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fortunatelyfresco · 4 years ago

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A Holistic Integration of Type 1 Narcolepsy into the Reading of Moist von Lipwig

Literary Interpretation, Disability, and Finding Yourself Between the Lines

As it goes, "I wrote this for me, but you can read it if you want." It might be a fun ride for anyone who is very interested in Moist von Lipwig, or narcolepsy, or both, and/or anyone who enjoys collecting small details from within a body of work and arranging them into threads that are supportable by the text, without being actually suggested by it.

Personally, I find it very interesting to read the meta behind different headcanons, and see how creators can unintentionally write a character who fits certain criteria. There are only so many traits, after all, and some of them tend to travel in groups! Humans are pattern seekers, etc etc.

The first step of reading Moist von Lipwig as narcoleptic is wanting to read Moist von Lipwig as narcoleptic. Being narcoleptic myself and relating heavily to Moist, this step was very easy. I invite you to take my hand and come along, at least briefly, if you were interested enough to click the readmore.

Once you have taken that step, things start falling into place. At least they do if you're intimately familiar with narcolepsy, or if you first learn about it in detail through, for instance, a Tumblr post with an agenda :)

I'll break this down symptom by symptom, citing only the ones I both have personal experience with and see textual support for.

I'll be using OverDrive's search function to catalogue "evidence" in (the American editions of) Going Postal, Making Money, and Raising Steam, so I might miss passages that don't use certain keywords.

Please take any statements along the lines of "being narcoleptic means X" with a huge grain of salt. Sometimes it's just more succinct. Narcolepsy can manifest in many different ways, and is still being actively studied. Don't base your entire understanding of it on a fandom essay I wrote to cope with the crushing pressures of capitalism. I have not even fully read the scientific studies linked here as sources.

Here we go! Spoilers abound.

I. Excessive Daytime Sleepiness (EDS) and sleep attacks.

Being narcoleptic means (salt now, please) that your brain does not get adequate rest while you sleep, no matter how much you sleep. This is because of a disturbance in the order and length of REM and NREM sleep phases. This leads to constant exhaustion. Some sources describe narcoleptic EDS as "comparable to [the sleepiness] experienced by a healthy individual who has been sleep-deprived continuously for 48–72 hours."

(Source.)

Sleep attacks can come on gradually or suddenly. In my case, I become irritable and easily overwhelmed, and nothing matters except finding a place to lie down. A more severe attack, under the right circumstances, can put me to sleep while I'm actively trying to stay awake and engaged.

Moist refers to 6:45 am as "still nighttime." He is "allergic to the concept of two seven o'clocks in one day" and is "not good at early mornings," and the narration even cites this as "one of the advantages of a life of crime; you didn't have to get up until other people had got the streets aired."

In Going Postal, he repeatedly falls asleep at his desk. I can only find two instances, but the first one describes it as having happened "again," so it happens at least three times over the course of one week. Both of the times I found were after Mr. Pump cleared his apartment, giving him access to a bed, and I can't find any reference to the fire destroying it—just that his office is "missing the whole of one wall." His presumably wooden desk is still intact, even, just "charred."

There's also no build-up either time. No direct narration of the time right before he falls asleep, just retroactive accounting for it.

Which is primarily a function of stories not showing us every boring second, and secondarily one of the smaller ways we're shown Moist being overwhelmed and racing to keep up with himself, but tertiarily it's a great set dressing if you've already decided he's narcoleptic. Sometimes sleep is just a thing that happens, without any deliberate transition. Sometimes you sit down to catch your breath or get some paperwork done, and wake up several hours later.

I've found only one example in GP of Moist waking up in his actual bed at the post office: the morning after being possessed by all the undelivered letters. Presumably either they put him there, or Mr. Pump did.

There are two points in Making Money where Moist, in an effort to be a comforting and/or guiding hand, advises people to get some sleep. First Owlswick Jenkins, and then one of the clerks (Robert) who is worried about Mr. Bent.

I take the optimistic view that this is Moist genuinely caring about these people, not just trying to get them to do what he wants. He has always done some combination of those things (GP opens with him having befriended his jailers, after all), but there's definitely a thread of him learning to treat both himself and those around him more like real people. (See also.)

Looking at this thread through narcolepsy-colored lenses, you get Moist perhaps drawing from his own experiences in an effort to be helpful. In Owlswick or Robert's position, what is something he would want to hear from the man currently in charge of his fate, or at least his job? "Get some sleep."

If we accept this as a pattern, it culminates in Raising Steam, when Moist starts to worry about "Dick Simnel and his band of overworked engineers," fixating particularly on their lack of sleep.

What sleep they got was in sleeping bags, curled up on carriage seats, eating but not eating well, just driven by their watches and their desire to keep the train going.

[...]

"People are going to die if we push them any further," he said to Dick. "You lot would rather work than sleep!"

[...]

The young man swayed in front of him and Moist's tone became gentle. "And I see now that part of my job is to tell you that you need some rest. You've run out of steam, Dick. Look, we're well on the way to Uberwald now, and while it's daylight and we're out of the mountains it's going to be the least risky time to run with minimum crew. We're all going to need our wits about us when we get near the pass. Surely you can take some rest?"

Simnel blinked as if he'd not seen Moist the first time, and said, "Yes, you're right."

And Moist could hear the slurring in the young man's speech, caught him before he fell and dragged him into a sleeping compartment, put him to bed, and noted that the engineer didn't so much fall asleep as somehow flow into it.

Moist then recruits Vimes to help him talk the rest of the engineers into getting some rest. The two of them briefly commiserate about people not realizing how important it is.

"I have to teach that to young coppers. Treasure a night's rest, I always say. Take a nap whenever you can."

"Very good."

II. Insomnia.

This is a lesser-known but very common symptom of narcolepsy. Or a comorbidity, depending on how you look at it. It seems counterintuitive if narcolepsy has been presented to you as "sleeping all the time," but it makes sense once you know it's really a matter of disruption in the brain's ability to regulate sleep cycles.

The case for this symptom is flimsier, and I fully admit I'm just reading my own experience into it. But here are two excerpts from Going Postal that I find quite suitable for my sleepy agenda:

1. "A man of affairs such as he had to learn to sleep in all kinds of situations, often while mobs were looking for him a wall's thickness away."

I latched hard onto this detail the first time I read GP.

At my worst, I could not get more than a couple hours of sleep in my bed. I kept taking naps in the bath because it was one of the few places I could sleep. It seemed to fulfill some of the criteria (isolation, temperature control, etc) that my brain demanded in exchange for playing nice.

We're told over and over again, throughout Moist's books, that he functions best under pressure.

(Brief aside: This is often cited as a reason to interpret Moist as having ADHD, which I'm also fully on board with. Not coincidentally, narcolepsy and ADHD share a few symptoms, have a notable comorbidity rate, and are treated with some of the same medications. Source.)

So again, if you're already inclined to read Moist as narcoleptic, the following is an easy jump:

"Moist thinks he's good at sleeping in strange places under strange circumstances. This is because A) his basis for comparison is a disordered attempt to sleep in normal places under normal circumstances, B) something about danger satisfies his brain into running more smoothly, and C) he's a resourceful person who is 'not given to introspection,' and so is less likely to wonder why his body demands sleep at strange times and more likely to focus on finding a place for that sleep to happen, and chalk this up later as a skill."

And returning briefly to EDS: Why would someone like Moist waste time finding a safe place to sleep while people are actively trying to kill him? At the beginning of GP, he leaves Vetinari's office and immediately goes on the run. In multiple books, when he feels threatened, his brain instinctively launches into complex escape plans. We see him successfully blend into an Ankh-Morpork crowd at least once after becoming a public figure.

So why bother? After all, a safe place to sleep is also a safe place to change clothes, or at least remove whatever distinguishing features he's given himself. Why wouldn't he just become someone else and leave town immediately?

The obvious answer is that sometimes things just happen, and an author doesn't need to know or explain every single detail of a character's past.

I would suggest, though, that one of those things might be Moist reaching a point where sleep is just not optional. A point where he not only doesn't, but can't, care about anything else. Where he is too tired to think straight, too tired to talk his way out of trouble, too tired to even contemplate the long journey from one town to the next.

2. "Moist knew he ought to get some sleep, but he had to be there, too, alive and sparkling."

Sometimes (especially in combination with underlying mental health issues) narcoleptic sleep deprivation can bypass everything I've described so far, and lead straight into a manic state. You won't necessarily find that on Google, but it's been my experience.

That's obviously not what the text is implying. "Alive and sparkling" is just a very relatable description. And we do often see Moist getting away from himself, speaking without thinking, making absurd promises that he justifies immediately afterwards as Just Part Of Being Him, always raising the stakes.

And here are a couple of excerpts from Raising Steam that could be interpreted as Moist being a light sleeper, AKA struggling to get deep sleep:

1. "And slowly Moist shut down, although a part of him was always listening to the rhythm of the rails, listening in his sleep, like a sailor listening to the sounds of the sea."

2. "All Moist's life he'd managed to find a way of sleeping in just about every circumstance and, besides, the guard's van was somehow the hub of the train; and although he didn't know how he did it, he always managed to sleep with half of one ear open."

Moist is exactly the kind of opportunist to see that as a useful tool, isn't he?

III. Hypnagogic and Hypnopompic Hallucinations.

These are hallucinations that come on as you're falling asleep or waking up. They can also happen during REM intrusions while you're awake. My most memorable ones include piano notes, someone calling my name, being trapped in the waves of a large body of water, and a huge truck going over a guard rail and tumbling down a hill. These are often, but not always, accompanied by sleep paralysis (and sleep paralysis is often, but not always, accompanied by hallucinations).

In GP, Moist casually cites his own hallucinations as proof that what is happening at the post office is not one.

"They're all alive! And angry! They talk! It was not a hallucination! I've had hallucinations and they don't hurt!"

Obviously that's not true for everyone, but it's true for Moist, and he has enough experience that he immediately recognizes the difference.

At one point while awake, Moist "[snaps] out of a dream of chandeliers" to realize someone has approached him to talk, while he was busy having visions of what the post office used to look like/could look like again.

Now, that's cheating, because we're probably supposed to assume it's a side effect of being possessed, but... I'm putting it here anyway.

There is also perhaps a case to be made for the tendency of Moist's internal monologue to lapse into extremely specific and prolonged hypotheticals. The lines between hallucinations, waking dreams, and "regular" daydreams have always been very blurry to me. I'm especially curious about the example at the end of Going Postal, which goes like this:

"Look, I know what I'm like," he said. "I'm not the person everyone thinks I am. I just wanted to prove to myself I'm not like Gilt. More than a hammer, you understand? But I'm still a fraud by trade. I thought you knew that. I can fake sincerity so well that even I can't tell. I mess with people's heads—"

"You're fooling no one but yourself," said Miss Dearheart, and reached for his hand.

Moist shook her off, and ran out of the building, out of the city, and back to his old life, or lives, always moving on, selling glass as diamond, but somehow it just didn't seem to work anymore, the flair wasn't there, the fun had dropped out of it, even the cards didn't seem to work for him, the money ran out, and one winter in some inn that was no more than a slum he turned his face to the wall—

And an angel appeared.

"What just happened?" said Miss Dearheart.

Perhaps you do get two...

"Only a passing thought," said Moist.

In-universe... what is Adora reacting to? What did just happen? The fact that these incidents are not isolated to Going Postal is a point against it being some sort of literal timeline divergence caused by The Spirit Of The Post.

So maybe Moist visibly zoned out. Maybe he had some kind of minor but noticeable cataplexy attack (more on those later) as part of a REM intrusion, brought on by the intense emotions he's currently struggling with.

IV. Vivid Dreams.

Again, at least some of this is probably supposed to be part of the possession, but I've been professionally projecting myself onto the surreal dreams of magically afflicted characters for years. Do try this at home.

1. "Moist dreamed of bottled wizards, all shouting his name. In the best tradition of awaking from a nightmare, the voices gradually became one voice, which turned out to be the voice of Mr. Pump, who was shaking him."

2. Moist is uneasy about the Smoking Gnu's plan, and then he has an extremely detailed dream about the Grand Trunk burning down.

This culminates in "Moist awoke, the Grand Trunk burning in his head," followed by a paragraph of him thinking things through and starting to form his own alternative plan, followed immediately by "Moist awoke. He was at his desk, and someone had put a pillow under his head."

So he fell asleep at his desk, woke up from a vivid nightmare, was awake just long enough for a coherent train of thought, and then passed back out. Which once again is not "proof" of anything, but fits the predetermined interpretation like a glove.

V. Cataplexy.

Cataplexy is a sudden loss of muscle control, usually triggered by strong emotions. This is thought to be a facet of REM intrusion—waking instances of the atonia that is meant to stop us from acting out our dreams.

The most well-known manifestation is laughter making your knees buckle, but it's not always that severe. My own attacks range from facial twitching, usually when I'm angry or otherwise extremely upset, to all-over weakness/immobilization and near-collapse when I laugh. My knees have fully buckled once or twice.

This is the biggest stretch. This is the one that is absolutely only there if you've already decided to read entire novels between the lines. It's also not even necessary for the broader headcanon; plenty of people have narcolepsy without cataplexy (or such mild cataplexy that it's never noticeable, or very delayed onset, etc).

However. I am doing this for fun. So I want him to have it. It's also become a major part of how I imagine Moist engaging with emotion, and I'd like to make a case for that.

There are a few scattered references to Moist's legs shaking, or being unsteady, or outright giving way, but there's usually an external physical reason, and/or enough psychological shock to justify it without a medical condition.

The most compelling example I've found so far comes from Moist and Adora's conversation about people expecting Moist to deliver letters to the gods.

"I never promised to—"

"You promised to when you sold them the stamps!"

Moist almost fell off his chair. She'd wielded the sentence like a fist.

"And it'll give them hope," she added, rather more quietly.

"False hope," said Moist, struggling upright.

"Almost fell off his chair" at first sounds like casual hyperbole, but then "struggling upright" implies it was a bit more literal. It's also an accurate description of me recovering from my more severe attacks, supporting myself on a wall or my spouse, or pushing myself up if I've fallen over in bed.

That happens to me multiple times per day, by the way. It doesn't bother me, and I didn't realize there was anything unusual about it for a long time. I barely think about it, except to fondly note that my spouse is good at making me laugh.

Which is to say, even severe cataplexy is not always noticeable or debilitating. Sometimes it absolutely is! It can be downright dangerous, depending on where you are, what you're doing, and whether you have any other conditions it might exacerbate. I don't want to undermine that.

I am just hell-bent on justifying the idea that this fictional character could have repeated attacks throughout the canonical narrative that are so routine they don't merit an explanation, or even a description. Especially for someone who is used to hiding his few distinguishing features behind false ones that are much more memorable. (See also.)

(That link goes to my own fanfic. Sorry.)

On the milder side, between Going Postal and Making Money, there are three instances of Moist's mouth "dropping open" when he's shocked, upset, confused, or some combination of the three. This is the kind of thing that shows up a lot in fiction, but rarely happens so literally in real life.

(There's technically a fourth instance, but I'm not counting it because it seems to be a deliberate choice on his part to convey surprise.)

And then there's laughter. Or rather, there isn't. I could be missing something, but I've searched all three books for instances of laughter and various synonyms (not counting spoken "Ha!"s), and what I've come up with is:

Moist laughs once in Going Postal, when he receives the assignment for the race to Genua.

Two packages were handed over. Moist undid his, and burst out laughing.

There's also an instance earlier in the book where Moist nearly "burst[s] out laughing."

I find the specifics here interesting, and, for our purposes, fortuitous. Cataplexy is complicated and presents differently for everyone. In my case, when laughter triggers an attack, one of the effects (which is sometimes also a cause) is that I laugh very hard, with little or no control. "Burst out laughing" is quite apt.

Let's move on to Making Money, and start with a quick tangent:

Mr. Bent explains that he has no sense of humor due to a medical condition, and that he isn't upset about this and doesn't understand why people feel sorry for him.

Moist immediately starts in with "Have you tried—" before getting cut off by the frustrated Bent.

Out-of-universe, "Have you tried" is such a well-known refrain to anyone with an incurable condition, I'm not at all surprised to find it in a book written by someone who had at least begun the process that would lead to a diagnosis of early-onset Alzheimer's. And Pratchett has certainly never shied away from portraying ignorance in his protagonists.

In-universe, it feels a little odd. Moist's tongue runs away from him all the time, but usually in the form of making ridiculous claims or impossible promises. Moist's entire stock-in-trade is People Skills, and it feels strange for him to make this kind of mistake immediately after being told Mr. Bent is not looking for solutions.

But if one were reading with, for instance, the idea in mind that Moist himself has an incurable condition related to laughter and is enthusiastic about, but still relatively new to, the practice of drawing on his own experiences to help people... it is easy to imagine the gears in his head turning the wrong way, superimposing those experiences over the tail end of Mr. Bent's explanation. Disabled people are not immune to these well-meaning pitfalls.

There is another Mr. Bent moment that I want to discuss, but we'll circle back around to it later.

I found two instances of Moist himself laughing in MM.

1. "He said it with a laugh, to lighten the mood a little."

This is deliberate laughter, employed as a social tactic. A polite chuckle, probably. Not the sort of thing that generally triggers cataplexy.

2. "Moist started to laugh, and stopped at the sight of her grave expression."

The first and only involuntary laugh in MM. It doesn't always trigger attacks...

Which brings us to Raising Steam. Compared to the first two books, Moist laughs a lot here. I count nine instances. Two of them are "burst out laughing"s, a couple include him as part of a group, some of it comes off as deliberate, and some of it doesn't.

I've always seen a lot of... rage in Raising Steam. Combing through it for laughter, I realized Moist's emotions in general are much closer to the surface here, and he's much less concerned about letting people see them. He laughs with friends and acquaintances, he cries in front of strangers, he shouts at Harry King, he has that entire conversation with Dick that boils down to "I'm very worried about you," etc.

Opinions vary wildly and sharply on Raising Steam. I have my own hangups with it, as I do with most books in the series. (Every time I make a new Discworld post, Tumblr passive-aggressively suggests the tag "my kingdom for a discworld character who is normal about women and other species.")

But I like this particular change in Moist, and I choose to see it as character development. He's trading in the professional detachment of a conman for the ability to grow into himself as a person and make meaningful connections.

So, what does that have to do with cataplexy? A lot.

I don't want to get too maudlin, so I'll just say I have plenty of personal experience with emotional repression masking cataplexy symptoms. And so, I believe, does the version of Moist we've put together over the course of this post.

Which brings us back to Making Money, and Mr. Bent. He says something about Moist that I find very interesting: "I do not trust those who laugh too easily."

Unless I've missed something, at that point in the book, Moist has never actually laughed in front of him. And Mr. Bent is a man who pays very close attention to details.

So, what is the in-universe explanation for this? I'd like to propose that Moist is very skilled at seeming to laugh, without actually laughing. He smiles, he's friendly, and he makes other people laugh, which is another thing Bent dislikes about him. He gives the impression of being someone who laughs a lot. (He certainly left that impression on me; I was very surprised by the lack of examples in the first two books.)

Even staying strictly within the bounds of canon, it's easy to imagine why this might have become part of Moist's camouflage in his previous life. He wasn't looking to get attached to anyone, and he didn't want anyone getting inside his head. Engaging with people genuinely enough to laugh at their jokes would run counter to both of those things, but some of his personas still needed to come off as friendly and sociable.

Still working within the canon, it makes sense to assume he's similarly distanced himself from emotion in general. He sits in a cell for several weeks without truly believing he's going to die. He's bewildered when Mr. Pump points out that his schemes have hurt innocent people. He has no idea what to do with his feelings for Adora. Etc.

Interpreting Moist as having cataplexy adds an extra element of danger. Moist thrives on danger, but there's a difference between the thrill of a con and the threat of sudden, uncontrollable displays of vulnerability. And so it becomes even easier to see him stifling his own emotional capacity.*

We meet Moist at a moment of great upheaval. He is forcibly removed from his cocoon of false identities, and pushed out into the world as himself. And we are shown and told throughout Going Postal that he does not know how to be himself. (See also.)

He is repeatedly stymied by his own emotions. He gets tongue-tied and confused around Adora, he snaps at Mr. Pump, he lashes out at Mr. Groat, he gets lost in school flashbacks when he meets Miss Maccalariat. This thread continues in Making Money, where the sudden reappearance of Cribbins immediately rattles him into making an uncharacteristic mistake.

I called him Cribbins! Just then! I called him Cribbins! Did he tell me his name? Did he notice? He must have noticed!

Later in the same book, Moist misses a crucial opportunity to run damage control on the bank's public image... because he's excited to see Adora.

The Moist of GP and MM is not used to feeling things so deeply. It throws him off his game. I'm not at all suggesting cataplexy is the only (or even primary) reason for that, but I do think there's room for it on both sides of the cause and effect equation.

With or without the cataplexy, I find Moist's relative emotional openness in Raising Steam... really nice. (It's a work in progress. He's still getting a handle on anger.)

Cataplexy just adds another dimension. A physical manifestation of emotional vulnerability, which would have been especially untenable for a teenager on the run. Just one more facet of the real, human, fallible Moist von Lipwig who spent years buried beneath Albert Spangler and all the rest.

Another piece of himself that Moist is growing to understand and accept, as he learns to more comfortably be himself.

The Moist of Going Postal runs into a burning building to save lives without fully understanding why he wants to, and justifies it on the fly as an essential part of the role he's trying to play.

The Moist of Raising Steam mindlessly throws himself under a train to save two children, and then blows up at Harry King about the lack of safety regulations. Freshly traumatized by the murder of several railway workers and his own violent, vengeful response to it, he still offers, in the face of Harry's own grief, to be the one to inform their families. On a long and dangerous journey with plenty of moving parts to think about, he worries about Dick Simnel and the other engineers, and pushes them to take better care of themselves.

He also meets a bunch of kids who nearly derailed a train as part of a childish scheme. His admonishment is startlingly vivid.

"Can you imagine a railway accident? The screaming of the rails and the people inside and the explosion that scythes the countryside around when the boiler bursts? And you, little girl, and your little friends, would have done all that. Killed a trainload of people."

[...]

"I'll square this with the engine driver, but if I was you I'd get my pencil and turn any clever ideas you have like this into a book or two. Those penny dreadfuls are all the rage in the railway bookshops."

Maybe what he is also saying, between the lines, is:

I left home at 14 and began a life of smoke and mirrors. I was empty inside, and I thought everyone else was, too. It was all fun and games, and then a man made of clay told me I was killing people. Nip it in the bud, child. Write books.

------------

*There are studies suggesting that in addition to deliberately employed "tricks," people with cataplexy may experience physiological reactions in the brain meant to inhibit laughter. (Source 1, Source 2.)

Most of the information here is way over my head, but that second link also says "one region of the brain called the zona incerta (meaning 'zone of uncertainty') was only activated during laughter in people with narcolepsy, not in controls. Research on the zona incerta in animals suggests that it also helps to control fear-associated behavior."

The linked article about that (https://www.nature.com/articles/s41467-018-03581-6) is also over my head, but I would certainly describe Moist von Lipwig as having unusual fear responses.**

**Narcolepsy is a fun roller-coaster ride of constant scientific discoveries about exactly which parts of your brain are paying too much attention, not paying enough attention, or trying to eat each other.

#moist von lipwig #narcolepsy #discworld #disabled headcanons #oh my god this got so out of hand #earned itself a title AND a subtitle #mr. cybulskis i'm sorry i fell asleep in your class every day it was at the exact wrong time and temperature and lighting

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reynesofcastamere · 5 years ago

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Pressure Points[β]

(A/N: The prompt I got for this was ‘Maul giving Ahsoka some NSFW stress relief.’ And. Uh...Well, I’m not sure if this is what you wanted, anon. But it’s what you’re getting. ORZ. So yeah, this gets fairly dark. Readmore is going under my notes again. Warnings for: blindfolding, non-negotiated bondage, dubious consent/morals, possessiveness, mentions of past self-abuse(reckless sexual behaviour/masochism) and sensory deprivation. I’m...not certain whether some of Maul’s lines fall under gaslighting or any other form of verbal/emotional abuse, but keep an eye out for those too. Potentially triggering sections have been marked off with ‘****’. This takes place about 2-3 years after ROTS and events are closer to canon (ie Maul is a crime boss but Death Watch and the Nightbrothers aren’t allied with him). Unbeta’d.)

There is tension in her frame as she waits, the strip of black cloth about her eyes her only adornment. Marks cover her, old and new, dappling the sunset colour of her skin with sharp points of red and pools of purple, blue, and yellow. They are not his work, nor do they belong to a single individual. Such a curious creature. Ahsoka Tano is knelt on a large cushion in front of a chair, the very image of powerlessness and debauchery. And yet... “Are these meant to provoke me?” Maul questions, fingertips trailing from the centre of her back and over one shoulder as he circles around her to take his seat. “Or have you come to request my aid in killing those responsible?” The latter seems unlikely, given her limiting morals and considerable skill, though the prospect does intrigue him. “Neither.” She murmurs, voice slightly roughened from strain as he cups her jaw in one hand, slowly tilting it upwards. The blindfold only prevents him from reading her eyes, but there is a wealth of information waiting in the tempo of her breath and heartbeat, the subconscious tells of movement and expression. “Don’t pretend you’re concerned for anything other than your own ego.” The bitter tone to her voice is hardly subtle, though. “If you wished to avoid interrogation, you should have been more patient.” He coaxes her upwards with guided touches until she sits bestride his thighs. “Instead you summon me here, covered in these tokens-” A single fringertip traces a line from her lower abdomen all the way up to the edge of the blindfold. “-and this insulting barrier.” She jerks her head away when he toys with the edge of it, clearly not willing to relinquish whatever ‘safety’ it afforded her. “What am I to do with you, my Lady?” “Don’t. I’m not yours. Not-” Ahsoka trembles as he discards his gloves to touch her properly. His hands stroke her outer thighs, over her backside and up her spine to curve around and palm her breasts. He indulges himself for a few moments, tasting the vulnerable skin that rests above the pulse beating in her neck as the callused pads of his thumbs rub and circle her stiffening peaks. “Reluctance does not become you.” Maul whispers as her hips twitch, hands blindly seeking out the armrests and gripping them tightly, as if to anchor herself. Or perhaps, to have something else to touch besides him. “Evil.” Her reply comes, followed by a sharp cry when he roughly tugs and worries at her nipples with his fingers. He is familiar with this kind of deprivation: How taking away one or all of the senses can increase the body’s reaction to pain. Such knowledge had never been meant for the purposes of pleasure; of making another being pant and writhe, seeking more. The first -and only- time he’d had the satisfaction of seeing her in this state was a far more...rushed affair. Punctuated with savage cacophony, nails and teeth tearing at each other as they were swept into a frenzy of unrestrained lust. There simply hadn’t been the time or inclination to truly explore her. But now... He laughs, soft and brief and cruel. “And you know for a certainty that none of your paramours were thieves, murderers, or worse?” One hand trails downwards, stopping just above her sex. The edge of his thumb just barely teases her engorged nub, drawing out a shaken exhale. “Or am I to believe that you screened every one of their backgrounds personally.” A statement of dry scorn as he observes her internal struggle, seemingly repulsed by and drawn towards him all at once. “It’s not the same. They weren’t-I don’t even have a word for what you are.” Ahsoka retorts, low and tinged with sanctimonious fury. She hisses when he slips a single digit inside her, a frission of genuine discomfort travelling up her spine and into her shoulders. Hm. She is certainly wet enough, so the soreness in her channel cannot be his doing. He will need to prepare her gradually if he wants to achieve much more than this. “Oh, but you do. Say it.” “...Monster.”

“Yes.”

“You’re not even going to try and deny it?” “A waste of my time and an affront to your intelligence.” He hasn’t stopped touching her this whole time, lips ghosting along her throat as his fingers carress her, inside and out. Her hips are rolling in minute increments, her grip on the chair practically white-knuckled at this point. Maul pauses for a few moments to remove his upper garments, pry her hands loose, and place them on his back. Specifically, on the furrows she’d left in his skin over the course of their heated entanglement. ****

“I can’t do this.” She breathes, fingers clenching as the heel of his right palm drags over the bundle of nerves at the apex of her slit. “Mmmn...-haaahh- It’s...it’s wrong.” Her back arches as he re-inserts one digit, then another, still providing the friction that’s causing her to start losing coherency. “An interesting choice of words.” They imply a certain degree of...latitude in her thinking. That it is some form of obstacle preventing her from giving in, rather than a total resistance to what is happening. “What’s that supposed t-ahhhhn-to mean?” Ahsoka demands, before their lips meet. It does not take long for her to melt, moaning as his tongue teases her lower lip, then lightly draws it between his teeth. When he pulls back, it is purely to admire the image of desirous ruin she inspires, flushed and breathing raggedly as she trembles. “Do you not realize how close you are to oblivion?” He curls the digits inside her for emphasis, feeling her jolt at the sensation. She has been attempting to shield herself from him in the Force, but Maul is both relentless and patient, and the conflict in her is simmering so very near to the surface. “If you are so diminished by wanting this from me, leave.” His free hand digs into a set of bruises on her right hip, her hands clenching against his back as her core quivers. “Run back to your masters, secure in your nobility and virtue, but know that the monster you marked will never touch you again. Not unless you beg, Ahsoka Tano.” It is a clear choice. She cannot accuse him of being obscure or unreasonable in his logic or wording. Yet she does not move away or speak. In fact, her jaw is clenched so tightly that one might worry for the state of her teeth. With how...outspoken she usually is, this development is quite odd. He lightly scrapes his teeth over her pulse point as he puzzles it out, circling the fingers still buried inside her. She is visibly struggling now, caught between body and mind as she clings to the last vestiges of self-control. “Ah...” Maul breathes in sudden epiphany. “There it is. You cannot bring yourself to ask for these...perversions.” The stiffening of her posture and the turn of her head is all the answer he needs. “So be it.” He tears a strip of cloth from his shirt, using one hand and some assistance from the Dark Side to tie her wrists behind her back. “I will ignore your sorrow, your guilt, your shame, and you will have the comforting illusion that this is not your choice.” He bites down on her throat as she comes apart, voice and Force signature finally released from their self-imposed restraints. The chaos in her is so exquisite that he cannot resist being overtaken, keening and snarling into his own climax.

****

There are long moments spent between regaining breath and sense of self, but she does not object when he changes their positions and spends a full hour pleasuring her with a clever mouth and dextrous hands; her releases bestowed as gentle gifts. Nor does she protest once he bears her down onto the floor and claims her again and again, their mutual cries filling the enclosed space with each brutal thrust. Maul is merciless as Ahsoka pleads for him to slow down, that he’s splitting her apart, and she can’t possibly come again. He simply folds her in half, legs placed over his shoulders as he proves her wrong. The final climax is wrought in shrieking agony for them both. It is almost...cleansing, in a way. He pulls out cautiously, readjusting her legs to a more comfortable position before untying her wrists. Ahsoka is limp and pliant, chest heaving with gulps of air. When he removes the blindfold, it is easy to see why. Her eyes are reddened and watery with unshed tears, haunted exhaustion making the blue of her irises lifeless and hollow. His lips press tenderly against her forehead as she closes them. “Shh. Sleep now, ja’ti mirtis {my death}.” He rumbles, just enough of the Dark Side layered into his voice to compel her obedience. A feat that would not be possible without her...current state. Perhaps it would be best to keep her with him for at least a few days, if not longer. His current base of operation is not far, and in this way he can be assured that she is only scratched, not shattered. The Rebellion will whine at him for absconding with their precious former Jedi, no doubt. Let them. He has had larger headaches than their petty grievances and slights. The only outrage that will matter is Ahsoka’s, once she regains herself and takes her freedom. Until then, she is his, and he will tend to her as he sees fit. (A/N: MAUL, ABDUCTING PEOPLE IS NOT HOW YOU SHOW PROPER AFFECTION OR AFTERCARE, FFS. -_-*** So yeah. I might do a single follow-up to this later from Ahsoka’s POV, depending on a number of things. This...might be the first smut drabble I’ve written purely from Maul’s perspective, come to think of it. The line in Sith language is repurposed from captainmazzic, and a couple of others from TLJ. The important thing to remember is that Maul is both Very Persuasive and convinced that he is Always Right. And he is, kind of, but only from a very selective point of view. Ahsoka has every reason to question the morality of what it means for her to not only want sex from him, but also that she likes having some degree of physical pain involved with sex in general. (Some people aren’t fully comfortable with masochism/painplay in their BDSM, especially when first starting out.) I wanted to explore a version of her that wasn’t as put-together or as sure of herself, because everyone has a point where they either get run down or break entirely; and it doesn’t make her any less for doing so. Anyway, I’ve rambled on a fair bit again. Cheers, everyone!)

#maulsoka #omg i forgot to tag this when i posted it. FAIL #NS.FW #lots of ramblings/warnings in this one but I swear it's for a Good Reason

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dementedgnomicwizard · 5 years ago

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celestriakle replied to your post “oh my god i fucking HATE the wolf 359 finale no podcast has ever made...”

Man I feel you. Personally I didn’t see a tpk coming and for me that probably woulda been too dark, but I remember feeling so weird about the ending as is, it was just, uncomfortable? It felt like they were trying for a happy ending and def did not get there, there was for sure a balance off. (Keeping in mind I listened like 2 or 3 years ago probably)

yeah i think it was maybe me being used to/having a preference for slightly darker fiction generally gfdhsjkhf i like stuff that’s humorous and doesn’t emotionally fatigue you but the stakes are high as hell and you know that none of the characters are ever 100% safe regardless of how much of a main character they are yk

ok i just started writing and then it got Long so i’m putting this under a readmore, ALSO HUUUGE SPOILERS UP AHEAD OBV FOR ANYONE WONDERING

what put that idea in my head initially was when eiffel almost got sent back to earth and turned back—in my head i was like ah, okay, so that’s the moment where he makes his Choice to come back no matter the cost, they’re gearing up for an Ultimate Sacrifice ending. (now looking back i’m like.... well. i Guess that’s still what was going on but.... lol.)

i assumed that for most of the episode the plan would be “stop goddard+kill cutter pryce and young, get home,” and that towards the end it would become clear that there wasn’t enough time/options/whatever to accomplish all of the above (either that they would succeed in killing cutter+price+young but in order to finish it they’d have to stay on the station as it crossed the red line or something like that, or that they would realize there were no options left besides destroying the station with everyone on board) and they’d have some touching moment as a crew where they reflect on all the development they’d undergone as people throughout the journey and all things considered are pretty gung-ho about accepting what has to happen.

it just feels (to me) like the logical and satisfying conclusion for their arcs! they finally have ALL the answers they’ve been looking for, they’ve succeeded in stopping goddard, etc. for lovelace it would’ve been a pretty kick-ass “the captain always goes down with the ship” moment and honestly a well-deserved /rest/ after everything she’s been through and all the loss she’s witnessed (because... um... can she die? now? of anything? bc it doesn’t seem likely, and ‘going back to earth so i can settle into a normal life again and then watch everyone i know get old and die around me while i stay alive because i’m not fully me anymore’ feels like ... kind of a really cold and sad ending for her, considering everything).

for hera it would’ve been a chance to (once again) reaffirm her humanity and just how much she’s progressed beyond what goddard tried to make her be; a really excellent final fuck-you, ESPECIALLY if the nature of the TPK in question was like “hera has to initiate the self-destruct and pryce is alive to witness this but powerless to stop her for once.”

for jacobi... i mean... like am i forgetting something or did they just not really bother establishing much information about like, what jacobi has to return to on earth? bc it seems like blowing the station could’ve been a way for him to 1) let go of a lot of his guilt/grief over maxwell and 2) a salute to kepler for his efforts (assuming that by the time the TPK happens kepler has already been revealed as a double-double agent + swooced out the airlock)

for eiffel it would’ve been a good conclusion to the Massive amounts of development he had; he spent the entirety of the show slowly and painfully learning how NOT to be an asshole/selfish/basically everything that he Was that contributed to destroying his life on earth care about, and how TO Show Up For the people around him despite getting off on the wrong foot initially. he arrived on the hephaestus as a (mostly) well-meaning but self-absorbed jackass with virtually no concept of boundaries or self-restraint, and by the end of the show he’d Realized this about himself and put in a colossal amount of hard work in order to Be Better... and then at the very peak of that arc, which the audience and the characters themselves have invested so much time and energy into, the decision is just to... throw all of it away? IT’S JUST GDFKSJGHFDK SOOO MUCH MORE FRUSTRATING TO ME THAN IF THEY’D JUST STRAIGHT-UP KILLED HIM because they try to dance around it like “Ahhh but IS he the same person anymore... who can never be sure.... maybe it’s a second chance....” but that logic just doesn’t WORK given the questions+answers about what makes up one’s humanity/personality as established AT LENGTH by like everything else in the show!! according to everything we’ve learned so far from hera/maxwell/pryce etc as they address these questions through the lens of the AI system, the answer to “are you still the same person if you’re physically unchanged but every single one of your memories is altered or removed?” is a resounding “NO.” i hate it when writers spend their entire story establishing certain rules/information/logic and then suddenly make decisions that completely fly in the face of all of it and think it’s a “subversion” when really what that’s called is “a bad writing decision.” i genuinely think they were just too hesitant to actually kill him so they tried to do “the next best thing” but it just... didn’t work the way they wanted it to. i’ll elaborate more on why i think they would’ve been afraid to kill him (beyond just “he is the beloved main character”) in a second

for minkowski... i mean... from a character/writing standpoint, if lovelace, hera, or eiffel (not including jacobi here only bc i don’t think they were QUITE close enough by the end for his death to have caused her As Much guilt as the other three would have) died during the finale then minkowski would almost definitely have to die as well, bc her primary motivation as we’re all very aware is to ensure the safety of her crew above all else; i don’t think there’s a universe where minkowski is okay with leaving herself if all three aren’t with her. BUT i think this became a corner that they wrote themselves into with her by the end, because then (i assume) the dilemma became “well, as much as we might like to, we basically can’t kill off any one single other character, because it will cut minkowski’s strings” WHIIICH is why i think they couldn’t go through with killing eiffel.

ANYWAY. YEAH. ALL THIS TO SAY for me personally an ending where the characters all have to sacrifice themselves, but it’s a choice they arrive at together easily + something they welcome and accept without much sadness/regret because they’ve done everything they could (and, in the case of those crewmembers w active ties to earth, successfully ensured the safety of their loved ones on earth) would’ve made a lot of sense and been satisfying. i’d be sad, definitely, but in an “this story and characters were excellent and i’m sad it’s over” way more than a “wait i’m so frustrated by this ending that can’t possibly just be It” way

#celestriakle #wolf 359 spoilers #THIS GOT LONG OOPS... SORRYgsdfhjkgfhd #dont feel obligated to read all of it im just rambling

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