#i am also EXTREMELY obsessed with how its a time loop and the idea (so sorry tumblr user whose post i have lost and was inspired by) | Explore Tumblr posts and blogs

sepublic · 3 years ago

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Elsewhere and Elsewhen!

…

PHILIP IS BELOS PHILIP IS BELOS PHILIP IS BELOS-

Why am I gasping?! I already knew that!

Seriously though… Confirmation that Philip was ALWAYS like that and a messed-up narrator! He happily ‘sacrificed’ Blue Fang (AKA used him as a distraction/guinea pig) and then wrote himself as some poor sad hero, NO WONDER Belos left the diary there! He wanted to make his past self LOOK good!

Also obsessed with the idea that Belos holds a grudge against Lilith because she broke his nose… And even after CENTURIES of dark magic, his nose is STILL broken! Bruh I fucking yelled for Lilith, GOOD FOR HER SHE PUNCHED HER ABUSER! Because let’s be real even if Belos didn’t recognize her as ‘Dirtrude’ he’d still treat her like he did Kikimora. The world is healing.

BUT YEAH, Belos is confirmed to have gotten messed up because he carved glyphs into his body?! MY THEORY WAS RIGHT, Belos drew glyphs on his body and siphoned magic from himself, because he was JEALOUS of witches and their bile sacs, and refused to consider that he could just use glyphs! He was a puritan, a white colonizer after all… A part of it COULD be chalked up to his background and how witches prefer bile sacs, but it seems a lot of this really is this bastard’s fault.

Also there’s an allusion to his brother, who is gone; May or may not have been ‘sacrificed’ at Eclipse Lake. Either way, I’m starting to think Belos doesn’t actually care for Hunter… Or it will turn out that even after all of this, HE STILL DOES. Which, the show foreshadows that Belos was working on the Day of Unity from the start, as Philip; And that he had to wait CENTURIES for the stars to align, hence why he didn’t act sooner! Just as I guessed… Also we know the Collector is a HE, and that he lives in the Titan’s skull?!

Lilith said the skull was ‘sacred ground’, but how do we know Belos didn’t essentially trap the Collector in his own fortress, for when he can finally seize his power in the Day of Unity?! The Collector must also be known as such because he can collect things from the ages and even other worlds… Speaking of which, we saw the Stonesleeper! We’ve seen Hunter unconscious and he didn’t petrify, but uh… I have to wonder if its self-petrification has any connection to how Belos petrifies witches?! Also the Hecktaceous Era, nice; Some look at the corpse of the Titan when it was still warm and volcanic! Makes me wonder if this will connect to King’s island and his people, if they’re evolved from Stonesleepers…! Luz, give King a scratch behind his ear(?), see how he reacts!

Also, as others guessed; THIS is what Belos meant when he said he can’t wait to meet Luz! He remembers how he met her for the first time… And he doesn’t want to break the time continuum because it’s a stable loop! But now that Luz has already done her part in her past, she’s infinitely less necessary… Obviously Belos still spares her because he doesn’t want bad publicity, but he no longer has to worry about preserving time. Which, I like how the show handled it, by making time portals extremely arbitrary and outright invisible, and difficult to detect without a special scanner; Explains why there aren’t more incidents! And it’s the result of coagulated Titan’s blood, so that stuff clearly has Space-Time properties.

But yeah Philip stole a LOT of Palismen, and he’s also following up on that cave monster imagery I brought up since Season 1! What if the Collector cursed Philip with a mud monster, as retaliation and an attempt to humble him… But Philip refused to learn his lesson? That seems to be what the show is going for; Some Beauty and the Beast where he was attempted to be humbled. Or he opened one of the Collector’s scrolls trying to seize its power, and accidentally did it to himself; Freaking white man!

LILITH! I love how Lilith has healed enough that she can pick up on Philip’s red flags as just that, as something that’s not super-great… And just THE FACT that she recognizes him but doesn’t know it?! Also turns out Flora D’esplora DOES show up, and she uh… Has interesting vibes… But yeah, given her triangle, I have to suspect Belos deliberately sent Flora to make Lilith feel insecure again and regress, under the hopes of luring her back to his side for approval; Or at least setting up Lilith to do so, if he ever needs her. And/or he’s still salty. What a bitch.

I… Honestly feel so bad for Lilith that she was haunted and mistreated over this fact. You think Belos recognized her as a kid?! You think there was a moment when it dawned on him!? You think him forcing Lilith to do menial tasks was a reflection of his hatred of her?! THAT FUCKER… He ruined and tore down a woman’s mental health out of saltiness, and she only punched him because of what HE did to Luz and Lilith! Also Luz calling Lilith a cool aunt UNIRONICALLY, indulging in balusters with her! CALLING HER AUNTIE LILITH-

(Also Luz just embracing being a Crab Maiden. There’s that creepy weird kid energy I love her.)

We got to see Lilith’s palisman animated, but not get its name! Guess we really gotta go for Artemisia for now… And Dell! DELL, poor Dell; The Owl Beast didn’t just take out his left eye, it ravaged his entire left side and disabled it, ruining his career! No wonder Eda feels so much guilt… And it must’ve been BAD if even after all these years, healing magic can’t fix it! But his palisman… And Dell giving Eda some CLOSURE, an old man telling his kid to move on and plant seeds for the future, something she’s done for Luz; The palistrom seed, working with the Bat Queen, who still owes Eda a favor but lbr she’d do it even if there wasn’t a favor owed!

Just… The THEMES, moving on from the past, being haunted by it; Belos is haunted by it AND his future! While Eda actually moves on and forgives herself… GOD I love this show, this is like Separate Tides where the A and B plot’s themes so impeccably fit together! Also, Steve; Steve is here and while I bet he’s passing it off as keeping an eye on Lilith and the gang to keep them from causing trouble, pretty sure he just admires Lily. Hope he doesn’t simp tho, she’s aro; But given how he’s gonna appear again, his attraction to Lilith might come up, which might invoke Lilith revealing that she’s aro in the show!

Just… WHAT an episode! Philip having a beard was clearly a stylistic choice to obscure his features, but now it’s undeniable and I certainly wasn’t fooled! Guess he’s not a blonde, his hair is just a REALLY bleached brown, as someone guessed earlier; Because of the curse and all! Even so his hair isn’t even WHITE, which just goes to show how Belos has kept himself alive at a cost… Also poor Red and Green Fang, they were totally right to hate that colonizer. Can’t blame Luz for reading the situation wrong, she’s so empathetic… Also, I have to wonder if even after everything, Belos is still fond of her, or at least sees himself in her, hopes to convert Luz?

Also… Philip saying it’s like the land DIDN’T want him to discover magic. What if the Collector is the Titan’s consciousness, or its son? Regardless, we basically have proof that THE TITAN HATES BELOS, and almost out of a petty revenge and necessity, he’s twisting its words around! He’s essentially held its heart hostage, likely; Preventing the Titan from lashing out and punishing him, because Belos is nuts enough to take it down with him if necessary! Meanwhile the Titan loves Luz, or at least isn’t trying to HIDE anything from her… Which kinda confirms that it shows glyphs to people who really want and need to look for them, for their own sake!

I feel bad for Philip’s brother… Who might still be a Clawthorne ancestor, we don’t know! Also yeah, confirmation that Philip really did cut up his ears, what the hell. I’m not surprised but also I am; Why am I gasping, I already knew that? Also Philip’s bruise was more a BRUISE, but with how red it looked… We getting some blood in this show? Either way, LEGENDARY episode, impeccable themes, and the humor is top-notch! Thank you TOH crew.

#the owl house #emperor belos #philip wittebane #lilith clawthorne #flora d'esplora #luz noceda #dell clawthorne #edalyn clawthorne #the owl house collector #speculation #analysis #eda clawthorne

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persephoneyss · 4 years ago

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Fool.

Pairing: jeon jungkook x f!reader.

Genre: Yandere, dark themes, heartbreak, office au.

Summary: ❝The fool is one who rests dreaming of doing things beyond his reach, instead of making it come true, pathetic.❞

Warnings: Yandere behavior, obsession, stalking / harassment, quite a bit of voyeurism, implicit murder, naming of non-consensual sex, forced pregnancy, somnophilia, jk drug a reader, extremely complicated relationships, sexual tension between mxm characters, naming of homosexual relations mxm.

Number of words: 5000+

︙ Author's note: My second fic here, thank you very much for all the support you gave to the first one. Enjoy!

(Sorry for any mistakes, my first language is not English and I am not fluent either.)

Puedes leer este fic y más aquí en español.

They say, out there, that monotony is boring.

What everyone vaguely forgot, is that we live in it. It is an endless loop between what we do, and what we want.

So, nobody wanted to change it.

Jungkook lived in a routine. He liked his personal independence and, likewise, he never changed anything in his life. He was a man of habit, worthy of admiration and imitation. But he never considered himself capable of guiding someone as his own person, he just seemed boring to him.

Perhaps his complexity of seeing things in different ways was what made him such a genius.

People who break with the custom or the conventional can be called differently in the eyes of everyone, crazy or genius. Jungkook considered himself to be in the middle of both terms. He was madly in love with his genius.

But nobody said that love was for everyone, Jungkook was also in love with another person that he considered that he was worthy of his love, the obsessive and sick, misunderstood love of him.

Jungkook was a genius, but he never wanted money wasting his time on useless things like building an empire and being a millionaire. He looked at other directions in life. His salary was minimal, he worked hard under Kim Taehyung's whip. His boss was successful, just as he has imagined since he saw him go by one fall day.

He couldn't remember the date, but he knew it was fall. The cool breeze was a seal of love.

The clumsy little Jungkook, always with his head down looking for a chance at life. When he could have anything he wanted with his inner genius. The porcelain cup swayed in his hand, watching people rush past, just as he thought it would, everyone had their own business in this time of change. Taehyung really fell from the sky like an angel, or that's what he wanted to remember the day he watched him pass a coffee shop with his phone in hand ordering a cold American coffee even though the wind was blowing strongly in the streets. Jungkook watched him fervently, he was enigmatic and undoubtedly managed to get his attention almost immediately. His tall, firm figure made her want to clench her thighs.

His father always told her that pleasure was fun on unfortunate occasions.

Perhaps because of that, he took enormous pleasure in seeing Taehyung walking close to him.

He felt, in a disgusting way, good about himself. It was as if just by looking at his face and his dark eyes, he would manage to make her cum on his pants. Jungkook searched for him for days, until in an insignificant magazine, which he found by chance, he read about one of the most sought-after businessmen in the nation. Much money, and above all an elegant demeanor. They were the perfect combination to create someone like Kim Taehyung, however, Jungkook missed everything when he saw a photo of his beloved unknown to him.

It was a matter of time. He now named himself to be an excellent worker, always by Taehyung's side wherever he went, he felt euphoric just hearing him say his name with his voice so silent. His personal secretary was jealous of him, she even insulted him for a simple smile that young Jeon showed her. She obviously was fired from her, she being replaced by Mrs. Jang who was an older woman, married with two children.

However, no one ever noticed or simply turned a deaf ear to Jungkook's constant provocations towards the former secretary, just as her mocking smiles seemed to be ignored by conveniently blind eyes.

Jungkook was a man who knew how to play. He loved being the mouse for Taehyung, getting caught up in his whims. But he loved even more being the cat marrying the prey.

And just when he could already feel himself on top of the iceberg, almost close to touching his beloved boss. You arrived. You were an intern, nothing special considering that thousands came every year and you didn't have a permanent position unless you did your job well. Jungkook didn't even notice your presence, not for a year. Mrs. Jang sick from one day to the next, Taehyung had a considerable appreciation for her so she did not take away his job. Only covered it with a temporary vacation.

Jungkook was used to walking into his boss's office being greeted by the harsh but sweet voice of the older woman. But his steps seemed to stop in automatic mode when he heard your voice, it was sweet after sweet. His gaze fell quickly on your figure, you were ethereal, with a hint of mischief that he noticed, questioning if your perfect form was normal to see in a person.

And ironically, he proclaimed you a beautiful and heavenly Angel.

His heart pounded when you seemed to notice his presence, your eyes fell on his face in confusion. Jungkook bit his lip, his breath caught and unconsciously, he clenched his thighs to cover his growing erection. He thought he looked ridiculous standing in front of you without saying anything.

He felt strangely pathetic next to you.

"Who are you? Where is Mrs. Jang?" He asked defensively, surprising your innocent figure. But you never let your guard down.

"I'm sorry, but I'm only a substitute until Mrs. Jang manages to recover. Can I help you with something?"

Jungkook frowned, but only managed to nod with no idea what to do. He took a few steps back, realizing that he had invaded your personal space and cornered you between him and your desk. Anyone who saw them would think that they were close and even that they were having a lovers' quarrel.

I didn't want that. Taehyung was close to being his.

Jungkook looked at you with disdain, you were like a viper trying to tempt his masculine weakness.

But I am not unaware of the fact that I could smell your perfume of roses and vanilla. He was offended that Taehyung will not tell him that he is against someone young again. For a moment he feared that you would steal his position as his boss's right hand man, but that would be ridiculous. Thought. Taehyung was happy by his side, he appreciates him like a ... Little brother. He was trusted.

Nobody said Lucifer couldn't be a woman ...

The next few days weren't any better. Jungkook had his eyes glued to you at all times, counting the minutes when Taehyung called you at his office. How long will it take to leave from your entrance. And when it seemed like too long, he knocked on the door pretending to bring some important documents to sign. I could see you, when you were near your boss you had your head lowered. You were a submissive to him.

Jungkook felt envious, and far beyond, in a reprehensible jealousy of Taehyung. You never lowered your head when he came to greet you every day, nor when he ordered you to bring him a coffee and even less when he tried to embarrass you in front of the other people in the office.

But without a doubt, Jungkook came to hate you more than anyone in his monotonous life. You were a thief to him, you did your job so flawlessly that Taehyung had no choice but to give you the job of secretary. Your secretary. A smile was what adorned your lips every day, Jungkook cursed you a million different times.

You were a competition on their way to the heart of your beloved and perfect boss.

Nothing really changed after your acceptance as a secretary. Jungkook was cruelly trying to ignore you, but you never said anything to him or gave him a sign that he will affect you. Maybe deep down, I expected to see you destroyed by her rejection. Possibly, he thought ironically that he would seek him out asking forgiveness for any mistake you have made for such contempt, seeking to be to his liking again. However, nothing changed for you, you greet him politely, always with that charming look and smile of yours. Just like every day.

Then Jungkook did what seemed the least complicated to him.

He slowly gave up, walking straight to your table to start a conversation every morning, this time, ignoring calls from his boss needing him.

Taehyung was perfect. He put it on a pedestal, admiring its beauty every day as if it were a God.

But with you it was different. You weren't a Goddess to him, that would be stupid. For Jungkook to have you by his side, it was like giving him the privilege of being born again. You were more than his love, you were his life.

Jungkook lived for you. I existed to watch you, love you, make you happy. In its twisted and sick reality, everything you did revolved around his discretion. For he should always have been like that. Taehyung was nothing more than a cruel and beautiful distraction that fate put on him, proving his loyalty to you. Unfortunately he fell into it. His heart felt heavy in his chest, thinking of how long you must have been waiting for him. You must have been alone all that time.

Jungkook cried for you.

"Good morning, Jungkook-ah" Your voice, again.

His gaze was lost on your face. You were the most beautiful thing he had seen in his miserable years of life. He wondered if you, too, could feel his appreciation for you, or could you hear his rampant heartbeat.

Almost unconsciously, like the first time he clenched his thighs biting his lips to avoid being tempted to look past your fragile face. He had never been able to look at your body in a dirty way, but he did not deny wanting to do so. So he did it. His eyes inspected all of you, drinking in your sensuality as if you were a glass of water in front of him. Under your neck that was proud, you had a small necklace with your name written on it hanging and shining beautifully. Your collarbones rose beautifully, Jungkook felt an unreadable desire to want to bite the soft flesh of your neck leaving its marks on it as a sign that you were his. Only from him. Your white shirt was buttoned making a pout to form on her face, I wanted to see what color bra you were wearing that day. Maybe you were wearing something sexier under that stupid uniform, I guess you were ready for him, with some hidden lingerie, tempting him to take you to a bathroom in the building and fuck you foolishly while saying you were his over and over again.

"Are you feeling okay Jungkook-ah?" His gaze followed your body, which rose from your seat to approach him. For a moment he thought he could see your thighs protrude from the black fabric of your skirt that clung exquisitely to your body. His mind created thousands of scenarios where he would remove that garment to make you feel good, hitting you with his cock mercilessly.

Maybe I would let you touch it under the table at employee meetings that were held every week, if you let it mark your entire body with bites and bruises.

"You seem distressed, let me see if you have a fever." You say, without even realizing how his eyes are resting solely on your lips that he was dying to kiss and bite at will.

Jungkook knew that if he touched it, it would be the end. His cock stood up proudly creating a tent in his pants, he was grateful that you were so clueless that you never noticed that small but big problem. His eyes squeezed shut and his hand squeezed his crotch, he hunched over so you wouldn't notice he was coming into his pants with your gentle, harmless touch.

"I'm so sorry! Did I hurt you?" You asked again, even more concerned than before.

Jungkook smiled, trying to breathe normally again. Really naive.

He made fun of you, he liked to play pretend to be the mouse just like with Taehyung. In front of you, he was a sweet and gentle man.

It was fun trying to keep his intentions true, but clearly this was starting to get tedious.

A week had passed since the incident, that day he had to ask permission pretending to be sick in order to go home.

You had been worried about his condition, thinking that you could have helped him. That same night, you called his phone wishing him well soon and apologizing once again.

You were never smart enough to notice that Jungkook had his hand inside his pants touching hard just hearing your soft voice saying how sorry you were, you sounded so weak and vulnerable to him. He dreamed of hearing you again, this time begging for him to make you cum on him a thousand times, he knew you would be perfect for his big cock. Taking him like a big girl, like her perfect little one.

Jungkook was a greedy person. Below being a caring and kind man, he was selfish with his desires. He got bored seeing you for so little time during the day, it seemed as if you ran away from him when you left the large company building. Perhaps it was his greed that led him and condemned you to follow you every day, treading closely in your footsteps.

You lived in a small apartment complex, your house had one bedroom and one bathroom. Jungkook thought it was essential for you, you earned almost the same as him and you were certainly a practical person. Making him fall in love with you even more, he felt identified in a funny way. Ironic. When your figure was lost inside your apartment he felt furious, he could not help feeling angry for not being able to see more of you.

But his eyes noticed almost immediately that your apartment had a window, one that just faced another in front of the neighboring building. An enormous satisfaction invaded him. He collected as much money as he could, managing to raise two months of rent for the apartment in front of yours. That would be enough until he would bring you to his feet, and then he would move in with you living together as a normal couple. The man who owns the building was surprised by the persistent attitude of the young man in renting a specific apartment. But he quickly forgot about it when he saw the money in his hand.

"I hope you are not bothered by the noises, the walls are thin and there could be problems with that." The owner babbled, explaining and talking about things that honestly didn't matter to him as long as he could be around you.

Jungkook watched your apartment from the window, the window looked directly into your room. He felt a smile grow on his face, he could see your perfectly arranged bed and the products on your dressing table. Mentally he wrote down all the marks, he had become obsessed with your smell. Wanting to imitate everything about you as much as possible, he even followed you to the mall to see where you always bought your clothes. He began to wear the same brand of clothing, the same style and in the same way, your personal things. Like your skincare products, even your lipstick.

Their love had now turned into a sinister game of catching the helpless mouse. He followed you day and night, it was only a matter of time before you were at his feet begging not to be eaten by the evil cat.

You never liked the night blanket, you felt that the worst things could happen in the dark of one night. Your steps were hurried, you constantly felt a presence following your weak form knowing that you would do nothing to stop it. You were not capable. You only got to feel calm and let out a sigh when you got to your little house, it was cozy for just one person. You liked it, it had a unique charm. Your shoes fell to the ground, as did your coat and bag. You were exhausted, Taehyung was not the best boss. He seemed to have an obsession with making you run around for coffee or a simple napkin.

Secretly, it was obnoxious.

"You're here, little one ..." a voice whispered, watching you from a camera lens.

I had bought a whole spy gear, between cameras, lenses and more just to see you, possibly to take some photos as a souvenir as well. Jungkook smiled, biting his lip impatiently. He had arrived at his department at the same time as you, but his work was not finished yet, not until you lay on your bed turning off the light and preventing him from seeing you any longer. "Good girl." His eyes never left your figure, the first garment fell to the ground.

You had a habit of going straight to the bathroom to relax for a few minutes after a tiring day. You were not yet aware that dark brown eyes were watching you from afar. Jungkook had adorable eyes according to many, they were like those of a defenseless and tender deer, but they would surely change their opinion if they knew what he does and sees with them.

"_____..." Your name left his lips in a moan, his face heated feeling his cock grow slowly at the sight of your naked body so exciting, you walked to the bathroom, losing his sight. But his imagination did the rest.

He sat in front of his camera, pulling down his pants along with his boxer shorts releasing his cock that rose proudly, crashing against his stomach. The presemen came out of his reddened tip, he moved his hand using it as a lubricant to be able to touch himself, imagining that you were looking at him too, calling him and begging him to come to your house to be able to fuck you in your bed. Your neighbors probably wouldn't like the noise. But I would still screw you so they can hear who made you feel good. Who you belonged to.

Just those thoughts was enough for him to come all over his hand, staining his stomach and part of the ground. His chest rose and fell with a laugh. It sure was pathetic.

But now I felt like I had some kind of power over you. Maybe it was always like that, you were his from the day you greeted him for the first time. He refused to think that you could see him cheated on with his boss. It was ridiculous, you clearly loved him.

So, for Jungkook you were his lovers in body and soul.

He could and had the power to do whatever he wanted with you. Taehyung walked in front of him, but for the first time in two years he didn't feel happy or euphoric to see him, and less excited.

He also didn't feel different when he called him into his office.

"Sit down Mr. Jeon, I have some business to attend to with you."

He obeyed immediately, realizing that even he had a power over his weak form. No one was superior to the great Taehyung.

Ironically. He likes irony.

"Lately I was going through the files of my employees and noticed something very unique." He spoke fully focused on his speech, Jungkook felt uncomfortable under his dark and empty gaze. "You have been working here for more than two years without taking a vacation or leaving your position something very exceptional and admirable. Thank you very much for your commitment to us, Mr. Jeon."

A sigh left his lips, he wondered vaguely why his breathing seemed to fail thinking that they could fire him. That would be terribly chaotic, it could not be close to you if it were to be roofed by the company.

It was a relief for him and a condemnation for you.

"It really isn't important, Chief Kim. I will continue to do my job fervently and do my best." He responded with a smile and a bow, trying to get out as soon as possible. He wanted to see you and Taehyung was starting to make him more nervous than usual, he felt that characteristic feeling of having damn butterflies fluttering in his stomach.

He felt like vomiting.

"That seems incredible to me, I would like to celebrate your great achievements. You think if after work, I can buy you a... a drink." He offered remarkably animated.

Funny, he had never been interested in doing that even when Jungkook followed him around like a puppy seeking approval. Did change something now? "I think it would be fair."

Everyone fully says that Lucifer is a man, Eve was very tempted by the apple of sin ...

"I would be delighted, only if I can bring one more person. He is someone important to me, and I would like him to celebrate in the same way." Jungkook smiled, he was delighted.

Taehyung looked surprised, genuinely surprised. But still, he managed to maintain his composure. "Of course, it would be a pleasure to meet that special person to you. You can go now."

Jungkook nodded, giving another bow and walking patiently to the door.

Taehyung watched his figure get lost, he felt strangely curious. He had never seen Jungkook interested in anything other than his job. However, now he spoke of someone special in his life. He frowned, searching his desk for the keys to his drawer hidden from anyone.

It was a bit personal.

He opened it, taking out the only thing inside. A red letter, the envelope was charming and eye-catching. He remembered it just like that day, Jungkook kneeling on the floor of his office where silence reigned. I knew that little Jeon waited for everyone to leave so he could confess, he said nothing at all, his gaze on the ground and his hands held the letter in the air hoping that he would take it.

He never read it.

But he knew it was a confession of his unforgivable love, that Jungkook would think he could fire him for something so heinous. But it was never necessary, he never read the letter so there was never a mistake on anyone's part. But now he was curious.

Maybe jealousy, he wanted to have power over everyone within his company and if a puppet left his strings, it would be like losing power over everyone.

He was lost so much in his misery that he did not notice that you had entered without permission, you were in a hurry because he answered a call from an investor from China that you could not wait for him to answer.

"Mr. Kim, you have a call ..."

Business dinners were boring for you, you knew it was just a stupid look covering up a night in a restaurant where they met to drink as much alcohol as they could. Especially men, according to your criteria. You didn't feel comfortable being the third person on a date between a boss and an important employee. However, I politely accept Mr. Jeon's invitation.

You looked for the table, where dinner and a toast to all the achievements of the aforementioned was supposed to take place. It was one number in particular, table 69.

"Miss _____..." Jungkook was the first to get up from his place to say hello. Taehyung stayed still in his seat, not even looking up from his wine glass. "Have a seat please welcome."

You felt uncomfortable, again. You were the third wheel on a date of two, to say you were a hindrance was to be a joker. Your chair was closer to Jungkook, as if your boss wanted not to be near you by mistake.

"Do you want to order something? Some wine?" Jungkook seemed strangely nervous, as well as attentive to any of your movements.

As if he were afraid of something certainly improbable.

"A-water is fine, thanks." You whisper overwhelmed by so much attention from one person. His hands seemed to shake as he got up from his seat running to bring your precious order.

Taehyung looked at everything with skeptical eyes. He was an observer. His gaze fell on your clothes, you weren't necessarily wearing something revealing or provocative to have so much attention from his former platonic lovers. You were dressed in a black skirt, a honey colored blouse and a white scarf along with some black shoes. You looked comfortable with your clothes, but quite the opposite with the situation and the environment.

Jungkook was dumb. Very silly, he thought, reading your thoughts. You clearly weren't interested in him and still, he was struggling to get your approval as if you were better than Taehyung.

Did you even think about what you were so valuable?

Your name left his lips, drawing your attention right away. "Bored?" His question surprised you, perhaps he was more than observant.

"No, no ..." You reply nervously, waving your hands in the air to give yourself more credibility. "I just think I'm not the most appropriate person to take this place at this dinner. It's weird."

"I get it. You are nobody, just an employee trying to do your job ... not impressive, by the way." Your face was distorted, you were not the most correct person in a matter of manners but you were sure that that was completely offensive and rude. Your inner voice whispered for you to leave, it wasn't worth it. "You are free to go, I will tell Mr. Jeon that you felt bad and had an emergency."

Doubt grew within you. Right now you felt that everything that came out of his mouth was trying to attack you and hurt you in some way. You frowned, refusing to indulge in his game. To say that Taehyung was surprised was an understatement.

"I'm fine, but thank you Mr. Kim."

"Listen damned-..."

Jungkook returned to his place sitting next to you, Taehyung closed his mouth automatically fearing the worst of him. The glass of crystal clear water sat in front of you, it seemed as if it had searched for simple water for days when only a few minutes passed. He looked eager for you to bring him to your lips and drink from something brought by him.

It was terrifying.

Your hand refused to take the glass, your conscience screamed uncontrollably for you to drop it on the floor pretending to have an accident. It was a horribly euphoric feeling. When the water wet your tongue you felt dizzy, your nerves calmed down noticeably.

It was just water.

Jungkook kept smiling the entire dinner, talking about things you honestly didn't understand. It was as if he and Taehyung had a special language to speak to each other, one in which you weren't welcome.

"It feels good?" Your vision became blurry, you had drunk half a glass of wine but your head felt like a whirlpool. Strangely familiar. Your mouth suddenly felt dry, your breath failed and your eyes surrendered.

Jungkook screamed in horror when your body fell to the ground, Taehyung smugly watched as the people around you tried to get up scared by your state. He did not care much about me, nor did it affect him that Jungkook went with you to a hospital. He just sat there, finishing his glass of wine and his special dish. Curious eyes watched them intrigued.

A truly unique man.

Your head rested calmly on his shoulder, he finally smiled away from the pressure of the people in the restaurant. You seemed so peaceful with your steady breathing and calm rhythm, you were so close to him that he was afraid he couldn't wait until he got to his new home. The man who was driving observed in the rear-view mirror, they seemed like a very calm couple and it certainly created a chilling sensation as the young man sitting in his car touched your face as if he feared breaking you by accident. On cold nights like these, he preferred not to ask any questions of his clandestine and unknown clients, but he would always take that doubt about who he helped to escape his own problems.

The room specially chosen by him was decorated, every detail seemed to reflect your darkest tastes and those that everyone knew. It was beautifully scary like the books and pillow was a replica of what you always wanted. Jungkook was proud to have been able to get everything, his bank account was now just zeroes. He learned how useful money was if you saved enough, he hated people who used it without knowing or measuring what it might be worth later.

Your body fell on the giant bed, the sheets were soft and honey color like your blouse. Jungkook knew that you liked colors that will make you relax but you had no preference for one in particular. His curious eyes glowed in the dark, his hands daringly touched your body without fear of being rejected because you simply couldn't do it.

"You are mine, now." He whispered, his voice mingling with the silent screams of the night. The moon was shining hungrily illuminating the room, but not enough to impede what was impossible to stop. "Sleep, sleep a lot. I could wait for you forever."

His promises remained in the air and on deaf ears. With selfishness in his heart, he rose above you positioning himself above you allowing his face to fall on your neck where he sipped from your charming scent that tempted him to follow. Your legs were side by side on his hips, he brought his body closer to yours. He couldn't bear to go on pretending to be the good guy, he was the only one.

"Please do not leave me..."

His sobs were trapped between the four walls, he was sick. He begged for forgiveness. Mercy he did not deserve. I was hoping that you could see him again directly as always, with a smile and your soft voice wishing him a good morning.

His calm, gentle kisses turned desperate, angry, and somewhat cruel. Leaving exaggerated marks all over your body, I wish it long ago. However, he was never heard.

Now he had what he wanted.

He felt complete by your side. His parents loved him as if they depended on their love, but they were certainly false in his head. Jungkook happily recalled how they prevented him from using his own money, how they seemed to put walls in front of him to prevent him from going to live alone, and how they rejected that he was in love with someone of the same gender.

His father called it disgusting and a shame, his mother was silent crying in his hands covering her grief.

Their bodies were never discovered. The police felt useless in front of their eyes, they apologized for their incompetence. They had fallen off a bridge where they always went to pray, where Jungkook knew they were asking for forgiveness and then committing the same sins again.

He planned his move cunningly, moving his pieces one by one.

He amused himself like a child killing a pawn of his competition.

He made an account of his crimes, his parents, Taehyung's best friend who was the harmless Park Jimin, his boss's former secretary who after being fired was strangely run over by a car that was never discovered, also remembers your insolent neighbor who seemed to enjoy stalking you, Jungkook remembers how I completely hate him. His hands on her neck made it clear when she hated him, he was disgusting.

He applauded happily, he felt very good about himself seeing that he made up his mind about so many people who for him were a plague in this world. It was like a child receiving a gift, his hands took the pen on his desk writing the last name on his list for now. Red ink stained the paper, a smile invaded his face.

𝓚𝓲𝓶 𝓣𝓪𝓮𝓱𝔂𝓾𝓷𝓰.

A gasp left his lips watching your figure move on the bed, he got up from his seat to watch you wake up. You looked so innocent, but now you were stained.

You carried her future child within you, he tried very hard to get you pregnant. You never noticed how he always managed to put powdered sleeping pills in your food every night since he got tired of just looking at you. Then he only had to enter your house like a ghost, his moans of pleasure were silent as he collided with you, fucking you hard with the thought and idea that you would carry his son in your womb.

So, you would never want to leave.

You will learn to love the monotony of being the wife and mother of Jeon Jungkook's son.

After all, he was never a fool.

#bts #bts yandere #yandere bts #bts smut #jungkook yandere #yandere kpop #yandere bts au #yandere!bts #yandere #jungkook #jungkook smut #kpop #jungkook bts

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jaegereism · 4 years ago

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𝙆𝘼𝙏𝙎𝙐𝙆𝙄 𝘽𝘼𝙆𝙐𝙂𝙊 𝙋𝙀𝙍𝙎𝙊𝙉𝘼𝙇𝙄𝙏𝙔 𝘼𝙉𝘼𝙇𝙔𝙎𝙄𝙎

MBTI type: ESTP

Dominant-Se

Katsuki has quick reflexes and is in tune with his immediate environment. He often relies on physical force to achieve his ends, such as physically threatening Midoriya to tell him the truth about his secret quirk and planning to beat up the “boss” child when required to babysit some difficult children. He is able to think on the move, like he did when fighting Tokoyami in the sports festival. He attacked him over and over again to discover his weakness and used it to his own advantage. He has a rather adaptable approach when fighting against different opponents. He changes his fighting style according to his opponents when needed, such as successfully avoiding getting touched by Uraraka when fighting against her in the sports festival. He is also skilled in observing while taking action and does not easily get startled when his opponents are unpredictable. Katsuki does not backs up from physical challenges and seem to actually enjoy them. He challenged Todoroki to use all his powers against him despite the possibility of losing against him because of that. He enjoys earning victory with his blood and sweat.

Katsuki prefers to establish his statements with his actions. He is not easily effected by words. He does not believes in bark with no bite, and is quick to challenge those individuals to prove their statements by their actions. “Show us with your actions, not your mouth.” He told Shishikura when he was trying to degrade the Yuuei students and allude that students from Shiketsu High are somewhat better than those from Yueei. Katsuki is seen acting very impatient when he wants something. He uses his physicality in order to prove a point, whether by fighting, yelling or aggressive body language.

Auxiliary-Ti

Katsuki has an internal framework about how the world works. He conceptualizes the world around him in fixed categories. Such as, you should not even attempt to be a hero if you do not have a quirk. He expressed annoyance in season 1 when Midoriya did not went by his personal framework and attempted to get accepted in Yuuei without a quirk. It took him a while to accept that Midoriya had a quirk despite him showing obvious signs of having it. He said to Iida that Midoriya will have to leave Yuuei soon because he is “a quirkless loser”, to which Iida replied “He has a quirk. Did you not heard what he did in the entrance exam?” Katsuki is unable to accept the obvious because he does not believe in quirks popping up out of the blue. Once he even accepts that Midoriya has a quirk, he ends up assuming that he had always had it and kept it hidden from him. Katsuki does not appreciate having truth kept from him and keeps on investigating until he finds an explanation that makes sense.

Once he discovered that quirks can be stolen when he was kidnapped by the League of Villains, it made sense to him that quirks can be borrowed too. It made him believe that Midoriya actually had his quirk borrowed from someone else. Once he had gathered all the data he believed he needed, he was very confident in his theory about Midoriya having his quirk from All Might and pressured Midoriya to admit it to him. Katsuki analyzes the way people’s quirks effect their body rather accurately. An example is him assuming Todoroki to be a video game character in order to get an insight of the way his quirk effects his body.

Tertiary-Fe

Katsuki’s tertiary function is not very healthy, especially at the beginning of the show. He picks up on others’ insecurities and knows how to make them feel better or worse. He bullied- and shamed Midoriya publicly by saying that he is not good enough to be a hero. He does not concern himself with forming relationships with people. Anyone who fails to catch his attention is treated as an “extra” and all his friendships are initiated from the other party. He finds little importance in sensitive topics, such as bluntly stating that he does not care about Todoroki’s family issues. All the shortcomings in his hero-performance are because of his lack of tact. In later seasons, he is seen using his tertiary function in healthier ways. He did not shamed- or ignored Kirishima’s feelings when he expressed his insecurity about not being strong like his classmates. Katsuki actually took the time to listen to him- and tell him that he is strong enough because of his courage.

Katsuki was also very upset by the idea of Midoriya tricking him into believing that he was quirkless. He even accused Midoriya of laughing behind his back when he bullied him. Katsuki is rather expressive with his emotions, but he mostly expresses all his emotions as the two he is most familiar with, anger and pride. His outburst at the end of the season 3 was a demonstration of Fe-Se loop. “All Might knows it was my fault but hasn’t said anything. Everyone has to know, though! I can’t get it out of my head. It’s like it’s constantly playing on loop! So what the hell am I supposed to do?!” He suddenly became extremely sensitive to how others perceive him and accused everyone of blaming him, when no one actually was. He saw his own guilt in the eyes of others. He also felt the need to vent his emotions by using violence because of his dominant-Se.

Inferior-Ni

Katsuki lacks restraints and often forgets to pay attention to the way his actions are adding up for the long run. He treated civilians tactlessly in the hero license exam, which ultimately led to his failure. He often looses himself in the moment. He was so caught up in beating up Midoriya to show his superiority in their first battle together, that he ended up losing because of not considering other important factors. Katsuki has had one goal since childhood and he is devoted to it. He is guided by the vision to become the “number 1 hero” and expresses frustration towards any obstacles that come in his way. He is confident about his gut-instincts about people’s intentions and motivations. “What you’re saying does not match the look in your eyes.” He bluntly stated without any doubt. He recognized the other Yuuei classes’ “demonstration of war” regarding the sports festival against Class 1A quicker than his classmates. He is able to pick up on hidden meanings and symbols, like when All Might said “It’s your turn” while pointing towards the camera, and Katsuki understood that he was referring to Midoriya.

Katsuki was not inclined to look at the big picture in the beginning of the series, but he slowly learned it. “If all you do is look down on people, you won’t be able to recognize your own weaknesses.” He gave that advice when babysitting a child.

Enneagram: 8w7

Tritype: 837 The Mover Shaker

Katsuki wants to be self-reliant and prove his strength to the world like a typical 8. He takes pride in not easily being afraid, and refuses to show vulnerability even in the situations he finds himself to be startled. His 7-wing makes him constantly search for the next challenge to win. He loves challenges to the point that he is willing to gamble on his victory for its sake, such as asking Todoroki to use his fire on him during their battle in the sports festival. Katsuki does not only want to win, he wants his opponents to know that they are weaker than him. Unfortunately, Katsuki was not the healthiest 8 in the beginning of the show. He was extremely swaggering and ego-centric, wanting everyone to be behind him and not considering anyone his equal. Katsuki was the “boss kid” in middle school and imposed his visions about quirkless people on Midoriya.

Katsuki denies vulnerability in favor of maintaining his independence. He does not like appearing weak, to the point that he was deeply infuriated when Midoriya expressed concern for him as a child. He hates feeling like a fool, which he certainly did when he assumed that Midoriya had a quirk all along but kept it hidden from him. It seems like Katsuki’s obsessive competition with Midoriya stems from a desire of reestablishing his power over him. Katsuki is competitive with all his peers, but his competition with Midoriya is on a deeper level. His strong 3-fix makes him addicted to victory, perfectionistic, hard-working, and hard on himself when facing failure. However, he refuses to shape himself into something that fits society’s standards of a desirable hero in order to be successful. He speaks his mind freely without any fear of judgment. His 7-fix + 7 wing makes him impulsive, expressive, and always ready to jump into action.

#bnha #boku no hero academia #katsuki bakugo #character analysis #psychology #bakugo katsuki #my hero academia #mbti #estp #8w7 #837 tritype #tritype #typology #anime characters #anime #myers briggs

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stonerfreed · 4 years ago

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below is my favorite analysis of stone ocean’s ending and the only thing that helped me understand exactly wtf happened. also this informs how i interpret ireneverse. [source]

“Part 6's Ending may be happier than you think. And how Made in Heaven works (Theory)“

FOREWORD:

Part 6's ending, with the death of the main characters, including Jotaro and Jolyne is a controversial ending to many. Whether you love it or disliked it, there's a consensus that it's overall pretty depressing or at best bittersweet.

Over the past few days I've thought about what exactly did happen at the end of Part 6, as after the battle at Cape Canaveral part 6 resolves fairly quickly and there are a lot more questions than answers. But I've gone over the ending a couple of times and I came up with a theory that may shed light on what exactly did happen, and how its not as sad of an ending as it may be. As I am fascinated by Made in Heaven as an ability and love to examine it. Of course this is my personal theory I backed up with evidence, but I'm not saying its the absolute truth but the way I look at it.

How Made in Heaven Works

Ok so first off we have to explain how Made in Heaven works. It's the stand created from C-Moon when some very specific conditions are met. The strange ritual that lead to the creation of Made in Heaven granted it, it's godly power of Time acceleration. Now we can assume that Pucci's perception of time can be made to fit his stand, its why he's able to keep up with the time speed up when no one else can, which is why it appears he is moving extremely quickly but really everyone else is moving slow to him while he is keeping up with the constant of time. It is important to note that living beings are not affected at all by Made in Heaven, only artificial and inorganic things are affected by the time speed up. All people from the original universe, end up in the next universe reset, they are not reborn in anyway, but merely transferred over. There isn't any evidence to suggest that they had changed in anyway but merely carried over. Of course this all culminates in his ultimate plan and ability, which was to reset the universe.

Enrico Pucci is obsessed with three things, DIO, Heaven, and Destiny. Let's not talk about DIO because it just serves for Pucci's determination, his real motivation is obtaining heaven. As a devout Catholic Priest, Pucci became enamored with the idea of "Heaven". That the end goal of all humans, as dictated in Christianity is to eventually ascend to Heaven with God. Through DIO, Pucci found that he could get to Heaven through the crazy ritual. While not the "Clouds and Angels" Heaven, it was the kind of Heaven that Pucci pictured as being "Heaven on Earth". And to Pucci, that meant Destiny being understood by humanity.

Destiny, is the third and arguably the most important of Pucci's obsessions, he is obsessed with the concept that there is a strand of fate controlling everything. That everything happens for a reason and everyone is where they are for a reason. Pucci believes that every enemy and obstacle he has faced was a trial for him to enter Heaven, and that any mishaps that happen to him is "bad luck", and that truly all things are predetermined. This coincides with his strong belief in God.

If you combine all three, you get Pucci's idea that creating Heaven on Earth is what's best for humanity, however his version of Heaven is that everyone understands their destiny. How does this happen? It does not happen because Pucci has some sort of ability to change history or warp reality in his new universe (The Pucciverse). It happens because knowing your destiny/precogntion is a result of Made in Heaven's time speed up. It is stated by Pucci that:

"Although the body and mind do not understand it, the spirit remembers everything! The spirit, through the speed up of time has remembered every possible event and every possible outcome!".

So, here Pucci revealed another part of Made in Heaven's ability, but it is less than ability but more so a side effect of speeding up time. Aforementioned, time speeding up from Made in Heaven does not affect living beings, but according to Pucci, it affects their spirit. Because due to time speed up, their soul was also speeding up, experiencing a million different scenarios and memorizing every detail of those events, subconsciously and unbeknownst to the person.

Then there is the other side of how Made in Heaven works: What happens if someone is killed by Pucci? According to the law of the universe, those killed by Made in Heaven do not transfer over to the next universe. This is because as mentioned before, the living transfer over harmlessly, while the dead, do not. This is an important part here: Pucci states that Jolyne and Jotaro aren't here because he killed them and even destroyed their souls. However: Pucci is only half right here. He later states something that contradicts his first statement slightly:

"All of my obstacles has been left behind in the previous universe!"

This, is very important to note here. Pucci states that he has killed them, which is true no matter what because he did kill them. What isn't true, is that he "destroyed" their souls.

Pucci's language here is dramatic, but only correct in terms of technicality. When he means "destroyed" he is only technically correct in that their souls do not exist in the first reset universe (referred to here on out as the Pucciverse). The reason their souls do not exist is not because he physically destroyed them, but because they were left behind in the old, original universe. As stated before: the dead do not transfer over. And therefore those that are dead stayed behind while the Pucciverse continued on without them. So in essence he is right, they aren't here in this universe so it is as if they had been destroyed, but they really haven't.

The Battle Between Emporio and Pucci

Then comes the next part of the ending of part 6 which is the battle between Emporio and Pucci. The theatrics of Emporio defeating Pucci aside, what is important here is what Pucci says about Made in Heaven. As Pucci is grounded, dying on the floor to oxygen purification he begs Emporio to let him live a little while longer. Here, Pucci makes a very interesting statement.

"If I die, the fate of mankind will be altered! It will probably be a different future! As long as it's after Cape Caneveral I will gladly give up my life! Or else it will mean that everything I've done up to now will be meaningless! Humanity will no longer be able to see their fate!"

Pucci once again reveals another aspect of Made in Heaven, but rather this time, it's flaw. Here we have to take into account where exactly Pucci stopped speeding up time. Judging by how Emporio woke up and saw "Jolyne's" first meeting with "Jotaro" in the prison, we can assume that time deaccelerated at this point in history, i.e at the "beginning of part 6". This is noteworthy because this means that Pucci had not fully completed a "loop". And by this, I mean the Pucciverse has not yet reached the time/point of original acceleration. It has not passed the moment time first began speeding up, and so technically the Pucciverse is "lagging behind" the original one.

Why is this important? It is because Pucci's work actually had not yet been completed. Pucci was incredibly concerned about staying alive until after Cape Canevral. If he's true to his word, then he may have let Emporio kill him afterwards because his death would have no affect on the universe. Why is this so? It seems because an unsaid flaw of Made in Heaven, is that if time does not pass the point of original acceleration in the new universe then it means that technically the old universe still exists, and that the new universe is only temporary until that point is reached. That Made in Heaven hasn't completely "overwritten" the previous universe because not all events in the previous universe had happened yet. If that was confusing let me try and break it down.

Made in Heaven speeds up time at Cape Canevral -> Results in Pucciverse

Pucciverse stops speeding up at the "Beginning of Part 6"

The original universe "ended" at the end of Cape Canevral = The Pucciverse is lagging behind the original universe.

Original Point of Acceleration = Cane Canevral

Pucciverse Start Point = Jolyne and Jotaro's Meeting at the Beginning of part 6.

Result: the Pucciverse is still lagging behind the original universe in time: Cape Canaveral had not yet happened, and so technically those events are still the events of the original universe, meaning the old universe still "exists" but is being overwritten by the Pucciverse. Because if the time that Cape Canaveral would have happened passes in the Pucciverse, then technically these would be "new events" that had not happened in the original universe. Therefore it would have by that point completely overwritten the previous universe and thus become permanent.

So that means that if Pucci were to die, his work would have been "meaningless" and the universe would have changed. Let's think about this for a second. If the Pucciverse is only possible because Made in Heaven sped up time, then it is not a stretch to say that the reason "why" Pucci is afraid that if he dies his universe will be changed is because he is actually holding it together. It is because of his stand ability that the Pucciverse is occurring in the first place. If he were to die before the old universe had been completely overwritten by the natural flow of time (or manipulation of the flow of time) then there would be nothing holding the Pucciverse together, and no reason for it to exist, and thus would collapse.

This much is understood by everyone, that upon Pucci's death his universe collapses. But where does it go from here? I think there's some evidence to see where exactly.

In Pucci's last moments he was speeding up time to fight Emporio. However, Pucci died before his universe had passed the events of Cape Canevral. From here we can know for sure two things.

His "Pucciverse" did not become permanent and collapsed.

A new universe was not created.

The second point may have some people scratching their heads, "But wait, what about the universe Irene is in? isn't that a new universe?". The answer is yes... and no.

The "Ireneverse"

How do we know a new universe was not created? Simple, because Pucci died before his new universe became permanent. That is, by passing the point of original time acceleration i.e Cape Canaveral. Understandably, in a room with nothing moving in it (I'm referring to Emporio's ghost room where the final battle took place) it’s difficult to see how fast time is moving as a result of Pucci speeding up time in said battle. But, we can know for sure that another singularity effect/universe reset did not take place. We know this because Pucci died before time even passed the point of acceleration. For a new universe to be created, it would have to reach the 'End of Time' and thus for sure have passed the original point of acceleration. So from here, it is evidence that Pucci didn't just reset the universe "again".

But hold on, right after Pucci's death we can see the effects of Emporio being pulled into a new universe again, just like what happened when the universe was reset the first time. We can know for sure that this isn't Pucci resetting the universe because he's dead. If he's dead then there is nothing to speed up time to create a new universe, and also because if it was him speeding up the universe, then it would not have collapsed for it would have passed the point of original acceleration.

So if it's not Pucci speeding up time to create a new universe, and the Pucciverse collapses because it had both not reached the point of original acceleration and Pucci's death, then where exactly does Emporio go?

He goes back to the original universe.

This is because the original universe had not been completely overwritten yet because the Pucciverse did not pass the point of original acceleration, so being that it had not been completely overwritten then technically it still exists in some form, and if the Pucciverse is collapsing, the universe only has one option and that is to go back to the status quo since it is the only intact universe available.

But there is more evidence for this. Emporio wakes up on a road on Green Dolphin Street. He sees a bus, but whats important to note here is that he doesn't know the bus is coming, he's surprised by the bus. This is significant because it shows he doesn't know the bus is coming, meaning that his spirit has not memorized these events because this is the original universe, the side effect of Pucci speeding up time has been erased.

There are two reasons for why Emporio no longer has precognition,

Pucci's death canceled any effects Made in Heaven had created, including its effects on the spirits of people to memorize events.

Pucci no longer exists, or is entirely different in this universe.

The second one needs some explaining. Because it is explained earlier that it is a cosmic law that those who are dead, do not transfer over to the next universe then there isn't any reason to believe that Pucci isn't under the same rule. Pucci died in his Pucciverse, and because of this he was left behind there while the universe moved once again. Now because the Pucciverse was entirely a result of Made in Heaven and since it is gone, then it’s likely that the Pucciverse too will be wiped from existence. Which means, that Pucci's death and his soul was left behind in an non-existent universe. Meaning that Pucci did not come to the new universe, and does not exist in any shape or form or was replaced by an entirely different counterpart.

"Counterparts"

The counterpart thing is important to explain, so let's dial back a bit and look at the meeting between "Jotaro" and "Jolyne" in the Pucciverse. It's clear there is a contrast here between the "people" who replaced Jotaro and Jolyne and their counterparts in the Ireneverse. When Jotaro and others were left behind in the old universe because they were killed by Made in Heaven, they were replaced by shallow imitations of them. We can know for sure that this isn't Jolyne and Jotaro because they look nothing like them, and that they are completely unaware of the universe reset. But, if you look at the guards and prisoners in a brief scene after Emporio arrives in the Pucciverse, they too are aware of the universe reset and just as shocked as Emporio. Which means they are from the original universe and simply transferred over.

But: the fake Jolyne and Jotaro are not aware of these events, exactly "who" they are is something there isn't a lot of evidence for. We do not know if they are real people, or if they are new souls/people created by the Pucciverse to fill the void that Jotaro and Jolyne left behind with their absence. The one thing we know for sure is that they definitely do not have the souls of Jotaro and Jolyne, as other than wearing similar clothes their souls were left behind in the old universe. And that while they have "similar" personalities, they are much shallower versions of the originals, you can discern this because they are acting as if they're supposed to be acting like Jolyne and Jotaro and you don't really get the feeling their actions and emotions are genuine. If they were complete copies of them, then Pucci would have been more concerned about a second coming of Jotaro and Jolyne to stop him.

So if Pucci's soul was also trapped in the Pucciverse, then he either does not exist in the next universe, or was replaced by someone very different.

Now let's bring it back to the counterparts of the Ireneverse and why the Ireneverse is the original universe. Without going back to explain again why the Ireneverse is actually the original universe based on just the flow of universes, there is more evidence for this.

Emporio sees counterparts of Hermes, Jolyne, Annasui and Weather Report in the new universe. However, let's compare his reaction to these counterparts to seeing the counterparts in the Pucciverse. In the Pucciverse, Emporio is at first surprised that Jolyne and Jotaro are here, but later calms down when he realizes that they are somewhat similar but they really aren't them. Yet when he sees the counterparts in the Ireneverse, he is overcome with emotion and breaks down into tears.

This difference and contrast is significant. Emporio's sudden crying reveals his bittersweet emotions on the situation, they are both tears of joy AND sadness. He is crying because his friends are not dead after all, but they just have no memories of him or the events that lead them to friendship. But, if these counterparts were like the counterparts in the Pucciverse, Emporio would not have cared too much and probably would not have gone with them because he knew that those weren't Jolyne and Jotaro. Yet here, he recognizes his friends, but of course he is still saddened that their memories are gone.

His reaction is also evidence that they aren't really "counterparts" in the way that the Pucciverse counterparts are counterparts. More so, there's evidence that they are actually the real deal. How so?

To examine that we have to look at everything mentioned beforehand and how it all culminates together.

We have evidence that this is the original universe because a new universe was not created by Pucci for time did not speed up to the point that it would have created a new universe.

This is not the Pucciverse because Pucci died and nobody knows their fates.

With the old universe still not completely overwritten by Made in Heaven, and the Pucciverse collapsing due to Made in Heaven's effects being erased, the universe had nowhere else to go and returned to it's original self.

The counterparts in the Pucciverse are new people and do not have the souls of Jolyne and Jotaro. They may wear similar clothing, but they look like nothing them and act shallower. We can assume they are like this because they do not have the souls of Jolyne and Jotaro because their souls were left behind in the previous universe.

So why is it then that these "counterparts" are so similar? Not just in appearance, but in personality as well?

It is because, as I mentioned they aren't counterparts but they are the real versions of the deceased. Jolyne IS Irene, Annakiss IS Annasui and so on and so forth. It's hard to deny that Irene is incredibly similar to Jolyne, the same personality, the famous Joestar birthmark and face albeit with longer hair and a more conservative outfit (Though it's revealed she wears the same default Jolyne outfit underneath her sweater). They are this way because they exist in the original universe, and thus the universe where their souls are. So essentially, these new "counterparts" are more like "reincarnations" and they actually contain the souls of the deceased.

But if they are reincarnations, why are they back and how?

Changed Lives

To answer that, we have to look at where the Ireneverse began and the results of Pucci not existing or being very different. So, when the Pucciverse resets back to the original universe, it’s not a stretch to say that it dropped off Emporio at the same time frame: what would have been the beginning of Part 6. This is technically before the events at Cape Canaveral and thus before their deaths. Which is evidence that technically because those events had not happened yet, they would come back to life as they had not died yet. But: this is only a half answer. It does not explain why their lives are so different.

Made in Heaven does not have the ability to change history, this is fact. However: it does have the ability to remove people from "existence" from a new universe upon death, merely as a consequence of the cosmic law of "The dead cannot cross over". Therefore Made in Heaven can indirectly change history by killing a person, so that their shallow counterpart will have a "different" history in the next universe. Pucci died before the events of Cape Canevral, at somewhere near the beginning of part 6.

So we can assume that Pucci was also affected by this law, and that in the Ireneverse Pucci may have been very different or did not exist. Because in the Ireneverse there is either no Pucci or Pucci was very different, he may have or may not have ever met DIO and if he did, his plans went very differently. From here, we can guess that whatever happened to Pucci post-death his actions did not turn out the same way. So for the context, let's assume that Pucci did not do any of his plans, so that results in: very different lives, we know a few things.

None of them are prisoners.

Jolyne is less "wild" and has a better relationship with her father.

Annasui is in a healthy relationship with Jolyne.

Hermes's sister is alive.

Weather Report is alive.

Therefore we can see the explanations for these are:

Without Pucci, no one was able to truly carry out DIO's legacy. If Jotaro's continuous absence from his family can be assumed to be Jotaro fighting either independent nefarious stand users, and or stand mercenaries/DIO followers hired by Pucci, then we can assume that since Jotaro had to fight less, he had to leave his family less. Which means:

He would have been able to be there for Jolyne, and give her the love she needed. Without the need for her father's attention, Jolyne had less outcries for attention such as criminal acts and such. With a more happy upbringing Jolyne never landed in prison, or got a shitty boyfriend like Romeo.

Because Jolyne never went to Prison, it's possible that she may have met Annasui before he murdered his girlfriend and started a healthy relationship. Meaning that Annasui also never had to go to prison.

Hermes's different life is a stretch, but essentially she went to prison to avenge her sister who was killed by Sports Maxx. However, Sports Maxx AFAIK only entered Pucci's service in Prison and came there independently of him. But: it is not too far of a stretch that Pucci set up events that lead Sports Maxx coming to prison. After all, Pucci stated that Spots Maxx was the only person capable of using DIO's Bone to create the requirements of the Green Baby. So it’s possible here that Pucci set up Sports Maxx to kill Hermes's sister to go to prison. If this is the case, then without Pucci's involvement then Sports Maxx would never had ran into Hermes's sister, and thus she would still be alive and Hermes would have no reason to go to prison.

Weather Report never had his memories taken away because he either never found out that he was dating his sister, or eventually he found out and was able to break it off on his own terms without the chaos that Pucci brought by bringing in the KKK. Either way, his relationship with his sister never lead to him coming to prison. (Sidenote: Weather Report was actually killed by Whitesnake instead of Made in Heaven, but because Whitesnake became C-Moon which became Made in Heaven we can assume it all counts all the same).

So both the time for their deaths had not occurred yet, and also because the main cause of their deaths (Pucci) did not act the same way, history changed for them as their lives were lived very differently and thus did not lead to their deaths.

Conclusion

In summary, at the end of part 6, Emporio returns to the original universe because the Pucciverse collapsed. The Pucciverse did not create a new universe because Pucci did not speed up time to create a new one. The Ireneverse that Emporio lands in is actually the original universe with a minor alteration of what if Pucci was very different, or did not exist. Because of this, he did not influence the events that resulted in Part 6 and lead to the main crew's deaths, he also ended up giving the the main characters a much better life because of his lack of influence. The Ireneverse counterparts are actually reincarnations, they have the souls of the deceased as the Ireneverse is the original universe and time had been rewinded to the beginning of part 6, and without Pucci's existence, they technically are not "fated" to die in the way they died in part 6.

So yes, Emporio is with the originals in the end, but they lived different lives. But their souls weren't destroyed, and in the end they lived happier lives. Although it is still bittersweet, because main characters that Emporio knew are gone because their memories are gone.

Sidenotes:

What happened to everyone else?

Made in Heaven has no ability to effect history or change people. It can only do this indirectly if it kills someone in the previous universe and their counterparts in the new universe change history. But it is stated that everyone crosses over unchanged. It is emphasized that even as something as insignificant as an ant makes it over to the new universe unchanged at all and merely "carried" over. So the events of Part 1-5, and all of it's characters still happened and those who lived, lived, and experienced the universe reset and time speed ups the same as Emporio did. Which is noteworthy because Emporio made it over to the new universe unchanged and with memories of previous events so regardless of the Ireneverse, it can be assumed that everyone else was pretty much the same.

The only curious thing is if Jotaro was "reincarnated" as well, we can assume that his life was entirely the same up to Part 6 but without the interference of Pucci so he was able to be closer with his family. Jotaro may or may not have a new name because the new Hermes never stated if her name was any different. Either way, the only thing that probably changed about him was his name. And his caring for Jolyne. However, in the case that my theory is true then Jotaro and Jolyne probably did not experience a divorce yet their wife/mother did, so its a toss up of what exactly might've happened.

The bittersweetness of their deaths:

The bittersweetness comes into effect when remembering the death of F.F. Jolyne begs her to wait as Jolyne will get her memory/stand disc back from Pucci but F.F says that while it will be "F'F. it won't be the F.F they know because it doesn't have the memories or experiences that the original F.F did. This is actually clever foreshadowing by Araki, as the same thing happens to the main crew at the end of Part 6. Emporio is saddened because while it is definitely the main characters, their lack of experiences and memories means that the friends he knew, shaped by bonding and experiences together, are essentially "dead". If you managed to read all the way down here, then thanks for taking the time to read a fan's madness lol.

Edit: Feb 2017: Araki recently commented on the ending of Stone Ocean, and he used "Irene" and "Jolyne" interchangeably. Which pretty much confirms that Jolyne did indeed become Irene and she's not another person entirely.

Follow-up comment [source]

Imagine the events of Part 6 being the plot of a VHS movie that you're watching for the first time. You love the characters and story and almost feel like you're a part of it! The scary parts are truly scary, because you don't know what's around the corner. But because of that, aren't all the happy times a bit melancholy? After all, you can't know what's going to happen next in the movie. At least, that's what Pucci thinks.

Pucci thinks it'd be nicer if we'd already seen the movie, so that we know what's going to happen. That way, we won't be scared when things turn bad, and we can be safely happy knowing what's coming. So what he'd like to do is rewind the VHS tape once the movie's over (because that's what you do with VHS), and watch it all over, knowing what will happen in advance. This is when he would activate Made in Heaven. He wants to tape over the parts of the movie that would prevent him from being able to do this (in this case, Jolyne and company). But in order to do so, he has to play through the full movie in normal time to properly edit them out, until he reaches the end.

So, at the end of the film, Pucci edits out the limiting factors (killing Jolyne etc) and fast forwards through the ending reel and credits all the way to the end of the tape (being the end of the universe). He makes his own cut of the film without those pesky elements, but with everything else intact, and adds himself in. Then he rewinds the tape, and fast forwards through all the ads and commercials before the movie begins (creation of the universe all the way through parts 1-5). Now he's reached the beginning of the movie (where Jolyne meets Jotaro). His new cut of the film has started rolling, and needs to roll through to the ending at normal speed. But somebody's lit Pucci's new cut on fire, and burned it to a crisp (Emporio killing Pucci). With nothing to edit over with, the movie goes back to playing the way it did before. Unfortunately, Pucci already cut out himself, and the Jolyne and Jotaro characters from the tape reel, so there's a big blank where they should be. The movie still has to continue on, so we fill in the blanks based on what we know of the characters from the first five movies, creating the characters of Irene and Annakiss etc.

#long as hell /#but a great read especially if youre dumb like me #ooc.#jjba spoilers #stone ocean spoilers #◜˚ 🕸 ╰ analysis .

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conservativetranny · 4 years ago

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2020 blog update

Hello. No idea if any of you ‘remember’ me but I do seem to have a fair few followers on here. I managed to access the login information for this account and it is safe to say this blog is dead. I denounce everything I stood for on this stupid shit.

I’m writing this because it’s what the blog deserves. Not looking to be dramatic, not looking for sympathy, in fact I think i’ll get a bit of backlash for this but bring it on.

The past and the present- a summary

I had this blog when I was 14, unfortunately way too young to have a social media presence (one which carried any responsibility like this one anyway). No matter what age I said I was, no matter how I portrayed myself or how you, my followers interpreted me, I was a sad young trans guy desperately hoping to look big, cool, masculine and stoic, and that manifested in the most toxic way possible.

I’m 17 now, still very very young, and after developments in my life, especially pursuing my medical transition and becoming happy within myself, I no longer hold such toxic beliefs as I once did. I am happier with myself and no longer feel the need to sacrifice others’ dignity, respect, and unfortunately sometimes on this blog, privacy, for my own. I was a very insecure, stubborn, and ignorant teenager, who dealt with a lot of denial. I’m not blaming the way I treated people online on other factors, but of course external factors came into play. I was dealing with bullying and insecurity, with parental problems, and with loneliness and depression. I seeked some sort of community, and I wanted to push myself away from the ‘weak’ trans community (the way I viewed it at the time). I wasn’t in denial personally, with the fact that I was trans (being gay is a different story- I was in complete denial with the fact that I’m gay), more just with the way other people viewed me (I will expand on this). I could elaborate on the way in which I viewed other people and the way that projected onto my conduction online, but it is a complex and confusing story. I have completely changed my viewpoint on trans ‘discourse’, I am open minded, I am close friends with people I would have turned my ignorant nose up at years ago. I am so proud to say that I am a completely different person now. I grow every day, it seems, and I can assure that I will never return to this ignorant mindset.

Growth

With experience, I have grown too. Obviously, from 14-17 i have become more mature. I have different experiences now as well, for example, I don’t bind often at all really anymore, because its more comfortable and can sometimes make me more dysphoric to know I am binding. I’m bringing this up because I bet you back when I was active on this blog, I would’ve laughed at the more mature, tolerant me, and probably went on a tyrade about how I was a fake trans guy or less of a man for not binding. I often wonder what ‘old me’ would think of ‘new me’. Now obviously, three years isn’t a hell of a big difference, but to a 17 come 18 year old it is. I understand I am not an adult yet, but I’ve always taken pride in conducting myself with a sense of maturity and articulacy, and for this post and platform especially I feel it is appropriate.

The Truscum Mindset

Back when I ran this blog, I was in an echo chamber of like minded people, which didn’t help my ideological development. I watched youtubers like Blaire White and Kalvin Garrah, who I thought gave me a balanced, moderate, and fair opinion which is clear is not the case. Back then I would’ve scoffed at the idea of Blaire and Kalvin and other similar people as being radical or a gateway, but I urge you, if you feel you are slipping to obsession with those ideologies, to seek to widen your opinions and associations. I understand it’s a fairly niche discourse topic, but for me it opened a wider rabbit hole into the alt right. From wanting to fit into the lgbt and wider communities as a masculine male, this opened up the black hole of the alt right, I browsed (now deleted) subreddits and 4chan boards, and forums that put me in a very negative and dangerous place. If you’d like me to make a post elaborating on this, I am more than happy to, but this post is to address conservativetranny.

Denial and owning up to responsibility

Back in 2017/18, I was very much in denial of certain aspects of myself, especially my sexuality. I am gay. I thought that this was, and especially as a trans guy, a demasculating quality. I still deal with those feelings sometimes, as a lot of young gay guys do, but thankfully it does not manifest itself as toxic as it once did. I just wanted to portray myself online as how I thought I wanted to be viewed-I didn’t want to be viewed like ‘any other trans guy’. I wanted to be different, but now I can appreciate individuality and I can also embrace being trans as well.

I used to think that having alt views was the coolest thing ever, which contributed to my slip into the alt right, something on which I’ll elaborate on in later posts. I am now an advocate for deradicalisation, and being rational, truly rational. I’m also an advocate for maturity and owning up to your mistakes.

I have hurt people, especially in my personal life, throughout my time as a stupid, thoughtless immature teenager and i am sorry, from the bottom of my heart, for that. I now respect the hell out of those people and unfortunately, but definitely rightfully so, they have lost their respect for me. I don’t blame them, because as I said, up until very recently I was a horrible, toxic person. With maturity, in the past half a year I have been able to own up to my mistakes and I am now taking responsibility for that. No excuses, because I was a shitty person. Of course there is a line between excuses and justification, and I hope those which are reading this can distinguish and appreciate this difference.

Self Hatred and Truscum

Back when I ran this blog, it was very easy to tell I was self hating. Everything I wrote on here, pretty much, was hateful except for the odd two posts that were about something unrelated to my ideology. I was extremely dysphoric and in a bad place when I wrote these things and certainly projected my insecurities onto others. I wanted to find a community of different thinking people that would accept me, and this community was certainly the wrong turn. I had a feeling that it was wrong at the time, but I was too naive and cowardly to own up to it and seek a way out. I kind of just naturally fell out of it, a a lot of things happened in my personal life in late 2018 that forced me out of trans discourse and into much more toxic places like the alt right and true crime fandoms, and I think I’ve only recently ‘found myself’ in the past year or so. I might make a post on self growth on the future as I intend to keep this blog to elaborate and voice my opinions on deradicalisation and highlight the importance of owning up and self awareness.

Don’t fall into the rabbithole

I’m not too acquainted with trans discourse anymore, so I’m out of the loop on this one, but I’d imagine that there’s still ‘transmed vs tucute’ ideas. Kalvin Garrah’s community comes to mind, I haven’t watched his videos ‘as a fan’, if that makes sense, for a while now but I am aware he has a large fanbase of young trans teens that were in a similar mindset to where I was back when I ran this blog. I would love for this post to reach his opposers and supporters for that matter, as a means to show them that they don’t have to fall into this cycle of hate which can be very damaging. I used to be an avid fan of Kalvin, and Blaire White, amongst others. I watched exclusively their content alone and formed my opinions around theirs. If you’re doing that now, I urge you to consider other people when you do. Think about the people like Brennan Beckwith, people who were severely impacted and hurt by hateful rhetoric. Those people are human too, and with maturity you will learn that people with different experiences and views are, at the end of the day, the same as you, and they have feelings as well .I’m going to make a post in the future about Kalvin Garrah, certainly, but maybe Blaire White as well.

Why now?

You may be wondering why this post is being made now of all times, and that is a question that has every right to be asked. I feel as if this timing is right because I finally possess the level of maturity needed to own up to my mistakes and tell you that I was wrong and it was certainly wrong to post those opinions and mistakes online for all to see, and put people in my real life on blast like I did.

I had completely forgotten about this blog, and forgot about the rude and ignorant words I had written towards the people in my real life, until chance had it that I was in contact with one of the people mentioned in this post. [https://conservativetranny.tumblr.com/post/169351517511/no-one-pretends-to-be-trans]

I’m not going to go into the nuances of the conversation we had, but it turns out they had, for a while and definitely rightfully so been hurt by the fact that I had mentioned them, by name, in this post. And while I’d of course still like to keep these people anonymous and will not sacrifice their anonymity in order to tell a story or ‘save myself’, this post is quite funny to read back on as I am good friends with the people referred to as ‘P’ and ‘Shadow’ now.

This is the end of this post, as I feel I have said everything I have wanted to say regarding my previous conduct on this blog. I’m going to change my name on this blog and my bio as I do intend on further posts in the future. I’m not sure how many people, if any, this post will reach, but I’m satisfied I have written this anyway. I certainly do plan on writing future posts but I’m not exactly sure how to formulate them. But thank you so much for reading this far, and if you have, I appreciate it.

#truscum #transmed #ftm #trans #dysphoria #kalvin garrah #kalvin garbage #terf #deradicalisation #i have literally no idea how to tag this #tucute #do people even say that anymore lol

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marnz · 3 years ago

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pausing my “”productive”” evening to be briefly insane with rage at this extremely stupid, imprecise, and ignorant essay about garth greenwell and ocean vuong, holy shit, i guess punching down is quite easy when you don’t even feel the need to make a point.

i haven’t finished On Earth We’re Briefly Gorgeous so I cannot speak to that aspect of the essay other than to say 1) the prose is amazing 2) writing to reach someone is the main function of a writer, you need to approach an emotional work in an emotionally open and receptive manner, 3) the critiques of the novel come across as jealous and a purposefully mean spirited reading. however,

if you READ What Belongs to You, if you READ Cleanness, you understand WHY these books are so sincere and WHY there is so much “”gay suffering”” and it is because the narrator fucking hates himself. This is not a secret. Greenwell’s primary aesthetic project in these books is tackling the intersections of shame and desire. What causes intense shame? The fact that the narrator’s father treated him horribly for his entire life because the narrator is sexually attracted to men--and so Greenwell explores gay sex and intimacy. I don’t think this could have been made more apparent? In the middle section of What Belongs to You the narrator reflects on his relationship with his dying father, and begins by discussing the innocent and familial intimacy between the two of them that vanished immediately when the father realized the narrator was gay, as a child.

The narrator is “”sincere”” and confessional about everything as a way to convey the intersections of shame and desire using prose that mirrors the looping, sometimes ponderous thought process of the self loathing. He is capable of reflecting on his terrible qualities and unsafe sexual choices, his obsession with self endangerment through sex and his self blame/culpability, because he thinks there is something not only inherently wrong with him, but inherently unlovable. This is something he obsesses about and it is why partially why the book reads as confessional (the other reason is it is the contemporary modern style. Almost every celebrated litfic novelist is doing it nowadays.) Sex is linked danger, shame, and rejection over and over again for the narrator and he struggles to move on from it because it’s all he thinks he deserves! The craft decision to use sex as a way to explore not just shame/desire but the narrator’s character is incredible! More people should do this! In one of the most harrowing chapters of Cleanness, “Gospodar,” the narrator goes to a professional dom and confesses to wanting to become “nothing.” He explicitly engages in humiliation play. Enough said!

The whole “gay suffering gay man sad” thing is NOT done as suffering for shock value or because it’s a sincere belief in what gay people deserve. This was a common critique of What Belongs to You and I agree it’s thankless to read if you went into it expecting gay Pretty Woman or a happy ending, l m a o, especially since one of the other craft projects of the novel is using Mitko to symbolize Bulgaria post iron curtain/””communism.”” Greenwell then uses Cleanness address the gay suffering critiques by exploring the narrator’s relationship with R....and these chapters are absolutely beautiful and moving and healing for the narrator, he finally gets to say shit like:

“Sex had never been joyful for me before, or almost never, it had always been fraught with shame and anxiety and fear, all of which vanished at the sight of his smile, simply vanished, it poured a cleanness over everything we did” and

“I caught my breath at [something R did for him], I felt a weird pressure and heat climb my throat. I felt like my heart would burst, those were the words for it, the hackneyed phrase, and I was grateful for them, they were a container for what I felt, proof of its commonness. I was grateful for that, too, the commonness of my feeling; I felt some stubborn strangeness in me ease, I felt like part of the human race.”

I don’t think it’s ever confirmed that the narrator in What Belongs to You is the same narrator as Cleanness but I think they must be because of the social implications of cleanness as related to gay sex and to aspects of shame, especially because in part 3 of WBTY the narrator learns he has syphilis, which is a very publicly disfiguring disease if not treated. It’s sexual leprosy, it is disfiguring shame. We read all of Cleanness understanding certain actions he takes as being because of what happened to Mitko, like insisting on condoms. I think the choice of it being syphilis as opposed to AIDs is purposeful but that is another post i will not be making.

The relationship with R is doomed to fail partially because R also experiences immense shame connected to being gay for a different reason and because the narrator is predisposed to self sabotage and other various reasons. It does end, the narrator goes back to his dangerous sexual practices, and Greenwell is careful to show that part of the reason the narrator does this is because he finds social as well as sexual gratification from it. With R the narrator did not do any form of kink except body worship, but body worship is not what the narrator craves because he craves humiliation play! I think the thing that is most interesting about Cleanness in particular is the way it explores different avenues of intimacy, different modes, you can be with someone for a very long time and feel felt and loved and understood and then be with someone else and feel felt and loved and understood in different, equally important ways. Every single relationship in your life is a trade off of these and your own prioritization of your own needs. Greenwell shows that the narrator’s sexual practices and his love for kink is an important need just as it is a self destructive one because of the linking of shame and desire. This is all made explicit in “The Little Saint” (which we are given to understand is post-R) narrator acts as a dom for once and explores being on the other side of the coin. He gets into it and later finds it very upsetting because for him all shame and humiliation is linked to being gay, which circles back to his father, and the sub ends up explaining to the narrator that you don’t have to dominate someone by humiliating them like that. Like what’s not clicking here!!!!!!!

My other main frustrations with this essay are:

the linking of sincerity = gay trauma when good art is often about sincerity and sincerity of emotion, either exploring it or eliciting it, even satire, even fucking...marvel movies, lowest common denominator writing wise, try to make their fans feel something

the fact HE CLEARLY DIDN’T READ THE BOOKS. i know Cleanness is set up as a collection of short stories so you have to take it apart line by line but WBTY is not like that. The shame = bad dad aspect could not have been more clear if it was underlined.

The fact that the essay says Ocean Vuong “is an artist of the memorably obtuse one-liner” as a derogatory thing which is SO rude and comes across as incredibly petty and jealous. Ocean Vuong is a fucking genius. Go after Rupi Kaur if you want to critique a poet who is actually over celebrated, damn

the idea of sincerity = cringe and the inability of many modern critics to moderate their response to a piece of work based on the project or any of its other qualities it is doing instead of like, how it made them feel expressed as sarcastically as possible. I am not a critic but I do not think this is difficult to do. What Belongs to You made me incredibly uncomfortable and sad for much of the book but I was still able to appreciate it? Even when I was like “ahhhhh i hate this” I could understand and appreciate aspects of craft/characterization/emotion/prose/whatever. This is basic shit.

the fact this essay doesn’t even explore the craft genius of Cleanness? it is really subversive to use sex like that in litfic, let alone gay sex...like I understand not liking something just based on your personal tastes but I’m like ?????????? so shocked that the whole craft thing and aesthetic project just doesn’t come up???????? At all?????? ALSO YOU WOULD THINK in an essay that tries to cash in on the outrage of ‘all gay art is suffering’ would explore why the wealthy, straight, white publishing industry and literary elite does invest in gay suffering and the homophobia/history behind it but no! this essay doesn’t even do that!

the fact this got published at all

anyway this essay is stupid and i am stupid for typing up basically an essay about it but like! where else can i do this! if you read all the way to the end pls read Garth Greenwell and Ocean Vuong thanks bye

#i really do not get mad on the internet anymore as a rule but this.....#ugh and what drives me even crazier is i know this stupid fucking essay was published for hate clicks AND IT IS WORKING #garth greenwell #cleanness #homophobia tw #if someone comes to me and says these novels are like toxic and not morally pure uwu i am going to unhinge my jaw and swallow them whole #long post

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theholycovenantrpg · 4 years ago

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CONGRATULATIONS, MAI! YOU’VE BEEN ACCEPTED FOR THE ROLE OF ABADDON.

Admin Cas: Where to begin with this firecracker of an app, Mai? Abaddon is full of complexities, but that didn’t pose a problem for you: you captured every single one of them to perfection. The way you described how she clung to her divinity in Hell, even as she felt it rotting inside of her, was truly *chef’s kiss*. There was so much to admire about your application — the clear development you have planned for Abaddon, the way you expanded on her relationship to her pseudo-family of demons without diminishing any other part of her, the balance of her divinity and her profanity — but I think the standout for me were your writing samples. She’s so level-headed, so elegant, and I’m completely in love with her and this whole application. I’m so excited to see what you do with her! Your faceclaim change to Nazanin Boniadi has been approved. Please create and send in your account, review the information on our CHECKLIST, and follow everyone on the FOLLOW LIST. Welcome to the Holy Land!

OUT OF CHARACTER

Alias | mai.

Age | twenty-four.

Personal Pronouns | she/her.

Activity Level | 6/10. i work and am in grad school full time, so my activity varies depending on my workload for the week, with end of fiscal quarter and midterms/ finals being the busiest, though i try to post a reply every 2-3 days. i’m pretty much always on my phone though, so i respond to messages quickly!

Timezone | est.

Triggers | REMOVED.

How did you find the group? | rosey!

Current/Past RP Accounts | kenna

IN CHARACTER

CHARACTER | abaddon. & i would like to change her fc to nazanin boniadi!

WHAT DREW YOU TO THIS CHARACTER? |

my libra ass saw the light/ dark conflict and said BET. but actually — i’ve always been obsessed with the concept of DUALITY and the fragility of the line that exists between two extremes (a line that is very much jagged, drawn with shaky hands into the sand; too easily, too inevitably erased by the violence of the tides). this quote i especially love:

“the distinction between holy & heresy was always

a question of fire: the distinction between whore & saint lies

in who’s burned for it — the distinction between martyr & false

god lies in whose testimony is set ablaze”

with abaddon, there is the obvious light and dark conflict: the war between her angel and demon sides. but there are also more subtle dualities: her roles as a mother and jailer (and even within this, guard and executioner); her loyalty to God and affection for the great betrayer; the righteousness she brandished against raphael yet acceptance of soul’s damnation. she’s a mess of contradictions, a wildfire contained in a matchstick; a rose flooded with blood.

abaddon’s biography also reminded me of a conversation i had with rosey. i asked how she chooses her characters, and rosey said it was easy: she likes to take characters that live behind the curtain and polish them until they shine. this was a revelation for me, as most of my characters are larger than life: with the precision and heat of a single beam of light or the ferocity and tragedy of a monster who eats their own heart. always in the forefront. it was why abaddon captured my attention. not because she is a background character, but because she chooses to be. she is the maternal figure; the one who quietly deigns to pass judgement with nothing more than a cool flash of her eyes. at least, outwardly. i view her as the margaery tyrell type — subtly calculating, biding her time and moving pieces behind the scenes when no one’s watching. tugging strings gently.

doubtless, she carries love in her heart. love and tenderness — and she wields them like a finely crafted weapon. (gotta love that #range). it is very much an exchange, though the vulnerability comes from a real place. as does the manipulation.

PLOT IDEAS

THE SELF.

i like to call myself wound

but i will answer to knife.

keeper of the black cells | many millennia spent in hell and still shining gold. bloodstained gold, perhaps. but gold nonetheless. and how did she do it? i struggle not to sigh as i type, she followed god. but really, that’s the answer. because even as she rose within the ranks of the demons; even as hell easily latched onto her soul, a beast with all claws and no shape, a beast that looked like her; that tried to eat its way out from the inside, abaddon clung to her divinity. she accepted the punishment given to her; she became her own executioner. and within the abyss then the black cells, even as she is able to walk through without chains, abaddon is the oldest prisoner of them all. because even as she doles out torture with nothing more than indifferent press of her lips, she allows herself to feel. there is the guilt, resting upon the rust of the chains that tear apart limb. there is the recoil, the violent churn of her stomach as blood mingles with air until her vision is spilt wine. and then there is the pain — her own pain — as if it is her flesh she is slicing apart. as if it is her joints being separated from limb.

but as with everything for abaddon, there is a duality. for as much as she is a prisoner, she is a KING. she owns the black cells. she’s its keeper; its protector. its mother. the black cells are her territory, and i think it is very much on purpose. i think abaddon gives out punishments as often as she gives out scraps of tenderness. it is she who paints the darkness, but it is also she who gives light, with the knowledge that a man dying from thirst will close his eyes in reverence as a single drop of water lands upon his tongue. the prisoners bend to the sound of her steps prowling the stone halls, equal parts devotion and fear within their black hearts (hearts that they are all too willing to carve out of their chests at her will). i love entertaining the idea of abaddon using the cells for her own purposes, whether it is seeking out information to stay in the loop with what is happening in every corner of the land, to an insurance policy, if anyone were to catch her ire (looking at you, judas).

dmitri | her heart is half darkened, half rotten. yet whenever her gaze meets with his, the drumming in her pulse turns to something tidal. and in the waves: potential. i think dmitri is the key to the reconciliation between the two opposing sides of abaddon. after all, they are a creature wrought from calamity, yet they still shine molten gold, and she can’t help the comfort and exhilaration she feels in their presence, as if discovering her reflection for the first time, awed by the glory yet frightened by the carnage.

maybe, in another world, this could have been a love story. but it’s not. more likely, i see the potential for abaddon dragging dmitri further into the darkness — judas has plans for them, after all, and abaddon’s loyalty rests with her makeshift family. (but that begs the question: is she then choosing to damn herself along with him? is she choosing to forsake the light within her — the balance within her — for the only love she has ever known? for family? and is that not another sort of light? a different sort of divinity?)

THE DEMONS.

“you can turn around in the dark,

with the man who wants your heart looming so big,

so big over you, and you can give it to him,

so bright and red and pure that it destroys him.”

the mother | i think it is very possible that the demons seek out abaddon before judas or damien. she is more gentle, more kind, more approachable. and less likely to slit their throats in one move (though let’s hope they remember to guard their hearts, too). and for her part, abaddon plays into this image. she listens to their concerns, often abstaining from comment; but there is something to be said for the steadfast gaze in which she regards them, the way the smoke clears from their lungs as she fixes them with her serene, though cool, eyes. it’s not love. but there’s a tenderness all the same, a mother’s sweetness; honey given to an ailing child — even if the honey is dripping off a knife. even if the mother has her own plans.

judas |

it’s something like a waltz.

loyalty to the great betrayer. the irony is not at all lost on her.

he had been there, when she fell. and some days, she wonders if he had not been waiting, for how quickly she had taken to him, even when their companionship felt too much like holding onto a switchblade that cuts before it opens — but this, she reasons, is different sort of knife; terrible and beautiful and coated with poison at the hilt. abaddon is, after all, too accustomed to the spill of her own blood; to the moments when she stitched herself back together with nothing more than the fevered faith of a child looking up at the moon every night, even when its face is turned away in indifference — maybe especially then.

let him cut me then, she reasons, as she walks with judas hand-in-hand through the cells. let him try. i will give him tenderness; i will give him devotion. i will be the lamb at his altar, all delicate flesh and wide eyes. and i will wound as i am wounded; twist PRAYER into PREY.

the child waits. the moon blooms blood red.

many thoughts… head full. at first glance, one might be tempted to label abaddon as the antithesis to judas. he betrayed god. she clings to her devotion. he destroys. she nurtures. he is the snake within the tall grasses. and abaddon? nowhere to be found (and maybe that’s because she is the grass — ever present and plainly within sight, swaying to the wind, both everywhere and nowhere at once; a place of sanctuary until it becomes the unfurled curtain). i would argue, however, that they’re more alike than you might think.

when she had first been hurled into hell, she’d grieved. she’d fallen, and the faces that stared back at her wore smiles that she couldn’t discern from snarls, lips pulled back and teeth gleaming white against the shadows that clung to their frames (the same shadows she would come to wear like glorified battle scars). yet, for as far as she had fallen, ABADDON WOULD ASCEND. and judas played no small part. of course, she had known exactly who he was. still, she followed him, pulled towards him with the same inevitability as an apple to a bruise. from judas, she learned to tear apart skin with a tongue sharper than teeth. and then later on, that she didn’t need to open her mouth at all, for what weapon is more powerful than the hands that bear the skin?

but he is still judas; there’s no division between where his name ends and his person begins — something abaddon has never forgotten. and as much as she learned from him, she kept her eyes wide open, just as she had when watching raphael’s ease in cruelty. and this, i think, is where abaddon sets herself apart — why it is she who is considered judas’s equal and confidant. she sees and understands exactly who he is, what he is. still, she stands beside him. (she would not kiss the ring, as so many had before her. abaddon, instead, kisses the flesh beneath.) still, she extends to him her tenderness, baring the delicate skin of her throat for him to kiss. for him to slit. it’s almost like a game — a balancing act, as everything in her life is, turning herself into a sacrifice filled with poison. and if he were to bite? (to betray her, as is etched into his nature?) he would find that it is a poison of his own making.

personally, i find the idea of judas getting betrayed by the one being he considers his confidant very sexy. the most obvious way is if he questions her loyalties and throws her into her own black cells (as mentioned in the judas app) — in which case, he has a wicked surprise coming his way. the second, more likely way, is if he harms damien or azazel (though damien is more likely). abaddon holds their makeshift family very close to her heart, for they had been the ones who made hell feel like home for her. but family doesn’t mean stability, and abaddon has long accepted the possibility of a conflict between judas and damien. i don’t even think it’s a matter of loving damien and azazel more than judas. it’s not the betrayal of the person; it’s the betrayal of their family. it’s the betrayal of her last whisper of hope for some semblance of peace and happiness within the punishment she has accepted for herself. and for that, he will not be forgiven.

THE ANGELS.

“who am I? […] a monster among angels or angel among monsters,”

raphael | i think it’s funny that the raphael app casted him as cersei, because from the beginning i described abaddon as margaery (though i also have not watched game of thrones, so we may both be bobo the clown on this part). raphael and abaddon’s dynamic really does make me a clown, though, if not bobo. for as much as they are antagonistic to each other, circling each other like hawks, elegant and watchful, they are foils. raphael is the healer; abaddon is the punisher. yet it is he who revels in pain and she who recoils. it was he who god favored, sending the ill-fated angel with the justice to strike at him into the depths of hell. yet it was she who mourned the loss of their creator; she who desperately clung to the shreds of her divinity, of Him, while raphael sat back and watched mutiny unfold.

but they are also similar. because it is in perfect synchronization that circle each other, as if guided by an invisible hymn for which no words exist. they are both patient — too patient, with their clever little machinations while watching the other players make their moves. poised to strike. lightning in a bottle. so what if we were to smash that bottle?

arael | it would be too easy, to use arael as a pawn. the angel does nothing to hide the pain and desperation in her eyes as she drags another being to the cells, and even if she looks away (she doesn’t), abaddon can hear the rage that thunders in her throat as she tells her to keep going. and of course, she does. and of course, the idea artfully arranges itself on the slight arch of her brow: how natural it would feel, to create leverage. to plant false information, use arael’s wrath for her purposes? and it would be no one’s fault but her own, for letting rage blind her to the monster in front of her. yet, as quickly as the seed plants itself, the ground dries up at its feet, barren of any notion of willingness, and abaddon isn’t stomach carving arael into a weapon, as she does with her own prisoners. even as the grief melded bars that encase the angel are thicker than any within the cells.

why? because she’s soft!! abaddon knows vulnerability well; so used is she to wielding it like a weapon. she knows the dance, the game, the exchange. yet arael had shown vulnerability without abaddon giving any at all. TO BE SEEN ALLOWS YOU TO BE HUNTED and arael had exposed herself without asking for anything in return. so as much as it is easy; as much as the possibly calls to the darkness within her heart like siren’s song, the other part, the part that loves, that understands, simply can’t get herself to manipulate arael.

overall | i’m interested to see how abaddon interactions with all the angels, honestly. i think she definitely feels a spark of anger whenever she sees them, for their betrayal of god, and it’s ironic how the being that mourns Him most is the one He casted out of His domain. and i’m hoping that the angels try to use her as a pawn. she is, after all, within the hearts of judas and the anti-christ. and within her own heart: light. wouldn’t it be all too easy, then, to try to get her on their side? to coax information from her under the guise of her first family?

ARE YOU COMFORTABLE KILLING OFF YOUR CHARACTER? | yes.

DRIVING MOTIVATION

peace. stillness. she never thought she’d find it, after her descent from heaven, and she’d spent most of her days yearning for it, using the little light she had left inside of her like a candle against the darkness of hell, never recoiling from the pain as the wax melted and burned her flesh, for she deserved it — had god not decreed it so? yet somewhere along the line she’d found family. precarious, fickle family. but one she cherished all the same. it was in the companionship of judas, the intensity of damien, and the bright glow of azazel had she found a love she had never know within the ranks of the angels, even as she had called them her brethren while their creator looked down upon them with the cool judgement of a father. within the ferocity of the demons, she had found love. and i think that’s what abaddon would claim her driving motivation to be.

i think it’s cute. fanciful. but no.

i suppose it could be called love. or peace. but more precisely, it is labeled as CONTROL. she had sliced raphael down with her own definition of justice, despite the consequences she had known would be enacted upon her. i do think some part of it is rooted in morality and what she thinks is right and wrong, but morality only serves as the thin veneer for the control of the world around her and the sight before her eyes.

when god had punished her, it was with acceptance that abaddon had descended, giving up control for her creator, as she views His will above her own, trusting in His judgement and the notion of balance. but had she not wrestled back that same control, as soon as her wings touched hell? had she not gripped onto the light within her, the divinity within her, with claws sprouted from her determination? she had refused to give up her agency, her identity, even as hell tried to chew her up and dismantle her heart brick by brick with all its rotten teeth. even the black cells serve as a mechanism for control — abaddon is its sole ruler, and it is with her will that punishments and tortures are enacted. even when it’s upon herself.

so my long haul pitch is this: TAKE IT AWAY. threaten her sense of control. abaddon is too content watching behind the curtain, moving chess pieces discreetly, balancing power and molding it into her definition of peace. while that is a very fun and sexy time, i would love for her to be forced into the light she cherishes so much. to make big, impactful moves. to rise into her full power and call in the favors she gift wraps as tenderness. i want her to be driven to choose, to forsake balance. TO SMASH THE SCALES ALTOGETHER.

CHARACTER TRAITS

(+) empathetic, diplomatic, loyal

(-) indulgent, obsessive, manipulative

I /

She searches for Him.

In the folds of dawn. In the hallowed darkness.

For years she wanders during the brief moments of respite; in the space between silences while the world is made anew, taking every chance she can to escape the gazes that dance over her form, tenderness and devotion briefly landing upon her before they flit away to the other demons within her family. And for once, she wishes they would overlook her altogether — such is her desperation to find Him. Such is the love and loss that seizes what remains of her soul, grief so acute that she wonders how the others haven’t heard its echoes within the empty chambers of her heart.

She will find Him.

And she will hold Him within her arms, bestowing upon Him the divinity and light she has so stubbornly held onto. (The traitorous, infested part of her heart can’t help but grin at the thought; Heavenly Father casted down from his throne, just as he had done to her. Spat from above with all the care of a rotten seed of faith.)

He will not ask for forgiveness, but She will give it anyway.

II /

How many years has it taken for violence to become sweet? Once metallic and revolting, now familiar, comforting; like a poem known by heart, and Abaddon gives herself a moment to savor the taste, swirling it in her mouth before she knows is the time to spit it back out, lest it transform into an addiction of her own making (sometimes she wonders if it hasn’t already). Such is the price of balance.

But the moment is interrupted, her back slammed against vibrant cobblestone, ridges pressing onto tender flesh (this, too, does not hurt as much as it thrills — as much as it comforts).

“You were gone.” Level. Casual. Elegant, even, and her lips curve upwards as she meets the gaze of Judas, though elegance gives way to a quiet sort of rage lined within his dark eyes. It’s a warning as much as it is a privilege, his rare show of genuine emotion.

“I was.” She waits, and she can feel the wearing of his patience.

“Where?” A demand decorated in politeness, ever the gentleman.

It only takes a moment’s shifting of expression; her subtle mocking of his empty decorum shifting into a confirmation of his suspicion that there is a detection in movement, Judas’s arm moving to unsheath a dagger and hold it to the base of her throat. Warmth trickles from where divine metal meets skin, but she doesn’t move away. For a moment Abaddon simply closes her eyes, wondering how it would feel to be enveloped in such warmth — even if it tastes too much like self-destruction.

It is at the same time that she opens her eyes does her head tilt towards the dagger, lips ever so gently caressing its blade and coming away stained pomegranate. A tender kiss, not unlike any of his own.

And she smiles before she moves, a lightning strike to match his own, wrenching the dagger from her confidant’s hand and plunging into her chest without so much as a wince of pain, her gaze never leaving his.

“Do you doubt my loyalty, dear Judas?”

He doesn’t answer, and she merely listens to the echoes of his retreating steps.

#accepted #accepted: abaddon

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savrenim · 4 years ago

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Hey mx savrenim its me again and I'm wondering: how you maintain tension in a story with characters with future vision? Especially in a story with no guaranteed future, where seers can ensure the best possible future for themselves

oooooh v v good question, once more under the cut

so there are a lot lot LOT of ways to do this that all depend on the tone that you want your story to go for, and Imma reference a few pieces of media that do this in various ways, but this is pretty much a subset of the question “how do you maintain tension in your story when your character is very overpowered”

1. Just very realistically explore that “in theory able to do things perfectly” and “in practice able to do things perfectly” are very very different things. Another Faust by Daniel Nayeri had pretty much someone with Seer-like capabilities (namely, the ability to loop back I thiiiink as far as they wanted in time?) that they could use to make sure they always said the right thing, got the right answers on tests, etc etc, and it just.... didn’t work out for them perfectly. Because perfect knowledge didn’t fix everything. If you know how every single play is going to work idk in a baseball game, that gives you an edge, but it doesn’t actually mean you win the game unless you are good enough at baseball to hit that ball and run those bases

In that case, the more effective the Seer wants to be, the more they have to actually train the skills that they care about, so that they can carry out the actions physically that lead to their ideal future. And building physical skills is hard and takes work and practice, and anything you have to work to get better at to reach a goal is the starting point of tension.

Also to continue the sports metaphor, having perfect knowledge of a baseball game and even being the best player in the world doesn’t guarantee you a win because you cannot play every single position, there are other people on the team who are going to be doing actions that at most can have secondhand versions of your knowledge. Trying to manage the human aspect leads to human error. So maybe there is tension because the Seer aggressively self-isolates so that Other People Will Not Fail Them and tension comes from interacting with other people they have extreme trust issues. Maybe the tension comes from them playing puppetmaster and trying to figure out which people they are willing to sacrifice for their goals, which people will fail them and which people they can and should hold onto, and from nobody really trusting them because everyone is well aware that the puppetmaster is willing to make sacrifices.

And finally -- just knowing the future doesn’t mean you can fix it. I don’t know about you, but even if I had perfect foreknowledge of the future, I would not be truly happy just personally thriving as idk rich and a famous mathematician and physicist and married to my fiance and maybe the books that I want to be published published and enough money to give to all my friends too and maybe can we have warp drives I want to go to space and inventing some solid if not immortality-tech then life-extension tech would be cool -- which, like, is everything I could personally wish for from life and more -- but in the world that we have? like, climate change SUCKS. fascism SUCKS. racism SUCKS. sexism and homophobia and poverty and class wars disguised as generational wars and all of the existing structures that reinforce all of these things SUCK. and even personally having perfect foreknowledge of the future enough to either start with or build up a bunch of political power and money, to try to change any of that would mean going against incredibly entrenched institutions that I honestly have no idea how effective one person could be at changing. Like if B*zos suddenly decided “wait let’s save the world and make a socialist utopia” do you actually think he would succeed? or even get very far? even applying every single resource he commands? or would he just.... lose a lot of his money and power trying to do that and then someone else becomes the richest person in the world who does want to maintain the system. because a lot of that power are things that do not exist, like stocks, it’s imaginary money that the moment you stop playing the game you get kicked out of the game and maybe you can make tiny changes but the game itself doesn’t stop

so baaaasically consider making your Seer a radical anarchist or at least someone who cares about tackling large-scale problems that one individual will never be able to solve, to play the “well if a very powerful individual had a single-minded focus on trying to fight these things could we at least get further than every single powerful person wanting to screw us over or just not caring?” game -- that creates tension because global problems can only be solved by global and communal actions, and one individual, no matter how perfectly they can see the future, cannot do that on their own

2. “Psychic powers don’t make you popular.” This is my obligatory “I just rewatched Mob Psycho 100 and am obsessed with it seriously consider watching it if you haven’t.” I know I keep bringing up MP100 but hear me out my favorite media is where the main character is stupidly overpowered so I don’t have to be stressed at all consuming it and MP100 maybe is the most touching but also well thought out and interestingly plotted version of that I’ve ever seen But the basic premise of Mob Psycho 100 is that the main character, Mob, is a middle schooler with the most powerful psychic abilities in the world. The tension comes from: (1) Mob is not in total control over his powers and feels really really bad when he loses control and for example uses his powers against another person even in self-defense because that’s a Rule he made for himself that he really doesn’t want to cross ever. Which with a Seer, maybe you have a Seer that Cares Deeply About Other People’s Privacy, or who Cares Deeply About Having Real Relationships That They Do Not Manipulate, or who Cares Deeply About Their Achievements Being Their Own and so they don’t use their powers in everyday life out of moral considerations, except sometimes gods in stressful situations you just want everything to be okay so the tension of “do I fix this right now or is this crossing a line” drives your story. (2) because Mob isn’t using his powers in everyday life, while he is having these giant badass psychic battles with ghosts and evil psychics as a part-time job after school and yeah yeah you know he’s going to win, the tension and growth in the story comes from the gains that he is making in his personal life of, like, “oh he made a friend!!!!! oh he stood up for himself even though that’s really hard for him and he set a boundary!!!! oh he’s working really really hard towards his goal of being better at running!!!!! oh look he’s grown so much at episode 1 he didn’t talk to anyone his own age or have anything to do and now he’s doing things for himself!!!” Having your Seer take the ethics of not using seeing into the future to manipulate the people around them really really seriously, working very hard at tiny life things and then being a complete fucking badass that is putting down world-threatening threats as hobby that they kind of don’t view as that important in defining them as a person or defining their accomplishments or how they feel about themselves means that it doesn’t matter how overpowered they are in terms of their abilities, your audience will care and be invested in the tiny life accomplishments that they are working so hard to do on their own, and will be proud of their personal growth.

3. Blind Spots. Exactly what it sounds like, can your Seer really see everything? Perfectly? And if they do see everything do they know the exact effect that acting differently will cause? Or are they limited visions -- they only come at certain times, they only are about very specific things, the Seer cannot control when they happen, etc. The more specific and limited your visions are, the harder they have to actually work to figure out how to interpret them and best play the cards that they have, so maybe finding that perfect happy life isn’t actually all that easy.

Alternatively, your Seer can only see the natural future, what would happen if they do not change their actions. If they change their actions, they can’t re-glimpse the new version, so it’s up to their best guess as to whether or not their plans to make things better will actually make things better. You can create a shit-ton of tension there if only because Plans Never Go Perfectly. Honestly at this point you’re just writing a slightly different version of those “MC is a Super Genius” books that instead of them making good plans because they are a Super Genius, it is good plans because they can see the future, I stand by childhood me that the first three Artemis Fowl books are great and honestly I’m pretty sure the plot wouldn’t really change too much if you added “Artemis can see what future would happen if he didn’t take any actions to interfere” and it would just be another interesting trait that was a part of his planning process.

And even if your Seer can see re-glimpse the new version, they are human. They have only a finite amount of time, and a finite amount of brain space. You don’t need to make the rules of Seer powers be that “they can see all of spacetime and all possibilities of the past and future perfectly all the time.” They can miss things by not thinking something is important and looking in a different direction. You can build up tension around they can only look into the future, not the past, they missed something, and now they don’t know what they missed and what to target to fix it. Or play the finite amount of time bit very hard: if they see the effects of deciding one particular course of action, it takes [x] time for the vision to complete, then they need to try to see the effects of one other particular course of action, and they can only effectively run a handful of simulations -- or even hundreds or thousands, but the answer is still a finite number of dear gods is nature chaotic / the butterfly effect is built into every single physics equation that there is that describes the world -- so tension comes from even if they can check that a plan is good, they still have to come up with a plan to change the future, and can only come up with so many plans in the time that they have.

4. Existential Crisis. You made Seer powers “they can see all of spacetime and all possibilities of the past and future perfectly all the time.” idk I would find life terribly boring and have an existential crisis over that probably? of am I even human? does anything I do matter? does anyone else exist, really, since I can see and control every aspect of their lives? am I a god? how do I relate to anyone? how do I care about anything?

In this setup, your main character would not be the Seer, it would be a person or group of people who are either trying to Save The World or Accomplish Something Important or even Accomplish Something Selfish who spend the story trying to befriend the Seer and get their help goddamnit because the moment the Seer is on their side, they win. and then the tension comes from the Seer keeps refusing but is ~slowly opening their heart~, jaded older mentor figure adopts tiny adorable hopeful child is the found family JAM and then your main character finally decides they aren’t getting the help and goes off and does the incredibly dangerous thing alone and the Seer realizes too late that oh nooo my tiny son is in danger and at just the last moment decides fuck it and leaps back into the game to try to help and save them and oh both the glorious drama and all the best tropes all of them seriously if you write this book ping me I’ll read it I’m a sucker for jaded old loner adopts Naive Hopeful Hero Who Is Going To Save The World Even If It Kills Them and jaded old loner just spends the entire time going “oh no. oh no tiny child. oh gods I’m coming out of retirement aren’t I. tiny child please. please have you considered just being chill so that I don’t have to come out of retirement” and then just. the SATISFACTION. when they come in at just the right moment and the tension leading up to it when you didn’t know if they were going to or not. it’s poetry.

This can also pretty easily be done without the Seer having godlike powers, just pretty strong powers-- have them have made their life perfect, found it empty, and fallen into a depressive fugue then use the above plot for the same effect.

5. Make Them Your Villain. The final way of dealing with making tension and having an overpowered character is, uh..... it’s only no tension when your protagonist doesn’t need to struggle to reach their goals. if the antagonist is walking down easy street that only makes things all the more stressful because how do you beat that? and that is all of the tension in your book: figuring it out.

a subgenre of this is Seer v Seer: the best possible future for one Seer is not necessarily the best possible future for another Seer, so if you have multiple Seers, Seers clashing against other Seers that have the same powers which means their powers aren’t necessarily an advantage is a shit-ton of tension. That is.... pretty much the plot of trash novel? So I’d rather not go into detail about how I personally am doing it, but anytime people who have the same abilities fight, they’re on equal ground, you don’t know who is going to win, so boom, tension.

6. Seers are illegal/ kidnapped by the government the moment they are discovered to work for the government only/ targeted for kidnapping by all sorts of powerful groups, so your Seers need to aggressively hide their powers and the more they use them to make their life perfect, the more in danger they are; even if they can use their abilities to avoid ever being captured, they will be on the run their entire lives if they get found out.

#writing advice #there are also a shit ton of combinations of these that you can do #like 2 combines with 4 very easily -- an extremely powerful seer doesnt want to use their powers it crosses a line #vs people trying to convince them to (which also happens in mp100 a bunch)#the latter half of 1 and 5 go together well -- changing global power systems and creating more equality is hard because some Seers benefit #from the existing systems and so don't want them to change #check out gay murder elf bachelorette book 2 of wolves and ravens for a combo of 5 and 3 #it's in my writing tab #and these are just the first six things that came to mind there are so many you can do #there's the typical curse of cassandra bit of 'a perfect seer but no one believes them so getting people to listen is hard #there can even be quasi silly modern versions of that like 'seer visions are not evidence for court so your PI/lawyer Seer needs to figure #out ways to leverage their visions into things that are publicly acceptable proof for what they want'#or scientists who can't just present results bc they saw the results are correct who need to reverse engineer how to get there #.......actually that's just a physicist who am I kidding #anyways yeah that's my advice I guess #I find it really really amusing that I am apparently the seer expert like this is just a plot device that I think is cool #the answers above are just kind of what I'd do

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shilkaren · 4 years ago

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How Do I Start My Data Science Career?

I would say that my data science learning path was fairly traditional. I did my undergrad in economics and have master’s degrees in global commerce and computer science (concentration in machine learning and artificial intelligence). I learned my business acumen from my coursework during my commerce degree and picked up most of the technical elements from my master’s in CS. I had a data science internship, and I was on my way. Looking back, there was nothing wrong with my path, but knowing what I do now, what would I change about my learning journey? This question is particularly relevant for people that are new to the field. Many things have changed since I started. Positions are more competitive and there are far more learning options. I would hope that my experience could help others learn data science faster, more completely, and give them better job opportunities.

I will caveat this article by saying that learning is a little bit different for everyone. My word is not gospel, and there is a good chance that you will find something that works a little bit better for you. Still, I hope this is a good foundation from which to build off. I hope it instills in you the big picture priorities that are relevant when learning this field. This article focuses more on how to learn than on where to learn (courses, boot camps, degrees, etc.). I recommend these two articles for specific courses and online resources for learning the field.

If I had to start learning Data Science again, how would I do it? (Santiago Viquez Segura)

My Self-Created Artificial Intelligence Masters Degree (Daniel Bourke)

For Those Who Would Prefer The Video Version:

Lesson 1: Break it down

When I first started learning data science I was overwhelmed with the size of the field. I had to learn programming languages and concepts from statistics, linear algebra, calculus, etc. When I was confronted with this many options, I didn’t know where to start. Fortunately for me, I had coursework to guide my studies. The degrees that I did broke down many of the concepts into smaller chunks (classes) so they were digestible. While this worked for me, I find that schools have a one-size-fits-all approach to this. They also include many extraneous classes that you don’t actually need. If I could go back, I could definitely break my data science learning journey into chunks better suited for me. Before diving into data science, it makes sense to understand the components that are used in the field. Rather than breaking things into “courses”, you can make data science into even smaller and more digestible chunks. I generally break data science into programming and math. Programming — familiarity with Python and/or R

Variables

Loops

Functions

Objects

Packages (pandas, NumPy, matplotlib, sklearn, TensorFlow, PyTorch, etc.)

Math Statistics

Probability theory

Regression (linear, multiple linear, ridge, lasso, random forest, SVM, etc.)

Classification (naive Bayes, knn, decision tree, random forest, SVM, etc.)

Clustering (k means, hierarchical)

Linear Algebra Calculus By breaking data science down into its components, you transform it from being an abstract concept into concrete steps.

Lesson 2: Start somewhere

When I was starting out, I was obsessed with learning things in the “correct” sequence. After entering the field, I found that many data scientists learned their skills in drastically different orders. I met Ph.D.’s that had studied math first, and only learned the programming concepts after taking a Bootcamp. I also met software engineers that were incredible programmers and learned math later through self-study and application.I now realize that it is most important to start somewhere, preferably with a topic you are interested in. I found that learning is additive. If you learn one thing, you are not forgoing learning another concept. If I had to go back, I would start with the concepts that were most interesting for me at the time. Once you learn a single concept, you can build on that knowledge to understand others. For example, if you learn a simple linear regression, multiple linear regression is a fairly easy step. Still, I probably wouldn’t jump right in and start with deep learning. It helps to start small and simple and build on that foundation.

Lesson 3: Build Minimum Viable Knowledge (MVK)

Over time, I’ve had a change of opinion about how much foundational knowledge you need. After experiencing many different types of learning myself, I believe that learning by doing real-world projects is the most effective way to grasp a field. I think that you should understand just enough of these concepts to be able to start exploring your own projects. This is where minimum viable knowledge comes into play. You should start by learning just enough to be able to learn through doing. This stage is fairly hard to identify. Generally, you will feel like you aren’t ready when you first get here. This is a good thing though, it means that you are pushing yourself out of your comfort zone. You can reach this stage fairly easily. I think you can get to this level of knowledge with every introductory online course, and I generally recommend the micro-courses at kaggle.com. To get to this step, all you really need to understand is the basics of python or R and have a familiarity with the packages used. You can start learning math later by applying some of the algorithms to real-world data.

Lesson 4: Get your hands dirty

With your basic knowledge, I recommend getting into projects as quickly as possible. Again, this sounds scary, but a project is all about how you define it. At the early stages, a project could be something as simple as experimenting with a for a loop. As you progress, you can graduate to projects using data on Kaggle, and eventually using data that you have collected. I am a HUGE believer that the best way to learn data science is to do data science. I think that the theory is VERY important, but no one says that you have to understand it all before you start applying it. The theory is something you can go back to after you have a functional understanding of the algorithms. For me, real-world examples were always what made things click. If you start with the real-world examples through projects, I think things have a far higher chance of things “clicking” when you start learning the theory. Projects also have the power to make data science smaller. One of the biggest challenges I see for new learners is that the field of data science can be overwhelming. Confining the things you are learning to the size of a small project allows you to break things down even further than you did in Lesson 1. Projects offer one additional benefit. They give you immediate feedback on where you need to improve. If you are working on a project and you run into a roadblock about what package, algorithm, or visual to use, you now know that you should probably study that area of the field further.

Lesson 5: Learn from other people’s code

While doing your own projects is great, sometimes you don’t know what you don’t know. I highly recommend going through the code of more experienced data scientists to get ideas about what to learn next and to better understand logic or syntax. On Kaggle and GitHub there are thousands (maybe millions) of kernels where people have shared the code that they used to analyze datasets. Going through these is a great way to complement your projects. I recommend making a list of the packages, algorithms, and visuals that you see being used. You should go to the documentation for the packages and expand your knowledge there. They almost always have examples in the docs for how they should be used. Again, this list can be used to help you think of new project ideas and experiments.

Lesson 6: Build algorithms from scratch

This is a rite of passage for most data scientists. After you have applied an algorithm and understand how it works in practice, I recommend trying to code it from scratch. This helps you to better understand the underlying math and other mechanisms that make it work. When doing this, you will undoubtedly have to learn the theory behind it as well. I personally think that learning in this direction is far more intuitive than trying to master the theory and then apply it. This is the approach that fastai has taken with their free MOOC. I highly recommend it if you are interested in deep learning. For this, I generally recommend starting with linear regression. This will help you to better understand gradient descent, which is an extremely important concept to build on. As you advance your data science career further, I think theory becomes increasingly important. You bring value by matching the correct algorithm to the problem. The theory associated with the algorithm greatly facilitates this process.

Lesson 7: Never stop learning

The beauty of the data science journey is that it never ends. You will need to keep learning to stay on top of new packages and advancements in the field. I recommend doing this through (you guessed it) more projects. I also recommend continuing with the code review and reading new research that is published. This is more of a mindset recommendation than anything practical. If you think that there is a pinnacle, you are in for a surprise!

Insideaiml is one of the best platforms where you can learn Python, Data Science, Machine Learning, Artificial Intelligence & showcase your knowledge to the outside world.

#ai #artificial intelligence #datascience #data scientist

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dillydedalus · 4 years ago

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october reading

i finished my masters thesis this month (yay!) so while i still read quite a lot for escapism i was also operating on no more than 2 braincells at any time, and one of those braincells was just. continuously screaming. so any incoherence or whatever here is. because of that.

i am sovereign, nicola barker a fantastically weird & enjoyable novella about a house-viewing gone wrong that eventually blows up the novella form. i don’t want to give away the meta aspect too much, even tho it’s not entirely unpredictable, but it is so very entertaining and delightful to read. had such a fun time with this. also has a great cover. 4/5

the lifted veil, george eliot i’ve only read middlemarch by eliot, so a 75-page novella about the supernatural sure was... different. it’s fine, but nothing special imo. i enjoyed the first chapter, which sets up latimer, a soft young man with the gift of foresight/telepathy and his fascination with his brother’s fiancee, whose mind remains opaque to him (....twilight???), but the second half is pretty meh. 2/5

the notebooks of malte laurids brigge, rainer maria rilke (read the german obvi) loved the beginning of this, where morbid, too-intense, death-obsessed author-insert malte laurids brigge walks around paris, seeing everyone carry their death with them, which then makes him think of the deaths he has witnessed in his childhood. the parts about his childhood in a danish noble family were also good, but it really lost me with the overtly poetic, weird historical/religious stuff?? feel like this might have been a victim of termin master’s thesis like maybe that’s not the time for poetic, fragmentary, modernist-ish novels. 3/5

wie der soldat das grammofon repariert, saša stanišić (read in german, english translation by anthea bell) i really enjoyed stanišić‘s memoir herkunft last year so i went back to his 2006 classic, about a kid called aleksandar growing up in yugoslavia and eventually fleeing to germany as a refugee during the war. it’s very similar to herkunft in story, although the presentation is very different. honestly overall i found it a bit Too Much, too long & too stylised in its structure. but like, i can see why it’s so popular. 2.5/5

i capture the castle, dodie smith i really liked this! cassandra mortmain is a very strong narrator, the atmosphere of the dilapidated castle and the dysfunctional family are great, & i was surprised by the crushing poverty of the family in the beginning - cassandra obviously attempts to cover this up both in her own head & in her journal, but for much of the first half or so i was genuinely really worried for the kids - and this makes rose so much more sympathetic in her resolution to escape poverty. i was less convinced by the whole love quadrangle this book got going on, but on the whole this was very charming, but often very melancholy in a far deeper way than i expected. 4/5

the death of vivek oji, akwaeke emezi my second emezi this year, altho sadly neither of them have lived up to the glory of freshwater. this one is about (gender) identity, grief, trauma, love, and solidarity/community based on otherness, which are similar thematically to freshwater, but in a novel that is, i would say, both more stylistically conventional and more hopeful/uplifting (altho it is still very depressing in parts). i enjoyed this on the whole, but it just doesn’t grab you by the throat the way freshwater does, and the reveal/central mystery just feels a bit lacking. 3/5

gott wohnt im wedding, regina scheer listen, this book is probably more competent & historically interesting than literarily great BUT it’s literally (literally) set around the corner from where i live, i know pretty much every single place & business mentioned in it & the house troubles are extremely relatable, if a lot worse than what i am currently experiencing. anyway. this novel is centered around a house in berlin-wedding & the people who live in it & it's about the holocaust & the porajmos, current discrimination against sinti&roma, the history of the wedding, gentrification, familial trauma & all that. it’s very interesting historically, slow but still very readable, and like.... i just really love the wedding! it’s kinda shitty & depressing but i love it!!! 4/5 the only good indians, stephen graham jones note: the elk in this book is not what you, a european, think of as an elk. that’s a moose. anyway, this is a horror novel about four native american men who hunt for elk when, where and how they shouldn’t have and ten years later find themselves pursued by a vengeful elk spirit. i enjoyed this! the scenes where shit goes down were certainly very horrible & gruesome & very sad as well. 3.5/5

solutions & other problems, allie brosh this book really is out there & exists. anyway hyperbole & a half was like, one of my formative internet things and i still love it a lot. this book is second only to the winds of winter in eternally getting pushed back and back and back, so this even getting published was def a pleasant surprise. it’s still really funny, and the weird ugly drawings are still amazingly effective, but this one is. very sad. some really bad shit happened to brosh inbetween and it’s kinda a downer (i mean the first one had the depression saga but this one... is darker). 3.5/5

a supposedly fun thing i’ll never do again, david foster wallace .....i might have to stan dfw, just a little bit. like, i read infinite jest when i was way too young to appreciate it (still traumatised by the uh. creative use of brooms tho) & i have NO intentions of ever rereading it BUT this essay collection was so good that i may just have to read a lot of his other stuff. particular highlights are the title essay, about a cruise journey, and an essay about the illinois state fair, two things that feel particularly fascinating and offputting in equal measure in this year of plague, where even the idea of being in enclosed spaces with many people freaks you out. but i also really appreciated his essays on david lynch & television & fiction, even if i don’t agree with all of his takes. he just has such a good voice! funny, smart, precisely observed but always with a strange spin. 4/5, minus points for too much tennis, but oh well

gruppenbild mit dame, heinrich böll (group portrait with lady) marcel reich-ranicki criticised this book for being, essentially, a sloppy mess and that’s kind of accurate - it’s definitely too long & a bit draggy & böll (and the narrator/“author”) go on tangents and into details with indulgence & abandon, but it’s also... kind of brilliant? the way the “author” collects material and testimony on leni (the lady), her family, coming-of-age and the love affair with a soviet forced labourer that made her an outcast, constructing a documented history of her while leni herself remains ever elusive, the focus on structure, architecture, construction, the endless loops of self-justification (pelzer’s insistance that he is not inhuman, the real estate tycoon’s insistence that they just want what’s best for leni & that her resistance to profit-logic is abnormal)... there’s so much in here, and a lot of it doesn’t need to be there, but a lot of it does. 3.5/5

sweet fruit, sour land, rebecca ley very lyrical, quiet, feminist climate dystopia. it’s good, well-written, very evocative of hunger and loss, a dystopia but really more about grief and identity, and i read it during the last few days of my master’s thesis and thus have absolutely nothing to say about it. 3.5/5

i also & this will be a shock, dnf’d burning down the haus: punk rock, revolution & the fall of the berlin wall, a book about the east-berlin/german punk subculture. it just felt like a longform essay artificially extended into a 400-page book & the writing was pretty basic in a music bro tries to be deep and like, subversive and shit kinda way.

#the books i read #long post

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paintednailsandsoftdetails · 5 years ago

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Fine Line: rambles & rankings

hello here i am eleven hours after being knocked on my ass by one miss harry e styles with some thoughts if anyone is curious!!

1. Golden- the sad bop to end all sad bops!! the dichotomy of this music being the most fun and bouncy (the da das on tour!!) while his voice is the lower, steadier element of the song is so interesting to me? also the pessimism of this song is *chefs kiss* even if the idea of his vulnerability being an undesirable trait to his partner is heartbreaking

2. Watermelon Sugar- she slaps and we been knew!! this wins for best dance number for sure and i can’t wait for us all to be grovin and yelling “high!” back at him

3. Adore You- i think after a week ive concluded that this was my least favorite of the 3 released songs, only just slightly? but i absolutely love singing along to this, and ofc the eroda aesthetic is forever connected to it and absolutely incredible

4. Lights Up- baby light of my life :’) i love lights up and i will always love lights up, shes always gonna be special to me knowing what it means to harry and the way he decided to release it on coming out day with that video, and i hope he continues making art like this for a long time to come

5. Cherry- i? wasn’t?? prepared??? to be perfectly real, i wasnt anticipating this being a fav from what we heard in reviews, BUT THIS? musically this is so exactly the sound i want from him (hozier meets bon iver but make it harry?? BLESSED) and im absolutely in love with it. and his voice!! pulled the first tears out of me on the listen through :’) the way he harps on “don’t you call him baby” in the softest most fragile way over top this melody is art, put it in the moma

6. Falling- MA’AM THESE VOCALS. i love that this is pretty bare bones musically to really highlight the vocals and the emotions, both of which go absolutely off. its maybe not the most ~interesting~ to listen to compared to others, but the power of this LIVE? holy shit thats 100% where this is going to flourish

7. To Be So Lonely- starting with “I was just a little boy” PLEASE BE QUITE im not okay. anyways there is something about the way these lyrics sit in the pocket of the music that im obsessed with. i wasnt sure how i felt about either one their own, but god the way the “arrogant son of a bitch” line is weaved in with these instruments (the strings on this!!), i feel that shit in my CHEST

8. She- hello to what i feel are the most hs1-esque vibes on this album, except definitely different and COOLER!! its weird bc this is a sound that i already easily associate with harry, but lyrically/conceptually this is fascinating territory. There are layers to be unpacked here and ive already seen some galaxy brain interpretations so im excited to let this one marinate (the falsetto and “plays pretend” lyrics… okay ma’am) also the “sleeps in his bed” vocal FUCK! and of course mitchell went off and i cant wait for harr to be all over him on tour

9. Sunflower Vol. 6- MY FUNKY LIL BABY this is so sugary in a way thats not at all cheesy but makes me smile so! much! the gasp, the sounds at the end… could not be more babie and i just know im gonna fall in love with the bits and bobs of this more and more every time i listen. shout out to the Queen vibes i got from the “tonight tonight tonight” parts! and also did i mention the end is the cutest thing what the fuck

10. Canyon Moon- these absolute VIBES shes THAT GIRL!! this is so sweet and tender im soft. the “Im going”s are so fucking PRETTY? the beautiful dulcimer sweetie you are doing so great. idek what else to say this is the soundtrack to the gay indie roadtrip movie i want harry to star in and i love it with my whole heart thats it

11. TPWK- hating on this is literally illegal?? babie made this for and about us and the space we mutually created on tour THIS IS OURS. hes feeling good in his skin and dancing with us!! even if he doesn’t have all the answers!! the Queen vibes in this too we love, and we are going to have SO MUCH FUN singing n dancing with him to this :’) the “loooong enough” vocal and then his “all together now” stuff at the end is so happy, healing and sweet i love him so much

12. Fine Line- *sigh* what am i supposed to say? what can i do? musically and vocally this is everything ive ever fucking wanted (again i didnt quite realize that harry styles pulling a bon iver was exactly my niche but guess what it absolutely is). HER FALSETTO HER VOICE THIS DELICATE TENDERNESS?? Cannot think of a single thing ive heard thats more stunningly gorgeous than the way he sings “we’ll be a fine line/we’ll be alright” so guess thats it for me lmao. similar to cherry, on paper these lyrics are not a hit for me (at least without analysis), but god it doesnt fucking MATTER bc they come across so abstract and transcendent in context (and open my mind to so many other interpretive possibilities) that i cannot not be in love. And then of course the horns come in and we get the hopeful turn…this song makes me feel things on a level nothing he’s made before ever has.

Overall this album threw me for the loop of a lifetime; its so different from what i was expecting and even hoping for, but without a doubt the most special thing i’ve listened to in as long as i can remember. these songs deliver on a level hs1 barely scratched the surface of, and i cannot wait to see how harry continues to grow and reach even higher places across his career. endlessly proud of him, always.

Extremely tentative ranking 100% subject to change bc this is impossible:

fine line >> sunflower vol. 6 = cherry = canyon moon > lights up > tpwk > to be so lonely > watermelon sugar = golden > falling > she > adore you

#this order isnt it ajssf im sorry #falling she and adore you do not deserve to be that low when #a) fallings vocals are like that b) adore you is so so fun and c) she has conceptual layers and a depth for interpretation that is so !!!#its hard bc the first four just hit so right with me on levels i cant explain #but i think some of my lower ranked songs are stronger lyrically or conceptually #and tbsl would be lower if i wasnt OBSESSED with the music #tpwk would be lower if i wasnt obsessed with the concept #cherry being that high is insane to me but here we are #ANYWAYS LMAO this is what i got come chat with me about it!#fine line #fine line review #mine

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