#here for the symbolism and not trying to disrespect anyone's religion

[brucewaynehater101]

Jason, religious guilt, and the symbolism of him being compared to Lucifer, God's most beautiful creation and beloved son that was cast away when he rebelled against His power.

[starbylers]

Here’s 7 of my favourite Byler proofs just from season 4. Pretty sure we all know these but just a refresher if anyone is feeling doubtful <3

Camera focusing on men wrestling when in Mike’s POV

There is no other explanation for this shot: Mike was watching the boys. Hinting at his sexuality is the only reasoning here that has actual narrative purpose.

Symbolism in the final scene

The dying Mlvn flowers vs the blooming flowers edited between Mike and Will.

El walking away from the love triangle framing, alone. Mike and Will centred as a pair between the other endgame couples. This is not an accident, the way everyone is positioned in twos is incredibly staged and deliberate.

Mike’s bedroom walls

The shirtless male dragon on a literal rainbow poster (this one is so obvious I have to laugh). Other characters have pictures of the gender they’re shown to be attracted to on their walls, why is it any different for Mike? And of course the one way sign. Set design is a professional career, these things were not thrown in at random. A character’s room is supposed to give us insight into who they are and their story.

The narrative. The most basic but strong evidence that exists.

El lying to Mike for months. Mike avoiding touching Will and pretending not to look at him in the airport, after finding out he likes a girl. Mike and El fighting and Mike using gaslighting language and shifting blame. El leaving Mike behind with ‘from El’. Their relationship is on the rocks. Will and Mike having multiple interrupted heart to hearts. Borderline flirting and definite gazing into each other’s eyes in the Dear Billy talk. Mike feeling insecure and inferior in his relationship. Will’s secret love confession making Mike feel happy and better about himself. That same confession encouraging Mike to give the monologue. The monologue being completely impersonal and containing at least one 100% confirmed lie (love at first sight). El fails to achieve her goal (save Max) despite Mike’s words. El having no response to Mike’s long-awaited ‘I love you’ when it’s been days.

Suzie’s house foreshadowing episode 9

Mike & Suzie’s dad both hit by the arrow (to show he represents Mike)

‘It looked genuine’ do I need to say more?

Also this foreshadowing is backed up by one of Suzie’s sibling’s lines ‘too much salt’ (aka reference to the salt bath).

The Suzie’s house sequence has absolutely no purpose to the plot. It exists for parallel purposes.

Fruit on pizza metaphor interrupting Mike’s alleged ‘I love you’ attempt

Mike: ‘That’s blasphemous! Putting fruit on pizza?’

Argyle: ‘Try before you deny.’ El: ‘It’s good!’

I think this metaphor is pretty self-explanatory. (Trying the ‘fruit’ = exploring his sexuality, Mike thinks it’s wrong, specifically using the word ‘blasphemous’ (which in simple terms is defined as ‘to disrespect God or religion’, and we know Mike grew up in a homophobic small town in the 80s). There are more detailed explanations of this elsewhere on Tumblr, this is just a mini summary).

Also, Argyle calling Mike Romeo (reference to a doomed relationship).

Again, this scene had absolutely no purpose plotwise or character-wise (at least explicitly). It was pure symbolism.

‘Straight doesn’t make sense’ map joke

Mike: ‘Straight, straight, straight…right on the money, as I said.’

Jonathan: ‘It just doesn’t make sense.’

Yet again, no plot or character purpose for this dialogue, or at least not for wording it this way. This was clearly a joke alluding to Mike’s sexuality (and him possibly being in denial), similar to the telemarketing joke in s3 (‘El? Sorry, not interested’).

[jttw-monkeybusiness]

Heya, Celibacy Question Anon again

I fully know the blog is centered around an AU, I was merely asking because the ethics of making an AU for something that isn't a show and is an actual religion is pretty shaky since actual religious text is pretty different from a form of entertainment media

I'll be honest, I mainly asked because I have seen and heard multiple accounts of Buddhists saying that personifying JTTW in such a way, especially in erasing/tweaking Wukong's celibacy, is extremely disrespectful

So I wanted to be sure that you were aware of the fact that many Buddhists do say that treating JTTW like it's some sort of fandom media (where you would make AUs rather than interpretations of said text) is very disrespectful (and even in interpretations, outright ignoring his celibacy is still considered wrong. Even if it may has been done before, my concern here is that a lot of worshipers of Wukong has said it's disrespectful)

Hello! First I want to say that what I will say in this text is not directly towards you, anon! I say this in general! What I understood is that this blog and AU are inspired by Journey To The West which is not a religion. It is a great Chinese work of fiction written presumably by Wu Chengen in the XVI century. I would argue it's one of the best Chinese novels of all time that I think everyone should read. Yes, it has a real religion that is Buddhism, but the main focus is the novel derives its material from folk tales and myths. That's how I at least take it when I read it. The author of the novel deliberately uses mutually interpretative terms which allow different experts, scholars, and religious practitioners to interpret the novel as an allegory of Buddhism, Taoism, Confucianism, Christianity etc. So Buddhism is not the main religion if we want to go very deeply into it. I personally think Journey To The West tells a story of spiritual transformation that happens to Wukong for example. While the meaning of religious symbolism can be understood in different ways depending on your own religion and background I think most people agree it's about seeking the truth and salvation for the soul. That's what I want to add to my AU and how I see JTTW in general. So for your point, I will answer as best as I can bc English is not my native language and I don't want to cause any drama or hate. When it comes to pop culture and media, I understand that there must be people who don't like JTTW AU's bc the creators, like myself, want to explore the possibilities and make our own stories for fun and entertainment. I personally think if the people in Buddhism and people who worship Wukong want to have their voice heard they should focus on companies that make a profit. Shouldn't this logic also include Lego Monkey Kid which was based on Journey To the West? Their version of Wukong is not exactly the same as in the novel in my honest opinion and the story could easily be someone's AU (and technically it is!) but it has become full-on animation series that makes money. I'm not trying to be disrespectful to anyone! I'm just trying to open the other door in here. I don't get any money from making this blog. I do this for fun bc JTTW is a novel that I love. Do some Buddhists and people who worship Wukong hate it and find it disrespectful? Maybe yes, but again JTTW is a novel and that's how I view it. It's like saying Christian people hate any movies where they make fun of Jesus Christ like Family Guy. That's not even the worst yet! I'm saying this as someone who used to be a Christian.

What I am saying is that you can't please everyone. I am aware that people might not like what I do, but I know that legally I am not doing anything wrong. I can't please people who are religious. I don't think I have tried to be disrespectful at least not intentionally. If I would I think people would have said it a long time ago.

I hope this gave you some satisfaction or a better idea of why I love JTTW.

[nonreligiousbible]

About This Blog

Hello! I was just a simple queer author trying to make my way in the world when I was cursed with a Good Omens obsession and a story idea set within biblical canon. I'm agnostic, personally; I was raised in a Christian-Missionary Alliance church, which is the same as being raised Baptist except with less emphasis on being baptised and more emphasis on evangelising. I also went to a non-denominational Christian private school during my high school years, and completed 4 credits of Bible classes. With this experience under my belt, I recently started rereading an NIV 2011 with a more critical, less religious lens. I realized perhaps this is something other artists could use, so I'm starting this as a sideblog to post summaries of each chapter of each book of the Bible (NIV 2011 as well as a direct translation bible), and maybe some other lists/informative posts. I'm also open to answering asks!

My only rule is that you don't try to evangelize, either to me or to anyone else. I'm not looking for religion at the moment, and if I find it during my reading of the Bible, great! But if I don't, also great! I'm not here to be religious about it all. Sometimes you want to add some religious symbolism to your gays, or make biblical figures gay, and I'm here for that, not to spread the gospel or anything like that. I will try to keep my posts clean, but I can't make any promises. Also, I will try to edit out any bias that may come from my evangelical background, but I do apologize if any slips through. Feel free to correct me, or add complexity to any of my posts!

This blog respects religious trauma! I've been there, as have all my friends and acquaintances. I will tag accordingly!

This is a Jewish-friendly blog! (although I am not Jewish myself and don't know anyone who's Jewish, so apologies if anything I post isn't in line with the Jewish understanding of the Old Testament. Please let me know if I post anything disrespectful and I will adjust it accordingly!!)

This is TERF-free blog! As I said, I am queer. I hate gatekeeping within the queer community. If I see TERFs I will not hesitate to block. Same for similar right-wing extremist groups. No thanks.

(click below banner for source! original blog has been deactivated)

[scholar-for-christ]

M'kay time to edjumacate some folks in Da Religies. @cheetochild989 has called upon me and I shall now gleefully FaithInfodump on y'all!

First off : I can understand @sarathrwizard 's frustration and hurt at watching a broken world become more and more broken. I absolutely understand the pain that can cause to a faithful heart. AND I agree with @wenzie76aster that this is not the way to live your faith. We need more love, not more hate.

TLDR: Both posters are technically correct. Like, yes, the rainbow did originate in the Bible as an expression of God's covenant with His people. But it is also absolutely VERY NOT OKAY to use religion as a reason to be unkind or downright cruel in any way.

Okay. Let's get into this:

Regarding Sarathrwizard's post:

Much of what Sara says regarding God is factually correct, but not in the spirit of the faith. God DID create us Man and Woman and that WAS the intended way for things to stay, but because we are indeed in a broken world, things that were originally in place become difficult or even impossible to maintain for our broken souls. (Note: ALL souls are broken in some way, myself included)

"I do not hate the person, I hate the act" is the correct mindset but it's not playing out here. It can be very hard to watch these things happen in our society. I agree that we are becoming FAR too sexually focused nowadays. There should never be any question of whether a five year old wants to be a boy or a girl. Just let them be THEM and they can decide about sexuality themselves when they're old enough to understand the implications, consequences, and potential health risks of that choice. Love the sinner, hate the sin distinguishes between the hurting person in need of help and the broken action they are choosing to do. In order to love the person but hate the sin, we must love the person, i.e. act in an accepting, loving manner that welcomes all people in to a place that was meant to be a hospital, not an exclusive club. We love the person, and avoid committing the sin, while showing the person, through our own lives, actions, decisions, etc... a better path. You won't change anyone's minds by ranting at them. If you want to change a person, change their heart first, and that can only happen through love.

It is true that 81 genders may be a bit much, lol. I think what we're headed towards is the realization that each human is unique and that we can never fully represent the person by placing them in any category/box. Yes, society IS trying to make LGBTQ (plz let me know if a new phrase is preferred, I feel like I'm behind on the whole 81 genders thing, lol) more "normal" which really just means less shunned and persecuted. I personally think it is wrong for any child under the age of 18 to be offered 81 different genders and allowed to begin physically altering medications, hormones, or procedures before they are adults themselves. You may disagree with me now, but you don't even know who you ARE before the age of, like... 20! And we should let kids be kids. Sure let htem play with and do what they're interested in (boys can be FANTASTIC at ballet and girls can DESTROY in sports, let them do what makes them happy) but leave out the sexual side of it until they're old enough for that stuff. Anyone younger than 18 shouldn't be having - and preferably shouldn't even be exposed to and actively exploring - sex.

(This message is endorsed by Chris Hansen)

The rainbow was created as a sign of God's covenant with humanity. But it has also taken on a different sort of meaning. As it's been used to teach colors and to represent diversity in personalities, emotions, and many other things (think Inside Out), it's become a social symbol as well and has a somewhat secular use. It's an odd one. Kinda stuck between a religious symbol and a social one. More research is needed to determine if it would be considered disrespectful to the faith to have this symbol represent LGBTQ communities.

ON THE OTHER HAND

Wenzie makes these points: 1. "There is no 'I respect your opinion but' in this when real people are disowned, tortured, killed, just for being themselves..... I'll NEVER respect you if you use your religion as a shield to spew hatred against a minority" - SO TRUE. Religion should NEVER be used to harm others. It goes against the absolute most basic, preschool level, foundation of the Christian faith, which, at its core, is "Love one another as I have loved you." Love is the source and summit of all we should aspire to. Because that little feeling we call "love"? That IS God. It's a little connection with God's spirit, the tiniest taste of His love for us and it should be our ultimate goal to show that love to anyone and everyone we meet, regardless of their beliefs, actions, or qualities. This does not mean to turn a blind eye to sin. Murder is murder and boundaries must be firmly set. But it is possible to love a killer as the broken, hurting child they are inside, and still consider their deeds horrible, tragic, and unacceptable. That's a more extreme example. In the case of LGBTQ communities, we should meet every person at the level they are at. It's not practical or even possible for someone to change core beliefs like these in the course of one argument. A better route is to be kind, show love, and display in your own actions and character, the life God wants us to strive for.

2. "There is no space in the fandom for people like this. Keep these hateful opinions to yourself..." - ALSO TROO. If you don't like the thing... don't engage with it. Not to turn a blind eye, but if a fandom of any sort makes you feel some type of way, just steer clear and go about your day. Find other blogs that share your ideas or build your own community of headcanons. Ranting at people will not change their minds. It's actually more likely to drive people away and make people see religion and Christianity as exclusive and unkind in general.

IN SUMMARY

The world IS broken and that hurts us all in many different ways

If you don't like the fandom, or certain parts of it, don't engage with those parts.

If you can't meet someone where they are with love and kindness, step away and consider your own heart until you can. Don't try to push, argue, or rage your way into convincing them because it won't work. Hearts change with love, not hate.

Just my thoughts as a Catholic trying to put a little more God/love into the world.

I rarely make posts like this, but I'm fucking serious when I say I'm gonna need you to unfollow me if you support the hateful things this person has said. Not only was she in hot water months ago with the comic where she drew a light skinned April and was met with comments asking her to change it and reacted with racism, but to have these views not just in general but in a queer-majority fandom based on a show that supports queer dynamics characterisations and headcanons, is disgusting.

There is no "I respect your opinion but" in this when real people are disowned, tortured, killed, just for being themselves, and trying to find happiness through that.

I'll NEVER respect you if you use your religion as a shield to spew hatred against a minority that spent decades fighting and dying to do something as insignificant as hold hands on the fucking streets, and they're STILL TARGETED AND BEATEN FOR THAT.

There is no space in the fandom for people like this. Keep these hateful opinions to yourself, or make some private account out of reach from queer fans who might stumble on your blog since it's clear no one can change your mind.

[no-droids]

Dove

Part 2 of 2 of The Locked Door Series

Rating: Explicit

Word Count: 19.7K i apologize for NOTHING

Warnings: DUBCON ELEMENTS, SMUUUUUUT, religion kink, virgin kink, authority kink, degradation kink, praise kink, age gap, ohhhhh the list goes on y’all been here long enough

A/N: I have nothing to say for myself this time im sorry

***

Obi-Wan feels like he’s going to be sick.

Dinner in the grand hall was difficult enough, forking down mouthfuls of expensive food he’s sure was absolutely marvelous, if he could’ve tasted it.  The s’Ziscari clearly splurged on the celebrations—expensive food, expensive decor, expensive everything, down to the silk napkin he studied and fiddled with under the table as he awkwardly waited for you to finish your plate.

He felt uncomfortable, absolutely.  He’s felt uncomfortable ever since he shuffled into this blasted, Maker forsaken robe not long after he left your quarters earlier.

Not black, no.  Not like yours.  Not like what appears to be an overwhelmingly vast majority of the people he’s encountered so far this dreadful evening.

No, his robes are blue.

A strong, eye-catching royal blue, covering his body in waves of fabric—softer than anything he’s ever worn before and leaving him feeling incredibly exposed.  The far more practical robes he traded for these atrocious garments are made of a thick, scratchy wool, a testament to the Jedi’s philosophical rejection of fine or expensive materials.  And, against all logic—to somehow make matters even worse, the sash tying this uncomfortable piece of attire closed has no place to clip his saber, unlike the leather belt he usually wears.  As a consequence, he’s left simply carrying it around by his side.

Granted, for some unknown reason, his robes are still far thicker and longer and more protective than the… stars, the ultra-thin black silk wrapped around your body, but Obi-Wan is so self-conscious about his appearance that he’s not even allowing himself to look at you.  Obviously that doesn’t stop him from refusing to leave your side the entire night, and he finds himself rather grateful that only a very few number of s’Ziscari are fluent in Basic, if only to provide him with a valid excuse to socially detach.

Of the very few people he’s noticed wearing robes resembling his, they’re all far younger than him—much closer to your age than Obi-Wan’s, and stars, everything about this celebration is unbelievably unnerving to him—including, if not most of all, your response to it.  One of the reasons he knows the food was grand, apart from the immaculate plating and lavish dinnerware of course, is because you momentarily excused yourself from the seat next to him to dish yourself out a second helping.

Even now, even in the skybox seats of this distressingly packed arena, Obi-Wan struggles to keep down what little food he could eat while you stand tall next to him and seem completely unbothered by the situation—and by the Maker, it bothers him.  He isn’t used to this.  He’s used to you being the emotionally turbulent one, the one whom he has to pacify, and it twists his stomach with the way the roles have suddenly found themselves reversed.

“I think the blue looks nice, by the way,” you lean sideways to mention casually to him, and he knows.  He knows you’re just jesting, just trying to lighten the mood, but he feels the bile rising up his throat at the fact that you even commented on it aloud.  “Fitting.  Matches your saber.  Your face, though.”  The smallest hint of a smile tugs at your cheeks.  “It’s beginning to match the color of mine.”

“Thank you for that, young one; your sense of humor is positively delightful,” Obi-Wan gripes, clutching the metal hilt tightly in front of him with both hands while he gazes out at the stadium before him, bustling with black hooded figures and a rare flash of blue.  It does not escape his notice that in complete contrast, your arms are loosely meeting behind your back, your saber dangling in one hand while the other lazily holds your wrist.  Your body is… open.  Draped in garments somehow equally as opaque as they are revealing, presented to the wide panoramic view of the audience and stage with no qualms whatsoever.

“Wonder who I got it from,” you ponder with a tilt of your head, and… fair point.  “How long is this thing supposed to last anyways?”

“Stars—‘this thing’ can’t get over with soon enough,” Obi-Wan grumbles, his eyes anxiously flicking down at the empty stage in the center of the audience.  He’s struggling with butterflies and nausea like he himself is meant to have a starring role in this debauchery.  “They’ll have… acts.  Plural.”

“Heavens,” you sigh under your breath, and oh yes.  He agrees.

He’s also painfully aware that he should be using this free time to continue contemplating his decision about… matters concerning later this evening with you, but he’s already feeling massively overwhelmed as it is.  Right now, it’s all he can do to just breathe and attempt to face one trial at a time.

But then, as if the Maker is feeling just particularly malicious this evening, Obi-Wan’s stomach drops when something quiet flashes in the Force and the roar of the enormous crowd instantly falls to dead silence.  The ominous sign rockets through him and while a Jedi should not know fear, this might be the closest he’s ever felt to truly terrified.

“Ooh, dramatic,” you whisper, but regardless of your laissez-faire attitude, his heart is positively pounding as he watches the figures of robed Force sensitives slowly file out onto the stage, and everything inside him lurches at the realization that—

They’re all wearing blue.  Every single one of them is clothed in fabric that matches his current attire, the one that made him feel like a blot on the landscape the entire dinner and subsequent mass pilgrimage to the arena.  A bright splash of color in the midst of an almost inescapably giant ring of black.

You’ve stopped talking.  Truly, he has no idea if that’s a good or bad thing, not right now.  The Force sensitives join hands and create a ring in the center of the stage while every single person in the arena sits in perfect silence, and Obi-Wan feels dizzy.  He’s not getting enough air right now, but he doesn’t even want to breathe too loudly and somehow draw even more attention to himself.

Two of the blue robes break off from their fellow acolytes and meet in the middle of the circle, and to simply avoid having a heart attack, Obi-Wan very purposefully chooses to ignore—like he’s done multiple times this evening—the subtle flicker of curiosity he experiences at the significance of the color blue and what it symbolizes to the s’Ziscari.  He can’t even bear to watch the way the two of them slowly lean in and allow their lips to touch from under their hoods.

Maker, if he turned his saber on and stabbed himself with it, could he convince you it was an accident?  Probably not—no, definitely not, what a stupid thought to have—

“How does she wipe?”  He hears your voice whisper, and Obi-Wan’s facial expression immediately screws up in confusion.

He turns to you, his tone equally hushed but the bewilderment sharpening his consonants.  “How does who what—?”

Only—you’re not even looking at the scene unfolding in front of you.  Your expression is just as confused as his is, but instead of looking down, your chin is lifted and you’re staring directly across the arena at the viewing booth opposite to yours.  He still has no idea what you’re talking about though, not until he follows your line of sight and sees the way s’Zerthia has her jaw propped up in her hands on her throne, looking bored as usual, and how the length of her newly manicured fingernails curves halfway up her scalp from this angle.

“That’s dangerous,” you remark quietly.  “They’re like talons.  Gaudy little weapons she always has attached to her that she decorates, makes them seem less vicious than they actually are.  I see them.  I certainly don’t envy whoever she picks tonight to—”

You cut yourself off with a bit lip smile and turn your face away from him, and Obi-Wan is almost mystified by how casual you’re able to be about this. 

“Whomever she picks to…?”  He trails off with a sigh.  “Do I… Do I want to know?”

“Never mind,” you tell him quickly, lifting your chin once more while still clearly trying not to laugh.  You’re trying not to laugh, while… while that is happening in the center of the audience.  “It was, uh… tasteless.”

He blinks, wondering what that could possibly mean.  Everything about this is tasteless, the entire thing is just an absolute nightmare coming to life.

Though, after a moment of silence, Obi-Wan soon realizes he much prefers it when you fill the void.

“Members of the Royal Court take turns doing it for her,” he eventually replies, decidedly looking anywhere but where the man is slipping the blue robe from the woman’s body.  It takes you a second to register to what exactly he’s referring, but when you finally do, you snort.  It’s too loud.  A few heads closest to your isolated seats turn as Obi-Wan very quickly thrusts his elbow into your ribs.  “Quit being disrespectful,” he hisses under his breath.

“You just—!”  You quickly clamp your mouth shut and face forward again, trying not to smile in an appalled sort of way.  But then—“Oh,” you blurt, not loud enough for anyone else to hear in this open setting but still loud enough for him to glance around and be slightly anxious about it.  “Oh.  Wow.  I wasn’t… expecting…”

Obi-Wan’s eyes automatically flick down to the couple, only just long enough to catch a quick glimpse of stark nudity in the center of the arena before his gaze immediately bounces back up again and focuses on the incredibly interesting steel beam currently propping up the Queen’s viewing box, clearing his throat.  “I… did warn you.”

“Well, yeah, I expected them to…”  Your hushed voice trails off and you stay quiet for too long, too long to imply you’re still formulating an end to your thought.  You’re distracted by something, but then you appear to snap back to your senses and immediately clear your throat.  “I just wasn’t expecting… the, uh.  The… positioning.”

He says nothing in response.  It… it doesn’t give him great comfort, wondering how you could possibly know enough about this type of profanity to have expected a different sort of positioning.  The stark contrast between the color of his ceremonial robes and yours still remains completely unspoken, but it quietly pulls at the back of his mind nonetheless.

“What about it?”  Obi-Wan immediately hears himself prompt and oh, no, this is completely inappropriate.  Not only should he not be encouraging this kind of talk with you, but he also shouldn’t feel so… so negative, not about something so personal to you and something that’s certainly none of his business.  Regardless, he… still has this buried, unexplainable desire to know the truth about it.  Regardless of the indirect way he’s attempting to go about it, he wants to know the truth about whether or not you broke your oath, and while he recognizes it’s completely improper of him, the urge is still strong enough to manifest itself using his vocal cords.

“Oh, I don’t know, it’s just…  It’s…”  He doesn’t even have a visual reference for what you’re attempting to find the words to describe.  He doesn’t want to.  He just wants to know what you think about it.  “…Bold,” you finally settle on.

Bold.  It’s bold.  Perhaps Obi-Wan wouldn’t be analyzing your verbal responses so closely if he had something more interesting to look at besides the general coliseum-like structure of the large outdoor stadium, but there’s a certain horizon he just won’t let his eyes dip below right now and unfortunately for him, being so high up above the crowd, the upper hemisphere of his visual field remains relatively dull.

“Who would've thought,” he eventually sighs, blinking up at the star-splattered sky now and attempting to see if he can use the Force to break off a piece of a satellite and have it impale him in a tragic accident.  “Considering the s’Ziscari are such a conservative bunch.”

His eyes soon wander back to s’Zerthia, and—Obi-Wan startles to find her staring directly at him with a thin eyebrow dangerously quirked.  She motions two long fingers in a V shape at her eyes and then points down towards the stage, her expression expectant and waiting.

Obi-Wan’s teeth hurt at how hard he clenches them together, his jaw flexing but the thick blanket of his beard doing well to conceal it.  She’s playing with him, he realizes; he can see the hidden smile on her lips all the way from here.

Maker, maybe she’s right.  Maybe he’s—maybe he’s being ridiculous about this.  This is fine.  This is fine.  His stomach feels like it’s all his food might come up at any second, but he’ll do it, he’ll look.  He can at least just look, right?

His gaze slowly begins lowering, trying to take in just a few things at a time so as not to overstimulate himself.  Thousands of s’Ziscari lining the seats of the arena, almost every single one of them dressed in black.  Lower still—the platform leading up to the stage.  A perimeter of blue figures now sitting down in a circle and then, at its center, a… a naked man and woman.

Obi-Wan’s heart pounds as he struggles to comprehend the sight, never having laid eyes on a nude woman before.  She’s on her elbows and knees, forehead lowered and resting against the floor, and the man kneels behind her, one hand holding her hips and the other wrapping around his—

Stars, Obi-Wan wants to end it all.  Right here.  His aim will be true.

But then… oh, no, he’s an idiot.  He’s a complete dullard, because he forgot.  Consumed by his own sheer anxiety and unease, Obi-Wan stupidly forgot an extremely crucial detail of the incredibly little he’s been told about the Sh’inzith.

—the projecting.

All at once, he’s nearly knocked over by the strength of the two Force sensitives at the center of the arena as they deliberately cast their minds out across the entire audience, presenting every sensation and fleeting thought they’re experiencing in all its intensity.  Obi-Wan immediately works to reinforce his mental shields as soon as he feels the shockwave about to hit, but there’s thousands of Force sensitives present—all of them congregated into one relatively small area, all of them tuning into the same two signatures and then suddenly… amplifying them back until it’s impossible for him to shut out.

“Oh, uh—” he just manages to hear you mutter through the whirlwind, just the slightest hint of panic in your voice peaking through the symphony of whispered thoughts and pulsing sensations coming from the stage, “—that isn’t good—”

Obi-Wan abruptly stumbles backwards and gasps at the awful, wretched feeling of something brunt pressing up hard against somewhere elusive, somewhere he’s never felt before towards the lower part of his body, and his mind fights viciously against it as he feels you spin around and reach out for his rapidly retreating figure.

“Wait, no—it’s okay, M-Master, it’s okay, it’s—” your voice cuts off and your hands suddenly fist into the robes at his chest, your forehead dropping to his shoulder against the sharp sting just continuing to push and push and push, “—i-it’s okay, it’s oka—”

He trips over his feet in the chaos and falls back on complete instinct and you’re so tightly attached to him that you’re yanked forwards with the momentum, the two of you plunging to the ground in a clumsy heap of grunts and tangled limbs.  Obi-Wan immediately starts crawling backwards across the floor underneath you, still trying to escape the horrible, inescapable sensation digging into a part of his body that doesn’t seem to exist, but it’s like you’re of the same mind—you’re scrambling forwards in the same direction trying to get away from the same thing, frantically attempting to calm him and simultaneously deal with the agony yourself, and then suddenly—

Oh—oh, Maker—

Suddenly something gives and surges in, and then Obi-Wan gasps—his elbows buckling under him and as the both of you drop down onto the floor because stars, it’s nearly blinding with impression.  Not only the aching, hard fullness stretching sharp and deep somewhere in his lower abdomen—but now a new sensation.  A tight, wet silk he feels swallowing him between his legs, concentrated on a part of his body that… does exist, a body part that’s currently pressed up right between your spread thighs.

“Fuck,” you moan hot against his throat, trying to find somewhere to brace yourself next to his shoulders and push yourself up off him, and he tries—Maker, he tries so hard not to, but his hands shoot out to grab your hips before he even knows what he’s doing and then he’s dragging his lower body up into yours on instinct alone, clamping his eyes shut and groaning out a desperate sound he’s never heard himself make before as his head drops against the floor.

It’s staggering.  It hurts.  He can't even hear your muffled noises anymore, not over the roaring encompassing his mind and body.  All he knows is that your hips quickly jerk back and grind down into his in response, sending Obi-Wan reeling while you bury your twisted cry of pleasure and pain into his neck.

The sound of it breaks through everything else.

Obi-Wan’s hands shake violently as they suddenly release you and then frantically shove at your shoulders, trying to push you off without hurting you.  He can’t think, he can’t see, he needs to leave—

“Get away,” he rasps desperately up at the sky, blinking his eyes wide but somehow not seeing anything in front of him but blackness.  “St-stars, get away from me—”

Suddenly you’re flipping off his body and onto your back next to him, too quick for it to be a mechanical movement alone, and he doesn’t even have the space in his mind nor the processing capacity to figure out if he Force pushed you off him or if it was you who did it to yourself.  He just clambers to his feet and stumbles away in a terrified, graceless retreat, bent in half, limping and gasping and fighting for every step he takes.

***

Your Master was right to leave as soon as possible, you think.  You were wrong to linger here for just a second to try and gain your bearings, because the more you work to grasp and attempt to organize them, the more mindless and disorienting they become.

You eventually have to heave over and drag yourself after him.

The further away you get from the arena, the easier it becomes to block the projection, but Maker, it’s exhausting.  You’re resigned to start out with a crawl—one of those Jedi Core crawls you haven’t had to do since the Academy but this one exponentially slower, forehead dropped down and eyes closed, just focusing on alternating shifting your elbows and your knees forwards and dedicating the rest of your mental energy to just isolating your mind from the debilitating assault.

Consulars don’t usually see much of war—you tend to do absolutely everything in your power to avoid it.  It’s the Guardians who experience the horrors of combat most often, who deal with ambushes and onslaughts from enemies of the Republic.  But Maker above, every merciless thrust into that poor little virgin at the center of the arena is like a blaster shooting directly at you, but then couple it with the thousands of reflections and ricochets in robes lining the bleachers?  You’re in the trenches of a deadly battle you had no idea was even about to break out and you have no weapon of defense besides retreat.

When you finally get far enough away to be able to push yourself upright as much as possible and continue staggering back to the palace on two feet, you have no concept for how long it’s been.  You can still feel the projection vibrating and clawing sharply at the edges of your consciousness, but at least the majority of your thoughts are your own now, and it gradually becomes easier and easier to focus and speed up to a clumsy run.

Though, no matter how successful you eventually are at muffling the vibrant sensations and thoughts of the two Force sensitives behind you—when they cum, you stumble down to your knees again and have to bite the back of your fist to keep from screaming.

Maker, it takes you a minute to recover.  You don’t even cum, you just feel it—the burst of energy from the Force in every direction, the violent explosion from the stadium that feels like it should fracture the ground beneath you.

You’re able to get up after a moment, if only because they decide to take mercy and finally cut off the projection.  You know that it’s a temporary relief, that they’ll likely be at this all night, but you hope the palace will be far enough away from the arena to block out the sensations completely.  You wonder if Master Kenobi felt that through the Force or whether he was too determined to block it out that he was able to simply ignore the nuclear missile that just detonated less than a few miles away from him.

You force yourself forwards and you want to hurry, you do—but strangely, in your wild state of exhaustion, stark reality is almost as debilitating as swimming through that endless madness was.  It’s quiet around you but the noise of still air pulses deafeningly in your eardrums after breaking free from such a thick mental filter separating you from your surroundings.  You still have your lightsaber clutched in your hand, Maker rejoice, and your thin robes are skewed awkwardly across your body, but you eventually find your way to the doors of the palace.

Though, trying to navigate the empty halls back to your Master’s chambers takes you longer than it should.  His signature is cloaked spectacularly, concealed to a mere speck you wouldn’t even know was there if you weren’t so closely acquainted with it for more than a decade.  You follow the flickering pixel of blue light through the obstacle ridden darkness, adjusting the front of your robes with one trembling hand while you wipe your brow with the other, closing your eyes and doing your best to take deep breaths.  He’ll be spiraling right now.  He’ll need a boulder to cling to in this tsunami, solid ground to stand on while the stars are falling out of the sky.

You… find him in your quarters instead.

The door is open and his handsome profile is to you, the thick fabric stretching over his broad shoulders now an agreeable light cream, familiar and telling of his intentions.  His hands are moving.  Setting something down on your bed—your robes, you soon realize.  He’s laying out your Jedi robes neatly for you across the fur blanketing the large mattress.

Master Kenobi begins speaking as soon as you step foot into the room, the tone of his voice very clearly impatient after having waited for you for so long.

“Change out of those ridiculous garments,” he tells you hastily, neatly laying out your leather belt across your dark tunic without even turning his head to look at you properly.  “We must leave.  Quickly.  Also—tell me you didn’t forget your saber at the arena, because if so, I’m afraid it’s lost to us forever now.  Ilum is only three days from here, perhaps we can stop there on the way back to Coruscant to find you another kyber cryst—”

You drop the hilt of your lightsaber on the floor and step forward, cautiously reaching out for his figure as he continues to ramble.  “Master, I—”

Your hand is thrown to the side with a subtle flick of his wrist and you instantly jerk to an abrupt halt, holding your palms out in front of you and keeping completely still while he spins around, his jaw slack and staring at you wide-eyed.  He takes a few steps away from you in shock.

“I’m sorry—” he immediately gasps, reaching out towards you even though the rest of his body is still desperately evading yours.  “Stars, I’m so sorry—that was just… That was excruciating, young one.  Why would anyone ever willingly—?”

“It—it doesn’t always—” you cut yourself off just in time, clamping your jaw shut before you can finish your sentence.

“We must leave,” he says once more as he turns back to your mattress, not appearing to hear you at all and shaking his head, far too frantic to sound like he’s just reminding you alone.  “We can’t do that.  I can’t do that—”

“It doesn’t always have to be—”  Maker, what is wrong with you?  Your heart kicks up in your chest and somehow stutters to a halt at the same time.  It’s the lingering effects of the assault your mind just experienced coupled with your desperate urge to console him that’s making you so utterly careless, you realize, it’s making your tongue loose.

“Stars, what do you mean?”  Master Kenobi finally snaps, and your blood runs ice cold.  “How do you know that?”

It takes the sum of all your years of training to keep the raging hurricane of emotion from showing in any capacity.  You feel like he’s holding his saber to your neck with how dangerously little you’re even allowing yourself to breathe right now, how utterly and completely still you’re holding yourself in front of him.

Lie, a little voice in your mind supplies quietly, the little voice you keep locked inside an impenetrable box of everything you are but have never been allowed to confront, haven’t been allowed to openly think just in case someone is listening too closely.  Lie.  Lie, right now.  Your silence is giving you away.

Only—you can’t.  You shouldn’t.  It’s not fair to keep this from him, not when you’re asking him to do something so structurally compromising to his belief system.  If… if you tell him the truth, perhaps he won’t judge you too harshly.  Perhaps he’ll feel… reassured, knowing he’s certainly not the first Jedi to break a sacred vow when he felt times were desperate enough.

Besides.  This might be the only secret that could potentially get you kicked out of the Order, but… it still isn’t your worst one.

“Because.”  The word is out of your mouth before you can rethink it, barely above a whisper.  “I… know.”

He doesn’t respond, and no.

No, you were wrong.  You were wrong to tell him the truth, and the look on his face immediately shoots panic through your whole body.

He doesn’t look reassured.

He looks… alienated.

“‘It doesn’t always?’”  Your Master eventually repeats back to you, and fuck—the implication is instantly clear.  The implication is made so clear from the sharpness in his tone, the hard edge to it as he rounds out the vowels in the last word that makes your heart twist and throb in your ribcage.  He might as well have just asked you how many times you must’ve violated your code of honor to know the difference.

“It’s not.”  You clear your throat and flick your gaze up to the ceiling, feeling like he’s using the Force to squeeze your chest in on itself.  “That was the absolute worst possible sensation that can be felt during… It’s—it’s not like that.  It won’t… be like that.  Not.”  Are there tears coming to your eyes?  “Not… with me.”

Utter quiet.  So quiet that if you really concentrate, you can hear the distant sounds of the arena continuing on with the Ritual without you.  You bite hard at your lip and wait for him to say something, anything.  Yell at you, tell you how disgusted he is, banish you from the Order.

Instead, Master Kenobi quite suddenly… deflates.  He sighs—not a heavy, exhausted one, but a soft one.  A quiet, accepting sort of sound.

He slowly lowers himself to the edge of the mattress and closes his eyes, running both hands through his hair, and it’s just enough to give you pause.  You glance over at him, trying not to let tears fall beyond the plateau of your lower lids with the frantic downward movement of your eyes, and you’re only just barely successful at it.

“It’s alright,” he says gently.  “It’s… it’s alright, young one.  I… suppose I am in no place to judge.  Quite… quite literally,” he murmurs, gesturing to the space around him with a lazy wave of his hand.  Maker, his figure is too watery and unfocused to make out his facial expressions, but you don’t want to blink to clear your vision just in case a sudden downpour escapes.  “It’s none of my business and I shouldn’t have asked.  You’re… not my Padawan anymore.  I should have no reason to… even care at all, really.”

There’s something that feels… major in that, something monumental yet incredibly well hidden, but you’re still too full of blind panic to interpret it further.  Your breathing is shaky and you wonder, quite stupidly and not for the first time in your life, if it’s somehow possible to use the Force to evaporate the water in your eyes before it turns into tears.

“I am certain it took place in your younger years, a long time ago,” he continues calmly when you don’t immediately say anything.  “You did always have a… a rather unconventional relationship with the rules.” 

Your only response is a quick jerk of a nod.  Yes.

“Yes,” you immediately agree, hoping your tone sounds convincing enough through the lingering tremors.  “It was… a long time ago.  I’ve changed, since then.  Grown up in many ways.”

It’s his turn to nod, and you manage to calm down just slightly.  You’re still breathing too hard and you’re a bit too braced, too much of a stance to truly feel like relief, but your heart rate is beginning to settle back into a somewhat acceptable rhythm.

Master Kenobi looks over at you, and he says absolutely nothing about the traces of water still glistening along your eyelashes.  He just smiles softly and pats the space next to him.

You cautiously make your way over to him after a moment, feeling more unsure now than you’ve felt this entire mission.  You leave at least a half a foot of space separating the two of you once you carefully sit yourself down on the mattress, and you can’t even look in his general direction.  You just focus on the long, draping sleeves of your black robe as you look down at your hands and wait for him to speak first.

“Sometimes,” he eventually sighs.  “Sometimes I… feel like you’re the person I know best in the entire galaxy, you know.  I’ve… I’ve known you far longer than I ever knew my own Master, young one.  I picked you out of thousands, and I’d do it thousands of times again.  Sometimes—especially since the day of your accolade and subsequent absence, I feel like I can know exactly what you’re thinking, even from across an entire star system.  And yet somehow, you… always surprise me.  Even after all these years, I am just.  Consistently surprised by you.”

You don’t know how to take that.  You just sit there in a guilty silence, still unable to turn your head or offer any sort of response.

“I chose you as a Padawan because you surprised me, you know,” he reminds you quietly.  “I had certain expectations for you, and you did not meet those expectations.  Instead, you presented an alternative I’d never before considered, an alternative that forced me to reevaluate you—and by extension, myself—far beyond what I had previously.  That is not a bad thing.  It has never been a bad thing.  As is made blatantly obvious by the fact that I’m the one currently standing in the way of saving lives, and you’re…not.”

Maker, this is thin ice.  You don’t know what to say that’ll express hesitant agreement with his sentiment without making it sound like you’re not apologetic for breaking your oath.  You’re… well, you’re not, not really.  His response itself is causing you to feel far more turmoil than any legitimate regret for your actions.

“It was—” On instinct, you almost say it was a mistake regardless of the conflicts you’re just so happening to encounter on this mission, but something stops you.  You suddenly remember your place here, your goal.  To save the galaxy from the Separatists’ reign.  And, by extension… sleep with your Master.  You can’t call it a mistake if you’re going to ultimately try to convince him to do the same thing.  So instead, you scramble to finish your sentence with a different thought, knowing his full attention is pinned to you right now.  “…A long time ago,” is all your exhausted mind is able to come up with.

“Yes,” he gives you a small, companionable smile.  “It’s alright.  Your prior lapse—or, well… lapses in judgement… will forever be safe with me.”

And still, you don’t feel relief.  Not when Master Kenobi very quickly appears to look uncertain.

“I… apologize,” he offers after a moment, “if.  If I ever made you feel like… like you could not confide in me about any struggles or… or urges you may have been experienc—”

“Maker,” you suddenly interrupt with a frantic wave of your hands, everything cringing inside you, “Maker, we don’t have to do this.  None of it, it’s okay.  Know what?  Let’s just go home—screw the galaxy, I don’t care, just stop talking.”

He snaps his eyes over to you, a sudden bark of laughter escaping him before the rest of his face even seems to register something was funny.

It evolves.  Eventually he’s covering his face and stifling ridiculous little snorts behind his hands, trying to apologize in between the chuckles but laughing even harder.  It’s almost like… just a form of pure stress relief for him.  So far beyond traumatized that it’s revealing itself in a slightly hysterical way, even if what you said wasn’t hysterical at all.

“Now you have a mere glimpse into what my experience has been like today,” he finally tells you with a sparkling grin once he composes himself, lifting his chin as he looks at you and scratching his beard with a quiet flicking sound.  “Shall I keep going?  If this mission has taught me anything, it’s that no matter what, things can always get worse.”

“They don’t have to.”  You say it without thinking, the gentle reprieve caused by his laughter flowing through you in waves and making you throw caution to the wind.  The four words serve to shut him up quite quickly however, even though it was the opposite of your intent, and your smile drops.  Maker, just freely conversing with him about these things is navigating a minefield for his mental state.

“You… you say that, and yet even—” Master Kenobi eventually responds, cutting himself off with a cough.  “Even the things I’ve heard are meant to feel… pleasant, were just.”  He shakes his head and blinks his crystal blue eyes over at you.  “By all accounts.  Agony.”

“I know,” you nod.  “I know.  Projecting that specific situation was… sadistic of them.  A distortion of the truth.  Probably rooted in deep tradition, but also a great scare tactic if I ever saw one, playing with us by presenting the absolute worst of it before anything else.  It won’t hurt.  At all.  I promise.  In fact—I-I can make it feel—”

Maker, you don’t even finish your sentence, but you must think the general idea loud enough for him to understand.  You don’t actually have a specific word in mind—good, great, amazing, euphoric?—and yet, something quiet settles over you two at the silent implication, the mere whisper of the possibility of you pleasuring him.

And him… allowing it.

“Master, I—”

“Don’t,” he quickly tells you.  “Don’t call—You don’t have to… call me that.  Just for right now, it’s.  I don’t—” he takes a breath that sounds shakier than it looks, and then he paints an easy, fake smile on his face following the exhale.  You recognize that smile anywhere, though.  While you’ve never seen him wear it before, it’s the smile that politicians make when they’re about to present a lesser truth to you, a smile shown to you in negotiations all the time that signifies something… hidden.  He’s hiding something, something important, and you have no idea what it could possibly be.  “I don’t feel like I even deserve to be called that right now, young one.  Perhaps you should be the Master, and I the learner.”

“Ah yes, the circle is now complete,” you can’t help but jest in return, wanting to keep the tone light even though the subject matter is heavy.  “Is now when we trade lightsabers?”

“Indeed,” he smiles, this time more sincere, and… you can’t pinpoint when exactly it happened, but it appears you’re physically closer to each other now than you were when you first sat down.

“Do they, uh… actually expect us to…”  You clear your throat and wave a hand around, “…Project the entire time like that?”

Master Kenobi quickly shakes his head.  “No.  s’Zer—Queen s’Zerthia informed me that.  Ah.  For us, projection will only be necessary during the… well, she called it the ��closing ceremonies.’”

Your eyebrows shoot up and you nod.  “I… see.”

It’s like you can physically feel his body start to break out into a cold sweat next to you at the sudden… realness of it all, the realization that it has to be getting late.  Close to midnight, if you’re not already pushing it.  It’s come time to make a final decision, you both know it.  You want to console him, offer him some kind of solace or reprieve, but stars, you just don’t know how, not when you’re this much of a mess about this, too, but for entirely different reasons.  You don’t have a single clue how to make him feel better about any of this.

“I just,” you rush before you lose the nerve, “I want you to know that—e-even if you feel like you’re somehow alone in this, you’re not.  Okay?  I’m… I’m really nervous, too.  I don’t… I don’t actually know what to do at all right now.  I don’t know whether to respect your apprehension or tell you it’s unfounded.  I don’t know if I should remind you what’s at stake here or whether I should avoid mentioning it at all costs.  I have no idea what position I should take, but I’ll—I’ll take whichever one you want me to.”

And it’s odd, because when you first launched into your confession, Master Kenobi gradually began to look more and more relieved, but at a certain point, something just goes horribly wrong.  You don’t know what you said, but whatever it was, it seems to rocket through your Master and suddenly his breathing stutters.

For a moment, you think he’s going to reach back, yank your neatly folded Jedi robes up from the mattress and push the dark fabric into your hands.  Tell you he’ll meet you at the docking bay posthaste, tell you not to linger, tell you that the mission was a failure.  But then—

“Before,” he suddenly says, the word almost startling you with how abrupt it comes out sounding.  Almost like he wasn’t quite expecting himself to say it either.  “Earlier today, you asked… you asked if there was anything you could do to… make this easier.”

“Yes,” you prompt immediately.  He won’t look at you, and for some reason your heart begins beating faster and the inside of your thighs are getting warm.

“I… I’m not sure I’ll be able to go through with this,” he admits with a whisper, his voice sounding so quietly reluctant, like he doesn’t want to say the words aloud but is forcing himself to.  “But… the Council put you in charge of negotiations.”

Your eyebrows furrow, trying to understand his implication.  What does that have to do with anything?  Is he saying that you’re supposed to be in charge, and therefore he’s defaulting to you?  “I’m not sure I—”

“The Galactic Republic…”  Master Kenobi enunciates very, very pointedly, still unable to look at you, “…put you in charge of negotiations.”

Specifying—or in this case, generalizing—doesn’t help much.  “I’m still not—”

“Maker, for—for the good of the Republic, young one,” he presses under his breath and finally flicks his gaze up to meet yours, sounding urgent and torn in equal parts.  “Negotiate.”

Stars, negotiate with who?  With—with him?  For the good of the…?  Is he asking you to somehow reason with him beyond what you’ve attempted to do already, or persuade him to do what’s right for—?

Maker—Master Kenobi is asking you to seduce him.

Shock paints your expression blank and his eyes instantly evade yours once more.  You have to sit there for just a second and double-check that you’re not dreaming.  None of this seems real.  All of it seems like an incredibly elaborate illusion of the Force, ever since you first laid eyes on him at the start of this mission.  You know you missed him but stars, did you truly miss him this terribly?  Your longing must rival something fierce to unconsciously conjure this wild of a scenario.  Is he actually here right now?  Have you been speaking to a ghost?  Are you actually here right now?  Are you going to wake up any second and remember he’s thousands of lightyears away and has been for years, risking his life on the front lines of galactic war while you’re left to play politics and negotiate treaties behind the scenes?

These thoughts aren’t safe to have in normal interactions with him, but nothing about this situation is normal, and while you know Master Kenobi has years of experience reading your signature, he most likely won’t be able to gauge the specific details of your thoughts when you can sense how intensely he’s focused on guarding his own chaotic mind from you.

So you let yourself think.  If only for a second, you sit next to him and allow yourself to just… think about him.  About how much you care for him, how desperately you ache for him—you let all these improper longings finally have their moment with you.  You let yourself confront it, crack the lid of the hidden box tucked away behind your consciousness and brave it, because if there was ever a moment to do so, it’s right now.

Your heart starts slamming up against your ribcage and your hands feel like they’re tingling.  He wants you to convince him to have sex with you.  He’s asking you to corrupt him.  He wants you to negotiate the galaxy’s survival with the last man standing in the way of its prosperity—a good man with strong, immovable morals, a man who understands the consequences that follow integrity around and won’t be easy to tempt.

“This was a bad idea,” suddenly comes Master Kenobi’s voice, quickly backpedaling after too long of a silence.  “I shouldn’t have said that.  Forget I said that, we should just g—”

“Would you like to meditate?”  You immediately ask him on a complete whim, shuffling back towards the middle of the mattress for the second time today.  You’re careful to make sure he doesn’t see you carelessly flick your neat robes to the floor with the Force, clearing the top of the large mattress.  “Let’s meditate.”

“Stars,” he breathes, shyly his head turning to follow you, “I’d love nothing more, but there truly just isn’t any time—”

You find it easier than you thought it’d be to pull a playful face at him, crossing your legs and straightening your spine.  “Please, you’re a Guardian.  You blue sabers practically invented battle meditation, did you not?”

He looks skeptical for a moment, as he has a valid right to be.  “Is this a battle?”  He eventually asks over his shoulder.

You say nothing in response to that, instead using the Force with a flex of your finger to tug at the loose cream fabric of his robe at his elbow.  “Come on, it’ll do us good.”

He looks conflicted for a second, but then ultimately decides to humor you.  “Alright,” Master Kenobi finally agrees, turning around and crawling towards you on the mattress, and you’re just quick enough to stamp down a flicker of arousal at the mere sight of it.  “It won’t hurt.”

“Of course it won’t,” you agree with just a bit too much air in your voice, but he doesn’t seem to notice it.  He just seats himself directly in front of you, facing you, crossing his legs close enough to yours that your knees barely touch, and—

—Maker, he’s lovely.

You purposefully let yourself think it as his eyes slowly fall closed and he takes a deep breath, beginning to tame the wild tempest of his mind.  You let the word flitter around your thoughts without instantly repressing it like you always do, and just the mere act of allowing yourself to acknowledge the truth is freeing.  He’s lovely.  He’s lovely.  You could scream it.

Your eyes trail down the lines of his ever softening, tranquil expression, not even bothering to pretend to meditate for his benefit this time.  Your gaze roams shamelessly across his face, the way his hair is combed back away from it.  The sandy, masculine beard leading down to the thick column of his throat, the broad lines of his shoulders draped in pale fabric, the way his chest slowly moves as he breathes.  Lovely.  Lovely.

And then you go… lower.

His abdomen is stretched long with how upright he’s sitting, his flawless meditation posture.  His thighs are spread wide in this position, pants stretched tight into an elusive drum over his crotch and preventing you from truly seeing anything—but stars is it a thrill even just letting yourself look. 

Especially knowing that the more his mind works to compose itself, the easier it’ll be for him to hear you.

You keep thinking, growing bolder the more you’re left alone with this box wide open.  You think about how lithe and strong his body is, how it would feel under your hands.  You think about all the different things you want to show him, all the… the mind shattering pleasure you can give him if he’ll allow y—

Master Kenobi says your name without opening his eyes.

It doesn’t sound the way you expect, though you don’t really know what you expected it to sound like.  A sharp, frustrated bark?  An exasperated, pleading attempt to get you to stop?

No—none of those.  It’s a quiet, low growl of a sound, and the clear warning in it absolutely burns a hole through you like he picked up his lightsaber and used it instead.

You take practiced breaths, trying to calm yourself down.  Stars, he just said your name, he’s said it so many times before, and yet hearing it in his mouth with that tone in this context feels like he just strapped rockets to your ankles and told you to stay put.  You’re impatient.  You’re turning yourself on, working yourself up, trying to get to where you can actually make a move on him after dedicating so many years to desperately repressing the longing to do so.  Once he told you to negotiate this deal with him, however, it’s as if every ounce of the impeccable self control you’ve practiced so spectacularly throughout most of your life slowly started to unravel.

Reaching out tentatively so as not to startle him, you wrap both of your palms around the bend of his knees and squeeze gently.  Master Kenobi displays no physical signs of—well, anything really, keeping his body completely rigid under your hands with no noticeable alterations in his breathing pattern.  Biting your lip, you begin to slowly rotate your thumbs, making sure to keep your movements slow and perfectly symmetrical.  Complete relaxation is your ultimate goal here—coaxing your Master into a serene state where physical contact is desired, not obligatory.  He's so uncomfortable with the concept of intimacy in and of itself though, from the way his eyebrows start to furrow and his spine begins gradually tilting back and away from you, it's almost as if your ministrations are dampening rather than fueling.

“Relax,” you murmur, and stars, even though you make it sound quiet and gentle, it’s like the melodic lull of your voice appears to startle him more than if you’d just spoken normally.  Maker—it’s counterintuitive; how are you supposed to turn someone on when the mere state of being turned on turns them off?  “Relax with me, it’s okay—”

“But I just can't, young one,” he suddenly implores, his voice pressed up tight in his throat, his cerulean eyes popping open in frustration and something else—an honest, heartfelt emotion that's strikingly less familiar to you, even after years spent by his side: deep, hot, stomach-wrenching guilt.  You watch your Master’s palms run the length of his thighs; back and forth, back and forth—almost like a nervous tick, you think—and it’s oddly endearing, if not increasingly concerning.  “I just can't, this is all so wrong.  Don't you understand?  E-Even if the Council did provide a—well, a rather admittedly ineluctable blessing for this downright ludicrous endeavor, i-it’s… I don't…”  He takes a deep breath, and visually, it looks like he's attempting to collect his thoughts and composure, but you know your Master all too well.  You know what he's really doing, and at this point, it's almost… frustrating.

“What are you so afraid of?”  You clutch his knees and whisper quietly, interrupting him before he can verbalize whatever perfectly logical reason he's trying to formulate as to why you both should leave the planet immediately, what he's going to say to the Council if they ever inquire as to why negotiations ultimately failed.  He jerks his head up sharply to look at you.

“The Jedi fear nothing,” is his automatic response, though his previously intense gaze strays slightly from yours after a second of too much eye contact.  “Fear is the path to the Dark Side, you know this.”

“And yet you are afraid,” you remark calmly, studying the way he’s turned his face away from you completely now, how you can still see his jaw clench under the thick beard with his profile shown to you like this.  “I—I’m trying to understand, Master, but I—I don’t.  Even if this mission were half as important as it is, your loyalty to the Order would follow you right into an early grave.  But this?”  You remove a palm from his knee to gesture between the two of you, the mattress beneath the both of you, “fulfilling this mission and these terms to save the entire galaxy is too ‘downright ludicrous’ for the Great Negotiator?  I don’t believe it.  Tell me what you’re really afraid of.”

Only, he’s suddenly moving—away from you.  Turning and planting his palms to fur, beginning to climb to the edge of the bed and sweep his legs around under him, and your voice has an unintentional edge to it when you address his back.

“Do you know how many lives over I owe you?”  You ask, and he jerks to an abrupt halt, feet just shy of stepping on the floor.  “Do you have any idea the stockpile of mortal gratitude you’ve amassed from me?  How many times you’ve risked your death to save me from mine over the years—can you count them?  I have.  I know my debt to you, I know the weight of my life piled on top of itself over and over again.  I remember each and every one of them like they happened yesterday, and not once did you hesitate even slightly, let alone the way you’ve hesitated today.”

”And?”  Master Kenobi quite suddenly snaps over his shoulder as he grips the edge of the mattress, sounding sharp but not necessarily directed towards you.  “What is your point?”

“My point is that if you’d so readily trade your death time and time again to prevent that of even one other person, let alone a difficult Padawan who caused the Order nothing but grief for years, then what is it that makes the deaths of trillions—” you nearly say preferable to bedding me before you realize how incredibly harsh that would sound, but something about the way he seems to tense his shoulders and curl inwards implies he was following the general cadence of your agitated signature more than the specific content of your words.

He says absolutely nothing, but he doesn’t move to drop his feet to the floor, either.  If only you could punch a proverbial hole through his practically indestructible mental barriers, you'd see the real reason he's so flustered, why he's purposely attempting to deceive you.  Unfortunately for you though, they feel like they're made of triple-reinforced beskar, a countermeasure gradually increasing in strength the more you try to probe.

But then—all at once, something clicks.  Something… fundamental.  An understanding. 

Your Master is a gifted negotiator, yes.  But more than that.

He wields a blue saber.  Not a green one.

He’s a Guardian.  A warrior.  He fights.  It’s something that has never truly been part of your nature, no matter how much you struggled with it over the years—but it is a part of his, no matter how exceptionally he’s been able to mask it for even longer.

So, all at once, you stop pushing.  Your signature abruptly pulls away from him, gives him room to breathe and simply hovers within your own personal space, unassuming and careful not to disturb him.  You see your Master lift his chin and straighten his spine slightly, immediately noticing your absence and the constant pressure you’d been applying, and you honestly can’t tell if he relaxes or tenses up even more because of it.

Finally, when you feel like it’s been long enough, you slowly reach out and gently place your hand on his arm.  This time, there’s no underlying motivation attached, no inherent desire for him to fulfill any sort of obligation.  Just a warm, companionable gesture to reinforce the simple knowledge that you’re both in this together, for better or worse.

Please tell me, Obi-Wan, you quietly whisper to him through the Force, allowing your tone and energy to transfer through your open palm and into his troubled spirit as softly and gently as you possibly can—a caress more than anything even close to a sentence or inquiry.  Your usage of his first name is entirely unprecedented however, and your Master sucks in a sharp breath in response.

I don't… But then the subconscious, half-formed thought fades away almost as quickly as it’s offered to you from behind the solid, unyielding fortress of his mind.  “W-what are you doing?”

You bite your lip, wondering how honest you should be with him right now.  Though, you suppose, if you truly want him to confide in you, you should at least meet him halfway.

“You’re the locked door,” you finally settle on.  “This is me knocking.”

Obi-Wan turns around and blinks at you, looking for all the stars in this galaxy like that was quite possibly the last thing he expected you to say.  You can see the frantic thoughts pass through his eyes almost as if the clear blue was completely transparent, likely remembering all the times you’ve leaned on him for guidance, listened intently and learned from his wisdom and experience.  And now you’re a fully grown woman patiently offering him your ear, wondering if you’ve earned enough of his trust for him to do the same.

“I’m afraid I’ll form an attachment to you.”  The words tumble from his mouth even though his body all but whips away from you in the process.  “It’s unreasonable for the Council to expect this from me.  From us.  I’m afraid our relationship will forever be tarnished from this, that neither of us will ever be able to go back to the way things were before.  I’m afraid that regardless of whatever decision I make, I won’t be able to carry the guilt on my conscience and continue to call myself a Jedi and Guardian of the Republic.  But mostly, I just—I-I—”

Your heart is pounding as Obi-Wan buries his face into his hands and his muffled voice groans raggedly, “—I’m afraid I’ll like it.  I’m afraid I’ll want it again, and again.  I’m afraid it’ll follow me back to Coruscant, that I’ll save the galaxy but spend the rest of my days aching for something I’ll never be able to keep, and that’s petrifying.  Desire, passion, selfishness, possession; all of them lead to Darkness, and I can—I can feel it right now.  Your soul is so gentle, so peaceful, and yet you… you inspire such Darkness in me, dove.”

Maker, you’re trying so hard.  So hard to keep your legs from clenching together at the utter desperation in his tone, how his breathing has picked up now that the words have ripped themselves out of his throat, like the whole thing was physical agony even just to say.  You have to take a second.  You’ve been so patient this entire time, but stars—this one makes you need a moment.  You’re so glad his eyes are clamped shut behind his fingers right now because yours lose focus trying to mask the absolutely debilitating wave of arousal that sinks down hot through your stomach.

Even when you regain the ability to speak, the ability to form a safe and proper response to the bombshell he just dropped on you completely evades you.

You purposefully don't say that you're already helplessly attached to him, that the colors of the galaxy somehow lost their brilliance the day you graduated to Knight, the day you left his side.  You don't say that you want this so badly you can feel it in your neck, that it would probably break you in half if he said no to this now.  Though it's the honest-to-Maker truth, you know discovering this information will only cause your Master to further distance himself from you, and somehow that thought alone is a million times worse than being denied the opportunity to be this close to him.  Even… even if what you end up sharing is more emotional than physical.

So you take a deep breath to center yourself, and choose your words very carefully.

“A compromise, then.”

Obi-Wan suddenly raises his head, turning around to look at you and blinking twice.  “A what?”

“You told me to negotiate.  What do we do as negotiators, hm?”  You raise an eyebrow, giving him a gentle smile and trying not to curl your fingers into the fur underneath you with how hard it is to conceal your burning arousal.  Do it for him.  Do it for your Master, you’re in l—you… care about him, and you care about the things he cares about, even if doing so feels like it’ll rip you apart.  “We compromise.  Yes?  So, let’s find one.”

He shakes his head.  “I don’t see h—”

“If you were to…”  You cut him off and look down, trying to find the most delicate way to phrase this.  “If you were to… find other means to bring yourself to completion, would you be able to convince anyone listening that I was the one doing it?”

Obi-Wan doesn’t even blink this time.  He just stares at you, holding himself like a statue in front of you.  Finally, he seems to find himself.  “I… I don’t—I don’t know if I can.”

“You’re stronger in the Force than anyone on this planet, Master,” you encourage softly, placing a hand back on his arm and squeezing this time.  “I’ve felt it.”

“N-No,” he practically hiccups.  “No, I mean I-I… I don’t know if… if I can.”

Your eyebrows narrow, a mixture of confusion and concern coloring your expression.  “If you can…?”

He looks back at you almost desperately, his eyes practically begging you to figure it out so he doesn’t have to say it.  Finally, Obi-Wan sighs, seeming to collapse in on himself with its intensity.  “I—I’ve never… purposefully reached completion before,” he admits.  “I’m—I’m not sure how to.”

Your eyes widen, wanting to kick yourself for making assumptions.  Of course.  Of course he’d follow his oath to its strictest interpretation, why would you ever think otherwise?  “Oh, y-yes, of course not,” you stutter, sounding incredibly stupid and perfectly mirroring the embarrassed flush also painting your Master’s cheeks, “I didn’t mean to imply—”

“It’s alright,” he holds up a hand.  “We simply… view such things differently.  So long as you do not pass judgment, then neither shall I.��

You nod and look down at your hands, wondering how else you can attempt to tackle this predicament.  “What if I…”  You blink slowly, almost wanting to keep your eyes closed in case he’s offended by the idea but figuring you should have them open to read his responses.  “What if I… don’t touch you?”

Now he just looks confused.  “I’m sorry?”

You blush and clear your throat, obviously phrasing this wrong.  “If you can modify the context of your projection, then I can… get you there.  Without touching you.”

“How could you accomplish such a thing without tou—” Obi-Wan immediately cuts himself off when you lift your hand and close your eyes.

His thigh.  The right one—you focus on it.  There.  Right above the bend of his knee folding over the edge of the mattress, you concentrate all the energy from your fingertips and reach out, connecting the two together.  And then you take a deep breath and begin to draw your attention slowly upwards.

Your Master’s breath catches in his throat as you use the Force to delicately trail further up his leg, not laying a single hand on him as his muscles start to visibly tighten and quiver.

“Young one, I—”  His breathing stutters when you keep your hand raised but let your head tilt and drop down towards your shoulder with your energy, slinking down the inside of his thigh like water and getting dangerously close to his— “Stars, hang on—”

You blink your eyes open at him and continue concentrating right there, letting your focus melt warm and thick along the muscle and squeeze it—

“Maker—”  Obi-Wan gasps and drops his head back, his legs nearly spasming apart.  “Maker, hang on, I…”

“Do you…” You breathe tightly, flicking your eyes down to the way he’s fisting the fur under his hands and subconsciously flexing his hips up just the slightest bit.  Even though the Force, his body feels good.  Strong, sturdy, and braced tight under your attention.  “Do you want me to keep doing this?  I can… go higher.”

“You can…?  The—the Force isn’t—” Obi-Wan groans, his eyes clamping shut, “—isn’t meant to be used in such… in such… If I’m to break my oath, young one, it needn’t be so… so blasphemous—”

Trying to conceal the hot sparks of arousal deep in your stomach, you simply allow your metaphysical hand to continue resting right at the juncture of his hip and thigh, waiting for a real answer.  You bite your lip and wait for him to tell you to either cut it out or to keep going.  He doesn’t even have to say it out loud if he doesn’t want to—he can just slide it under the impassable door still separating him from you, the door you’re eventually going to get him to unlock himself.

His back is to you, so you can only see a bit of his face from this angle, but you can hear him loud and clear when he opens his mouth and whispers to you, barely louder than a breath.  “Go higher.”

Adrenaline rockets through your veins and slowly, your fingers curl in thin air while your gentle energy wraps itself around his cock.

Both of Obi-Wan’s hands instantly fly up to his face and he releases a tight, longing whimper into his palms, and you feel almost as desperate as he sounds.  You can sense the ghost of his thickness in your hand, and the way he’s already throbbing for it is like pure spice to you.

You can’t stop your crossed legs from shuffling and rotating your body to face his hunched spine more directly, just taking a second and allowing him to adjust to the sensation of you just holding him between his legs like this.  Your fingers rest gently along his pulsing skin while he hides from you, and if only to get a little bit more of a reaction for your own sake, your thumb just barely angles to delicately brush up under his frenulum.  

Obi-Wan shudders and makes a choking noise behind his palms, and oh good Maker, you really want to see his face.  You know it’ll probably never happen unless you take your own initiative, but you also don’t want to overstep and snap him out of this blissful reverie.  Still, something compels you to be so gentle about it that he hopefully won’t even notice. 

You start to slowly work the length of him and squeeze his cock a bit more firmly, but a tendril of your energy slowly slithers upwards, so quiet and full of caution that it hardly even counts.  Very carefully, you start to flatten the lifeforce from your other palm over his stomach and trail it up, gradually urging him to stretch his slouched figure upright and then eventually start to tip backwards, never once letting your focus on his throbbing erection falter.

Your courageous efforts bestow prosperous rewards.  Obi-Wan’s hands drag down the length of his face and he makes it almost too easy to keep pressing him back—back back back until his muscles give up what little fight they were putting up against it and his shoulders are dropping down to the mattress, his head falling into your lap.

“There we go,” you whisper under your breath, just loud enough to softly encourage him if he’s listening but avoiding a break in his focus if he’s not.  “That’s not so bad.”

“It isn’t,” Obi-Wan gasps up at you, his eyes tightly closed but his jaw slack and his handsome features screwed up in rapture.  “Oh, no, it’s… it’s really… rea—good.”

You bite your lip and your cunt flexes hard between your legs without your permission, feeling so empty.  If you’re being honest, only touching him through the Force causes your hand to become increasingly bold, also feeling too empty.  Obi-Wan’s head rolls to the side and he pants hot air against the thin black fabric covering your thighs as you tighten your hold around him just slightly and start to move up and down his cock in earnest.

“Fuck,” he whispers, the dirty word and rasp in his voice contrasting brilliantly with the proper Coruscanti accent and the crisp enunciation behind it.  “Fuck, this feels so good, I—”

His fingers grab at the fur covering the mattress top and pull at it, his adam’s apple bobbing sharp along the arching column of his throat as he groans and twists his head around in your lap.  He confesses it like it’s so wrong, but it can’t be wrong when he fits so perfectly in your hand?  How can this be wrong when it’s the only pleasure you can possibly give him that’s anywhere near close enough to match the way you feel when he’s around?  Even then, it’s but a fraction.

Your gaze flickers briefly from his face to check your progress with his body, and—stars, there’s a startling wet spot staining the front of his pale trousers, his cock tenting up shameless and needy for you to ache and throb just as desperately for in return.  Fuck, he deserves this, he deserves more—

“I can—I can make it better—” you can’t help but gasp, your eyebrows slanting upwards with need.  “Oh fuck, I can make it so much better than this for you, Obi-Wan—”

“You…?”  He blinks his stormy eyes open and sounds like he’s about to explode.  “This can be—” he chokes out, “—better?”

You can’t stop yourself.  Your pussy is clamped up so tight between your legs and Maker, you want to reward him for being so good to you, give him true adoration instead of phantom touches.  You don’t think before you’re moving out from under him and slinking down onto the floor, slipping in between his spread thighs.  You use the Force with a bend of your finger to tug his pants down just enough, just enough to let the swollen tip of his cock peak through the waistband, and then your head is dropping into his lap as you let it slide into your hot mouth.

Obi-Wan lifts his head and snarls at you—and something across the room shatters as you widen your throat for him and slowly sink down his length, curling your finger to stretch his hemline further as you go.  His fingers aren’t gentle when they fist into your hair and neither is the way he immediately twists it sideways, feeling like he’s trying to pull you off and shove you down on him at the same time.

You’re stuck between going as slow as you physically can to drag this out and giving him the best oral you’ve ever given to make him dream about this for the rest of his life.  You want him to want this as badly as you have for so many years.  You want him to fall into this Darkness with you, to crave you and what you can give to him so much that he’ll never want to leave you again.

So you make it wet.  You make it soft and slow and wet, switching between sucking gently at the tip and swirling your tongue around it, and then inching his length down your throat and swallowing around the thick girth of it once you can’t fit anymore in your mouth.  Obi-Wan is just an absolute mess about it—he can’t sit still, he’s tugging uselessly on your hair, whimpering out his bliss into the quiet room while you close your eyes and ignore his squirming, just taking your sweet time enjoying him and the way he feels.

He tastes exquisite.  Maybe it’s just because all your broken, stupid brain can think right now is slightly varying forms of my Master’s cock is in my mouth and it’s fucking leaking while you slowly nurse from it with your tongue, but stars—he tastes exquisite.

He’s swollen.  Throbbing.  Aching for you.  Releasing precum from the tip like his body is producing way too much of it after decades of neglect and just needs to get it all out at once.  Shifting and writhing underneath you but managing to never move his hips or cock a single inch away from the soft attention you’re giving him.  You can feel his smooth skin pulse against your tongue as you continue your lazy pleasuring, finally giving him what you’ve both been denied for so long and steadily swallowing down the spoils of your endeavors.

“—Wait, wait, Maker—stop,” you faintly hear gasped from above you not long after you even begin, and it takes the sum of all your efforts to unlodge his throbbing cock from your throat and pull away from him.

“I’m sorry,” you exhale automatically, trying not to slur your words as a bit of drool slides down your chin.  “I’m s’sorry, Obi, I should’ve asked before I—”

“Something’s… n-not right,” Obi-Wan interrupts you and lifts himself up to his elbows, his abdominal muscles heaving and a wild, frenzied look in his startlingly bright eyes.  “My stomach was—I-I felt—”

Heat blooms through you along with a realization, and your eyelids begin to droop slightly at just how sexy it is—the fact that this man, this fully grown, red-blooded, warrior of a man is currently teetering on the precipice of his very first ever orgasm, and you’re the only one with the power to give it to him.

You shuffle backwards slightly, grabbing hold of his thighs and squeezing to get his attention.  “Hey.  It’s okay, relax.”

Obi-Wan nods his head vigorously down at you, the exact opposite of relaxed.

“Listen to me,” you urge quietly, trying to ignore the sight of his thick, swollen cock twitching restlessly against his abdomen, precum still steadily dribbling at the tip.  Is your mouth watering?  “This is it.  You’ll need to start projecting when you’re ready.  It’ll be tricky, but not impossible.  You’ll just have to imagine you’re inside me when it happens.”

Obi-Wan shakes his head vigorously from side to side, vehemently opposed.

“No, I don’t—” He croaks, “—I don’t know what it’s like, I won’t be able to—”

“Doesn’t my mouth feel similar at least?”  You ask, looking down at his cock once more.

“I-I—” Obi-Wan sputters, “I don’t know, young one—you tell me!”

Okay, well.  He… makes a valid point.

You settle back on your knees even further, gazing at your Master thoughtfully.  His chest continues to rise and fall with heavy breaths, a thin sheen of sweat coating his temples and a mild flush high in his cheeks, but his eyes have regained a bit of their focus.  “You can just try to imagine the, uh,” you try, your cunt nearly convulsing with burning need at the mere sight of him, “the same positioning and sensation from… earlier?”

“Alright, I can…”  Obi-Wan nods, though his hands are shaking.  “I’ll do the best I…”

You can’t help but lean forward to press a soft, encouraging kiss to his thigh, and he jerks under your touch.  You try it again, receiving the same result, and it makes you pause for just a minute longer.

“I’m nervous,” he blurts unceremoniously after a moment of stillness, as if you hadn’t noticed.  “Oh stars, I’m nervous, I—”

“Obi-Wan,” you let your voice lull, your hands squeezing gently around the bend of his knees once more.  “Calm down.  Clear your mind.”

He hiccups and you wait.  You wait with your mouth a few inches away from his cock, waiting for his breathing to slow and for him to follow your lead.

Can you hear me?  You murmur through the Force, and he quickly whimpers and nods.  Focus your thoughts.

You gently kiss at his tensing thighs once again, and he doesn’t flinch away from you this time.  His breathing slows into a calmer, steadier rhythm, letting you trail your lips gently along the curve of his leg.

Will you let me try something?  You ask after a moment, opening your mouth just the slightest bit to brush your tongue out and taste his skin.

“Y-Yes,” Obi-Wan says quietly, his breath stuttering through the word.

And—perhaps you shouldn’t have, but you give him something; a suggestion, more than anything else.  You give him a… visual.  A reference to guide his mind through the Force.

You, still in your black robe, slowly standing up from between his legs.  Widening your stance to straddle his lap, pull you robes up just enough, and then adjust your hips just slightly over the head of his cock.

Obi-Wan inhales sharply at the vision, his eyes clamping tightly shut against it in vain.  He can close his eyes, turn away, hide his face all he wants—he can’t escape the way your body looks as it slowly begins to sink down on his.

At the exact same time, you lower your mouth around his cock once more, and you try to make it as close to the sensation as possible.  You don’t even move your tongue, you simply lift your soft palate and close your lips around his girth, beginning to carefully bob up and down along his length in time to the image you’re conjuring of you riding him.

Only, you already feel his balls tightening up and his body starting to go rigid with tension once again, and you can sense him still wanting to resist his approaching orgasm.  It’s okay, Master, you encourage quietly through the vision, it’s okay, just let it come easy.

“I—I’m not—” he shakes his head back and forth against the bed frantically, his breathing getting shallower and almost immediately picking back up to where it was before you stopped.  “I d-don’t want—”

Stop fighting, you tell him, continuing to mimic the sensation of him thrusting into your aching, neglected cunt with slow and steady movements of your throat.  Don’t run from it, let it take you.

He grits your name tightly in response and subconsciously begins to rock his hips up to match your unhurried pace, his ragged breathing gasping out into the quiet room and gradually increasing in volume and desperation the longer he stubbornly tries to hold out against it.

You know not strong enough to use the Force to coax it out of him.  You can’t alter your technique and break the illusion, either.  So you have to resort to desperate measures.

There’s enough remaining wherewithal to your mind that prevents you from permanently damaging his clothing when you tear his robes open with the Force and allow the metaphysical image of yourself to rip them apart with your hands.  Obi-Wan gasps when both versions of you reach up his bare torso at the same time and dig your nails into his chest.

Master—you demand, taking his cock down your throat as far as you can go and then clawing hard down his stomach—cum.

And thank everything good and right in the universe that he remembers at the very last second to start projecting, because being this close to someone as strong in the Force as Obi-Wan when he finally succumbs to his first taste of the Dark Side is just a fucking atomic missile straight to your nervous system.

It’s all you can do to just remember to keep swallowing.

The projection he casts out through the shockwave is utterly flawless—brilliantly composed, looking and feeling so authentic and overwhelming even from this distance that there should be no issue at all convincing any s’Ziscari in the wide vicinity who are tuning in right now.

Except—then you hear it.  Through the roaring pleasure of his thoughts, a flicker of his subconscious he’s unable to mask through the mind blowing bliss.

Is she…? Maker above, she’s drinking it—

A ragged groan tears through the silence of the room, his cock pulsing spectacularly on your tongue.  He just keeps cumming, and cumming, and so you just have to keep swallowing, and swallowing.  You suppose you should’ve expected this from a fully grown man who lived a life of celibacy, but what would typically be a rather short moment with anyone else subsequently goes on long enough to where Obi-Wan is actually able to lazily raise his head up from the mattress and simply watch you continue to swallow his load, dazed and reverent in his stare, glassy blue eyes trained on the hypnotic movements your jaw and throat make around him.  The remaining traces of whatever visual he attempted to maintain immediately flicker out of existence, replaced instead by the sight of your mouth around his cock, diligently taking down each rope of cum he gives you.

When he finally stops throbbing, you reluctantly let his cock fall from your mouth and slowly stand up as the botched projection fizzles out completely.  His gaze eventually follows the movement like he’s on a five second delay.

“So, uh…”  Your voice is hoarse.  “We… need to have sex.”

“Alright,” he agrees dreamily, his eyes lazily dragging down your body.  “Alright, we can have… I… Wait, what?”

“You, uh.  I know it wasn’t intentional, but you might’ve, uh…”  You  shuffle awkwardly from side to side, wondering why you’ve chosen now of all moments to become shy with him.  You’re literally still savoring the taste of his release in your mouth.  “You might’ve accidentally projected a very specific thought towards the end there and let everyone know that we weren’t actually doing what we’re technically supposed to be doing.”

“What did… what did I think?”  The question would likely be nonsense in literally any other situation, but you understand.  And truthfully, for the life of you, you can’t find it within yourself to feel even a little bit mad about it, not when it means you can continue doing this together.  You can’t even conjure up a single shred of disappointment in his failure, it’d just be a lie.

“Doesn’t matter,” you assure him, your heart continuing to pound.  You know you should make your next move now while he’s still so loopy, the post-orgasm bliss causing his signature to vibrate with pulsing endorphins as he blinks up at you slowly from the bed.  “Though we won’t be able to do it for a little bit, just uh.  Just for general… anatomical reasons.  But that should’ve at least counted for… initiating the Ritual, so I don’t think we have to worry about time anymore.”

Obi-Wan just stares at you, his Force signature feeling more serene and spaced out than you’ve ever sensed before.  Oh Maker, how you wish you felt the same.  You swallow thickly, still tasting his hard orgasm on your tongue, and then try not to clamp your thighs together with how embarrassingly turned on you are.  Anyone with any experience whatsoever would know exactly what you’re going through with just a mere glance—you’re biting your lip with your entire body is subtly crumpled in towards your swollen, neglected pussy—and your Master has been watching you struggle through it this entire time.

“Are you alright?”  He asks dumbly, finally managing to at least push himself upright, still completely unaware or unconcerned at his softening cock on full display for you and your starving libido.  “You’re… shaking.”

“I—won’t die,” is the only serious assurance you can make to both him and yourself right now that’ll ease your suffering the smallest bit.  The last thing you want right now is to come on too strong and snap him back to his senses, bringing everything back to square one.  “Just, uh… r-really worked—worked up.  Trying to just.  C-Cool it?”

Your fingers flex at your sides because no matter what you try, you just can’t stop thinking about his.  They’re right there.  They’re so close, so strong and thick and—

“Aren’t you…”  He trails off, letting his head tilt and then drop to his shoulder with a combination of confusion and exhaustion.  “Aren’t you going to…?”

“To what?”  You prompt shortly, your hands suddenly clenching into fists to deal with another violent wave of arousal at how unbelievably drunk he still looks.  Maker, you did that.  That’s all you.

“s’Zerthia said all—” Obi-Wan murmurs, blinking long lashes lazily up at you, “—all Jedi must… participate.”

Fuck. Just hearing him provide you an excuse to give into the boiling arousal causes you to suddenly break out into a sweat.  You don’t know if he wants you to get yourself off or if he’s indirectly implying he wants to help, but you’re so far beyond desperate that you jump at the chance as soon as he so much as hints at the opportunity.

Very slowly, you move forward and lift one trembling knee to brace next to his thigh on the mattress, and then carefully swing your other leg over his lap, lowering yourself into a straddle in the same exact position he attempted to project earlier.  You’re so unbelievably cautious about his cock, making sure you don’t accidentally touch it and jolt him awake.  Instead of your newfound proximity scaring him away like you feared though, he stays so… docile.  Still so relaxed from his very first orgasm that he even rests his large palms over the thin fabric covering your thighs, letting the loose silk drape and fold over his hands as he drags them up and down.

His eyes follow your trembling fingers as you work at the knot tying the material around your body, your cunt throbbing between your legs at how he’s just… staring.  His eyelids are dipped slightly, breathing so calm and slouched under you, pliant and waiting.

The thin fabric slowly parts only enough to reveal the valley between your bare chest to him, and you watch his eyes fall down the thin strip of skin and catch on the dark line of your panties riding low on your hips.  Maker, you can’t help but remember his terror at even glimpsing the two acolytes taking off their robes earlier—the way his eyes bounced around and how his cheeks lost whatever color they had left to them as soon as he finally made himself look.  Now, though.  Now he can’t seem to drag his eyes away from the soft flesh of your tummy, the way your nipples are still covered by the thin fabric of your slightly parted robe but are impossible to miss while your breasts subtly move with your breathing.

You gently call one of his wrists to your hand with the Force and Obi-Wan is either mentally or physically too weak to resist your will.  He allows you to catch his hand and slowly lead it downwards with both of your smaller ones to the part of your body that’s longed for his attention for years, though now it’s absolutely weeping for it.

You don’t want to scare him.  You don’t want to scare him.  Oh Maker, you need him to be brave for you right now, or at least just continue to be stupefied.  You can work with stupefied, but you cannot work with panic, especially when you feel your own wanting to rise up the more you drag this out.

When the tips of his fingers brush against the waistband of your panties, Obi-Wan’s hand pushes under it without your guidance.

You’re throbbing.  It’s been years in the making.  Unable to stop the way your thighs contract and you lift your hips against his palm as it steadily curves down the slope of your soft curls, the sight of the finish line so within reach makes you reckless and too quick.  You can’t help it.  When he gets hesitant and eventually slows down to a halt right above your slit, you don’t even think before you’re suddenly giving his wrist an abrupt shove with the Force, pulling his hand down before he’s ready and forcing his middle finger deep through the soaking cleft of your pussy.

Your shameless moan of his name comes out sounding so grateful—you pour everything you have into it and sag into Obi-Wan’s chest at the feeling, but he startles and all but rips his hand out of your underwear before you can stop him.  He was a hair’s breadth from touching your clit and the denial of it—the sudden turnaround from your goal is just so massively overwhelming that tears suddenly spring to your eyes.

You can just barely make out the sight of him staring down at his trembling hand between the two of you, your slick shining wet and hot along the length of his finger. 

“Stars,” he rasps, blinking his wide, sapphire gaze up to yours—and then he quite suddenly looks alarmed.  “Did I—Did I hurt you?”  Obi-Wan gasps, his energy beginning to outright seize with distress while you blink rapidly and try not to crumble on his lap.

“No—I’m sorry, it’s just—I’m just… oh, fuck, I n-need it,” you stammer.  “Oh fuck, I need it Master, I’m so sorry—I’m trying to be calm but—”

“What is it, little dove?”  He urges, reaching his hand up to your face and flicking his eyes back and forth between yours, sounding almost as panicked as you do from your desperation.  “What do you need?”

“Oh stars, Obi-Wan, I need you to just—” You can’t fit anything into words, a tear finally making its way down your cheek when you clamp your eyes shut in frustration.  You just need him to understand, to give you what you’ve been craving for so long—but when you blink your eyes back open, his troubled expression has suddenly resolved itself.

Your Master’s hands immediately grab tight to your hips and twist you around, easily tossing you back up onto the mattress.  The jostle of bouncing back into the soft fur startles you, but not nearly as much as when he climbs over your body and braces an elbow next to your head, gently placing the tips of his fingers to your temple.

He pushes carefully but firmly against your natural mental barriers, flexing the energy shields inwards gently enough to not hurt you but with enough force to let you know he’s entirely capable of breaking through should you refuse to let him in.

So you do.  You let him in without a single thought, never mind a second one.  Obi-Wan gasps as your shields all but collapse for him that easily, and then he’s finally breaching the surface of your thoughts.

“Oh—Maker above, little one,” he grits almost immediately, his forehead dropping to your shoulder and his other hand wrapping tight around your arm as he struggles to acclimate to the blinding distress you’re experiencing.  “Collect—” he groans as your cunt clamps down at the rasp of his broken voice, “—collect yourself.  I can’t—can’t think—”

Oh, no, it’s too much.  It’s way too much, even just having him inside your head without being able to read him in return—it’s too much for you.  You start hyperventilating and instead of wanting him out, you just want to drown out the sensation of everything else.  The endlessly pulsing, aching throb between your legs that you’ve been dealing with for so long, the way you can feel his cock dragging against your tummy from this angle and how much you already want it in your mouth again, the way your nipples are so hard right now that even this soft fabric feels so rough and sharp against—

Your robe suddenly rips itself off your chest, and you whimper up at the ceiling as you dig your fingers into thick fur and writhe under him, almost completely naked and just desperate for him to do something, to at least just use his hands or his mouth to make you feel bet—

Obi-Wan’s head drops and his blazing mouth opens hot around your nipple, his tongue rolling soft and slick up under the hard bud.

You choke out the first part of his name and you barely even have a flicker of a thought—a brief flash of a rabid, baser desire you’re not even able to consciously recognize before you feel his jaw opening and his teeth closing gently around it, biting down just hard enough to make you spasm bright and urgent between your legs.  “Oh, fuck—”

As soon as you feel the pleasure and twisting ache spark deep in your core, Obi-Wan flutters his eyes shut and wedges his hand back into your panties, humming low in his throat when your legs jerk apart for him.

This time, your clit is the very first thing he touches.

He zeroes in on it.  The tip of his finger starts to rub it exactly how you’d do it to yourself, exactly the right angle and speed and pressure that your body suddenly feels massively overheated and dizzy from it.  It blindsides you.  It makes sense he’d be able to do this, after all, but for some reason, the whole thing just absolutely blindsides you.

“Maker,” you whimper at the ceiling, soft and pitched high in your throat, eyes rolling back when Obi-Wan gently bites down on your nipple again and continues to work to relieve you even as every muscle in your body feels like it’s tightening up.

“Stars—” he whispers when he pulls away, “This—this feels incredible, Padawan.”

You moan and roll your hips against his hand, on cloud nine at just how he’s slowly allowing himself to become filthier with you, to lower himself in all his righteous beliefs and descend into delicious sin with you, and—

—wait, did he just…?

Your cunt clamps down hard with realization as he continues massaging your clit better than you’ve ever even done it yourself.  Maker, it shouldn’t turn you on so much but it does, hearing that word in this context.  Padawan.  Padawan, holding her legs open while her Master explores her pussy.  Padawan, moaning desperately as her orgasm buzzes deep down inside with a rising, threatening resonance.  Padawan, Padawan, Padawan—

“Oh, you liked that,” Obi-Wan remarks tightly, taking a second to tug on your clit.  You nearly start to cry again, your insides pulling up and going rigid at the sensation.  “I heard it, little one.  You like it when I call you that?”

“Oh I like it when you do f-fucking anything,” you choke out helplessly, your words starting to slur together.  “Oh fuck, you’re so amazing, you’re so good at everything, you’re the best Jedi in the whole entire galaxy Master, you’re so much better th—”

“My, you’re agreeable like this, aren’t you?”  Obi-Wan grits, his touches growing stronger and quicker and rocketing you straight to the edge of madness.  “Shall I take that to heart, my darling little Padawan?  Or did you say such flattering things to the oth—”

“Wait!”  You suddenly exclaim, desperately trying to push his hands away.  “Oh, nonononono—wait, wait, wait, I—I-I’m about to cum—I need to—”

His hand yanks itself out of your underwear once more and you take giant, gasping breaths and try to compose yourself at least somewhat, but then your Master is quickly scrambling down your body and using the Force to rip your panties down your hips—

“Obi-Wan, wait—” you choke out, “that isn’t—you don’t… h-have to…”

He looks up at you, dark brows furrowed in confusion.

“I’ll be able to—y-you don’t—”  You have to take a few gasping breaths and remember how to speak Basic.  “I used my mouth on you before because I… I wanted to.  If—If you don’t want to do that, you don’t have to.  It’s not… oh fucking stars above, it’s not n-necessary.”

“Are you telling me this because you don’t want me to?”  He immediately asks, though you both already clearly know the answer to that considering how exposed your wild thoughts are to him right now.

“Ah, no I, uh… I just.”  You try to clear the thickness from your throat and you feel your body tremble while you focus as much effort as possible into trying to explain.  “I just want to be sure I’m not taking advantage of you, that’s all, I—I want you to know the truth about these things.  It’s not… necessary, b-but.”

“But.”  He repeats the word meaningfully as he glances back down at your weeping cunt, nodding slowly to himself.

And then your Master leans in, flutters his eyes shut, and slides his warm tongue deep into the seam of your pussy with absolutely no hesitation whatsoever.

“Obi—Wan—!?”  You gasp, somewhere between a squeak and a squeal, your entire upper body launching upwards around his head as your clit is immediately enveloped into a slick, dexterous furnace.

Hold still, you hear his voice warn through the Force, sounding so much closer than you’ve ever heard him before.  Whether that can be attributed to the fact that the command came directly from wherever he is inside your head or whether it’s simply because his tongue is now tracing gentle circles around your clit as you whimper pitifully into the quiet of the dimly lit room, you’re not sure.  All you know is that his mouth feels like velvet between your legs and his beard is scraping across your thighs and your fingers have buried themselves in his hair without your conscious permission.

Hold still, young one, he urges once more, but you just close your eyes and moan shamelessly at it this time, opening your legs wider for him.  His voice, it’s… it’s maddening like this, coming directly from your own thoughts.  Deep, precise, somehow sounding so true, so much clearer and full-bodied without your pesky ears in the way.  Your hips are subconsciously rolling slowly against the lower half of his face when Obi-Wan apparently decides he’s had enough.

An invisible energy wraps around each of your individual limbs and snaps them against the mattress without any warning.  You whimper high in your throat, arms and legs held so firmly against the bed with the Force that your internal struggles aren’t able to be translated outwardly; he doesn’t allow your body a single centimeter to move under him, no matter how hard you fight it.  Which means you have to lay there and just take the way Obi-Wan’s hot mouth continues to lick and kiss at your clit slowly, taking all the time in the universe to properly explore you between the legs he’s forced apart.

“Obi—” you croak breathlessly at the ceiling, feeling a familiar heat start to burn hot and tight through your core, “Obi, I—I have to p-project—before I—ah!—before you—before you ma-make me cu—ugh, f-fuck—I have t-to—”

Then project, he encourages simply, gently fluttering his tongue over your clit.  You gasp and he hums, murmuring through the Force once more to you.  We’re not hiding anymore.  They’ll all know I’m using my mouth on you like this.  It’s alright.  Let them know.

You realize you’re going to cum the second you hear your Master’s voice say the words using my mouth on you like this while he slowly sucks on your clit, and you barely have enough wherewithal to gulp in a giant breath and begin projecting your signature as far across the palace and surrounding city as physically possible before your body shatters hot into searing euphoria under him.

Obi-Wan groans deep in his throat and holds you perfectly still under him as you cum with a ragged, hoarse wail of his name, giant waves of white hot bliss beginning to radiate through the Force from you with spectacular power.  The contractions are so much more pronounced when it’s one of the only sets of muscles in your body he’s granted permission to move.  It’s like everything is concentrated and multiplied there because of it.  You can feel each individual spasm your floor muscles make as they convulse against his tongue, how each blazing shot of ecstasy that shatters through your body wrings more and more wetness from your cunt into your Master’s mouth.

Never.  Ever ever ever.  Has anyone done something so mind blowingly sexy to you.  Nobody.  Ever.  He’s a virgin, you frantically remember as Obi-Wan purrs softly into the folds of your pussy while it cums all over him.

Your thoughts, young one, you can just barely make out his voice remind you gently, just as gently as he sucks on your clit through the aftershocks, somehow sounding even more aroused than he did before.

After allowing your projection to flicker out of existence with a putter, you’re completely dazed.  Incapable of moving regardless of the way he keeps you pinned with the Force long after he pulls away, slowly moves back up your body and waits while you work to regain your bearings.  You don’t even want to open your eyes right now, knowing he’s looking down at your peaceful expression while you work to catch your breath.  You’re too stupid with pleasure you almost don’t even process the soft touch of something against your lips.

You’re lovely.

The thought is so quiet you don’t even recognize it isn’t your own.  Not until he keeps pressing his lips to yours so sweetly, not knowing to do anything else when your mind is too fractured with ecstasy to unconsciously act as his compass like before.  Everything is innocent and gentle and not reminiscent of the fact that the robes you’re both wearing are wide open and your mouths tasted of each other even before he kissed you.

Instead of melting into the soft touches, though, they just start to burn you alive, the thick fog of your orgasm clearing more and more with each gentle press of his lips and your need for him steadily growing.  He’s kissing you.  Master Kenobi is kissing you for a few precious, heart stopping seconds at a time before pulling away, pausing to look at your face each time to make sure your eyes are still closed, before leaning down and carefully pressing his lips to yours again.

The only part you can’t stand is that he won’t even let you move your jaw to kiss him back.

Kiss me, Obi-Wan, you urge desperately through the Force, not wanting to interrupt to speak.

“I am, little one,” he replies between kisses, and the sincerity in his tone tells you he’s not purposefully teasing you.  No, this is him kissing you, genuinely, the only way he knows how to.

Let me— you start to struggle in earnest against his hold on you, —please, let me—

The warm breath from his nose puffs softly against your cheek with a quiet little sound from far back in his throat, and then you suddenly gain the ability to move from the neck up.

You immediately part his lips with yours and Obi-Wan pulls back just the slightest bit in response, but your neck lifts up to compensate as you lick deep into his warm mouth.  He gasps at the foreign sensation and loses his concentration for a split second, enough for you to break free of it completely.  Your hands quickly fly up to cradle his face as soon as they can move and your fingers hook around the thick beard blanketing his sharp jawline, urging him back down into you.

Your legs come up to wrap around his lower back and he sags against your strong will with a needy groan, dropping down closer and obediently keeping his mouth open for you to taste.  As soon as he presses his body into yours, his cock strains and drags against your lower stomach, already throbbing hot and leaking precum along the soft hills of your skin.

Maker, you want it but somehow you… you don’t.  You just want to savor tonight as long as you physically can, keep holding him and kissing him like this for another few hours at least before you try to take his cock, but he’s unintentionally grinding it against you while his tongue shyly dances with yours, needy and already raring to go in his own timid way.

Do you want it, Master?  You finally murmur to him, running your fingers through his hair and gently biting his bottom lip, scooting your hips up to let him rub himself against something better than your tummy.  You feel… ready.

The only response you get from him is a shuddering, helpless moan into your mouth and you hold him tighter to you, grinding your still sensitive cunt up against his cock while he pulls hard at the soft fur next to your head.  Your feel your soaking pussy lips part around the solid curve of his length and gradually coat the underside of him in slick with every gentle circle and roll your hips make, and Obi-Wan finally pulls away from your mouth to drop his forehead to your neck.

“Yes, I—” he moans into you skin, “Oh stars, I want it.”

With a gentle wave of your hand, you use the Force to drop his hips down to the proper angle and tilt the head of his cock to line him up perfectly.

And now this is the part you don’t want to rush.  This is when you take Obi-Wan Kenobi’s virginity.  You’ll savor just being able to remember this for the rest of your fucking life.  You’ll see him in Council meetings years from now and be reminded that you’re the only person in the galaxy to know the thickness of him as he rests heavy up against your entrance, the way his voice presses deliciously tight in his throat as he gasps out into the quiet room.  You’re the only one who will know that sound, that sound is yours, that sound belongs to—

“Padawan,” he grits, hips stuttering into you while you wrap your arms around his shoulders, “your thoughts—”

You groan up at the ceiling and your pussy tightens at the reminder that he can still hear you, but your body is just too bold and desperate for it.  Your thoughts begin to flare bright, growing more possessive by the second, and you can’t even wait for him this time.  Every single muscle in Obi-Wan’s body goes rigid when you tighten your grip around him and roll your hips up into his cock, letting it break you open nice and slow.

It stretches you wide with a deliciously sharp fullness and pleasure rips through you as Obi-Wan instinctively tries to lift off you and away from it, but you’re clinging too tightly to him.  Your whole body hovers off the mattress to stay with him. 

“You said—” he gasps, “—it wouldn’t h-hurt—oh—”

“It doesn’t,” you groan, continuing to tighten your legs and hoist yourself up, lifting your hips to take his cock deeper inside you.  “Oh, Maker, it feels so fucking good, Obi—feel it—”

His elbows shake where they’re locked and braced against the mattress but he drops his head and holds strong like this while you work your muscles to take him as far as you can from this shameful angle.  Your body feels like it’s on fire while you desperately cling to him and the length of your robe brushes against the mattress while you just keep trying to get him deeper inside you—

Suddenly something grabs hard at your hips and tries shoves you downwards and off his cock, but you want it too badly.  You summon the hidden strength of your energy and then channel it into your legs where they’re hooked around the curve of his lower back.

Obi-Wan chokes at the unexpected resistance and his elbows buckle, dropping you both down to his forearms with a jolt, but you’re too busy mentally clashing with each other for it.  The result is… well, it’s maddening.

Every time your pussy is able to swallow him more than halfway, you pull back and let his energy shove you down his length—but then dig back in right before you drop completely and use the Force to bend your legs and fight the uphill battle to his cock once more.  Your Master gasps, beads of sweat gathering at his temples while you fight him with every ragged breath in your body to keep fucking him.

Except—he’s the fighter.  And you should’ve known.

You’re no match for the sudden blast of energy from him, easily hinging your legs apart from around his back and then ripping you down off his cock with a wet sound, bouncing back down into the mattress once more.

In order to stop the desperate tears of defeat from coming to your eyes, you immediately clamp them shut and twist your face away from Obi-Wan’s, but he makes a low growl and uses the same ferocious royal blue energy to keep your knees pinned open and wide against the bed. 

And then drops his hips and rocks back into you, giving you those last few precious inches of his thickness you weren’t able to get at before.  It hits sharp nirvana up inside you with his thighs pressed tight to your hips like this.  His name rips itself from your throat while Obi-Wan clenches his jaw and starts to lose himself in the pleasure, holding you down into the bed with the Force while he allows your desperation to guide him to the perfect angle and speed to sate you. 

He’s so gifted, so strong in the Force, he’s able to use your mind as his anchor and give you pleasure beyond anything you’ve ever experienced.  And in return, you want to do the same to him.  You want to read his thoughts, instantly be able to give him everything he never knew he needed—

“You do,” your Master chokes out, “darling, you already—”

Everything inside you surges up at the admission, aching that much harder to hear him, to hear everything the way he can hear you.  The tips of your fingers find his temple, slick with sweat, and you press just hard enough to tell him your intent.

“Let me in,” you whisper, wicked arousal swirling tight in your lower muscles as they start to bear down on his cock.

“I—I can’t—” Obi-Wan gasps breathlessly, “I can’t—”

“Open—open the door, Master,” you beg, “please, open th—”

“Fuck,” he cuts you off, his voice rising in pitch while his his hips snap just a little harder against yours and his rhythm falters, “—It’s too good, Padaw—I’m going t-to—stars, are you—are you r-ready?”

Some terrifying, swirling darkness manifests itself deep in your thoughts.  It rises up, part of the desperate, hidden subconscious that you’re typically capable of stifling.  No, it says, don’t let this be over.  Not yet.  You don’t want to go to sleep alone, wake up and remember you’ll never have this again.  You need there to be a next time, and a time after it.

You try your hardest to push the longing downwards when you recognize it, but your Master is too quick, too talented to deceive when he’s this close to you.  He easily plucks it from your mind and expands it, enlarges the chaotic string of thoughts until you feel them pulsing at the edges of your consciousness.

And then Obi-Wan sees it all, immediately playing out in your memories as you helplessly watch on.  Every desire you buried for him unearthed, every whimper you stifled with the back of your hand when you touched yourself at night and thought of him amplified.  The years of repression, the blind hope that simply ignoring it would make it go away.  How hard you worked to deaden the burst of affection that radiated through the Force when you finally saw him after two years apart.  The circumstances behind the night you lost your virginity—not a long time ago, as he suggested before, but only just last year.  So desperate in your loneliness and longing for his presence that you began routinely sneaking around and fucking other Knights—Guardians with blue sabers whose souls were just marginally close enough to Obi-Wan’s, and you thought of him the whole time.  Every time.

But, perhaps, worst of all.  The… fantasies.

He sees himself dropping to his knees and congratulating you for passing your trials by burying his tongue inside your warmth and telling you how proud of you he is.  He sees you opening his trousers and slowly licking his cock while he meditates, trying to get him to break his concentration.  He watches the two of you fucking in every conceivable position, how incredibly ready you always are to take him when he needs it.  Most importantly, he recognizes your inherent, blazing desire to drag this out as long as physically possible, to permanently brand every moment in your memory to get you through his impending absence.

And then… then Obi-Wan does something unexpected.  Something incredibly uncharacteristic.

You watch as he morphs the fantasies right before your eyes.  He's still on his knees with his head between your legs, but now he’s telling you how proud he is of you for negotiating the mysterious, confidential deal that ended the Clone Wars.  You’re licking his cock as the ship autopilots itself through the week-long journey back to Coruscant from s’Ziscari, letting him slowly cum in your mouth as he sprawls lazily in the captain’s chair.  He’s taking you against the wall of your quarters after a mindless and dull Council meeting; you’re riding him quietly in his bed after lights-out at the temple; he’s rubbing your clit while he sits behind you and advises you on matters concerning your own Padawan you’ll be choosing sometime soon, two fingers deep and squeezing a bared nipple when he whispers in your ear how much he absolutely adores you.

Thoughts that aren’t your own begin to fill the empty spaces of your mind, a lovely pale blue tenor to harmonize gorgeously with the soft green alto of your own consciousness.  The resulting color of your combined energies fills your soul with Light, a stunning turquoise of a color you’ve never loved more, one you wish you could live in for the rest of your life.

For every debased thought of yours he sees, he shows you one even more revealing.  The way he used to dream of you at night, especially after a close battle where many Jedi and Clones fell, and then he’d wake up in a cold sweat with an erection pulsing feverish and so terribly shameful between his legs.  How he tried to shove a pillow down there once to somehow relieve himself of the aching hardness, and then had to rip it away and launch it across the room with the Force when he realized he’d been dragging himself against it and thinking of you.

“I’m gonna—cum—” your voice scrapes across your throat, and you can already sense him throwing his beautiful consciousness out like a net.  You match him with what little mental strength you have remaining, wrapping your arms around his shoulders and your ankles around his lower back and pulling him down into you.

Obi-Wan’s energy keeps swirling a brilliant aquamarine with yours, presenting his every subconscious thought to you, one right after another, so quick you can barely keep up.  How he’ll always be with you, no matter what.  How the Maker himself won’t be able to drag him away from you now.  How quiet jealousy still tugs at his heart just thinking about the fact that you broke your oath—before you both could do it together.

Everything swells up inside you and you scream when it finally crashes over, your blended signatures sealing themselves together permanently and then detonating in a debilitating shockwave that ripples the air around you.  You’re blinded and deafened by its vivid energy, powerful and dazzling every shade between blue and green and Light and Dark, all balanced perfectly together.

You lay there in the gentle afterglow afterwards and feel your pussy still clamping tight to him, pulsing in random intervals while Obi-Wan slouches into you and every muscle in his body trembles with the comedown.  Everything is right.  Everything in you sparkles.

“Stars, Obi,” you start chuckling up at the ceiling, the sheer joy overwhelming you and bringing tears to your eyes.  “Stars, did we just—”

“We just won the Clone Wars, my dear,” he slurs into the crook of your neck while his cock still throbs inside you, and you can feel the exhaustion creeping up his spine, every single thought in his mind completely dead at the moment.

“How long do you… do you think it’ll take before it’s over?”  You ask quietly, brushing your fingers through his hair.  Obi-Wan groans and buries his face deeper into your neck.

“Few months, maybe.  Time for s’Ziscari…”

He stays like that for just a second, and you press your nose to him and breathe him in, marveling at how utterly gorgeous his signature is right now.  Clear blue with the lightest touch of teal, rippling like quiet water in a crystal calm riverbed.

Lovely.

You keep softly playing with the hair at his nape, and then quickly wrap your arms around him when he goes to try to brace his forearms next to your shoulders and lift up just the slightest bit.

“Wait, don’t—it’s—”  You bite your lip and feel him sink back down into your body without another word, clearly having only attempted it for appearances.  “This is good, let’s just… stay for a second.” 

He doesn’t respond, he doesn’t even move, and—a few months, you think.  A few months of his absence, of wondering where he is but never being able to ask.  It burdens your heart, but you understand it’s necessary.

The Council may… grant me a position with a more permanent location after this mission, he responds quietly to your dip in the Force after a moment, too tired to even talk anymore and exhaustion weaving his every thought.  On Coruscant.

Your heart pangs with sudden hope, and you know he can feel it.  “They would do that?”

I could ask to oversee the s’Ziscari’s assimilation into our ranks, he offers alongside a stifled yawn into your collarbone.

He’d… request that?  To be closer to you?  But why?

He doesn’t hesitate before offering the words to you simply, not even considering them before they’re the only thought in his mind.  Because I care for you more than there are stars in the sky.  I always have.

Lovely.

No, no, not even, that’s just.  Love.  By itself.

“Yes,” Obi-Wan murmurs softly into your neck, and your soul feels like it grows wings.

You both lay there in silence for a long time after that, and it takes you even longer to realize he hasn’t succumbed to sleep yet, even as the aching fatigue weighs heavy on his back.  He’s resisting it, keeping his eyes purposefully open against your neck while yours are blissfully shut.

“Master,” you eventually whisper up at the ceiling, and his cock twitches inside you.  Oh stars, you’ll have to remember that.  “Go to sleep.”

I have one more confession.  The thoughts are slurred and distorted, barely conscious as he desperately tries to outlast the sleep trying to pull him under.  I didn’t even want to mention it before because I didn’t know how this was all going to go, but…  He blinks slowly against your neck even as his eyes droop, only just a few seconds from passing out with exertion.  The Sh’inzith lasts six days, dove.

Your eyes pop open in shock just as his finally fall shut, and Obi-Wan stops fighting.

[postoastblog]

13 Perfect Answers By Beauty Pageant Contestants That Decided The Crown Winner

Every woman who went for the beauty pageant contest has impressed everyone with their poise, wit, intelligence, and eloquence. One of the best parts about the contest is the speeches that leave us feeling empowered. Women speaking words of wisdom that inspire a lot of other women out there is something that makes the contest even more special. While every question before the final round in the question and answer segment is a test of their intelligence, eloquence, and wit, every contest winner gave answers to questions with immense sensitivity and gracefulness that these answers have become an inspiration for people around the world.

Sushmita Sen, India: She was asked why she described India as the country where ‘love is a sense of life,’ here’s how she replied,

“Well India is a country that everybody knows it has multinational people, as in people with different languages, people with different religions and we have about 168 languages and people all live together and there is to quite an extent a lot of peace which is very difficult with so many religions staying together and that is why I said love is a sense of life in India.”

Zozibini Tunzi, South Africa: She was asked what we should be teaching young girls today and her answer made her win the contest,

“I think the most important thing we should be teaching young girls, today is leadership. It is something that has been lacking in young girls and women for a very long time and not because we don’t want to, but because of what society has labeled women to be. I think we are the most powerful beings on the earth, and that we should be given every opportunity. And that is what we should be teaching young girls, to take up space. Nothing is as important as taking up space in society and cementing yourself.”

Aishwarya Rai, India: She was asked ‘What qualities should Miss World 1994 embody?’ and she gave the most impressive answer,

“The Miss Worlds that we have had up to date have been proof enough that they have had compassion. Compassion for the underprivileged, not only the people who have status and stature. Who can look beyond the barriers that man has set up for ourselves, of nationality, color, we have to look beyond that and that will make a true Miss World. A true person, a real person.”

Vanessa Ponce, Mexico: Vanessa was asked how she would use her influence to help the world. Here’s what she answered,

“I will use my position just the way I’ve been doing for the past three years. Being an example. We all can be an example of good in the world, we all have to care, we all have to love, we all have to be kind. It doesn’t cost a thing, and helping is not that hard, you just really need the will to make a change…..there’s always someone that will need what you have to offer. So, help anyone you can, guys”

Toni-Ann Singh, Jamaica: Miss Singh was asked ‘Why should you win? What’s special about you?’ She gave one of the most empowering answers that everyone loved,

“I think I represent something special, a generation of women that are pushing forward to change the world. I wouldn’t say I’m different from any other women on this stage, but I will say that my passion for women and pouring into them and making sure they have the same opportunities that I have had is something that sets me apart.”

Diana Hayden, India: Diana was asked  ‘Why do you want to become Miss World?’ And this is what she said,

“I draw inspiration from a famous writer and poet, William Butler Yeats, who once wrote – ‘With Dreams Begin Responsibility.”

Manushi Chhillar, India: Manushi Chillar was asked ‘Which profession should receive the highest salary in the world?’ Her answer won everyone’s heart,

“Since I am very close to my mother, a mother deserves the highest respect. And when you talk about salary… I don’t think it’s just about cash but I feel it’s the love and respect that you give to someone. And I think my mom has always been the biggest inspiration in my life and all mothers just sacrifice so much for their kids so the profession which deserves the highest salary, the highest respect and love should be of a mother.”

Yukta Mookhey, India: Yukta was asked what advice she had for her parents, as their daughter,

“I would tell my parents that in the values that you’ve taught me, I’ll still stand by you no matter what and hope that we can set an example for the rest of the world to see what family values and ethics are all about.”

Natalie Glevoba, Canada: Natalie was asked ‘What the biggest challenge in her life was?’ And she gave a really positive answer that made her win the crown,

“The biggest challenge in my life is always trying to stay positive. I consider myself the kind of person who always looks at the glass half full instead of half empty and even though sometimes in difficult times, it’s hard to look at it this way, I always try to maintain a positive outlook on life”

Mpule Gwelagope, Botswana: In the question and answer segment, Mpule was asked what a contestant should do if she falls pregnant while running for Miss Universe, Mpule Gwelagope said this,

“Personally, I think Miss Universe is a symbol of a woman who celebrates her femininity and I believe if she got pregnant, you should not end the title. But, I believe that as a woman she should celebrate her femininity.”

Lara Dutta, India: Lara Dutta was asked what her views were on the protests taking place at that time, ones that were claiming that beauty pageants are disrespectful towards women. And here’s what she said to win the contest,

“I think pageants like the Miss Universe pageant give us young women a platform to foray in the fields that we want to and forge ahead, be it entrepreneurship, be it the armed force, be it politics. It gives us a platform to voice our choices and opinions and makes us strong, independent that we are today.”

[feminetflix]

De atracos y ab*rtos - Of heists and ab*rtions or How women are being robbed.

⚠️ this contains major spoilers for LA CASA DE PAPEL / MONEY HEIST season 1, specifically episode 3!

Personally, I have experienced the series la casa de papel (original title) or money heist as progressive, realistic and not afraid to deal with certain topics like domestic violence which I will be commenting on in posts yet to be published, female trans representation and occasionally peppered with numerous feminist parentheses (see characters like Nairobi and dialogues around/involving her opinion).

However, there are certain aspects I did not enjoy to watch / do not support. That is normal and every show has its flaws, those resulting all the more dangerous however, as money heist is not just any show. The series is thanks to its popularity by now a relevant aspect of people’s opinion-forming and plays into the perception of many people all around the world, coming from different cultures and having experienced all kinds of upbringing. The target audience is not specified, yet crime drama (the genre) is estimated to target both females and males aged 15-40 years old. Means, also targeting minors and adolescents. Again, all cultures / religions / races / classes etc etc included.

I am fully aware that this kind of range was not expected and therefore not taken into account by producers, talking about the first two seasons that were solely meant for a Spanish audience, not an international one. (The series was initially intended as a limited series to be told in two parts. It had its original run of 15 episodes on Spanish network Antena 3 from 2 May 2017 through 23 November 2017. Netflix acquired global streaming rights in late 2017). The analysed / discussed scene is indeed part of this maybe not so carefully crafted content. Cough.

Let’s get right into it.

Characters interacting: Mónica Gaztambide (Esther Acebo), one of the hostages who was also Arturo Román's secretary and introduced as his mistress and “Denver” (Jaime Lorente), one of the robbers participating in the heist [Denver is an alias, all robbers being referred to with city names]

Context: Mónica has an affair with Arturo Román (Enrique Arce) -hostage and former Director of the Royal Mint of Spain- which leads to an unwanted pregnancy. Numerous factors influence her (for now) final decision: she doesn’t want the child. Shortly after, the robbery unfolds and she’s taken hostage among other people. She then requests an ab*rtion pill, which at some point arrives in the mint alongside other medical supplies. The scene analysed: one of the robbers (Denver) is supposed to hand her mentioned ab*rtion pill. Before that he holds an emotional speech on the subject, morally risen forefinger, accusations and tears included.

Here the dialogue without comments:

————Now my opinion / the actual post:

“You need money, right?” One might think that the amount of money seen in this frame (20.000,-€ approx. $21.701,50 according to Denver) is an exaggerated, way too generous gesture. Let me tell you, it is not.

According to a 2017 report from the U.S. Department of Agriculture, the average cost of raising a child from birth [to] age 17 is $233,610. If that made your heart skip a beat, take a deep breath before you read on. Incorporating inflation costs, it will be more like $284,570. Since that’s based on 2015 numbers, we can expect the cost will be even higher, babies born since then.

[…] This average includes everything from housing, food and transportation to healthcare, education and childcare to clothing, personal care items and entertainment.

Let me now remind you that Mónica is a secretary, so she likely earns (barely) enough money to be financially independent herself (taking into account that she lives near or maybe even in Madrid, her workplace, the Royal Mint situated there, so housing alone is hella expensive) and can’t really expect reliable support coming from the potential child’s father, Arturo Román, either, who initially denied support himself, their relationship a secret to the family and wife he already has. Phew.

Btw: A University of California at San Francisco study found that women who were turned away from ab*rtion clinics […] were three times more likely to be below the poverty level two years later than women who were able to obtain ab*rtions. 76% of the "turnaways" ended up on unemployment benefits, compared with 44% of the women who had ab*rtions.

“Enough to get the kid diapers until he graduates.” The problem or let’s say points raised above are now also being ridiculed or not taken seriously to say the least.

She takes the money, sticking to her decision however. “So, what’s the problem?” Or “Then, what is it?” A million additional things, Denver, believe it or not a potential child is a big deal. That and none of your business.

Also, see the reaction? How he stares at her in disbelief (and possibly even disgust, see the risen corner of his lips?). How he looks at her as if she were heartless, selfish, a monster – the picture often painted in this debate when it comes to women who decide to terminate a pregnancy. How he doesn’t respect her “no, thanks” and continues. Continues influencing her, later on even starts to mansplain his way into her stone cold heart. Okay, then let me continue as well.

“That he’ll f*ck up your life? […] Your son. Better to have your life f*cked up by your son than any of these sons of b*tches. Or me.” Call it ‘f*ck up’ or not – that is entirely her perception, her decision and I’d dare to say…she knows best.

First, because regardless of the fact that she is a woman and you are not – well it is indeed her life and, uhm, excuse me Denver, you’re no sibling, no friend, no acquaintance, quite the contrary, you have known her for what? Three minutes and already jump to conclusions?

Take the privilege of explaining her how a child would f*ck or not f*ck up her life?!!

Secondly, what makes him assume the gender of this cluster of cells, this potential future life, this basis for a potential life that may later on develop into a life (it is not a walking talking baby boy already, my friend!).

Personhood begins after a fetus becomes “viable” (able to survive outside the womb) or after birth, not at conception.

Does it provide a smooth transition for that awfully funny and figurative “son” – “sons of b*tches” (org. Hijo – hijos de p*ta) line or is it literal propaganda?

Why does he say “your son”, although he cannot possibly know? I’ll tell you. In order to distract the audience from the fact that he is referring to a pea-sized basis for a potential life by painting the picture of an already existing male human being. Mónica, do you really want to murder your son? Mónica, does that cute little doe eyed baby boy really f*ck up your life? Yeah, propaganda at its best.

Also, another example for ridiculing the point “a child would destroy my life” by comparing an unwanted pregnancy to a literal robbery at gun point. Great one.

“This f*cks your life up. A kid doesn’t.” Do you see that raised gun, that is quite literally an extension of a raised index finger? Wow, the drama. On a different note, did you notice the symbolism? A weapon stands for death, murder and guess what is also often equated with murder.

“How do you know what f*cks up my life? What do you know?” Finally. Exactly. He doesn’t know her, like at all. He doesn’t know her situation and no, he’s also not the pregnant one or anyone who would have to worry about that.

What do you answer to that, hmm? Let’s make this whole dispute even more emotional and dramatic. That ‘a cute little son isn’t as bad as a robbery’ didn’t convince her?

Let’s try with an extraordinary f*cked up and tragic life story, nobody asked for. Its goal? Showing the oblivious, naive, little secretary what real ‘f*ck up’ means, despite the evident lack of any sort of knowledge when it comes to her life (story). Again, conclusion-jumping and wallowing in prejudice at its best.

Have a look at his expression while ‘lecturing’ her. How disrespectful, how belittling. ‘Oh please, what do you know about life?’. On a wider scale: ‘How could we possibly trust women to rationally and with a clear conscience decide such things for themselves – concerning life and death, if they have not the slightest idea, living in their bubble of security and stability and no real problems’ etc. This is everything but taking women and their reasoning abilities, their judgement seriously.

“My mother was going to ab*rt me.” Now the audience doesn’t only have the mental image of a potential cute little son, it is furthermore provided with the image of a living, breathing human being standing right in front of them. Just look at him and his pleading puppy dog eyes. No actual child actor could have done it better.

Thank god she did not go through with the ab*rtion, right? Oh thank god she was not allowed to.

Taking advantage of this frame to remind you of the fact that we are still talking about a POTENTIAL future life, not an existing one that is nevertheless put above the mother’s already existing life in this impudent, low and unfair debate.

“But first…she inhaled the heroin she had to sell to be able to pay for the ab*rtion. Then she was caught by the police. Between jail, drugs and the police, I was born. What do you know?”

1)Adding even more emotions, subtle accusations and drama to that oh so rational dispute? Check. Making his situation seem two thousand times worse than hers (which he, again, has no clue about)? Check. Subconsciously painting the picture of reckless, irresponsible drug addicts/ “lowlifes” or generally female members of “society’s margins” usually being the ones to abort and make it seem like the state’s or whoever’s responsibility to prevent them from deciding for themselves? Check.

2) Then he even tears her valid ‘what do you know (about my life)’ out of the initial context of being confronted with endless assumptions and prejudice and blows it way out of proportion in order to demonstrate the insignificance of … everything concerning her? Her background, her life, her reasons. Everything.

And FINALLY *drum rolls* the wild theories and hypotheses and presumptions she was dying to hear because since he, I repeat for the twelfth time, has no actual clue about her life, let’s make up one.

“Because it seems that you don’t have a very exciting job. And maybe outside of work your life is not that great either. Or what is it that you do? ‘Kilates’? And Friday night drinks, right? What a f*cking drag. Another plan ruined by the kid[…]” That and the entire following paragraph. Wow. All accusations thrown at women who decide to abort in one.

Because OF COURSE a middle aged, down to earth, intelligent, responsible woman like Mónica Gaztambide has no other reason for terminating a pregnancy than not being able to drink alcoholic beverages or party anymore. Because OF COURSE it is valid to assume a woman or any person for that matter one has known for half an hour and interacted with for literal five minutes has a boring enough life that would not be affected in any way by a pregnancy, birth and ultimately being forced to raise an unwanted child. Because OF COURSE Denver would know how much a pregnancy can affect somebody, especially one that is forced upon a person. Quite frankly he has no idea and no right. The audacity.

“Do [your friends who are also mothers] seem f*cked up? / Do their lives look f*cked up? No, right?” Because you know best. Not only regarding her life but on top of that also that of her friends. Because those pregnancies or motherhood in general did under no circumstances end a career or prevent them from pursuing one in the first place or cause the end of a relationship or force them to stay in a toxic or even abusive relationship or change their financial situation completely or rob them of their fragile financial independence and/or free time altogether or cause any (mental) health complications or … you get the point. Oh, and because their situations are completely identical to Mónica’s situation, that is additionally not half as dramatic as your life story. Of course, Denver.

Seeing the ‘rational’ argument doesn’t really work, let’s add yet another dramatic, emotional rhetorical question. As a precaution.

“Do you know how much a child can love you?”

How could she, being the heartless, cruel, selfish, irresponsible, ridiculous and impulsive murderess you’re ‘exposing’ her as?

⚠️ Another spoiler warning for seasons 3 and 4 and still 1.

Would Cincinnati - that’s her sons actual name, not alias – really love her like he does now?

Friendly reminder: his biological father (Arturo Román) let her know - right from the start - that he wouldn’t take on any responsibility whatsoever, regardless of his later statements about doing so. Why those statements don’t matter? Despite his awareness of her state, despite knowing she was pregnant he shortly after urges her on to steal the cellphone she is caught with right after the analysed scene, ready to risk her life and the potential life of his unborn child. Literally, because as soon as she is caught with it, Berlín orders Denver to execute her.

So to those of you who will now say “but- but Cincinnati is okay and has an amazing life and does love her” etc etc, first think certain things through. If Denver wouldn’t have spared her, if she didn’t just happen to get together with him and if the heist didn’t just happen to work out like that, what then?

Cincinnati would have a different name. What else? Well for one, he wouldn’t have a father (that is now Denver) like at all, resulting in possible daddy issues / issues in general. How I know Arturo, the biological father, wouldn’t be there for them, wouldn’t fulfill all his empty promises?

Did he canonically care about his son? Was he devastated that he was not given the possibility to see him or did he instead focus on that random book of his and his speeches about heroism and honour and so on? If he wouldn’t have called his wife by his mistress’s name and through that expose himself, if his family wouldn’t have left him all alone, don’t you think he would stick to them? Just to paint a picture of who the father is and how he behaves and what we can assume from that behaviour. So the probability was high she would’ve been left alone with I quote “all the love” and of course all the responsibility. It’s a thing, Denver.

Secondly, if she didn’t just happen to turn into a millionaire thanks to the heist working out, would she really be able to provide a life for Cincinnati? Would she really be able to remain financially independent? Would her life at her son’s side really be all peace and harmony if she wouldn’t just so happen to be able to live from heist money?

So many coincidences, so many risks and no security. Can we really blame her? Do we have the right?

With these questions I will end this seemingly endless post and leave you to think about it, reflect certain things and – if you want to – share your opinion(s) with me. Please don’t hesitate to do so, as long as those contain rational arguments and most importantly respect. Thank you for reading!

(Also: sorry for the extensive censoring, I had to, otherwise it wouldn’t appear in the tags.)

[photosetart]

The mistreatment of Hinduism

This is a post probably no one will read. But that is okay. I am writing it because I want it to be out there in the world.

I am a Hindu. So I will be largely speaking of the religion that I follow, but I suppose a lot of things apply to Buddhists as well because of the cultural similarities.

I want to write this because as a Hindu, it pains me everyday to see people talk left and right about cultural appropriation, yet not address why my culture is represented like this.

Cultural appropriation for me is about taking an element out of a culture, removing the cultural source from it's identity, and flaunting it.

I am not to say what is wrong and what is right, but god damn it pisses me off.

So I will do what I can do best about it- rant on the internet.

Yoga

Yoga is an ancient Indian practice that was scoffed at by every westerner until Indians made a move to prove that it is actually, medically valid. Then it exploded.

And, I am very happy about that. I really am. It is so nice to see people trying to do something from my culture, to respect something about it. But here is the thing- a lot of people don't actually respect it. Treat yoga as an exercise, or a part of your spirituality if you will. But don't cheaply imitate what yogis have been doing.

Which brings me to another point-

DON'T CALL YOURSELF A YOGI unless and until you are well-versed in the physical, mental and spiritual aspects of Yoga. Just practicing yoga as an exercise DOESN'T make you a Yogi.

Namaste

Do you know that not even most Indians greet each other by Namaste? So why would you casually use this word as a synonym for 'Hello'? It really isn't that. Now this one isn't 'wrong' , of course. But still, if you have to use this word, it would be good if you know what it meant.

In Hinduism, it means "I bow to the divine in you".

No, it doesn't mean 'Hi'.

Third-eye

Oh this one makes me hella angry. People use the word third eye as casually as their normal eyes, as if this has not been part of both Hindu and Buddhist traditions for Gods know how long.

This word means 'eye of insight'. As Wikipedia says, 'The third eye refers to the gate that leads to inner realms and spaces of higher consciousness.'

The opening of the third eye is symbolic to achieving spirituality in many parts of India. And sometimes of Shiva's godly wrath.

So, no you cannot casually roll your third eye.

Swastika

Yes, Hitler used it. Yes, it is an evil sign standing for the slaughter of millions of people.

But that is the inverted Swastika.

Swastika in Hinduism and Buddhism is an extremely important religious symbol. You can't expect a billion people to abandon something so very close to them because someone made it stand for something different.

Not one Hindu looks at a Swatika and goes, 'Huh, that stands for genocide.'

Not to us, it doesn't. We use it in our festivals and during our rituals and during our ceremonies. And we are not trying to disrespect the memories of the people who died. But that symbol was long before the Nazis, hundreds of years before them.

And it is not even the same thing. And Hitler's representation of Swastika is just another point in a long list of why I hate him.

There are so many things like these.

I don't expect anyone to do deep research for every single thing that they are unsure about. That would be extremely stupid on my part.

But, if we are screaming cultural appropriation, let's be more inclusive. Let's call out stuff that actually needs to be stopped instead of stuff like 'Hymn of the Weekend'.

Wear lehengas, or saris, or bangles, or whatever you want to wear. Wear it the way you want, just respect it while wearing it.

Just because my skin is brown, and I was born into Hinduism does not give me sole rights over this culture's elements. It would be a shame if no one ever got to experience what being in this culture is like.

But experiencing it as a part of the culture, or at least being respectful while you use some things is the least anyone can expect of anyone. What does respect even entail?

It just means keeping in mind that there are people in this world who have deep love for their religion heritage and culture, they identify themselves with it. You don't need to do things the exact way they are doing. You don't need to wear a sari exactly like Indian wear it. Your sindoor could be blue.

It sounds weird, but if you are mindful of not hurting people and actually try, to me that is enough.

Of course, it doesn't apply to only white people. As a brown person, I can't go on using African traditions just for fun. Or I can't start pretending I am Jesus.

That would be deeply hurtful.

At the same time, I do feel that we shouldn't over-identify ourselves with our race, heritage or culture. But, that doesn't mean it's no part of my identity at all.

Hate a culture. Love it. Feel meh about it.

But, respect it all the same.

[beloved-judged]

Vodou: what am I doing here?

I knew this question was coming--how could it not? Vodou is a very visibly black and African religion, and I am very visibly not black.

Early on, and continuing until relatively recently, that bothered me. I did not want to encroach or to cause harm. I did not want to do what my ancestors, some of them, have done. I did not want to be the same sort of ignorant, grasping interloper that is so easy for white people to be.

Anyone who has read US history knows that white people have done horrible, horrible things to various other groups for hundreds of years. That isn’t even controversial, as a statement: anyone who has had a decent US history course, let alone any social science courses, knows that there isn’t just historical oppression, there’s modern day oppression. We still have tremendous problems with racism as a nation. It is in no way done.

For a time, I thought the most responsible thing I could do, other than providing support to various anti-racist organizations, was to essentially stay away from black spaces or spaces that seemed majority black, so that I would not be summoning in with me that history, let alone the actions I might take which would enact that oppression.

So how did I end up in vodou?

When my academic career died, I decided to die with it. I stopped eating, stopped getting out of bed, stopped drinking water, stopped responding to people. My ex had to fight me into meals, and fought me into going to a therapist, who proscribed a ton of drugs that did very little for me. Any time someone wasn’t fighting with me, I was laying in bed, staring at... nothing.

He dragged me to a doctor at one point, where they told me I had high blood pressure, high cholesterol, and that I was in danger of a heart attack, at a very young age. I essentially said “fine, let’s get it over with then” and went back to laying in bed, staring into the void.

When I was alone, I talked to death in my head, asking him to come and get it over with, since I’m too far away from the waves to ask the ocean to help me.

One night, my ex talked me out of bed and got me drunk. I stared at my computer screen, filled with the most powerful urge to go back to speaking to them as have always been with me. I found myself crying, thinking of the ocean and walking into it so I could go back home, to the bosom of my mother, a conceit which I have been unable to shake since I was a small child, standing in a boat in the Hong Kong bay, singing to the boat people and the ocean.

We traveled a lot when I was a child. There’s a photo of me standing up in a boat in the Hong Kong bay, my hair a tangled reddish brown mass, my arms out in a plaid pinafore, singing wordlessly to the ocean. Something about the ocean, I don’t know what, has always struck me as motherly, but not in a ... nice way. I’ve known, since I can remember, that I could walk into her and she would take my life from me, so that I could be done.

For the record, I grew up southern baptist. There is exactly nothing in that upbringing that would have taught me that the waters would be kind in that way, but I’ve walked around most of my life wanting to wade into the waves and be taken home.

I don’t remember what I googled that night, but I landed on a series of vodou webpages, and then my papa’s webpage. The urge to cry out to them as walks with me was unbearable. I missed them so badly--having played at being an atheist, I was worried they wouldn’t take me back. I didn’t know who I was calling to, I just knew that there was a presence that I longed for.

But I cried out anyway, exhausted and dizzy and sick and lonely. Suddenly, I was utterly unable to stand and could think of nothing else but sleep. I dragged myself to bed, and closed my eyes.

Someone showed up in that vision that is not done with my eyes. He, and boy was he a he, stood at the foot of the bed, looking down at me.

“Poor baby,” he crooned, shrugging off his jacket. “Let papa take care of you.”

And he did. Thoroughly. It was the best experience of that kind in my long, varied, and very kinky life. Also the most shocking, and I am not a woman easily shocked. I’m still getting a charge out of it several years later, if I think about it.

I’m still trying to figure out how to say thank you, but in a very filthy fashion.

I woke the next day as if a fever had broken: conscious, alert, alive, capable of thinking of things other than the dull fog which had shrouded my brain and the overwhelming desire to die.

I also awoke rather... shocked and quiet. My ex fought me into the car to run errands, and to the new sense of presence around me I said, in the silences of my mind, “is this really what it is? Is this really what you want? Give me a sign.”

My ex, exclusive controller of the car radio and fan of silence on drives, decided to switch the radio on. Godsmack’s “Voodoo” started playing almost as soon as the radio came on.

“Oh,” said silently. “Well all right, then.”

I have now been asked several times what I’m doing in vodou.

This is my answer: I was called and I came, and I almost died trying to avoid it. I have spent years running away from the more... let’s call it esoteric experiences. This shit scared me and I grew up being told that if I gave in, I would promptly be demonic, let alone a carrier of the inherent evil I bore somehow. I even picked an academic career in the sciences, just to be extra sure to avoid anything weird.

I ignored dreams, ignored signs, avoided anyone referencing them, and booked it out the nearest door on encountering anyone who made that part of my brain tingle or looked even a little “mystic.” Too many necklaces, various symbols, anything that looked witchy caused me to immediately vacate the area and avoid the person from then on.

And yet, I couldn’t seem to stop reading about those topics, though I hid what I was reading from everyone.

I am here because I was called. I am not here because I looked it up and just felt like being here, or because I’m trying to take anything from anyone, or because I thought it looked exotic or cool. I could have secretly read about it and done nothing for the rest of my life without ever setting foot in a temple or the djevo.

I’m here because I cried out when I was ready to die, and was answered. I have had all sorts of other experiences since then--far more than I am recording here.

I am here because they were willing to heal me, and for me at least, that has incurred me a lifetime debt. They bought my loyalty with my life.

My papa says, on the topic of race, that god is for everyone. He has a specific podcast on this topic, and I will not repeat his message in its entirety, as I believe that the rebuke involved is better from people who have more credentials than I on this topic--after all, the only thing I have is a lave tet.

But I will say that for me, the best part of his message was this: if god and the mysteries call you, don’t be disrespecting either of them by refusing to come.

I was called and I came. If and when my behavior becomes a problem, I’ll get spanked. Up until that point, I will be exactly where the spirit puts me, doing whatever it is that the spirit wants me to do, which will include no small amount of humbling me and changing my perception.

I was called and I came. For me, at least, it is that simple.

[seemedlogic-blog]

Why we draw Swastika the way we draw?

This is for all my friends who’re followers of Hinduism or are interested in understanding it. 

We Hindus have been, without failing, using this symbol everywhere and every time. We have seen our mothers, priests, all the well learned class of people using this symbol. But what does this symbol represent.n  I have tried to understand our ritual that we follow in our daily lives. Well this means I ask a lot of questions which brings a lot of irritation to people :P (I am evil ). We draw this on aarti thalis, entrance of houses and offices, on new vehicle, financial books, on our foreheads (in some communities) and even at funerals; basically always. For many of us, this sign represents positivity, prosperity, wealth, health, luck and fortune.  

I have been reading  “My Gita” written by Devdutt Pattnaik. Well it’s my second time reading it. I couldn’t  process it in first go. So many thoughts and concepts for my first read. In his book he mentions swastika as the theory of “four - fold division” of the world.  As he mentions and I can understand it according to Hindu Mythology, the existence of world and life is based on humans, animals, plants and elements (water, fire, earth, sky). My Gita, Chapter 3, Pg 56. It was just a concept he pulled to explain other concept (for curiosity, refer the book). 

I have tried to hunt for answers on why do we do certain things in certain way through reading blogs, articles, books, discussions and putting my own logic. I am writing this article to share my opinion on why we draw symbol of Swastika the way we draw it. I could be absolutely wrong with my theory. I am giving a disclaimer here. I am not writing this article to offend or disrespect anyone. Its just a thought crossed my mind and all I wanted to do was share it with people. This may help my generation or older generation or future generation to understand why we do certain things in certain way  and what could be the meaning behind it. (Once you get the meaning, its easy to accept it rather than retaliating it)

In Gita, they say the soul never dies. There’s a previous life that we have lived, a life we are living now and there’s a life after death like rebirth. Nature keeps playing her role in maintaining the balance between everything, even cosmic activities. Many of us keep following this logic of “what goes around, come around” or “whatever happens, happens for good” or “everyone has to pay for its deeds” (Karma)” and so on. I have always believed whatever we are following in name of religion or rituals or superstitions has to have some meaning behind it. I mean, no one can be that stupid to follow it for centuries after centuries blindly. Its just that the reasons and explanations of certain acts have never been explained and we are still finding difficulty in reasoning it out and many don’t match with our existing circumstances. In fact, I don’t believe astrology is fake. Something which has been practiced for such a long time has to have some significance. I am writing my first article explaining the representation of Swastika symbol. 

My theory on this is symbol of Swastika and the theory mentioned above makes sense to me. Only when the FOUR - humans, animals, plants and elements work together, they strike a balance with nature making the world a livable place, creating world, creating life.   

The extra line we draw that I have highlighted in the symbol with color can have its own reasons . Extended line could be a meaning of growth. When we draw that extended line, we are also praying or hoping for these four aspects to extend and grow in right proportions and there should always be a balance. Just like shagun ka lifafa (cash envelope) we receive or give away - it always has money in format of 101, 201, 251, 501, 1001 and so on. The 1 we add behind the main amount is the extension like an extra push. The giver prays or hopes that this lifafa (envelope)/ offering given to the receiver gives growth and progress in the event for which it has been offered. 

I know this is deep! I remember when I was a kid I was collecting charity for a cause in my neighborhood. One of them gave me the charity and Re 1 coin and told me this is for your growth (that I get good amount for charity) and wished me luck. I was too young to understand the meaning but now I get it loud and clear.  

The set of parallel lines we draw in all four directions can be meaningful too (Not everything is just a drawing). In my opinion, these lines represent boundaries. We all want four aspects (humans, animals, plants and elements) to grow but not outflow or exceed than required. The nature always strike a balance so when we hope things to grow and bring prosperity, this only happens when they grow in particular proportion and in given limitation of nature. There’s an old saying “Har cheez ki atti haanikarak hoti hai” - anything in excess is always harmful. Considering 4 set of parallel lines are drawn in 4 directions - East, West, North, South we are also helping nature to bring balance and keep our lives running unconsciously. 

But but but I see irony in this. We have been using Swastika symbol everywhere in name of ritual, belief and religion. What I don’t get is how we could ignore the basic meaning of it. Humans have come a long way to put themselves superior to everything and everyone that exist around them. For our ease or I say luxury, we have been distorting other three aspects of life and nature i.e plants, animals and elements. We haven’t left any of them unharmed or destroyed them causing imbalance. Pollution, population, foeticide, global warming, dirty water, bad air, disease, no greenery, animal extinction, animal hunting, plastics. We are the SOLE REASONS of our and other’s problem.  The funny part we are the cribbers too. We are the main reason why there is an imbalance and we are the same people who rant about it all the time. I am not trying to be environment activist or social changer. All I am saying is we are using the symbol of swastika in everyday of our lives hoping for best to happen with us and around us but unconsciously. 

Why can’t we just bring the concepts that we have been following in names of rituals, belief and religion to our PRACTICE CONSCIOUSLY.  This is the most basic thing we can do to respect our belief system and keep it going and not just fade away because generation today isn’t getting it anyway. We can consciously act upon our belief system and help nature in bringing balance of life and inculcate the same in our future generation. Only then I see a balance, survival, life and our existence. 

[silversunshine2012]

Something to Think About

Disclaimer before we start:  I started writing this because I was bored and got inside my own head a little bit and had to get it out.  There is some talk about religion and politics in here.  Most of this is speculation and observations, but near the end it does get more heated and, depending on your pov, more patriotic.  I don’t normally talk politics, religion, etc, because I don’t want to get into an argument or offend anyone.  So I usually keep my mouth shut.   Please know that I am not trying to start a fight whatsoever.  This is just something I wanted to share that I’ve been writing for about 3-4 hours now instead of doing my school/homework in which I ask you to think.  We don’t think as much as we should and we take things that we read and hear online and on the news, etc. for granted and don’t always fact-check because we’re lazy.  I also want to ask you to think before you read this.  If you think that you will probably get offended by reading this because it has more than just your point of view in it, then please dont read it.  Please just move on with your day and don’t worry about little ole me and whatever over-thinking bs my brain comes up with.  Also, if you do choose to read it, please excuse any and all digressions.  I have a lot up here..

           You know something interesting about the Pledge of Allegiance?  We always say it the same exact way, every single time, like a kid’s song almost.  Like, okay, try something for me.  I pledge allegiance to the flag of the United States of America and to the republic for which it stands, one nation under God, indivisible with liberty and justice for all.  How did the voice in your head read that?  Did you hear: “I pledge allegiance..to the flag..of the United States of America..and to the republic, for which it stands..one nation..under God..indivisible..with liberty and justice for all”?  It’s like how we see the lyrics to a kid’s song we’ve heard all our lives and we inevitably hear the tune in our head too.  Like this, “I’m a little tea pot, short and stout…”  Now you’re hearing the whole rest of what you can remember of the song, right?  But if you were to listen to someone who’s never heard this before (“this” referring both to “I’m a Little Teapot” and the Pledge of Allegiance) read the words aloud, it would sound very different.  

           But the thing is, the way we’ve always said the pledge is actually how we have to do it in order to stay in sync with one another.  Whenever a large group of people are all reading the same passage together as one, they pause every few words even when, grammatically, you wouldn’t pause there in the sentence.  And they do this because it makes it ten times easier to know exactly where everyone around you is in the passage so that everyone can collectively follow along.  We say it as if it were a song with no tune and a very boring rhythm.  And with the Pledge of Allegiance especially, because we’ve said it ever since we can remember, and because we’ve always said it the exact same way every single time, we always say it the exact same way every. Single. Time.  I’m being redundant to make a point here.  We don’t just say it the way you would read it, even when we’re saying it by ourselves and there’s no one else to stay in sync with.  And because we say it the same exact way every single time, and because we’ve said it almost every single day since we can remember, the words themselves lose meaning..  

           Like, really, we’re “pledging” or promising our “allegiance” or loyal commitment to a fuckin FLAG first off, which in and of itself seems weird to promise to be loyally committed to a symbol, regardless of what it represents to begin with.  Yes, we’re also pledging our loyalty to the republic it stands for, the US democracy and the Constitution and Bill of Rights that it is both bound to and based on, but all that comes after pledging loyalty to the symbol itself.  Also, it says that the nation stood as one under God, which meant that the founding fathers were Christian to begin with, something we also see clearly in the Declaration of Independence.  “We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men are created equal and are endowed by their Creator with certain, unalienable rights.”  Then it goes on to say that this one nation is “indivisible,” cannot be divided, which refers to the how the colonies had to unite as one against the British forces during the Revolutionary War, the very point Ben Franklin was trying to make when he said, “We must all hang together, or most assuredly we will all hang separately,” and the political cartoon with the snake cut into pieces that says “Join, or Die.”

However, the way it’s worded seems to suggest that the nation can only be and remain indivisible if it is and remains under God.  Same with “with liberty and justice for all.”  The wording suggests that the nation can only have liberty and justice for all if it remains under God.  

           Something else i find interesting is that, the Bible says in Matthew 5 (I suggest starting in verse 43 if you want to fact check me on this) to “love your neighbor as yourself” and also specifically says “you must also love your enemy” because “If you only love those who love you, what reward will you get?”   Basically, it says to love everyone, because God loves everyone, because God made everyone.  And yet, many people have only experienced hate from Christians because, well first off no one is perfect, but also because there are just some people who are so stubborn and who only see rules, rule-followers, and rule-breakers, rather than people and guidelines for protection, which is what they were meant to be in the first place.  And it’s sad that there are people who use a book that is supposed to be filled with love and use it to spread hate.

           Also, going back to what I was saying before, when we repeat something over and over and over again, it loses its meaning for us.  Like all those little pearls of wisdom we’ve heard a thousand times like, “If at first you don’t succeed..” “The grass in always greener..” “Plenty more fish in the sea” “Blood is thicker than water.”  Those aren’t as meaningful and wise as some, but they were just as irritatingly familiar.  When it comes to the Pledge of Allegiance, we don’t necessarily know what we’re pledging to anymore.  The founding fathers made it so that the government would be subject to change in the future so that it could stand the test of time, and each new generation that became more aware of injustices in our country than the last would be able to speak up and change it.  The nations, groups, religions, societies, etc. that survive the longest are the ones that can adapt to each new generation that comes into it, can adapt to each new struggle it goes through as a whole, etc.

           And, again, going back to the repeating thing, it’s the same with the national anthem.  How many times have you just stood and sang the national anthem as if it was just “Take Me Out to the Ball Game”?  How many Americans don’t even know what part of the war the song is talking about? How many Americans have never even seen this video or at least heard the story about how these people died holding up the goddamn flag because they knew that if it fell, the British side would win.  How many Americans actually realize that the implications behind the Pledge of Allegiance are, at least in part, referring to this story?!  The reason we pledge LOYALTY to the flag today, is because OUR ANCESTORS pledged and either RISKED or GAVE their LIVES just protecting the FUCKING FLAG and MAKING SURE that it never FELL because THEY KNEW, if THAT flag HIT THE GROUND, it would all be over.. FREEDOM would LOSE.  DEMOCRACY would FALL.  AMERICA would DIE, before it even truly began.  If that flag fell, nothing we have here today would be the same.  

           We pledge our loyalty to that flag to honor those that died keeping it upright.  We stand for both the Pledge of Allegiance and the National Anthem because of their sacrifice.  We do not KNEEL, because doing so would DISRESPECT and DISREGARD ALL the sacrifices made by those that would rather “die standing” than “live on [their] knees.”  We STAND up for what we believe is right and rally together as one voice to be heard so that we can make a change. 

           BUT we also sit, and listen, and work together.  We don’t just talk, because when everyone talks, no one listens.  When no one listens, we yell louder.  The louder we yell, the more things escalate.  Peaceful protests turn into two, warring, angry mobs.  Then next thing you know someone gets in their car and plows through both mobs killing 20-some-odd people.  

           We are turning to violence.  Violence among ourselves.  More and more, we are considering ourselves white, black, hispanic, straight, lgbtq+, Christian, athiest, areligious, etc. etc.  More division.  More distancing.  More disarray.  More dehumanizing.  Just a never-ending downward spiral of hate and bickering.  

           This, however, is not new.  Like I mentioned above, the colonies had to purposefully unite as one. Before they preferred to consider themselves Virginians, Georgians, Pennsylvanians, etc.  They had to come together as AMERICANS before they had any chance of winning the war.  

           We today, must learn to do the same.  Yes, there are some shitty people out there.  Yes, there are people who have only had bad experiences with a certain group of people, and so the logical conclusion based on the data they have is that all people within that group are asshats.  However, we need to remember, there are shitheads in every category we have made up for grouping together humans we don’t know, as well as the fact that there are nice people out there in each of those categories too.

           If you did take the time to read this, thank you.  

[crossedbeams]

The Rape of The X-Files: Chris Carter and Control

An essay on my rage. - Rose

As a relatively new fan to the show, I’ve sometimes struggled to understand the level of vitriol the fandom harbours towards the show’s creator, Chris Carter, but 12 hours from the premiere of S11, I think I’m finally starting to get it. It’s not about any one episode, or a character arc that is less successful than the show at its best. It’s not about the anticlimax of years of rose-tinted revival. 

It’s about disrespect and misogyny masquerading as creativity. 

It’s about a man who has created a project and with it a person, offering it to us as one thing - a journey for truth starring a woman of integrity and worth, uncowed by impossible odds and stalwart in a world determined to misunderstand and belittle her. But this is not actually what he is offering. Having convinced us that he values and believes in this character, that we should too, he begins, under the guise of “character development”, her total destruction; the molestation of all she holds dear, and through this act and a hundred other micro-messages reinforcing the same thing, the rape of not just one character but in essence everything the show has purported to be.

To its fans and many of the creative forces involved, writers, directors and cast, The X-Files is a show about love and hope and possibility. It is a tale of strength and loyalty and humans. It is a show I have come to love, a show that brings us all together here, which is what makes its creator so increasingly problematic.

Chris Carter has shown, time and time again, through the stories he tells when he writes that what he actually believes in is not God or Science or the capacity of those who fight and seek truth to achieve justice, but in his right as creator to borrow tragedy and torment from anywhere and anyone, without remorse or care, to feed his egotistic vision of The X-Files. He truly believes that what his audience wants is his “genius” 40 minute take on issues that he does not understand. He is liberal only in his appropriation of trauma to feed his narrative; no race, religion or gender is safe from his careless pilfering. 

I’m not saying that men like Carter shouldn’t write about these things, in many ways I wish more would, but to the service of their subject. Good writers try to look beyond their experience out of a desire to illuminate, protest and educate, to lend the privilege of their position. They create space for controversial content within their world out of a desire to be an ally and deal humanly, hopefully with the repercussions and the result. They aim to inspire change

Chris Carter just wants to cause controversy. 

When asked by EW what led him to make My Struggle III’s decision about Scully’s child’s paternity, Carter replies

 “ It adds to the characters in an interesting emotional way. “

This after ten seasons of character building. This after the pre-exisiting trauma of these seasons has driven Mulder and Scully apart. This, at the end of an episode, in which Scully has already had seizures, endured a car accident and had an assailant attempt to throttle her in her sickbed and watched her partner murder this man on top of her, all while missing her son, orphaned and fearing the end of the world and for her own sanity.

If you cannot, as a writer, find interest and emotional meaning in this rich body of work, then you are no writer. Except Carter is. He has written many interesting and innovative plot-lines for The X-Files, generated spin-offs, this whole world is born of his imagination… which leads us to a much more troubling truth.

He simply doesn’t care.

To him, The X-Files is a plaything and Dana Scully is an object. With every trauma unconsidered, every choice undermined and every abuse of her mind and body, Carter demonstrates that Dana Scully (the “two steps behind please” back-up who didn’t have a backstory until David Nutter wrote her one in Beyond the Sea) was never envisioned to be a feminist icon or symbol of female empowerment. To Chris Carter, she was only supposed to be a body for Mulder to bounce ideas against, a plot device for a conspiracy of men to use and exploit. Perhaps this is why Carter hates ‘shippers so much, because Scully was never intended to be Mulder’s equal, his lover, she was just supposed to be his foil. Her sexuality is supposed to be limited to inspiring male envy (Milagro), rage (Never Again) or reproduction (preferably medically induced to deny her agency even in this most traditional of female roles. Making Scully the body upon which to enact his fears, prejudices and fantasies at the cost of her own integrity is why Carter has become the show’s greatest Achilles Heel.

Ironically, this casting is perhaps most keenly summarised by a monologue  Carter penned himself in yesterday’s episode. While he attempts to describe the motives of the Cigarette Smoking Man he unintentionally presents an unfortunately apt description of his own relationship to The X-Files.

“He was to be the man to lead us, but he became destructive. He took only his own counsel. […] You have no idea this man’s need to control our fate.”

 - Chris Carter, My Struggle III

It’s about control, and in this case the need to maintain it when what you have created threatens to become more than you. Chris Carter was given the opportunity to be the most powerful man in a world with a long reach and the power to inspire through change. He was given 25 years of viewership and acting talent and budget to make a TV show that was revolutionary. Only he doesn’t want a revolution. He wants things to be as he sees them, his characters to be clean and platonic and known; blank canvases who spring back from torment unscathed, ready to have fresh terror and trauma rained upon them. Just to add interest. Chris Carter cannot see that the X-Files universe is one of collaboration, of unexpected circumstance sparking development, of characters becoming more than they are written. In his desire to air the biggest, most complicated conspiracy arc of all time, he is missing that many of the most beloved and iconic episodes are about small people and issues that are the more impactful for their lack of wham-bam-drama.

Why else would he, at the end of a dramatic episode that had fairly successfully fixed a tricky cliff-hanger, (an episode that I actually quite enjoyed), would he use the last three minutes to rewrite everything based on a harmful, damaging, degrading alteration of the show’s long term narrative. Mulder and Scully refer to William as ‘our son’, Scully, a medical doctor, claims William’s stem-cells will save Mulder, suggesting she knows they are genetically compatible (and we know from canon that she knows the difference between a sibling and a parental match). Given this, given the many questions that are raised in My Struggle III about a new faction of human colonisation nutters, Scully’s mental health, Skinner’s maybe-betrayal and the possibility of an apocalyptic scenario, why would we need to throw in a medical rape, ret-conning En Ami and rendering irrelevant much of the character work (Mulder and Scully as grieving parents) that he has done in the seasons since?

“Because Chris Carter” is the only reason I can come up with. It’s a self-indulgent flexing of muscles nobody asked to see and for that I will struggle to forgive him. 

The calculated cruelty of his treatment of his world, characters and audience is irredeemable, and were it not for the culture of discourse in this fandom, the possibility of appreciating much of the rest of the show, its writing and performances, my struggle  would be reconciling my feelings for Chris Carter and my love of The X-Files.

Fortunately, outside the writing room, the X-Files is beyond his control. The friendships it creates, the community it fosters have the power to keep the world of Mulder and Scully from descending irrevocably into a racist, misogynistic soup, even if canon’s gravity is headed that way. It crosses cultural boundaries, asks brave questions and it brings us together in our outrage. The wounds left by Carter are met by creative bandages, fanworks which take the best of the show and its people and make beautiful, powerful statements. So don’t be ashamed to love this mess of a show or allow Chris Carter’s megalomania to drive you away (though I do not judge you if it does). Get mad, get inspired and get loud in whatever way you can. Let Fox know that whatever comes next, either for The X-Files or a new show, behaviour like Chris Carter’s will not go unnoticed. Write letters, write emails, scream it on your social media, talk to your friends, make it clear to anyone who will listen, even if it is only one person, that The X-Files fandom will not support rape culture. Perhaps it feels small but all revolutions start with a whisper. Changing one mind is a huge victory.

Do it for Dana Scully, who deserved better and for all the little girls she inspired who deserve more than a world in which their idol is a man’s plaything 

[mingyoozi]

Wonwoo: Blood for Blood, Bloom for Bloom (pt. 3)

photo cred ©

[table of contents] I. II. III. IV.

Summary: uhhhh I don’t remember how to write lol also I’m trying to incorporate more of a fantasy aspect with like fairies and witches and stuff and I’m also tryna establish more of a difference of cultures between the two kingdoms pls feedback I wanna know if it’s too weird for this story or not

When you were young, Jieun used to drag you around the forests of your hometown when she had free days. She had always loved the quiet thrum of nature; the whistle of the wind through tall trees, the sound of birds chirping when the sun was at its highest. There was a clearing in the forest just behind your small castle, and you loved it almost as much as Jieun did. The forest felt like endless possibilities hidden in the tree trunks, with forest sprites waiting to jump out of the underbrush and dance around you until you were dizzy and lead you to every hidden place.

It’s times like these where you wish you could just go back there, enjoy the feeling of the sun on your skin and the dirt under your feet. How nice it would be to hold a bow in your hands again. To feel the light weight of your own hunting bow in one palm and the heavy weight of your father’s in the other. As you grew older and Jieun started to take her lessons more seriously, you began to take solace in the feeling of drawing the bow and shooting the arrow. You would give anything to have that feeling again.

Now, sitting confined in your room with the door locked and Mingyu begging for entry, that feeling seems so far away. It’s hard to remember. It sits in the back of your memory just out of arms reach and the horror of not being able to remember something so significant takes over.

Eventually Mingyu gives up. You hear another voice outside, coaxing him into the dining hall for supper. You can hear his hesitance to leave you and it crushes you inside. You feel selfish, mourning something that hasn’t happened yet. But no one can blame you. They all know how incurable Jieun’s sickness is. You sit in your lonesome in the eerie quiet of your room for as long as fate will allow. The peace lasts for an hour, and then Mingyu is knocking at your door again. It’s a soft knock, decibels quieter than the absolute uproar he had been torturing you with earlier.

You approach the door, your hand laying on the latch as you consider letting him in.

“Please,” You hear him whisper through the wooden slats. “I’m begging you.”

You flip the latch down and pull the door back just enough to let him know that he may enter. He pushes his way in gently and latches the door behind himself, effectively including himself in your isolation. Tears still leave your eyes, only now they leave in a drip instead of a stream.

“She’ll wake up.” He says, and you become overly aware of how much of a mess you must look with tear stains on your cheeks and redness in your eyes.

You wipe furiously at the wet trails on your face as he sinks down to sit beside you, creating a two person barricade along the doorway. “She won’t.” You say, refusing to meet his eyes.

“She will.” He says, taking your face into his hands and wiping away your remaining tears. “I swear to you.”

He dips his head down then, capturing your lips between his. You freeze for a second before you’re scrambling away from him, tears running down your face in a constant flow again. You’re still in your day clothes, the draping sleeves getting caught under your feet and your corset cutting into your chest as your ribs heave up and down.

“Y/N,” Mingyu says after a moment of shock has passed.

He reaches out towards you and you flinch, feeling nothing as you watch the hurt flash in his eyes. “Get out.” You say.

“I’m sorry.” He says, and you scream.

-

Jieun is pale and lifeless, transferred to her own room and heavily contrasting the dark red bed coverings. Wonwoo’s kingdom with all of its advanced medicines and remedies has managed to do absolutely nothing to improve her condition. You sit at her bedside, holding her hand. Your cheeks are still stained with tears from earlier that evening, but you just want to forget.

“Please wake up.” You say, running a hand through her hair. “I need you, Ji. I don’t know what to do.”

There’s a knock on the door then, a soft rap that interrupts your train of thought. The door opens before you can answer. Wonwoo stands before you, his head hung low as he enters the room.

“A message from Yingan, my lady.” He says, handing you a slip of parchment. “I’ve yet to read it, for your sake, but I can’t imagine that it says anything heartwarming. We rarely receive messengers from Yingan.”

Your heart skips a beat at the mention of your home. You take the message from him with shaky hands, almost tearing it in your haste to unfold it. The parchment slips from your hands as your brother’s neat script burns itself into your eyelids.

“M-my uncle he’s—“ You stop, seeing the bruises on Wonwoo’s hand that he’d been trying to hide. “You’ve hurt yourself.”

He shoves his hand behind himself, meeting your eyes with flushed cheeks. “Nothing. Do continue.”

“My uncle is on his deathbed. They’re crowning my brother as king in a fortnight.” You say.

“Is he requesting an audience for his coronation?” Wonwoo asks. You don’t know why he does, it’s tradition for the royal families of all three peace kingdoms to be present at a coronation.

You nod. Jieun won’t make it. It’s three days at sea and three days by carriage and she can barely breathe on her own lying still in bed. Wonwoo’s jaw clenches as he looks over at his sleeping wife.

“I can’t leave her side.” You say. Wonwoo takes a seat beside you and takes your hand in his. “What if something happens to her while I’m not here? What if this illness consumes her?”

“A Yingan healer was sent to look after her. She’ll be better by the time we’re back.” Wonwoo says. “You’ll have to stand beside me in her place at the coronation to symbolize the harmony between our kingdoms.”

“Tell me what happened to your hand first.” You say. The fingers wrapped around yours are black and blue.

He tightens his grip on you. “I care about you as I care for the queen herself. My cousin disrespected you, so he faced the consequences.”

“The consequence was your fist?” You say. Jieun has always hated violence, for once you’re glad that she isn’t awake.

Wonwoo smiles, lacing his fingers through yours and standing up. “Come. I want to show you something.” He says.

You nod your head and follow, making sure that the door is shut securely behind you as you leave Jieun’s room. Wonwoo leads you through the halls of the castle that have become so familiar to you over the past few months. Years. Time has blended together and it’s sometimes easy to forget that you haven’t been back home in years.

“This is for you. A gift to apologize for your sister and my cousin, but mostly your sister.” He says. He opens the doors to the armoury and leads you in. There’s a bow hanging near the swords and a set of arrows laying on the ground. “Mingyu told me about your love for archery back in Yingan.”

“That’s mine?” You hesitate. He nods and you run towards it, a light feeling in your chest that you haven’t felt in a while.

You lift the bow to inspect it. It’s beautifully made, easy for you to carry, and your name is etched into the side of the handle. You draw the bowstring back, testing the draw weight, and it feels almost identical to your bow back home. You turn to face Wonwoo again with tears in your eyes to find him grinning at you.

“It’s beautiful. Thank you.” You say. He just smiles and grabs a crossbow from the adjacent wall.

“What did you hunt back in Yingan?” He asks as he grabs his own set of arrows and starts to leave the room.

You have to think about that question. It’s been so long since you’ve seen the native animals of Yingan that they don’t immediately come to the front of your mind.

“Mostly rabbits in the warm season and deer in the cold season. I didn’t shoot to kill very much back in Yingan, it was mostly target practice on trees and an excuse to be alone in the forest. Violence angers the Gai, so we hunt with the intent to use every part of the animal.” You explain.

“The Gai?” He asks. In the years that you’ve been here, you’ve yet to have had a conversation about your own religion and culture with anyone in the castle. You never considered yourself a very religious person before you left your kingdom, so it’s been a while since you’ve had to think about the Gai and her rule over the world.

“Our goddess. I’m not as religious as Jieun is, but some of my kingdom’s religious morals resonate with me. Jieun still prays to the Gai every morning, you know? It amazes me.” You digress.

Wonwoo nods his head. “I see. What else do you believe in?” He asks.

You shrug your shoulders. “I’m not sure that I believe in much anymore.” You say.

While you were talking, Wonwoo had managed to lead you to the base of the Shengo mountain. As you step up onto a ledge, you’re glad that you’d had the sense to change out of your day gown before you visited Jieun. You spot a white rabbit in the grass that has managed to not notice you or Wonwoo.

You set an arrow into the rest of your bow and draw.

prev.   next.

[noreachspeak]

If you haven’t read emisonme’s blog concerning “camatthew” or whatever that PR rubber blow-up raft’s name it is, go check out that out first. I posted this “how to stage kiss” for people, just to understand “staging” in general. Thankfully, C and M didn’t serve us any lips, so most likely those lips never touched. Now, I’m an artist, writer, transpersonal psychologist (soon to graduate), and a filmmaker. This video is not mine, but it is one example of the many different ways to stage a kiss. I already talked about Camila’s pic with Michael Hussey, one beard for one beard, meaning they both need beards. I also noticed the angle of M’s sunglasses which do not match the position of his mouth on hers. Michael who is now 30 and is not with anybody...well, that’s just bad for business, right? I mean, you wouldn’t seek out financial help from someone who is broke. I actually wonder if there fees cancel each other out. Taylor paid for her first beard, until she got smart and got paid to be a beard for men who needed to appear straight or simply to not look single. In the Philippines, if you’re 30 and single, three things usually happen: 1) everyone just assumes you are gay. For a country that does not have equality in human rights, it’s the most gay friendly country in the far east. (I’ll post a piece I did on that later) 2) people speculate that perhaps something is wrong with you, and they may give you advice or send you to a great hairstylist they know...but this speculation usually ends up back to number one or goes to the next option: 3) everybody begins to suggest people for you to meet or invites another single person...basically, everybody plays cupid...and yes, they’ll do it even if you are gay! Now, while I think this PR move was a bit too soon, I think the people who are out there burning her album, are doing so, not so much out of hate, but out of frustration and disappointment. Plus, like I’ve said in previous places like on YT and here, the whole thing is laughable, but we also ought to understand that the society we live in, is perhaps not the same for other people in other places/countries. What I’m trying to say is that in some places in America even though we have marriage equality, we still have a lot of homophobia, so it is not easy even here...you may live in a blue state, but maybe you live in a very strict Catholic household, or another religion. emisonme says for us to, ‘get over [ourselves] and stop being selfish’---and yeah, I can stand by that, but I do think it is sad. Sad because she told us about the freedom of being in control...and that gave many people a lot of hope. When she used the pink triangle in the form of a “glass closet” and how she says she is very detail oriented, that the look of everything has to be just so, we know that with all of the restrictions put on her, she still manages to “come out” with her music, with her performances, with her merch, with her cover art, with her music video, with nearly every interview....plus every camren vid out there, we already know. In case you don’t know about the “glass closet” this article is great: https://www.out.com/entertainment/2008/09/22/glass-closet  Not every gay person in this world can openly express their queerness. In some countries, it is criminal and punishable. This is where I think it gets complicated. Here’s the thing, many celebrities have lived in this “glass closet”. C hasn’t yet to act straight in the last 6 years...exceptions include when she lied about “the boy who took her to watch a scary movie” and when both C & L  pretended to be straight and just ended up overacting with C exclaiming, “there were so many hot boys today!” to which Captain Dinah looks strangely up at her as if to say, “wtf...bruh” then Lauren chimes in with, “oh my gurd” in an exaggerated yet boredom filled way in agreement with Camila...so funny...I know you guys have seen it! But it is what it is and now we know she only has control of certain things like her music, her indirects. Please remember that not too long ago, on the anniversary of the day C and L met, everyone across the globe said Happy Anniversary, not to be confused with the day 5H were formed as a group, mind you--she posts a pic of herself, most likely in Jamaica with Lauren with the caption “the loving” and that speaks volumes. To put things in perspective, would Camila ever risk disrespecting the Pink Triangle? ....the one half of two triangles that form the Star of David? wherein the color designated their crime (pink=homosexual)? and those with that symbol remained in prison, even after the war was over? No. She would NEVER. Perhaps because despite every limitation, she was able to maneuver inside this “blender” aka the cutthroat music industry, living her “telenova” life while behind the scenes, most likely Camren is very real in private. Let’s respect that for now, let’s stay calm, let’s ONLY observe and enjoy the music. Let’s promote the music. Anyone sending death threats to M is a shipper who does not deserve C’s attention nor is welcome within the majority of the CSs who quietly observe and respect her and LAND, so if you are reading this, leave him alone. Please know that at least he was chosen to show the general public her “professional” persona while simultaneously saving his counseling business. Please hope for the best for CC and all of the members of Fifth Harmony. Peace and love to you all. Salamat!

[kiutotakulady]

This is the first time I found a highly correct Bruneian custom & culture guides! There are some things that are not quite correct but most of it are on point. If anyone interested to read, I’ve put under the cut which point is the truth or not or need some additional information~

Brunei Guide

Language, Culture, Customs and Etiquette

Facts and Statistics

Location: Southeastern Asia, bordering the South China Sea and Malaysia Capital: Bandar Seri Begawan Climate: tropical; hot, humid, rainy Population: 422,675 (July 2014 est.) Ethnic Make-up: Malay 66.3%, Chinese 11.2%, indigenous 3.4%, other 19.1% (2004 est.) Religions: Muslim (official) 67%, Buddhist 13%, Christian 10%, other (includes indigenous beliefs) 10% Government: constitutional sultanate

Language in Brunei

There is a multitude of languages spoken in Brunei. The official language of the state of Brunei is Standard Malay. This came into force on 29th September 1959, with the signing of Brunei 1959 Constitution. English is also widely used as a business and working language. It is also the language of instruction in secondary and tertiary education. Other languages spoken in Brunei include the Chinese, Indian and Native languages spoken by the minority ethnic groups.

Bruneian Society and CultureThe Family 

The family is the focal point of the social structure. The Bruneian family is the extended family and includes aunts, uncles, and cousins as well as close friends. Members of the extended family are expected to remain loyal to each other and the family.(True) As a result of this Brunei is a hierarchical culture. (True. also, it makes you feel old when the kids bow at you.) Age and position are revered. From a young age, children are taught to subjugate their own desires for the good of the entire family and to respect elders without question. (well things have changed. Though not as much but elders began to be accepting these days) In addition, they also learn that it is through family support that they accomplish goals.

The Concept of Face (The Asian is strong here...also all true)

The role of face, shame and honour are crucial to Bruneians. Consequently, they are very polite and well-mannered. Maintaining face is of utmost importance and they do their best not to cause issues or problems which could jeopardize this. In order to maintain face their communication style is very indirect and can come across as somewhat ambiguous to those from a culture where direct communication is the norm. By being indirect Bruneians avoid embarrassing another person, which would cause that person to lose face. Most Bruneians find emotions such as impatience, anger, or irritation embarrassing and try to avoid them since expressing them could result in a loss of face and disharmony.

Religion

Most Bruneians are Muslims and as such their lives revolve around the duties afforded to them by Islam. (True)  Alcohol is banned from the country however pork is allowed for non-Muslims. (True) Gender relations are also governed by Islamic principles and etiquette. (True but contrary to what people think we are more tolerant regarding it here. The only downside in the country for trans people is they need to wear their born gender clothes if they went to work at government sector. They are free to express themselves on normal days.) since Shaking hands across genders is rare.(women only shakes hand with blood-related male & vice versa) Bruneians practice a devout but tolerant brand of Islam, which includes devotion, yet allows other faiths and beliefs. (True) Muslims must pray five times a day – at dawn, noon, afternoon, sunset, and evening.(p.s. I am not a good muslim so I don’t pray....it's not a forced thing but its more up to your faith thing.) Friday is the Muslim holy day. Everything is closed. Many companies, as well as government offices, also close on Sunday and Saturday afternoon.  (True) During the fasting month of Ramadan, government staff works a six-hour day and entertainment and sporting activities are suspended. The Sultan encourages the recital of the Quran each morning prior to the start of work to obtain Allah’s blessing and guidance. (all true)

The Monarchy

Bruneians are proud to have centuries of royal heritage and to be the only remaining Malay Islamic Monarchy in the world. The Sultan of Brunei comes from a family line that dates back to 1405. In 1967 His Majesty Sultan Haji Hassanal Bolkiah Mu'izzaddin Waddaulah was made the 29th ruler of Brune and led the country’s independence from the United Kingdom in 1984.

Etiquette and Customs in BruneiMeeting Etiquette (quite true)

The common greeting depends upon the ethnic origin and the age of the person.

In general, many men you meet will have adopted the western concept of shaking hands, although this is not always the case with older Bruneians or with women.

Ethnic Malay men shake hands with one another, but men and women do not traditionally shake hands. 

Younger Bruneians may shake hands with foreign women or they may merely bow their head in greeting.

It is considered respectful to bow your head when someone who is senior to yourself in age or position.

It is considered disrespectful and rude to stare into another person's eyes, particularly those of a person who is senior to you in age or status.

Gift Giving Etiquette (All true accept the white wrapping paper thing....like huh??)

If invited to someone's home for dinner bring good quality chocolates or fruit.

Do not give toy dogs to children.

Do not give anything made of pigskin.

If giving foodstuffs ensure there is no gelatine or anything else which is not ‘halal’.

Avoid white wrapping paper as it symbolizes death and mourning.

Offer gifts with the right hand only or both hands if the item is large.

Gifts are generally not opened when received.

Dining Etiquette

For the most part, Bruneians do not invite foreigners into their homes.(unless you are close friend as stated below)

If you are invited to a Bruneian home, consider it a great honour and testament to your personal relationship.

Punctuality is not strictly adhered to. You may arrive a little late without causing offence. (so guilty)

Shoes are generally removed before entering a house. (True)

Greet the eldest person first. (True)

Wait to be told where to sit. (True)

It is considered good manners to accept an offer of food or a beverage. Turning down hospitality may be viewed as personal rejection. (just take it & pretend you gonna eat it later)

Wait to be invited to eat before starting.  (True)

Food is often served buffet style or on a revolving tray in the centre of the table. (True)

The guest of honour may be served first or the eldest person may. (True)

Do not eat with the left hand, as it is considered unclean.(sometimes only. Like that kentucky fried chicken ain't gonna let you use one hand only!)

Eat or pass food with your right hand only. (True)

Many Malays eat with their fingers. Alternatively, they may serve cutlery for foreign guests, usually a fork and a tablespoon.  (True)

If passing a plate that is heavy, you may use your left hand to support your right wrist. (True)

When you are finished eating, place your fork facing downward on your plate with your spoon, also facing downward, crossed over the fork. (True)

Bruneian Business Etiquette and ProtocolMeeting and Greeting

Greetings should be formal and demonstrate respect and deference. (True)

It is important to introduce the most important person on your team first. (True)

Handshakes tend to be light. Bruneian men often raise their hands to the heart after shaking hands. o o Most Bruneians do not shake hands with members of the opposite sex.  (True)

Foreign businesswomen should nod their head in greeting. (not really)

Foreign businessmen should wait to see if a Bruneian woman extends her hand first. (True)

Titles are important and can be confusing. Bruneians can have as many as 20 words in their title. o Titles such as “Pengiran” with several different words following it, “Awangku”” and “Dayangku” indicate the person is related to the royal family. (True....seriously these titles though!)

It is acceptable to address someone with a title by their title alone. (True)

Honorific titles are “Awang” for a man and “Dayang” for a woman. The abbreviations for these titles are “Awg” and “Dyg” respectively. (True)

Business cards are typically exchanged after introductions and handshakes. (True)

Present the card with both hands or with the right hand and the left hand supporting the right hand. (True)

Give a business card to each person you meet. (True)

Examine any business card you receive before putting it in your business card case. (True)

The respect you show someone's business card is considered to be indicative of the respect you will show the person in business. (True)

It is considered a breach of etiquette to write on a person’s business card in their presence.  (True)

Communication Style (All true)

Bruneian communication is formal and respectful, especially to those senior in age or position. Hierarchy is revered, so older businesspeople should be greeted before younger ones. As in much of Asia, group harmony is vital. Therefore, the communication style tends to be indirect and somewhat ambiguous. This is done to avoid embarrassing someone or causing either party to lose face. If you are from a more direct culture, you may find the use of evasive responses or insincere yeses frustrating. Most Bruneians find emotions such as impatience, anger, or irritation embarrassing and try to avoid them. Therefore, it is incumbent upon the foreigner to refrain form showing his/her inner feelings. Bruneians commonly ask what would be considered intrusive personal questions such as about wages or the like. If you are uncomfortable discussing such matters, it is important to handle the matter diplomatically so neither party loses face. Such conversations are meant to get to know you as a person, they are not meant to make you uncomfortable. Tone of voice, body language, eye contact and facial expression can often be more important than what is actually said. Therefore, it is important to observe the person as they speak.

Business Meetings (wow...all true)

It is important to advise Bruneian counterparts in advance of who will be attending the meeting. This allows them to organize counterparts at the same level. It is also a good idea to send a brief business biography of each person. When entering a room it is important that the most senior person on your team enter the room first. Doing so gives face to both parties since it demonstrates respect towards the Bruneian culture. It is quite common for the most senior person from each side to sit opposite each other at the table. Typically, the most senior Bruneian will offer a brief welcoming speech. Although you need not do the same, having a few welcoming words will brand you as a competent leader. Once the introductions are complete and everyone is seated, there will be a period of small talk to enable all parties to become more comfortable with each other. It will end when the most senior Bruneian feels comfortable discussing business. Do not rush the process or you risk permanently harming your business relationship. At the first meeting between two companies, Bruneians often do not get into in-depth discussions. They prefer to use the first meeting as an opportunity to get to know the other side and build a rapport, which is essential to them. Meetings may extend into business meals, although business will generally not be discussed. Nonetheless, this getting-to-know-you time is vital in developing and fostering a good working relationship and therefore it is important that you remain professional. Similar to most Asian cultures, Bruneians are indirect communicators who are equally concerned with the message as with the manner in which it is delivered. Since they avoid politely and go out of their way to confrontation, they attempt to speak in a manner where both parties retain face. They will attempt to avoid communicating anything directly that would hurt or offend another since doing so would cause a loss of "face". They will gently push their ideas forward and wait for others to respond. If they disagree with an idea, they will generally remain silent rather than speak up. Therefore, it is important to watch for silences and body language. Since Bruneians have difficulty giving an absolute negative response, they have many ways of giving a non-committal "yes". Phrases such as "it is inconvenient" or "we shall see" generally indicate a negative response. Given the difficulty in saying “no”, it is a good idea to phrase questions so that an affirmative response can be given. If you are unsure what an answer means or think that it may be a non-committal agreement, ask the question in another fashion to see what response you receive. It is important to remember that nodding the head does not always indicate agreement; it may simply be an acknowledgement that you have spoken. This can be disconcerting for people from more western cultures who translate the gesture differently.