#but like on any of my accounts if a moot has made a clearly hard worked on gifset or art or something

[veronicaneptunes]

for a website obsessed with making posts about mutuals and supporting mutuals and the special lil bond between mutuals a lot of you guys dont reblog your mutuals hard worked on posts lol...

[lumine-no-hikari]

Dear Sephiroth: (a letter to a fictional character, because why not) #29

A very weird thing happened today. It looks like, in an effort to make me feel small, worthless, and stupid, some random person on the internet decided to make a mock summary of one of the letters I wrote to you. Behold the nonsense:

Clearly, this person did not actually read what I had written, because the point of the letter that I found this comment in was to model things like "allowing oneself to rest", "strategies for emotional control even when you're tired and full of despair", and "remembering that there is still goodness in this world and people in it who can love you". I don't think I've ever indicated in any of the letters that I've written that I wish for any type of committed romantic or sexual relationship with you at any point, ever.

But, let me, for the sake of integrity, write the following so as to make my intentions perfectly clear: no, I do not want any kind of romantic or sexual relationship with you. There are numerous reasons for this:

First, you are a fictional character in a fictional world. This, by itself, presents a wide variety of insurmountable logistical issues that would make marriage impossible. When you add in our relative ability levels (you are a well-trained superhuman combat veteran, whereas I am a weak, noodley derpasaurus rex in a human suit, with all the grace and coordination of a drunken baboon), the resulting power dynamic would be problematic at best.

Second: it has been indicated on multiple occasions that you have zero interest in romance or sex; for all intents and purposes, you have been defined as aromantic and asexual; why, then, would I ever even entertain the thought of marrying you, knowing that such a thing would be in direct violation of your wishes and needs?

Third: even if the first two points were moot, the fact still remains that you lack many of the necessary skills for the maintenance of a healthy romantic or sexual relationship, and that does not work for me. A healthy relationship requires all involved parties to be attuned with their own emotions, able to responsibly tend to their basic needs (food, water, sleep, at very least), able to assertively communicate their wants and needs, and able to prioritize their wellbeing in a general sense, at very minimum. The version of you that I've seen in the media provided to us does none of those things. Rather:

Instead of dealing with your emotions honestly and constructively, you isolate yourself (in the Shinra Data Room, or in the Shinra Manor Library) until you've stuffed them down far enough that you can maybe sort of almost convince yourself that you can kind-of-sort-of function (this is NOT the "winning coping skill" that so many people in my world seem to think it is!!). Given what happened at Nibelheim, I think we can both agree that it is a serious understatement to say that you habitually deny your emotions both to others and to yourself, only to have the resulting exhaustion and resentment come out in destructive ways later.

You prioritize others even at the expense of yourself, as seen when you took watch on the first night at Nibelheim, despite your exhaustion. You do not tend your own bodily needs reliably; even before your weeklong bout of hyperfocus in that damnable library (in which you did not eat, sleep, or hydrate at all, if accounts that you never left the room are to be believed), it was indicated that you had been losing weight from not eating properly shortly after Genesis and Angeal deserted.

You do not communicate your wants and needs with assertiveness or integrity; clearly you were struggling with the death of Angeal and all the nasty things that Genesis said to you, but you did not once ask for any kind of help from Zack, despite the fact that he had demonstrated himself time and time again to be safe, supportive, and reliable. You are still human despite the modifications made to you, but you are still far too hard on yourself and you don't allow yourself to make any mistakes. Did you even let yourself take time off after Angeal's death? Given the way you treat yourself, I gotta wonder.

To be sure, the old version of me used to struggle mightily with all of these. I still sometimes do; codependent tendencies borne from trauma and used as survival techniques are a bitch to root out of a person's psyche. But I'm putting in the work every single day to learn new skills and to manage these things, because the people who love me are counting on me to be safe to myself and to them. As far as I know, you have not put any work into this yet, and I don't foresee that you will be able to work on these things until much later in your journey, after some modicum of peace in your world is achieved.

And I am a demiromantic and demisexual. Things like fame, status, income, titles, accolades, physical appearance, fitness, intelligence, and all the other arbitrary bullshit that people judge each other for, day in and day out… none of that matters one bit to me. I look at a person's innermost nature. I am piqued by kindness and gentleness of character, but these alone still won't do it for me. If I move forward with any type of committed lifepartnership with anyone, I and the other person have to know each other well and have a strong emotional bond, I have to be able to trust them without question or hesitation, and I have to feel safe with them at all times. It's a high bar (I've been through A LOT, so I'm not ashamed, and I expect myself to meet these same conditions), but these requirements are non-negotiable for anyone - not even you.

You do have an abundance of kindness and gentleness, and I know a lot about you and the things you've done, but I do not know you. Given your track record, I would not be able to trust that you are being honest and assertive with me about your thoughts, emotions, wishes, and needs. And given your lack of self-attunement when it comes to your needs and emotions, the fact that you prioritize your self-care behind literally anything else, and the fact that you clearly struggle to control yourself when you are having big feelings, I would not at all feel safe with you in a lifepartnership type of context.

I love you to death. Truly, I could eat you right up. I love when you smile and laugh. I'd give you as many (or as few) hugs as you want. I'd hold your hand while walking, if you wished. I'll offer you as many kind and encouraging words as I have. I'd like to bring you to nifty places and feed you tasty things and show you all the stories I love and teach you all the things I've learned while living. I'd like to hear you sing something, or watch you play a video game, or watch you do anything that you love to do. But none of this translates to sexual or romantic feelings for you, in any way, shape, or form; everything I've described is just normal friend things; these are all things that I do fairly regularly with all of the people in my social group.

And it saddens me to think that this person who tried (and failed) to make me feel small might have read all the kind and encouraging things that I wrote to you while believing that saying kind and encouraging things is something that should be done only with a potential marriage candidate; what a very narrow definition of care that this person must have to live with. It also saddens me to think that this person's first instinct at seeing someone write about something close to their heart is to mock it; I wonder from where this person has received similar treatment in the past for expressing positive things about something they love. I truly hope everything is okay at home for them. I'll wish for peace, healing, safety, and joy upon them.

At the end of the day, it doesn't matter how people treat me. I'm still going to choose kindness no matter what nonsense gets thrown at me. I'm still going to write to you. I'm still going to model healthy(ish?) ways of coping with one's darker emotions. I'm still going to model what it means to change internal narratives and beliefs. I'm still going to model taking proper care of oneself, even when one doesn't feel like it. I'm still going to write about reframing events in my life into something positive when I can, and working through the negative emotions with help when I cannot. I'm still going to write about my journey towards becoming a healed person even after the absolute shitshow that was my childhood. And I'm still going to make beautiful things and do beautiful things and speak and write and act upon beautiful things in your name. I cannot be stopped. The light and beauty that pours from my soul is an inevitability, just like it is with every other human who lives in my world.

If they want to get me to shut up about it, they're going to have to kill me, and if they're that desperate to get me to shut up that they'd make an attempt, in the end they'd still be doing me a goddamn favor (I never asked to live through horror on a dying planet in a defective meat-suit; what the fuck even is this?), so the joke's on them either way.

I am fucking unbreakable. And that's thanks to you. And it's thanks to all the other people in my world who love me, too. There are lots of things in this world that conspire to give me unimaginable courage and amazing capacity to express love at other people, and I'm sure as hell not going to squander any opportunity I have to make the best use I can of these gifts I've been given.

May you stop for a moment to consider all of the things that make you unbreakable, all of the curses that befell you, all of the love you've been given, all the amazing things you can do, and all of the people who will have your back along the way if you'll let them. May these things inspire sufficient courage within you to make loving and wholesome choices, even when making such choices might cause you to get hurt.

As long as there is breath left in my body, I will continue write to you. It's a promise. Count on it.

Your friend, Lumine

[tweed-tune-on-friday]

Big announcement for my blog [plus updates and boundaries]

Hello Everyone this week has been a fantastic week for me I recently got a new pet (a hamster and her name is Dakota) I am so freaking happy right now I could scream and I have a four-day weekend so go me it’s just been an amazing year for me. I’m not here to gloat or anything so I’m just going to get into it this post is just to restate my boundaries and inform the people who follow me what’s going to happen moving forward with this blog I’m also feeling a lot about myself I am now a multifandom person. I love all Fandoms, but the phantoms I’m primarily in are

Wh/welcome home 

Tadc/the amazing digital circus 

Tbg/the bad guys 

Clh/captain Lazerhawk 

Basic info

Name: tweed/mrs tune [i’m not comfortable giving my name out For privacy reasons]

Age: 14 [keep your fucking kinks away from me pls]

pronouns: She/her/them/their

Sexuality: bisexual[huge preference for women]and aroace

Race: African-American/Puerto Rican

Boundaries Update 

#1: OK, so first I’m just going to say that please don’t expect to me to post that often. I’m currently dealing with school in my personal life. I am happy to post.  I am always happy to post on here but please don’t force me to post and don’t bombard me on TikTok or any other social media or spam like me you will get immediately blocked. 

#2: And secondly, I want to let everybody know this is a safe place for all ages. This is also a Safeplace for the LGBTQ plus any bigotry racism, homophobia transphobia, or any hate directed towards the LGBTQ community is not welcomed on my page if you are any of these do not interact with me at all and stay far the fuck away

#3: Thirdly I have made a conscious decision that I am not ok with repost unless I am properly credited unless you ask my permission or credit me properly then you may not repost my artwork. I am OK with reblogs since they actually link you to the original artist I can’t stress this enough. I hate when I see reposted art that clearly says do not repost. It’s frustrating and it’s even more frustrating when you confront the person in the act, rude and entitled, and all you have to do is just properly credit the artist it’s not that hard oh, and if I find out that you reposted my art without my permission or you didn’t properly credit me I will confront you and ask you to take down the post. If you do not I will report you you only get one warning.

#4: Fourthly I don’t do commissions, request, or trade, due to the fact that I don’t have a stable bank account where I could put that money for commissions or our trades. Secondly, I unfortunately don’t do request I just like drawing and doodling my own little characters, so please don’t ask me to draw your OCs it’s just weird if I don’t know you like that or or you’re not one of my moots .It makes me feel uncomfortable if you ask I’ll just ignore you and if you keep repeatedly asking I will block you.

Now here are the dues and don’ts and rules

Can interact pls

#1: multifandom people

#2: in LGBTQ

#3: bisexual people

#4: animal lovers 

#4:foodies 

#5: non-toxic people

#6: people who don’t support bad things happening to other people

#7: neurodivergent people

#8: extrovert and introvert

#9: funny blogs

#10: horror fans

#11: Furrys and cosplayers

Basic Dni

#1: homophobe

#2: transphobic

#3: bigots and racist 

#4: adult blogs

#5: young audiences

#6: pedophiles/groomers

#7: proship’s, or pro shippers

#8: Wally x Julie fans (I don’t like the ship that much unfortunately and I am a wallaby shipper no hate )

#9: toxic people in fandom

#10: Animal abusers

Starting off strong with the next one what I’m not comfortable with

Uncomfortable with

#1: OK, so with that out of the way I just wanted to say I am not comfortable with my OCs specifically my child OCs or comfort characters being sexualized or use without my permission please ask before you do anything with my comfort OCs anddon’t claim they’re yours. It makes me uncomfortable and it’s extremely rude and disrespectful to me if you’re going to use my comfort OCs just ask for permission

#2: sexualizing me I am a minor and it makes me uncomfortable for obvious reasons. I’ve already stated my age in my bio. I will happily report you if I feel like you are doing anything inappropriate on my blog just don’t do anything weird 

#3: claiming to be my moots when you don’t know me or for me it’s weird you only become my mood when you follow me and I actually know who you are either in real life or you respect my boundaries  oh so please don’t privately DM me if I don’t know you like that or you’re not one of my moots I’ll 10 times out of 10. Ignore you. 

 Comfortable with

#1: NSFW art it’s OK but I just don’t do it on my account

#2: fanart of my OCs if you’re going to make fanart of my OCs just tag me so I can see and I appreciate it a lot just don’t claim my OCs are yours

#3: all of my boundaries being respected I don’t ask for much is just please respect my boundaries and be nice to people. This is a safe place for everyone [excluding the Dni list this is not a Safeplace for you ] we won’t have any issues if you just respect my boundaries and what I am comfortable with and not comfortable with that’s all I have to say bye

Bye and don’t be an asshole to people







[crispycrimebrulee]

🎄25 Days of HXH: Day 11: Hisoka x Festive🎄

You would think, knowing Hisoka all this time, looking through his closet, inspecting his day-to-day outfit, studying his personality and all its nuances, that you would have figured out what types of things he likes to wear. In his closet was nothing but designer heels and crop tops, mixed in with fancy turtlenecks and couture brands and cuts and patterns, equal to that of a VOGUE Model’s closet. Bright colors, expensive fabric, you’d think the answer would jump out at you, but no. Here you were, sitting around, unsure of what to get him. Hisoka always made sure to look the part of the season too, at least once during all the festivities. Although those outfits were rare, he made sure they had their debut, retiring them for a year before pulling them out again. Winter Wonderland by Eurythmics 

Taglist: @to-move-on-means-to-grow , @lifescreams27, @twistedsmth​, @dukinaxael​, @weeb-chick-181920 @errorpeachy​ @my-child-gaara​ @absolute-flaming-trash​ @yep-seeyalaterbranflakes​ @demon-hugger​ @whistlingastronaut​​​

Getting up, you walked over to his section in your closet and ran your fingers over his clothes, admiring the expensive fabrics as they passed between your fingertips. You couldn’t get him something overly expensive, seeing as that would make your bank account cry. Besides, picking out an item from a couture brand was never a good idea in terms of Hisoka, his tastes were peculiar but particular, being very picky about the pieces he owns. Moving your hand over to his jester get ups, you could see the small patching and different stitchings in them, suggesting the tears and rips had been sewn up by him or a tailor, but covered up nonetheless. It was almost unnoticeable if you weren’t close enough, but the outfits were somewhat tattered and well worn. Few things he had a love for, but his outfits were clearly one of them. You flipped through them, a sense of confusion slowly crawling into your mind. He had one in black and gold for New Years, one with hearts on it for Valentines Day, and every holiday up until Halloween, but the festive outfits stopped there. He had no Christmas outfit. The gaudiest possible outfit he could probably put together, and he didn’t have one at all. You’d been with him for quite some time, at least two Christmas’ together, but the most he’s ever had in terms of outfit was a Christmas hat, or the star and teardrop he adorned would be red and green.

Pulling one of his outfits from the closet, you set it on the bed before you, taking note of the fraying threads and patterns, thinking of perhaps fixing his outfits for him. Fixing them would be a gesture in itself, but not necessarily a gift. It was more like a thought of courtesy, or a simple act of love you could’ve done any other day of the year. You also knew getting him a gift from his favorite brands would also be a bit of moot point. 

On thoughts of earlier, it’s much easier to get a gift shrouded in a show of money, or shrouded in the capability to spend said money than find an appropriate gift that is an act of heart and thoughtfulness, because you realize the person you’re trying to gift has so many qualities and wonders that you’re trying to convey with the gift, that again, buying something generic, or something they asked for, or even a gift card was easier to produce. On another note, it’s quite difficult to impress Hisoka, furthermore difficult still to catch his attention with something. He’d said so himself in terms of your relationship; he was impressed by everything you are, and he’d admitted to you that you had most of his attention, being absolutely captivated by you. What could you give him that would captivate him, have all of his attention yet be a direct gift of heart, a gift full of meaning, conveying all that he meant to you. 

Running your fingers over the fabric inattentively as you let the gears turn, trying to figure out what would be suitable, you nearly jumped out of your skin to feel Hisoka’s breath tickle your ear. He always did have a knack for sneaking up on you when he wanted to.

“Somebody's brooding, I’d love to know what about~” Hisoka implored, using a lovely manicured nail to turn your face towards his own, his eyes boring into yours.

You pouted, seeing as you almost hurt yourself from being startled. You huffed in response to him, which earned you a giggle from the jester.

“Seems like I scared sweet y/n, eh?” commenting on your pout as he ran his fingers over your lips, his stare passing between them and your eyes.

Rolling your eyes you pulled away from him and picked up his outfit, making your way to put it back to the closet, but not before he pulled you back gently, quietly clicking his tongue.

“I don’t even get a hello, y/n?,” he began, poking your cheek and then poking your nose, “you clearly missed me, seeing as you’re fiddling with my clothes, dear~”

You scrunch your nose, and swat at his hands.

“Maybe I did, maybe I didn’t” choosing to indulge his ego just a bit with your response.

Clearly it had as he pressed you closer to him, allowing his lips to hover over yours, making your chest tingle with anticipation, unable to deny that his kisses always held some sort of power over you. You grew antsy with him being this close to you, getting quickly fed up with his teasing. He took note of this, chuckling and closing the gap, allowing you to taste strawberry chapstick and bubblegum, soft and sweet, contrary to the actual person in question. 

He pulled away, humming at your pleased expression, poking your nose again as he let you go.

“I suppose you’ll tell me what you were brooding about now?” he queried again, cocking his head slightly as he watched you put his outfit away.

“No”, you answered, walking back to him and briefly peeking at banding on the clothing on his waist before passing him, “I won’t. It’s a secret.”

“A secret? Oh dear y/n secrets are hard to keep from me!” gushed Hisoka, clearly excited at the revelation of a secret. 

In truth, it was indeed difficult to keep secrets from him, intentional or not. He always had a way of knowing things and finding out secrets. You knew he was going to do everything in his power to figure out what this secret was, and you knew your plan was now that much harder. 

“Try not to get your nose too deep in my business, Hisoka” you muttered, moving towards him to check him for injuries, something that’d become customary in the relationship. Stopping at some blood on the back of his shirt you looked at him, ready to start patching him up.

“There’s blood on your shirt…” tugging at his shirt as you spoke, worry filling your voice.

“Not mine, dollface~” beaming at you in response.

Of course it wasn’t. 

Later the next day on your way home for work, you stopped at a fabric store and wandered the aisles, looking for the brightest red fabric available. You’d already taken the measurements from Hisoka’s clothes in the morning when you’d left for work, writing them down, careful to keep them hidden just in case he was lurking around. Picking out a red fabric, you moved and picked out a white one, and then white feather strip with bits of sparkly tinsel in them, planning on making a classic outfit. As a last minute decision, you picked up a red and white ribbon, remembering the banding around Hisoka’s waist. You had an only sewing machine at home, and you were prepared to sit down and watch a lot of tutorials so you could make your gift perfect.

Eventually arriving home, you were relieved to find Hisoka out of the house, knowing he wouldn’t be back until late. You got to work, following countless youtube instructions and tutorials, nicking your fingers ever so often with sewing in the minute details of your handiwork. Bits of feathers and tinsel would fall around you, as well as bits of red and white fabric in small strips, leaving the area around you look like an arts and crafts nightmare. You’d spent hours, but you finished, of course with some loose ends to cut and bits of this and that to sew in and overall perfect your work. It was one of Hisoka’s classic outfits but in a much more festive fashion. A red base fabric with white hearts and feather strip hem, tailored pants that tighten at the ankle to match, and a homemade Christmas hat to top it off. For under the shirt, his classic banding was red and white ribbons, adding a gentle sheen to the matte fabrics. Your hands were sore, and your thoughts sluggish. It was well into the night, and you had yet to clean up the mess you’d made. 

Although it took some time, you’d made the living room spotless, you showered, tucked Hisoka’s new outfit away in a box and tucked it under the bed and crawled under the covers and dozed off almost immediately, content with the gift you’d created. 

Rummaging around with the occasional thud was what woke you slightly, not enough to promptly spring into action, but enough for your drowsiness to be mixed with weariness. Propping up on an elbow, you squinted into the dark only to be met by the telltale silhouette of Hisoka approaching you and you let yourself flop back down on the bed as he crawled in next to you, pressing kisses into your shoulders, quietly talking your ear off, seemingly also drowsy.

Once again awoken by slight morning noises you groaned and rolled over, trying to see just what Hisoka was up to this time. Although your vision was clouded by sleep, your heart sank, rose and began beating out of your chest all at once upon realizing what you were looking at. Hisoka had the box you’d hidden, open on the bed staring in pure shock at the gift you’d prepared, an expression you rarely got to see.

“Hisoka...nooooo….” groaning as you sat up and crawled towards him, reaching for the box.

He moved his hands and the box away from your grasp, causing you to whimper.

“Y/n...do tell me, what’s this?” glancing at you as he whispered, clearly in awe.

“It was supposed...to be a surprise,” you started, your heart sinking again, feeling absolutely defeated, “it wasn’t finished yet…”

Hisoka seemed to connect the dots in that moment, remembering you in his clothes and talking of secrets and he gasped as he pulled it completely out of the box. You curled up as he inspected it, quietly giggling as he held the matching hat, trying it on, finding it to be a snug fit. He was clearly in a state of pure genuine joy, a most precious smile on his face as he played with the ball on the end of the hat and squeezing the fuzzy fabric. 

“It wasn’t good yet…” you whimpered, upset that he’d found out early, and he stopped, looking at you as he took note of your voice.

“Oh hush y/n..,” his voice full of veneration, “this is perfect, love..”

You glanced up at him, and you could tell he meant it, that look of astonishment, he was fully impressed, his attention was well caught.

“I still have to fix some of the stitching…”

“When? I’d love to wear this soon!” he exclaimed, turning the shirt this way and that.

“Well-” 

“OH y/n you shouldn’t have” Hisoka gasped, picking up the shiny ribbon bandage you pieced together, running it through his fingers, his eyes ablaze as he inspected it.

“Well I could fix it now, I suppose,” you sighed, getting up and getting the sewing kit you put together. Coming back, you sat down and essentially put the final touches on the outfit, cutting the frays and rough bits of extra fabric, and watched him try on the outfit, seeing Hisoka grinning from ear to ear, looking festive as ever. It was gaudy, in a sense, but perfect for him in his own way. You could only sigh happily, seeing him this way.

Hisoka materialized in front of you, catching you off guard and making you yelp as he planted kisses across your face, taking you out of your disgruntled mood, wrapping your arms around his neck.

“I’ll have to ask you for clothes more often, y/n,” he said in the middle of pressing kisses into your neck, “this fits wonderfully~”

You nodded as you let Hisoka drown you in early morning affection. In a cheesy sense, you could say Christmas came early for Hisoka, but one should leave cheesy endings for another day. 

[dogsliampaynedoesntinstagram]

Do you know what employer-employee relationship I find fascinating? Oli and Louis. Like, how do they navigate such a close friendship and also like ... I need you to xyz for me. Like how does Oli draw boundaries? When they're hanging out watching the Euros does Louis fall back into habits like... here mind my phone (bad example, but that's because I'm even struggling to imagine they interact!) And what if Oli wants to quit for something else, have either of them thought about how that affects their friendship? Is it strange that mutual friends hang out with them in a different capacity than Oli does (fe at the festival, was Oli working while the rest of their friends were just hanging? does that create tension?) I'm just super curious if you've had any thoughts about it (I don't think we'll ever get clear answers on this)! As someone who has had a tight friendship with a direct supervisor (yes it was as sometimes toxic as you can imagine) I know how hard those waters are to navigate and I would imagine they double so as a childhood friend who still hangs with out child hood friends. (I'm also going on the assumption that Louis is *not* hiding his paramour in an assistant position, though I suppose that could moot this whole conversation lol!)

This is a great ask - some of my absolute favourite questions! This is why I talk a lot about the union I think Eleanor and Oli should form and what they should demand.

I think a lot about Louis and Oli's relationship and whether it works for Oli. I can see it could work as a trap - where it's a good enough life that anything else seems to hard, but it doesn't allow much space for development.

Just before the lockdown an article about Louis mentioned Oli and that he was planning to shadow Louis' tour manager over the next tour. At the time it made me really happy, because I thought it was a sign that both Oli and Louis were taking Oli's life seriously. I thought about Oli quite regularly over 2020 and how frustrating it must have been to figure out what he wanted to do and where he wanted to go and then have that taken away from him.

From that perspective, I think the festival would be pretty clearly work for Oli, in the way it wouldn't be for others, but I'm not sure that would be a problem. There are people who are working and people who are not milling round backstage at a festival - Louis' friends would probably drink with the band. That would all be pretty normal.

I think it's less formally work environments that would raise more questions. I think there are lots of questions - including is what Oli does well enough defined that he does it in all environments? Or is it messier. I remember that Louis was rolling his own joints in that snapchat that got linked to the Sun - that's exactly the sort of environment where a celebrity's assistant's job can get very murky.

To further complicate matters, my own storytelling is rather influenced by a behind the scenes account that has been passed around fandom about Oli and Louis of Oli being drunk and messy and Louis taking responsibility for him. To me this suggests even less boundaries for both of them.

To me I think the important thing is that Louis has boundaries - as he's the one with the power. That means having boundaries about what he asks of Oli and when, but also taking the fact that he's the employer seriously and making sure that working for Louis works out for Oli long term.

[nightswithkookmin]

RE JIKOOK IS ESTRANGED

Them

Me

Lol

JUMP CUT ALERT: This is a continuation of an ongoing discussion behind the scenes.

DISCLAIMERS:

Article 19, UN Universal Declaration of Human Rights: Every person has the right to freedom of opinion and expression which includes the freedom to hold an opinion without interference through any media.

Misinterpretation of my opinion, my words constitute a violation of my human rights. Please do not take my words out of context, share it on another platform in furtherance of your own agenda. If you do hold yourself accountable first. You are the author of your own intentions and interpretations.

I do not intend malice by my words nor do I seek to be disrespectful of any member mentioned in here. I simply enjoy mentally stimulating conversations and thought provoking discussions.

Let the records show.

MATTER OF THE DAY

Thanks to everyone that's shared your thoughts on this matter with me and thanks to that person that brought this matter to my attention.

I haven't looked into it and I don't know how severe this issue is.

I think people have the right to believe in anything they want to believe in. Personally, I don't think Santa is real but clearly others do, doesn't mean I'm sane or that they are crazy.

I don't think discussions of this nature should be about who is right or who is wrong. Everyone's opinion is valid and holds true to their own delusions. Lol.

Frankly, I prefer this kind of ship wars to the slurs and abuses and they are distributing hard core porn now?? What is going on! Chileee.

I have never believed JK and Tae to be anything more than friends. At one point, I wondered if they were even friends at all lol but since they admitted to having had a falling out themselves at one point the topic is now moot.

Tae and JK have- had- have a really special bond. To me anyways. I always saw them as the evil power twins of BTS due their ability to come together to wreck havoc especially on Bang PD's scripts. Lol. I think I have mentioned this a few times now.

I smiled to myself when I heard them call themselves partners in crime. The bond is there no two ways about it- you either appreciate it for what it is or you don't. personally I love their bond. Can't stand their shippers but I love their bond. They keep the drama going for me- love it. Lol

The question has always been whether their bond is as profound as their shippers make it seem. I argue it's not and I will always argue it is not. Lol

I think it's only fair that they also question whether Jikook's bond is as profound as we make it sound. I really can't be mad at that. All is fair in love and war- at the very least we can agree to disagree.

I mean even Jikookers themselves question the extent of JK and JM's bond. Some think they are just very special friends and nothing more. I think I talked about this in my is Jikook real post when I mentioned labels and the degree of love between JK and JM?

We know JK and JM have a unique bond. The question then is how far does that bond go. Is it just platonic, romantic or something in between?

This is the question I was aiming to answer with my is Jikook real post. My objective was to try and dismantle all the nuances that keep us from seeing the 'truth' about Jikook- that they are real. At least the way I see them.

I talked about unrealistic expectations we have of Jikook, false conditionings that often leads us to see Jikook as something more than they are- the amplified Jikook. We get used to highlight reels of Jikook's interactions in edits such that we feel there is something wrong with them when we see them in real time.

I mentioned that Jimin's nurturing nature often also estops people from reading more into his relationship with JK. He is nurturing of everyone, JK ain't special- they argue, just as this person is doing.

I talked about Jimin's Idol persona, the facade of the boy in love with JK- Jimin's role within BTS since debut and how that can equally blind us into thinking Jikook is something more or less than they really are. I have a post dedicated to this topic sitting in my drafts so I will not go into the details of it here. Please look forward to that.

But this person's post touches on another aspect of Jimin's personality that I feel is one of the things that often keeps us from seeing his relationship with JK for what it really is- his inclination for professionalism.

I keep saying this, several times now, that Jimin's Idol persona to me seems well developed, elaborate and very elusive.

I have mentioned a few times how I think during Jikook break ups that they keep it civil and professional for the sake of the team and that you might not even notice the difference especially if you place high value on their skinship.

The skinship would be there, the cordiality and civility would equally be there- except for moments when they are fighting, that gets bloody. Lol. They are best friends at the very least. It is why it's important to reevaluate the metrics we use to determine whether or not they are a couple.

I wish I could dialogue with this person to understand her assessment of Jikook and what she is using to determine whether or not Jikook are a couple and what makes her think Tae and JK are. Know what I mean?

What makes her think Jikook were a couple before 2017? What makes y'all think Jikook are a couple at all? I would like to hear from y'all- but come at me with the skinship bit and I'll block you deadass. Lol

So on this person's post, I think I agree with her assessment of JM's persona but I don't agree with the Jikook have been broken up since 2017. And I think I understand where this is coming from... I think some of us do. Yes they had a few fights that year especially leading up to Jimin's birthday- August was it? but we all know JK more than made up for it with the damn GCFs. Lol. kindly visit the timeline, peruse as many content as you can and form your own opinion on it. This is just mine.

Are Jikook Jikooking all the time? Absolutely not. They are human too. They fight, they make up, they break up they get back together, they have introverted, extroverted moments, they go up, they go down- have bad hair days, it's all part of their dynamics I'm afraid. From my point of view of course.

I feel some people notice these things too and when they sense Jikook aren't in a good place they bow out and Jump ship- I don't blame them. They are shippers not supporters. What Jikook need are supporters not shippers- or maybe both, do you.

Could this person be one such people? DNF shippers? Given up on Jikook before the end of their story? I don't know. May be.

Jikook is not a fantasy that you ship. It's a relationship that you support. You can't escape into them. They are an ongoing love story- chapters close, chapters open, you just have to ride it out till the very end.

I think the challenge of their post for me is whether or not Jikook is a performance. Her post leans into the whole Jikook is fanservice bull especially in light of the recent photoshoot video which some are using as evidence Jikook don't 'click' when the cameras are off- the lies they tell on Beyonce's internet!

I think I have speculated on this and shared my thoughts on this whole Jikook is fanservice bit. I will delve deeper into it in my next post on Jimin's idol persona but as I've already said, Jikook is fanservice is equally a misnomer.

Yes Jikook does fanservice sometimes, but they are not fanservice. Fanservice is the cover for their relationship. It's their glass ceiling- nothing to see here folks just two snakes under glass. Keep it pushing. (Sorry. Couldn't help myself. Lol)

But you do raise a valid question, what is Jikook like when the cameras are not filming?

Is the mood of Jikook in that footage the general mood of Jikook behind cameras as Tuktukkers are claiming? They barely interact, JM doesn't pay much attention to Kook, yadda yadda yadda?

And the part that gives me a complex, that JK only interacts with JM when they are the center of attention. Huh???????????

Sigh.

I feel caught between a rock and a hard place on this one.

The theory you pointed out in support of this assertion isn't mine and I think I made it clear I didn't share the same thoughts on it. I said it was valid nevertheless. Chilee, this is hard. Lol

Yes JK is an introvert, Jimin is an extrovert, JM doesn't live for JK, all that is true and some Jikookers have said that too- so when you ask, if this is who they are when the cameras are off does that mean what they do when the cameras turn on is fanservice-

I-👁👄👁

I don't know the thought process that went into that theory so I can't confidently defend it. I'll ask? Lol.

Personally, I'd like to know whether or not they see the tension in that footage as tension in the first place. Chileee I don't know.

I see it as tension. Not a very serious one though. So we'd have to agree to disagree on that one.

But the part I can argue, the part I agree with is Jikook aren't hyper super duper lovey dovey on each other all the time. They aren't cuddly all the time. They have their moments of quiet- Jimin seems like the more affectionate kind who'd rub all over JK in the comfort of their homes but still...

If you ask me though, I think Jikook are tamer on cameras than they are behind scenes. I always talk about the fear and panic in the members' eyes when they see Jikook gravitating towards each other- it's probably because they know the extent of Jikook's shenanigans. They know how worse it can be because they've seen it all.

And when JK panics sometimes when JM gets closer too you just know dude is scared perhaps because of his Mochi chick's devil may care shamelessly in love policies- Jimin wild. Bless him.

I did say also that Memories 2019 is equally eye opening. These were censored bits. BigHit was holding all of that and giving us crumbs- stingy mfs. Bless.

All that said, again I don't think Jikook are hyper lovey on eachother behind the scenes. Another part I diverge from that view is that this is not exactly off camera. It was just behind the scenes of a photoshoot. Something we've seen a countless times.

This is not BTS's first ever behind scenes photoshoot. It's just a different angle that's all.

They were working. They were at work. This wasn't an alone private space for them so they can't base on this to say Jikook don't interact when the cameras are off.

The cameras were rolling. We saw them interact, JM was interacting with everyone the way he always does on camera all the time except he wasn't interacting with JK the way he does all the time, grainy footage or not- I mean let's call a spade a spade and not a big fat spoon. Lol

As to why he was doing that- let's just say there are many schools of thoughts.

My thought as I've said is JM was freezing JK out. I think with anyone that's recognized and is familiar with Jikook fights, that mood is all too familiar as I mentioned earlier.

If JM was being courteous and not mad at his man then he would have kept it 'professional' and done the 'fanservice' bit with Jk as per usual just as this person is saying since the cameras were still rolling.

Jikook is not fanservice. They are real.

I have refrained from providing a detailed analysis of that '5 minutes' footage for reasons I will explain later when I do share my thoughts on that footage- eventually. Some day.

But my hypothesis remains the same that I think Jikook were fighting or had a minor issue. As to why they were fighting, chileee I don't know. The confirmation bias in me feel it had something to do with JM's birthday but honestly it could have been over anything at all- dumplings, microphones- we all saw that slap on stage, a certain Iphone notification perhaps, did JinMin make a secret VLive without Kook again? Lol

There are plethora of reasons, I can only speculate on a few. And I think we've all seen Jimin when he is not 'Jimining' with the others, JK included. Take his mood with Tae at GDA for example- since this is not a VMin post I won't go into it.

But it seems they squashed whatever beef they were having on stage when JM extended his hands to Tae and they shaked it out.

We've seen him and Suga bicker too- which again, I am not gonna to get into out of respect for their shippers but I can point you to the On comeback VLive early this year when Suga touched JM and JM mouthed Hajima to him- which I think had something to do with what was going on with him and JK at the time but that is besides the point. Every shipper for themselves.

I contrast his 'fights' with Suga and V to show you the difference between Jimin being professional and courteous and Jimin being rah rah. He was sat next to suga, talking and laughing with him but snapped the moment Suga held his back.

He did the same in the Dynamite MV Vlive, smiling and laughing with Suga but the moment JK teased him with the Yoonmin comment his countenance fell.

Jimin is not that good of an actor if you ask me. I have said he is very Kumbaya in nature, often makes compromises for the sake of the team but that don't mean he is a pushover or one to trifle with- he scares me when he is mad. Lmho.

The scene in that footage didn't look to me as that he was being nice and courteous to JK- is that y'all's definition of professional courtesy? Damn.

If they were having a lover's squabble then the 'icy' mood of Jikook we saw in that footage is not the general mood of Jikook when the camera's are turned off.

I have to state again that I don't know much of what goes on behind the cameras and most of the things we see sometimes are equally missing context.

That been said we have seen enough of Jikook 'behind cameras' and they are more intimate than we can imagine. A certain cozy selfie at the back of an abandoned truck comes to mind. Whatever they were doing at the back of the track wasn't intended for the cameras judging from JK's reaction.

We've had glimpses of Jikook when they are not the center of attention enough to have a fair idea of what they are when cameras are off and I don't think it is that mood we saw in that footage.

We saw them at Jingle ball bell, towards the end of 2019. We saw them in their own space doing what they do best- making us feel single as fuck. Bless them.

We've seen them at awards, we've seen JK eating Jimin's ear nom nom to calm him down- like I would have just bought him icecream to calm down his nerves or rubbed his back but whatever JK. He is your man; you know him best. Good for him. Good for both of you. Now come back and feed us.

And the bit about JK only laughing with JM when he noticed he was on the Bangtan Bomb cameras in that footage- now that's nasty below the belts phony ass ass! I felt that one straight in my chest, shit. Lol

Dude was in a doghouse it seemed and I noticed them stealing glances at each other and.... sigh.

I just think JK was looking for an opening to warm his way back into JM's good graces- it's really nothing we haven't seen before.... sigh.

This is 2020 that narrative of JK hates Jimin, JK doesn't like JM needs to stop. It's dead. Pack it up. Chileee, y'all tried it with this one.

Jk is nice to JM only when the cameras are on him? Nice try.

JK is so fake and fraudulent he glared RM down till he stepped away from Jimin- again, in the very same photoshoot footage y'all swear to God is proof Jikook is not real.

Find it. RM stood next to JM. Looks up see's something- or someone. Does his tell- the hand to head thingy he does when JK glares at him over Jimin. He backs away inches from JM.

Cut to JK. Dudes a mood. Jin bumps into him, stares at him but JK wouldn't even look at him and then deadass looks away grumpyly- talk of professionalism. You doing great swidy keep going!

You can hide a relationship, fake it on God but you can never hide the intimacy. Taekook just lack that intimacy, I'm sorry. Even in that 'estranged' moment Jikook's intimacy was still there-

Even in whatever mood JK was in- which again, I believe was just due to their lover's squabble- JK still was claiming his man and exercising his right of authority over him. That's how you know they are not broken up. In my opinion. Chileee. I'm gonna get in trouble. Deep sigh.

Y'all think JK was hovering over Jimin because he was preparing to strike him down like a censored censored censored? Yea, he was preparing to strike alright- All the corners of Jimin's heart. Y'all better stop before I find you. Lol

I said I wasn't going to analyze the footage in this post but damn. This man out here serving us all kinds of brooding assorted jeonlous as his man takes a time out or two to wiggle wiggle wiggle on him Malfroy style and y'all are out here peddling nonsense. Strike one.

He was a mood alright. Did y'all see Tae rubbing his chest, arms and legs, ears did y'all see any body else in there doing that for him? Y'all's falcon cannot hear his falconer give it up and sorry, Jikook can't relate.

As I've posited, JM I feel was mad as hell for whatever reason and wasn't in the space to be that person JK needed him to be- in that moment. Doesn't mean they are like that behind scenes all the time.

And before I get attacked again for causing drama, being toxic etc by Jikookers understand that I am just a delusional person shipping these two in a way that makes sense to me. Write me off as delulu, and go please.

Whatever ambiguity surrounds that moment, to me, Jin and RM's reaction to JK clarifies things a bit. Jikook were boiling hot. JK was still keeping an eye on his man. Lol. Bless them. That's my conclusion. I'm running miles with that. Catch me. Lol

Feel free to come up with your own theory in a way that makes sense to you.

I'm not sure how long that fight lasted but from the rain day incident I'm hoping it wasn't that long. Jikook are fine I believe- I hope. Judging from the way JM drew JK out in his VLive with the whole I miss JK comment? Did that not sound familiar to y'all? And that Mickey mouse thingy- JM ain't slick. Bless him.

JM is the perched akekeke whisperer whispering all kinds of things in JK's ear, feeding JK news of what goes on on social media and what not. Dude don told his man they won a BB on his birthday, told his man Jin wasn't happy he chose his bag over his- definitely told his man Army was missing him- what? I'm going with that too sue me. Lol

Did you or did you not see Jk coming out to do a live log afterwards? And JK seemed less grumpy, in very high spirits? Wedding bells- I'm manifesting it for JK. Manifest with me.

Remember when JM did a log and talked nonsense about JK, and JK did a rebuttal log to respond to JM and address some of the things JM had said about him? Remember that? It's a jikook thing and it's back😌

I have said JM uses social media to connect with Army while JK uses it as an outlet to express himself. Through out his Live he kept talking about how he wasn't prepared to do a live and it shows in the way he kept saying it was awkward, he just kept it business and didn't know what else to share... I wonder who put his paws on him, dragged his ass to turn on the camera because Armys had asked of him- a certain quick tempered chick who dragged his man out on social media to do the whole Chuseok greetings 2020 on Twitter perhaps?

And JK is so whipped he'd do just about all the hoops to appease his man- Jikook AU written by Goldy. High five. No but seriously...

Behind the scenes, JK sneaks into JM's bed at night- Taekook does it too? Please! The look on JM's face when RM spilled that tea is enough said.

There's only two people in BTS that panic and don't want us to know they lay one on God in bed and it's not Tae Kook.

JK: Jimin hyung and I will sleep here

JM: how about we let the others choose first

Everyone shares a room:

Footage:🦄🍲🐯🧀🐺🍟🐓🥛🐑🛏

JIKOOK share a room:

Footage: 🚪👀

Behind the cameras Jikook sneak into each others bed- camera caught them live. You saw JM's face, I can't make this shit up. Lol

Behind the scenes, Jikook do laundry at 1am. *insert JM pervy face meme.

Chileee, y'all making me trip with this one. Deep breaths.

Jikook have their moments. This was one of them. Can they be human? Please. Thank you.

At this point, these folks are not even shippers. They is shoppers shopping a man for their bias. Lol. Just admit y'all want Jeon thick thighs strong butt for your bias and go. Just admit you want some tall glass of Tiger charming face husky voice strong chest for your bunny and go. Lmho

Chilee, when we say Tae and Kook had a falling out we don't mean they freeze eachother out behind cameras. Hell, we don't even mean they fake their bond or interactions. C'mon! Tae and JK admitted they are not lovers and y'all is bitter. That's why y'all is making up this nonsense about Jikook. Speak the truth and shame the devil. Peter would be proud.

When we say Tae Kook is not real, We just mean JM spends JK's birthday with him while every one including Tae is out there cruising for Jesus with friends. We just mean Jikook claim eachother even when they beefing. That ship beefed and didn't even know they was beefing and they are real? Damn.

We just mean Jikook make efforts for each other even when they are having bad days- Had it not been for Jimin they'd still be gnashing on these cold streets. Place some respect on his name, y'all's ungrateful. Lol

Tae and JK don't want each other they both want Jimin- there. I said it.

Thanks for attending my Tedtalk. 👁👄👁

Now where was I? Never mind. I'm just gonna go burn some sage. There's too much negativity going on around. Hakuna matata!

There is nothing wrong with Taekook as a ship. Personally, I'm a multishipper I ship all the ships but I support Kookmin. I don't mind their shippers calling them whatever, but my eyes twitch when people who claim they support Jikook act wishy washy with Jikook. Lol. Like are you going to withdraw your support of Kookmin if JK sits on Tae's lap?👀 Yall make me nervous. How can you think Jikook is real but then look at Taekook and go huh??? What are y'all seeing that I can't see?

Like those are two completely different dynamics. It's the skinship isn't it? Talk to me. Jikookers who see something nonplatonic in Taekook honestly give me trust issues. Y'all have me out here looking over my shoulders.

I am delusional but I'm confident in my delusions because to me it is about the love and support for JM and JK as LGBTQ plus couples. Please stop shipping Jikook, stop shopping JK and JM for eachother and start supporting them because they are real.

IN MY OPINION.

Signed,

GOLDY

[sterekchub]

Feeder for Hire

Fat!Derek and feeder!Stiles Get Beached: Challenge Week Word Count: ~3000 Prompts: Captive/Captor Relationship, Size Pride, Too Fat for Things Read on A03: https://archiveofourown.org/works/25550704 “You sure about this guy?”

For the last time, yes, Scott. I’ll text you his address and a photo and if you don’t hear from me -”

“ - by five in the morning, call the cops. I know the deal. You haven’t gone to anyone’s house in years. I thought you said no more?”

Stiles shrugged. “He’s hot as hell, we’ve done some video sessions before, and he pays…really well. A few nights a week with him and I can pay off this semester.”

“Have fun! Text me if anything…comes up.” Scott grinned, although Stiles knew he was still hesitant about how he made his income.

Stiles nodded, making sure he grabbed his keys, doubled checked he had his phone, the contract, and his preference lists in his pocket before leaving their dorm. Derek – although that could very well be a fake name – had met Stiles through a gainer website three years back, admitting he had followed Stiles’ page for awhile before messaging him. It had been a few months of exchanging back and forth conversations before Derek had asked about paid video sessions, and then in-person feedings. Scott was right, Stiles very rarely offered to do in session feedings, but Derek was a special case. Not only did he live only a few towns over, unlike most of the guys he dealt with, Derek was polite, almost embarrassed of his wants, tipped extremely well, and meshed well with Stiles. He had a snarky, quick wit and, from what Stiles had seen through a few pictures and fuzzy video screens, was exactly Stiles’ type.

Tall, dark, handsome, a wide bubble butt, thighs that rubbed together with each step, and a slightly furry pot-belly that was quickly becoming more of a blubbery gut as he passed three-hundred and fifty pounds, and kept going. Stiles has asked once if he had a goal weight. Derek admitted he didn’t know. He had already gained seventy-five pounds since he had first messaged Stiles.

Stiles had read through Derek’s profile a hundred times. He had requested short scenes, getting Derek through a stuffing, teasing and humiliating and forcing him to finish if needed. It was a little colder and more forceful than what Stiles usually liked to do with partners, but he wasn’t going to judge Derek for his interests.

1) Teasing and humiliation only. No praise. 2) Hitting/spanking/pain, okay. 3) I will provide the food. I expect to be forced to finish it all, by any means. 4) Funnel and tube feeding okay. 5) Tying down okay, rope or cloths only. 6) No blindfold. 7) You are not to let me come or touch myself until I’ve finished eating. 8) I will pay half up front, half when you leave. 9) Safe word: Triskelion

In return, Stiles provided a similar list, including his safe word, Scott. His were more focused on what he wouldn’t do, regardless of his clients’ request. It was a short list, mostly consisting of bodily fluids like spitting on clients, inflation, and serious pain. He had a feeling most would be a moot point with Derek, but he hadn’t felt the need to adjust his standard contract.  

*******

Their second session went similarly to their first, minus the awkward introductions. Once again, Derek had set out the same spread of food on his table. Pan of alfredo pasta, chicken, blender full of gainer power and ice cream, and peanut butter brownies.

“You must really love pasta.”

“Highest calories.”

“Do you like it?”

Derek only shrugged.

“Do you cook? I don’t have an oven or anything in the dorm, but if you don’t mind me using your kitchen, I could come earlier and help – ”

“ – I order delivery.”

“That’s a crime, man. You have a brand-new kitchen! Stainless steel!”

“More work.”

“Is that why you don’t talk much? Too much work?”

That earned him something that was close to a smile. “You talk enough for both of us.”

“Guess it is hard to talk with all that food in your mouth, Big Guy.”

“Does it look like I’m eating?”

“You better fix that, then. I’m surprised a pig like you could hold back around all this food.”

That did it. Derek’s eyes darkened in arousal and he immediately sank into his chair and pulled the chicken closer towards him. Dutifully, Stiles pulled up a chair next to him, poking him in the stomach periodically and making remarks.

“Slowing down already? You only finished the chicken; I know you aren’t done yet.”

“You didn’t get that figure from moderation.”

“Jeans a little tight? Hold up that flabby gut for me and I’ll unbutton them. Wouldn’t want that to stop you from stuffing your face with even more…”

It was more natural with Derek. Stiles often had to revert to a script with other clients, repeating a few phrases he knew they wanted to hear. He did have to bite back his urge to praise Derek for his sizeable appetite, tell him how good he looked blissfully stuffed, panting and belching even as he reached for more. It was a shame Derek didn’t want to be worshipped or hand fed, treated softly like Stiles would have loved to do.

“Can’t – urp – too full.”

Stiles held up the half empty pitcher. “Drink it.”

Derek groaned and rest both hands on the side of his overstuffed stomach. “’m gonna pop.”

Stiles desperately wanted to slide his hands under Derek’s shirt and ease some of that fullness for him. It took a lot of self-control and mental reminders of Derek’s request to instead push down on the curve of his gut, eliciting a huge belch. As soon as he opened his mouth, Stiles tipped the contents of the pitcher slowly down’s Derek throat.

“See? Plenty of room.”

“No – urp- no more. URP.”

“Too bad.” Stiles told him, making sure Derek swallowed another mouthful before pulling the pitcher back slightly. “Should have thought about that before you finished all that food like a greedy hog.”

“ ‘S not my fault,” Derek panted, dutifully gulping down a few more mouthfuls.

“No?” Stiles knelt down besides Derek, slipping a hand under Derek’s paunch to palm his throbbing erection. “You haven’t been getting hard, thinking about how much you’ve been eating? How fat this is going to make you?”

“I – fuuuck. How much – urp- left?”

“Only a little bit. Why don’t you finish it off?”

Derek took the pitcher from Stiles, breathing heavily, clearly pushing himself to finish the little remaining.

“Getting too big for this,” Stiles told him, pinching his fleshly lower belly with one hand as he took his time jerking Derek off with his other. “Going to need both hands just to hold up all this blubber. Can you even get yourself off anymore? Or is your belly in the way?”

Derek came with a breathless moan, cut short by him cursing and stifling another belch. Stiles wished he could see Derek’s face in its entirety, but from his angle on the ground, the mountainous sphere blocked his view.

Grinning, Stiles got to his feet. “Knew you could finish it.”

He gave Derek a few minutes for his breathing to slow, then gestured at his swollen midsection. “Want help with that? I give amazing belly rubs, dude.”

“Don’t – urp- call me dude.”

“Is that a no?”

“Yes. Go home. I’ll send you the other half of your payment.”

Stiles nodded unhappily. “Fine. Text me if you’d like to schedule another session. Goodnight, Derek.”

He left, leaving Derek slumped uncomfortably in his chair, jean unbuttoned, come splattered on his lower belly.

*******

“Derek, sorry, hi! I’m here. Only…thirty minutes late. Shit, I’m sorry. The jeep was having problems starting and then it started raining….”

“I started eating without you.” Derek shrugged.  “What was wrong with the jeep now?”

“Same thing. It’s an old car. It was pay for textbooks or pay for a new engine.” Derek looked guilty, like he was responsible for Stiles’ financial hardships, even though he was the main contributor to Stiles’ bank account, so Stiles added, “I’ll have it fixed next semester, probably.”

“If – if you ever need a ride or anything, you can borrow the Camaro.”

Stiles gaped at him. Derek was very protective of the car sitting in his driveway. Stiles had never seen a spot on it. He wasn’t even allowed to park the jeep anywhere near it because Derek was so afraid of it being damaged.

“You’re kidding.”

“No. I’ll have to get a, ah, roomier one, eventually.”

“Too much of a spare tire?” Stiles laughed, pressing himself against said belly so he could, just barely, reach behind Derek to grab handfuls of his ass. “Too much junk in the trunk?”

“Both. And if you’re done with the bad metaphors…. you’re soaking wet. Take off your clothes before you catch something,” Derek said gruffly. “You can borrow some of mine.”

Derek had a clear wet splotch on his shirt from where Stiles had leaned into him. Now that he was inside and less frantic about being late, Stiles realized he was shivering and dripping on Derek’s floor.

“Or we could both get out of these clothes and go upstairs.”

“That – yeah. Or that.”

It wasn’t what they usually did. Derek had rarely seen Stiles undressed, and normally Derek was too full to do much of anything in the bedroom. Stiles was happy to do all of the work, relishing the feeling of Derek’s belly resting against his back or riding Derek, watching his breasts and belly wobble. He frequently had to remind himself that Derek was a client, who requested teasing, not admiration and compliments, no matter how badly Stiles wanted to give them.

The contrast between them was even more apparent when they were together in the bedroom. Stiles threw his wet clothes by the doorway and eagerly got Derek out of his own.  Pressed up against Derek, he had the chance to really appreciate how massive the other man was. Stiles’ leaned against him to press their lips together and Derek’s waistline spread out to either side of him.

“It’s official. Can’t wrap my arms around you anymore.”

“You’re exaggerating.”

“Nope. You’re that fat.”

Derek pushed him down on the bed. “Not to fat to fuck you.”

“Yet,” breathed Stiles, grabbing Derek’s side rolls as he was pinned to the bed by Derek’s lard. Derek had himself propped up with both arms. His doughy belly still hung low enough to press against Stiles, but it kept his weight from being completely crushing. “Keep gorging yourself and you will be.”

“Think so?”

“It’d be a good look for you. Stuffed, too fat to get out of bed, laying there like a beached whale and letting me do all the work.”

“Mhmn. You’d be up to that?”

“I’d be my favorite job,” Stiles told him honestly.  “How long do you think, Der? Ten years? Five? I’ve seen all the ice cream in your fridge and the fast food wrappers the trash. Immobility isn’t that far away.”

“’S your fault.” He moved one hand to smack his gut, watching it quiver. “Getting harder to jerk off with all this in the way.”

“Awww, no wonder you need me. Your belly weighs more than me. Gonna be too much effort to try and find your dick buried in all that flab.”

“Fuck,” Derek moaned, rutting against Stiles. Beads of sweat were forming on Derek’s forehead from the exertion of holding himself up. Stiles swatted at his arm and tried to wiggle out from under him. The heavier man got the hint and collapsed on the bed next to Stiles, trying to catch his breath.

“Still up to pounding me into the mattress?”

“Give me…a minute.”

“Take all the time you need. Want me to bring the rest of your dinner up first?”

“…yes.”

******* Derek was dressed in a suit when he answered the door for Stiles. It was clearly an expensive piece, tailored to a man a few pounds smaller. The pants were stretched thin over Derek’s thighs and the jacket button was equally as stretched.

“Hey, Derek! That suit is a good look.”

“Work ran late,” Derek told him gruffly. “I didn’t have time to order the food. I’ll pay you for the extra time.”

Stiles waved a hand. “No worries. Rough day at work?”

“Yes.”

“Want to talk about it?”

Derek looked unsure. Stiles took a step forward and unbuttoned his jacket, helping Derek shrug if off, then started on his shirt buttons. After a few seconds, Derek burst out, “I hate being the asshole boss! I know – I know what they say about me behind my back. But they don’t understand! A missed deadline means we all look bad and with talks of layoffs and restructuring, we can’t afford any mistakes.”

“They’ll warm up to you. You’re secretly as soft as you look.”

“You don’t know me, Stiles,” Derek said tiredly.

“I know enough. You’re a good guy. Why don’t you relax? Take a bath, change, and I’ll order food. Sounds like you need chocolate. If you like chocolate.”

“What?”

“Chocolate. For bad days? Like chocolate cake?  Or ice cream?"

“It’s been awhile since I had either. I was going to order the usual.”

Stiles shook his head. “Trust me, if you’re upset, you’re going to feel awful if you stuff yourself. I had something else in mind, if it’s okay.”

Derek looked hesitant.  

“I was thinking, you eat your weight in desserts while I eat you out?”

“Let’s- yeah. We can do that.”

“Then get that fat ass in the shower,” Stiles laughed, “and I’ll bring the food upstairs when it arrives.”

******* Stiles had been hesitant since he walked in the door. Derek had been less talkative than usual, admitting only he stopped for fast food on his way home from work, before he had started on their nightly feast.

“Eating without me?”

“Ran into my ex,” Derek admitted through a mouthful of food. “Said a few…choice words about my weight.”

“So you went into McDonalds to spite her?”

“She’s a bitch.”

Stiles laughed uncomfortably. Derek was acting nonchalant, but still seemed upset. “Guess so. Look on her face must have been priceless.”

“Can’t have anyone thinking I got to be this size on accident.”

“The way you eat? I doubt anyone thinks that. How much did you order at McDonalds?”

“Twenty-piece nugget, double cheeseburger, milkshakes, two large fries.”

“Jeeze. Still think you can finish all this?” He saw Derek struggling more than usual to take bite after bite.  Derek took a bite and then gagged; hand clamped over his mouth like he was going to be sick.  “Are you okay?”

Derek took a few seconds, hand still clamped over his mouth, before swallowing and nodding weakly. “I’m fine. Must’ve swallowed too fast.”

“Maybe you should take a break for a little?”

“No,” Derek told him firmly, stabbing his fork back into the chicken, “I’m fine.”

Stiles could tell he wasn’t. His stomach was stretched out further than Stiles has ever seen, stretch marks an angry red. Derek had to be in pain. His arm was wavering, breath coming in shallow pants, each burp looking like it would result in a total upheaval of his entire meal. Stiles wasn’t sure he could sit and watch Derek force himself bite by bite to finish the sizeable amount of food left.

“Scott,” Stiles gasped out, “Derek, Scott.”

Derek immediately froze. “Fuck, are you – is it a panic attack? What…urp-  can I do?”

“No. No. I’m fine. It’s – I can’t watch you do this.”

“You haven’t had a problem with it before.”

“Usually you’re enjoying.”

“I can – urp – keep going.”

“You almost threw up. Tell me you didn’t, Derek.”

“Jus’ need a few minutes….”

“No.” Stiles slid the food a few inches away. Derek reached forward, belly grumbling audibly as he groaned in pain, and fell back into his chair, glaring at Stiles.

“Then you can go. I’ll pay you for the full session.”

“Dude, no way I’m leaving you like this.”

“Mmpppfh. S’fine.”

“No, it isn’t. Think you can make it upstairs?”

Derek made it, but it was a laborious task. Stiles helped him slowly to his feet and kept a steading hand on the small of Derek’s back as he waddled up the stairs, taking one step by a time in agonizingly slow steps, trying not to jostle his overstuffed middle weighing him down. He finally made it and sunk with a groan of relief on the bed.

Stiles bent down and pulled off Derek’s shoes and socks. “Stand up, Big Guy. You’ll be more comfortable with less clothes.”

“Ngggh.”

“Come on,” Stiles laughed, pinching his inner thigh, “only a few seconds and you can lay back down.”

Derek reluctantly got to his feet so Stiles could pull his jeans down around his ankles while Derek tugged off his shirt. As soon as it was done, he fell back on the bed.

“’M too full to do anything.”

“No sex tonight,” Stiles promised. “This might be better.”

He rubbed circles over the top of Derek’s gut, which was so taut with food it had lost its usual softness. Occasionally, he would stop to trace over the multitude of stretchmarks, or press a little bit harder, massaging away the soreness. Eventually, Derek’s heavy, labored breathing, belches and groans fell away to snoring and snuffling.

[lavenderek]

So you're saying you don't think "underage" fic is gross. Is that what youre saying?

well, no. yuck. what i’m saying is, what exactly and specifically do we want to happen?

there should not be explicit fic about underage characters, got it. so what age can they not be under? 18? 16? what country’s laws regarding the age of consent do we prioritize? like, i think it’s gross that the age of consent is 16 in some places, but i’m an american, so i would, wouldn’t i? so ok, what if we hedged it a bit and put the age as like, 14? that way it’s not little kids, it’s all teenagers. but no, gross, 14-year-olds are children. fun fact: so are 16-year-olds. they are also children.

what about fic about two teenagers having a consensual encounter? should all romantic or sexual fic have to be about adults only? your answer to this may very well be “yes,” and that’s completely valid. a teenager writing fic might disagree. somebody who’s a big fan of a show that’s about a bunch of teenagers might disagree. should there be an adults-only section on the site? there’s already a “stop, you have to be 18″ box to check before you can access explicit fic, so how do we verify a user’s age? they can just lie about their age and click through anyway. you have to be 18 to make a youtube account and i’ve had one since i was 13. i remember very deliberately choosing a new birth year when it asked for my birthdate.

then you get to slightly greyer areas like large age gaps, or heavy role play between consenting adults. i have absolutely witnessed fic that’s clearly written to be CP, but it’s tagged as age play. so like, for all intents and purposes this is CP, but if you roll in like “hey, this is fucked up,” they can be like, “oh, so you read this picturing actual children, sicko?? you have a problem with two adults doing shit in the bedroom??? how dare you!!! don’t like don’t read!!!”

it’s kind of like on porn sites, how they make like nasty inc*st stuff but call it “stepmom” or whatever, like oh, they’re not actually related! sure, joseph, thanks for covering all your bases

so we can’t ban kinks. or can we? should we limit depictions of serious addictions or domestic abuse too? torture, or even body horror? these are generally accepted to be dark content.

i’m not trying to engage in whataboutism, i’m naming actual, relevant questions about shit that’s disturbing in real life (no offense to kink people who follow codes of consent and conduct) and can be incredibly upsetting to encounter online. shit that i can’t imagine wanting to read, let alone write.

these are the questions that we, you, i, people pro-a*3 and people anti-a*3, are all asking, and not a single one of us can or should answer them unilaterally.

so it’s like, oh, okay, so there should be no oversight at all? should there be no rules? no, obviously, that would be horrible, i don’t trust any of these fuckers to conduct themselves civilly. so there should be some rules, but not too many rules. that’s what we have now, and clearly the way things are now isn’t working because a lot of users are reasonably very upset.

should there be a voting system, and rules are set by a popular vote? should certain words be flagged and you can’t post the fic with that word in it? should there be a thing where when you post a fic, you have to select the ages of each character and that’s listed at the top of the fic? what if they age during the fic? should there be a flagging function, where you report someone for not using sufficient tags? users will find workarounds for all of this. you know they will. so mods will have to be very specific about the rules and introduce, like, a vetting system for it. which is a lot more manpower and a lot more chances for subjective judgments.

all of the above is why it operates on a tagging system instead. i’m gonna be real, i only go on a*3 to read comments on my own shit lmao, and even when i did go on there more often i never went in the tags searching for fic. so is there a blacklist function? is there a flagging function?

if there is a flagging function, maybe they make it so that if the flagged user has violated the rules, their account is suspended and their fic made private for the duration and until they add necessary tags.

cool, a compromise. but uh-oh, it turns out Mod A agrees that this fic is n*ncon, but Mod B thinks it’s just vague, not n*nconsensual, and doesn’t feel comfortable banning the fic. or it turns out User didn’t post anything flaggable, they were reported by somebody who is targeting them for some reason, or by someone who is more stringent about n*ncon than somebody else would be, like, it’s gotta be enthusiastic and verbal consent or else it’s skirting the edges too much.

it’s like, we’ve already witnessed censorship (please take this word usage gently, i know it’s touchy but it’s the word to use here) being a problem here on tumblr with their stupid nipple ban. there’s a double standard regarding whose nipples are explicit and whose are kosher for public consumption. people have to appeal their shit getting flagged and sometimes nothing gets fixed regardless. i’m sure other people are pleased that there’s less of a chance of them accidentally scrolling past a picture of a hard dick at work.

so you get it, this is a problem that’s more complicated than “all of x should be banned and if you post it there’s something wrong with you,” a belief you’re more than entitled to hold but can’t base, like, fanfic legislation off of. you get it you get it.

you get it, but like, what is the fucking deal with those “fandom moms” who go off on soliloquies about the days of old or whatever the fuck whenever this topic comes up? what about the weirdos who are like, “what’s next, banning gay fic????” yeah, if we allow gay marriage you can marry a tree, that’s how it works, thanks tiffany.

but no, the reason they do this is NOT that they think lgbtq content is comparable in any way to CP. the reason they do this is that this exact problem has taken place on every site that has ever hosted fic. and many previous sites did think lgbtq content was comparable to CP. it was categorized as adult content and hidden.

that’s why a*3 exists in the first place. it was to avoid godmodding and absolutism. it’s supposed to be more or less self-governed. i don’t want there to be CP on a*3 any more than you do, but i also don’t trust randos to decide what is and isn’t acceptable content. this topic is not new.

i’m in support of stronger government regulation in real life because it can be argued that certain actions and systems violate human rights. everybody deserves food and shelter, for example. the same can’t be argued in this case because some creep writing CP doesn’t violate my rights. i find it offensive and i don’t think they should be writing it, but my right to click the back button is intact. there is no institution making it impossible or even difficult for me to not read fanfiction. the creep could just as reasonably argue that their right to post what they want is being affected.

why is this response so long? is it because i can’t shut up? yes, but also because this is a complex issue and that’s why nobody has taken significant action on it.

people are also big mad.

i’ve never understood this impulse to see somebody not doing a thing you want them to do and assume it’s out of malice or incompetence, anyway. i don’t know anybody who volunteers for a*3 but it’s my assumption that given the choice to have us all pissed at them, or have us all not pissed at them, they would choose to have us not be pissed at them. it just seems like the reasonable reaction to have. and like, i’d be pretty shocked to part the kimono and find out they’re all CP-loving gargoyles and a*3 actually stands for A lot Of child abus3. that is the reason i have not been like, “fuck a*3.” because what are they supposed to do, you know?

there’s no simple or inarguably morally right solution here. the princess is in another castle. just post fic on tumblr, i guess? make another hosting site that’s exactly like a*3 but romantic characters can only be like, 21?

i actually think the legal age in the US should be raised to 21, not joking. your brain literally and biologically isn’t finished developing at 18. teenagers lack the world experience to make decisions that adults make.

somewhere there is an 18-year-old or a person who moved out and became self sufficient at 18 who hates this sentiment. there’s a teenager in an abusive home who would be intensely demoralized by the prospect of having to remain beholden to these people for three more years.

and there’s a parent who is relieved to know that their kid can’t be preyed on by army recruiters for three more years. there’s a person who got into a car crash with a teenager who misjudged whether or not they could make a turn who’s like, yeah, she could probably have benefited from a few more years.

nothing is as simple as it should be. i agree with you, but i’m not willing to pass blanket judgments with regards to actions that should be taken. and honestly, given how little i actually go on the site, i don’t even have a dog in this fight. so all my opinions on it are moot anyway.

(side note, if you are in an abusive home and you can’t make your own bank account, or if your bank account is monitored by your abusive parents, maybe try venmo? you can get a debit card that pulls directly from your venmo balance. a surprising number of places accept venmo payments, and this way you can save up money in secret.)

anyway uhhhhh seeya

[bookish-bo]

A snippet of my consciousness

It seems I am on the cusp of finally leading my life as much as anyone can lead their life. Highschool was a straightforward enough conveyor belt, but the end of the belt is unceremoniously inching closer—well I am inching closer to it; how predictable of me to incorrectly consider myself the object of attraction. Suddenly a day will dawn and I’m supposed to know what to do about it. Could the sun just stay still—another incorrect phrasing; I swear I’m caught up on my 5th grade astronomy. Could the Earth just pause enough for me to breathe without worrying whether that was oxygen well spent? Of course the physical repercussions of a paused Earth… probably not the best conditions for deep breathing. Probably time to start freaking out, or rather, amp up the freakiness. You cannot start something that is already occurring.

I had settled hard into my position on the conveyor belt, constantly moving along as outward forces ensured my progression. Now I am to be shoved from the nest with my foe being not gravity, but finding out the meaning of life. Anyways, that’s the foe my brain decided on conquering during last night’s panic attack. And apparently one mentally ill brain is not fit to surpass the musings of many much wiser predecessors. I move from this conveyor belt, reliable if only in it’s pain, to a world where there are no forces invested in my progression. I’d lie if I said I wasn’t going to miss this predictable life. Yes, I inched by without freedom, but there’s enough to stress over when I was making the bare minimum of decisions. When I stubbornly embraced unhealthy coping mechanisms, I was being rebellious. I was ruining something that was—by all accounts—theirs. But soon, soon I was to be given full responsibility for this joint creation that for so long I had been able to blame completely on them.

Them. How to define them? The world. Society (please read as pronounced by JD in the song before his death in Heathers; if you have no idea what I’m talking about, educate yourself you uncultured—though clearly in better mental health than myself—swine). Morris. I’d rather not think about society or the small sliver of it I have to put up with known as Morris, but my thoughts are constantly drawn to her like a moth to a flame. The flame being, in this case, panic attacks, mood swings, moments of numbness, all that lovely stuff. I’d take a flame any day… of course, I sometimes do.

It annoys me that if I live to look back on this time, I’ll be staring down a moody teenager whose make-up—when attempted—always looked like shit. The make-up is understandable, but why must my thoughts be copy and pasted from every child who ever thought they were grander than the rest because they had been cursed with the habit—obsession—of overthinking. This would make for a horrible book I presume. Everything in my life just happens in my head nowadays, I’ve got enough trauma stored up that I simply reflect and wish I could do something more. And it’s not the smart overthinking, like Sherlock’s ability of deducing, or at least the helpful and somewhat entertaining spiral of thinking ten steps ahead of everything. No, it’s just draining my brain of whatever optimism I started the day with by reiterating everything wrong with me, the world, society.

But how do you stop, when this way of thinking is what you consider keeping track of reality? My reality is understanding that my thoughts are unhealthy, uncalled for, and completely accurate.

I am completely useless.

Yes, my GPA would prove otherwise, but my ability to scam the high school system is moot when it becomes apparent that all these stupid little tests have been in an effort to prepare me to contribute to society. It feels like a cruel trick. To view everything as so utterly unimportant only to be smacked by the realization that not caring about the work your teachers have been begging you to become invested in wasn’t a rebellion against them at all; you were screwing yourself the whole time, idiot. I am completely useless. Morris would certainly agree—though not with so many words. Just a degrading few sprinkled here and there that collect until they cover every single thing I touch.

And the other people? They wouldn’t say I’m useless only because I don’t matter enough to form an opinion of. I’m not wrong. And boo hoo, I sit here and uselessly overthink, full of the conviction that I must have significance but refusing to stoop so low as to join the huddled masses that carve out meaning for themselves in this fake world. Everything feels fake, but why is that a problem anyways? Still, I refuse to “fake it until I make it.” To wear a cheeky smile. To conversate with people who grate upon my nerves—who cares about your nerves you are useless. My uselessness does not, apparently, exempt me from thinking I am better than others. Not better, just separate. And separate by my own doing.

Not my own wishes, but certainly by my own doing.

I refuse to branch out, put on a façade, because I am desperate for people to care about me; the true, ugly, twisted root of myself. That’s not fair, but I’ve been nursed to adulthood by phrases reminding me that life is anything but fair—so why can’t that unfairness ever fall in my favor? I just want people to care about me again, even if their care is as the conveyor belt dutifully caring about my monotonous progression. There’s Morris, but she doesn’t count. She cranks my conveyor belt forwards fueled but hate and misunderstanding. Ugh, a misunderstood teen—can I get any more basic? But being cared about, or to be honest being less basic, is never going to happen again. People die, people kill themselves, and the police will bag their bodies while talking about their lunch plans, only to die themselves while an unrelated conversation takes place above their cooling corpse.

There we have it, I’ve come upon the startling realization that people die. Yes, yes, you’re very smart. Now shut up.

This doesn’t make me special. Nothing makes me special because I am useless. But nothing has intrinsically made me useless. This isn’t a condition that has been thrust upon me. I’m too lazy—too scared, too tired, too full of excuses—to change. Should I remain complacent in my uselessness? It sounds lovely, to be okay with uselessness. But something, some flame within me that hasn’t yet been blown out, insists that I keep yearning for more. Are those the blows from moth wings that cause this flame to flicker? The flame isn’t enough to excite change, let alone growth, but it is enough to fuel regret over every minute I waste reflecting. The billions of neurons making up my brain can do the job of a mirror, probably akin to the scratched up kind found in dollar store make-up kits. Great.

The predicament, it seems, is whether I am a moth that, if it were to just set its sights higher, would flutter off after the moon, or if I am the sputtering flame destined to devouring moths.

[gaudeixcc]

Peleton News – Confessions (G18 Tour special – April 2018)

This year’s tour was a little fractured to start with.

JT, my honorable (although diminutive) co-chair has been living in Munich for some time, so has reluctantly lobbed all administrative tasks my way. He still of course has a pointy figure hovering over the keyboard most hours of the day to fire off a bullet-like reminder should any delegated task fall in to the overdue category.

My approach this year had been to further convolute the whole process by sub-delegating further down the value chain. This year RTA picked up route-planning duties, shouldering the full burden once Moley had thrown the metaphoric towel into the Gaudeix corner.

JT arrived the night before to settle into Hotel Mariposa and to busy himself ready for our arrival next morning, where, his welcoming party preparation of sundry nibbles, iced towels, freshly pressed mango juice and 6 flutes of chilled Champaign could be seen exactly nowhere.

Quietly bikes were built and readied.

I don’t with to appear overly-critical at this early stage, however I feel it is important to highlight areas where improvement could be made.

My first area of improvement relates to a mathematical ratio.

13.2 is an acceptable ratio.

60 is a completely unacceptable ratio.

Back in the day when I rode motorcycles for my thrill-seeking pleasure, the most expensive item of an accessory nature was the helmet. An oft quoted saying was ‘If you’ve got a £10 head, get a £10 helmet’.

I valued my head at considerable more than £10 and hence why I could be seen peacocking about the place in the latest stealth MotoGP inspired bonce-protecting loveliness from Arai, makers of the very best.

And the same is true of bikes and their bags.

If you’ve got a ratty old Trek which you equally be happy to see as landfill as opposed to nestled between your legs, then by all means bag it with a carrier from Tesco.

If on the other hand you have a carbonfibre creation, with composite wheels, electronic shifting and less weight than a fat sparrow, then for fucks sake, buy a proper bag.

Is there a correlation between 2 visits to a bike shop for fixing 2 bikes hurled into fifty quid bags?

Answers on a postcard…

Next year we are going to be introducing the video referee to dish out ‘after the event’ fines and tickets to offences against cycling such as this little atrocity.

Anyway, peleton delayers aside, we had quite a good tour from a reliability perspective.

No flats at all in 3 days of riding.

Not bad going considering the excess baggage about 50% of the peloton where wheeling about the place.

It can be a harsh life travelling with a pack of cyclists. As a group, we are generally slow to acknowledge quality but lightening-fast to highlight weakness.

This year’s theme was most definitely fatness.

It all started when Dripping decided to relax on day one and let his guard down.

The relief a fat Victorian lady must feel when at the end of a day grazing on mutton, savory puddings and broiled swan, she releases the strings on her corset, was probably how Dripping felt as he gently supped an ale whilst not ‘tensed’ or ‘sucking it in for dear life’ sitting quietly in the sun.

It was harsh and cruel for Mac to take a picture of Dripping at rest in such an unguarded state. The resulting snap caused almost immediate physiological damage, which was then added to by verbal slappery of the worst kind from almost all.

Macca’s boobs got a much lower level of attention than would otherwise have been.

But the real crime in the whole torrid ‘fatgate’ affair, was a quietly outed photo from Colchester Mac which showed what looked like a Michelin Man ballooned around a struggling Cannondale, legs bouncing hard off an impressive midriff as the owner snuffled and puffed his sorry arse up a hill.

That night James in a moment of shocking and completely unexpected kindness said to me ‘You’ve put on a bit of timber this year’…..

It’s about as nice as he’s ever been to me in the 15 years of friendship we have shared.

Ever.

Meanwhile, back in the Peloton, Whatsapp was on fire as fat Michelin man took a breather from cycling, sat down, drank a beer, guzzled food and then promptly took a micro-nap to allow his body to digest this latest onslaught of calories.

The peloton…. They can be mighty cruel to those built for comfort.

Anyway…let’s move on. Let’s talk compliments….

‘Love the tattoos’

‘You’re girlfriend is very pretty. The plastic she has had inserted in the chest area is both proportionally perfect and pleasing to the eye’

‘Nice denim’

‘Wow.. impressive steed’.

All of the above are probably good ways to make a hells angel feel special.

Alternatively, you could surprise the life out of him by slapping him on the arse as you cycle past at 15 mph…. showing shock and dismay on your face and general surprise that he hadn’t apparently heard your tinckly bike-bell.

I arrived at a stationary Peloton to find Macca being verbally abused by a very angry biker who was busy calling us all arseholes……. I mean he was right…. Must have been a lucky guess.

This was another visible demonstration of Macca’s intolerance to a good swathe of human kind.

On the flight out, Moley’s seat on the plane had been taken by a Turkish lady of more senior years and built like I will be if I don’t stop eating constantly.

She was resting up from the exertion of having had to climb the stairs at the rear of the bus and drag her cabin bag the 6 yards to her seat. The bag was then occupying Macca’s seat whilst she appeared to be cuddling it.

This was clearly a cue for some helpful soul to then lift it into one of the overhead lockers and help her out.

Macca, ignoring this cue like the plague, barked at her. He informed the startled greek lady that he owned the seat, not her bag, and would she kindly get a shift on and move it.

The plane went awkwardly quiet.

Trembling, the lady dressed in black wobbled to her feet and with oscilating bingo wings hoisted the bag upward. There was a moment or 2 when none of us could be sure the bag was going to make it. Like an Olympic weightlifter going  for a PB, there was a pause, a grunt and then a final push… the bag was in.

Macca looked on in bland indifference.

She sat down, glazed with a sheen of garlic and thyme perspiration.

I think secretly Macca was hoping for an engine issue, a wayward turbofan blade and the exiting of the Greek weightlifter from the above-wing window seat.

He fumed quietly for most of the flight.

I suppose I should at some point talk about the cycling.

As with all these tours there is a lot to cover. But, as with most years, I generally can’t be arsed doing so and instead revert to the well-established highlights list.

So, here goes for G18, Malaga;

• Dripping confessing to having voted tactically in previous tours when it came to the yellow cap. Berlusconi-esque in its political nefariousness • C&N orange camo base layer • Mrs RTA’s contribution to the tour…. Can’t name it for legal reasons, but it went down exceptionally well • RTA’s ghost-like completion on date realisation • General higher standard of dress quality (although I still feel the shame and hurt from the explicit savaging I got from Dripping on the yellow cap voting paper… he went into enough detail to require and appendix FFS…) • Damo’s use of the back pen on photos • Whilst he did fuck all in his season of pink, Damo did at least sort out everyone elses mechanical catastrafucks whilst on tour • RTA’s route planning. Magestic. Simply nailed it to the floor. The pink was going one way only after 3 days of beautiful scenery • I hate losing. I especially hate losing to Dripping. I especially especially hate losing to Dripping twice. First time I made an error of timing. After having nearly lost a lung hunting down my prey I should have tailed his sorry ass for half a K before nailing the finish. I didn’t and paid heavily. Day 3’s mechanical was akin to running out of petrol 50 yards short of the finish line. I was running in the red and Drip snuck in and nicked my lunch. Absolute bastard. • Col Mac’s ‘Spam’ top • Macca’s deep-seated suspicion of foreign restaurants… he had me convinced that the preparers of our final meal where going to triple the bill, hack our phones, empty our accounts, spit in our food and quite possibly steal our children. What they actually ended up doing was serving us food which was simply sensational and probably the best meal I’ve eaten in the last 12 months, and then go on to charge us very modestly for it too. • Strange fact number 1. Everything edible in Malaga is cooked in beef fat. • Strange fact number 2. There is nothing wrong with 7 over 40 year olds drinking pink gin with berries in the glass. Completely hetrosexual and in keeping with the modern men we are. (On reflection, I think Colchester Mac way have swerved the gin actually) • If I have to hear one more bloody time about how good wahoo is…… you didn’t invent the fucking thing for the love of sweet baby Jesus… • Shit Garmins • The descent on day 3…on day one going up it I nearly died…. On day 3 coming down I could have cried…. Probably the best descent this peloton has tasted. • This year’s tour caps…. Top quality. • A vintage year that saw our first triple-cap…. ! Yes, my (well deserved) orange nailed a hat trick of caps (although only 2 physical caps probably maketh the point moot). • Desire takes many forms. But few have the strength and longing that have been displayed with the force of a Dripping wanting yellow. He may have ‘bought’ the cap, but god it was worth it to see his little face!! • Murdering 9 oranges to make 1 drink

And finally, whilst we have our highlights list, we also have a lowlights list. This one is my own personal list…. Only 2 entries… and neither of them spotted or witnessed by the Peloton;

1. On unpacking my bike and reassembling, somehow my fat fucking fingers and squinty eyesight have managed to crush the Di2 cable that runs the front mech…. FFS… bike now on turbo in just the little ring…. Horrible humble and apologetic call to Damo/Amy coming shortly. I can actually feel Damo’s eyebrows raise as he reads this…. (and can actually here him say ‘well you’re a fucking idiot aren’t you’…..) 2. Do you know what Raybans hitting tarmac at 20 mph sound like? No? It took me a while to figure it out too…. Well, 10 miles worth of fast riding to be precise…. And then I sulked quietly for 20 mins when I realised that day 2 would be the last time I went our armed with more than one pair of sunnies…… I kepy it quiet because Trusler would have definitely shit himself laughing at that one…..

So there we have it. Drip and Mac need new bike bags if they are to show their cycling faces ever again, Macca needs to take a tolerance pill twice daily, Damo needs to tut in my general direction, JT needs to not mention sunnies to me ever again, Moley needs to get his shit together in readiness for G19 and RTA needs to take a well deserved bow to a round of applause from the Peloton.

Malaga, G18…. Magic.

Hoppo

[sciencespies]

To Silence Wind Turbines and Airplanes, Engineers Are Studying Owl Wings

https://sciencespies.com/nature/to-silence-wind-turbines-and-airplanes-engineers-are-studying-owl-wings/

To Silence Wind Turbines and Airplanes, Engineers Are Studying Owl Wings

Every owl fancier has a story of the first time they heard an owl — or, rather, didn’t hear one. It’s unforgettable to see an enormous bird, whose wingspan can reach more than six feet, slipping through the air without even a whisper.

Justin Jaworski’s first close encounter came at a flying exhibition at the Raptor Foundation near Cambridge, England. “They trained the owls to fly very close to the audience,” he says. “My first experience was of ducking to avoid a collision. I heard only a very slight swoosh after it passed.”

Laboratory measurements have shown that the slight swoosh made by a barn owl is below the threshold of human hearing until the owl is about three feet away — a feat of stealth that biologists and engineers are far from completely understanding. But researchers from both disciplines are working to solve the riddle of silent flight — some with the aim of designing quieter fans, turbine blades and airplane wings.

Such owl-inspired innovations can reduce noise by as much as 10 decibels, similar to the difference in noise between a passing truck and a passing car, Jaworski and Nigel Peake write in an overview in the 2020 Annual Review of Fluid Mechanics.

Go gentle

Jaworski, an engineer at Lehigh University in Pennsylvania, is hardly the first scientist to be captivated by the puzzle of silent owl flight. In 1934, Robert Rule Graham — a British pilot and bird connoisseur — called attention to three structures on owl wings that might account for the owls’ silence.

More than 80 years later, his “three traits paradigm,” as Christopher Clark calls it, is still cited in many papers on owl wings. “He clearly knew birds very well, and he was an aeronautical engineer,” says Clark, an ornithologist at the University of California, Riverside. “Science was different in the 1930s. In our age of specialization, you don’t get that combination.”

First, Graham pointed out an unusual structure called the “comb,” which literally looks like a comb projecting forward from the wing’s leading edge. Second, he noted that most of the owl wing is covered with a soft layer of velvety feathers. Finally, he observed that the feathers on the trailing edge of the wing form a ragged fringe.

Most researchers still agree that the comb, the velvet and the fringe combine in some way to reduce noise, but the owl may have more tricks up its sleeve. “When all is said and done, I think we’ll have a number of mechanisms, including Graham’s,” says Clark.

To explain how an owl suppresses noise, it would help to identify where the noise comes from in the first place. For an airplane coming in for a landing, a large part of the noise comes not from the engines but from the flow of air around the plane, especially the sound produced at the trailing edge of the wings. The turbulent air rushing past the exposed edges of the wings translates to the dull roar you hear as the plane flies overhead.

Researchers trained a Florida barred owl (Strix varia alleni) to fly through a special recording room. The gliding owls generated very little sound in the range of human hearing (people can hear sounds above the dashed line). Low-frequency sounds made by owl flight are inaudible, no matter the distance. Humans can hear flight noise in the mid-range frequencies when the owl is between one and three meters away. Owl wings and feathers are especially good at dampening higher-frequency sounds, which can be heard only if a person is standing within a meter of the noise.

(Knowable magazine)

One way to reduce this noise would be to make the trailing edge of the wing less hard, more porous and more flexible. This may be the function of the owl wing’s ragged fringes. Jaworski and Peake have mathematically calculated how engineers might use such porosity and elasticity to reduce noise, and how to quantify that diminished din.

Those calculations are supported by wind-tunnel experiments: A variety of porous materials do dial down the noise. Work by Thomas Geyer at Brandenburg University of Technology in Germany has found that a poroelastic wing the size of an owl’s can be about 2 to 5 decibels quieter than a regular wing.

However, says Geyer, the right porous material is crucial; in the wind-tunnel tests, some materials actually increased high-frequency noise. Measurements of owls in flight show that their wings mute only frequencies higher than 1,600 hertz (on a piano, two-and-a-half octaves above middle C). Since this is roughly where the range of rodent hearing begins, it’s the range that an owl would benefit most from suppressing as it hunts for a meal.

Jaworski and Ian Clark (no relation to Christopher) of NASA’s Langley Research Center have attempted to mimic the owl’s velvet by covering a standard airfoil with various kinds of fabric. “The winning textile was a wedding veil,” says Jaworski. However, it may not be necessary to donate your nuptial accessories to science, because the researchers got even better results by attaching tiny plastic 3-D–printed “finlets” to the blades of a wind turbine.

Research suggests that owl wings have three features that contribute to their silent flight: a “comb” structure (just visible at the wing’s top right), ragged trailing edges (visible along the bottom of the wing) and a velvety material that covers much of the upper left of the wing. The comb structure from a different specimen is shown close-up at bottom.

(Thomas Fritz Geyer / Brandenburg University of Technology )

“Over a certain frequency range, we saw a 10-decibel noise reduction,” Jaworski says. “That may not sound like much, but in air acoustics, engineers fight over two or three decibels. Ten decibels is half as noisy. That’s a massive change for any technology.” Siemens, a manufacturer of wind turbines, has apparently been listening, and recently unveiled its second-generation “Dino Tail” turbines that have combs directly inspired by the owl wing.

Feathery enigma

Though owl wings are providing new insights into noise reduction for aeronautical engineering, engineers have had less success describing the physics of owl flight. According to ornithologist Clark, the engineers may not even have identified the most important source of noise in owl aviation.

If you’re trying to build an owl, rather than a wind turbine or an airplane, you’ll notice several differences. Owls have feathers; airplanes don’t. Owls flap their wings; airplanes don’t. There’s a good reason that aeronautical engineers prefer stationary, solid wings to flapping, feathery ones: They are easier to understand.

But if you are a biologist, to ignore flapping is to ignore a fundamental ingredient in avian flight, says Clark. As bird wings flap they change shape, and as they change shape the feathers rub against each other, causing noise. This noise is frictional, not aerodynamic, produced by the contact of solid against solid.

In Clark’s view, the purpose of the owl’s velvet and the fringes is to reduce frictional noise between the feathers while flapping. Clark concedes that his argument would be moot if owls glided while hunting, but video evidence shows they do not: They flap when taking off, they flap when landing and they even flap when “coursing” for prey.

Scientists seeking to understand why the owl’s flight differs from other birds have studied the turbulence patterns left in their wake. Red and blue indicate vortices spinning in opposite directions.

(Roi Gurka, Costal Carolina University and Elias Balaras, George Washington University)

And the fringes are not only on the trailing edge of the wing, where the aerodynamic theory would predict them to have the greatest noise-reducing benefit. Fringes also exist on the leading edges of the feathers, where they do not affect aerodynamic noise, as well on some feathers that are not even exposed to the airflow. This suggests that their purpose is not aerodynamic.

Clark says that we may be asking the question backward. Instead of asking why owls are so quiet, we should ask why other birds are so loud. The answer is feathers. “Feathers are amazing structures, and probably the reason birds are so successful,” Clark says. But they come with an evolutionary cost: “If you’re going to build a wing out of feathers, they are going to produce frictional sound.” To become silent hunters, owls evolved special adaptations that reduce this disadvantage.

Owls are not the only kind of bird that has solved this problem. Some species of Australian frogmouths have independently developed the same adaptations. These birds are also carnivorous and have wings that are soft and fluffy with combs and ragged fringes. In Graham’s day, people assumed that frogmouths were closely related to owls, but genomic analysis has proved that they are not. While less studied than owls, they too are silent flyers.

“Evolution often takes a quirky path,” Clark says. “One way you can home in on the underlying mechanical principles, and tell them apart from quirks, is with convergent evolution.” When two unrelated animals have the same adaptation, it suggests that the feature confers a benefit — in this case, stealth.

At present, there are two ways to understand owl flight: an engineering view informed by the equations of fluid motion and wind-tunnel experiments, and a biological view based on anatomy, behavior and genomics. A truly integrated story will probably require both. Even engineers realize that idealized studies based on rigid, unfeathered wings are not enough. It’s quite possible that the owl uses its feathers and small shape adjustments of the wing actively, rather than passively, to manipulate airflow. Engineers aren’t even close to understanding this process, which spans several size scales, from the barbs of the feathers to the individual feathers, to the entire wing.

“What is missing to us is the microscopic point of view,” says Roi Gurka of Coastal Carolina University in South Carolina, whose experiments with flying owls have led to beautiful computer simulations of the flow field around a flapping owl wing. “I understand the wing,” he says, but understanding the role individual feather morphology plays in noise reduction is another matter.

While the scientists debate, the barn owl will continue flying as it always has: its face as round and imperturbable as the moon, its ears trained on its next meal and its feathers treading gently on the air.

This article originally appeared in Knowable Magazine, an independent journalistic endeavor from Annual Reviews. Sign up for the newsletter.

#Nature

[kuriquinn]

You Are Cordially Invited [2/?]

Cover & Disclaimer

Chapter Summary:  This time, if he accepts the mission, he would have to find Sakura. He would have to tell her he’s leaving her behind again, not even a day after they’ve decided on a future together. While he knows neither of them will ever live a quiet life—they are shinobi, after all, and the mission always comes first—he’d hoped for some more time with her.

Chapter Beta: Sakura’s Unicorn

Sasuke leaves the old Uchiha district, still mulling over his housing conundrum. It isn’t until he’s wandered into the busy centre of the village that he realises it’s all a moot point anyhow. Before he can even consider finding a house, he has to know the state of the Uchiha clan finances. Those, he suspects, are probably not very stable.

He hasn’t really had to think of money since he got back.

Between Sakura fussing over him to eat breakfast whenever she has mornings off, and Naruto insisting he come eat dinner at the Uzumaki household every other night, and Kakashi allowing him to stay in his unoccupied apartment, he hasn’t needed to worry about food or shelter. In lieu of an actual regular job, he’s been performing the odd specialised job for the village, such as  testing the village’s sensory barrier for weak points.

It’s a hand to-mouth-existence, which suits him fine after his years of wandering, but he doubts it will suit his future wife. Sakura is used to a roof over her head, three meals a day, and a life that follows a certain routine (at least as much as one can expect with a shinobi lifestyle). If they’re going to be happy, Sasuke needs to re-adapt to that kind of lifestyle. Even if he hasn’t lived like that since he was eight years old.

The more he thinks about it, the more Sasuke is convinced there’s no avoiding it; he needs advice. The question is���who to ask?

His immediate instinct for matters like these is to ask Kakashi. His former teacher has always been good at saving money—considering how many times the man tricked his genin squad into paying the bill at Ichiraku, he has thriftiness down to an art form.

Kakashi’s job hasn’t exactly provided him with a lot of wealth. The post of Hokage does not pay well; it keeps the money-hungry from aspiring to it. Kakashi gets a small stipend from the village for his services, paid for by taxes and occasionally as diplomatic gifts from the daimyo or other hidden villages. On average, it probably only covers Kakashi’s basic needs and not necessarily his dependents.

If anyone has experience with finances in that family, it’s probably Manako.

Like most Hokage’s wives have done in the past, Kakashi’s spouse remains firmly in the shadows and out of public life. She even maintains her own separate residence in her name, even though Kakashi has been more-or-less living there for years now. It’s why he had no compunction about letting Sasuke use his apartment when he came back.

Officially, it’s a measure of protection—the enemies of great men will always try to go after families and loved ones. Even in a village of people who can handle themselves.

Unofficially, Sasuke suspects it’s because the Inuzuka woman hates pomp and circumstance about as much as Sasuke does. By maintaining a separate residence she avoids any unwanted accoutrements of being married to the Hokage.

Still, the fact that she can manage two households suggests she knows her way around finances. And she owns her own business—which makes asking her a better option than Kakashi.

The only problem with approaching Manako is…it’s hard to talk to her. And considering Sasuke’s overall apathy toward speaking to most people, that’s saying something.

Growing up, if there was anyone in the village who came close to hating Itachi as much as Sasuke did, it was Manako Inuzuka. She was one of his brother’s agemates, and Manako’s best friend, Izumi Uchiha, was Itachi’s first victim during the massacre.

Based on his own childhood memories and the lingering effects of Itachi’s Tsukuyomi, Sasuke remembers Izumi as a smart, talented girl with a kind smile. She was very similar to Sakura, both in temperament and the tenacity of her affections. Konoha lost a rising star when it lost her, and her death impacted Manako in a way that Sasuke understands on a primal level.

It would be the same as him losing Naruto or Kakashi.

As a child, Sasuke kept his distance from Manako—partially out of respect for her grief, but mostly because he needed to focus on his own hatred instead of worrying about someone else’s pain.

Since the war, he’s spoken to her a few times—the first instance, shortly before he left Konoha, and once or twice since returning—but mostly he maintains a respectful distance. He can see in her eyes that it’s hard to look at him, and Sasuke knows that’s because of his resemblance to both her dearest friend and the man who murdered her.

Kakashi might be the better option to ask after all.

He glances skyward—the height of the sun tells him it’ll be at least an hour before Sakura finishes her shift. It’s early enough that Kakashi will still be at the office; no doubt Shizune has him buried in paperwork.

Decision made, Sasuke heads to the Hokage Tower.

He doesn’t bother announcing himself, simply slipping silently through the hallways until he reaches his former instructor’s office. When he gets there, Kakashi is indeed sandwiched between two giant towers of paper, but he’s clearly not working.

A familiar orange-covered novel is clutched in his hands.

Some things never change…

He wonders if he should clear his throat, but Kakashi glances up, looking crestfallen. “Oh. You’re here. That was faster than I’d hoped.”

Sasuke frowns. “You were expecting me?”

“Yes. Didn’t Shizune say?” Kakashi sighs, moving to tuck his book away. “I was hoping it would take her longer to track you down.” He notes Sasuke’s blank expression. “Unless you’re here on an unrelated matter and it’s just coincidence.”

When Sasuke only raises an eyebrow in response, Kakashi’s defeated demeanour vanishes and his leans back in his chair, still clutching the book.

“Excellent. If you’re here, she’ll spend longer looking for you. It works out for everyone,” he says happily and motions to the chair in front of his desk. “Have a seat.”

“I’ll stand.”

“Of course, you will.” Kakashi rolls his eyes. “Well, what are you here for, if Shizune didn’t send you?”

“It can wait,” Sasuke replies. Shinobi business always comes first. “What did you need me for?”

“Our daimyo has forwarded me letters from his counterparts in Earth and Wind Country,” Kakashi tells him, sifting through one of his file folders. “There’s also a note here from the General of the Land of Iron’s samurai regiment—I know…not exactly your biggest fans,” he adds when he notices Sasuke frown, “—which makes their request even more interesting.”

“Request?”

“There are concerns about a potential enemy force rising in the North-western Mountains. Mostly, it appears to be in the Land of Earth, but Iron and Wind suspect whatever is going on is spreading to the other two countries as well. They’ve requested aid.”

“From Konoha.”

“The Tsuchikage believes that whatever the threat is, it’s based around a new kind of genjutsu,” Kakashi says. “So far, none of Iwa’s shinobi have been able to confirm this or even find information. The same with Gaara’s people and General Mifune’s.”

“They can’t confirm it because they can’t identify it, or because they’ve died?”

“It could be either, but I suspect it’s the latter. Everyone sent to investigate has gone missing.”

Sasuke clenches his fist.

“They’ve all requested that I ask you to check it out—seeing as how you’re the foremost genjutsu user in the world,” he concludes in a sardonic tone.

“We don’t know that for sure,” Sasuke dismisses, uncomfortable with the praise.

“I’ll take my chances,” Kakashi remarks dryly.

“Earth Country…”

The north-western border is about six days away—possibly ten if the mountain conditions aren’t favourable. And if whatever’s going on has spread to Iron and Wind…it could be a month or longer, not even accounting for the reconnaissance involved.

“I know it’s a lot to ask. You haven’t been back very long, and you’ve been sticking close to home. If you don’t want to accept it, I can find someone else. As you say, there are other shinobi that specialise in genjutsu. We are still in contact with the last survivor of the Chinoike clan.”

“No,” Sasuke says immediately. “Chino is strong, but still healing from her past. Sending her up against an unknown enemy that has three separate countries worried…that would be unwise.”

He is quiet a beat longer, mulling over the prospect of this new mission. For the first time, he finds himself reluctant to commit. Before, he would’ve accepted the second Kakashi brought it up. He’d probably set out without even stopping to let anyone know he was leaving.

He can’t do that anymore.

This time, if he accepts the mission, he would have to find Sakura. He would have to tell her he’s leaving her behind again, not even a day after they’ve decided on a future together. While he knows neither of them will ever live a quiet life—they are shinobi, after all, and the mission always comes first—he’d hoped for some more time with her.

“How long before I need to leave?” he asks, deliberately neutral lest his resignation be audible.

If Kakashi notices anything, he doesn’t say. “Well, this time of year, the roads between here and Iwa will start to flood. I’d say you have three weeks before the main routes are impassable.”

Sasuke nods. “Very well. I will notify you when I’m able to leave.”

Kakashi studies him for a beat, and then his eyes crinkle in what Sasuke knows is a smile beneath his mask. “What was it you wanted to ask when you came in?”

“It can wai—”

Sasuke pauses, considering the merits of saying anything now. If he’s just going to leave, he might as well stay mum on the subject until he returns. On the other hand, if it’s something that will take time anyhow, perhaps now is the best moment after all.

He doesn’t bother sugar-coating it. “Does the Uchiha clan retain any funds, or have they been depleted completely?”

When his clan was murdered, all of their holdings reverted to the village. Sasuke has no illusion of where most of it went—first, to pay for the body removal and funeral costs for the dead, then to Danzō and the Elders. They would’ve drawn from those funds in “reparation” for years, justifying it based on the failed coup and Itachi’s crimes.

As a child, Sasuke’s weekly allowance came from what was left in the fund, but it was controlled by the Hokage. First, Hiruzen Sarutobi and then, briefly, Tsunade Senju. After leaving Konoha the first time, he always assumed the Elders had taken complete ownership of it.

“No,” Kakashi says. “Tsunade kept as much of it as possible from being used by the council.”

Sasuke blinks in surprise. “Well. That’s something.” He suspects it’s more her dislike of the council than any affection for him.

“A lot of what remained was spent during your trial,” Kakashi continues, sounding apologetic, “and to cover your own reparations to the village, inside and out.”

Sasuke nods. It’s as he thought—he’s basically starting from scratch.

“I can look into transferring whatever remains back to you. It should take a week or two. Unless… Is there something in particular you need it for? It might help speed up the process.”

“No.”

The idea of having to ask the village for his own money in order to get married and start a family bothers him—as if he has to ask their permission to be happy. He would rather do it on his own.

Maybe a loan…

He is doubtful even as he considers it, and it’s on the tip of his tongue to ask Kakashi, but then he stops. If he continues this line of questioning, Kakashi will begin to pry. Perhaps Naruto—

No. No way will he know how.

Even if Naruto knew how to get a loan, he’d spend a good deal of time making fun of him.  And then just tell him to go to Sakura which he doesn’t want to do because it defeats the purpose of showing her that he can take charge of their plans for the future. If only there was someone who—

Wait. There is someone.

It’s a mark of how the times have changed that Sasuke even thinks about Hinata Hyūga—Hinata Uzumaki, now, for almost six months.

He’s spent more time with her since he’s returned to the village, seeing as how he’s become a frequent dinner guest. He pretends that it’s because Naruto will nag him until he agrees to dinner, but in reality, it’s Hinata’s cooking. It’s the best he’s had in years (actually, it’s the only home cooking he’s had since his mother died).

She grew up learning to run an entire clan and preparing to be the wife of whatever Hyūga she was married off to. Now that she’s married to Naruto, and with him so busy most days preparing for his future job as Hokage, she’s the one in charge of the household.

If there’s anyone in the world who won’t mock Sasuke or have a snide comment on the subject of houses and loans, it’s her.

Well, that’s one problem solved…

“If there isn’t anything further, I’m leaving,” he tells Kakashi.

“See you,” Kakashi replies, already flipping open his book. Sasuke is almost to the door when he speaks again. “Oh, and Sasuke?”

He inclines his head.

“Be sure to say ‘hello’ to Sakura for me.”

The suggestion itself is innocent, but the tone is heavy with implication.

う��は

Sakura yawns and throws down her pen, the last chart of the day filled in and signed. If she wasn’t able to channel her chakra so well, her hand would be cramped up from the amount of writing she’s been doing today.

Still, it could be worse. I could be Kakashi-sensei.

She grins to herself and stretches like a cat, even purring with pleasure as the muscles in her back pull taught and then relax.

“You’re in a good mood,” a voice to her left remarks, and she glances up to see her assistant, Ando, in the doorway. He’s a scrawny kid with wild brown hair and wide eyes—sort of reminds her of Konohamaru Sarutobi at that age, only with more common sense and less of a sense of humour. Fourteen years old, Ando just recently made chūnin, and his former genin squad leader suggested he had a talent for medical ninjutsu. He’s been with Sakura since May and has already made her life a hell of a lot easier—and more organised.

She’s inclined to agree with his former squad leader.

“It was a good day,” she tells the boy with a smile, even if that’s only half of the truth.

For the first time in a long time, she is perfectly and unquestionable happy. She’s running the day-to-day affairs of Konoha Hospital for Tsunade while she’s away, her children’s clinic is still a huge success, and all the people she cares about are happy.

All of this utterly pales in comparison to the secret fact that the love of her life has proposed to her. It’s a dream she never thought would become a reality, and yet it is.

She’s spent every spare minute today fantasising about it. She’s already dreaming of the flowers she’ll choose and whether she’ll have a traditional dress, or one of the beautiful white gowns that are all the fashion out West.

Sasuke is the more traditional sort, so probably the first option—

“Your stalker is here.”

“My what?” Sakura demands.

“That guy you go home with practically every day,” Ando rolls his eyes. “You should be careful.”

“Of who? Sasuke?” Sakura laughs. “Listen, he might be a legend, but I can hold my own against him.” They both have bruises from their last sparring match to prove that. “And we don’t go home together, he walks me to my place. He’s a total gentleman.”

“Good. I would hate to find out my supervisor is a woman of loose morals.”

“Loose mor—what the hell’s that supposed to mean?!” Sakura demands, raising a threatening fist.

“The guy needs a haircut,” Ando goes on, glancing out the window. He sounds utterly unimpressed with Sasuke, as if his status as saviour of the planet means nothing compared to being well-groomed. “Who wants to go on a date with a guy who looks like a mop? And if he’s going to wait around for you every day, would it kill him to bring you some flowers? If my boyfriend walked me home every day and didn’t bring me flowers now and then, I’d dump him.”

Sakura is suddenly bombarded by a long-forgotten image of a different Sasuke, one gracing her with a dazzling smile and a red rose in hand.

A rose for someone else.

And while she knows that Sasuke wasn’t real but simply a figment of Obito’s genjutsu world, she still shudders.

“No, that would be a nightmare,” she declares, earning a puzzled stare from Ando. “Never mind. If you’re done criticising my love life, I’m heading home.” She shrugs out of her lab coat and reaches for her bag. “And if I see Hikaru on the way, I’ll tell him he better get you flowers because you’re so grumpy today.”

Ando sniffs in response.

Outside, Sasuke is waiting in his usual spot across the street. He leans against the wall opposite the hospital, his single hand shoved in his pocket and a preoccupied look on his face. As usual, when she steps out onto the road, he falls into step with her.

“Hello, Sasuke,” she greets him cheerfully.

“Sakura.”

From here, they usually head to either a nearby restaurant or meander toward one of the tree-lined roads. Mindful of his thoughtful expression, Sakura heads toward the trees; he’s more likely to open up about what’s bothering him if they’re alone together.

They walk in silence for almost a quarter of an hour, until the last stragglers along the path disappear, leaving the street deserted but for them. As they head toward the forest where they both like to stroll, their hands inch closer together. It’s enough that Sakura can sense the heat of Sasuke’s, even though they aren’t touching.

Until they do.

Their little fingers bump, at first by accident, and then, she thinks, perhaps on purpose, but she isn’t sure if it’s her or him instigating it. The fourth time, Sakura’s eyes widen as Sasuke ever so slowly curl his fingers around hers—little finger first, followed gradually by the other digits, until their palms touch.

Sakura continues to stare straight ahead, but can’t help the happy sigh that escapes her. She squeezes his fingers briefly, signalling her approval and even gratitude. This is the first time he’s held her hand, which is a very encouraging first step.  

Maybe one day he will bring me flowers, she thinks idly. And then she frowns, remembering something else Ando said.

“What?” Sasuke asks, and she jumps. She didn’t realise he was watching her expression.

“Nothing.”

“If it was nothing, you wouldn’t be frowning.”

“Look at you—ten years ago you wouldn’t even have noticed,” she teases.

“I would’ve noticed,” he tells her seriously, “I just wouldn’t have said anything.”

She rolls her eyes good-naturedly.

“Are you going to answer?”

“I want to go on a date with you,” she tells him firmly.

Sasuke blinks. “A date.”

It’s a statement, but she reads the question in his tone.

“Yeah, you know, you and me, spending time together, the two of us,” she clarifies. “A quiet, romantic dinner, or…moonlit walks under the cherry blossoms?”

“We’ve been doing things like that since I got back,” he points out.

“No, those weren’t da—I mean, I guess, technically, yes, they do sort of fit that definition,” she allows, “but it’s not like…we didn’t have to get dressed up nice or anything, and there was no planning a picnic or…or watching the stars together or…” Sakura flounders. She’s explaining this badly and knows it.

“So planning and stars are the difference between what we’ve been doing and a…date?” Despite the critical note on the last word, as if he doesn’t like the way it feels coming off his tongue, Sasuke’s question is for clarification. As if he is truly trying to understand what she is saying, instead of shrugging it off in contempt the way he would when they were younger.

“Well, that or a romantic candlelit table for two, or dancing or…” she trails off when she sees his eyes widen—it’s only incremental, but on anyone else it would be panic. She exhales through her nose. “I’m freaking you out right now, aren’t I?”

“No,” he says, but the syllable is pushed through clenched teeth.

“I am,” she sighs, and a moment later makes a waving motion with her free hand. “Never mind. It’s just…” Leftover fantasies from when I was a girl. “You’re right. I’m being silly. We already do all the stuff I want to do and asking for any more would make things feel forced.”

“We can. If you want to.”

“No. I don’t need that,” she dismisses, tucking that dream back into her mental hope chest. “It’s only, at some point before we get married, it might be nice to have some indication that you see me as a woman, and not just the person you happen to be in love with.”

Sasuke is utterly confused at this and doesn’t even try to hide it this time. He clears his throat, uncomfortable, and changes the subject. “On that note…did you have a specific time you were thinking about?”

“I’m not sure,” Sakura responds. “When Naruto and Hinata got engaged, they did everything really fast—about four months. So, I guess we can use that as an estimate. About whether we should do it sooner or later, I mean.” She taps her chin thoughtfully. “Except…if we have the wedding in four months, it’ll be winter, and I don’t really want to have a wedding in the snow. It might be romantic for about five seconds before the cold and the wet and people being inconvenienced would ruin it.”

“We could wait for the spring,” he suggests reasonably.

“We could…except…I sort of don’t want to wait four months, let alone six,” she admits. “We’ve waited long enough, don’t you think? And I can deal with having less fuss than they had. I was actually thinking…two months from now?”  

Sasuke frowns and glances up at the sky. He has his problem-solving face on.

“And this planning for the wedding,” he says after a moment, sounding careful, “is something I need to be present for?”

Sakura smacks him in the shoulder—a little harder than a playful tap, but not with any malice. “Yes, you have to be involved! It’s your celebration, too—unless you don’t want to celebrate?”

“In that case, we may have to wait anyhow.”

He stops walking and turns to face her. He looks grave, and she immediately tenses for bad news.

“Kakashi offered me a mission,” he tells her. “There’s something happening in the Land of Earth, and might take anywhere from a few weeks to a few months.”

Sakura’s chest tightens. “Oh.” She swallows. “And you said yes?”

“I haven’t decided yet. I told Kakashi I would let him know, but I wanted to speak to you first,” Sasuke tells her. “You will be my wife. This is the sort of thing that I’m meant to speak to you about in advance. Especially if it interferes with your plans, in which case…Kakashi proposed another individual who might take the mission…if that’s what’s required.”

He sounds like he’s telling himself more than her, as if he’s reminding himself about a long-forgotten social norm. Though her disappointment is rising—she’d hoped to spend more time with Sasuke before he inevitably started taking long-term missions again—she recognises the effort he’s making.

Konoha wasn’t built in a day, she reminds herself.

“Thank you for considering me,” she tells Sasuke softly, squeezing his hand, “but don’t worry. And, of course, you have to go on the mission. Besides, would you really tell Kakashi ‘no’ if I had a problem with it?”

Sasuke shifts uncomfortably, but his expression is unapologetic. “No.”

“Good,” she declares. “Some things have to come first, especially if we want to build the future we risked our lives to protect. It’d be the same if a situation came up at the hospital, or if I had to visit another village to offer medical aid. You wouldn’t expect me to run things by you first, would you?”

Sasuke snorts.

“Exactly. But I’m glad that you thought this was important enough to discuss with me beforehand. It was thoughtful and…and very husbandly of you.”

He looks away, but the back of his neck turns red.

“So, when are you leaving?” she asks eventually, breaking the silence.

“Soon,” he answers. “I told Kakashi to give me some time. But since we’ve spoken now, I’ll probably go back right away and tell him I can leave tomorrow morning.”

“…Oh.”

She isn’t quite capable of hiding her disappointment here, and Sasuke notices. “What?”

“Nothing.”

“Sakura.”

“It’s just…I mean…I know we just said the mission comes first and everything, but since Kakashi-sensei gave you that time, maybe…we could spend some of it together.”

Sasuke considers, frowning in thought. “Kakashi said it’s possible for me to wait a week or two,” he says slowly. “If you want.”

“Would you?” she asks, trying not to feel so selfishly pleased. “I mean, only if it’s not going to inconvenience you—because, if it does, then you wouldn’t be doing your job. And I don’t want to be the one who holds you back from—”

“It won’t kill me, Sakura,” he deadpans, but there’s a twitch in the corner of his mouth that tells her he’s more amused than irritated.

She grins and leans into his shoulder.

“Let’s have dinner—a team dinner! We’ll have Naruto and Hinata over,” she suggests. “And Ino and Sai, and Kakashi and Manako. And Yamato, if he’s in the village. We can tell all of them the news together.”

“You said you wanted to keep it to ourselves for a while.”

“That was before you got a mission that could take months. I’m not keeping a secret this big for all that time!” she protests. “Besides, it’s in the best friend code that I have to tell Ino within at least forty-eight hours of getting engaged. And you know Naruto will whine and complain that you didn’t tell him before you left.”

“Hm.” There is a beat of silence, as if Sasuke is considering whether he should chance it—and then probably figures (quite correctly) that if the news came out while Sasuke was away, Naruto would follow him on his mission just to kick his ass (or raze a forest trying). “All right. Dinner might be a good idea.”

“Great!”

“But not ramen.”

“Obviously. This isn’t exactly a casual conversation. I’d like it to be a little more special than ramen.”

“We’ll do it at my place.”

“You mean Kakashi-sensei’s obscenely tiny apartment?” Sakura prompts, making a face. “No. Let’s have them over to my place.”

This time Sasuke makes the face. “With your parents hovering?”

They both wince.

“All right. Fine,” Sakura decides. “We’ll have it at your place. Who cares how cramped it is when we’re with people we care about, right?”

She beams at him, and Sasuke stares at her, his mismatched eyes adorably wide. He seems completely stunned for a minute, and then hastily looks away, letting his hair fall over his face again. From the tense set of his shoulders, he is considering something difficult.

“Sasuke?” she prompts. “If the dinner is too much, we don’t have to. I’m just as happy telling them all individually if you—”

“Come with me.”

She blinks, a little confused by the non sequitur, but shrugs. “Okay. Where?”

“No—that’s not what I—” he cuts himself off, looking frustrated for a moment, and then forces himself to continue. “Come with me on the mission.”

It’s Sakura’s turn to be stunned.

“You asked me once,” he reminds her, “and it wasn’t the right moment. But you’re right—we’re wasting time. I would prefer not to spend any more of mine without you by my side.”

It feels as if the world and all its sound has suddenly disappeared, along with the air from her lungs.

“I know that you have responsibilities here,” he continues quietly, “and that it would make the most sense to occupy yourself with those. I would understand if that’s what you choose to do—”

“Sasuke—”

“—and with this mission, if it’s…what you want, I’ll go tomorrow and come back here as soon as possible.”

Her vision becomes a little blurry.

“But if you—”

“I’ll come with you,” she tells him firmly, reaching up to take his face in her hands. “That’s not even a question. And don’t worry about my responsibilities here. I have people who can keep an eye on things while I’m away—they’re trained for that. Besides, after the amount of work I’ve done for this village, I could use a vacation.”

“A mission isn’t a vacation,” he reminds her.

“Does the mission involve paperwork?”

“I doubt it.”

“Then it’s a vacation,” she says happily, and before she can think better of it, hugs him around the middle. He goes rigid at first and then relaxes into her embrace. “Thank you for asking me, Sasuke.”

“…You’re welcome.”

“So, we’ll go, and when we get back, we’ll plan the wedding and get married,” she decides, pulling away from him. “We might end up marrying in the spring after all.”

“But you don’t want to wait.”

“It’s not so bad, the waiting—as long as I’m with you.”

“…Hm.”

He looks a little conflicted, like he’s still worried this idea is an imposition somehow. She’s not entirely sure how to assure him that it’s anything but, and not just because she’ll be by his side.

An idea occurs to her, a little bolder than she’s used to—but then, this whole situation is a little bolder than what she’s used to.

“There are…other reasons this could be a good trip,” she begins, trying not to sound uncertain. “It could be a good opportunity…to practice?”

Damn it, I shouldn’t have phrased that as a question!

“Practice what?”

“Practice for…well…you had that second goal,” she reminds him, trying and failing to keep the blood from rushing to her cheeks. She hasn’t tried to flirt with Sasuke since they were genin, and isn’t entirely sure how to go about it now that they’re adults. When continues to look confused, she curses herself for starting out with something so…lewd. 

Well, I started this, I might as well commit!

“Back when we first got put on the same squad?” she reminds him. “Remember what you said?”

Sasuke stares at her blankly for about five seconds before he realises what she’s talking about.

And promptly turns as red as his favourite food.  

He looks away from her, his entire body tense and Sakura experiences a moment of panic.

Oh, no! I’ve embarrassed him! That was so not the point, I didn’t want to make him uncomfortable, I just…!

“Sasuke, I’m sorry!” she stammers over herself to say. “I didn’t mean…that’s not what I…I meant practice being close…the two of us—not that it’s not the two of us now, it is, but—”

When Sasuke looks back at her, his cheeks and the bridge of his nose are still darker than usual, and he shoots her an exasperated look. She exhales in relief to note it’s fond exasperation, and not the Naruto-exasperation.

“Annoying woman,” he says wryly. “All I am to you is a piece of meat.”

And he turns to walk away.

Sakura’s jaw drops.

“Did you just…did you just make a joke? Sasuke? Sasuke! Wait up!”

Reviews and constructive criticism are much appreciated! Also, if you are in a supportive mood, I have a tip jar button through ko-fi located at the top of the page, or you can check out the link here. Thanks for your interest in my work!

クリ

Next Chapter

[robedisimo]

“It Rhymes”: Cascading Character Roles Across the Star Wars Trilogies [PART I]

[Disclaimer: PART III of this post chain contains speculation and theories about the upcoming Star Wars – The Last Jedi that, if correct, would count as SPOILERS. While it’s unlikely that my musings are 100% accurate, keep that in mind if your intention is to go into the film completely blind.]

1. Modern fiction and the monomyth

When questioned about the repeating themes and story beats in his two Star Wars trilogies, George Lucas once famously replied: “It’s like poetry; it rhymes”.

View it as a statement on conscious creative methodology or as a middling excuse for predictability, the result doesn’t change: the Star Wars franchise is a creature of recurring plot points and character types, echoing from one iteration to the next in a never-ending cycle of repetition. Which isn’t really surprising when you take into account Lucas’s outstated inspiration from Joseph Campbell’s The Hero with a Thousand Faces, a 1949 400-page essay on the nature and journey of the archetypal hero throughout ancient-world mythologies.

The so-called “monomyth” outlined by Campbell’s influential study hinges on simple narrative categories so engrained into our collective fiction-churning society that we instinctively recognise them wherever they’re used, whether we realise it or not: if a piece of modern fiction incorporates these elements its flavour and texture are those of a “classic”; if it doesn’t, they aren’t. Simple as that.

It’s not even a matter of quality, either. Have these narrative elements endured the test of time because they’re demonstrably better than others? Are they incessantly repeated because they’re iconic, or are they iconic because they’re incessantly repeated? Whatever the case, we’ve seen them so many times in so many different – yet not-so-different – permutations that each new iteration feels like coming back to the same, familiar story, the One Grand Tale mankind has been telling itself for the past four millennia at the very least.

Virtually all pieces of contemporary fiction that proved able to take root in our collective subconscious – what we call “pop culture” – share these same archetypal themes, story arcs and character moulds: properties such as the original Matrix, the Lord of the Rings books and films and the ongoing myth-spinning relay that are superhero comic-books all tapped into that same potential for endless recycling of pre-existing narrative categories.

Yet none leaned into it so hard, and so successfully, than the Star Wars franchise. Its staying power as a modern mythology for the 20th century and beyond is peerless. Is its adherence to the formula uncovered by Campbell a stroke of foresight-imbued genius, or the lucky side-effect of a pedestrian imitation game? I’m afraid we’ll never know for sure, but the results are so self-evident as to make that point entirely moot.

2. Narrative roles in the Star Wars mythology: the Original Trilogy

What’s most interesting, however, isn’t just how Star Wars recycles age-old narrative tropes, but rather how those tropes cascade from one trilogy into another. The now three-trilogies-spanning franchise has shaped into a monomyth all its own, built on a singular story being told and re-told multiple times through a specific set of internal rules.

The first of those rules – I use the term loosely; I’m not trying to pass my musings as exact science here, merely pointing out patterns where they seem to arise – concerns the story and the narrative categories that allow it to function. These categories were established in the Original Trilogy comprised of A New Hope, The Empire Strikes Back and Return of the Jedi, but as you’ll see they can be readily applied to later permutations of the franchise.

At the best of my current ability to analyse the topic, the main character roles that allow the plot of a Star Wars trilogy to hold itself together boil down to seven specific archetypes, loosely defined as follows:

the Selfless Hero – Pretty much what it says on the tin. The Hero is the main active force of good in the story, propelling the plot forwards through a series of choices primarily motivated by altruism. They’re less prone to take part in comedy scenes, and when they do it’s mostly through quipping rather than practical gags.

the Rogue – Coming from a dangerous background, their motives are often dubious. Unruly and undisciplined, they initially align with the “good guys” out of self-interest, and tend to be motivated (even in their positive choices) by personal feelings and attachments rather than by interest in a greater cause of universal good. Among the three protagonists they’re the most likely to take part in physical comedy.

the Warrior Princess – Strong and independent (often to the point of overconfidence) they nonetheless tend to require a lot of rescuing. As noble as the Hero but less misguided in their choices, they serve as the story’s moral anchor. They’re the least likely member of the protagonist trio to get involved in comedy relief.

the Mentor – The Hero’s first teacher and tutor. Killed by the Dark Knight by the end of the first chapter, to form a grudge between the protagonist and main antagonist and to act as an inspirational moral compass.

the Sage – A secondary instructor to the Hero, acting as a connecting figure to past lore greater than the story’s present concerns.

the Dark Knight – The story’s active antagonist, pursuing the protagonists and representing a physical menace. Caught in the middle of a personal character arc that puts them on an eventual course of collision with the Dark Lord.

the Dark Lord – The story’s passive antagonist, acting as a behind-the-scenes mastermind. Less physically involved in battle, they represent an almost incorporeal, abstract concept of evil to be defeated at all costs, portrayed with fewer human qualities than the Dark Knight, if any at all. Much like the Sage, their character is already formed and undergoes no meaningful variation throughout the trilogy.

As far as the monomyth is concerned, the Original Trilogy is by far the most classical of the Star Wars iterations. Its themes and aesthetic – as alluded to in my choice of terminology – lean heavily into archetypal sword-and-sorcery elements: a farm boy with a greater destiny is led by a wizard to the rescue of a captive princess, held prisoner by an evil wizard-king and his right-hand black knight.

As such, it’s also easiest to make the OT’s cast of characters fall neatly into our grid. Here’s how (right-click and “show picture” or “open in new tab” to expand):

3. The Prequel Trilogy: recurring motifs and variation

Things get more interesting as we “backtrack forward”, as it were, to find ourselves in Prequel Trilogy waters. The prequels are a fairly different affair from Episodes IV through VI, but while the substance and setting of their narrative arc play to a different tune from what made the original Star Wars films what they were, the character types inhabiting that narrative are very, very familiar.

The formula we defined when looking at the Original Trilogy can be seen at play here with several overlapping points and a few key variations, first and foremost in the fact that this time around the Selfless Hero isn’t the main protagonist: the prequels’ focus, in accordance with their darker story arc, instead falls on the Rogue, personified by the younger Anakin.

Plot-wise – and also character-wise; more on this in Part 2 of this post chain – the Rogue is defined by change. They start in one position and often end at the opposite end of the spectrum. Han enters the Original Trilogy as a scoundrel and a street rat, and exits it as a decorated hero on track to marry into royalty. Anakin’s arc leads him from slavery – a position of absolute lack of power – to the heights of Force-infused might, from good to evil, and from hope to despair.

All that lays the groundwork for his transition into the Original Trilogy’s main antagonist, creating a precedent for the Hero and the Rogue falling on opposing sides of the good/bad moral axis as they trade their spot in one trilogy’s trio of protagonists for one of the four other positions in the character ladder. This will be a very important point as our analysis moves into predictive territory.

The other roles are filled in with ease... save for one: the Dark Knight category is, admittedly, a bit of a contended spot. In my mind, the Knight is the “villain with an arc”: their motivations – and even their ultimate alignment – change throughout the trilogy they inhabit, whereas the Dark Lord looms as an immutable agent of evil whose personal goals and inclinations are pretty much set in stone.

It could be argued that Palpatine ends up filling the role, as his arc as a villain is at least as well-explored as Vader’s was in the Original Trilogy films; still, as compelling as his final transition from Sheev Palpatine to a full-fledged Darth Sidious is, he only half-fits the bill. More importantly, his role in the prequels’ overarching plotline is clearly more suitably tailored on the “mastermind in the shadows” archetype, a dead ringer for the Dark Lord label.

So the Dark Knight spot is possibly meant to be left vacant, at least if we only take the films as our frame of reference. Instead, things get a lot clearer if we turn our attention towards the additional material provided by the – entirely canonical, unlike the rest of the now-scrapped Expanded Universe – Clone Wars and Rebels animated shows, where Darth Maul is not only revealed to have survived the end of The Phantom Menace, but also goes on to have a complex and extensive character arc.

I don’t agree with the entirety of Belated Media’s What if the Star Wars Prequels Were Good? YouTube series, but I absolutely concur that treating Maul, Dooku and Grievous as interchangeable pawns in Palpatine’s scheme was a major mistake that would’ve been sorted out by simply giving Maul a more developed story arc beyond Episode I. The Clone Wars and Rebels do exactly that and, wouldn’t you know it, his journey begins by killing the Mentor (Qui-Gon Jinn) and ends with him turning against his former master, the exact same arc followed by Vader in the Original Trilogy.

Now that’s what I call a Dark Knight. Our character role chart, thus informed, shapes up as follows:

At this point I’ve hopefully managed to provide you with a solid enough grasp of the system’s general bases. We’re going to need that as we head forward into a second tier of analysis: how plot mechanics interact with character dynamics.

[ NEXT – Thematic classes and the Sequel Trilogy ]

[theconservativebrief]

Michael Cohen, the former personal attorney for President Donald Trump, has pled guilty to eight criminal charges. two of which are campaign finance offenses involving his payment of hush money to Stormy Daniels and Karen McDougal, two women with whom Trump had affairs.

Strikingly, Cohen admitted in court that he worked “in coordination with and at the direction of a candidate for federal office” to make one payment; the other was made merely “in coordination with” the candidate. While Trump wasn’t named, that effectively implicates him in the underlying crimes here: willfully causing an illegal corporate contribution and making an excessive campaign contribution.

Several law professors told my colleague Sean Illing that if Cohen’s account can be proven, it means Trump himself is guilty of federal crimes. “Although the president is not named in the charges, he is all but an unindicted co-conspirator,” Duke’s Lisa Kern Griffin told Illing.

Lanny Davis, Cohen’s attorney, agrees:

Today he stood up and testified under oath that Donald Trump directed him to commit a crime by making payments to two women for the principal purpose of influencing an election. If those payments were a crime for Michael Cohen, then why wouldn’t they be a crime for Donald Trump?

— Lanny Davis (@LannyDavis) August 21, 2018

“Trump is clearly guilty of violating campaign finance laws and also guilty of federal conspiracy as well (because he agreed with Cohen, and possibly others, on a plan to violate federal law),” Cornell’s Jens David Ohlin added to Illing. “Normally he would be indicted right away. But that won’t happen only because he’s the president.”

That last part — that Trump is only not being indicted because he’s the President — is tremendously important. The conventional wisdom is that even if Trump committed federal crimes, only Congress can address that wrongdoing by impeaching him. The prevailing view, embraced by the Justice Department’s Office of Legal Counsel and many legal academics, is that the president is immune from routine criminal prosecution by someone like a US attorney or a local district attorney. He could be charged for wrongdoing as president after leaving office, but not until after impeachment and removal, or resignation.

The thing is, though, this has never been tested before. And some legal scholars, like Hofstra University’s Eric M. Freedman, have argued that rank-and-file prosecutors can indeed indict and prosecute the president. It might be difficult for, say, the deputy US attorney for Southern New York who prosecuted Cohen, Robert Khuzami, to test the president’s immunity by securing an indictment. Trump could simply dismiss Khuzami from their post (US attorney Geoffrey Berman has already recused himself from the Cohen case).

But state and local prosecutors don’t serve at the president’s pleasure the way US attorneys do. They’re typically elected or appointed by state or local politicians. So if Trump were to, as he’s jokingly threatened in the past, “stand in the middle of Fifth Avenue and shoot somebody,” then New York County District Attorney Cyrus Vance Jr. could indict him for assault or murder without fear of losing his job.

The case would be immediately appealed, and the question could be settled once and for all, most likely by the Supreme Court.

“If they did seek an indictment against the president, the president would almost certainly appeal right away,” Brian Kalt, a law professor at Michigan State University and author of Constitutional Cliffhangers: A Legal Guide for Presidents and Their Enemies, told me in 2017. “Immunity arguments get reviewed right away, since the point of immunity is that you can’t be prosecuted — letting the trial go forward would moot the issue. It would go all the way up to the Supreme Court in short order, but that could delay things for a few months at least.”

“While I personally think the president is immune while in office, I concede that there are arguments on both sides and that it is unsettled,” Kalt continued. Now, with Trump, there’s a small but real chance that the Supreme Court might finally settle the matter.

The most famous argument that presidents should be immune from ordinary criminal prosecution was made in a 1997 law review article by Yale constitutional law professor Akhil Amar and Kalt, his then-student.

Amar and Kalt argue that the president is a unique official, as the sole person ultimately in charge of the executive branch. “If he is arrested, so too is the executive branch of the government,” they write. This distinguishes him from a normal legislator or judge, who can be prosecuted, because there are plenty of other judges and legislators who can carry on their work. “Any distraction of the President from his duties is much more significant than similar distractions of these other, prosecutable officials, and has a much bigger impact on the well-being of the nation and all its People,” they conclude.

At the state level, they pointed to the landmark 1819 case of McCulloch v. Maryland, which ruled that state officials cannot obstruct “the measures of a government [the federal government] created by others as well as themselves.” “In other words,” Kalt and Amar summarize, “a single state cannot use its power to derail the functioning of the United States.”

A federal prosecution would similarly illegitimately impede the function of the presidency, and put an inferior executive officer, like a US attorney or independent counsel, in charge of prosecuting the president. The president could simply fire either one, rendering the point largely moot.

”If the President freely allows his regularly appointed lieutenants to pursue him, then there is no separation of powers problem,” they write. But if the president refuses to let that happen, he’s in his rights as the leader of the executive branch to dismiss either a US attorney or independent counsel prosecuting him.

In a 1992 law review article later adapted into testimony during the Clinton impeachment imbroglio, Hofstra University’s Eric Freedman took the opposite stance. There was explicit disagreement, he writes, among the founders about whether the president was immune from prosecution, disagreements that reached the floor of the very first Senate ever convened. So the issue can’t be resolved by recourse to the Constitution’s original meaning.

Second, historical practice is that every other federal officeholder, including the vice president, has been considered eligible for regular prosecution. After Vice President Aaron Burr killed Alexander Hamilton, he was indicted for murder in both New York and New Jersey. “Amid the considerable public tumult that followed, there was never any suggestion that he had any immunity from prosecution on these charges,” Freedman writes.

Moreover, in the Watergate case, the Iran-Contra investigation, and Bill Clinton’s impeachment saga, subpoenaing the president was considered unquestionably legal and appropriate.

”The question of how to enforce a criminal sentence against the President is no different than the question of how to enforce a subpoena against the President,” Freedman writes, and subpoenas against the president have been enforced in the past. To this point, Kalt counters that the special prosecutor in the Watergate case “didn’t think they could indict [Nixon] while he was in office, which is why he was named as an unindicted co-conspirator.” That suggests that indictment and subpoenas might be different.

If the president is given a sentence like prison that precludes him from carrying out the duties of his office, Freedman argues that his Cabinet and vice president could use the 25th Amendment to suspend his presidency, or the president could invoke the amendment voluntarily for the length of his sentence.

If the president were in prison and still insisting on performing his duties from there, two-thirds of members in the House and Senate would need to ratify the vice president stepping in as acting president. But it’s hard to imagine a situation where the president is literally in prison and Congress doesn’t assent to that.

In Freedman’s view, the best way to prosecute Trump would be to revive the independent counsel statute passed after Watergate. That statute led to the appointment of Kenneth Starr to investigate Clinton’s Whitewater land deals, which culminated in the impeachment effort. It expired in the late ’90s, partly as a consequence of fatigue from the Clinton investigations.

“As a practical matter, what you need at this point is for Congress to revive the independent counsel,” Freedman told me in 2017. “No one in the Justice Department chain of command will do it, not just for the obvious reasons but because the Justice Department has an official position of longstanding that it can’t be done.”

Kalt agreed: “Based on internal precedents, I think that most any US attorney would stop short of seeking an indictment against the president.” He adds, “They can do a lot short of that, though — investigating the president, indicting underlings, etc. — in an attempt to tee things up for the day the president leaves office.”

I asked Freedman if an independent counsel would have the authority to bring charges against the president. “He plainly could,” he replied, noting that the independent counsel statute specifically said the counsel can only be removed for cause. “Under the then-statute, which was upheld as constitutional, such an indictment would not be a cause for firing him.” Amar and Kalt, in their article, argue the contrary, that it’s clearly within the president’s power to fire an independent counsel for whatever reason, and that the Supreme Court’s prior ruling on the office didn’t say otherwise.

But in any case, Congress would have to revive the independent counsel statute before any of this could happen. So far, there’s little indication that Republican leadership is open to that. Even if they did, Kalt noted, “the president would presumably veto it, and if they have the two-thirds majorities in both houses that they would need to override the veto, they presumably would have the votes (a lower threshold in the House) for an impeachment and removal.”

A state prosecutor, Freedman argued, could also bring charges. “The president could by statute remove to federal court,” he explained. “There, or even if it stayed in state court, the immunity issue could be brought up rapidly pretrial. The Nixon case itself is a example of how this could work.”

While it seems pretty likely that Trump violated federal law by instructing Cohen to make illegal payoff, the potential charges against him in, for example, New York and Florida are less obvious. The campaign violation is a federal, not state, offense.

But the state option does provide a path for the Supreme Court to ultimately settle this question. If a state or local prosecutor concludes that Trump broke a law, they could secure an indictment and finally force the courts to come to a decision about whether or not presidents can be indicted and prosecuted.

Original Source -> The only reason that Trump hasn’t been indicted is that he’s the president

via The Conservative Brief

[theculturalkrusader]

On Hillbilly Elegy: 3 Stars

I read J.D. Vance’s bestselling memoir in less than a day, so I can’t say it wasn’t a good read.  As a native Staten Islander, I have long been torn between the ultra-conservative Island culture (I’ve realized since reading Elegy, SI is more akin to Vance’s beloved “hillbilly” culture than I could’ve imagined) and the more progressive, liberal politics of the City and state of New York encompassing the Island. I was interested in what Elegy had to offer me in the way of insight into things like Why Trump won, Who these people I couldn’t stand to live among really are beneath the surface, and most urgently, How to rectify these two cultures I’m constantly caught between.  I was eager, thanks largely to the overwhelmingly positive press the book has received since its release last year, to read this book and gain new insight into this self-obsessed, isolationist, myopic, white [middle-to-lower-class, in this case] patriarchal culture I’ve spent my life amid and relatively appalled by. 

I didn’t.

Vance, foremost, struck me as macho.  Clearly not one to have dabbled in Buddhist teachings despite his Ivy League education and pedantic obsession with self-responsibility, Vance’s language betrays a lack of compassion beyond the scope of his own fragility.  One example that really struck me was in an anecdote he told about overcoming hillbilly fight culture in the outside world: Vance had been cut off by another driver, and planned to get out of his car at a red light and demand an apology, if not fight it out with the guy. But he stopped himself.  He acknowledges he had acted appropriately in forgoing a fight, but rather than forgive himself for getting angry in the first place (compassion), he spent the hours afterwards “[doing] the right thing, I silently criticized myself.” (p.247)  This admission strikes me as of precisely the same mindset Vance spends his book proselytizing against: that beat-down, my-choices-don’t-matter-and-neither-do-I schema that supposedly separates the more typical hillbillies from one of his success. In one sense, his choice here did prove significant, because no fight ensued, and everyone walked away unscathed.  

In a much deeper sense, though, I can’t help but feel these ‘proper’ choices he’s making still resonate with him as somewhat useless, given his reaction to his own flaw in this case is still criticism. Why does one criticize the self?  To deprecate, to beat down - the very things Vance can’t stand to see his hillbilly neighbors constantly excusing their lack of accountability with.

I don’t think Vance is terribly self-aware.  Disciplined? You bet. Conscientious?  Certainly. Intelligent?  Absolutely.  But self-aware?  I’m not convinced.  He claims to be self-assured now, but how self-assured are you if you can’t even make a mistake without staying mad at yourself about it for hours upon hours? Moreover, how could a truly self-aware grown man - who’d spent four years in the Marines and three in the Ivy Leagues - really believe that his folk don’t hate President Obama for the color of his skin, but for his difference in class, as Vance lamely tried to argue on p.191? What self-aware scholar says that?

In this one inadvertent clue, I find an entire argument essentially made moot.  How can someone claim to have overcome a mindset, want to preach on how he’s done so and why you should too (and why not doing so will doom all affected to depravity and depression), and then, without any sense of irony, continue to employ this mindset as he writes the very work composed to deride it? While Vance’s story was, for the most part, genuinely compelling, his larger narrative fell flat in conveying clear and defined insight, and instead read more like a successful white american male haranguing his people for not being as wise, as strong, as willful, or as great as him. Here I was, thinking I’d be reading a book full of carefully-described bullets delineating why this culture should concern and compel me; a book dense with information and wisdom and well-thought-out insight; a book like Evicted, or We Should All Be Feminists, The New Jim Crow, or Between The World And Me. To my disappointment, it didn’t hold a candle to those works, and certainly did not deserve the level of praise and literary prestige it received, in my mind.  To say, “You will not read a more important book about America this year.” (-Economist) feels obsequious and plain untrue.  What insight have I gained?  

Here are some bullets:

-Hillbilly culture is rooted in the Appalachian mountains and surrounding regions. Sometime in the mid-19th century, a mass emigration in pursuit of better job opportunities made its way from the poorer regions of Appalachia up to northern states like OH, PA, IN, IL, and MI, and pushed this culture up and out of just the Rust/Bible Belt. Hillbilly culture subsequently spread far and wide within middle America, and remains heavily entrenched there to this day.  These folks are traditionally Scots-Irish, and are generally considered distinctive in their “persistent and unchanging regional subculture in the country. Their family structures, religion, and politics, and social lives all remain unchanged compared to the wholesale abandonment of tradition that’s occurred nearly everywhere else.” (p.3) 

-In describing these Scots-Irish and their culture, Vance weighs the good - intense sense of loyalty, fierce dedication to family and country - and the bad - distrust of and disdain for outsiders; and disclaims himself as Scots-Irish at heart - presumably to allow for wiggle-room in his misguided arguments about self-responsibility, political culture, and overall cultural climate. Of the latter, he conveniently made almost no thoughtful mention, despite drawing a direct comparison between poor whites and poor blacks in their overwhelming cultural similarities more than once. This struck me as incredibly odd, since so much of the 2016 election revolved around racism, racial tension, and shamelessly racist hillbillies punching black people at rallies and threatening to kill them. Given Vance’s task, this should have been explored.  

-These qualities he mentions - “good” and “bad” - are exactly the qualities I’d assume drove the majority of hillbillies to vote for Donald Trump. E.g., intense sense of loyalty (to America, however misguided); fierce dedication to family and country (however egregiously misguided here as well); distrust of and disdain for outsiders - in this case, the majority of “outsiders” happen to be non-white…and women (sexism is yet another extremely important factor in assessing both the 2016 election and this culture that remains conspicuously unaddressed in Vance’s book).  And who did Donald Trump tout as the biggest enemy of them all?  Others! Mexicans are rapists - other.  Blacks are thugs - other.  Women are fodder for men - other. Hillary is a criminal - other. 2016 was the election of Trump versus The Other. (Vance did not explicitly state this, but since Vance’s non-explanations leave much to desire, the reader is left to deduce for herself, and this is a conclusion I have come to. In fact, I’ve deduced every point on Donald Trump made in this essay so far, because Vance did not give me straight answers. I was sure he would.)

But, Donald Trump was an outsider too - if Barack Obama was intimidating to hillbillies because he was too upperclass, then why are these same people toting Donald Trump as the next greatest thing, when he’s far more ostentatious in displaying his status than Obama could or would ever be? This takes me back to labeling Vance’s aforementioned claim on Obama’s lack of appeal to hillbillies sheer and utter hogwash.

——————————————————————————————-

The bullets above together may explain why:

1) Trump won office at a time when most of us couldn’t understand a vote cast in that direction (which, ironically, Vance made absolutely no effort to himself address or deconstruct…an incredibly lazy cop out, if you ask me).  Wasn’t the election what compelled Vance to write this book?  What happened to all that sociological insight his book promised?  Anecdote - Vance’s narrative tool of choice - here lacks insight; Vance tells anecdote after anecdote, but makes hardly any effort to tie these stories back into the larger picture for which they served as an example, and therefore does not outright explain their significance in relation to our country’s cultural climate; all he does instead is offer reasons to pity these hillbilly people - the very same people he himself lambasts to do better - as if to say, They know not what they’ve done, so forgive them for putting our country in such indescribable danger. It’s an incredibly entitled approach, saturated in what I could only register as white privilege.  This takes me back to arguing against Vance’s self-awareness: Vance does not seem at all in-touch with his male white privilege in posing these arguments. 

2) Vance himself struggles to narrate from outside his experience, and consequently lacks an objective tone; the subjective tone we’re left with is again, heavily proselytizing instead of plainly informative. Even he doesn’t really understand the WHYs.

3) These people are so goddamned hard to get through to; they’re all absorbed in the same mindset as Vance: I have done this, while I watch others do that. That is wrong because this is right.  This is right because look at how much I have to humblebrag about now.  All other problems must just be the result of laziness and lack of discipline.  Vance argues it’s not the govts. fault (but it is!), it’s not society’s fault (but it is!), it’s your fault, and there is no way to fix it. Except, what Vance does not seem to grasp, is that this culminates exactly the kind of defeatism his people must move away from.  He is clearly still immersed.

J.D., I really wanted to tell everyone I know that your book was brilliant, and required reading.  I can’t do that, though I will recommend it to anyone seeking a readable hillbilly memoir.  

The book was good, but not great.  It informed but did not teach.  If Elegy exists to inform on what hillbilly culture looks like, acts like, and moves like, I already carry all the info I needed on this topic from growing up on Staten Island, where hillbilly culture is uncredited but very much present.  Sass aside, I found this book frustrating, and incredibly overrated.  His story is interesting, yes.  I read the book in a day without getting bored or restless, and even enjoyed it, yes. His success with self-discipline genuinely inspires me, and I give him credit for making his way out of poverty and into the Ivy Leagues. I respect his unique transition from dejected nobody to Marine, but I respect it as just that - UNIQUE.  I wince at his idea that he can extend his narrative to encompass - and shame - all hillbillies not following his lead; his experience is not universal, as demonstrated by his holier-than-thou tone. So how does reading about his non-universal experience actually help me to deeply understand this culture? 

It doesn’t.

Did I really learn anything, take away some insight I was certain going into the book I’d come out with? No.  This Hillbilly Elegy felt less like a tribute to the dead, and more like a tribute to Vance himself. He cites only 21 sources in a 257 page text.  This is not a sociological evaluation, a philosophical text, or even an academic work.  This is a memoir, of a hillbilly boy, who, despite an unusually-education-centered upbringing, an Ivy League education, military service (God bless), and what he calls perspective, still sees the world through questionable lenses.  

But he married a woman of color, so I’m sure he believes he’s better than his kin in Kentucky and Ohio, even as he still wears their uniform on the pitch.