to it that his boys would never have to deal with that. If that was the case, then Mobius didn't just see his own son in Loki. He saw himself and couldn't help but empathize.

Don wasn't perfect. His frustration with his younger son was very evident, but Loki, observing, could see the love that lay under it. He may even have thought of times when Odin was driven to anger by Loki's actions and realized that the anger didn't necessarily mean that Odin didn't really love him. Learning to forgive what can be forgiven is another aspect of recovering from childhood trauma.

It's worth remembering that Mobius knew Loki in much the same way we do. We got to see the things that Loki never let anybody see: the fear, the vulnerability, the pain, the longing, and the sadness. (Doesn't hurt that TH can turn a simple reaction shot into a freakin' soliloquy!) The difference is that, while we only get to see the highlights (and lowlights) of Loki's life, Mobius had access to all of it and he had centuries to study it.

Mobius literally knew Loki better than anyone else in (or out) of the multiverse. How could he not love him? And for Loki, knowing that somebody who knew him that well genuinely cared so much for him (same with Sylvie, who understood him in ways that only another Loki could and vice-versa) had to have shaken him to his core and made him rethink a lot of things. The fact that it was Mobius to whom Loki turned in episode 2.6 when he thought he might have to kill Sylvie shows how much he still looked up to Mobius in many ways.

This was a show about redemption, yes, but also about healing from childhood trauma. They did an amazing job with it.

[givehimthemedicine]

I'm gonna say something that might make elmax tumblr mad at me but:

as much as El and Max are besties in the sense of the nonexclusive title, I can't honestly say I think they're mutual best friends in the sense of literal #1 ranking of emotional closeness.

Max becomes El's best friend within the same hour that they meaningfully interact, surpassing Mike by miles. no contest. but I think Max's best friend is still Lucas.

Max doesn't really share emotionally with El. she's a brand new friend and doesn't really have the, what do I want to say, life experience? to become Max's go-to confidant right away, which is a pretty major pillar of emotionally close friendship. El is so new to normal human relationships and regular life across the board. she would listen and care if Max confided in her, undoubtedly, but someone to whom you'd have to pause and explain and define aspects of what you just said honestly isn't going to be your #1 choice when you're upset and just want to vent and be understood. there's definitely no lack of emotional intelligence or anything like that from El, she's just not the easiest one to communicate with.

El actually COULD understand Max a lot better than Max might expect - and vice versa - but since neither of them really tells the other anything about themselves (at least not onscreen), they don't know just how much they can relate to each other yet.

what little sharing Max has done with El has been mostly in brief unintentional(?) inferences that El didn't engage with ("happy screams" being a troubling insight into her home life, etc). and I see extremely little evidence that El has ever told Max or anyone else much about the lab.

their friendship in s3 is more about being kids and having fun together (which is not something shallow! they both need that so badly) and they have more of a mentor-mentee relationship in some ways. just when their friendship could be getting deep, they get separated which is horribly unfortunate.

I don't mean to paint Max as the giver and El as the taker - they're different things to each other. Max drops everything and immediately offers advice, friendship, and warmth to a girl who's previously been rude to her for no reason, expecting no apology and asking nothing in return. but El spends season 3 body-shielding Max from monsters, is there to hold Max when Billy dies, and moves mountains unasked to find/protect/save Max in 4. she is very much there for Max emotionally, just verbal/written communication isn't her strong suit, and that's especially hard in a long distance friendship where that's the only way you can communicate.

Lucas, on the other hand. he has the distinction of being the first person to make her feel accepted in an unfamiliar town, her first true friend in Hawkins or possibly ever, and I don't think that's overwritten by one shopping spree.

Max really opened up quite soon to Lucas considering her trust issues in season 2 and he made it a very positive experience for her. not much of substance happened between them in 3 but in 4, their relationship seems to have its greatest emotional depth ever despite being broken up, and she voiced her literal deepest darkest secrets and suicidal ideations in front of him. (El heard it too, but Max didn't actually consent to that, although I imagine she would have). Henry used Lucas for a vision, knowing her fears would hurt the worst coming from Lucas's mouth. Lucas is the first person Max mentioned she had already looked for when she went to Dustin's house to talk about what she saw, and that was before their reconciliation.

but now here's something to offend lumax tumblr as well: I don't think Max has been Lucas's best friend at any point so far.

am I forgetting a time he's told her anything about himself? a time she's complimented him? I can't think of a topic he's discussed seriously with her that didn't pertain to Max herself, their relationship, or upside down stuff. his best friend is still within the party - Mike or Will I bet.

I could absolutely see Lucas finding Max daunting to open up to, even before her depression in 4. the way she treats him in 3 doesn't give me the sense there's a whole lot of sharing or validation going on for Lucas. I'm not saying she's a bad girlfriend to him, but I am saying she must make him feel a lot less emotionally cared for than he does her, unless he's extremely aware that they have very different ways of showing love. Max really is nice and definitely would listen and care if he shared seriously (and she has shown him that, just not often or recently), but she definitely has an exterior you have to get past first and I wonder how much he tries to do that.

I assume their friendship/relationship had to have had more depth than what we actually saw onscreen but I feel like Lucas lets his feelings be easily swept under the rug when it comes to Max vs the boys. the "the lady is never wrong" policy he learns from his father may keep the peace, but it isn't healthy for the long term. and this may be a subset of that, but I think Lucas prioritizes Max's hardships above his own (that's gonna be huge for him in 5 and beyond - he got traumatized by what happened to Max too, but he won't be inclined to seek validation of that especially not from her).

while they both absolutely care and empathize, Max and Lucas's backgrounds and struggles aren't ones that each other can personally relate to much. Max doesn't know what it's like to get bullied for being black and Lucas doesn't know what it's like to grow up in a poor, broken, abusive home.

but while their childhoods looked drastically different too, El and Max actually could relate to a lot about each others' pasts. El wouldn't know much about being a child of divorce, but can relate to having an abusive big brother, to wanting to escape, to major trust issues and craving love, to refusing to grow up to be what her abusers want her to be. Max doesn't know what it's like to grow up in a lab, but she can relate to being a little girl unsafe in her own home, to having a hard-learned no snitching policy, to living with a bad man she's supposed to call dad whose abuse causes her sibling to abuse her in turn, to refusing to repeat that cycle.

El and Max have potential to have an incredibly deeply understanding mutual best friendship, and I think they will once they get a chance to spend some time together, process what just happened in 4, and open up to each other about more.

simply aging and maturing will contribute to this as well but I think what Max has learned in 4 will make her more emotionally available with Lucas (disregarding that in reality she'd probably close off more than ever after 4 but it's the last season and we don't have time for that) in fact she was already starting to open up to him more just before she died. I hope they don't rush the relationship aspect of lumax because their friendship is sososo important and deserves its own attention tbh. I want to see some mutual emotional sharing between them where Lucas's trauma isn't sidelined.

also El and Lucas, the combination with I'd say the least in common, absolutely must do some massive bonding over Max. I want the two who were slowest to warm up to each other as kids to be absolutely ride or die. the brot3 potential is there I just need everyone to communicate!

tl;dr: Max is El's best friend but El isn't Max's best friend, and Lucas is Max's best friend but Max isn't Lucas's best friend

[writingwithcolor]

I'm writing an AU of a movie that takes place in the 1880s USA, where a travelling white character and a Jewish character are waylaid by Native Americans, who they befriend. Probably because it was written by and about PoC (Jews) the scene actually avoids the stuff on your Native American Masterpost, but I'd still like to do better than a movie made in the 1980's, and I feel weird cutting them from the plot entirely. I have a Jewish woman reading it for that, but are there any things you (1/1)

2/2 1880s western movie ask--are there things you'd LIKE to see in a movie where a white man and a Jewish man run into Native Americans in the 1880s? I do plan to base them on a real tribe (Ute, probably) and have proper housing/clothes and so forth, but right now I'm just trying to avoid or subvert awful cowboy movie tropes. Any ideas?

White and Jewish Men, Native American interactions in 1880s

I am vaguely concerned with how you only cite one of our posts about Native Americans, that was not written by a Native person, and do not cite any of the posts relating to this time period, or any posts relating to representation in media. 

Sidenote: if you want us to give accurate reflections of the media you’re discussing, please tell us the NAME. I cannot go look up this movie based off this description to give you an idea of what my issues are with this scene, and must instead trust that the representation is good based off your judgement. I cannot make my own judgement. This is a problem. Especially since your whole question boils down to “this scene is good but not great and I want it to be great. How can I do that?”

Your baseline for “good” could very well be my baseline for “terrible hack job”. I can’t give you the proper education required for you to be able to accurately evaluate the media you’re watching for racist stereotypes if you don’t tell me what you’re even working with.

When you’re writing fanfic where the media is directly relevant to the question, please tell us the name of the media. We will not judge your tastes. We need this information in order to properly help you.

Moving on.

I bring up my concern for you citing that one—exceptionally old—post because it is lacking in many of the tropes that don’t exist in the media critique field but exist in the real world. This is an issue I have run into countless times on WWC (hence further concern you did not cite any other posts) and have spoken about at length. 

People look at the media critique world exclusively, assume it is a complete evaluation of how Native Americans are seen in society, and as a result end up ignoring some really toxic stereotypes and then come to the inbox with “these characters aren’t abc trope, so they’re fine, but I want to rubber stamp them anyway. Anything wrong here?”. The answer is pretty much always yes. 

Issue one: “Waylaid” by Native Americans

This wording is extremely loaded for one reason: Native American people are seen as tricksters, liars, and predators. This is the #1 trope that shows up in the real world that does not show up in media critique. It’s also the trope I have talked about the most when it comes to media representation, so you not knowing the trope is a sign you haven’t read the entirety of the Native tag—which is in the FAQ as something we would really prefer you did before coming at us to answer questions. It avoids us having to re-explain ourselves.

Now, hostility is honestly to be expected for the time period the movie is set in. This is in the beginnings (or ramping up) of residential schools in America* and Canada, we have generations upon generations of stolen or killed children, reserves being allocated perhaps hundreds of miles from sacred sites, and various wars with Plains and Southwest peoples are in full force (Wounded Knee would have happened in 1890, in December, and the Dakoa’s mass execution would have been in 1862. Those are just the big-name wars. There absolutely were others). 

*America covers up its residential schools abuse extremely thoroughly, so if you try to research them in the American context you will come up empty. Please research Canada’s schools and apply the same abuse to America, as Canada has had a Truth and Reconciliation Commission about residential schools and therefore is more (but not completely) transparent about the abuse that happened. Please note that America’s history with residential schools is longer than Canada’s history. There is an extremely large trigger warning for mass child death when you do this research.

But just because the hostility is expected does not mean that this hostility would be treated well in the movie. Especially when you consider the sheer amount of tension between any Native actors and white actors, for how Sacheen Littlefeather had just been nearly beaten up by white actors at the 1973 Academy Awards for mentioning Wounded Knee, and the American Indian Religious Freedom Act had only been passed two years prior in 1978. 

These Native actors would not have had the ability to truly consent to how they were shown, and this power dynamic has to be in your mind when you watch this scene over. I don’t care that the writers were from a discriminated-against background. This does not always result in being respectful, and I’ve also spoken about this power imbalance at length (primarily in the cowboy tag).

Documentaries and history specials made in the 2010s (with some degree of academic muster) will still fall into wording that harkens Indigenous people to wolves and settlers as frightened prey animals getting picked off by the mean animalistic Natives. This is not neutral, or good. This is perpetuating the myth that the settlers were helpless, just doing their own thing completely unobtrusively, and then the evil territorial Native Americans didn’t want to share.

To paraphrase Batman: if I had a week I couldn’t explain all the reasons that’s wrong.

How were these characters waylaid by the Native population? Because that answer—which I cannot get because you did not name the media—will determine how good the framing is. But based on the time period this movie was made alone, I do not trust it was done respectfully.

Issue 2: “Befriending”

I mentioned this was in an intense period of residential schools and land wars all in that area. The Ute themselves had just been massacred by Mormons in the Grass Valley Massacre in 1865, with ten men and an unknown number of women and children killed thanks to a case of assumed association with a war chief (Antonga Black Hawk) currently at war with Utah. The Paiute had been massacred in 1866. Over 100 Timpanogo men had been killed, with an unknown number of women and children enslaved by Brigham Young in Salt Lake City in 1850, with many of the enslaved people dying in captivity (those numbers were not tracked, but I would assume at least two hundred were enslaved— that’s simply assuming one woman/wife and one child for every man, and the numbers could have very well been higher if any war-widows and their children were in the group, not to mention families with multiple children). This is after an unknown group of Indigenous people had been killed by Governor Brigham Young the year prior, to “permanently stop cattle theft” from settlers. 

The number of Native Americans killed in Utah in the 1800s—just the number of dead counted (since women and children weren’t counted)—in massacres not tied to war (because there was at least one war) is over 130. The actual number of random murders is much higher; between the uncounted deaths and how the Governor had issued orders to “deal with” the problem of cattle theft permanently. I doubt you would have been tried or convicted if you murdered Indigenous peoples on “your” land. This is why it’s called state sanctioned genocide.

This is not counting the Black Hawk War in Utah (1865-1872), which the Ute were absolutely a part of (the wiki articles I read were contradictory if Antonga Black Hawk was Ute or Timpanogo, but the Ute were part of it). The first official massacre tied to the war—the Bear River Massacre, ordered by the US Military—places the death count of just that singular massacre at over five hundred Shoshone, including elders, women, and children. It would not be unreasonable to assume that the number of Indigenous people killed in Utah from 1850, onward, is over a thousand, perhaps two or three.

Pardon me for not reading beyond that point to list more massacres and simply ballparking a number; the source will be linked for you to get an accurate number of dead.

So how did they befriend the Native population? Let alone see them as fully human considering the racism of the time period? Natives were absolutely not seen as fully human so long as they were tied to their culture, and assimilation equalling some sliver of respect was already a stick being waved around as a threat. This lack of humanity continues to the present day.

I’m not saying friendship is impossible. I am saying the sheer levels of mistrust that would exist between random wandering groups of white/pale men and Indigenous communities wouldn’t exactly make that friendship easy. Having the scene end be a genuine friendship feels ignorant and hollow and flattening of ongoing genocide, because settlers lied about their intentions and then lined you up for slauther (that’s how the Timpanogo were killed and enslaved).

Utah had already done most of its mass killing by this point. The era of trusting them was over. There was an active open hunting season, and the acceptable targets were the Indigenous populations of Utah.

(sources for the numbers: 

List of Indian Massacres in North America Black Hawk War (1865-1872))

Issue 3: “Proper housing/clothes and so forth”

Do you mean Western style settlements and jeans? If yes, congratulations you have written a reservation which means the land-ripped-away wounds are going to be fresh, painful, and sore.

You do not codify what you mean by “proper”, and proper is another one of those deeply loaded colonial words that can mean “like a white man” or “appropriate for their tribe.” For the time period, it would be the former. Without specifying which direction you’re going for, I have no idea what you’re imagining. And without the name of the media, I don’t know what the basis of this is.

The reservation history of this time period seems to maybe have some wiggle room; there were two reservations allocated for the Ute at this time, one made in 1861 and another made in 1882 (they were combined into the Uintah and Ouray Indian Reservation in 1886). This is all at the surface level of a google and wikipedia search, so I have no idea how many lived in the bush and how many lived on the reserve. 

There were certainly land defenders trying to tell Utah the land did not belong to them, so holdouts that avoided getting rounded up were certainly possible. But these holdouts would be far, far more hostile to anyone non-Native.

The Ute seemed to be some degree of lucky in that the reserve is on some of their ancestral territory, but any loss of land that large is going to leave huge scars. 

It should be noted that reserves would mean the traditional clothing and housing would likely be forbidden, because assimilation logic was in full force and absolutely vicious at this time. 

It’s a large reserve, so the possibility exists they could have accidentally ended up within the borders of it. I’m not sure how hostile the state government was for rounding up all the Ute, so I don’t know if there would have been pockets of them hiding out. In present day, half of the Ute tribe lives on the reserve, but this wasn’t necessarily true historically—it could have been a much higher percentage in either direction.

It’s up to you if you want to make them be reservation-bound or not. Regardless, the above mentioned genocide would have been pretty fresh, the land theft in negotiations or already having happened, and generally, the Ute would be well on their way to every assimilation attempt made from either residential schools, missionaries, and/or the forced settlement and pre-fab homes.

To Answer Your Question

I don’t want another flattened, sanitized portrayal of genocide.

Look at the number of dead above, the amount of land lost above, the amount of executive orders above. And try to tell me that these people would be anything less than completely and totally devastated. Beyond traumatized. Beyond broken hearted. Absolutely grief stricken with almost no soul left.

Their religion would have been illegal. Their children would have been stolen. Their land was taken away. A saying about post-apocalyptic fiction is how settler-based it is, because Indigenous people have already lived through their own apocalypse.

It would have all just happened at the time period this story is set in. All of the grief you feel now at the environment changing so drastically that you aren’t sure how you’ll survive? Take that, magnify it by an exponential amount because it happened, and you have the mindset of these Native characters.

This is not a topic to tread lightly. This is not a topic to read one masterpost and treat it as a golden rule when there is too much history buried in unmarked, overfull graves of school grounds and cities and battlefields. I doubt the movie you’re using is good representation if it doesn’t even hint at the amount of trauma these Native characters would have been through in thirty years.

A single generation, and the life that they had spent millennia living was gone. Despite massive losses of life trying to fight to preserve their culture and land.

Learn some history. That’s all I can tell you. Learn it, process it, and look outside of checklists. Look outside of media. 

And let us have our grief.

~ Mod Lesya

On Question Framing

Please allow me the opportunity to comment on “are there things you'd LIKE to see in a movie where a white man and a Jewish man run into Native Americans in the 1880s?” That strikes me as the same type of question as asking what color food I’d like for lunch. I don’t see how the cultural backgrounds of characters I have literally no other information about is supposed to make me want anything in particular about them. I don’t know anything about their personalities or if they have anything in common.

Compare the following questions:

“Are there things you’d like to see in a movie where two American women, one from a Nordic background and one Jewish, are interacting?” I struggle to see how our backgrounds are going to yield any further inspiration. It certainly doesn’t tell you that we’re both queer and cling to each other’s support in a scary world; it doesn’t tell you that we uplift each other through mental illness; it doesn’t go into our 30 years of endless bizarre inside jokes related to everything from mustelids to bad subtitles.

Because: “white”, “Jewish”, and “Native American” aren’t personality words. You can ask me what kind of interaction I’d like to see from a high-strung overachieving woman and a happy-go-lucky Manic Pixie Dream Girl, and I’ll tell you I’d want fluffy f/f romance. Someone else might want conflict ultimately resolving in friendship. A third person might want them slowly getting on each other’s nerves more and more until one becomes a supervillain and the other must thwart her. But the same question about a cultural demographic? That told me nothing about the people involved.

Also, the first time I meet a new person from a very different culture, it might take weeks before discussion of our specific cultural differences comes up. As a consequence, my first deep conversations with a Costa Rican American gentile friend were not about Costa Rica or my Jewishness but about things we had in common: classical music and coping with breakups--which are obviously conversations I could have had if we were both Jewish, both Costa Rican gentiles, or both something else. So in other words, I’m having trouble seeing how knowing so little about these characters is supposed to give me something to want to see on the page.

Thank you for understanding.

(And yes, I agree with Lesya, what’s with this trend of people trying to explain their fandom in a roundabout way instead of mentioning it by name? It makes it harder to give meaningful help….)

--Shira

[possiblyimbiassed]

The lying liars who lie

Years and years late to the party, I’ve finally gotten my hands on all the DVDs of BBC Sherlock, and I thought it would be fun to watch the extra material carefully, one piece after another, and also listen to at least some of the show makers’ commentary of the episodes. But at this point, after S4 where DVDs seemed to be a constant lying device in general, I tend to look at them with a bit more suspicious eyes...

I still love the show of course, but now that I’ve taken this deep dive into all the special features, I find them a truly hard thing to try to wrap my head around. Even this long after the fact, I’m amazed by the amount of shameless, self-congratulatory BS in the DVDs, where the people involved can’t have enough of complimenting each other and their show, while they skillfully avoid to discuss anything actually meaningful about the plot line. ;) For example, Moffat claims in the S2 DVD that “In fact, you’ll never see a more obsessively authentic version of Sherlock Holmes than this one”. But if we follow their light-hearted commentary, which basically takes the show at face value, I’d call that not just hyperbole, but an outright lie. If you want to see the ‘authentic’ stories from ACD’s work in this show, you’ll definitely need to go much deeper into the subtext and meta levels - neither of which are mentioned on these DVDs of course. Here’s my own (rather subjective) ‘review’ of the whole thing, trying to pinpoint why I view most of the commentary of the show from its own makers as an advanced art of deception. 

(My musings under the cut)

Series 1 - a wealth of extra material

First of all - as many of you probably knew already - the whole of the Unaired Pilot is added to the DVD of S1. In the extra material about the making of the series, they (Sue Vertue, Mofftiss and others) talk about what things they changed between the Pilot and ASiP, claiming that many changes were necessary improvements once they knew that they had a whole series and a lot more time at their disposal. 

Which I can perfectly understand and agree with in general. But I think what’s missing in their discussions is more interesting than what’s actually there (”Mind the gap” ;) ). Things that I would expect from the show makers when they go to the trouble of comparing the pilot version with the aired product. There’s not a word, for example, about the fact that they added both Mycroft and Moriarty to the story in ASiP - two characters who later turn out to play major roles and appear in almost every other episode until the end of TFP. Or about the choice that one of the screenwriters would play Mycroft. 

Neither do they discuss why they chose to relocate the place where Sherlock was challenged by the cabbie from 221B to Roland Kerr’s School of Further Education. Instead they focus on the details, like for example the new design of the interior of 221B.

Not to mention the fact that almost every scene in the Pilot is mirrored in ASiP (as pointed out long ago by @kateis-cakeis X), but at Angelo’s in the Pilot Sherlock follows the events with the cabbie while looking in an actual mirror. I even noticed that in the Pilot the cabbie is offering Sherlock dark-coloured bottles with the pills in them, while in ASiP those bottles are transparent, as if the cabbie is offering Sherlock to play Black or White in the chess game that he is simulating. What’s with all these mirrors, though? Not a word on the DVD... ;)

Now, even though these rather remarkable choices are neglected together with a great bunch of minor ones, I still think that the most interesting fact about all this is that they actually included the whole pilot version within this DVD, which is sold by the franchise. Why even do this, when it raises far more questions than it answers? The only logical reason I can come up with is that they’re laying out a track of little hints that anyone with a deep enough interest in the show to actually buy the DVDs can try to follow. And it seems to me that lying by omission is one of the first steps in the long line of cryptic and misleading author comments on this show. But at the same time, they clearly want the fans to have access to it all, even the abandoned version.

Moving on to Series 2, time for bigger lies 

In the extra material of this DVD Benedict himself describes how his character "faces one of his deadliest enemies in the shape of Love, and it comes in the form of Irene Adler, who is this extraordinary dominatrix [insert here a bunch of superlatives regarding Adler]...”. And then we see how Adler whips Sherlock with a riding crop (without any kind of consent, I have to add) while he’s lying on the floor, and we have Lara Pulver telling us how it was to have a go at Benedict on set. So Holmes whips dead bodies and Adler whips living; seems like a match made in hell! :))

Gatiss claims, grinning with his whole face, that “they’re clearly, absolutely made for each other”. OK, so I think we can see Sherlock being intellectually impressed by Adler, and even trying to protect her from Mycroft, and we can see John acting jealously. We can also see her being dressed and styled as a perfect, female mirror of Sherlock. But I’m still at a loss what all this has to do with love on Sherlock’s part? Especially since he’s not even responding in any fashion to her various attempts at seducing him. 

And there’s more: Paul McGuigan, the director of ASiB, claims that the scene where Sherlock has a conversation with Adler inside his Mind Palace about the crime case with the car that backfires "is a part of a kind of love story, if you like...” No, I don’t. Maybe it’s just me, but if their aim really was to convey to their audience a love story between Sherlock and The Woman, I think they failed miserably. All I see is a guy ’mansplaining’ to a clever woman how to use her brain, while she’s trying to flirt with him by expressing her admiration (to no avail, though) and make deductions at the same time. Nothing new under the sun, really. John did the same thing repeatedly in ASiP (without making own deductions) and got far more attention from Sherlock, but I’ve never heard any of the show makers call that ”a love story”. But by ’lie-splaining’ the scene with Irene to the audience, they try to manipulate us all to see it as such...

In all the direct commentary of this episode, where Steven, Mark, Sue, Benedict and Lara are present, I get the impression that every time they even touch on the relationship between Sherlock and John, they hurry to add the term “friendship” or “man love” or similar words in case they forgot them at first, avoiding even the tiniest possibility that there could be anything more going on between them. They even explain that when Irene calls them “a couple” she does not mean anything romantic. This whole approach feels almost paranoic in the midst of all the laid-back jokes and light-hearted talk about the filming. It’s as if a sort of restrictive, heteronormative filter or blanket is being constantly applied, to teach the audience the ‘no homo’ lesson of it all. And the more I listen to this, the more tiresome it becomes.

In the commentary Moffat does reveal an interesting detail, though: that the ‘Flight of the Dead’ in ASiB was inspired by a cut out scene in the Bond movie On Her Majesty's Secret Service. To me this is just one more reason to question the ‘authentic’ quality of this scene, as opposed to possibly taking place in Sherlock’s Mind Palace. But I digress... 

Listening to the commentary in general, it’s like it’s aimed to distract the attention from what’s going on at the screen rather than highlight it and try to explain their intentions. They do mention that Irene didn’t actually ‘beat’ Sherlock in the end of ASiB, but there’s no explanation of this obvious deviation from canon, where Adler does indeed fool Holmes, taking advantage of his prejudices.

The rest of the extra material of S2 is mostly about technical stuff, special effects and such, and also about filming techniques and Benedict’s delivery of fast deductions. But the part I really do love is the one where Andrew Scott talks about how much he enjoyed playing the scene where Moriarty dances before breaking into the Crown Jewels. That’s one of my favorite scenes of he whole show. :) Also, the takeaway message from this DVD is Moffat’s words at the end: 

“These are still the formative years of Sherlock Holmes, and the most important thing about this series is not that it’s updated; it’s the fact that those two men are still young and they’re still at the beginning of what they don’t yet know is gonna be a lifelong partnership”. 

And then comes Series 3... 

...and its extra material, with the most blatant attempts at deception so far, I believe. At this point Sherlock is called a “psychopath” by both the show’s characters, John’s blog, Benedict Cumberbatch and Martin Freeman as if it were true, which is a big deviation from ACD canon. That simply doesn’t happen there; while Holmes is sometimes described as eccentric, no one in the books is ever claiming that Sherlock Holmes has some kind of mental illness leaning towards cruelty and egotism - not even his enemies say this about him. In the show, however, they begin in ASiP with making him torture a dying man for information (something that is not included in the Pilot). And in S3, where they avoid discussing the reason why they turned Mary Morstan into a ruthless assassin, this major shift is glossed over by the fact that in the same episode (HLV) they also turn Sherlock into a murderer, who cold-bloodedly blows the brains out of a blackmailer for threatening to make said assassin’s crimes public. 

But without ever getting into the “why” of it all, the cast and crew seem overly happy and smiling describing these rather morbid choices as something positive; “fantastic”, "fresh and new” and "amazing” are their choice of words. Benedict claims that Mary, who has literally shot and almost killed Sherlock in HLV, is now "a new best friend of Sherlock’s”. Amanda claims that Mary “is protecting John” when she shoots Sherlock in the chest. Now they’re both psychopaths, and poor little John is forced to stomach them both because he’s addicted to danger. In Amanda’s words, Mary also “kind of gets in between the two of them, but she wants them to be together as well”.  Which is a load of BS considering that Mary tries to kill the protagonist of the story.

Lars Mikkelsen thinks it’s “such a good script” because “you’re mislead as an audience”. But he never gets the chance to expand on what the misleading actually contains, because then Mofftiss cut in to express how much they love playing with “what ifs”. As if this whole mega-budget project of a show were just a big experimental playground without any actual story to tell. 

Benedict repeats his line from HLV that Magnussen “preys on people who are different” and Moffat also says he “exploits people who are different”. Which is really confusing, considering what we can see Magnussen actually do in the show. Lady Smallwood and John Garvie are two well-established, powerful governmental politicians whom Magnussen blackmails by finding their respective pressure points. In Garvie’s case his pressure point seems to be alcohol problems in his past, but according to media he’s later arrested on charges of corruption. Lady Smallwood is blackmailed on the basis of her husband having sent compromising letters to a minor many years ago, in spite of later claiming that he thought she was older and stopped when he found out the truth. And then Magnussen is blackmailing an assassin who recently threatened to execute him but shot Sherlock Holmes instead, in order to try to get at Sherlock’s brother Mycroft, another powerful governmental figure. 

But what does media seeking out dirt on certain people in power and their families have to do with “people who are different”? Despicable as the method may be, isn’t this unfortunately how political power play usually works in our society? Or are TPTB somehow a repressed minority group now? Unless this whole “people who are different” accusation is actually about something entirely different, something that none of the show makers even cares to mention... ;)

In these DVDs, none of the involved persons is ever discussing the change of roles with regards to canon, though, or the (lack of) logics in this turn of events, or even a hint about the narrative motivation behind them. It’s all about the great Drama, the extraordinary visual effects and the aim to endlessly “surprise the audience”. Which is fine by me to a certain extent, but when this is all that’s being said, it feels extremely superficial, as if the audience is merely seen as a bunch of consumers that have to be triggered more and more by horror, special effects and cliff hangers to be able to appreciate the show. (“Warm paste” indeed, like Gatiss has later criticized some viewers of wanting...) While the "why”; the idea behind this surrealistic adaptation, made by self-proclaimed fanboys of ACD, is not even touched upon. Around this, the silence is total and therefore totally confusing.

Maybe I shouldn’t even go into Series 4...

...but why not, since I’ve already started? :) 

First of all, there’s a lot of extra material on this DVD and I particularly love the parts about the music and composing and Arwel Wyn Jones’ work with the design and build-up of John’s and Mary’s flat and the interior of 221B. Those bits are truly enjoyable. What I could live without, though, is the leading commentary that kind of instructs us, the audience, how we should interpret the show. 

Benedict is on it again on this DVD, telling us that in TST they picked up where they left off in S3 and “It’s a very happy unit of three people that then become four.” Why does he feel the need to make this statement, considering how S3 ended? Actually, if there’s anything I totally fail to see in S4, it’s happiness. The banter between the three  of them may seem entertaining for a while, but who could have a relaxed, warm relationship with someone who tried and almost succeeded to kill you less than a year ago? Without any sign of remorse? Now there’s a dark tone of discomfort and mean jokes that feels forced and not even a bit happy to me. 

But Martin tells us how excited John and Mary are about starting a family and Amanda mentions how much they’re looking forward to the baby. Again and again it’s repeated, as though trying to rub it in: “they’re in a good place, they’re a loving, married couple”. Yeah, right - a child that (judging by TSoT) wasn’t at all planned and now with an assassin for a mother... Twice we see the new parents complain that their daughter has the mark of Satan on her forehead and debate which horror movie she’s from. The clichéd hypocrisy of it all is sickening, and I’m willing to bet that it’s really meant to be. ;) 

But Gatiss chimes in, deciding for us all that the christening of Rosie is “a funny scene” and “they’re enjoying each other, enjoying being on adventures as a three”.

An interesting detail is that Gatiss also tells us that the working name of this episode was “The Adventure of the Melting power Ranger”. So this little blue guy was that important? :) And - even more interesting - is when he says: “Cake is now the code for violent death”. So how should we interpret Sherlock, John and Molly going out to have cake in TLD then, on Sherlock’s (supposed) birthday? 

These might be jokes, though, but when they tell us that Sue cries every time she sees Mary’s death I strongly believe they must be joking. How could anyone feel truly moved by this overly sentimental long monologue where far more efforts are put into reacting to Mary’s speech than saving her life? And John’s mooing like a cow, is that also moving? :)

One thing Martin says about TLD that actually disgusts me is regarding the morgue scene where John assaults Sherlock and Sherlock lets it happen: “From there, really, their relationship can only sort of rebuild, that’s the absolute worst it can get”. As if outright physical abuse would be something that makes you want to rebuild a relationship? Wow - just wow... How far can they go with this crap?

Anyway, when we finally arrive at the absurdity of TFP and Sherlock’s ‘secret sister’, everything is of course discussed as if she actually does exist on the given premises, and everything she does is ‘real’, no matter how impossible it would be in real life. The abandonment of any attempt to have the story line make logical sense is skillfully covered up by more distraction with fascinating technicalities of the film making process. This is where Gatiss makes his now almost classic statement that after Sherlock and John jump out of the window at 221B when a grenade explodes there, it’s just “Boop! And they’re fine.” 

Of course there’s no serious attempt at explaining this logically. Except perhaps Gatiss claiming that they both landed on Speedy’s awning - whatever good that would do to them, since the awning is leaning downwards, but never mind... But we never even saw that happen, did we? A great deal of time is then dedicated to show all the precautions to have Martin and Ben jumping safely at low level onto a madras supported by empty cardboard boxes.

Sian Brooke did say something interesting about Sherrinford, however, that got me thinking. She said that Eurus “wants revenge for the years and years that she has been held captive” there, isolated, and that in TFP the Holmes children are now “lab rats” and “it’s an experiment”. On a meta level, I think we can indeed see this episode - and maybe the whole show - as a kind of experiment, but maybe we, the audience, are also lab rats? Since Sherrinford is slightly shaped like a film camera (not commented in the extra material, of course), it leads my thought to all the adaptations through the years and years where Holmes and Watson have not been allowed to be together. A whole century when Sherlock Holmes has been held captive, restricted by the very same sort of heteronormative filter that all this extra material imposes; it’s like Sherrinford, isn’t it? Which gives all the more meaning to Moriarty’s arrival to the island, accompanied by Freddy Mercury’s “I want to break free”...

I think I’ll let the final words in this little exposé come from Mark Gatiss in The Writers’ Chat (my bolding):

“Moriarty is a fascinating thing in that in our sea of ongoing lies, one thing we’ve genuinely been completely consistent about is telling people he’s dead. But no-one believes it! And it’s a rather brilliant thing.”  Again - self-congratulatory statements. But instead of providing some actual evidence of the death of this character, who has kept popping up in almost every episode since his supposed demise, they think that the more a confirmed liar repeats something, the truer it gets? And the more we’re supposed to believe them? Well, all we can do is wait and see. :)

Tagging some people who might be interested: 

@raggedyblue​ @ebaeschnbliah​ @sarahthecoat​ @gosherlocked​ @lukessense​ @sagestreet​ @thepersianslipper​

My earlier meta on a similar topic (X)

[firelxdykatara]

Katara x Aang :3c

are you trying to get me in trouble

-cough-

no but in all honesty, my genuine feelings about kataang boil down to three major points: 1. it's boring, and does not jive thematically with either of their character arcs, to the point of, 2. actively hampering character development on both sides, and 3. katara deserved better.

points expanded under the cut. (please, if you're a kataang shipper and you see this, just keep scrolling. i've tagged it appropriately and put the bulk under a cut and at this point that's literally all i can do lmfao.)

send me a ship and get my (brutally) honest opinion!

1. It's Boring: This is the most subjective point on the list (I mean, in fairness, it's all subjective, but I have evidence from the show and post-canonical materials to support my other points; this one is just preference), but there's just... nothing to kataang. It's cute (when it's not actively aggravating), and... that's about it. It's not even that I dislike friends-to-lovers as a shipping trope (though it's not my overall preference), because there are a lot of friends-to-lovers couples that I do ship (kanej comes to mind, also will/elizabeth from potc, karolsen from supergirl, romione and hinny from hp, among others), but one thing that I think all of those couples have that kataang doesn't is that both sides of the pairing are teens or adults when they get together, with teen/adult dynamics and issues and stories to deal with, rather than one half being a teenager and the other being literally prepubescent.

And don't get me wrong, I have no problem with age gap ships in general. And as far as atla goes, Katara, at 14, has the same age difference from Zuko (16) as Aang has from her, and it's never stopped me--because both Katara and Zuko are well into puberty when they meet and I have no problem picturing them being into one another and growing together as they enter adulthood. Aang, on the other hand, is a child. And he acts like it. Which wouldn't be a problem, if the show weren't expecting me to believe he is a) ready for a romantic relationship, and b) ready for one specifically with Katara, who is not only older and far more mature but is specifically cast as his caretaker in a very maternal role for the entire show's run.

This show asks me to believe that a teenage girl well into adolescence is going to be attracted to and develop romantic feelings for a pre-adolescent child--and it asks me to believe this while showing us otherwise that Katara's type is actually older boys with fabulous hair and angsty pasts in all of her other potential romantic dalliances--and then enter into a relationship with him, all while ignoring the elephant in the room that is the fact that she was basically acting like his mother for the entire series to that point. (Something that is heavily lampshaded earlier in the very same season.) That just stretches the bounds of credulity way too far for me, especially when there's no evidence that Katara herself would get anything out of their romantic relationship.

There's nothing there for me to sink my teeth into. No delicious development, no parallels where they help each other grow, no internal conflicts that they have to work through together, nothing. Certainly no reason for me to actually believe Katara feels (or would grow to feel) anything for him other than the platonic affection of a caretaker. I can easily believe she loves him dearly, as a friend and quasi-little-brother, but I just can't see that developing naturally into romantic love--not the way it's presented in the show.

And even if they did manage to at least make the development of Katara's feelings believable, unless they changed something fundamental about the nature of their relationship, it'd still be boring, so.

2. It Actively Hampers Their Character Development--On Both Sides: I've written before (extensively lol im so sorry) about how kataang is actively detrimental to Katara and to Aang. In short (because ye gods this post is already getting long enough), Katara is narratively harmed by being shoved into a relationship that completely ignores her stated feelings--a relationship that had been presented as a one-sided puppylove crush for the vast majority of the series--and it inhibits her growth as a character in ways that become far more obvious in the comics and lok, where the very same creative forces that lead to her beginning a relationship with Aang in the first place reduce her to 'the Avatar's girl' and very little else, all the way through to the end of LoK (where she is a Healer and the Avatar's wife and, again, very little else).

As for Aang:

As to how this relationship is detrimental to Aang (other than the comics and LoK nonsense)? Just take a look at book 2, when he’s trying to learn Earthbending from Toph. Katara constantly coddles him. Much of the time, she’s afraid to be anything other than gentle and understanding with Aang--partly because of her fear that if she pushes him too far, he’ll run away. (Which he does, several times.) But sometimes, what Aang needs to grow is a sharp kick in the slats, which Toph was more than willing to provide--and which worked. Katara was great for teaching Aang to waterbend, but he needed more than that to grow as a person. And he can’t get that while he’s in a relationship with someone who will apologize for getting upset when he was very explicitly neglecting her.

In addition, it is pointed out by Guru Pathik at the end of Book 2 that one of Aang's chakras is blocked by his attachment to Katara. Aang takes this to mean (incorrectly) that he has to stop loving her in order to become fully realized as an Avatar, but this is actually part of the problem--because the issue isn't that he is in love with Katara, it's that he's possessively attached to her. He believes himself entitled to her love in return, rather than selflessly loving someone regardless of whether or not they return that affection. (This is obvious come the EIP episode, where Aang demands to know why he and Katara aren't in a relationship already--because he kissed her without asking [or even checking to see if she'd be ok with kissing him], which he phrases as mutual even though it very much was not, and he gets angry and violates her boundaries when she says that she is confused and doesn't want to think about it right then.)

It is his attachment to Katara--the need for her to return his love, the belief that she will and it is only a matter of time before he gets what he wants--that he was supposed to let go of, not his feelings for her in general. Unfortunately, while he pays lipservice to doing this (far too late for it to be useful--if he'd stayed with the Guru for five more minutes and unlocked his chakra there, that battle would've gone very differently), he almost immediately backtracks on that development come book 3, and there isn't another single whisper of Aang maybe growing up and moving past his one-sided and possessive crush and realizing that even if Katara doesn't feel the same way, it doesn't mean she loves him less or that their friendship is less important.

What really needed to happen, for Aang to grow as a person and become fully realized as an Avatar, was for him to grow up. To realize that his feelings were not of paramount importance, and that even if he was in love with Katara, he was not entitled to her love in return. He should have been able to move past his need for her to love him back, in order to get past that stumbling block, unlock his chakras, and regain the Avatar State in time to face the Firelord. But he didn't. As a result, they had to find some other way to just give him the Avatar State (a well-placed rock) and the means to defeat Ozai without killing him (the deus ex lionturtle) and his entire character arc just fell apart in the third act rather than reaching a satisfying conclusion.

3. Katara Deserved Better: This really ties into how her romantic relationship with Aang hampered her own development, but I'm still bitter enough about it that it gets its own bullet-point. And the biggest single reason I could never ship kataang--the thing that would've turned me off even if there were substance and a halfway decent storyline for them--is the fact that Aang kisses her without her consent (for the second time) in Ember Island Players, Katara gets angry at him and storms off, and then..... she walks out onto the balcony to make out with him.

With nothing to bridge that gap.

It's bad enough that a show aimed at children had a scene where the child protagonist kissed the object of his affections without her consent when she didn't want him to (made explicit by her angry reaction)--and this is absolutely an issue when the show is aimed at children and it may well be the first experience they've had with consent issues portrayed in media--but this moment is never addressed again. Katara just decides--completely off-screen--that she does love him Really and walks out to make out with him in the epilogue. There's no conversation, no apology for violating her boundaries, no discussion of why that was wrong or any indication that Aang understands what he did and why it upset her. They don't have a single one-on-one interaction between that kiss and the epilogue, and the only other time they are on screen together, Aang yells at her and storms off.

So, even leaving the comics and lok aside, Katara deserved much better from her own romantic plotline. In fact, she deserved to have one, rather than simply being the oblivious object of Aang's affections, given a couple moments where she blushes but otherwise remains completely ignorant of his feelings (she looks shocked and upset when he kisses her prior to the invasion, and then she completely forgets that even happened because she's confused as to what Aang is even talking about during EIP until he brings it up; that's not the behavior of a fourteen-year-old girl who was kissed by someone she was developing romantic feelings for), before the epilogue where it becomes clear that she figured all of that out off-screen and had feelings for him after all.

She's a main character, not a side-character written in solely to give one of the mains a love interest. She deserved a romantic plotline of her own. (She could have had one with someone else, with very few changes made to what was actually on-screen prior to the epilogue, but that's another conversation entirely.) She deserved to have her feelings considered at all important by the person she was going to be paired with in the end, rather than having him just assume she felt the same way and then get mad at her for never giving any indication of it when he'd never asked about her feelings to begin with. She deseserved agency in her own romantic narrative, and she just didn't get that with Aang.

So yeah, at the end of the day, my biggest issue with kataang is that it involved doing Katara dirty, and she's my favorite character and she deserved so much better damnit.

[angelguk]

→ lessons in love — a jeongguk scenario

member: jeon jeongguk

word count: 5.4k

genre: smut + that’s it there’s barely a plot i just ramble for 5k words + besties!au + virgin au

warnings: virgin!oc / jeongguk keeps laughing at her / hey can i touch your dick for experience purposes / except jk is kinda into oc but let’s not discuss that yeah / um descriptions of dick / a handjob that takes forever to be a handjob / oc is babie but like she could be soft dom if she tried / basically jk is a leo moon and oc is taurus idk why she just is / somewhat sub!guk if u want it 2 be / over-stimulation kinda / they r not in highschool they just graduated it’s summer and oc would like to understand how dicks work / there’s a lot of hesitation in this but everyone has consented jk just has to do a lot of manhandling for oc to even touch him

soundtracks: dwbyf + bother, lil halima

a/n: happy birthday aleah! :3 💕💖

This is weird. Jeongguk knows this is super weird. He can feel it in the rigidness of his shoulders, stiff with a pressure that makes his skin crawl. There’s a weight wavering over his head and heart pounds erratically in his chest, driven by nerves he’s struggling to adjust too. Because, in what world is it normal for him to be sitting pretty at the edge of his bed, stripped to nothing but a loose t-shirt and his boxer-briefs, waiting to instruct his best-friend of twelve years on how to give a handjob? Jeongguk’s already came to the realisation that his life was an utter tragic comedy. But this? This was an incredibly new low for him. And when you meander into his room, the bathroom door adjacent to his room falling shut behind you, Jeongguk has the overwhelming urge to call this off. He really could; just slip his pants back on and kindly ask you to leave. But when you glance at him, gaze unexpectedly steady, it throws him off. He’s already somewhat lost, navigating through the anxiety and excitement that mingle in his system with difficulty and the indifference in your features isn’t helping. It’s what makes him swallow the apprehension that clogs his throat, forcing out a sentence that sounds meek even to his ears.

He says it at you descend onto the bed beside him, the tension between your bodies tangible.

“Are you sure you want to do this?”

You pause, staring at him closely before you give a quick nod of your head. “Yes. Are you not sure?”

Jeongguk doesn’t know where he stands at right now. He really wants this. There’s already a tingle of heat sparking in his gut and you haven’t even touched him. But he’s also acutely aware of how this could change things. Maybe not for you because you were so painfully oblivious it hurt. But for Jeongguk? He knows his entire world could shift. Turn upside down on its head leaving him disoriented and lost in a complex ocean of emotions he’d never dared to dive into. But he still wants to, so bad that he thinks he might never forgive himself if he lets you leave him like this right now. Especially when you were offering to give him something Jeongguk had thought about more times than he’d like to admit.

He still remembers the night you asked him about this, the pretty innocent look on your face as you’d bunched your hands into the hem of his shirt and murmured your question. He’d forgotten how to breathe, for a moment, when those words glided out of your mouth.

“Can I give you a handjob?” No hidden objectives, just your body huddled into his one night, pressed so tightly together that Jeongguk could feel you. Every inch of you. He’d spluttered on air, his own hands falling to clasp yours and gently push you away because Jeongguk needed space if he didn’t want to do anything he’d immediately regret. But your face had fallen so quickly at that subtle rejection. And before he could tug you closer, reassure you that his reaction wasn’t negative, you were wilting into yourself, suddenly so far from him that Jeongguk couldn’t help but recoil, yearning for the warmth of you against.

“Why?” He tried instead - which was the wrong question. Who inquires the intention of a blowjob? Jeongguk, that’s who.

You’d frowned at him, the scowl on your pretty lips making his heart pound. “Never mind.”

“No – tell me, why?” Jeongguk’s pushed it because he still couldn’t process it the sentence that had left your mouth. It had not settled in his head yet, what that offer meant for him. For your friendship.

“Just because,” you’d retorted, shifting away. “But forget it. You don’t want to anyway.”

“I never said that.”

And that was all it took. You were looking at him again, the glean of hope in your gaze making Jeongguk want to do very dangerous things that he normally would never have conjured up in his head if your eyes weren’t settling on him like that.

“I want to learn,” you replied.

“How to give a handjob?” Jeongguk responded, the disbelief in his voice obvious.

You’d pouted, but your face betrayed the hesitation that gripped your heart. “I’m about to go to college and I’ve never even kissed someone Jeongguk. Or done anything with anyone – I think I should at least learn something before... You know.”

Jeongguk did not know. At all. But he withheld that comment, still bewildered that you were asking for this. “So, why start with a handjob? Not kissing?” The furrow in his eyebrows was instinctive.

“Why would I want to kiss you?” You’d snapped back, clearly irritated by the contents of this conversation even though you were the one that had initiated it.

Jeongguk had just glared, perturbing by this sudden side of you. “Yeah, but you’re willing to touch my dick.”

“All dicks are the same,” you replied.

“No, they’re not. Some have foreskin, some are short as hell, some are –”

“I don’t want a fucking descriptive piece, Jeongguk. Just tell me whether it’s yes or no.”

He’d faltered, taken the moment to read the gaze in your eyes. “You’ve still not told me why you want to do this. And why me?”

“Because you’re the only boy I can stand,” you said, slow with your words.

“Why not just…. learn from porn?”

“It’s not the same thing and you know it,” you’d replied. For once he can agree with you; there’s a difference between watching people fuck and doing the act itself. And it’s a lot more overwhelming and intimate when it’s your first time doing anything like that. “Besides, I don’t like watching that stuff.” That’s when you started twiddling with your hands in your lap, lithe pretty fingers fumbling over themselves. He doesn’t know if that was on purpose but it made Jeongguk’s brain start working, gears in his mind turning as a visual suddenly sprang before his eyes. The feeling of your hands around him, smaller this his own, working yourself along his length, touching him in ways he never imagined could be a reality.

That’s partially why he’s here now, half-naked on his bed. The other reason is that the idea of you doing this with anyone else kindled a fire of possessiveness in his gut that Jeongguk was very foreign too.

You nudge your foot against his, retrieving Jeongguk from the well of his thoughts with the abrupt reminder of your presence. It’s oddly silent in the room – something unacquainted to the both of you because you could never be quiet around Jeongguk. Not since the day you met him, when you were that little but loud rambunctious child that somehow befriended Jeongguk one late afternoon.

But you’re no longer children. Jeongguk’s painfully aware of that fact. Because he’s about to teach you how to give handjobs.

“Are you hard?” You suddenly say, breaking through the silence that cloaks you with an innocence that makes Jeongguk nervous. He is adamant not to give in to it, feeling somewhat irritated that he’s so weak for you that he’s allowing this. Your eyes aren’t even looking at him, focused on the band poster plastered onto his bedroom wall. The corner of it is ripped, and you’re trying to recall the name of the band when Jeongguk scoffs rather loudly, demanding your attention back on him. When your eyes meet, something tightens in your chest. It’s fast and has claws that sink deep, gripping your heart with intent. He’s staring at your closely, gaze unwavering and you’re struggling to decipher the hidden words in his eyes.

“Do I look like I’m hard?” He says it plainly, but there’s a challenge in his tone that you refuse to fall bait to.

“Well… Get hard then.”

Jeongguk laughs. He actually laughs. And you can’t help but be annoyed as your eyes falter to your lap, your palms warm because this shouldn’t be as awkward as it was. Yes, you were about to give your best friend a hand job but shouldn’t there be instinctive sexual tension? Electricity in the air or whatever. Not this – this mortification you feel so deep in your bones because Jeongguk knows you’re inexperienced and he’s just laughing at you.

The punch you land on his shoulder is involuntary, but all you do is hit hard firm muscles and he barely flinches, his fingers slipping into the mess of brown curls that sit atop his head like a halo.

“You’re making it hard to get hard with that attitude,” he comments. Which is true. Jeongguk is incredibly soft right now. Maybe it’s his uneasiness getting in the way but there’s also the wide gap of space between your bodies that is not aiding to the situation in his pants right now. And he’s the only one almost naked. You’re fully dressed beside him, which is strange but not as strange as the fact that you’re in his room to give him a handjob. And still, you won’t even look at him. He’s noted it, the way you’re sitting at the very edge of his bed, ass perched so precariously he’s surprised you haven’t fallen off yet, with your eyes glued to his walls or your lap. Never on his crotch. Not even on him for longer than a brief moment. It’s off-putting. How were you meant to touch his dick with your hands when you blatantly didn’t even want to look at it.

“Well… What can I do to help then?” You murmur. It would be nice if Jeongguk could just hurry up and get hard on his own because you were only here for one thing and that was a lesson you suddenly wished you’d looked for elsewhere. But it was too late to pretend like this never happened – it would be easier to just get it over and done with before swiftly erasing it from your memory.

Jeongguk clears his throat, and you immediately regret offering any help because he seems like he doesn’t want it. Not from someone with your naivety. But in reality, the simple question has a torrent of thoughts flooding Jeongguk’s mind and he has to physically stop himself from drowning further in that hole in his head because he might never be able to reach the surface if he lets himself get that deep. It’s enough for something to spur in his gut, a quick flash of heat that wanes out faster than he wants it too. But it’s a start. And that’s all Jeongguk needs to pretend like this isn’t as weird as it is.

“We could lie down instead,” Jeongguk offers, glancing at you as he awaits your approval. When you nod the tension in his body fades for a bit. Because it would have been ten times weirder if you gave him a handjob sitting on the edge of his bed with ten inches of space between your bodies.

It takes you a moment to get comfortable, rearranging the various pillows that scatter Jeongguk’s mattress until you’re both settled. Jeongguk’s flat on his back and your resting on your elbow, your bodies lined against each other. The intimacy makes your stomach swoop, a fast flash of longing that spreads through your system when Jeongguk tugs his shirt upwards, revealing his firm abdomen. He’s all taut muscles and brute strength and even though Jeongguk is your best friend you can’t lie that that doesn’t do something to you. He’s attractive in a conventional way; tall, handsome and so charming that it makes you sick. But at this moment Jeongguk looks so vulnerable, baring himself to you in a way that makes your heart thump hard.

Your stillness makes him diffident.  

“You’re going to have to touch me, you know,” Jeongguk says, gaze flickering to the way your shirt stretches across your chest. He shouldn’t be staring but it’s tight, revealing the silhouette of your chest easily. He’s noticed them before, but never like this. Something in him hates the way his dick stirs awake in his pants.

“I know,” you retort. And then your hand is skipping down his chest with no hesitation, fingertips warm as the journey along his happy trail. It’s the suddenness that takes his breath away, how bold you are as you touch him, the feeling of your hand tracing ginger patterns just across his navel sending heat right to his gut.

“I – uh – thought you said you were new to this,” Jeongguk can’t help but mumble. There’s already a stiffness forming beneath his underwear and normally he would be embarrassed but Jeongguk can’t seem to muster up a reason to care in this already bizarre situation.

“I am,” you reply. And he can still you’re still tentative from the way your palm hovers above his growing bulge.

“Go ahead,” Jeongguk says, giving you a pointed look that you return with vehemence. But before he can get out another jib at you, your fingers are cupping his cock, pressing hard into the fabric covering his length and Jeongguk short circuits.

You’re not even doing much, but the feeling of your warm palm against his has his brain struggling to string together a sentence, the heat consuming his body steadfast now. He bucks up into it, relishing the tiny gasp of awe that leaves your mouth. Because Jeongguk is rock hard now, heavy and thick under the press of your fingertips, straining against the material of his underwear. It’s then the air shifts – a subtle difference you wouldn’t have noticed if your ears didn’t discern the breathless moan that Jeongguk chokes out when you gingerly squeeze his length.

“That’s – oh,” he sighs when your drag the edge of your nails over his length, cock twitching because of the unexpected gentle pressure. But then you halt, looking at him for further direction and Jeongguk abruptly remembers the reason for this whole situation. He had lost himself, for a moment, in the feeling of your hands touching him like that. But there’s no place for that here.

“I don’t like it dry,” Jeongguk says, gesturing towards his drawers. “There’s lube there, third drawer.”

You’re up fast, digging through his stuff until your hands clasp around a bottle. “Strawberry?” you deride, drifting back to the bed where Jeongguk waits.

He blushes, abhorring the tingle in his gut. “What? It smells good,” Jeongguk justifies. But then you’re dipping back into his bed and he nearly bites his tongue. A part of him wants to ask you to take your top off, make him feel less exposed than the does right now. But that’s overstepping your argument. It was just meant to be him – this was educational after all.

You’re kneeling beside him all of a sudden, a delicate motion that makes his chest bloom dangerously. The bottle is twiddling in your fingertips, the confidence you’d exhibited moments ago diminishing rather quickly and Jeongguk realises you won’t touch him again unless he pushes for it.

“Leave that,” he says, taking your hand. The bottle hits the sheets with a soft thud. “Touch me again.”

Your fingers itch to do so but you’re still so unsure of yourself so you don’t move. Jeongguk exhales, so low that you wouldn’t hear it if it wasn’t for the silence in his room.

“Can I do something?” he mumbles. You nod because you know if he didn’t, nothing would happen and the both of you would have to wallow in this awkward mess you’d initiated.

His hand is gentle as he tugs your own downwards, resting your palm against his straining bulge once more. You slip in some pressure because you know he likes that, and from the subtle twitch of his cock underneath your palm, you think your observation was correct.

“I’m… I’m gonna take it out now.” He only says it not to startle you, because you feel so skittish beside him that Jeongguk has to hold every reaction you draw from him back. He waits for you to nod before he shifts your fingertips the band of his underwear, wordlessly encouraging you to help him out of the last bit of fabric that supports the boundaries of your friendship. You just dig your fingers into the elastic, throat tight as you force it down with the assist of Jeongguk shifting out of the material. His cock hits the cool air a second later, bouncing along the firm lines of his abdomen. The first thing you register is his size. He’s large. Not like you have anything to compare it too, but you’re not that foolish. You know he’s big. That’s what makes you pause, quiet because you’re actually about to touch your best friend's dick.

Jeongguk doesn’t notice it until underwear is somewhere on the floor, cock patiently waiting for a touch that never comes. He tries to give you time to adjust, but you’re just staring at his dick and it’s unsettling.

“Why are you just looking at it,” he asks. You blush in response, face bright with your bashfulness. Jeongguk feels a little embarrassed too. It’s one thing having your best-friend give you a handjob, it’s another to watch her just stare at your cock like it’s a bug.

“I don’t know,” you respond. But you do. Porn wasn’t your favourite thing in the world although you have seen penises before, mainly out of natural curiosity. However, seeing one up close with your own eyes and having the imminent knowledge that you were about to touch it was something else entirely. You don’t know where to put your hands so they stay put in your lap and you consider, for a brief moment, asking Jeongguk to forget about this entirely. That would be incredibly difficult to do though. You’ve seen his dick now – it’s scored in your memory for eternity. Every detail of it, from the veins that run along his length to how it sits heavy against his abdomen, head red with expectancy.

“You’re going to make me soft,” Jeongguk abruptly says, cutting through your apprehension.

“Sorry.”

There’s a long pause. He sighs again. You feel stupid.

“Do you… want to try to touch it? We can stop here if you’re not comfortable.” Jeongguk says it so gently and you feel even worse immediately.

You want to scoff at that because the person who should be uncomfortable here is Jeongguk. You’re the one who put him in this situation and now you’re just staring at his dick like it’s the ugliest thing you’ve seen on the planet. For the record, it’s rather nice. A decent length and thickness that makes your thighs clamp together involuntarily. The fact that you now know what Jeongguk's dick looks like is jarring in itself.

“Show me?” you say. “I mean like… how to touch it.”

Jeongguk bites back a soft laugh. “Just touch it. I’ll like anything you do.” When you reach for the bottle of lube he halts you. “Try without that first, though. If you want to.”

You nod your head, taking in a deep breath because your hands are shaking. And then you reach forward before you can overthink this any further, your fingers wrapping around his length. The first thing you register is how soft he feels in your hands. Warm too. Your gut twists suddenly at the weight of you against your skin, a sharp heady feeling that coaxes your fingers around him tighter.

“Oh – oh fuck,” Jeongguk shudders for a second, the sudden feeling of your bare palm against his length making his head spin. You’re not even moving your hand but he spine tingles, the promise of his high sitting thick in his bones.

“So…what now?” You ask, holding his dick like it’s a fucking joystick.

He can’t help it, the laugh the drifts from his lips. It’s innocent but your blush so hard that Jeongguk partially regrets it. So he stifles it and reaches out for the discarded bottle of lube in his sheets.

“It’s literally so simple, like so simple.” His flicks the cap up. “Open your hand.”

The lube is cold in your palm and you can’t help the tiny flinch that flickers over your face. You hadn’t expected it to feel like that, but you adjust quickly. When Jeongguk’s satisfied with the wetness coating both your hand and his cock, dumps the bottle to the side. His hand settles around yours a second later, gingerly guiding your fingers around his once more.

It warms up quick, the moment your hands begin to create a steady rhythm of up and down strokes along his length. It’s oddly lewd, the sound of your hands working around his cock, his fingers directing your motions. Jeongguk swallows the small sounds that threaten to leak from his throat, afraid he’ll make you uncomfortable. But he notes one thing right away. You’re too gentle. He likes his handjobs hard and fast and demanding. But you touch him like he’ll crumble in your hands.

“It’s not going to break,” Jeongguk mumbles a second later, unable to keep that remark to himself.

“Well,” you retort, exasperated because Jeongguk is so silent beneath you. Not even a gasp to let you know how well you’re doing. “What am I supposed to do?” You ask because you want this to be good for him. Need it to actually. There’s a heat pooling between your legs that you refuse to acknowledge but you’re acutely aware of the how tight your chest feels.

“You could just –” And then his hand squeezes down on yours, subsequently tightening the grip you have on the base of his cock. His body reacts instantly, just a shallow shift of his hip upwards but it’s enough to let you know what to do. “Holy –” Jeongguk stops thinking, brain turning mellow because you squeeze around him again and when your hands twist upwards your grip is tight, dragging at the edge of his head when you pull down. It’s so different from the stoic way you were touching him just moments before. You move with finesse, stumbling sometimes but you read his body well enough to know that Jeongguk reacts when you touch him like this, rather rough even though your fingers glide along his cock. You’d never thought he’d prefer it like this but the way he shivers whenever your palm settles tight around his head is enough to make you stomach flip. Whether it’s with yearning or surprise you discern just yet. Or rather you refuse to decipher that feeling at all. Instead, you keep your hand moving, swiftly along his length until Jeongguk’s mouth finally drops own, the groan that leaves his lips breathless enough to render your own lungs empty.

“Fuck – that’s so –  Nngh,” Jeongguk’s mumbling into the air, hips shifting up to meet the twist of your hands around his length. His fingers fall away, but you keep your fist tight just as he instructed, snapping up and down in quick motions that make the air charge with a heat you’ve never felt before. It’s weird to look but you can’t look away even if you wanted to. Jeongguk is gorgeous, the head of his cock red and needy, slick slipping from the tip with every graze of your palm along him. It gets swept up in the motions of your hand, which is already beginning to ache with the constant friction but the feeling of Jeongguk writhing underneath you spurs you forward, a sudden determination blooming in your chest. He’s not even hiding his moans, the air coloured with the cadences of his pleasure, so carefree with how he lets you know you’re being good to him. It’s intoxicating, observing the haggard rise and fall of his chest as Jeongguk whines into the sheets, your hands still wrapped tightly around him, coaxing out an orgasm that builds so deep inside of him. He should have jerked off beforehand but the prospect of you touching him like that had halted him. And now he was, thighs trembling every time your hand settles tight on his tip, with a load in his balls that he really wants to give you. He couldn’t stop it even if he wanted too. In fact, he desperately chases after it, his brain loose with the pleasure that courses through his body.

Maybe it’s the feeling of your small hand dragging down his cock or the little gasp that drifts from your lips when Jeongguk unknowingly twitches in the palm of your hand. But it happens before he wants it to. A fast cave of his stomach, breathe caught in his throat and then he snaps, spilling all over your hand as your name glides from his lips. A small chant, a prayer to ground him back to Earth because Jeongguk is levitating. Nothing has ever felt this good. And the fact that you don’t stop, hand still working him even when he’s so sensitive, the cum that leaks from his tip aiding the glide of your palm, nearly makes his brain melt into nothingness.

He chalks it up to your inexperience. You don’t know when to stop and give him a breather. But Jeongguk doesn’t mind because he likes it like this. Likes being pushed past what his body can give, enjoys the sting of pain that lies beneath the pleasure. He’d done it to himself multiple times before but it feels so different when it’s your hand working his cock like this. Like you want him to give you everything he has. Everything and more.

Jeongguk knows he’s in trouble the moment the forces his eyes to crack open, the shudder that slips down his spine when he finds you looking at his cock as you wring him dry making the bones in his body fuse together. He’s tingling, bursting with heat and electricity that threatens to devour him whole. But then his eyes shift to your lips and your tongue sneaks out, skipping over your bottom lip, pink and wet. Jeongguk can’t help the thought that forms in his mind. How your mouth would feel around his length, your tongue on his cock, the feeling of you choking on him as he fucked your mouth open. It’s hitting too fast for him to cope, a terrifying burst of warmth that runs from his head to his toe and Jeongguk nearly cries. It’s then that he paws your hands of him, let’s his still hard sensitive dick drop to his chest, desperately searching for air because he’s about to combust.

You only pause then, the stickiness that coats your palm making your chest feel funny. But then you glance at Jeongguk. His golden skin is glistening with sweat the rouge blush that scatters across his bare body, oddly beautiful.

“You’re still hard,” you murmur, involuntarily reaching out for him.

Jeongguk swats your hand away and something in you crumbles.

“Give me a moment,” Jeongguk gasps into the silence, too afraid to move because his dick hurts but it’s still so hard. He can still feel that edge, sharp and dangerous with how makes its presence known in his gut.

“Was I bad at this? You didn’t like it did you?”

Jeongguk wants to laugh again because anyone with eyes could see the mess you’d just wringed out from him. He can feel the streaks of his release on his chest and the fact that you don’t realise this makes him feel things he can’t understand. But he reads the unsureness in your tone and bites back the laugh in his throat.

“I did,” Jeongguk says instead, voice gentle despite the tension in the air. “You were about to make me come again.”

“Oh.”

And that’s all you can say because you see it now, how much the sheets beneath you are ruined not by the bottle of lube you’d all but dumped on his dick but by the mess of Jeongguk that now coats your hands too. You’d never expected it to be this much but there’s something about seeing him now, wrecked on his bed because of the way you touched him that makes your brain go fuzzy for a second. When you shift on your knees, you feel it. The weight in your gut, the heat between your thighs and the wetness that clings to your underwear.

Jeongguk must see it too because he meets your eyes with his heated gaze, cock still painfully hard against the perfect line of his abdomen. He feels himself sink deeper into that hole when your tongue skips over your lips again. There’s trouble in his. He knows it. He knows it so bad and yet he can’t help himself. Not when your eyes settle on him like that.

“Oh,” you say it again, fingertips settling on Jeongguk’s thigh. He tenses because it wouldn’t take much for you to drift your hands upwards, touch him again until he was whining into the sheets helplessly.

He hopes you read it in his eyes, the silent plea for this to not end just yet. He’s not ready to let this opportunity slip from his fingers right now. And then you say it. Jeongguk kind of wants to kiss you right away.

“Do you want me to make you come again?”

You shouldn’t have asked but your brain isn’t currently attached to your mouth right now and the wanton desire leaves your lips before you can swallow it down. There’s a moment of silence in the room and you don’t dare to look at Jeongguk, because you know he’s looking at you.

It’s the lilt in your voice that renders him helpless, plaint to any of the whims you wish to subject him too. You’re bolder than you pretend to be and Jeongguk wants to see more of that. More of this. Even that thought is wrong in itself because this is just a onetime thing. A blunder in your lives that both of you were immediately meant to forget. He sighs hard, back moulding into the sheets of his bed because Jeongguk feels heavy. The weight of his realisation sits on his heart, accompanied by the warning that bubbles in his chest. He should address it, but it’s so easy in this moment to ignore it. Because he wants that as much as you do. Maybe even more. So he lets himself have this, doesn’t question the way his heart flips when you glance at him, still waiting for his answer to your sudden offer. One mistake can’t hurt, can it?

He takes your hand into his, abhorring the way his gut tightens when your whimper. A tiny helpless noise that makes his thoughts run. Would you sound like that with his dick buried deep in you? Would you even be able to take him at first? No one had ever touched you like that. A part of Jeongguk wants him to be the only one to see you like that. But that’s not his to have. You’re just his best friend. That’s it. Yet as he guides your hand back to his length, feels the weight of your fingertips as they wrap around him, Jeongguk can’t help but imagine having more with you.

“You okay?” You suddenly ask, the sudden twitch against your palm drenching your underwear. But Jeongguk looks so distant, spaced out in the solace of his mind. You want him here, want him present. You give his length a sudden squeeze, the soft moan that glides from his mouth soothing the sudden need for reassurance that lingers in your heart. “Is this fine?”

No this is not fine, Jeongguk thinks. He’s not okay – at all. And that’s because he’s thinking thoughts about you and him and together. The both of you. Waking up with you, limbs tangled in his sheets. Going to bed with you in his arms. Being able to kiss you, touch you, without it being strange. Making you feel good underneath him (or on top of him – whichever you preferred). Being there for you forever. Not just as a friend. As more. He can’t help but long for that.

He hums instead, drives his hips up hard. “Yeah,” he says, even though his heart is beating painfully as he lies. “This is fine.”

[generalexcuse]

Alright. I am beating a dead horse here but taking time off of this show and fandom did not work. This will be the last time I ever say something about it but it’s upsetting to me so I need to vent. And to everyone saying “You are an adult man and this is fiction, why are you so obsessed? Weirdo. Learn to differentiate between fiction and reality.” I am going to address these notions as well as other problems I am having here. But really, Inuyasha was one of my first Anime, I have many dear memories and especially Rin was one of my all time favourite characters. Seeing her being mistreated like this upsets me. Ofc it does because if you watch something in formative years it’s not just fiction like a boring sitcom you watch now. Shows and characters are important to people and to simply dismiss it like that even if they would have been equally upset if it wouldnt have become canon, is infuriating. Really this is just therapeutic for me because even after weeks it’s still so baffling to me. Also please excuse the grammar and spelling mistakes. I am not a native speaker.

So the problem is obviously Sessrin and how it’s done because while I absolutely dont agree with this pairing, it would have been fine if it wasnt like it is. 

In the original show, Rin is an 8 yo child and her entire character reflects just that. She behaves like a child and depends on others. She has also been traumatized, doesnt speak at the beginning of the show and dies twice. Both times she is saved by or because of Sesshomaru. In many ways, while she has survival skills on her own, she depends on his presence alone to keep danger away. He also leaves her with trustworthy humans at the end but stays in her life as a protector. Now I like the original dynamic. It’s sweet, innocent and both characters grow because of it. Rin can work through her traumatic experiences, learns to trust others and Sesshomaru becomes a better person.  What happens afterwards only happens offscreen right until Rin gives birth to his children at the crippling old age of 15. 15. My lil sis is 16 now and couldnt consent to something like that. And she is mature af. It’s ridiculous. My blood boils just typing that shit out. And if you give me the ‘it’s legal in Japan’ excuse. In Germany a 14 yo can be with a 20 yo sexually. Still not okay in societies eyes and on tv it’s never shown as something positive. It’s even explicitly forbidden for authority figures like teachers or protectors to be with their protégé before the age of 18 because the chances of even unintentional grooming are too high. 

Now lets take a quick break and discuss how this kind of relationship usually plays out in other fictional pieces. A minor with an adult is something that is being portrayed at times and I dont have a problem with that. The problem is how it’s being done in Yashahime. And I dont mean the nonexisting character development but the fact that even in adult fiction this type of relationship isnt depicted positively. And this show is for young adults and teens that will exist way after all the discourse as the official sequel to Inuyasha. A cult anime. Meaning that in the future young people will watch it. Just like many still watch Inuyasha to this day. It’s on Netflix for fucks sake. Just to preface what comes next.   Some people say, “But cant you differentiate between reality and fiction?!?!?!” Adults can but younger people havent developed this ability to the same extent.   What happened to Rin was statutory r*pe in the USA, illegal even in Germany and should have been depicted as such unless the showrunners and fandom are okay with watching it without criticism or deconstruction. At best it was done with the intention to please the fanbase but really it’s neglectful to anyother part of the present and future audience. Not even most Animes do that. And I get that Sessriners arent into that shit in real life and an adult show could have gone this route because the viewers understand and add the criticism in their heads. Not ideal but whatever to me. But a YA show to go this route is so wrong on so many levels. The younger viewer who will watch this show in the following years might subconsciously internalize that this is acceptable under certain conditions when it’s not criticized properly on the show. That lowers their alertness when an adult actually starts to groom them. How dense do you have to be to assume that the lack of criticism on this YA show is a good thing?? Not everyone who will ever watch this show is an adult or capable of the same reasoning.

But another thing: for the same reason r*pe isnt depicted in a positive light, these types of relationships arent either. Because it’s not a positive thing and most people and showrunners dont want to see or create it as positive. Even in adult fiction, even in other anime, the media critizes and deconstructs what it’s showing because normally the showmakers dont approve but show it for realisitc or dramatic reasons. the same sessrin storyline would fit a fucking horror or thriller series. Just change the music and show it all. No showmakers in their right mind would go “Aye we got a r*pe scene coming up, lets put romantic music and have a pink filter over it.” “But it’s a different time and culture!” People will say and I agree but to have the audacity to assume that back then it was okay or that in todays Japan it’s okay, is fucked up. Think about it for a second. That’s so fucked up to think. Even if the society back then or in Japan thinks it’s okay, does it make it okay? 15 yo girls werent able to consent to adults and bear their children back then. They had to. They were raised with the expectations and they simply grew up thinking that it was the normal thing. But that doesnt make it right. That’s just societal grooming which did not prepare them in any way or allowed them the human dignity that they would have deserved. To now act like it’s all cool to just show the “positive” aspects or to twist it into something positive is so fucked up. Child Brides are a fucked up concept and to portray it as anything else is fucked up and also undermines the experience many girls still have to make. period.

I heard people say that it’s okay to portray it in this way because “Sesshomaru is not human!!!1″ and that’s correct. He is not. BUT, it’s not about being human but about maturity, consens, and independency. Him being a yokai makes it worse imo because there is an obvious power discrepancy. But in this particular fiction a good relationship could have been established (Kagome and Inuyasha for example) on those foundations but they did not because I can only assume they wanted Sesshomaru to smash and the show to pick up at a point where the other characters arent too old to be cool.

“What’s with Sango and Miroku, Kagome and Inuyasha?? It’s the same!” No it’s not. Rin was 8 at the beginning of the show. Kagome was 15 and Sango was 16-17 when they met their significant others. If you now tell me that you think 8 to be comparable to 15-17, I must ask you to get a reality check. Kagome’s and Sango’s relationships were slowburns starting when they already were able to have sexual and romantical feelings. Rin was a child. And Kagome did not kiss Inuyasha until they knew each other for a long ass period of time and bonded as friends and maybe more. Sesshomaru and Rin never were friends in the same way that Kagome and Inuyasha were because the maturity levels are way off. No adult is friends with a little child in the same way they are friends with their adult friends. And normally you dont grow into such a friendship but in the rare case you do, it’s not when she is 15 but maybe 20 or 25. 

Last but not least, Rin is not a character to the audience the same way Kagome or Sango are. Why? Because she was never shown as an adult or 3 Dimensional character to the audience. We know her as a child who wants to be with her trusted group. She is naive, but tough and doesnt have any motivation or drive on her own outside her group. Like every child she clung to the adults around her and her world outside of this group was nonexisting. Kagome wanted to be successful in school, Sango was a demon hunter and wanted to find her brother. Those are motivations and traits that dont circle around the love interest. Rin never had those because she was not developed to that point. Because she was a child and her entire existence was to develop Sesshomaru and to perhaps give the viewer a character to simply adore. What we see is of her: Mistreated child, -> Dead child -> Child being looked after and healing, -> Child not being homeless anymore -> ????? -> Teenager getting knocked up, pumping out main characters and then getting yeeted into a tree. 

This is not the way you treat a beloved character. There is no dignity to her character. “But she is fictional!!1″ Yes she is. But please show me a show that treats its child characters like this without criticizing it. 

I would have loved to see her grow as her own person. Go on her own adventures or learning a craft or developing meaningful bonds with other characters her age. Forming ideas that dont revolve around Sesshomaru alone. You know her being 3 Dimentional and not just there to pump out main characters. And if she then with 20 or 25 met Sesshomaru again and thought he was the hottest shit, I would have been fine with it. Not happy but fine. But in the little time we saw her as ‘not a child’, she still behaved the way she did before. 

[hawkland]

Destiel fic recs #3 - the (mostly) longfic edition!

It’s been a while since my last rec post - mostly because I’ve been wallowing in a number of longer fics (50-350k!) so it’s taken me a while to have enough to talk about in one post (and boy do I talk a lot, here!)

With these longer fics, I do sometimes have some caveats with my recs - or at least reasons why they might not appeal to every Dean/Cas reader. But note that if I didn’t overall strongly recommend reading the fic I wouldn’t include it in my recs here at all, so any quibbles I bring up are minor compared to my overall enjoyment of the stories. Just, I don’t want someone to commit to a long read without knowing what they’re getting into and why it might not be their thing.

I’m still not into reading complete setting AUs at this time, but a lot/most of these are canon-divergence AUs, often written/set at the end of a season and giving an alternative take on what happened next. I love those kind of stories, as it’s often so interesting to see how fans thought of what might happen in the next season (especially when it’s better than what we actually got.)

Onto the recs & discussion behind the cut!

The Sinking Ship by UnfortunatelyObsessed (114k). This is a story that ripped my heart to pieces (in a good way!). I stayed up all night to finish reading because I simply couldn’t stop once I started on it and it gave me a massive fic hanger from all my emotions. Season 14 divergence, imagine if Dean did go into the Ma’lak box to trap Michael under the ocean with him forever...and once there, he discovers that Cas has stowed away with him. Because of course Cas would never leave Dean to such a fate on his own.

I loved literally. Every. Damn. Thing. About this fic. Cas telling Dean stories to pass the (endless) time. Their small intimate moments while realizing they can never consummate physically while trapped in the box but finding every other way to express their love. The absolute heartbreak that had me SOBBING when Michael fights for control of Dean and destroys everything they’ve built together and Cas thinks he’s lost Dean forever. Sam & Gabriel & Rowena & Claire & Jack doing everything they can to devise a plan back home to try to save them both while keeping Michael trapped. Also even just the wonderfully sensitive portrayal of aroace Jack still closely bonded with Claire and Maggie and just. And just. This is a story I’ve already re-read just to savor how much I loved it and its portrayal of everyone in TFW 2.0 and their extended family, it just hit my id in all the most incredible ways and I have nothing but absolute love for this one.

Beautiful Chaos by anyrei, mugglerock (141k). Season 9 canon-divergence, in which Dean doesn’t simply abandon Cas to fend for himself post 09x03. Instead he sets Cas up in a kind of squatter’s nest in an abandoned building near the bunker so he can keep tabs on him and help him out. 

This fic definitely gets the award for FILTHIEST, HOTTEST, SMUTTIEST Dean/Cas (and Cas/other) I’ve read in, like, ever, for human!Cas turns out to be a rather insatiable sex fiend/cock slut and Dean is too up his own repressed ass to easily give Cas what he wants/needs. It is dark at times, Cas ends up in some very unsavory/non-con situations, and the authors do mention that they tried to hone in on endverse!Cas’s characterization more than what we saw in Season 9...so you might roll with it, you might not. I adored their original character Jerry the tattoo artist in this, and like I said it was seriously hot (if you are good with total bottom!Cas and Cas with others, I know those are not everyone’s cuppa). I did have a few minor issues. For one, the last chapter felt a bit rushed and hand-wavey, but clearly the authors weren’t fond of the canon conflicts of season 9 & 10 (Abbadon, Mark of Cain) and just wanted to be done with them. Can’t say I really blame them. And I did have to laugh a bit at Lebanon, Kansas apparently having such a bustling gay bar/tattoo artist/etc scene being someone from a butt-fuck nowhere American small town myself. But, SPN was never all that realistic in how Lebanon was shown (and yes I’ve spent too much time roaming around it on Google maps), so if you can suspend some disbelief this is an awesome hot/angsty/occasionally heartbreaking read.

These Forsaken Lands by destielpasta (53k). I came upon this story when looking for fics that dealt in some way with the aftermath of Godstiel. This is a wonderfully atmospheric late Season 9 “fill-in” case fic (post Meta-fiction) where Cas ends up in a small town that had been visited by Godstiel...and while initially residents have reaped much good fortune, there has suddenly been a wave of deaths/bad events and he is determined to find out what happened and set things right. He calls upon Dean for help, but Dean is fighting the Mark of Cain and it’s going to take a lot to get past its control and find a way out for both of them. Together they work on repairing an old church while trying to repair each other and their damaged relationship.

I loved this story for how well written it was, really invoking a gothic small-town/Americana atmosphere. The original characters blend in very well with the case-fic at the center of it, and the author deals really well with Cas at a very fragile point when he’s running on borrowed grace and trying to navigate Dean’s MoC-enhanced anger. It’s Dean/Cas but actually much more of a Cas character study, so I highly recommend it to my fellow/compatriot Cas-girls who love a good wallow in his head.

Mixed Emotions by Tierra469 (50k). Canon 12 “parallel” fic that then goes canon-divergent with the season finale. I actually stumbled on this while in the mood to read some Cas/ or & Mary fic after enjoying their interactions in Season 12 (don’t hate me). This is sort of two fics in one. The first half focuses mostly on filling in the gaps with some critical S12 Cas episodes, especially Cas & Mary’s developing friendship (and one night of something more). But of course Cas’s feelings for Dean (and vice-versa) are always there, and when Cas figures out a way to get his powers fully back, the question is if Dean can open himself up to be vulnerable - and express love - the way Cas needs for this to work.

This was an interesting fic in a lot of ways. I loved the author’s take on angels’ connections to their vessels and grace, it was very consistent in a way the show sometimes/often wasn’t. Cas is very Cas in not understanding privacy and personal boundaries (so he does some questionable things, admittedly, which might squick some readers). The smut is fucking HOT - though I will caution at one point it involves Cas temporarily in a younger (NOT underage) female vessel (and the story does point out Dean’s discomfort with this and some of the consent issues involved, I don’t want to spoil too much). I wanted the Mary plot resolved more than it was, but I still recommend this story strongly for the quality of the writing and unique/well-developed take on angel lore and mechanics that was quite different from what I’m used to reading.

We Are Either Here Or Not Here by petramacneary (54k) A post-season 12 fic that goes on a different tangent to how Cas returns, and what happens in the meantime. Particularly, it offers a different take on what apocalypseverse!Cas would be like—as Mary makes her own way back from that world with AU!Cas as her prisoner.

What I loved about this story: first off, BAMF!Mary is awesome here. Dean is so heartbreaking, not quite knowing what the fuck to do with this different Cas who at times is just a painful reminder of who/what Dean’s lost...but then becomes a chance for Dean to say and express some of the things he always was afraid to in the past. And when (real/our) Cas finally returns, there’s some very interesting stuff that happens with both Cas & AU!Cas and Cas & Dean that I don’t want to spoil. (And let’s also just say that when real!Cas and Dean finally get together it’s AMAZINGLY awesome. Like, hot Impala!sex. So is the artwork that goes with this story.)

You Can Keep Holding On by NorthernSparrow (353k) The longest fic I read this time around and probably the one I have the most mixed feelings about, but a while on I do keep thinking about parts of it so I do rec it with some caveats. This is a canon-divergence after the end of Season 11. Dean & Sam find Cas after he’s been blasted out of the bunker...to the bottom of the Grand Canyon. Mary isn’t in this one except for a brief appearance/visit, which Dean thinks is Amara’s gift to him. Life seems good for a while, they’re enjoying dealing with mundane problems for a change, but then Cas seems to be pulling away from the brothers, spending less and less time with them at the bunker, taking a mundane job at another Gas ‘n Sip, and clearly preoccupied by something else. Or is it someone else? Dean is worried yet finally ready to accept that Cas maybe has a girlfriend, or a boyfried, but then it turns out that is not at all what Cas has going on. It’s something far more serious than that.

Honestly I almost stopped reading when the reveal happened - it’s a subject that’s very sensitive to me from personal/family experience and not something I usually like reading in fic (especially if there is a sad ending.) So I admit I jumped ahead to read how it would end first before committing to finishing it. And I am glad I did, because the author handles the subject matter with a realism and obvious knowledge of experience as well, not how I often see it in fanfic. There are a lot of emotional ups and downs but it’s nice seeing Dean in his momma-hen/mode, and Sam is so so good in this one! I think I enjoyed Sam’s characterization here most of all! And the author has a really cool/well developed angel/wing lore that hit my wing-kink pretty hard. I do think it could have all been edited down a bit - I found myself skimming parts, especially in the last third, just to get on with things. But it’s definitely a story you can disappear into for a good long time and I’ve bookmarked the author’s other works to read later, so again, I do rec it even with a few caveats.

A few shorter fics, too, just because I don’t want to forget about them...

Eleven Erogenous Zones of a Fallen Angel by almaasi (15k) Pure gratuitous wing!kink for me :) Cas uses the last of his grace to manifest his wings...but then is stuck with them in his human form and not even able to use them to fly as he used to. This presents a lot of awkward problems to deal with but also the excuse for Dean to help him keep them clean :) I did say wing kink, right? :D :D I loved how Cas seemed confused about the pleasure signals he got from bathing vs. sex vs. grooming and all of that. It’s sweet and hot and has my favorite kind of caretaking Dean in it.

Fossil Tracks by SegaBarrett  (3k). Dean & Sam & Cas and dinosaurs. How can you go wrong with that? One of the SPN stories from the Id Pro Quo collection I really enjoyed reading (and didn’t write myself, lol).

[cathyparrlyn]

The truth behind the politics-notmything drama

TLDR: Charley’s explanation has been proven to be false through clear evidence, her contracting statements with what was found from original authors, and too many coincidental or suspicious points.

There are too many screenshots to all fit in this one post, so we ended up putting only a few on here. For the full post, here is a link to the google doc, you can also read this instead:

As many of you may already know, I have recently made a callout post against Charley (@politics-notmything) for being a plagiarist. She, however, has made an explanation of her side of the story. After lots of careful investigating, I can honestly confirm that Charley is in fact a plagiarist and lied about certain points of the situation.

To start off, I waited to make this post until I was basically 100% sure on whether her explanation was the truth or not. There was much evidence against her. However, a friend of mine decided to check the IP addresses of each of the tumblr blogs she had mentioned (I did not ask them to by the way, they just sent them to me thinking it would help.) They sent me them and it showed that Charley's main account politics-notmything had the same IP address as both the fake wolf1ez account that she claimed to trick her and the fake Nikole account she blamed. I will not, however, be posting her IP address as proof as I personally consider posting that publicly without her consent as doxxing, and I do not wish to harm Charley like that. I never even considered looking at her IP address as I am not comfortable with that nor technologically competent to even remember IP addresses are a thing you can look at. However, I can’t ignore that what my friend showed me is very blatant proof that confirms that Charley has been lying, so I shall mention it, but I refuse to send it to anyone and I have told them to do the same. Please respect that decision.

Some of you may just take my word for it on that. However, for those of you who don’t, here is all the other evidence stacking up against Charley’s story.

First things first, let’s say I didn’t know Charley’s explanation was false. Her explanation was that she plagiarized a friend instead who had plagiarized fics. Charley, in the end, had deceived people and accepted praise from those who were misled to believe that writing was true. Because of that and if her story was true, then she gave a platform to terf (later knowing they were one and continuing to post their work) and her followers had unintentionally supported a terf and plagiarist because of her deception. Now, she may have received credit, but she could've easily said at any point that the fics weren’t actually written by her but by someone else who was anonymous. AO3 even has some features to properly credit others.

The definition of plagiarism is the practice of taking someone else's work or ideas and passing them off as one's own. With this in mind, Charley had plagiarized no matter what, and the fact that she never once told anyone about this co owner and has held conversations with me about how she came up with, wrote, and edited She Used to Be Mine, a plagiarized fic, all by herself is very suspicious.

The proof Charley has been sending is also on invalid sites where you can easily create your own evidence. Everyone already knows and understands the unreliability of google docs with handling fake emails and stuff I presume. As for Snapchat, you can very well change the date. It’s the exact same thing as time traveling in animal crossing, and it’s actually decently known among people. Here is a link to an example of someone altering time on snap chat, followed by the results.

(Results are on the google doc.)

Now some might wonder why would she go through all the trouble of doing that? Well, to create evidence to clear herself. The fact that it was posted quite a bit later, and that she had told people prior to this that she deleted all the messages and proof of information that could blatantly defend herself is very sketchy. Not to mention, the account she @ed as “Nikole” was fake and confirmed to be nonexistent by a friend of mine.

Moreover, the tumblr account that she claimed was Nikoles was recently changed between the two days. When Charley first mentioned the account, me and my friends all investigated it and found a post saying she had another account. However, since then it was altered to say the account Charley @ed and the account had a new bio saying her snap chat is the one Charley @ed. But the account was nonexistent the day before?

Is this simply just a coincidence? Well, let’s see what else is a coincidence.

Charley has recently been writing smut and this blamed blog is an NSFW blog. Coincidence? Maybe. But she also claimed to have cut the person out of her life last year. The blog however is more recently made in late 2020. Why would Charley still be in contact with her accounts? Is this another coincidence? Also, if they did cut things off, why continue to still post her work? And why would two of the fics be things that were made this year if she ended their friendship in 2019? How would she have gotten that from “Nikole” if they were cut off? We even asked the original author of one of the fics about the situation and they confirmed that they gave no permission for someone to copy their fic.

Are these all coincidences too? Not to mention, Charley didn’t say just one person she never mentioned before had tricked her into plagiarism, but two. Charley claimed to be good friends with the author of the original Luck be a Lady and have received permission from them, however, they never spoke to Charley before nor gave permission to anyone to use their fic.

When it was found that the original author of the fic that Luck Be a Lady plagiarized was not friends with Charley nor gave her permission like she had said they did, Charley claimed another account that was fake had tricked her.

Again? How likely is that to even happen once, let alone twice? Or for someone with no post on an account that could have easily been made had even interacted with Charley? Or that the texting style in the evidence she posted is similar to her own and could be edited? And also the conversation itself is way too sketchy and convenient?

(Check google doc or Charley’s post for the conversation.)

Charley also just happened to request help with the title in a group chat l was in with her, but she requested help 3 weeks after the conversation she claims to have happened above.

( @all-my-love-cathy by the way was the one who named it, her name was censored because its her personal account with her name real)

Maybe it's just me, but 3 weeks seems like a bit of a long time to wait to name a fic that already had a storyline and pre-written chapters.

Moreover, the fake Wolf1ez also just so coincidentally happened to recently have copied the Twitter pfp of the account that Charley had seen but not their actual tumblr account? And that this blog that doesn’t make posts decided to tell Charley to use a fic they didn’t write?

How did they even find her blog? And why wouldn’t Charley at least double check the situation here since the person is very suspicious in the conversation they had, had no posts and she doesn’t know them? This is the "close friend" they claimed to have co authored with?

Also, Charley claimed to have commented on the AO3 fic and then deleted it. However, the original author never got an email for this. Whether it’s anonymous or not, they would have seen that a comment was deleted, yet they didn’t have one and all the other comments were fine.

The author even had a note written at latest in January 2020 telling their readers to talk to them on Twitter instead of Tumblr.

Their A/N^

(more screenshots are on the google docs)

Why would she discuss it with them on tumblr then if the author didn’t like tumblr, and Charley does in fact have a Twitter, so why not talk to them there? That’s pretty sketchy.

Also speaking of coincidences, how about the fact that the most recent fic she updated that was confirmed to be plagiarized happened to be the very last fic on the supposed list she claimed to have been given by “Nikole”? Or how she later contradicts herself by saying she won’t upload anymore of her fics? What left did she have to upload if they were all used?

Furthermore, the fic just so happened to also be a Rent fic. Wow, right after Hope Mill Theater released Rent with Millie and Maiya both starring in roles, something Charley had seen and recently expressed great interest in. What a coincidence that it was the one she posted that day. Or how about the other fics that were all copied also being her interests? So many coincidences.

Now I hope it is understood that all of these together just don’t add up. Those are way too many “coincidences” for her explanation to be true. The original authors contacted had never spoken to Charley or given her permission to use their fics, and the accounts she used made no sense with how they were presented. Her explanation feels somewhat of an excuse, and the fact that there is definite proof that she has lied in her explanation and is connected to the accounts is unsettling. Blaming a makeup blog is already messed up, but calling them a terf?

I’m sorry if this post is upsetting to anyone? I know a lot of people have been openly angry or devastated at the news of what has been done. Plagiarism is not okay, neither is deception. To see such a big blog that you might have once admired lie to you and steal from others isn’t easy, especially since she has such a big following that others are dreaming to have. Not to mention, this definitely looks bad for fic writers, especially shippers as she was one of the major faces of Parrlyn. I think it’s important to recognize that we can’t encourage or simply overlook issues like these, nor is it fair to many fans. Please make sure to recognize this issue and become aware about it.

What Charley has done isn’t right, however, that doesn’t deny the fact that she is a human being just like every single one of us. She is very young and did something dumb, but she does not deserve to be sent any hate so please refrain from doing that if you so desired to. I know my blog is known for having issues with her in the past, but I genuinely mean it when I say I hope she learns from this and I don’t want her to be attacked. Nobody deserves to be sent hate, and as a fandom we should strive to be bigger and better people each day and only share positivity and kindness with each other.

Please, once again, give the original fic writers credit if you liked fics that were plagiarized. If you could spare a second to give them a kudos/like and possibly comment something simple like “I love this”, I’m sure it would mean a bunch to them. Hearing your fics were stolen is not easy, speaking from experience here as someone who was also plagiarized this year. They could use a bit of love, so please do consider it if you are comfortable with that.

Once again, I spent the past two days since I read Charley's explanation investigating the situation with a group of people. I just wanted to share the truth, maybe it’s the inner journalist in me. This is what I found with them and what I stand by. Believe what you want, I can’t force ideas onto anyone and I know some are bound to disagree with this, but it’s what I found.

For anyone upset over the incident and needs a place to rant or vent, my dms are open and so is my inbox. If you follow me on insta or are a friend on discord I would recommend those as I am a bit more active there. I’ll try to be on as much as I can the next few days in case anyone needs someone to talk to.

[yukisohmasmokesweed]

on: rin/haru and what “grooming” actually means

apparently there is some, hm, discourse going around at the moment claiming that rin groomed haru, crediting this to their 2 year age gap. there seems to be a pretty huge fandom-wide misunderstanding of what “grooming” actually means, so i wanted to talk about rin and haru and compare it to an actual instance of grooming in fruits basket: kyoko/katsuya

tw for discussions of pedophilia, grooming, abuse and references to csa

let’s put legality aside for a moment, and here’s why: legality =/= morality. the federal age of consent in japan is 13. it doesnt take a genius to come to the conclusion that that’s a seriously wack law, a 13 year old cannot consent to sex. however, just like in the united states, each prefecture sets their own local age of consent. fruits basket is set in tokyo, and in tokyo prefecture the age of consent is 18. japan does not have romeo and juliet laws like the US, so in tokyo prefecture neither rin nor haru would legally be able to consent to one another. so let’s set those laws aside because they are irrelevant to this particular conversation. when it comes to kyoko/katsuya, that relationship is illegal both in japan as well as the united states. in fact, katsuya would at the very least lose his job if this happened in america. however age gap relationships are unfortunately still a cultural norm in many places in the world, japan included. as an american i find this pretty shocking, but it is the reality of it

for clarity: haru is a high school sophomore (15 or 16) and rin is a high school senior (17 or 18) during the events of ep 18. kyoko is an eighth grader (13 or 14) and katsuya is 22 when they initially meet.

(source for all following images) (additional source)

so lets talk about the stages of grooming.

-rin did not target haru. yes, they both suffer (different degrees) of isolation, neglect, and abuse, but arguably rin is the more vulnerable one in this relationship. rin and haru are childhood friends as well as social peers, and their relationship grew from a place of mutual like and spending age-appropriate time together throughout their lives. haru offers rin support when she is in a bad place throughout their friendship, and presumably rin offers some sort of emotional support to haru in the same way, though we dont see this onscreen. so we’ve already failed step one

-kyoko is a victim of abuse. she is isolated and neglected by her parents. she has a chaotic home life and a lack of parental oversight, driving her to seek out bonds in an unhealthy environment (the gang). katsuya sees that she is a vulnerable, struggling child and targets her specifically after meeting her.

-does not apply. the only time rin or haru interact with the other’s parents onscreen is when haru is yelling at rin’s parents. we don’t know how haru’s parents feel about rin, but based on the way the sohma adults around rin talk about her and the other zodiacs, i think it’s safe to assume its mild disinterest to an actual dislike. we simply do not know

-doesn’t really apply to kyoko/katsuya either since kyoko’s parents are so absent

-this does not happen at all during rin and haru’s relationship. they are affectionate towards each other, but consensually and in an age-appropriate way

-katsuya doesn’t gift-give, but he does use flattery. he makes comments about kyoko’s physical appearance and her intelligence and gets her alone both in and outside of school to talk in multiple instances. he is purposefully fulfilling kyoko’s need for a positive adult influence in her life, seeing as she has none, and she starts to rely on that because she’s a child and he is being kind to her (from her perspective)

-i’m running out of things to say about haru/rin because this doesnt happen! yes they hang out alone together but again they are social peers. their age gap is simply not significant enough for this to be inappropriate.

-katsuya waits until kyoko is completely isolated from her family and her peers, having left the gang and immediately disowned by her parents, to do this. he shows up AT HER HOUSE at her absolute most vulnerable moment, getting kicked out her home at 14, and informs her that they are getting married. so now she is cut off from her immediate family, cut off from her only friends, and to a child it’s understandable why the only way out of this situation would be through katsuya. not only does she trust him after months of grooming, she basically has no choice but to trust the one and only adult in her life. she’s not even old enough to get a job (japanese labor laws prohibit anyone under the age of 15 from having a job)

-yes, rin and haru do have sex. they are both teenagers. it is not something where rin is exploiting haru’s curiosity about sex or vice versa, it’s two people in the same peer group consensually exploring it together. they are both on the young side for sure, but there is canonically consent (haru asking permission to kiss her). teenagers having consensual sex with other teenagers is not abusive in any way

-we don’t know when kyoko and katsuya’s relationship gets sexual, but kyoko was underage for sure. she’s 18/19 when katsuya dies and tohru was 3 or 4, which means when kyoko got pregnant she was 16 at the absolute oldest, and i’m sure they had a sexual relationship prior to the pregnancy. katsuya would’ve been around 24 when kyoko got pregnant

-this simply does not happen between rin and haru. they keep it a secret for a while, but not because rin is trying to control haru. once they’re found out haru talks openly to yuki about his sexual relationship with rin. the secrecy wasn’t a control tactic, they were trying to protect themselves from outside forces

-obviously there is no secrecy here either, but after katsuya dies it’s apparent that kyoko did feel that katsuya was the only person who could meet her needs. the way katsuya took advantage of kyoko’s social isolation and became the only person in her life as well as the person who supported her financially clearly took its toll on kyoko, who is despondent and floundering after his death. she falls into a deep depression and neglects her own health as well as the health of her child. she has no idea how to function without katsuya, as is the design of someone who grooms a child in the way he did.

tl;dr rin and haru dont even come close to meeting the definition of grooming. yes, they are both young, but they are also both in the same peer group as well as both being in bad home situations. their relationship is grown out of a well-established friendship and they mutually support each other. when their relationship turns sexual, they do so from a place of love and verbally consent to one another

kyoko/katsuya is an example of actual child grooming, so much so that it meets nearly every stage to a T. it is disrespectful to peg rin of all people as a groomer when there is such a glaringly obvious example of how a groomer actually acts within fruits basket.

i don’t know how people came to the conclusion that rin is grooming haru, but its an incorrect take and tbh reeks of misogyny! hope this was helpful to people who are confused.

[gameofdrarry]

Wizards Hearts Recs: In Vino Veritas

Wizards Hearts was a four-month-long Drarry reading fest. Players were given a playing deck of 52 tropes, and were asked to find 52 different fics to read and comment on to fill their decks. To prevent the same few fics from being read, fics were restricted to only being used for the game three times before being considered ineligible for further points. The tropes and submissions list can be found here.

Check out the masterlist of fics for this trope below the cut!

📜 Special Delivery (previously Amende Honorable) by alittlebitAlexie Rated:  Mature Words:  11628 Tags: Post-Second War with Voldemort, Apologies, Misunderstandings, Accidents, Owl Post (Harry Potter), Bartender Draco Malfoy, Bartender Pansy Parkinson, Draco Malfoy & Pansy Parkinson Friendship, POV Draco Malfoy, Unrequited Crush, Diagon Alley, Death Eater Trials mentioned, Letters, Love Letters, Gay Draco Malfoy, Flatmates Draco and Pansy, panic attack (mentioned), Nightclub, Confrontations, Running Away, Outing, Veritaserum, Harry Potter Epilogue What Epilogue | EWE, Kissing, Snogging, Undressing, Not Actually Unrequited Love, Secret Crush, Not Beta Read, Not Canon Compliant Summary:  After his trial, Draco writes apology letters to everyone he has hurt. Not so special. But he writes two to Harry. One to actually send, and one (that was never meant to see the light of day) to pour his heart out and admit things like thinking Harry has a fit arse and was his sexual awakening. What could go wrong? Well, Pansy could accidentally mail the wrong letter. That's what. ❤️ Read on AO3

📜 Vanilla and Sweet Spices by FleetofShippyShips Rated:  Explicit Words:  20032 Tags: HP: EWE, Hogwarts Eighth Year, Drinking, Drunkenness, Rimming, Anal Fingering, Anal Sex, First Time, Awkward First Times, Morning After, Mildly Dubious Consent, Because of the drinking, Plot What Plot/Porn Without Plot, Porn with Feelings, Pressure to drink Summary:  After the others leave an eighth year party, Harry still has the rum he snagged off Dean. But the only person left to drink it with is Draco Malfoy. ❤️ Read on AO3

📜 Veritaserum by Digitallace Rated:  Explicit Words:  5822 Tags: N/A Summary:  Draco brews a batch of veritaserum in order to get some answers out of Harry at last. ❤️ Read on FFN

📜 Stand Back: I'm About to Perform Archaeology by Blowfish_Diaries Rated:  Explicit Words:  9784 Tags: Archaeology, Hogwarts Eighth Year, Fluff, Copious Dr Who references, literally zero angst, Mentions of Draco in lingerie, Anal Sex, Oral Sex, Drinking Games, Washing pottery, Seriously so much pottery washing, All of archaeology is actually just pottery washing, Draco in safari gear, glamping Summary:  A new Muggle Studies professor takes the Eighth Year students to work on an archaeological excavation. In which Draco is lazy, Harry is sweaty, Hermione is drunk, and Ron turns red. ❤️ Read on AO3

📜 Sex, Lies, and Veritaserum by lettered Rated:  Explicit Words:  17953 Tags: Dirty Talk, Fingerfucking, Anal Sex, Kink Negotiation Summary:  This entire fic is one long conversation about sex. ❤️ Read on AO3

📜 In Vino Veritas by cassie-black12 Rated:  Explicit Words:  16986 Tags: In Vino Veritas, HD_Holidays Summary:  They say weddings are the perfect occasion for bringing together family and friends; but what about old enemies? ❤️ Read on LJ

📜 You Say It's Your Birthday by Emma Grant Rated:  Explicit Words:  ~4000 Tags: N/A Summary:  Harry gets very drunk on his 30th birthday, so drunk that he has no idea what happened that night -- except that it somehow involved Draco Malfoy. ❤️ Read on LJ

📜 A Shorts Story About Love by onereader Rated:  Explicit Words:  3439 Tags: Magic University - Freeform, Harry Potter Epilogue What Epilogue | EWE, Student Harry Potter, Student Draco Malfoy, Recreational Drug Use, Marijuana, Bisexual Draco Malfoy, Bisexual Harry Potter, Redeemed Draco Malfoy, Anal Sex, Making Out, Getting Together, recreational alcohol use, Pansy regrets everything, Hermione Granger & Harry Potter Friendship, Hermione is the friend we all want, Lowkey they're all fucking, Breaking house rules, A couch is properly defiled, Smoke rings as foreplay, The way to a man's heart is through his shorts Summary:  House-sharing with Slytherins, student life, magic weed, and short shorts. Harry's life at university might be strange, but he wouldn't change it for the world. ❤️ Read on AO3

📜 Between Myth and Man by slytherco Rated:  Explicit Words:  16242 Tags: Veritaserum, Truth Serum, Mundane, London, Falling In Love, Lies, Angst, Angst with a Happy Ending, This whole story is just Draco angsting really, Sexual Content, keeping secrets, Smoking, Bad Weather, References to Drugs, Making Out, One (1) Scared Little Sparrow, And also lots of texting Summary:  Draco, lost and a little broken, navigates post-war reality convinced that people like him should not be allowed to make their own choices. To solve the problem of his self-sabotaging tendencies, he starts taking a few drops of Veritaserum every morning. A story about the complexity of choices, repressed desires that come to the surface when we least expect them, and the utter hopelessness of truths built on a foundation of lies. ❤️ Read on AO3

📜 Proving a Theory by Marie_Tomas Rated:  Teen and Up Words:  29024 Tags: Post-Hogwarts, Post-Battle of Hogwarts, Humor, POV Harry Potter, Harry Potter Epilogue What Epilogue | EWE, Flirting, Awkward Flirting, Bad Flirting, Drunken Flirting, Drunken Confessions, Hogsmeade, Three Broomsticks, Professor Harry Potter, Oblivious Harry Potter, Character Study, Relationship Discussions, Light-Hearted, Sexuality, Confused Harry, Plot Twists, Scheming, Famous Harry, Harry Potter is So Done Summary:  Eleven years after the Battle of Hogwarts, Harry is approached one evening at the Three Broomsticks by Draco Malfoy, who claims that thanks to the publication of Harry's official biography, everybody in the wizarding world has come up with a very interesting theory about the two of them... ❤️ Read on AO3

📜 Christmas Is For Sex (and Love), So Give It To Me by GoldenTruth813 Rated:  Explicit Words:  53218 Tags: PWP, Established Relationship, Christmas, Bondage, misuse of frosting, making gingerbread houses, coming without touching, Blowjobs, Fingering, anal penetration, Rimming, misuse of fairy lights, Praise Kink, Nipple Clamps, erotic massages, Lingerie, Harry in Lingerie, Butt Plugs, Masterbation, Dirty Talk, Overstimulation, Topping from the Bottom, Ice Play, misuse of snowballs, misuse of brandy custard, veritasium, Public Sex, misuse of christmas candles, Wax Play, floating blow jobs, bubble baths, Candy Canes, misuse of candy canes, sex with feelings, Clubbing, naughty letters, babysitting teddy, Edging, healing past trauma, really so much more than sex, but lots of sex too, spiked hot cocoa, Drunk confessions, Anal penetration with a foreign object, french!draco, Switching Summary:  Draco buys Harry an Advent House, intent on helping Harry create all new holiday memories, and have a lot of great sex in the process. ❤️ Read on AO3

📜 Mixed Drinks and Crossed Wires by korlaena Rated:  Explicit Words:  16470 Tags: Auror Harry Potter, EWE, Miscommunication, Pining, Drinking, Drunken Shenanigans, Drunken Kissing, Face-Fucking, Anal Sex, Light Dom/sub, Friends to Lovers Summary:  Draco is a handsy drunk. Harry is okay with it, really. They’re friends, so it doesn’t mean anything. ❤️ Read on AO3

📜 Never Feel the Burning Light by carpemermaid Rated:  Explicit Words:  48578 Tags: Fake/Pretend Relationship, Fake Marriage, Living Together, Party Games, Sharing a Bed, Unresolved Sexual Tension, Denial, Pining, Mutual Pining, Jealousy, Hero Complex, Masturbation, Intergluteal Sex, Oral Sex, Post-Hogwarts, Post-War, Falling In Love, HP: EWE, Prostate Massage, Drunken Confessions, Drunken Shenanigans, Minor Hermione Granger/Ron Weasley, Minor Ginny Weasley/Luna Lovegood, Minor Pansy Parkinson/Theodore Nott, Romance, brief mentions of Draco Malfoy/OMC, Lack of Communication, Getting Together, Slow Burn Summary:  When it falls to Draco to restore his family name to its former glory the road ahead of him is long, but with Harry Potter’s help and a plan that is just this side of ridiculous he just might succeed at accomplishing his goals and getting what he wants. What neither of them plan on is falling in love along the way. ❤️ Read on AO3

📜 A Bit of Honesty by manixzen Rated:  Explicit Words:  3654 Tags: Professor Draco Malfoy, Professor Harry Potter, Veritaserum, Enemies to Lovers, Making Out, Frottage, Semi-Public Sex, HP Kinktober 2020, Hogwarts Professors Summary:  A Hogwarts ball, a spiked punch, Professor Potter and Professor Malfoy on chaperone duty… what could go wrong? ❤️ Read on AO3

📜 Adventures in Truth and Texting by fluxweed Rated:  Explicit Words:  7981 Tags: Texting, Drunk Texting, Sexting, Veritaserum, Implied/Referenced Homophobia, Internalized Homophobia, Auror Harry Potter, Drinking, Christmas, Advent Fic, Awkwardness, everyone has phones, Harry Potter Epilogue What Epilogue | EWE Summary:  Former Death Eaters are being targeted with a Veritaserum curse – it’s permanent, and makes victims speak aloud their every thought. Luckily, it’s easier to control when writing – and Hermione is trying to introduce Muggle technology to the wizarding world. An advent fic featuring texting, identity struggles, and a Draco Malfoy who will literally not stop talking. ❤️ Read on AO3

📜 The seven stages of alcohol intoxication by Sassy3 Rated:  Teen and Up Words:  2714 Tags: Alcohol, Drunkenness, Drunken Confessions, In Vino Veritas, Auror Harry Potter, Auror Draco Malfoy, Auror Partners, Oblivious Harry Potter, Supportive Ron Weasley, Supportive Seamus Finnigan, Minor Seamus Finnigan/Dean Thomas, Minor Hermione Granger/Ron Weasley, Alcohol Intoxication, Friends to Lovers, Drunk Harry Potter, 7 stages of alcohol intoxication Summary:  After a challenging day at work, with a big presentation the next day, Harry wasn't quite in the mood to celebrate Seamus' birthday. But, what's the harm in just one drink? Stage 3: Excitement Harry was in the middle of a shot race with Seamus, when he got the brilliant idea that he should inform Malfoy what a good partner he was. He’d never told Malfoy how much he appreciated him and how much Harry enjoyed working with him, but he should totally do that right away. Harry dragged Seamus in for a hug, and shouted into his ear. “Mate, I’m going to talk to Malfoy. Tell him how much I like him. Like work. No, like working him. With him?” ❤️ Read on AO3

[patchdotexe]

explorers of arvus: now what? / 2.2.21

LAST TIME ON EXPLORERS OF ARVUS: we kicked the shit out of a witch, a murdercow, and a tree, and nearly got murdered by a broom! also i exploded the tree, which was pretty fucking poggers. we also did have to hold taure down to feed her some healing elixirs but yknow

silje, meanwhile, was spaced the fuck out the entire time (bc of being a dmpc last time) and has no idea what just happened or that he commited gratiutous amounts of tree violence.

And Then We Slept For 24 Hours (we didnt)

thorne rolled a nat20 on drawing the tree blight on fire! which is EXTREMELY COOL. im glad we have a memorial of the coolest thing ive done on arvus so far (and also hopefully the fire wont spread bc it would suck if we set all of arvus on fire) oh nvm we're in a swamp so we good. hard to set things on fire in a swamp.

i swear im paying attention but green is talking about dreamout in 772 rn and has some very interesting theories about how the eggpire plot would go down so i am just. side-eyeing it. i am Looking. i swear im paying attention.

oh man i havent collected my notes from last session bc i was liveblogging in discord for nyx's benefit. that's gonna be interesting to compile.* i wonder if i should put these in gdocs instead of wordpad lmao (wait no i use wordpad bc its easier to just pop open and have layered over discord / roll20) * [ AND THEN I DIDNT DO THAT FOR LIKE 2 MONTHS ]

michael: ...burn the house down charlie: ~ we're gonna burn the whole house down! ~ thorne: [confused] how do you know that song? we dont have any bards charlie: [buffering] ...BITCH I MIGHT BE

what if i took a level in bard, would that be fucked up or what

tiny hut tiny hut tiny hut tiny hut. TINY HURT (sieron casted Leomund's Tiny Hut bc we burnt down the only nearby shelter)

lots of discussion about the hut. hut talk

thorne: sieron, why havent we been doing this? charlie: great question! hey sieron, what the fuck? sieron: i guess i just havent thought about it? charlie: you're lucky you're cute >:/ sieron: AA??

discussion of sieron's alter appearance and how its probably somewhat awkward bc thorne is just. openly a horc. unfortunately, sieron's hometown is super racist

HELLO I HAVE BEEN DISTRACTED BC RUBY DID A PANEL REDRAW FROM ASP AAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAA aa a a a a a

time for taure and thorne to chat on watch! frenship taure hasnt noticed her hair colour bc shes been busy doin stuff, like killin people taure misunderstands thorne asking abt her hair and thinks he has a tragic backstory of being a hairdresser before becoming a warlock DOES TAURE KNOW WHAT THE FEYWILD IS yes she does! war of the veils was a thing, where the feywild invaded the material plane and honestly i should read all the worldbuilding again bc its been forever but i thought all that was neat

oh shit thorne called taure a uhhhh eladrin? OH BOY TAURE ROLLED A 1 we're on the same page here TIME FOR THORNE INFODUMP eladrin are feywild elves! as in closely related to the fey, as well as living in the feywild. their hair changes with the seasons, like taure's does :O !! taure and thorne have not had a fucking one on one conversation before

thorne: taure. taure: yes, hello that is me i am taure [..] taure: now, counterpoint, the sun makes hair change colour-- thorne: Taure.

thorne is trying so hard i love they everyone else is sleeping through this convo so theyre spared the awkwardness but ooc we are having a great time :o eladrin hair colour changing stuff related to mood / seasons / powers?? thorne is admittedly confused bc Weird Documentation but this is really neat to hear about taure, meanwhile, has no idea why this is important.

thorne: if i had told you this, and you had-- transcended-- into your next phase-- id be very concerned taure: hold on [loud grunting] okay no

why havent we been doing tiny hut this whole time. sieron.

oh right taure has a tragic backstory and her mom ditched her as a babby. MEANWHILE, THORNE DOESNT EVEN HAVE PARENTS michael: there are two types of people in the world: those who're kidnapped as infants, and those that kidnap infants WAIT IS THIS LIKE, THE FIRST TIME ANYONES HEARD ABT THORNE'S BACKSTORY BESIDES "LIVED IN THE FEYWILD" thorne is very chill about it though. god i love thorne. i love the entire party

thorne: ...after the third or fourth prophetic vision, they all sorta blur together.

god i wish id written down more about the magical mystical adventure OH. THE ORACLE FORESHADOWED THE ELADRIN THING. NEAT thorne: oh, the oracle! is that the guy with the, uh... [snaps fingers] the gryphon fart orb?

IREL IS HERE YAY IREL i have forgotten how to spell their name. how about i split the difference and spell it Yirel. michael is rolling to see if thorne and taure woke yirel up-- OH OKAY yirel just. sleeps for fun. god i wish that were me

charlie's hair can hold many small pets of dubious sapience.

I LOVE YIREL,,, thorne is just pleasantly confused. WAIT IS YIREL PURRING yirel: you are confused by that action! :D taure: ...yes. what were you doing? yirel: i was performing magic! i can now detect your minds! i can hear your thoughts. :D OKAY SO YIREL WAS. NOT PURRING. yirel has cast Detect Thoughts on thorne. thorne's train of thought is now "???"

we need to teach the snake consent. we have now taught the snake consent.

YIREL IS GOING TO VERY POLITELY ASK THE BIG BAD IF HE CAN READ THEIR MIND its okay i love them. thorne is SO CONFUSED yirel is attempting to be helpful YIREL LITERALLY DISCOVERED THEY COULD CAST DETECT THOUGHTS SO THEY CASTED DETECT THOUGHTS. thorne is hoping yirel wont learn to cast fireball on themself. yirel: there's two timelines where that could happen. i will do my best to avoid them! :D

okay its really hard to get across in text but yirel is basically just. permanently happy/excited sounding. like a puppy! or like the ":D" face in winged snake form.

ooh, a celestial serpent location! off in the mistwall mountains. they are Extremely Dead but yirel told thorne+taure where it is on the map and said we can learn stuff abt time! and then went to sleep. goodnight yirel. i will kill for you

S. S. BIG BOAT (it is 60 miles across. big boat. thank you jorb)

WHAT IS WRONG WITH JORB'S CAMERA, WHY DOES IT KEEP ZOOMING IIIIIIIIIIN

it rained overnight so all the water that collected on the tiny hut got dumped on everyone, and THEN silje shook off like a dog and charlie is MISERABLE

SILJE GOT A NAT20 FORAGING the survival squad are gonna get the fuckin best breakfast ever

oh yea the poison / disease was stored in the tree blight! so now that we've incinerated it it's all good. still gonna take time for the whole river to clear, but with the source of it gone we should be golden. fuck yea

oh man today was hourly comics day, wasnt it. or was it feb 1? fuck shit damn uhhhhh i have done. nothing. besides work on the PMV, talk about dreamout, and now play d&d. this is unrelated to everything im just Thonkin

TIME FOR SWAMP FACTS solar knows So Much about swamps. time to discuss cattails (please no) these are cattails............. ME WANT BITE. ME WANT PLANT CORN DOG DELIGHT. ME WANT DEEP FRIED. ME THINK WATER TWINKIE NICE

oh shit thorne has spotted a ufo. yuufo time OMINOUS YUUFO silje, with an armful of frogs and a lizard in his mouth: [looks up] mrrp? poor silje cant see for shit. NEITHER CAN THORNE its either very small and close, or very big and far away

HRM. actually this MIGHT be related to the vision bc the ominous yuufo was heart-shaped, and the vision was of a necromancer on a floating bloody platform raising all kinds of undead

its been forever and i didnt take a lot of notes on the mini-session but the last time we saw the oracle was a cave on theral! so, unrelated to the place yirel marked on the map. which michael marked down as "seat of the oracle"!

TAURE THINK OF THE CHILDREN THAT WE DONT HAVE (we have yirel!) TAURE THINK OF THE CHILD THAT WE HAVE

ahoyhoyyyyyyyyyyyyyyy i wanna go to ahoyhoy. we are not currently going to ahoyhoy but maybe some day

i had to stop paying attention because buttons wanted to see my Horrible Streaming Setup and apparently something terrible has happened. also honse

we are potentially dealing with a salad katamari.

thorne: could that be what the object in the sky is? silje: ...a lettuce?

we have voted to ignore the salad katamari for now. this action will have consequences.

charlie and silje take watch! charlie wants to know what silje's deal is! silje is a monster hunter. charlie misses bein a thief ): SILJE WAS A MONSTER HUNTER SINCE HE WAS 12?? charlie realizes that perhaps becoming an adventurer and doing a huge amount of murder on a regular basis, especially as a child, is Maybe Not Great silje likes books! charlie offers to lend him her books :D charlie, quietly: i am totally doing the friendship thing so good. RATS RATS RATS RATS hehe rats.

uh oh, nyx has died. NVM NYX IS OKAY nyx's power has not gone out again

we've been on arvus for 13 days! neat.

OH SHIT FLOATING ISLAND its also shaped weirdly like a heart. YEP IT LOOKS LIKE ITS BLEEDING probably bc of clay or iron oxide in the dirt but still that looks ominous as hell SIERON'S A SMART BOY he rolled 20+ on the 3 rolls he had to do, fuck yeah. this fucked up island is an Earth Mote! which are lil sky islands. or like, just general dirt chunks thatre in the sky. theyre either natural events or wizards showing off! also they usually move, but this one is just kinda... tethered. not like Literally but its locked in place. this is apparently the "Heart of Arvus"! which is . at the heart of arvus. or at least the centre of the continent.

solar: leo, we've found the ruins of mumbo jumbo's base. leo: [leans over and thwaps solar on the leg w nerf sword]

penn: i swear to god, if i look out my window and i dont see jorb in the sky, im going to be disappointed that hes not doing his job. jorb: slowly rotating.

we are now thinking about how to get up on the rock. TINY HUT STAIRCASE solar: could i featherfall the wrong way? wand of wonder / wild magic surge! NOPE mage hand! charlie is 41 pounds. mage hand is 5 pounds limit. korred rope! we have enough rope to tie together and tie to the korred rope, BUT the korred rope cannot fly. OH THE ROCK IS INHABITED there's an elf!

sieron & taure: [worried about the necromancy] charlie: HOWDY~!

[party arguing about who's gonna go up bc not all of us can fit up there] [leo and solar start swordfighting in the background]

sent kaepora through the portal to the heart of arvus aaaaaand end of session! CLIFFHANGEERRRRRRR

michael: DID YOU FUCK MY MOM, DUNGEONMASTER?

[misterspectacular]

Hannibal and Friendships

So I found the whole friendship theme in Season 1 of "Hannibal" very interesting (especially episodes 7 and 8). We are presented with many different friendships and relationships for Hannibal and yet there's only ONE person he truly feels lonesome without...

But here's the list of people that present Hannibal with the opportunity for friendship:

. FRANKLYN

. BEDELIA

. WILL

. TOBIAS

. ALANA

. JACK

So I wanted to type up what my analysis of certain scenes, and what I feel each person means to Hannibal, or is for Hannibal.

FRANKLYN

Franklyn is one of Hannibal's patients who desperately wants to be more than a patient. He wants to be Hannibal's friend. But Hannibal tells him... No. I'm your psychiatrist. I'm not your friend. So, basically using the "I'm your psychiatrist" as an excuse. He COULD be friends with Franklyn, if he desired. But he just doesn't.

Here's the script:

HANNIBAL Would you like to discuss our chance encounter?

FRANKLYN Wasn’t all together chance.  I kinda thought you’d be there, which isn’t why I was there.  I was there because I like that sort of thing.  Just occurred to me you might, too.

HANNIBAL In fact, I do.

FRANKLYN I was trying to get your attention.  Stand within your peripheral vision but not directly in front of you.

HANNIBAL I was aware of that.

FRANKLYN I knew you were aware, even though you pretended that you weren’t.  It felt like you were rejecting me.Hannibal offers a small, warm smile.

HANNIBAL It would be unethical to approach a patient or acknowledge in any way our relationship outside this room until that patient gives consent.

FRANKLYN I don’t really know who you are outside this room.

HANNIBAL I’m your psychiatrist.

FRANKLYN I feel rejected again. 

HANNIBAL Why do you suppose that is? 

FRANKLYN Cause I want you to be my friend. 

HANNIBAL Of course you do.  I have intimate knowledge of you. 

FRANKLYN And you like the same things I do.  I think we’d be good friends.  It makes me sad I have to pay you.

Hannibal attempts to hone the topic of conversation to:

HANNIBAL Tell me about Tobias.

FRANKLYN Tobias is my best friend, but I am not Tobias’s best friend.  He has cancelled on me so many times.  He almost didn’t come to the show.  But he sure took an active interest in my active interest in you.

HANNIBAL Have you put Tobias on a pedestal?

FRANKLYN Yes and he saw a higher pedestal.

HANNIBAL I am a source of stability and clarity, Franklyn, not your friend.

So that's the deal with Franklyn. Hannibal isn't interested in being friends with Franklyn, but Franklyn is interested in being friends with Hannibal. It is one-sided. Hannibal has rejected him.

BEDELIA

When Hannibal goes to see Bedelia, the roles are reversed. Now he's the patient. He says to Bedelia "you and I are friendly" and she responds as Hannibal did. You're my patient (AKA I'm your psychiatrist). I'm not your friend. I felt this was her way of saying "I know this version of you is not who you truly are. We can't be friends if the real you is not actually present". She can see through the veil; she is not fooled by the friendly mask Hannibal wears.

Here's the script.

BEDELIA This always goes better if I’m perfectly honest with you. 

HANNIBAL What would be the point otherwise.

BEDELIA Well, one of us has to be honest.

HANNIBAL I’m honest.

BEDELIA Not perfectly. 

HANNIBAL As honest as anyone.

BEDELIA Not really.  I have conversations with a version of you and hope the actual you gets what he needs.

HANNIBAL A version of me?

BEDELIA Naturally, I respect its meticulous construction, but you are wearing a very well tailored person suit.

HANNIBAL (good-natured teasing) Do you refer to me as Person Suit with your psychiatrist friends?

BEDELIA I don’t discuss patients with my psychiatrist friends, especially since I only have one patient who chose to ignore my retirement.

HANNIBAL A patient who wears a Person Suit.

BEDELIA I can still see the shape of you, but you’re elegantly obstructed.  So really, it’s less of a person suit and more of a human veil. 

HANNIBAL

I prefer we call it a human shield. 

BEDELIA That must be lonely.

HANNIBAL I have friends.  And the opportunities for friends.

BEDELIA On the other side of the veil.

HANNIBAL You and I are friendly.

BEDELIA You’re my patient and my colleague, not my friend.  When your hour is up I’ll pour you a glass of wine, nevertheless you’ll be drinking it on the other side of the veil.

HANNIBAL Why do you bother?

BEDELIA I see enough of you to see the truth of you.  And I like you.

Hannibal smiles, liking her as she opens a small wine closet.

BEDELIA Red or white.

HANNIBAL I think something pink, don’t you?

Because Bedelia has the ability to see him, or at least pieces of him, I think Hannibal is interested in pursuing her friendship. I think, like Franklyn feels towards Hannibal, that she is a source of stability and clarity, especially where his feelings for Will are concerned.

WILL

When Hannibal sees Will, he asks... Am I your psychiatrist or are we just having conversations? At this point, there's a pattern. There's the Doctor/Patient relationship, which equates to "Not friends", and then there's the Friendship. This keeps being brought up. We're meant to make connections.

So basically, Hannibal asked Will, "Am I your psychiatrist or am I your friend?"

This is the first time Hannibal actually asks the other person how they feel about it, which I feel expresses Hannibal's true desire to be Will's friend. Not just to be friendly, not just to keep up appearances (for the sake of the mask he wears). He truly, deeply, wants to be Will's friend.

I feel he was curious as to how Will would respond and didn't want to step over the line, and admit what he wanted from Will, unless he was sure that Will would react positively. It just goes to show you how much control Will has over Hannibal. Hannibal was exhibiting an UNEASINESS with expressing his ideas about friendship with Will. He wouldn't even use the word "friendship", just to be safe; he disguised it as "just having conversations". I feel it was partly because he didn't want to influence Will's response, in one way or another, but also because he didn't want to put himself out there unless he was sure that Will felt the same.

Will responds with "yes"; saying that Hannibal is both a psychiatrist AND a friend.

This is the first time that two people are on the same page; that it's not one-sided. They meet in the middle.

Here's the script.

WILL GRAHAM Have you been drinking?

HANNIBAL I had a glass of wine with my last appointment.

WILL GRAHAM You drank with a patient?

HANNIBAL She drank with a patient.  I have an unconventional psychiatrist. 

WILL GRAHAM We have that in common.

HANNIBAL Am I your psychiatrist or are we simply having conversations?

WILL GRAHAM Yes, I think is the answer to that.

So we have the same question under three different circumstances.

"Is this a Doctor/Patient relationship or a Friendship?" AKA "Is this Impersonal or Personal?"

That's what "I'm your psychiatrist" and "you're my patient" actually means. It means "this is not personal", or "I don't see the real you/you don't see the real me".

So this is where we are, so far:

FRANKLYN - NOT A FRIEND (Hannibal's NO)

Hannibal doesn't want to be friends with Franklyn because he's not clever enough to see him. Hannibal wouldn't even present Franklyn with the opportunity. He is not interested in Franklyn. Franklyn is annoying; he's impolite (drops his used tissues on Hannibal's desk). He's needy. He's too open, and therefore no fun, because Hannibal doesn't really have to try analyzing him at all; it's all right out in the open, and that which isn't, is not hard to figure out. One-dimensional, you could say, therefore boring. He's weak, he's whiny. And he's not exactly stupid, but he's not very intelligent, either. He's just not what Hannibal's looking for in any sense.

So from Hannibal's point-of-view: "You're nothing like me."

BEDELIA - NOT A FRIEND (Bedelia's NO)

Bedelia doesn't consider them friends because she knows True Friendship is not in the True Hannibal's nature, and that she is not being allowed to see behind the human veil. I do think Hannibal truly likes her, but I think that he might also be bored by her, because she lacks passion. She doesn't have the same "madness" that's present in Will.

So from Hannibal's point-of-view: "You're too much like me."

WILL - A FRIEND (Will and Hannibal's YES)

Hannibal wants to be friends with Will because he knows Will already understands and sees exactly who he is underneath (even if Will himself is not aware) and that he would be clever enough to climb over his walls. So not only is Will suitable, because of these abilities, but he's also willing (so far, at least). He is a combination of Franklyn (willing) and Bedelia (suitable), but also something else entirely -- He's INTRIGUING. He's UNPREDICTABLE. For a man that can see things so clearly, this can be very exciting.

I feel that it's the combination of being Understood and being Intrigued that attracts Hannibal.

So from Hannibal’s point-of-view: “You’re a perfect combination of being like me yet nothing like me.”

Interestingly enough, the alcohol says a lot about Hannibal's perspective on things.

During the scene with Bedelia, she asks whether Hannibal wants Red or White wine. Hannibal responds with "I think something pink, don't you?"

In the next scene, Hannibal shares this pink wine with Will.

He does not share any drink with Franklyn.

Hannibal didn't want red wine. He didn't want white wine. He wanted a combination of both; he wanted pink wine.

The red wine could stand for the doctor/patient relationship. It could also stand for being on ONE side of the veil as opposed to the other. And stand for being on the one side of the scale (basically one-sidedness).

The white wine could stand for friendship. It could also stand for being on the OTHER side of the veil. And for being on the other side of the scale (also one-sidedness).

The pink could stand for all of the above. The doctor/patient relationship AND friendship. Seeing THIS side of the veil AND seeing THAT side of the veil. Standing on both sides of the scale, balancing them out. Being just alike, but also being entirely different.

He doesn't want just one thing. He craves duality, which can be contradictory, and that's why it's so difficult to find just the right person. That one person who is worthy enough.

Ultimately, I feel the pink wine was symbolic of Meeting in the Middle. Of coming together. Of two separate, individual things becoming one.

He was basically stating exactly what it is he wants and craves; a Marriage, in all aspects.

When he mentioned which wine he wanted, that was his way of saying "this is what I want in a relationship". I don't think he was specifically saying it was what he wanted from Bedelia, but that he was saying it was what he wanted from whoever could manage to provide it. And I think that's why we weren't shown he and Bedelia drinking the wine together, but that we were shown (in the very next scene) he and Will drinking it together. Will was meant to be the focus of that statement, I believe. Everything that happened leading up to the scene with Will, was BECAUSE of Will. Those previous scenes were set up for THIS scene specifically. And this is why I say in the series that everything that happens, happens with Will in mind - all of those previous scenes were setting us up, or setting Hannibal up, for the idea that Will is the only person that could be a true friend and that provides Hannibal with all that he desires.

"The third time is the charm", they say.

And though Will was the main focus of all of this (the wine and the conversation with Franklyn and Bedelia), Hannibal, canonically, did still drink that wine with Bedelia. So she and Will are the only ones that Hannibal feels have the potential to be a friend, a true friend, to the whole of him. The only difference between the two is that Hannibal is just more interested in Will. Like I said previously, Bedelia lacks in passion, where Will does not. Will is very different from Hannibal (which intrigues him), while also very much like him (that duality). Will sees exactly who Hannibal is on the inside, while Bedelia sees only the shape. She may see Hannibal, to a degree, but she doesn't have the gift Will has, to be able to UNDERSTAND him. Even if Will doesn't yet realize who it is he's seeing, he does still see, very clearly, and that is relieving for Hannibal.

So now that we've discussed those 3 instances, I wanted to move on further to more people that present(ed) Hannibal with the opportunity for friendship: Tobias Budge, Alana Bloom, and Jack Crawford.

TOBIAS

Tobias, like Franklyn, wanted to be friends with Hannibal. He wanted to be seen and understood, just like Hannibal did, but Hannibal was not interested. He didn't want to be friends with Tobias, either. In the scene where Hannibal invites him over for dinner, he shares white wine with Tobias. Not pink. It is one-sided. Tobias was too much like him to be interesting.

ALANA

Then there's Alana. Alana is already Hannibal's friend, but she only sees the mask he wears. She has not seen past the veil; she's neither clever enough to climb over his walls, nor is she ever given the opportunity. Hannibal has deliberately closed himself off to her and therefore she cannot truly be considered a friend. That's why she is given her own beer, rather than shares pink wine with Hannibal. They are not meeting in the middle; that balance is not present here. This relationship is a fake one and she is, ultimately, on her own.

JACK

Hannibal's relationship with Jack is also a fake one. Hannibal uses Jack to get information on Will, and also arranges their get-together’s to try and convince Jack of Will's insanity (and also to alienate them from one another). In the end, Jack is a means to an end, much like Alana. It's mostly about Will, though there are also other reasons he keeps Jack around, and that's because he knows befriending Jack means Jack is less likely to believe he is a criminal.

Friendship, or relationships in general, can be blinding, and Hannibal is already an extraordinary actor.

So all in all, Will is the only one that caters to everything Hannibal desires. He's the only one capable of understanding exactly who he is, while being different enough to still be intriguing.

[domreaderrecs]

Oh boy do I have some kink discourse for you. Here’s a wholeass list:

1. A female dominant does not need to be a sadist who is always torturing and abusing their sub. They can be soft and kind and caring.

2. Findom is a valid form of domination and is really a kink, it is not just women faking it to get money.

3. Online domination is possible, although there are more risks involved, it is still a valid form of domination.

4. Submissive black men are allowed to refuse to be called slave and their dom shouldnt be annoyed they can’t used their preferred honorific.

5. Kink and fetishes can be incorporated without the use of the power dynamic found in BDSM.

6. BDSM is still BDSM if the rope is pink and the outfit is white lace instead of red and leather.

7. It should be standard practice for there to be a safe word that means everything is fine so that the Dom can check in on the sub easily without breaking the scene.

8. It is only BDSM when both parties have discussed before hand, otherwise it’s sexual assault (yes that includes Chad who brought out the rope without warning and now Bethany is just going along because she likes him)

9. BDSM has always and will always be driven by the LGBT community.

10. Under 18 year olds do not have a place in the BDSM community. If they wish to learn, then they should do so by finding articles and books, not by asking people involved in the scene.

Yeah that’s about it for now. I’m realizing you probably didn’t want this much but oh well. We’re here now. Let me know what you think!

whewww so much to unpack here lets go its essay time

1. !!!! this is probably one of the most fundamentally misunderstood parts of femdom. it don’t gotta be ball crushing and whipping and calling him a worm all the time, or even at all. this is probably what turns so many women off from trying it or thinking they might be into a more dominant role. gentle femdom is way more palatable for beginners and for me personally, just way more enjoyable (even tho i definitely would wanna make a boy cry from time to time)

2. I used to be one of those people who looked down on findom. I still don’t understand why anyone would be into it tbh but findoms get a lot of shit for no reason... being a sugar baby is so glamorized but if you’re a findom you’re cold, or a bitch, or taking advantage. even though they’re both just people who get money from men who have money to throw at them for sexual favors... but one’s demonized and one’s all the rage... hm i wonder why

3. I have no real/successful experience with this... more on that in number 10

4. 100000%!! the stories i’ve seen from black subs in kink (mostly black women but still) are horrendous. a lot of doms will try to enforce a master/slave relationship, and try to exercise their authority to make subs agree to it. i know it’s a common dynamic, but that shit is wayyyy different to black people... any dom should know that. forcing your sub to do anything is wrong, but especially something so racially, historically, and culturally insensitive. and don’t get me started on the surprise “race play” stories i’ve heard... like i said doing anything without your sub’s consent is wrong but THAT kind of thing requires double consent with a cherry on top. this is part of the reason I’m so scared to enter the kink scene... this shit scares me. thats why the title mistress and master/slave dynamics in general just isn’t for me. it makes me think of my ancestors :/

5. again, 1000% agree. i’ve said this on my blog before, but i’ll say it again. not everything has to be dom/sub stuff. if you wanna peg your bf you don’t have to tie him up and call him names or boss him around, you can just peg him. i feel like ever since FSOG this whole dom/sub thing has grown way out of proportion, but that’s a whole other essay for another day

6. yessss I hate the stereotype of dom outfits as black, latex, leather, way too high to walk in boots... like does it look fire?? yes of course but pink and lace and knee high socks would make a fit that’s just as fire. 

7. this is non-negotiable to me. whenever I hear someone say “I don’t like safe words” or “I/We don’t need a safe word” it’s just a red flag to me. idc what anyone says safe words are mandatory.

8. Yes. I feel like I shouldn’t have to say this but with the rise of the popularity of “rough sex” (again, thanks FSOG) there’s seems to be a rise in people who just assume their partner may be into something, or who just try to experiment on their partner without asking them first. I’ve heard a lot of friends and other girls talk about guys just going straight into choking them, spanking them, and pulling their hair without even asking if they like it (another reason I’m scared to get out there and do stuff, as a person who is very much not a sub or into being treated roughly or tossed around, it’s a big fear of mine). I’ve also seen a lot about girls just randomly trying to finger their boyfriends. If it’s not vanilla, and y’all haven’t discussed it, do not assume it’s on the table. We’ve gotten to a point that kinky stuff is so talked about and normalized (especially with young adults) that people forget it’s actually kinky. 

9. period.

10. okay so story time, around the age of 15/16 is when I started to realize I was into kinky stuff. The preference had kinda always been there, but I couldn’t really place a name to it. I had always felt like an outcast among my peers when it came to the way they would talk about romantic and sexual relationships (I was a year ahead, so all my friends were 1-2 years older than me, so they started to do that stuff earlier than I did) because the things they talked about and liked were way different from the stuff I would think/fantasize about, so I always stayed quiet (teenage girls are very vocal about having choking/daddy kinks but that’s definitely indicative of a much larger problem that i will not get into bc that’s a whole other very very long essay that I will definitely write on here one day but not now). So when I found out what gentle femdom was I felt like I had a community that understood me, and everything just clicked. I would lurk on online communities and I lived for the discourse on there but I could never actively participate because every community had a strict “no minors” policy. They would say exactly what you said, “If minors wish to learn, then they should do so by finding articles and books, not by asking people involved in the scene.” I didn’t want to make anyone catch a case and I didn’t want to get targeted by predators so I tried to follow their advice. i found nothing. There honestly just isn’t that much educational stuff for “kinky teenagers”, or at least none that fit me. There was no femdom oriented stuff. I mean sure there was the standard “consent is important especially in bdsm relationships” but like that didn’t really help me. I had so many questions, that I could never feel comfortable asking my mom or a therapist, and especially not my friends. I didn’t know how to express this part of myself. I couldn’t talk to anyone about it and I couldn’t even watch porn like a normal teenager (we all know the state of femdom porn. its bad) so I was this ball incredible frustration and confusion and i didn’t know what to do with it. So I unfortunately turned to twitter. There I made a little like minded friend. he was also 16 so i thought “this is good, a non adult also kinky teenager who I can relate too. what could go wrong :)”(I’m sure you see where this is going) I was so excited to have a new friend, but ofc, our convos soon took a turn. However, since he was the first person to ever show interest in me, and the only person my age who i could talk to who understood me, i started to catch feelings. But he was a teen just like me, just as horny and confused and sooo immature. He started to pressure me into domming him/becoming his domme, but I refused because I wasn’t ready (i saw on one of those online communities I used to lurk in that its not healthy for your first sexual experience to be bdsm and I took that to heart). he ghosted me. needless to say that “friendship” was toxic. i realized too late that he only saw me as a kink dispenser, and didn’t care about me on a personal level. it also made me realize how not “mature for my age” I was. i say all this to say, NO, teenagers should not be participating in kink. they are not mature enough. however education and resources for them are not where they should be. if we want to discourage them from putting themselves in these situations, we need to better provide them with education and healthy ways to relieve these urges/feelings (i eventually took up writing, it helped me a lot). i feel like had i found a healthier and safer way to express/explore that side of myself, I would’ve never gotten in that situation to begin with. That experience has kinda put me off from dipping my toe into the actual community (well that and the lack of diversity but we’ve already talked about that)

ALSO the amount of very young children i’ve seen in the kink “community” on twitter is alarming... you’re not a little you’re 12

anyways, thanks so much for this essay of an ask and sorry i wrote an essay in response to each one lol but like I said I could discuss kink all day

[thepursuitofunderstanding]

January 31/2021

Well, hello new journal! I look forward to our explorations together. Now, what shall we begin discussing this morning? Nothing feels important enough to mark your first pages [this is from before I switched from paper to digital journaling]. I guess that I could say that I’m starting to catch a glimpse of what I might like my life to be like once I graduate Uni. That’s long been a giant question mark for/with me. Due in large part, I’m sure, to the fact that the conventional path seems to be a sort of settling down. That is, graduates go out and find a job; make a home in some place or other; date/get married; essentially people seem to settle onto one path--at the expense of all other paths. Which is fine--for them. I think that there shall be no settling for me. I must keep moving. This seems to be a condition of my existence. Whether this movement is within or without seems to be irrelevant. Or, rather, I do seem to to particularly prize/regard the internal movement, but I have found external movement to be a great stimulator of internal movement.  And, alas, as long as I have books and you [that is, my journal] I seem to never stop moving within. So that helps that. 

Most of all though, I don’t want to chain myself to some job that stymies my movement. Especially my internal movement. If I’ve learned anything about myself in these 24 years, it’s that such is a death sentence for/to me. I must keep moving. Inertia is death. Because a self-imposed death is still very much a death. Perhaps an ever deader death (if that’s possible). Now, of course, this whole ‘not letting a job chain me down’ does get rather complicated by the fact that I do need money to maintain my survival. It’s not like everyone in the world enters into the contract (or bondage, depending on how you look at it) of a job because they’re just total masochists. No, I recognize that for the most part people consent to have a job for the simple fact that it is required for their continual survival. As it is for my continual survival. Plus I’ll have some student loans to pay off (I try not to stress too much about that one. Uni is absolutely imperative for/to my development. I’ll figure out how to pay for it later.), so it seems that I will definitely need to figure out some way of generating moneys. But, alas, I aim to keep my expenses such that I won’t have to chain myself to a full-time job. I aim to do this by living in my van when weather permits and then...figuring something out for winter. I’ll live frugally--my only indulgence being books. For it turns out that one really doesn’t need as much money to get by as one might think. You cut out all that useless shit that people buy, get back to just the basics and suddenly things become much more manageable.  

This, I hope, will be what the outward appearance of my life will look like after graduation. And inwardly, well, I can’t even imagine that--I’ll be moving, that’s all I know. Working towards Greatness, looking at perhaps getting myself published; learning, always learning. This is how I’ll fill my life. It makes me so full and content to consider that I could cry. Oh what a feeling it is to actually want; to crave to live one’s life. It’s not exactly a feeling that I’m familiar with. Usually I tend to attempt--by any means necessary--to avoid gazing too long into the/my future. For the wretched weight of it felt only like a jail cell beckoning me towards it confines. Time, at my back, preventing my retreat, the chains of life always an inevitability; I could see no way around it. Or, rather, I could imagine ways around it (my power of imagination being what it is paired with my insatiable need to read anything that I can get my hands on (that makes it sound like I’m not a discriminating reader, which is false: I might just be the most snobbish reader that I’ve ever encountered. I’m so intimately aware that I’ll never be able to read all the books that I want to, therefore I must be very careful to give my time and energy to only those books that I deem to be imperative to my development. God I sound like such a cocky asshole. But hopefully a cocky asshole that is tempered with the realization that I’m not shit yet and I never will be unless I really... strain myself. I’m not sure how this spiraled into a poop(ing) metaphor, but here we are nevertheless.)) but I never felt myself to be capable of the strength and individuality required to evade that jail cell that I’ve witnessed so many people around me imprisoned by. 

Alas though, I realize now that the only thing more terrifying than attempting such an evasion is to not. For, to not attempt such an evasion is to surrender myself; to fail to become myself: of which I agree with Kierkegaard is a fate worse than death. I have discovered that I can withstand a lot of pain and discomfort in life--but not that. To lose myself, especially like that, to (how did he put it?) “pawn” myself to the world is not something that I will ever be able to withstand. I know this. Any leanings in the past towards such have led--always--to a crushing compulsion to end it all. I seem to be so constituted that such a pawning is simply not an option to/for me. Which is something that I’ve only just now grasped in its entirety. I seem to have had some hunch of it for a few years here now (thus the talk of the conditions of my existence) but only now have I managed to grasp (or begun to grasp) the full weight of all this. I can truly do no other. I have never, nor will I ever, have any choice in the matter. Or, rather, since I don’t believe in determinism, I should say that my choice is to either live “myself” or to not live at all. This is the ultimate condition of my existence. All other conditions stem from this ultimate one. 

Wow, okay, so this is why I love writing--why I absolutely need to write. Just as my physical body needs food and water to sustain itself, my soul needs to write. For through/by writing I come to be/tough ‘myself.’ Perhaps f I did not write I would become a pawn to the world. And I would never realize that although I might be physically alive; conventionally regarded as a living being; I never became anything more than a living death. For that’s what it feels like to pawn oneself to the world. I feels like one’s ‘self’ and one’s life is not one’s own; that one is merely a spectator to the unfolding of a dreary and rather impersonal drama.--Gross. That is, if I had it in me to even put up with any of that. I imagine that, being who/as I am, I wouldn’t live to see too many seasons of a life like this: the cape of despair eventually suffocating me. 

I wonder, what is it about me, my ‘self’ that makes it wholly impossible for me to ignore my ‘self.’I look around me and see the majority of people managing it just fine (or, rather, as fine as one can manage the pawning of oneself to the world.). Why is such a path/manner of Being one that is closed to me? I couldn’t attempt it even if I wanted to. Why/how is this??? What is it about me that makes this so? Because I realize now that my inability to do such a thing/live such a way, has defined my entire life thus far. It doesn’t seem to be something that I learned or picked up from anyone else. That is, I can think of no one who modelled anything like this in my early life. It was only later on, when the definition was making itself felt more and more that I managed to find others who also felt such a condition defining their existence. But those others didn’t birth it in me, they only (not only, for their friendship has been everything to me.) helped me recognize what was already there. 

My need to be/become my’self’ seems to be an inborn requirement of my Being. The condition of my existence. But how can this be?? For this condition doesn’t seem to be present, or at least, not nearly as stressed, in the people that I observe around me. It is this condition that has made me feel different--pathological--my whole life. Even when I couldn’t grasp it, it was always there, whispering to me from the darkness. It was never not there. Thus, I though that there was something wrong with me. 

It would seem that the entire trajectory of my life has been defined by the attempt to understand this whispering from the darkness. For I discovered early on that I couldn’t silence it without simultaneously doing away with myself. Because it is more me than I am... Whatever that means. And it is this whispering, this me, my ‘self’ that I am now engaged in consolidating; I am collecting from the darkness and attempting to explore and understand. This is what my life is about. Or, at least, it is the meaning of my life. My defining commitment as Hubert Dreyfus would say? And God is that which makes it all possible is what Kierkegaard what would say? God is the ground where all of this takes place; God is the sun which allows for the illumination of these dark places. It is only with/through God that the whispering can be understood? Is God that which whispers to me? That would indicate/imply that my ‘self’ is God; a fragment of God? My ‘self’ is atman? So many things to consider here...

Atman, my ‘self’, might this bear any relation to the concept of Nothingness that Sartre is acquainting me with? He does talk about how this Nothingness “haunts” Being. And I would certainly say that this whispering from the darkness of my Being has haunted me. Haunting is actually a perfect word for it. I seem to be more (profoundly?) haunted than others. Is this possible? I wonder, will Sartre ever discuss the possibility of some being more “haunted” or possessing more Nothingness than others? 

It has become apparent to me recently that this is my work. It is my play too actually, all woven into one. That is, when I sit here with you, when I lose myself in books, when I wander around and think/imagine, I am working. It may seem like such a minor distinction to focus on--such a trivial thing to notice and distinguish. But to/for me it is everything. I have always craved to be one of those people who is consumed by their work. I has always thought that there was something to important and noble about it. I bestows one’s life with an importance that isn’t there otherwise. That is, a life without this emphasis on one’s work is a life without a defining commitment. This seems to be an awareness that I apprehended before I was ever able to understand or articulate it. All I knew was that I was missing an importance/meaning to my life. I could see that others (though few) had it. But I never really believed that I would come to experience it myself. I had resigned myself to merely watching those others from the sidelines. Always to be aware of the game that I so desperately yearned to be a part of, yet never being chosen to participate. For, alas, it does seem to be a game that one must be chosen for. You can want to participate with your whole Being, but that means nothing unless one is animated from within. Otherwise one will simply be going through the movements; it will be purely mechanical. A true experience of/participation in the game requires that one lose oneself in/to it. And to lose oneself to something is never a choice made by oneself. That is, one can offer oneself up to this losing, but one can never control whether/if one will get swallowed up. I so wanted to be swallowed up by the game--by my work--and now it seems to be happening. I wonder, if one consistently offers oneself up to such a swallowing, is it inevitable that one will eventually get swallowed up? So many questions. And I’ve gotten so abstract and... mystical(?) in my thoughts now that I can hardly ask anyone else these questions. For, even the formulation of these questions requires such a lengthy and convoluted explanation that I’m unsure if I could even construct them, let alone hope that anyone might be able to follow my train of thought well enough for anything close to a satisfactory answer. It seems that I must wander the path of my questioning alone. And my writing is my mapping of the territory that I come across. This is my contribution to the literary community: to add my mappings to the mass of mappings that have been done before me. Because, after all, aren’t we all just trying to make sense of this crazy thing we call life? And isn’t life continuously evading our attempts to do so? 

The closer I get to Greatness the deeper I’ll be able to penetrate into (the mystery of) life. And, thus, the more precise/profound/meaningful my mapping will become. 

It seems to me that the only way for me to draw closer to this Greatness (my Greatness?) is by following the whispers of my ‘self.’ That is, I may learn from those around me, but I can never rely on them too fully lest I imitate them and lose the thread/path of my ’self.’ For Greatness seems to be... wholly individual, in a certain regard. By that I mean that... what do I mean? Every artist has their own particular flavor of Greatness. And it is only through/by this particular flavoring that Greatness appears. Because Greatness is... well, it’s not black and white; it’s vibrant and lively, it dances and lives. It is transcendent. It cannot be created/pursued mechanically. Sure it requires discipline and control, but it also requires personality and deviation. It requires that one break rules and forge new paths. These things can only be done by the individual. For it requires that one step outside the boundaries/limitations that had previously been set. This is a task that can only be done by the individual. It is not a collective activity, not something that any machine (mechanized something) might be able to do/engage in. The mechanized something is unable to do such because, as I understand it, these things necessarily require boundaries in order to operate in the first place. Or else these get swallowed up by possibility and are unable to function at all. Thus limitations must be set and can only be sidestepped by direction from some external tinkering/director. And, in the case of the collective... there seems to be a sort of inertia in the collective. As is a certain level of inertia is one of its defining features. For it is only by standing still that things (people) can collect after all. Yes, that seems right. Thus, only the individual, through their individuality, may pursue/tough Greatness. Although, of course, in saying that I also recognize that the individual is an amalgamation of everyone and everything that said individual has ever encountered (or will ever encounter?). So, in a sense, the individual is, in the individual self, a collection of Being. But, alas, a different sort of collective than what one conventionally thinks of when they consider a collective. 

Damn, I gotta say, I really covered some ground today. So odd too, I really had no idea that all of this was welling up within me. When I first sat down with you this morning I had absolutely no idea what we would be exploring together. Alas though, is it time to move onto some Being and Nothingness now? I’ve got to tell you, if I keep going at this pace, finishing it and The Second Sex by the end of the semester will be a piece of cake. I maybe should have set my aim even higher and also included Being and Time. But then, is it too late to make a change? Let’s just think about this for a minute... I’m at such a point in Being and Nothingness that I could reasonably leave it aside for a moment and return to it without too much confusion (I think). Being and Time only has 415 pages. And Dreyfus’ commentary on it is only 281 pages. Do I dare raise my aim? Doing so would mean adding another 700 pages to my goal, making it 2300 pages of dense philosophical treatise to complete in 3 months while simultaneously juggling 5 classes. Do I dare attempt it? I ask but I already know the answer. Now, the only question is, do I start Being and Time first or ought I take a bit of a wander through Dreyfus’ commentary first?