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catsafari25 · 1 year ago

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A/N: Hello again, and with this I think (?) I may have succeeded in writing enough bionicle fic to get it out of my system (unless another plot bunny hits me like a cannonball, but... eh, we'll see) and thus, here is the companion piece to the Vakama & Roodaka oneshot.

This time, exploring the scene where Vakama entered the Great Temple, from his side of things! This was also partially inspired by the scene in Challenge of the Hordika where Nokama is almost physically repulsed in trying to enter the Great Temple :)

In the tunnels beneath the temple, Vakama must stoop.

At first he shuffles, mutated arm tucked against him and his sole hand brushing only briefly along the floor to steady himself, but the passages are dark and deep and lined with creatures which seek out the weak. The eyes that watch him are not hungry. They keep their bellies too full for that.

In the end, it is easier quicker to drop to all fours, to share the weight between claw and tool that feet alone cannot. His altered form folds into the new stance with frightening familiarity. It's comfortable.

Natural.

The crown of his mask grazes the tunnel's ceiling, but only in passing. His gait is sure. Well. Surer than the ungainly slouch it had been before.

It was said – back when Matoran were awake to say such things – that even the strongest swimmers of Ga-Metru would hesitate before plunging into the depths of the protodermis sea. Not because the creatures there had any fondness for the taste of Matoran. In truth, it was thought that the rahi actively disliked the flavour. No, it was because the way Matoran swam was indistinguishable from the rahi's usual prey. Only when they had sunk tooth and jaw into their meal would they realise their mistake.

It was an annoying, if harmless mistake for the rahi.

Matoran couldn't say the same.

Vakama's early crawl through the passage had been like that of a Matoran swimmer: functional, but slow and indiscernible from wounded prey. Creatures drag themselves down into these depths to die, in hopes that they will be devoured only when they are too far gone to feel it. The eyes are patient. They will wait to see if this newcomer is similarly inclined.

And so when Vakama drops to his haunches, the eyes blink. Reassess. He moves less like the hunted and more like the hunter now, more predator than prey, and the eyes – and teeth – keep their distance after that.

The path Vakama stalks through was once a protodermis pipe, made obsolete even before the cataclysm. Newer conduits had been built, more efficient, more resilient, and this one had been disconnected but never dismantled. When he reaches its origin, it takes some effort – and his blazer claw – to break the seal across the hatchway, but when he does, one of the temple's protodermis purification chambers looms above him.

The room beyond is quiet.

Unmarked.

He doesn't realise he's stopped until the chittering of his audience draws closer. The snarl he throws back echoes off the pipe's walls, and the eyes retreat, but do not leave.

Vakama curls his hand around the lip of the hatch, and then falters.

Something is wrong.

It's not a pain, because the feeling does not hurt as it ought, but something is undeniably, fundamentally wrong. It causes his breath to catch, his hand to flinch, and it would be so easy, so easy, to turn and walk away, only...

Only he came here for a reason.

The wrongness flares, amplified for a moment, and then he pulls himself up. The eyes watch, but do not follow. Do they feel it too? Can even such base creatures sense the innate malice the temple exudes?

He clambers out of the purification chamber – empty and abandoned now – and stumbles upon his landing. He catches himself, but does not rise back to his feet.

Wrong.

This is wrong.

And at the edge of the wrongness there is a strange sort of terror. It dreads the same way the fire fears the sea, the same way the prey fears the predator; it is the meeting of two primally antithetical forces where only one can survive. It whispers turn back through his mind.

He moves into the next room.

It's one he knows well. Light filters down from the rot-stained windows, centering – as it had the day he'd first seen it – on the suva, and casting long sentinel shadows of the columns standing to attention around it. A crack mars the suva, its stone dome now split cleanly in two from the quakes, and – drawn by some desire he cannot identify (instinct, curiosity... nostalgia?) – he approaches.

It seems so small now. Even bowed and altered in his Hordika form, he looms over the Ta-Metru symbol he'd once had to stretch to reach.

Unbidden, his hand moves to the niche where once he'd placed a Toa Stone – where once he had though himself chosen, duty-bound, destiny-gifted – and falters a breath from the stone.

The wrongness spikes.

Screams.

And with a twist of something he will not call horror, he understands it is not originating from himself.

But from the temple.

It is repulsion. It's alienation. It's recognising him, but as other, as rahi.

It's disgust that a monster would dare enter its sanctuary.

In the Ta-Metru carving, stone once polished to the point of fragmented reflection, he sees a glimmer of his own face. Neither Toa nor Matoran. Nothing blessed by Mata Nui.

Vakama recoils.

And then a wave of his own disgust, propelled by that fury that runs so close to the surface now, rolls through him. If you didn't want us as the Toa, you should've stopped Makuta from choosing us, he thinks, and digs his claws into the stonework.

The wrongness sings.

But he knows it for what it is now, and his morphed, clawed hand gorges scars through the carving. The stone is soft. Its makers had never imagined someone would take a blade to it.

There comes a tapping from across the room, echoing brazenly off the ancient stone walls, and Vakama retreats instinctively into the shadows. A Rahaga enters.

Norik?

No, this Rahaga's armour is more akin to a Po-Matoran than a Ta-Matoran's, the colour of dust and stone. Vakama tries to recall the Rahaga's name – and then dismisses the attempt.

It won't matter, in the end.

The Rahaga walks as he always has, stooped and slow, but clearly unhindered by the temple. He passes by the suva and runs one gnarled hand across the stonework, his movements marred by curiosity rather than reverence.

The rage arrives a fully-formed creation. It drowns out the wrongness, floods the apprehension, and he is moving before he's decided that this is the path he wants.

It is not pain, for it does not hurt as it ought.

But it does still hurt.

Whatever the Rahaga might once have been, they are old and weak now. Four are captured before Vakama's rage has a chance to cool, but the ire is no less dangerous when it does.

(That's the thing about Ta-Metru; it's not a place of fire so much as it is of magma. And magma doesn't extinguish with the cold; it sets. It moors itself into place, an unmovable, burning force.)

The rage settles, solidifies around his heart and lungs and carves a home between his breaths.

(Magma is not fire. It does not leap blindly from one source to the next. Instead it advances. Slowly. Steadily. It finds a channel, a destination, and it engulfs all in its path until it reaches it.)

He finds the last two remaining Rahaga, pathetically ignorant to their brothers' fates and still scavenging the temple for answers. He hears the way Norik appraises his sister's translation, relief clear in his voice that they are one step further on this wild rahi chase. Relief, surely, that the Rahaga are one step closer to regaining their Toa form.

(And Vakama's anger has found its destination.)

He does not descend on the Rahaga's leader the way he has the others. No. Norik will know what's coming for him first. He gets to fear. Vakama waits until Gaaki has gone, until Norik is alone, and then he circles. The wrongness thrums in his veins, weighing him down and labouring his breaths. It doesn't matter. Let Norik hear his approach.

Norik doesn't try to run. Vakama will give him that much. (A wise choice. Vakama intends for this encounter to last, but if Norik runs, Vakama cannot be sure he won't chase.) Instead, the malformed once-Toa calls out and actually tries to approach him. Stupid. Doesn't he know that he won't win any fight, transformed as he is? As both of them are? No, instead, he tries to talk. As if they are equals, as if Norik has done anything to deserve his respect rather than his scorn. As if he has earned the temple's forgiveness for his trespassing.

Even when Vakama raises the fate of Norik's fellow Rahaga, Norik attempts to sway him with the illusion of reason, talking of duty and unity, as if he's not using the other Toa Hordika to chase after a rahi myth for his own desires. As if their roles are in any way comparable, both Toa of Fire once, both leaders, it's true, but Vakama hasn't forgone his duty to chase after selfish needs.

And it stops now.

Vakama circles closer, and Norik is still talking, unease in his voice, but not fear. Still searching for the right words to turn Vakama to his bidding as he has the other Toa Hordika. Ever the voice of two-faced logic.

Why won't he just shut up?

Does Norik think him to be as gullible as the others? As quick to desert his duty as them?

And Vakama knows he wants – needs – to shake that assurance, that arrogance out of Norik. Needs to see that facade of self-righteous wisdom crumble into the terror of his situation.

The growl begins deep in his chest and, unleashed, it becomes a roar. He rears out of the darkness, into the weak sphere of light surrounding Norik – and there, there he finally sees true fear fill the old fool's eyes.

Something slams into Vakama and he reels, his roar cut short. His hand reaches automatically, defensively, to his mask. He finds only water there. It clings to him, imbued with some sort of power – he can feel something other in it – but otherwise impotent.

"Leave my brother alone," Gaaki snarls. She stands in the doorway, small and hopelessly overpowered, but her shoulders are tensed with a stubborness Vakama recognises. Already, her spinner is powering up for another shot.

Well. Two can play at that game.

Vakama's rhotuka fires into motion, but the water has seeped into the mechanism, and dowses the fire before it has a chance to catch. He gives it a withering look, before turning the expression onto Gaaki. "Very clever."

Another water spinner hits him, but this time he is braced for it and all it does is wash harmlessly off him.

"Is that all you have?" he asks. His blazer claw splutters, but the claws on his hand flex. After all, there's more than one way to defang a muaka...

Gaaki steps back. Good. She knows she's outmatched. "It's a devastating attack underwater," she offers, and her words are strong but there is a cracked edge to them.

"Then you'd better start finding a puddle," Vakama growls, "before my claws find you," and he drops into a run, feet pounding and fangs bared and that ever-present wrongness humming about him.

She doesn't flee. Just like Norik, she stands her ground, gnarled fingers wrapped tight around her staff. Her eyes are hard, but he sees the way her hands shake.

How long will her resolve last, Vakama wonders. Before or after the claws find their mark?

He never finds out.

He's knocked off his feet before he reaches her, and when he hits the ground, ropes of energy pin him to the earth, like a water-bound rahi caught in a net.

What–

Norik.

He'd forgotten Norik.

He thrashes against the restraints, but they hold strong – for now. His blazer claw splutters again, but it does nothing to the energy that binds him.

He stills as he hears footsteps approach.

The two Rahaga hobble into his line of sight. Gaaki is breathing hard, as if only now is she allowing herself to feel the fear. "You left that late, Norik," she says, and even the breath that follows sounds more like a shaken wheeze than a nervous laugh. "Almost too late."

"I only had the one shot. I couldn't afford to miss," Norik replies. "He's got our brothers. Gaaki, go find–"

"I'm not leaving you alone with him," she retorts. "I only went for a moment before, and look what would have happened if I hadn't returned."

Vakama tilts his head as well as the energy net will allow. He grins at the Rahaga, anger curdling it into a sneer. "Yes, Gaaki, you're very good bait, congratulations." He shifts his gaze to Norik. "But you've always been so good at getting others to do your dirty work, haven't you, Norik?"

Norik doesn't even have the decency of guilt. Instead, he simply looks tired. "Whatever you think you know–"

"I know the truth! You don't care about the Matoran, you only care about yourselves!" He strains against the ropes, and although they do not break, there's a little more give in them than before. He slumps back to the ground, breathing hard. "You might have the other Toa fooled. You might even have the temple fooled, but not me," he growls, and the temple's hatred presses down on him, straining his last words.

Gaaki places a frail hand on her brother's arm. "Norik," she says, and there is such unbearable sorrow in her voice. "He looks in pain."

"It's not my doing," Norik assures her softly. "My snare spinner only binds."

Vakama snarls. "I don't need pity from the likes of you. I know what you are."

"We're allies, Vakama," Norik says, in that insufferably reasonable way of his. "Friends."

"You're frauds," Vakama snaps. He twists against his restraints. They slacken, just a touch. "Liars. You don't deserve to walk these floors."

And the Rahaga stand there, unburdened by the temple's hate, strangers to this land, to Metru Nui, and yet it is Vakama the temple repulses? After everything he has forgone, the life he's abandoned, the friendships he's lost, Mata Nui punishes him?

His rhotuka fires off a fire spinner, and it goes wide, cracks a wall. Norik and Gaaki stumble back, Norik preparing another snare shot, but the energy net holding Vakama snaps. Vakama lurches forward, suddenly free, and slams into Norik.

The snare spinner wraps itself around a column. It lights up the room with crackling energy.

A blast of water grazes past his shoulder, too shy of hitting Norik to commit to taking the easy shot, and Vakama reels towards Gaaki. He fires with a snarl, but hears the snare spinner coming again and ducks at the last moment.

Again his own attack misses and the shot cleaves clean through a wall. Something on the other side begins to smoulder.

Then it begins to rumble.

It's a low sound at first, as deep as the earth and just as vast. Almost like a distant growl. But then the cracks begin to spiral out across the roof, along the columns, and the room buckles.

The light flickers. The frames of the high windows above collapse.

The world becomes fragmented, filled with flickering images. Falling masonry and toppling pillars and dust – but the sounds never relent. Even in the depths of the passing darkness, the thunder continues.

And when the dust settles, so does an awful silence.

Vakama straightens, or does his best approximation of it. Fragments of cracked protodermis fall from his shoulders, his head, his back. He withdraws the hand which has somehow found itself raised above Gaaki, knocking aside the stone slab caught against his arm.

Where's Norik?

Both Hordika and Rahaga stand side by side, that quietness disturbed only by the skittering of stone shards settling. There is wrongness in his breath, his head, and it's impossible to separate where the temple's ends and his begins. But any moment now, Norik will reappear from the wreckage, bearing that ever-same holier-than-thou look, and the anger will rise anew in Vakama.

Any.

Moment.

Now.

"You've killed him," Gaaki says, and her voice breaks that terrible stillness. She draws in a half-breath that cracks into a sob. "You've... oh, Norik..."

No.

No, it was an accident. He hadn't meant to– Norik had simply been in the wrong place. It wasn't as if he'd taken a blazer claw to Norik, or hit him directly with a fire spinner. He'd only meant to... what? What had he only meant to do?

Something swings towards him and he grabs the staff before he even registers what it is.

"He's not dead," Vakama says, and maybe if he says it, he might even believe it. He snaps his gaze to Gaaki, as if her grief is bringing it to pass. "He's not. He's not as easy to kill as that. When the others– when the Toa find him, he'll be fine. Fools like him always find a way to survive."

Gaaki attempts to pull her staff free, but her strength is no match for Vakama's. He wretches it out of her grasp and tosses it aside.

"Stop that."

She doesn't listen to him, only steps back and charges up her rhotuka. The grief in her eyes fogs into hatred.

The water spinner hits him but does little more than rock him.

"Stop."

Gaaki screams, a sound of rage and anguish, and releases a volley of spinners as ineffectual as the first.

Vakama's patience – or whatever had held him in place until now – snaps. He lunges forward. His claws close around the joints of Gaaki's rhotuka and pins the mechanisms harmlessly into place, in the same manner one might pick up a baby ussal crab by the widest edge of its shell. She thrashes, but Vakama's grip holds.

"I said, stop," he snarls.

She's breathing hard, her gasps sharp-edged with agony. "You killed him," she says, voice hoarse and hateful.

His insides twist, and – Gaaki hauled by his side – he starts the ascent to where the rest of the Rahaga are trapped. He doesn't look back to the rubble. Doesn't glance for one last glimpse of Norik's resting place.

He's not dead. He's not dead he's not dead he's not

The wrongness, the hatred, has woven so deep into him, it's almost a part of him now.

Toa don't kill. Vakama can't remember who taught him that (he recalls, briefly, the flash of a gold mask, but it comes with pain – grief – and he pushes it aside before it can take root) but it gnaws at him like a trapped stone rat. Toa don't kill.

But he was never meant to be one.

And if the Great Temple – if Mata Nui – thinks a mistake was made in Vakama's destiny....

Well. That's somebody else's problem.

The Hordika that returns to Roodaka is different from the one she sent out. There's something new in his eyes... or perhaps something lost.

"How was the temple, Vakama?" she asks when it's just the two of them.

He looks to her. Beneath the anger, beneath the rahi, there's almost a haunted look to those eyes. It vanishes a moment later, but Roodaka never doubts her own eyes.

"Unwelcoming," he replies, and Roodaka smiles. She could have suggested Vakama pick the Rahaga off one by one in the chaos of Metru Nui, outside where her Visorak could have been an aid... but the temple had been too good an opportunity to miss.

"Good." She sets a hand on his shoulder. "You owe no loyalty to Mata Nui, Vakama. Not anymore."

He rolls his shoulder, but not sharp enough to dislodge Roodaka's hand.

"One thing I do not understand," she says. "What happened to the sixth Rahaga?"

The Toa growls. It is a gutteral sound, rooted deep in the chest and at home in a way it wasn't before. "You wanted a message left for the other Toa. I needed a messenger."

"Alive?"

Vakama shrugs his shoulder again, and this time she lets him roll her hand loose. "Does it matter, so long as they understand?" he growls.

No, Roodaka concedes as she surveys the remains of the Toa before her. She supposes not.

#bionicle #cat writes #lego bionicle #do i have a weakness for the hordika arc? you'll never know #(yes. look i was a well behaved 12year old kid who loved plots about characters going feral. i ate the hordika plotline up)#(and two decades later or there abouts i still have nostalgic fondness for it)#heya so how do we feel about vakama returning to the temple and finding it is repulsed by him?#a discovery that might not only confirm he wasnt chosen by mata nui but has been forsaken #and yeah this was the fic i technically titled 'damned'#but also casually thought of it as 'god called to let you know he hates you personally'#because that's definitely a normal thing to name a fic #also yes i like the idea that roodaka pushed vakama to enter the temple knowing he would feel abandoned by mata nui #and thus helps sever the 'destiny' part of the three virtues #i like the idea that just like matau had to invoke the three virtues to get vakama back #roodaka worked on severing vakamas ties to the three virtues to get him to turn his back on the others #and while she succeeded with unity and destiny #duty she could only derail or corrupt rather than sever entirely #and that (esp since duty is vakamas whole shtick) is why matau reminding him of his duty finally worked #i'll probably add this and the stasis tube au to ao3 in time #but for now it goes here

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fluentisonus · 2 years ago

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rereading a morbid taste for bones & brother cadfael truly characters of all time. he loves his herb garden. he regularly sleeps through mass. he was in a crusade and maybe killed some people. he's definitely had lots of sex. he keeps opium poppies. he's welsh. he has an ongoing snarky commentary with his young assistant about all the other characters in the abbey. he wheedles his way into a trip to help pick up some reliquaries because the thinks it'd be fun to get out and about and ends up in a murder mystery. it's 1137 AD

#thoughts #I can't entirely remember how the whole plot goes from here bc it's been like a decade but I'm having lots of fun

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mariocki · 2 months ago

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Shadows of Fear: Did You Lock Up? (1.1, Thames, 1970)

"And they didn't make much mess?"

"No, not really. They forced that door. Smashed the cabinet, slashed a sofa. And kicked a hole in the bedroom door."

"Ah. Big mistake."

"What is?"

"Never lock inside doors. Anything you can to keep them out - but when they're in, let 'em get on with it."

"I'll remember."

#shadows of fear #single play #roger marshall #1970 #classic tv #thames #kim mills #michael craig #gwen watford #ray smith #mark mcmanus #malcolm kaye #charles leno #having come to something of a premature pause in my New Scotland Yard watch (the first ep of series 3 isn't on the YT playlist I've been #using and is proving quite tricky to get ahold of) i thought I'd revisit this brief lived anthology series for the creepy season. i first #watched this about 10 years ago and my memories of it are scant to say the least‚ so it seemed like good viewing for the season #the production history of SoF is lost in the mists of time (unless someone out there wishes to enlighten me?); this first episode was shown #in June of 1970‚ but the rest didn't follow until January of the following year; probably this acted as a sort of pilot to gauge viewer #reactions to another vaguely horrorish anthology series (the previous decade had been ripe with them‚ tho we rarely see their like today)#and then there's the odd case of the final ep‚ shown almost 2 years after the series ended and running to half the length (and generally #feeling like an entirely different format) but I'll come to that when (and if) i get to the episode itself. this debut ep is... well it's #fine. i was excited to see Marshall's name in the opening credits‚ one of the most dependable of old tv writers and I'd quite forgotten he #contributed to this show. but the issue here is simply one of length. the plot is solid‚ a suitably grotty little tale of a family man's #mounting obsession with the burglars who broke into his home. it would make a good ep of Tales of Unease (shortly to begin on Thames'#sister broadcaster LWT) or a few years later as an episode of Tales of the Unexpected; both being 25 minute shows. but this clocks in at #close to 50 mins and there isn't really enough to it to sustain that longer running time‚ leaving it feeling a little stretched thin and #flimsy. a shame‚ because Craig and Watford are putting in excellent performances as the middle class couple whose reactions to the burglary #slowly shift as time passes (he goes from prosaic acceptance to fixated malice‚ she from shocked indignation to making peace with it all)#no big surprises in where the play is headed or how it plays out‚ but that's often the case with these things; it's often just as much #about the horrible foreknowledge of what must come than some shocking twist‚ and this plays it about right. it's just too long is all.

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mostlyanything19 · 7 months ago

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WHEW that back half of the episode was JUICY, HUH??

#critical role #c3 #p #cr3x95 #both the sweet and shenanigan-y part and then the ABSOLUTE PEAK DRAMA HOO BOY #everything's so fucked up and by everything i mean mostly laudna #sometimes it gets on the back burner but like. this has been coming up with more and more force as the story goes on #is the question of..how will this ever. ever. end for her. how? she's so entwined with delilah. she doesn't seem to have the inner strength #to rip herself away from that influence; that presence that has killed her; made her; shaped her; accompanied her for decades #that's been a whisper in her ear and into her deepest thoughts for longer than imogen - the other biggest influence on her - has been alive #and even if laudna /could/ find the mental fortitude to attempt to rid herself of something that's this integral to her very existence #i don't know how she could? and now i mean physically; she's alive only through delilah; she's tethered to this essence; how could she ever #be her very own person again; how would that /look like/?#we thought we saw it after her resurrection but in the end that's not truly what it was. delilah was still in there #and if she ever truly left-could laudna live?how? a continued endless undeath? some true form of return to life? it seems terribly unlikely #and after episodes like this... it all seems so helpless #a little like what imogen was trying to express. 'i love you. i will always love you. i just don't know what to do with it.'#because it feels like you cannot ever truly move laudna out of the position she is in #but that position is becoming more and more precarious #now i've gotten into the thoughts re:laudna but THAT ENTIRE COMFLICT WAS AMAZING AND I'M HERE FOR IT

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ardentperfidy · 1 year ago

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#lord grant me patience with some of the takes i've seen #like right off the bat #yemen has not been doing anything for the palestinian people #the houthi rebels have been launching missiles into shipping lanes not yemen #not to be a huge bitch but if you were so unaware of the civil war in yemen that has been going on for genuinely a decade #that you entirely conflate the two groups #and are out here talking about how yemen has been bravely taking on the western world in defense of palestine #i simply do not take you seriously on this topic!!#TWO you do not under any circumstances have to hand it to the houthis!!#listen no side of the yemeni civil war is the 'good guys'#and that includes the houthis!! who have been blockading taizz from water supplies and committing a litany of human rights violations #i NEED you all to develop the ability to hold more moral nuance than 'good guys and bad guys' or 'enemy of my enemy is my friend'#anyway i saw a post this morning saying that we stan yemen now and i have been internally screaming ever since

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killjoygem · 10 months ago

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Gotta confess, I've been using the for you dash for like. Several days now. At first I was just testing it to see what it was like but it just consistently has more interesting posts than what's on my usual dash

The biggest problems seems to be A) repetition, I get a lot of the same posts multiple times and B) showing me old poll posts that i can no longer vote in. These aren't super big issues though, i can scroll past repeated posts, and with the polls I just treat them like they're any other post and add my answer in the tags

#i dont know how people who have been here over a decade dont get bored of their dash being almost entirely unrelated to their fandoms #ive only been here 8 years and the following dash is only like 30% relevant to my interests

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harrowharkwife · 1 year ago

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#i can't bring myself to talk about the palestine israel stuff publicly online yet no matter how many times i try #but please rest assured that i am not ignoring any of it. it's weighing on me very heavily and occupying most of my irl conversations #every time i try to talk about it i end up writing a fucking novel length brick of text #if anyone wants to talk about it i am here and open to discussing it via DMs #it has been a difficult and exhausting and disheartening and intensely uncomfortable week to be an anti-Zionist jew online #which i do realize is incredibly western/American/first world problems of me to be saying when people are literally dying #but just. i have a lot of thoughts but for the most part they all boil down to frustration at having my entire faith and culture #equated with zionism at every turn #and it is so distressing to watch chronically online westerners actively cheering on death and war and conflict #and none of the things i want to say will fit in a post or a canva infographic or a tweet or an insta story #just. palestinians deserve to live freely. jews deserve to live safely.#what we're seeing now is the inevitable result of decades of violent genocidal settler colonialism #that doesn't make it justified or any easier to swallow or any less heartbreaking #personal #idk

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syrinq · 2 years ago

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mfw in hindsight there obviously was something Wrong With Me when i was growing up but i didn't think of it as a possiblity whatsoever because of environmental circumstances & I Am Just Lazy And Useless And Doing Fuck All By Nature & I Thought I Fixed My Biggest Issues By Therapy Already And I Didn't Think I Could Have Any More

but then said behaviours continue even in better environments and you're suddenly out of uni wondering what the actual fuck is up and it's into the downward spiral to wonderland from there

i'm the frog being dissected in biology class. i'm the dissector at the same time. i peel out an overgrown lump out my dissected frog ass and see that in fact i do have Behaviours. now i have to find the origins of this behaviour & unfortunately the best i can do is speculate. which sucks because i need to 100% know what's caused by what else in order to understand it and deal with it better

(blingee sparkle gif effects) Unfortunately Nothing Is Ever Certain With Comorbidity, Baby! Nor Is It Certain It Is Comorbidity To Begin With (This Is The Impostorism Talking)

on one hand, learning frog anatomy by poking its ass & getting to know myself better to deal with it. cool, i guess. on the other.

god. why.

#im the loadbearer of frog shit #alright mrs. i lay on the floor 5-30 min after full-time school obligations because I Am Too Tired To Do Anything Else #alright mrs. i wanna learn piano. gets a piano and then doesn't out of anxiety of other people around #alright mrs. i wanna do x y z & the entire alphabet. but you'll do it only when a certain time hits. or you're mentally somewhere else.#and then you don't anyway. and then you wait and wait and then suddenly it's been over a decade?????#alright mrs. i always do my obligations and schoolwork Out Of Anxiety For Negative Consequences And Not Because I Like Anything #alright mrs. I Only Immediately Do Things That Are Obligations But I Hate Being Told What To Do And Having No Freedom Of Choice #alright mrs. I Have art WIPs for 6 Years Untouched. ''i should finish this'' annual revision. still doesn't do it #alright mrs. I Have Energy For Fucking Nothing And Am Stressed 24/7 When Committing To Anything I Don't Like Especially Full-Time #alright mrs. I Have More Free Time And I Still Don't Do Shit Except Engage With My Hobbies Sometimes Unless I Am Really Into It #alright mrs. Saving Up For Sims 4 Selling My Beloved LPS Collection & Then Not Playing It For Years #alright mrs. I Read Other People's Analogies Of Their Feelings And You Don't Understand Whatsoever Until You Put It In Your Own Words #alright mrs. I Want To Do Things But I Just Don't Because I Don't Know I Just Don't. EXHAUSTING. UTTERLY EXHAUSTING #alright mrs. I Wanted To Do My Flight Rising Shit Today But I Spend It On Late Breakfast. Shower. Hygiene. Browsing Reddit For Research For #uhm. i don't know How Many Hours but it's Hours Alright. and then it was dinner time. And Here We Are #fucking fuck ign violence everywhere hatred malice shooting eyelaser beams #sy.txt

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kabretoss · 3 months ago

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dinosaur kid in the 90s, never accused of being a tomboy and used to love dresses until I went 180 and rejected them when I realized they were compulsory Girl Formalwear

blissfully don't think about gender throughout most of my teens

straight because boyfriend? have a minor panic when said boyfriend comes out to me as bi. have a Homophobic Moment(tm) when I think about my boyfriend leaving me for a boy

promptly eat my words about a year later when I'm having a sleepover with my bestie at the time and the thought occurs, unbidden, "if she were down I'd have sex with her"

(never made a move on that one. though later I'll find out a couple of my Girl Crushes at the time were queer)

cautiously and tentatively start thinking of myself as bi

start discovering I enjoy wearing masculine fashion

the hammer comes down hard on that one from my mom

for the next 10+ years I dress almost exclusively in baggy pants and hoodies. i am still undoing this damage.

BUT: the next time I end up with a Bestie Crush, I make a move and it goes well (hi @cherrehc!) (I end up marrying her. like 15 years later) (we like to take our time with things)

20s are an occasional sexuality buffet (with Cherry's thumbs-up) and I confirm that yes I do enjoy sex, and yes I do enjoy it with multiple genders

still not thinking about gender: am aware by this age of Transgender People and am cool with them but I've never felt like a boy so that's not what I am, right?

(Even if, when puberty really took hold, I felt completely alienated from my secondary sex characteristics? that's normal, feeling like your body isn't yours but is a barbie's, right? I'm hot and I like being hot, so I'm a cis girl, right??? people like my tits and I like that so I must be a cis girl, right????)

at the same time find myself playing nonbinary characters in RP situations before they are in vogue in the wider community.

(reading some of my old RP logs is wild. it is all RIGHT. THERE. in text from when I was 20 and had never heard the word nonbinary.)

(I have avoided RPing men up until about this point because "I don't know how to play a guy". women are already strange to me: men must be aliens.)

(then a particular character occurs and something clicks.)

fast forward to my early thirties. one of my best college friends is on T, has been calling himself a male name for years, and comes out first as nonbinary and then as a man.

wait.

if I'm not a girl I don't have to be a boy? I don't have to be a boy to not be a girl? well that's closer, but what does that leave me?

I hear the word agender.

grief.

the loss of so much time. looking back on this timeline of events and feeling the most profound sense of something gained, late, not too late but still so late. It's never too late to know yourself, but you lose time. You lose the ability to experience parts of your life, ones you can never relive, as your genuine self. In my case, I also may have lost the window in which I can safely medically transition, as other health issues have cropped up since I was young.

I will never get to be a young nonbinary person: I never was, because I was never allowed to imagine myself that was.

I was a "girl". I was an alienated, lonely girl, who didn't understand why she felt, even when invited, that female spaces were wrong and strange. There are other reasons for that too, but I think a huge part is gender. I was invited repeatedly into the world of the feminine by good women in my life, but I never went there. I didn't feel the pull of it, even when I wanted the friendship and companionship that seemed to live there.

I lived in limbo. I felt like -- not a gender failure, but a kind of nothing. An empty space. a void. I didn't have something missing, I was something missing.

it's a big grief. It's ameliorated by getting to see young people living as the people they are, watching others grow up with the self-knowledge I was never allowed to come to.

I don't know where all the agender people my age are: odds are good that attrition bore them into silence or suicide, or that life has not yet introduced the opportunity for them to learn better than how they were raised, or they're (like me) just so very fucking tired and unable to build community themselves. I know a few of y'all here fall into that category and I'm quietly collectively rooting for us, here; I know one or two others from my union and animation work.

But it brings me so much joy to see younger queer communities embracing gender diversity. Treasure it. It may still be an uphill struggle, and newly dangerous in a different way to be visible, but at least you're not lost alone and blind in the dark woods thinking that sight is a myth: you have each other, and you know what you are.

LGBTQ+ folk what was your gender/sexuality pipeline?

#k talks #grief #gender #sexuality #this is such an insanely hard thing to explain to my younger friends #I don't think it's entirely possible to communicate the weird empty barrenness of decades lived as something you're not #you have to have experienced it to understand how self-neutralizing it is #how erosive to how many things in your soul #and in a way I don't want to #let the pain of it fade to textbooks and words written by older queers (I'm not an *old* queer yet just not young anymore)#the young people have so many struggles of their own to contend with #it is a blessing to see a pain slowly begin to leave the world #this whole thing is part of why *butch* is something I'm doing a lot of reading into the history of right now #I think we're hiding in the pages of old queer anthologies #under older names #because we've always been here

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sufficientlylargen · 6 months ago

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It always gets me that the name "Gandalf" literally just means "Wand-Elf" or "Stick-Elf". I'm imagining old Gondorians just being like:

Librarian: I saw that weird guy at the library again today.

Guard 1: What weird guy?

Librarian: The old guy with the beard? Kinda elfy-looking, apart from the beard?

Guard 1: Oh, with the big-ass stick?

Librarian: Yeah, looked like he was carrying an entire tree branch.

Guard 2: Yeah, that's the Stick Elf.

Guard 1: Hell yeah, I fuckin' love the Stick Elf.

Librarian: The "Stick Elf"?

Guard 2: He comes by every few years, usually after some weird book or other.

Librarian: Oh. Yeah, he wanted a treatise on goblin breeding habits.

Guard 2: Like, how they have sex? We have books on that?

Librarian: Yeah, turns out we do. I was as surprised as you are.

Guard 1: What'd the Stick Elf need a fuckin' goblin-fuckin' book for?

Librarian: I didn't ask. So you just call him "Stick Elf"?

Guard 2: I mean, he looks kinda elfy and he always has that stick, so, like, yeah.

Guard 1: Dude also has some fuckin' dope pipeweed.

Guard 2: Oh yeah, his pipeweed is awesome.

Librarian: How long has he been coming here?

Guard 2: Oh, for decades. He's, like, super old.

Guard 1: More like fuckin' centuries. Dude's old as balls.

Guard 2: Wait, really?

Guard 1: Yeah, my gran-gran used to talk about him. She loved his pipeweed too.

Librarian: So he's… an immortal pipeweed dealer?

Guard 2: I think he's just, like, a connoisseur. He doesn't sell it or anything. He just always has some really top-notch pipeweed on him.

Archivist: Oh, are we talking about Stick Elf?

Guard 1: Hell yeah we are!

Librarian: You know about the Stick Elf, too?

Archivist: Oh, totally. Stick-Elf's a super chill dude. Gave me some awesome pipeweed when I was maybe 12, and tee-bee-aitch I think I'm still a little buzzed from it.

Guard 1: What'd I tell ya, fuckin' dope pipeweed!

Archivist: Also he's really old.

Guard 1: Old as balls.

Librarian: Yeah, so Éodan and Jenniforomir were telling me.

Archivist: My grandpa used to tell me stories - he said one time he saw Stick Elf enter a smoke-ring contest.

Guard 1: Ooh, I'll bet he kicked fuckin' ass.

Archivist: Apparently the guy made an entire warship out of smoke and it flew around shooting down the other rings.

Librarian: And how much of this "fuckin' dope" pipeweed had your grandfather had by this point?

Guard 1: No no, that's totally plausible. Dude's got weird elf powers and shit for sure.

Archivist: He brought fireworks for the king's birthday one year, too.

Guard 1: Oh fuck, I forgot about those! Fuckin' incredible fireworks! Dragons and knights and glowy trees and shit! I was fuckin' 6 years old or something, they totally blew my mind. Hey Éodan, did you see that shit?

Guard 2: No, I think that's before I lived in Gondor.

Guard 1: Wait, you're not from here?

Guard 2: Oh, no, I grew up in Rohan. We moved here when I was, like, thirteen because my uncle Éojeff said he could get my dad a sweet job. And also that there were houses that didn't smell like horseshit.

Guard 1: Oh shit, are you related to Éojeff and Éosteve who run that æbleskiver stand on Norndîl St?

Guard 2: Yeah, they're my uncles!

Guard 1: Shit, they cook a fuckin' great æbleskiver!

Librarian: Ok, hold up a sec, "Stick Elf" can't possibly be his real name.

Guard 1: Why not?

Librarian: What? You think his parents named him in the hopes that he would carry around a fucking tree when he got older?

Guard 2: Maybe they gave him the tree when he was born!

Archivist: I don't think a baby could carry that stick.

Guard 1: You ever seen a baby hanging onto something? They're hella strong.

Archivist: It's not a strength thing, their hands are tiny. That staff is enormous!

Guard 1: My halberd's bigger 'n I am, I can hold it just fine.

Archivist: You're not a baby.

Librarian: Also why would elf parents name their kid "stick ELF"?! Presumably they know that their kid's going to be an elf!

Archivist: Is he actually an elf? I didn't think they grew beards.

Guard 1: How'd he get old as balls if he's not an elf?

Guard 2: His ears aren't that pointy. Maybe he's just a really old guy? Like, a Numémoriam or something?

Guard 1: Did you just say "Numémoriam"?

Guard 2: Nûnenorman? Munimõrbitan? Y'know, those guys like the king that can get super old.

Guard 1: You mean the fuckin' Númenóreans?

Guard 2: Yeah, the Númenóreums.

Archivist: Even the Númenóreans don't live THAT long.

Guard 1: Plus he carries that fuckin' stick around.

Guard 2: Wait, what does the stick have to do with it?

Guard 1: That's an elf thing. Y'know, trees and shit? Very elfy.

Librarian: Ok, look, but his parents naming him "Stick Elf" would be weird whether or not he's an elf. In fact, it's even weirder if he's not - what human names their kid "elf"?

Archivist: Huh. Yeah, you're right, he probably does have another name.

Guard 2: Yeah, I guess so.

Librarian: He's been coming here for decades and nobody's ever asked his real name?

Archivist: I dunno what to tell you, he's Stick Elf. Even his library card just says 'Stick Elf'.

Guard 1: Fuck yeah, the Stick Elf!

Guard 2: Maybe we could, like, ask him his name sometime?

Guard 1: Hey, look, Elrond's over there. He's old as balls too, maybe he knows?

Guard 2: Oh, we shouldn't interru-

Guard 1: HEY ELROND, YOU'RE OLD AS BALLS, RIGHT? WHAT'S THAT OLD ELF WITH THE STICK'S NAME?

Elrond (coming over): Do you mean an old man cloaked all in grey and blue, leaning on a rough-cut staff, who came to the great library this day?

Guard 1: Yeah, the Stick-Elf!

Guard 2: (Sorry to bother you, sir...)

Librarian: He's got to have a real name besides 'the Stick Elf', right?

Elrond: Indeed, for no elf is he. You speak of the wizard Olórin, wisest of the Maiar, older even than Eä itself. Many are his names in many countries: Tharkûn among the Dwarves; Incánus to the south; Mithrandir he is called among my people, the Grey Pilgrim.

Librarian: Oh.

Elrond: And here in the North he is called Stick-Elf.

Librarian: Oh.

Guard 1: Fuck yeah!

#fun fact: the Khuzdul name Tharkûn means 'staff-man'#so the Dwarves also call him 'the stick guy'#on the naming of things #sufficiently verbose prose #that's what I'm Tolkien about

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mcmansionhell · 11 months ago

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we've found it folks: mcmansion heaven

Hello everyone. It is my pleasure to bring you the greatest house I have ever seen. The house of a true visionary. A real ad-hocist. A genuine pioneer of fenestration. This house is in Alabama. It was built in 1980 and costs around $5 million. It is worth every penny. Perhaps more.

Now, I know what you're thinking: "Come on, Kate, that's a little kooky, but certainly it's not McMansion Heaven. This is very much a house in the earthly realm. Purgatory. McMansion Purgatory." Well, let me now play Beatrice to your Dante, young Pilgrim. Welcome. Welcome, welcome, welcome.

It is rare to find a house that has everything. A house that wills itself into Postmodernism yet remains unable to let go of the kookiest moments of the prior zeitgeist, the Bruce Goffs and Earthships, the commune houses built from car windshields, the seventies moments of psychedelic hippie fracture. It is everything. It has everything. It is theme park, it is High Tech. It is Renaissance (in the San Antonio Riverwalk sense of the word.) It is medieval. It is maybe the greatest pastiche to sucker itself to the side of a mountain, perilously overlooking a large body of water. Look at it. Just look.

The inside is white. This makes it dreamlike, almost benevolent. It is bright because this is McMansion Heaven and Gray is for McMansion Hell. There is an overbearing sheen of 80s optimism. In this house, the credit default swap has not yet been invented, but could be.

It takes a lot for me to drop the cocaine word because I think it's a cheap joke. But there's something about this example that makes it plausible, not in a derogatory way, but in a liberatory one, a sensuous one. Someone created this house to have a particular experience, a particular feeling. It possesses an element of true fantasy, the thematic. Its rooms are not meant to be one cohesive composition, but rather a series of scenes, of vastly different spatial moments, compressed, expanded, bright, close.

And then there's this kitchen for some reason. Or so you think. Everything the interior design tries to hide, namely how unceasingly peculiar the house is, it is not entirely able to because the choices made here remain decadent, indulgent, albeit in a more familiar way.

Rare is it to discover an interior wherein one truly must wear sunglasses. The environment created in service to transparency has to somewhat prevent the elements from penetrating too deep while retaining their desirable qualities. I don't think an architect designed this house. An architect would have had access to specifically engineered products for this purpose. Whoever built this house had certain access to architectural catalogues but not those used in the highest end or most structurally complex projects. The customization here lies in the assemblage of materials and in doing so stretches them to the height of their imaginative capacity. To borrow from Charles Jencks, ad-hoc is a perfect description. It is an architecture of availability and of adventure.

A small interlude. We are outside. There is no rear exterior view of this house because it would be impossible to get one from the scrawny lawn that lies at its depths. This space is intended to serve the same purpose, which is to look upon the house itself as much as gaze from the house to the world beyond.

Living in a city, I often think about exhibitionism. Living in a city is inherently exhibitionist. A house is a permeable visible surface; it is entirely possible that someone will catch a glimpse of me they're not supposed to when I rush to the living room in only a t-shirt to turn out the light before bed. But this is a space that is only exhibitionist in the sense that it is an architecture of exposure, and yet this exposure would not be possible without the protection of the site, of the distance from every other pair of eyes. In this respect, a double freedom is secured. The window intimates the potential of seeing. But no one sees.

At the heart of this house lies a strange mix of concepts. Postmodern classicist columns of the Disney World set. The unpolished edge of the vernacular. There is also an organicist bent to the whole thing, something more Goff than Gaudí, and here we see some of the house's most organic forms, the monolith- or shell-like vanity mixed with the luminous artifice of mirrors and white. A backlit cave, primitive and performative at the same time, which is, in essence, the dialectic of the luxury bathroom.

And yet our McMansion Heaven is still a McMansion. It is still an accumulation of deliberate signifiers of wealth, very much a construction with the secondary purpose of invoking envy, a palatial residence designed without much cohesion. The presence of golf, of wood, of masculine and patriarchal symbolism with an undercurrent of luxury drives that point home. The McMansion can aspire to an art form, but there are still many levels to ascend before one gets to where God's sitting.

If you like this post and want more like it, support McMansion Hell on Patreon for as little as $1/month for access to great bonus content including a discord server, extra posts, and livestreams.

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#architecture #design #mcmansion #mcmansions #ugly houses #interior design #bad architecture

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