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the-curse-of-neoclones · 1 year ago

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Moderneopets Artist Mistreatment

Edit as of 11/16/23 10:40 AM NST:

Removed names where I failed to do so before. I'm very sorry to the affected parties, this snowballed so far out of my intended scope.

Edit as of 11/16/23 5:30 PM NST

Please see this post for a small update.

As of 11/16/23 10:10 PM NST, Hazer the site owner has formally and publicly apologized to myself and Velu, the other affected artist. As far as I'm concerned he has officially handled the situation as best as he could, and I hold no further qualms with Moderneopets. I hope to hear of its management continuing in this direction.

The following post is left up for archival purposes only.

*****

Hello, I’m wren. I'm an artist responsible for some of the pet assets on the neoclone, Moderneopets. I'm just going to get into it.

Hazer was extremely lucky to somehow cultivate a dense group of largely professional artists to work together to make assets for his site. When it comes to his own management as a site runner, he’s largely hands-off of the art department, which is a good thing! If he can’t be active in the art panel enough to know what goes on in there, he shouldn’t be running it— we have many strong, capable artists on the team who are passionate about recreating the neopets style, who work together on every pet that has been released ever since critique became a requirement.

It makes sense that, with a project this large, Hazer should have to designate moderators to enforce rules when he is absent. Choosing to bring on moderators was also a good decision. Unfortunately, he chose poorly.

Art panel issues should have separate Art panel moderators to take care of them. People who are not overburdened with generic moderation duties from the many other channels of the server, for example. In the same vein, artists should not be moderators. When an artist has an issue with another artist, who happens to be a moderator (which has happened many times, with many people— If the mods actually open threads for all complaints they receive, they should have evidence of this & if they don’t they are not being truthful), the artist would likely not feel comfortable approaching that same artist-slash-moderator to complain about what happened. It breeds an aura of fear and discomfort any time there is an issue with an artist/mod, and that is why the two moderators on the team should have to choose one or the other if hazer wants to cultivate a healthy atmosphere in his panel.

I’ve created many pets for this website. Neopets has been a passion of mine since the third grade. I’m also one of those professional artists I mentioned— my work is also art, industry or otherwise. I care about breaking neopets down into their core, recognizable shapes. I care about keeping them on-model and in the spirit of the original TNT art team, with improvements made where I and the other panelists think they make sense. I have redlined for other artists to an even greater degree, just as other artists have redlined for me and helped me finalize each pet into something simply good: something that made sense to get put on a little passion project website for other people with a similar passion to enjoy. I found the panel to be a community of likeminded artists with which to discuss our favorite childhood petsite while we made art for a clone, as if we could pretend we were making art for neopets-dot-com. It was nice.

It wasn’t perfect, though. In fact, shortly after I joined in 2021 I took a hiatus because the art panel was fairly dead. I came back a little while later to see we had several new species, as well as an art director, and lots of activity! That was very exciting. Over the next year I would reach out to the panel or, if nobody was sure of how to proceed, I would reach out to the art director to propose ideas for how to make the panel a little more functional; quality of life updates, if you will. I don’t take credit for all of these alone, there were other artists with similar ideas all communicating to the director in private, but some examples:

A designated “collab” zone where artists could seek out other artists to complete pets with.

“The Purge,” in which the team was whittled down to ~25 current, active artists to refresh the team and allow for new artists to join.

“The Approval System,” which I first sat down with in my workshop (public to all artists) to hammer out the details with as many other artists as wanted to give their input— a method for pitching new ideas to eventually break through the “new species/color freeze” that had been plaguing us.

Speaking on the approval system: like most things that required Hazer’s direct input in the art team, it was left without response for a very long time. Artists with ideas for custom species or colors would occasionally murmur about their excitement for the system to get a look-over by hazer, to see if our approval system pitch would be approved. But hazer is busy, as we all know, and the pitch sat for a while. We had new & returning artists on the team to keep everyone busy.

What I would expect from a years-old panel of artists, when new additions arrive, would be some manner of tutorial. New artists would need to know the pipeline (here’s your workshop, you can post WIPs and anything else in there; here’s how you ping for critique, here are the spaces in which to ask for it; make sure you always ping before your work is submitted on-site), and there would likely be some acclimating on both sides. What I did not expect (but should have), was pushback from new artists on things that hadn’t had pushback in a long time. Why can’t [x] color be a posechange? Well, we’ve created many already and none of them were posechanges. Why can’t I use colored lineart? Well, that isn’t in line with the style standards set by this color; see, nobody else is coloring their lineart.

Suddenly there was a divide between veteran artists, the director, and the new blood. The divide felt greater when Hazer came to his new artist’s aid to say, approximately: “Eh, if someone wants to go above and beyond and make better art, they shouldn’t have to adhere to the guidelines.” Then he threw the art director under the bus for not somehow knowing that his intentions were always to keep the panel loose and unstructured. But don’t worry, that isn’t the first bus and won’t be the last.

My personal investment in the panel waned around that time. I think a structured “work” environment with easily accessible rules and deadlines is necessary to any project of this size. If we didn’t want to enforce color standards, nor prioritize certain colors for release, and anyone could just submit whatever Nice Art they wanted, why not open it up so any user could submit pet art? Why have a panel at all? Isn’t Hazer taking any opportunity to dunk on Leopets because he wants his site to be better? How is this different?

But I stuck around. This was a hobby I really enjoyed, after all, and I really believed it could get better. It had a good core, and despite my grievances with individual artists, none of them were bad people.

But I noticed some trends. New artists would receive feedback that they didn’t agree with and retaliate by bringing in their emotions or personal preferences. Any disagreement where multiple veteran artists stepped in to say their piece would escalate to the point of very long messages on both sides, and would need to be left to hazer to give a final input. Often he didn’t come around to it, because he’s busy, as we know. I didn’t step in to every argument; they became cyclical after a while, and I didn’t have the time or energy to spend simply tapping the proverbial sign (or style sheet). I would try to give positive suggestions when I could, for example: I don’t think this color needs another alt for just one single design, but we did talk about eventually making this color that your design would fit into really well.

I’ve done my time having arguments on the internet. I really just want an art environment where the rules are set and people actually enjoy following them, because I do— I see art rules as helpful guidelines at best and obstacles to cleverly navigate at worst, which is still fun. But of course not everyone is going to feel the same way, that’s normal; that’s life.

On 11/9 I was given this message by Hazer:

It reads:

Hello wren,

I am reaching out to you today to inform you that effective immediately you are being dismissed from the Artist and Consultant Panels. This decision has been reached through discussions and based on repeated offences in the form of user harassment and subjecting the panels to a toxic atmosphere, after multiple reports and concerns brought up to us by other users.

While we understand concerns regarding panel management, there is a distinct difference between criticising and condeming the way the panel does things and criticising and condeming users that are on the panel, and we believe this line has been crossed one too many times, further supported by concerns brought to us.

We appreciate the passion and drive of our team—all of them—and we understand you have been very passionate about the panel. Given some of the messages we see, we have also concluded that due to things in the panel not working out as you have wished, it has caused you much stress and upset as well, which we do not want. All in all, we've decided that the atmosphere of the panel and your own enjoyment of the website are hampered by your presence on it. Because of this, we have decided it is best to have you part ways with the staff sections of the website.

Effective immediately after this message, we will be permanently removing you from the panels. While normally we do a temporary removal, in this case we've seen that your compatability with our management and handling of the panel will not improve, and it will just bring stress to both sides.

We understand you have put a lot of passion into the projects you have been working on for release in Moderneopets, and in lieu of that, we offer you the option of having the project(s) still be released even after dismissal. Rewards will still be granted for releases per usual, and credit will still be given. If you decide, due to dismissal, you do not want your unreleased work to be released on Moderneopets, simply state it as such, and we will discard all progress on projects you have been working on to respect those wishes.

This decision is final and will not be revoked.

Best wishes to you,

The Moderneopets Team

[end caption]

My response:

It reads:

No warnings huh?

[end caption]

Hazer didn’t have an answer for me. I was already removed from the panel.

This came as a shock. I’d been there for over two years, I felt I had a good rapport with the other artists, I felt I’d been a helpful and active addition to the team. Like I said, I’ve done my time having arguments on the internet… what toxic behavior? Discussions over style guides? Giving redlines to people with permission? Working with the whole team to bolster several new color releases? I had an entire species that Hazer wanted ready to go since March— I just pushed through the Swamp Gas release, I just created the Mystical alt?

No warnings?

Let me reiterate: I have never been spoken to by any staff about my behavior. Hazer, his then-four moderators— none of them have ever been in my DMs to issue a warning. I have spoken TO the mods about others’ behaviors, and nothing ever came of it. The one time (and I mention this for full transparency only) the art director came to talk to me about something I said, it was stated clearly that it was not a warning, and even so I adjusted my behavior around said issue accordingly. And that was well before the purge.

But, don’t take my word for it. Here it is from hazer himself, speaking over his mods who were busy telling the rest of the panel that they always issue warnings:

It reads:

No in this case I do agree that this has been an abrupt situation and I understand the blind-sided-ness of it. No official warnings were given out regarding the actions that resulted in the removal of artists today and that’s on fault of myself and deebs not working things out properly despite the moderation team bringing issues to a us a few times – also due to our lack of availability recently. [end caption]

So… What happened? Well… here it is from Hazer, in longform:

For those who use screen readers, above are several enormous discord screenshots; I've placed it in a paste bin here: https://pastebin.com/dHLiBRTF

Two other artists immediately stepped down. Hazer admits here in his message that he and the mods had multiple tickets opened about my behavior, that they had known they wanted to remove me. They never gave a warning, never talked to me until the moment of my dismissal, but they had known it was coming for months?

Why did Hazer and his gang of mods let me continue working on art for their panel? Why did they let me work so hard to pull Swamp Gas together for an official release? Why did they let me put together a whole custom Alt and workshop it for so long? I’ve been active this whole time. Why did you let me keep working if you knew you wanted me gone?

I am a professional artist. My work is art. Hazer made the knowing decision to exploit my time and effort for his website. He’s not paying me, he’s not paying any of us. It’s volunteer work. But I did not volunteer to be mistreated like this. To not even be given a chance to defend myself. To him, artists are disposable. To him, if someone has worked on your team for years but speaks up when your friend tries to overturn the system, even civil discussion is cause for disposal. Civil discussion negates years of effort, passion, time and care.

I didn’t have to make art for you, Hazer. And you don’t deserve the team you have. How many artists have voiced their discomfort with your actions? How many artists are taking a break from the panel because of how you handled this? Ah, wait, you wouldn’t know… you’re busy.

Hazer and his mod team are just another corrupt group of individuals unfortunately heading what could have been a fun and promising petsite. Everyone who speaks praise of modneo does it by and large because of the new and unique art. Hazer was extremely lucky to cultivate a dense group of largely professional artists to work together to make assets for his site.

If Hazer wants to show any sign of his potential to be a better person, I believe he needs to formally apologize to his site for the misuse of his power and the mistreatment and exploitation of artists on his team. He needs to apologize to you, the players of his game, the subscribers to his patreon, for allowing this to happen under his watch and under his word. You know you fucked up, hazer. You shouldn’t have sided with your friend without any actual evidence of misconduct. You shouldn’t have spoken about me like I was a toxic, subhuman hindrance to your art team. You shouldn’t have treated me like that. I didn’t deserve it. None of us did. You can apologize to me and the other lost artists publicly.

#moderneopets #virtu.pet #grundos cafe #neopets #neotag #modneo #moderneo

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seijorhi · 2 years ago

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Glitter and Rot

What better way to ring in the new year than with my favourite, degenerate twins. Happy belated new year, y'all <;33

Miya Osamu x female reader x Miya Atsumu

w.c 6.8k

tw: extreme dub-con, themes of infidelity, major character death, smut lite, slight gore/violence, somnophilia if you squint, murder, and, as always, yandere themes

The rain comes heavy, soaking the dirt beneath your bare feet.

The cotton of your nightgown, drenched, plastered to your skin, does little to keep the chill of the midnight air from seeping into your bones. Raindrops fall from the leaves of the trees above you, dripping onto your shoulder, clinging to the ends of your hair, your eyelashes.

In the mountains, away from the city lights, the night glitters with stars, streaks of soft moonlight spilling through the canopy on clear nights. Tonight, though, with the rain clouds looming ominously overhead, there’s no light beyond the sole beam of torchlight, steadily making its way closer towards you.

Your toes wriggle in the earth. Run.

He calls out your name, twigs snapping in the undergrowth behind you.

How… how did you get out here?

The wind picks up, biting at your soaked, exposed skin. You shiver, and he calls your name again. This time you can hear a note of concern – not quite panic, though. Not yet.

Run, that quiet voice urges.

You take a step. Another–

And the torchlight finds you. Squinting under the sudden bright light shining on your face, there’s only a sigh, and the beam shifts downwards.

A familiar countenance peers back at you through the rain; dark hair, grey eyes, a strong jaw. Your husband.

“You’re gonna give me a fucking heart attack one’a these days, sweetheart,” Osamu says, with a wry sort of laugh. “C’mon, let’s get’cha home.”

Holding an umbrella in one hand and the torch in the other, he passes you the latter so that his arm can snake around your middle, tucking you into his side and out of the rain. Unbothered by the dampness of your skin, he presses a kiss to your temple, his thumb rubbing at your side.

“… I’m sorry,” you mumble, “I don’t know– I don’t remember–”

He squeezes you side, offers you a crooked smile as he helps you back through the trees. Back home. “It’s fine, the Doc said this could happen, remember?”

You do, vaguely. The Doctor had said a lot that day, most of it lost to the ringing in your ears.

Neither of you say much as you make the trek back to the house. There’s a gentleness to the way he helps you peel off your sodden nightgown, letting the shower heat up before ushering you in.

“I’m sorry,” you tell him again, when he passes you the big, fluffy towel to rub yourself dry.

Sorry for causing him to worry. Sorry for making him chase after you in the rain in the middle of the night. Sorry that you can’t remember what came before, the life you built with him and all the happiness surrounding it.

You feel like a shell, hollow and useless. You don’t know why he keeps putting up with it, and somewhere in the back of your mind, a nasty voice whispers that he won’t for much longer.

But Samu just shakes his head with a snort, “Don’t be stupid. You’re my wife, ya don’t apologise for anythin’.”

You muster a weak smile in return, quickly glancing away. He’s only being polite, you remind yourself, pulling the towel tighter around yourself. Accident or not, none of this is ideal. It’s been weeks now, and you haven’t gotten better. Your memories are still gone, and no one can tell you with any degree of certainty when or if they’re going to come back, not to mention that tonight officially marks the third time you’ve wandered off in your sleep.

What if your memories don’t come back? What if you never return to the person you used to be?

Before this you had a family, friends, a history. Likes, dislikes, funny stories from your childhood and weird habits. The things that shape who you are from where you’ve been. You’re just supposed to slide back into the life you had, but how can you when you don’t know who that person was?

What kind of man would want–

“Hey,” he says, catching your jaw to coax your face back up. Grey eyes appraise you, a frown pulling at his features. “I mean it. None of this is your fault. Not the accident, or your memories, the sleepwalking, none of it. And I’m not going anywhere either, alright?”

He holds your gaze, surveying you intently until you bob your head in agreement.

“Good girl. Now are ya comin’ back to bed or are ya planning on leavin’ your poor husband high and dry for a second time tonight?”

Your cheeks heat, the heaviness between you easing somewhat as amusement dances across his face. He’s handsome, almost intimidatingly so – striking features and excellent bone structure. Something coils in your stomach as the weight of his gaze bores into you. Taking your face in his palms, his thumb brushes along the curve of your cheekbone. Slowly.

Your mouth parts then, but whatever response you have is lost as his lips descend on yours, kissing you deeply.

When he pulls away, when you’re breathless and slightly dazed, satisfaction and more than a touch of pride gleams from his expression.

“Though we might have to invest in some better locks. Don’t want ya wandering off too far on me.”

—

Sometimes it feels like you’re waiting for the rug to be pulled out from under you.

As if you’ve woken in someone else’s life, or a dream, and it’s only a matter of time before it all comes crashing down and you’re whisked away back to reality. A handsome, devoted husband, not one but two houses – the mountainside retreat you’re staying at while you get better, and a place in the city you haven’t yet seen – even the ring on your finger, the bright, sparkling diamond that sits next to your platinum wedding band.

How can it be real?

He tells you that the two of you work together in his restaurant back home, and that too sounds sweet in an oddly domestic way.

And looks can be deceiving, you know that. Money, success, the image of a perfectly happy couple, it doesn’t mean anything. Façades can crack, rot can fester beneath the surface, slowly eating away.

Everything he tells you sounds so… good.

You’re happy. In love. Fulfilled with your job and comfortable enough financially for the both of you to take the time off while you’re still trying to fix the broken pieces of yourself.

Accident aside, no one gets everything they want. Surely no one can be this happy.

There’s a niggling sense of unease that bites and gnaws. No one can be this happy.

There’s a woman who keeps calling Osamu’s phone. You know because those are the calls he lets ring out, ignoring them until he thinks you’re asleep or busy, distracted by whatever task he’s set you on for the day.

He calls her Hikari. No, that’s not entirely true now, is it – he calls her Kari.

“Kari, you know I wanna be there, but I can’t. Things are just– it’s not a good time right now, s’all.”

And the house is quiet enough that you can hear her desperate sniffles on the other end of the line, “Samu, please, this is important. I need you back here.”

He huffs, running a hand through his sleep mussed hair, pacing the length of the living room. “I can’t,” he repeats. “I’m sorry, I am, but after everythin’… it’s too much.”

She cries again, and it’s a strange thing but your heart squeezes in response. She sounds so broken, so lost and scared, a fragile, pitiable thing. “… I know… “ her voice trembles, “Despite what happened, I know you still care about her. I need you to come back. Please, Samu.”

You slip away then, unable to bear it anymore.

Sliding back beneath the covers of your bed, you let out the shuddering breath you’d been holding, trying to process the conversation you’d overheard.

There were perhaps other explanations beyond an affair, but as you lie there, mulling it over, none come to mind. If she were a friend–

‘I know you still care about her.’

No. You’re not that naive. Maybe you were before the accident, or maybe you had suspicions, hell, maybe you’d physically caught him in the act – you suppose none of that matters anymore, does it? All that matters is what you’re going to do with this new development.

And as your husband returns a few minutes later, crawling into bed beside you, an arm hooked over your waist, the warmth of his muscular frame pressed up against your back chasing away the winter chill, you wonder if he sees this as some kind of atonement.

Osamu exhales, nuzzling closer in an effort to get more comfortable, and amidst the strange heaviness in your chest, you close your eyes and will yourself back to sleep.

—

If Osamu knows that you eavesdropped on his call last night, he gives no indication come morning. Although, admittedly, that might be because of your visitor.

The day the Doctor came to the house, he’d said a lot about what was happening to you. A result of head trauma, there was no telling if or when your memories might return.

He’d spoken to Osamu, taking your concerned looking husband aside just before he’d left.

“What did he say?” you’d asked when he’d returned dutifully to your side.

He hadn’t answered straight away, choosing instead to reach out and take your hand in his. For a moment, his focus remained on your entwined fingers, and then he’d said, “To take things slow. Too many people, too much it might… might overwhelm ya. Until things are better, it’s best if it’s just you ‘n me.”

Today, apparently, marked a change to that, because his twin brother was arriving to stay for a little while.

Which, shortly after mid morning, he does.

Naturally, you’ve seen pictures, you and the twins back in highschool, posing with a friend of theirs, grinning toothily and laughing at the camera. Seeing the two of them in person, though – it’s a whole other ball game.

Next to each other, they’re a mirror image, but… not. Tiny, subtle differences that weirdly make them appear more similar than less. It doesn’t make any sense at all, and yet you have no other way of explaining it.

Osamu stands at your side, his arm slung over your shoulder as his brother pulls up front in a fancy, fast looking car. Atsumu, however, pays him no mind, eyes – a few shades browner than his brother’s – fixed solely on you, a familiar, smirking grin broadening across his handsome visage.

Osamu tells you that the three of you are close, yet with only a faint, glimmering recognition and your husband’s words to fall back on, it’s hard to know how you’re supposed to greet someone you once knew and loved.

With an arm loosely wrapped around your front, you settle for a smile.

Atsumu notes this with a raised eyebrow. “Aw, c’mon now, that ain’t no way to greet your favourite twin, is it?”

Before you can stop him he’s on you, yanking you away from Osamu so he can pick you up into a near crushing hug, spinning you around for good measure. You shriek and bury your face in his neck, clinging to him while he laughs, eventually setting you down on wobbly feet.

“Fuck, I missed you,” he says, ignoring Samu’s disapproving scowl in favour of taking you in, hands settling on your waist. And there must be some giveaway, a hesitance he notes because his demeanour turns curious, head tilting to the side, “Still nothin’, huh?”

You shake your head, shrugging. “Sorry.”

Feels like that’s all you’re capable of saying lately.

“Nah, don’t be. Not your fault.”

While you don’t necessarily agree – it’s hard not to think of any of this as some kind of moral failing, as though the only reason you can’t recover those precious memories is because you’re simply not trying hard enough – it’s… nice having someone else around to help fill in the gaps a little.

Not that you aren’t endlessly grateful to Osamu – more than you actually know how to convey to him, and you have tried. It’s just that when you woke up in an unfamiliar bedroom, being watched over by a man you didn’t recognise, and with no memories of who you were or what had happened, you hadn’t reacted well.

Being your husband (the issue of fidelity aside), he’s supposed to be the person who matters the most to you, and you assume that’s a two way street. In a sense, forgetting him is its own kind of betrayal, with that comes the heaviness of expectations and fears and awfulness.

Plus, things have been… strained between you two, lately.

So yes, having Atsumu here as a sort of buffer between you two is a relief. Having someone else to help fill in the gaps in your life, to tell you about the person you used to be – the one you’re trying to fit back into – even more so.

“That year we made it all the way to the finals before gettin’ knocked out.”

His finger draws across the picture; the volleyball team, sweaty and defeated, bowing before the roaring crowd. All these years later, now a pro playing in arguably one of the best teams in the country (according to him), a two-time Olympic medalist, and he still sounds pissed about it.

You bite back a giggle, following when he turns the page of the year book. “I dunno, second in the nation when you’re still in high school doesn't sound too bad to me.”

“You were there that day.”

Glancing up, you find Osamu considering the two of you from the kitchen, elbow deep in food prep for dinner. “I was?”

He nods. “Yeah. Ya came to all our games, right from the start.”

“There,” Atsumu taps on the next page, a picture of a younger you cheering wildly from the stands, hands cupped around your mouth to amplify your shouts, maroon ribbons in your hair. “Our cute little cheerleader.”

“We begged ya to become our manager, but ya kept turnin’ us down,” Samu adds, then smirks, “Said you couldn’t stand being around Tsumu for another ten hours a week.”

The dig reaches its mark, Atsumu sneering as he flips Samu the bird, while his other arm slides from the backrest of the couch to drape over your shoulders. You hardly notice, utterly transfixed by the book on Tsumu’s lap. You don’t think you’ll ever get over how weird it is to be seeing these pictures, like peering into some alternate universe; you, but not you. You look happy, though.

It makes your heart ache a little.

Did you like sports, or was it more of a school pride sort of thing, you wonder. Or was it them – him, really – who drew you into it? If you watched a game now, would you feel anything, some glint of recognition? Excitement?

Flipping the page, you study the various pictures until one in particular catches your eye – only after a second glance. To be fair, the photo isn’t of you – well, it is, but you’re not the focus. Rather it’s of two girls who appear to be in the same year as you, posing cutely with each other on the school’s courtyard. Behind them, though, in the background there’s a wooden picnic bench in the shade of an oak. Perched cross-legged atop it, sitting amongst piled up books and notes, there’s you – and you’re not alone.

Shoulders back, eyes closed, soaking in the rays of the sun filtering through the leaves sits another boy. Not Osamu, one of his teammates, a dark haired kid you recognise from a bunch of the old photos they’d shown you.

The image itself might not be so remarkable – you’re not doing anything all that interesting, one of a number of people captured in the background, and slightly out of focus at that– if not for the one tiny detail that has a strange feeling racing through your heart.

Barely visible but for the way you study it, your hand is curled in his.

“– listenin’?”

“Huh?”

Mid-way through scraping out his rice, Osamu fixes you with an odd expression. Atsumu, however, just snickers and flicks your forehead. “Ya always were a little spacey.”

Halfheartedly, you chuckle along with him.

The smart thing to do – perhaps the right thing – would be to leave it.

Samu told you the two of you dated right through high school, so it can’t be anything like that. There’s a possibility the two of you were just close. Good friends, judging by how often he appears in the photos with you and the twins. He’d told you your parents, the only family you had, died in an accident years ago, but Samu hasn’t really spoken much about your friends. You know why, and understand it to an extent – he doesn’t want to stress you out unnecessarily, not while you’re still so fragile.

‘The doc said we gotta take things slow, baby.’

Nevertheless, your lips part, the question burning on the tip of your tongue–

Suddenly, as has become a frequent occurrence in the past few days, Osamu’s phone blares to life, the loud vibrations against the marble countertop startling all three of you.

He doesn’t answer it, by this point you no longer expect him to.

—

You dream of fingers running through dark hair, of lips smiling lazily. Someone laughing, ‘You’re an idiot.’

There’s a warmth, a slow burning heat that ignites in your body, trailing from your jaw, down the slope of your neck, dancing along delicate collarbone, another unfurling deep within your core. You chase the pleasant sensations, a soft, pretty moan drawn from parted lips.

Only when teeth bite down, a tender nip to sensitive flesh are you roused from your dreams to find your husband straddling you, his mouth now between your breasts, dark eyes that glint in the low morning light taking in your visage as you slowly come to.

“S-Samu, wha–”

“Shh.” He chuckles, your stomach flipping at the deep rumble, “Relax. Gonna make ya feel good, baby.”

Whatever protests you might have (if you have any at all) are lost when you realise that the heat pooling in your guts is due to the two digits Osamu has curled up inside of you, slowly easing in and out.

It isn’t the first time the two of you have been intimate since the accident, and while you hadn’t fought him those times either, there’s a slight niggling sensation, nearly lost to the burgeoning pleasure, that twists and knots at the thought of what’s to come.

There’s no possible way of knowing how often you’ve had sex with each other in the years you’ve been together. For him, this must be old hat. For you though, with no frame of reference, no past partners to call to mind, there’s an edge of vulnerability you wish you could get rid of.

A hesitance you don’t give a voice to – not that Samu offers you much of an opening to do so.

Pushing up the hem of your nightdress, your husband lifts your hips enough to ease off your panties, dragging them slowly down smooth legs until they’re dangling from one ankle, and you kick them aside.

Spreading them either side of his broad frame, Osamu stands briefly to rid himself of his own underwear, crawling on all fours back between your legs – gripping one thigh to sink his teeth into soft, delectable flesh – his tongue quick to soothe the hurt when you cry out.

“A-Atsumu, he’s gonna wake up,” you murmur as he once more takes you by the waist, hefting you forward so that you lie flush against him, your legs hiked up over his hips.

The very last thing you want right now is an audience.

With one hand, he strokes his cock with the fingers that had been buried inside your pussy, spreading the glistening mix of your slick and his pre over the thick member. The other’s planted near your shoulder, keeping him stable while he rolls his hips forward, slowly bullying his cock into your warm, tight little cunt. Osamu grins roguishly, lowering his top half down to hover above you as you fist at the sheets, your spine arcing, ankles locking over his back.

“Maybe–” he grunts, relishing in the sounds of your sweet cries and gasps as he inches his way into stuffing you full. “Maybe I want him to hear.”

—

A heavy weight drops onto the couch beside you. “Somethin’ on your mind, sweetheart?”

You fiddle with the rings on your left hand. How many times now have you caught yourself toying with them, completely lost in contemplation, their weight on your finger almost foreign?

A few times now you’ve taken them off to wash up and forgotten about them entirely, not noticing their absence until Samu himself comes to take your hand in his and slide them back on.

Did you used to do that before the accident?

No… no, you probably spent days marvelling at them, wiggling your fingers to make the diamond sparkle in the light. You were probably enthralled by the pretty thing. Blissfully in love.

Happy.

“I think Osamu’s cheating on me.”

You don’t dare raise your eyeline when you say it, afraid of what you’ll see. You might be his wife, however poor a job you’re currently doing, yet the one person Osamu’s closest to is undeniably his brother.

Since Tsumu arrived three days ago, all they’ve done is bicker between themselves, and yet without either of them saying as much, the writing’s on the wall. It’s in the looks they share, full of silent conversations you’re not privy to and won’t ever have a hope of understanding. In the way they move around each other, that implicit, frankly unnerving trust they have with one another.

There are things Osamu can’t share with you – or won’t, maybe – but there’s not a doubt in your mind that if Samu were sleeping with somebody else, if he loved them as he claimed to love you, Atsumu knows about it.

It’s not confirmation that you’re searching for, though. You doubt he’d admit it to begin with – between you and Samu, there’s no question of which side his loyalty falls. This isn’t about that.

For days now, weeks, you’ve had this gnawing pit in your stomach that keeps getting worse, and worse and worse.

With each day that passes, you should be making some kind of progress towards regaining your memories or, if not that, then at the very least becoming more comfortable around him. Yet you still feel like a stranger inhabiting this body, and to make matters worse, your marriage might be failing before you can try to adjust yourself to it.

Atsumu’s really the last person you should be saying this to. It’s the sort of thing you accidentally let slip to a friend after one too many glasses of wine, letting them comfort you and offer advice, commiserate, even.

Yet Samu won’t so much as bring up the friends you had before for fear of making things worse – because you’re fragile and weak, and you haven’t shown any signs of getting better. From the complete and utter radio silence on their ends, you can only assume none of them bothered to fight him on it.

Again, rationally speaking you can understand it – that doesn’t mean it doesn’t sting in its own bitter way.

Beside you, Atsumu laughs. Actually laughs.

Indignation – hurt – burns, heating your cheeks as your hands curl into pathetic little fists in your lap and shake. Much to your dismay, tears prickly uncomfortably at your waterline. You go to say something, only for a lump to settle in your throat, blocking all noise. You didn’t think he’d spill the truth just like that, but to laugh at you?

In a split second decision you start to rise, planning on stalking off to go lick your wounds alone in your bedroom until Samu comes home, when a hand on your shoulder stops you.

He chuckles again when he’s met with your poisonous glare, “Hey, c’mon. Don’t run away, I wasn’t laughin’ atcha.”

Raising an eyebrow, you scoff. His lips curl into a smirk, hands coming up in a peaceful gesture. “Okay, okay, I was but… s’just funny to me that you think Samu’d ever look twice at another girl. He’s been in love with ya pretty much from day one.”

The words should be more of a reassurance than they are. Your shoulders rise and fall, a tight shrug as your gaze dips once more to your lap, to the rings that shine mockingly on your left hand.

Atsumu, however, isn’t so willing to drop the subject.

“Nah, you don’t get to say some wild shit like that ‘n then go all quiet on me. Explain.”

If you got up and left, would he follow you? Probably, you muse. If anything, Atsumu’s proven over the past few days that he’s nothing if not persistent. He’s clearly amused, at your expense, mind you, yet the way he scrutinises you now, the slight narrowing of his eyes, that reminds you of a dog with a bone.

No, he won’t let this go.

Nibbling at your bottom lip, you shrug again, “There’s this girl– woman, I guess. She keeps calling him… Samu won’t talk to her if I’m around.” You swallow tightly, “I–I overheard them, the last time she rang, and…”

“What’d ya hear?”

You fiddle with the hem of your skirt as that tell tale prickle stings at your tear ducts. After your early morning tumble in the sheets, you’d thought that things might’ve been different between you two. But Samu still left, some hollow excuse about running errands, and all you can think is that he’s with her now, that whatever you gave wasn’t enough and–

“Look at me.” Atsumu’s no longer laughing. If anything, he actually looks mildly pissed off by the whole thing, his jaw tightening even as he tries for a reassuring smile, scooching closer and touching your shoulder again, “What did she say to him?”

“She told him she needed him, begged him to come home.” Your voice breaks, just as the dam to your tears do, tumbling down your cheeks as your shoulders shake and crumple inwards.

Atsumu runs his tongue over his teeth before muttering a quiet curse, and you suppose that that’s confirmation enough. Without a word he pulls you into his arms, your face held to his chest while he strokes your back and you cling to him in turn, letting all the frustration and grief and confusion of the past few weeks spill out of you in horrid, trembling cries.

You don’t know how long you sit there, half cradled in Atsumu’s lap before he finally speaks, “I don’t care what ya heard. Samu loves you more than anythin’, we both do. He ain’t gonna throw that away for nobody.”

Drawing back, he takes your cheek in one hand, cupping it in his palm, the broad pad of his thumb sweeping away the remnants of your tears with a tenderness that near breaks your heart.

“I mean it,” he says. You’re close enough that the warmth of his breath tickles your skin, that you can count every last one of his eyelashes. Your stomach flutters. “You mean everything to us. Nothin’s gonna get in the way of that.”

And before you can stop him, before you can blink, Atsumu’s closing the gap between you, his lips meeting yours.

Like a computer short circuiting, there’s nothing you can do but freeze and falter as he kisses you, wholly unbothered by your lack of participation. His lips are surprisingly soft, warm as they move against yours, and while his tongue brushes along your lower lip, he makes no real effort to deepen it, seemingly content with the contact he has.

Your heart pounds against your ribcage so violently that it drowns out all other noise. Your stomach twists, flips, churning as he moans softly into your mouth, but for the life of you, you can’t move, can’t stop this. You’re frozen. Shellshocked. Only when Atsumu breaks away, pupils dilated, eyes slightly glazed over, wearing a stupid, self satisfied little grin do you finally gain control over your body again.

By that point, he’s already shifting to settle you back on the couch, rising himself. “Samu and I love ya. We aren’t goin’ anywhere, stop worrying your pretty little head about it, yeah?”

And then he’s walking away, whistling as he goes.

—

A little while later, Atsumu calls out that he’s going for a run. You don’t acknowledge it.

The front door opens. Closes. The sun moves across the sky, minutes tick by, and eventually he returns, sweaty and panting, popping his head in the door to make sure you’re right where he left you.

The whole time you sit stationary on your bed, staring vacantly out the window to the forest that lies beyond. Numb, just numb.

“Gonna go have a shower, then I think you ‘n me should talk before Samu gets back.” He waits and you don’t acknowledge him. Shrugging off his shirt, something wicked enters his expression, “Unless ya wanna come join me?”

That, finally, gets a reaction; your head jerking back to regard him with wide, scandalised eyes, “What?”

He winks, snickers when your gaze drops briefly below his shoulders, eyeing his muscular chest, the well defined planes of his stomach. A bead of sweat rolls from his neck, you track its path with a rapt focus, down to his navel, the smattering of hair there, the cut of the V shaped muscles that draw your attention towards–

Abruptly, you force your attention upwards, cheeks burning as blood rushes to your face.

Atsumu, grinning smugly, missed none of it. “Next time, then.”

And with that, he waltzes off, leaving the door ajar.

… What the hell?

What the actual fuck?

Head reeling, you have no idea how you’re supposed to process this sudden shift in… well, everything. Had this – you and Atsumu – happened before? Did Osamu know about it?

Were you cheating, too?

Was that what your relationship with Osamu was; two deeply unhappy people screwing countless others to avoid fixing whatever it was that festered between them.

Your mind jumps to the picture you’d seen in the year book, you and that boy on the picnic bench, your hand wrapped around his. Osamu told you that you’d been dating ever since your high school days, had you been unfaithful that whole time – spreading your legs for his friends and brother until he gave up trying to be loyal in return?

You feel sick at the thought.

What other option is there, though? What explanation? Either Atsumu’s being particularly cruel and messing with you, or he isn’t and you’re apparently more than okay fucking not only your husband but his brother as well.

‘Despite what happened, I know you still care about her.’ Hikari’s words ring mockingly in your head. All this time you’ve been so bent out of shape over the idea of Osamu with another woman, and it’s now occurring to you that maybe you might’ve been the one to drive him to it.

Despite what happened.

You draw in a shuddering breath, you bring a hand to your lips, either to stifle a sob or to keep yourself from throwing up, you’re not entirely sure which.

And as the sound of running water filters through the room, so too does a sense of calm clarity.

For weeks now you’ve been trying to make this work, trying to slip back into the person you were, a life that you don’t truly remember.

And it isn’t working.

You still don’t feel normal around Osamu. You don’t remember anything, and despite what you’d been told from the start – despite fighting it every step of the way – you have to accept the possibility that that might not change.

Your spine straightens, the grip you have on the duvet easing as you take another, calmer breath in, letting it fill your lungs and clear your head.

The answer’s been staring you in the face this whole time. If you can’t find your way back to the life you led before you got hurt, perhaps rather than clinging to a past that doesn’t truly belong to you anymore, it’s time you cut it loose and walk away.

A clean break doesn’t sound like such a bad idea when the current situation promises nothing but messiness, hurt and heartbreak for everyone involved.

Even if the thought of going it alone is a terrifying one.

Even if it means leaving the one – now two, you suppose – people who stood by your side in the aftermath behind.

And as if the universe senses the tumultuousness inside your head, the sharp, trilling sound of a ringtone shatters it, snapping you out of your thoughts and back into the moment.

You figure that it must be Atsumu’s phone and despite being startled, you’re content to let it ring out – after all, it’s not your phone, not your business.

Atsumu’s a professional athlete, an incredibly successful one at that, there could be any number of important people on the other end of the line, and if it’s critical, whoever it is can leave a message. You’re not his receptionist.

After a few seconds, the ringing stops. And begins again.

Frowning, you push yourself up from the bed, heading towards the dining room. Atsumu’s still in the shower, you can hear the faucet running, your only thought is that if it’s Samu and it’s something urgent, he won’t mind.

Except when you find it, lit up and vibrating on the kitchen bench, the caller ID isn’t his twin’s. Again, the ringing stops, and again, after a short beat, it begins anew.

The picture that fills the screen is of a pretty girl with dimples, her arms looped around a familiar looking brunet.

Not Osamu, but the boy from the yearbook. Older, of course, smiling lazily at the camera while she pokes her tongue out and throws up two peace signs.

Little Suna, the caller ID tells you, and in brackets next to a sun emoji; Hikari.

Your heart squeezes, a thick lump settling in your throat as you survey the image of the two of them. But it isn’t dismay, or the hurt you’d felt earlier when Osamu was hiding her. You can’t put a finger on what it is exactly, only that looking at that picture fills you with an incomprehensible and near overwhelming sense of grief, like someone’s clawed their way into your chest, taken your still beating heart in their hand and slowly, agonisingly, ripped it from you.

Without consciously choosing to do so, you slide the little bar across, answering the call and clicking on the speaker icon.

“H-hello?”

The silence you’re met with is heavy. Pregnant. Why did you pick up? Why the hell did you answer?! Panic and common sense sets in and you silently curse yourself for being so stupid, your finger moving to hurriedly tap the end call button.

And then you hear her gasp, a tiny, sharp little thing that spears right through you. Hikari stutters your name, “You… Wha– they… they found you?”

She starts to laugh then, or maybe she’s sobbing, it’s difficult to tell exactly.

“You’re okay?” she asks, the sound muffled by choked, ragged noises. “Oh my god, I can’t believe you’re okay! A-after they found Rin, I-I thought–”

White noise drowns her out.

… Rin.

Rin…taro.

Suna.

Your knees go weak, giving way beneath you. Pain sings through your kneecaps as they collide with the wooden floorboards, but it’s nothing compared to the agony that overtakes your chest, spreading with every beat of your frantic heart until it’s the only thing you can feel, and you cling to it. Desperate. Gasping.

There’s a frantic noise somewhere, Hikari calling your name; it’s lost to the pounding haze. Nothing more than the buzz of a gnat flittering around your head.

Every thought eddies from your head, only him. Only that name; Suna Rintaro.

And suddenly–

“You’re an idiot, you know?”

You laugh, throwing an arm around his shoulder as you wriggle your fingers in front of his face, admiring the sparkling ring. “But it’s so pretty, don’t you think? It suits me.”

He raises an unimpressed eyebrow when you turn to cheekily grin at him, “Considering I was the one who picked it, yeah, that was kind of the idea.”

Giggling, you stretch up on your tippy toes to press a kiss to his cheek.

………

“Gin can’t make it. Somethin’ about his girlfriend and the baby,” Rin mutters, appearing in the doorway of your bedroom. “So it’ll just be us and the twins, I guess.”

“Well geez, no need to sound too excited about it,” you say, eyeing your boyfriend – fiancé now, you have to keep reminding yourself – from the mirror as you battle with the clasp of your necklace. “It’s fine, we’ll see him when we see Kita and the others next month.”

A few seconds pass with no sign of victory, and Rin rolls his eyes, “Let me.”

He comes up behind you, taking the delicate gold chain from your fingers and nimbly clasping it shut in what feels like a mockery of your struggles. Adjusting the pendant so that it falls better, he exhales, letting his arms fold loosely around you, his chin coming to a rest atop your head.

The faint crease between his brows, the set of his jaw – to anyone else he might appear bored, annoyed even. You aren’t so easily fooled. You know Rin, know better than to push. It’s not hard to guess what’s bothering him, though. “You think it’ll be weird?”

He doesn’t say anything for a moment. Then he shrugs, “I think it’ll be weirder without Gin.”

“It was years ago, they’ve both moved on – a long, long time ago. They’re our friends, Rin. The only thing they’re gonna be is happy for us.”

………

A hand covering your mouth, another roughly shaking your shoulder, rousing you from sleep. “Shh, shh, it’s just me. There’s someone in the house,” Rin’s voice whispers in your ear. “Get under the bed and don’t make a sound, okay? I’ll be right back.”

“Rin–”

“Not a fucking sound!” he hisses, and quietly slips from the bed. As if on cue, a loud shattering noise cuts through the room, and terror, absolute terror, grips you. You do as he bids, limbs shaking and clumsy, the sound of every breath enhanced in the quiet stillness Rintaro leaves behind. You clamp a hand over your mouth to try and muffle it.

You wait, and wait, trembling in the darkness.

And then a crash, heavier than the last one. Rintaro’s yelling, more voices raised, more muted thumps, grunting and howling bellows of agony that have every hair on your body standing on end, and abruptly–

Silence.

It rings in your ear, echoing.

Your pulse thunders, every beat of your heart pumping a paralysing mix of fear and panic through your body. You’re shaking like a leaf, tears streaming down your cheeks as you try – try so desperately – not to make a noise like Rin told you to.

The footsteps that approach have your blood running cold, and you squeeze your eyes shut, wheezing terrified breaths as you choke back sobs and pray that they won’t find you.

You aren’t that lucky.

You aren’t that quiet.

They stop at the foot of the bed. Two of them. One bends down, a hand finding your ankle and with a snickering laugh, yanks you out into the open.

You scream and fight against the figures clad head to toe in black, thrashing like a wild thing for all the good that it does you. You’re determined not to go easy – at least, not until they carry you out past the living room, the mess they left there.

Rin, but not Rin. Not with his face brutalised like that, his skull all caved in, limbs broken and splayed out all wrong.

No.

No, no, no, no.

One eye, empty and lifeless, staring back–

It’s too much.

You blink, jerking back to the present with a heaving gasp. Glancing up, your gut tightens into a knot as two things become starkly apparent.

One; Osamu’s finally returned, standing half frozen in the doorway, appraising you with an uncharacteristically cold expression.

Two; it’s deathly quiet. Turning your head, you find that the call with Kari’s gone silent, a shirtless Atsumu, hair damp, a towel wrapped dangerously low around his hips, gripping his phone, jaw tightly clenched.

It twists into an awful sort of forced grin when he notices you’ve come back to them.

“I really, really wish ya hadn’t done that, baby.”

#yandere haikyuu #yandere miya atsumu #yandere miya osamu #yandere atsumu x reader #yandere osamu x reader #yandere miya atsumu x reader #yandere miya osamu x reader #yandere atsumu #yandere osamu #tw: non/dubcon

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minecraftbookshelf · 2 years ago

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How was little Jimmy taught was he a homeschooled kid and what did he learn about Rivendell when he was young and was the information biased since they where allied with the wither rose alliance it had to have been covered in the lessons because he would need to know about the other empires

so how did the knowledge he had about Rivendell affect his opinion of an arranged marriage

i mean he probably didn’t think an arranged marriage was weird his sister was in one and it a normal royal thing but did the fact that it was to a prince of Rivendell give him pause

With the disclaimer that I'm still in the process of sorting out the exact timeline so all dates/measures of years are tenative...

Wee little Jimmy had the best tutors that Lizzie and Joel's combined resources could find for the more "royalty oriented stuff" and he also attended an ocean kingdom preschool and elementary school for a bit before the delayed aging thing got too weird for it. (Lizzie wanted to at least make an attempt to get him properly socialized, Joel read so many parenting books and talked at her about them so they were both mildly obsessing over it). He also got a lot of stories from Pix whenever he visited.

So most of his education was homeschooling. In the sense that he was at home and the only student. A lot of his education was also just following Lizzie and sometimes Joel around as they went about their days and duties. Between the hands-on parenting and the length of his childhood he is honestly probably one of if not the most prepared rulers. (Not that he feels like it at all)

Rivendell was very isolationist and something of a mystery outside its own borders, with the exception of their only allies/outside contacts; House Blossom. This predated Jimmy's life span, as it had persisted for a few Elvish generations.

It was a huge shakeup when Xornoth took power, about ~50-75 years before the events of the main story, even before they opened Rivendell's borders. It tends to make the gossip circuits when an exiled prince returns home, kills their parents, takes over the ruling power, and functionally vanishes their younger sibling. Jimmy was in the equivilant of his late teens when that happened and the Cod Swamp was in the early stages of seperating from the Ocean Empire as an autonomous nation so he was kind of distracted. (Not because of any tensions with Lizzie or anything, there were just a lot of logistics happening and being discussed and he had just been appointed Codfather by the Cod Council and was very stressed about everything all the time)

The alliance between Rivendell and the WRA literally happened because Pearl looked at Xornoth and decided they were friend-shaped and dragged them along. So there is a degree of seperation there. It's also a matter of proximity. Rivendell is sandwiched between House Blossom's holdings and the Crystal Cliffs so those are the closest political alliances out of necessity as much as anything.

And yeah, an arranged marriage was hardly a shock in and of itself. Mostly its just kind of uncomfortable because of the tensions between Mythland and the Cod Swamp and the fact that if something goes wrong Rivendell is going to go from "a friend of my enemies" to potentially "my enemy".

And of course also the entire Ocean Alliance has been squinting at Xornoth for the past almost-century like "Are they imprisoning their brother? Is this something we should be concerned about?" Honestly the biggest surprise for all of them (Except Pix) was the confirmation that Scott was alive.

#empires smp #empires s1 #solidaritygaming #ldshadowlady #xornoth #ask and it shall be answered #adina123 #rain rambles #smajor1995 #marriage of state au #mos: worldbuilding #mos: jimmy #mos: rivendell #mos: xornoth #mos: wra #mos: the swamp

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donnerpartyofone · 9 months ago

Text

Everything I Watched While I Was Recovering From the Plague

I have a fantasy that watching a bunch of movies of wildly varying quality and content in close proximity can really bend your wires out of shape, like being exposed to too much radiation. I like to tell people that I had to get all those eye surgeries because of all the deranged stuff I subject my eyeballs to. My criteria for this marathon were "movies I want to watch but it's never 'the right time'" and "movies my sick husband in the next room is not interested in".

THE IRON CLAW: Pretty much the big, dumb, lummoxy movie that you might expect. The script is surprisingly weak--the girlfriend declares that everything is a matter of fate minutes before saying "I believe we make our own luck"??--but the family curse part is sort of compelling in spite of it all. I admit I was partially in it for the freak show of muscle mania; for various cultural reasons the way bodies were presented (and the kinds of bodies people aspired to have) in the '80s was so different than it is now, the exhibition of flesh had a very different kind of character that's hard to describe but this movie with its bulbous wrestler bodies filling the screen gave me flashbacks. Zac Efron should keep his He-Man haircut.

DARK HARVEST: I've been struggling to describe this certain type of movie that's very form over function, with a pretty specific form: there's like a really forced "stylized" nostalgia thing with a lot of humorless "weirdness" attached in movies like FINAL GIRL and KNIVES AND SKIN, and to some degree THE REFLECTING SKIN although that's a more sophisticated example (that I still don't enjoy). Anyway DARK HARVEST adds a Pumpkinhead guy (not pictured below) to the mix, and he looks pretty good at least.

THANKSGIVING: Well it's the best movie Eli Roth has made in a long time! It's OK. I like that the inciting incident is a Black Friday stampede, but it's too bad he didn't have the means to make it look more convincing; it feels like about a 150 people running around yelling and there's conspicuous amount of breathing room for the victims getting "crushed".

ZONE OF INTEREST: A tour of the ogre's castle, creepy and effective. Łukasz Żal's spy cam setup cleverly establishes a sense of being trapped in forbidden chambers.

GODLAND: Danish priest makes the perilous journey to Iceland, is a complete asshole to everyone he meets. Interesting, but more beautiful than interesting.

LINGERING: Goofy K horror in which a handful of different neurotic women are relentlessly mean to a small child. I often wonder about this trope of like, someone who is categorically unsuited to parenthood gets saddled with an orphan, and they REALLY don't want to adopt the orphan, but eventually they turn against their own personality and rational estimation of means because the orphan is so cute and/or sad. The implication seems to be that every one of us can and should be parents, and maybe this is even related to the (usually comedic) trope of the solitary curmudgeon who just wants to be left alone, until they undergo some kind of forced exposure therapy at the hands of their nosy neighbors who insist that no human being could actually enjoy their own company. This is an ongoing concern for me.

UNREST: Anarchist watch factory workers in love. Second movie in the list that uses early photography as a motif (also GODLAND). Pretty interesting formally, and I like all the stuff about the development and spread of standardized hourly time.

WITCHHAMMER: 1970 Czech allegory for Communist "show trials". Man, whether you're making an exploitation movie or a political statement, witch hunt movies are always tough stuff, huh?

HONEYCOMB: A woman unravels mentally when her childhood furniture arrives at her home, and she and her husband play out a series of weird infantile psychodramas as an escape from the pressures of their bourgeois existence. More interesting than enjoyable, and I'm not always sure how interesting it really is. There's a certain brand of European '60s filmmaking that involves a lot of improvised shrieking and laughing and crying and rolling around on the floor that makes me question whether it's really as hollow as I think it is, or if I'm just not a sophisticated enough viewer to understand the power of it, or if its original power was really dependent on its context in the development of cinema. Maybe the answer is a little of everything.

THE SWEET HOURS: A Spanish writer's latest play parses the Freudian mysteries of his childhood, and he fully immerses himself in the rehearsals to seek the truth by reliving his memories. It's actually not that deep but maintains a great air of importance anyway.

NIGHT GAMES: A young aristocrat brings his bride to his childhood manse where their surroundings trigger immersive memories of his debauched youth, in which--wait a minute, am I watching the same fucking movie for the third time? Not really but that was weird. Criterion notes that this is supposedly John Waters' favorite movie, which makes a lot of sense when you've heard him say that he used to force Divine to drop acid with him and go see Bergman movies, which Divine HATED. What's really funny to me is that if you basically do not want to drop acid and watch a Bergman movie then you'd think nothing could make you do it more than once! The idea of John Waters tricking Divine into doing this repeatedly is fucking hilarious.

SAM NOW: Disturbing documentary made by some young dudes trying to find out why their mother suddenly abandoned them when they were kids. It's a decent enough movie but I was extremely unsettled by the blithe naivete of the young brothers set against the increasingly obvious fact that there's something pretty bad going on with the mom. Get ready for a lot of discomfort and unresolved questions if you watch this.

LIZZIE: Why is it that nobody has made a good Lizzie Borden movie? It's one of those overly familiar tales that's just sitting there in plain view still waiting for a solid adaptation, kind of like The Legend of Sleepy Hollow, but that at least has the great Disney cartoon in among all the so-so film attempts. You really want this to be good with Kirsten Stewart and Chloe Sevigny AND Denis O'Hare who I love to death, but it's just not that compelling. Actually it doesn't even dig into the most interesting details of the story in my opinion, I guess we needed to save time for extra lesbian makeouts. Also I hate to say it but Chloe Sevigny is really miscast; I love her but her whole thing is being really easy-going and natural, and that doesn't really work for this character (or she's not getting the direction that worked on AHS). Oh well.

MAIDSTONE: See my notes at the end of HONEYCOMB. I found this almost totally unwatchable. I've never read any Norman Mailer. Is Norman Mailer still cool, or did he just seem cool to some people at the time? Was Norman Mailer sort of like an adolescent rebellion phase that American literature had to go through in order to get to wherever it is now? A cursory review of his legacy seems to indicate this. Or maybe it's just really hard for me to sympathize with someone who goes way out of his way to piss off women, and then his defense against the inevitable backlash is "SEE? Feminism is fascist bullshit because look how I'm being treated!" I still see men do this on the smaller scale of their personal relationships--you know the drill, drive some poor woman insane, and then when she acts insane, invalidate everything she says by calling her insane--and they don't even need the excuse of clumsy satire to keep doing it, so forgive me if I don't find this approach very radical. And that's all setting aside Mailer's fetishization of the American Negro for whom it is not my place to speak, but you can imagine what that consists of if you don't already know. In any case I did not enjoy this movie, but I was on the edge of my seat the entire time waiting for the infamous Rip Torn hammer attack. I developed this whole fantasy that Rip Torn must reach a point where he just can't take it anymore and he tries to kill Norman Mailer. I mean *I* sure wanted to kill Norman Mailer, somebody has to do it, right? There are several moments in the film where it seems like someone has finally snapped and the cathartic murder might take place. What actually happens is that Rip Torn wanders up to Norman Mailer with a claw hammer, totally wild-eyed, and declares that he has finally understood that this great work of art can only be resolved with the death of the character Mailer plays. He really seems to believe what he's saying, and the sequence is extremely disturbing. In a way it's even disappointing, there were perfectly good, sober reasons to kill Norman Mailer without putting an unstable person in a chaotic and violent situation where he might naturally flip the fuck out! If MAIDSTONE has anything to tell us about the myth of the cowboy auteur, it might be that somebody like Norman Mailer shouldn't have free reign to abuse large groups of people even in the name of social critique or whatever, because one of them might turn out to be fucking crazy.

WANDA: I love movies that are made in Pittsburgh, I find them all totally fascinating. Or even just Pittsburgh-adjacent, like contrary to everybody else my favorite part of THE DEER HUNTER is the very beginning with the wedding, it's totally captivating to me. Anyway this is an odd, grimy little drama written and directed by Barbara Loden in which she plays the most incompetent woman in the world. It's a good time for a bad time, and if you're watching closely you'll see a poster for THE BRAINIAC in one of the scenes!

KISS DADDY GOODBYE: Obscure psychic kids movies starring Marilyn Burns and Fabian. Marilyn Burns is the nice teacher and Fabian is the cop who try to solve the mystery of the psychic kids, so they inevitably have sex because we have time for that I guess, but man Fabian's like roadside bachelor pad is SO SCARY. It has to be somebody's real hoarder house and it looks like it should be condemned, I felt nervous for Marilyn Burns! Marilyn Burns do NO eat or drink anything that comes out of that kitchen! Have you had your tetanus shot Marilyn Burns? Please run screaming, this is not a normal bachelor pad mess and it is not a good place for you to be naked!

The End.

#long post

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jyou-no-sonoko19 · 3 months ago

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hi. there is something I've been meaning to ask hope you could help me with. so how to draw a character (human) into a certain animal? like what you do in bunwell. there are some characters I want to give them what if they were a dog but like that. I don't really know where to look or where to start so I was hoping you can give me a tip or guide me where to look?

Ooh, anthro question, interesting!

So the first thing to do is fine-tune your animal choice to a species level, to the degree that the animal both has some visual similarities to the human (think sharpness of features, length of hair, colouring) and personality associations (like labrador retriever for a really loyal, good-natured person, or a maltese poodle for someone who can be quite prissy and temperamental).

If you don't have any experience drawing anthro, I'd recommend studying some classic styles to get an idea of what sort of stylisation you want to do, such as Disney's Robin Hood for a more realistic set of features, or for something cartoonier, try Warner Brother's Road Rovers or Jim Henson's Dog City (the animated segments, but the puppets can be helpful too). Those are specifically useful for diverse dog anthro references.

Once you've chosen your species, there's the trickiest part: creating an ungodly fusion of human and beast! >:o If you want to keep human hair the same as the source, you'll want to use animal ears, but sometimes you can merge the animal's ears with the human hair, such as with a cocker spaniel whose ears lie in a similar way; this allows you to keep the shape of their heads quite close to the human's. Another big important choice is how much of a snout you want the anthro to have: an advantage of shortening the snout is that your face can look more human but with a few animal features, but that does take away from the recognisability of the species, and can come off as a lack of dedication to the concept. If a person has sharp features, embrace a pointier snout!

In the end, though, don't feel too hemmed in by the breed you've chosen, because this is stylisation. For instance, if you wanted to draw Laura DeMille as a rough collie anthro, because of their Scottish ancestry and their ample, long fur, but prefer the colouring and curly ears of a boykin spaniel, go ahead and say you're anthro is a mix of both! (This can be a particularly fun technique if the person you're anthroing is of mixed heritage, and you can research breeds for both sides) It's worth noting that there is a particularly maligned form of anthro where vastly different animals -- such as a fox and eagle -- are mixed in order to gain a specific set of features, for an essentially impossible species. But the degree to which the anti-science of this matters to you relies on how much the world you're creating follows specific biological rules that mirror our own (eg. wolves and domestic dogs can breed, snakes and frogs cannot). For an example of a fantasy series that threw all that out the window for a truly charming cast of characters, check out Disney's The Wuzzles (thereby wrapping up my tendency of recommending show that were on in my childhood), which includes Bumblelion (a bee and lion mix), Butterbear (a bear and butterfly) and Rhinokey (a rhinosaurus and monkey).

Traditionally, anthro characters are clothed, but artists tend to be split on how much human modesty concerns should apply to them: for instance, many (usually male) anthro characters wear only a tshirt or other item, leaving their more animal-shaped hindquarters and tail exposed. This can be particularly useful for characters whose bodies could make tailoring clothing difficult. It's also an issue of some variation whether female characters should have human secondary sex characteristic (breasts and wide hips) or just retain a similar body shape to their animal aspect, but bipedal. Many artists deal with the latter issue by using some kind of fur-ruff at the chest to mimic a female human silhouette without adding breasts (and thereby suggesting that their mammaries go down their stomachs, like in regular dogs, etc).

Good luck with your designing, and feel free to tag me in your sketches! :D I'm always interested in seeing how artists choose to do their anthros.

#anthro art #art tips #fursona #anthropomorphization #I'm so glad you enjoy the Bunwells!#I do owe the world more art of them probably ^^;

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jump-wings · 10 months ago

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Hey there! I'm really excited about my new OC forMasters of the Air, i was watching and she popped into my mind. I'd love for you to get to know her a bit.

Fandom: Masters of the Air

Word Count: 1761

No warnings! General reader. F/M

New OC.

On that day, three planes had been shot down during mission by anti-aircraft fire. Bucky had been drinking until he got drunk again, continuing to do so. The sun had already set, yet they found themselves sitting on the wing of the plane as the last traces of blue in the sky descended upon them. Taking the bottle from Bucky, she took a substantial sip without realizing its strength, finding it to be harsher than what she was accustomed to in the Air Force. It felt as if it descended her throat, raising the temperature to a seemingly two hundred degree.

In their shared state of inebriation, the responsibility of keeping an eye on them would likely fall on Buck. His silhouette was spotted coming towards them from a distance. A wave was exchanged.

One becomes accustomed to missions, especially after just three of them. Following these initial missions, the novice phase gradually fades away, allowing a rough understanding of what needs to be done. They could predict the beginnings and potential outcomes of everything. However, becoming accustomed to death remained an impossible feat. They now better understood the woman French army doctor they had met, who appeared to handle death well until expressing otherwise. My apparent indifference stemmed not from becoming accustomed to deaths, but from pushing thoughts of death to the recesses and deep down of my mind, preventing a distaste for life from creeping in with each breath. That's what the doctor girl, an avid reader, had said.

Disgust with life had always been a foreign concept to her. Even in the face of life's adversities, there was always a genuine love for living. As a child, her thoughts were consumed by the simple joy of jumping on a bike and racing down the neighborhood street each day. In the midst of bike races with other children, the focus was not so much on winning but on the exhilaration of speed. Legs burning from lactic acid and hands aching from gripping the handlebars, she would accelerate, yearning to blur the shapes of houses, yards, street trees, fences, mailboxes, and electric poles into parallel lines.

Afterward, she would find solace under the shade of a tree on the sidewalk, sharing popsicles with friends and then resuming the joyous bike rides. Water fights, scoldings from a concerned mother fearing her daughter getting ill, and again mud battles resulting in reprimands for getting dirty from her mother were all part of her childhood adventures. Occasionally, when her fourteen-year-old brother, in the throes of adolescence and a newfound disdain for everything, sought solitude on the house roof with his melancholy, she would join him, gazing at clouds during the day and stars at night. With Ivy her little sister under the streetlight, attempting to catch illuminated tiny bugs with their hands, they would eagerly await the return of their father from the law office where he served as an accountant.

Life was beautiful, but it was changing. There was something happening back then that she thought was terrifying: she was growing up, but she was absolutely sure she didn't want to. She remembers doing her best to delay it. Trying to wear clothes that now seemed small to her, insisting on drinking milk every morning at breakfast, continuing to style her hair the way her mom used to when she was little, and insisting on displaying childlike behaviors, she secretly resented friends who didn't continue to do the same.

She tried to ignore the changes in her friends – the emergence of kissing, going to the movies together, dancing, and the discussions about having boyfriends or girlfriends. She attempted to maintain her old life. She resisted becoming a young girl. But it was inevitable. Growing up. When she thinks about why she was so afraid of it, a few reasons come to mind. Firstly, she feared the loss of fun, the joy that came with freedom.Even if her mothers didn't allow her to go beyond the white-fenced house on the street, or if she wasn’t allowed to eat sweets whenever she wanted. She felt more free compared to her mother who dealt with daily chores, meals, and taking care of Ivy at home, compared to her father, returning home with his tie loosened, his eyes closing from tiredness. And her brother who was grappling with the weight of impending adulthood as he faced the anxiety of going to college in a year, she felt freer than her sister, two years younger than her brother, caught in the exhausting cycle of becoming a good daughter, helping with household chores, not lagging socially behind girls of the same age, getting a boyfriend, studying, maintaining high grades, knowing oneself, and chasing dreams.

The fear of being a young girl was increasing, as the second reason. Expectations were placed on her. Being a proper young lady, learning and adhering to the unwritten rules in society's mind about how a good young girl should sit, speak, behave and present herself. Doing household chores. There was no problem in doing household chores. She enjoyed helping her mom. But just helping her mom and because she was a human using that house and living inside it, not because it was a duty imposed on her simply because she was born a girl.

Disapproving looks to the loud laughter of her sister and her friends, the criticism directed at her mother and her younger aunt for not knowing how to sew properly and to her grandmother for not being a good mother who has daughters and teach them before they get married (even though her grandmother had actually tried to teach them), the gossip surrounding Rose, who lived three houses away and remained unmarried at twenty-seven, Jacqueline, who was questioned with suspicion for walking with a male colleague for safety to her home late at night after left work very late, Minerva in the pink house because she was divorced (she couldn't escape despite being in her late sixties), Daisy, exhausted from constant inquiries about when she would have children, and unsolicited advice to visit the hospital for a check-up herself because she married five years age and still childless , Lilly, who was believed to be unable to keep her husband (he cheated on her every month with a different woman), Frances and Olivie, teased in similar ways—one for having three boyfriends by the age of seventeen and the other for never having a boyfriend at seventeen—, along with all the other women criticized, shamed, humiliated, and never seemed to be enough no matter what they did, made growing up as a woman unappealing when she heard the things said to their faces or often behind their backs.

The worst part was that it was each other who treated them like this or it was their husbands, brothers, neighbors, friends.

The third reason was her mother, who had been telling her since childhood that she never wanted her to grow up. She had heard it from her many times, and it had deeply ingrained in her. She didn't know the reason. She didn't ask when she was a child because it never occurred to her to ask. And when she grew up, she didn't want to face the answer.

The last reason was probably that she secretly, almost covertly, wanted to grow up. She wanted the magnificence of adult woman that not only came from beautiful dresses and make up but came from self-confidence, various talents, unique personalities, strong courage they have despite they were considered as second sex but with their flaws makes them human and their self-management and ability to manage others -kids, husbands, brothers, fathers- and their ability to accomplish all those multiple tasks at once.

She yearned to be one of them, but she feared she couldn't achieve that.

That's when writing came to her. It started with writing little things on this paper and that paper. It was a kind of diary. She began when she entered adolescence and continued as she progressed through adolescence, she wrote often sitting alone on the roof this time without her brother who had gone to college. The diary of papers advanced, turning into a notebook. A hardcover notebook with a green background, looking like it had pink, white, and yellow flowers scribbled on it. Now, it wasn't just about events and plans to be made; it started to pour out her feelings and observations onto the pages.

Even after she enlisted to Air Force, before the barrack’s lights go out at night, she wrote. She now had cool notebooks like the ones Air Force officers use. Sometimes Bucky gave her one, then tells her not to write about him.

Writing always reminded her of how much she loved living.

After a few pages of complaints, pessimistic thoughts, anger, threats, the evils of the world, the bad experiences she had -once separated from her depressive feelings and emptied her mind from these- good things would come. How beautiful the sky looked today or the eye-catching color the season painted on the trees, planting flowers with her father in the front yard and drinking lemonade together when tired, how much fun it was to stroll in the city center while her mother looked beautiful in her new dress, amusing experiences at school, at home, with friends, maybe a joke, buds of hope and plans for the future, and ways to fix things if something was going wrong at that moment—these were all written down. Living was beautiful; things were falling into place; worries had disappeared; there were things to be done.

One day, leaning against the wheel of Bucky's plane on the runway, sheltering in the shadow of the wing to protect herself from the sun, she became so immersed in writing. Bucky finished his work in the cockpit and approached silently behind her until she realized he was reading what she had written. By then, she had filled a page. Fortunately, what she had written at that moment was not something she would be ashamed of. More importantly not about him.

Still, they had a little argument, and although they sat at the same dinner table for two days, they didn't talk to each other. Then they made peace. They always made peace. She, him, Buck, and Biddick. They somehow always found their way.

Her closest ones were in the Air Force. Now, even outside the Air Force. She knew she had changed. They all had changed. No one else knows their changed selves except them.

#mota #mota new oc #hbo war #new oc #masters of the air #to find

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traumasurvivorshelpingsurvivors · 1 year ago

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seeking advice and resources… this is TW (involves a coat hanger and a childhood coochie) all I really remember about my childhood is being extremely aroused and fascinated by sex, by age 10 I was already actively speaking out that I wanted to have sex with others my age or really anyone and I can't remember a time when I didn't feel that way, I remember age 2 and up and even as a toddler I was very sexualized and felt a strong urge to kiss all the boys in preschool and it went on into elementary school and middle and high and so on into adulthood where as a teenager i ended up having a sex addiction that was diagnosed by a professional in the medical field so what i really need some advice on and resources of is why can i remember age 2 and up so vividly but i can't remember anything from under age 2? and also i moved at age 2 from a big city to a small town. and when i was a child i was so curious about sex that i actually took my own virginity by using a coat hanger because i didn't know what i was doing but all i knew is that it felt good but weird but in a pleasurable kind of way. i was around 7 or 8 when i did the coat hanger. i knew it took my card because there was so much blood. and i hid it by cleaning it and throwing it away after breaking it. also i am a millennial and i am diagnosed with ptsd and depression and anxiety and adhd so I'm sorry in advance for this adhd styled submission. i hope someone can provide resources online or a book suggestion or anything. also id love for my mom to understand what ptsd is and how it affects me, i live with her and she has to sort of help take care of me but she doesn't understand what ptsd is idk if there's a book out there for "helping moms understand their millennial offsprings PTSD struggles" and i do see a therapist for talk therapy but it doesn't always help like it should. and again I'm sorry for this longness. if you can re-write my submission and make it less TW or more easy to understand then please do so. i just really don't know what else to do.

Hi anon,

Please know that there is no need to apologize for this ask at all, it's not long and it's easy to understand. While to some degree sexual exploration is developmentally appropriate, it's a bit concerning that you were extremely fascinated by sex, and this can potentially be a sign of hypersexuality from sexual trauma. This article explains what is and isn't developmentally appropriate sexual behavior.

I'm not a medical professional, but while bleeding can be a sign of a broken hymen, that usually indicates that the hymen is in some way malformed, as many people tend to not bleed when their virginity is taken. This article says that the bleeding and pain some people experience [...] comes from stretching or tearing the tissue. The shape and size of a coat hanger could certainly cause bleeding.

It's also important to remember that virginity and the hymen are not inherently related. Not only can your hymen break from nonsexual activities like riding a bike, but the concept of virginity is culturally subjective and has different definitions depending on who you ask. So while it's okay to say you took your own virginity, just know that you can reclaim it if you wish.

The Body Keeps The Score is a great book about PTSD and how it manifests. Here's an article with a list of other related books you could look into. If anyone has any other recommendations, feel free to add on.

I hope I could help and please let us know if you need anything.

-Bun

#mod bun #trauma talks #trauma details

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uptoolateart · 2 years ago

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All the Missing Pieces - Ch 6

PREVIEW from Chapter 6:

‘A family.’ He turned the words over in his mind, counting the syllables, imagining the letters written down and tracing their shapes with his mental eye.

‘You…do want one someday…don’t you?’

A vision filled his mind, the same vision that always came to him when he tried to imagine becoming a father someday. A vision that made his blood run cold – of his own image blurring with Gabriel’s. Of becoming Gabriel.

‘It’s not that I don’t want one. It’s more like…I’m as unsure about how that will look as I am about what pathway to choose when I go to lycée.’ This was an inadequate response that didn’t begin to touch upon the real issue, but he didn’t have the energy to go into this fresh set of fears.

She shook her head. ‘You’re…you’re right, I’m sorry. We’re only fifteen, anyway. What am I doing, putting this on you. We have years to work this out. Of course, you don’t want to think about this now.’

‘It isn’t that. It’s more….’ He clenched his fists as he fought to find the words. ‘You have everything planned out – right down to the hamster. And I get it. That’s what you’re like. In or out of the costume, you’re Ladybug, and that’s what first made me fall in love with you. I love your mind, Marinette. I always have. I’m just…not that person at all. I’m not a planner. Plagg says I’m not even a thinker. When I do think about this future that’s coming for us….’

She laughed softly. ‘You make it sound like it’s some kind of monster with teeth.’

‘Isn’t it?’ He wasn’t joking.

She scooted closer to him. ‘I don’t think I’ve ever seen you this serious.’

‘I don’t think I’ve ever felt this serious.’

She licked her lip. ‘Listen.’ She took his clawed hands. ‘Forget the family, okay? Forget all of it. Maybe I plan too much. There’s a risk, there, because I get these fantasies in my head and then if things don’t work out the way I dreamed, I get disappointed. Like, really disappointed. Like, the world is going to end and maybe we’ll all be sucked into a black hole. I mean, who knows what’s going to happen over the next five years, right?’

He blinked as pieces slotted into place. ‘You were planning on starting a family at twenty?’

‘Um. No.’ She pushed a lock of hair behind her ear. ‘I also didn’t plan for Emma at twenty-five and Louis at thirty.’

He blinked some more. ‘Wait. What are we naming the first one?’

‘Hugo,’ she said immediately.

He choked back a laugh.

‘You don’t like the names?’ She sounded genuinely concerned.

‘They’re fine,’ he assured her. ‘They’re beautiful. And the kids will be beautiful too, just like their mother.’

Ooh, that was the right thing to say. He knew it as soon as he saw the way her pupils dilated before her eyes softened in that lazy way that invited him to kiss her. Maybe Felix was right. He might not have had a career plan, but he knew exactly what he wanted to do with his life.

He moved in closer, so their knees touched. ‘Twenty might be a little young. Could we push the five-yearly baby schedule back a little? Give us both time to finish a degree, maybe, and find our feet?’

‘All of it is negotiable,’ she said. ‘I value your opinion.’

He laughed and shook his head. ‘Only you, M’lady. Only you.’ He leaned in for that kiss, and she kissed him back. He pulled her into his lap, so her legs were around his waist. He wanted badly to feel her with his actual fingers, but he also didn’t want to de-transform and end up with Plagg watching them and listening to them and, worst still, commenting on them. In this big bad future that was coming, they would definitely need to take off their miraculous in such moments.

The kiss deepened, and it hit him that in this future there really would be such moments. The end of childhood meant the beginning of a new phase – the beginning of freedom. No more hiding on rooftops when their parental figures thought they were in bed. They would live in a house that was all their own, where they made the rules, and they could do these things whenever they wanted.

Read at Ao3

No archive warnings apply but please read tags - rated Teen+

#ml fanfic #mlb fanfic #ml fic #mlb fic #ml fanfiction #mlb fanfiction #fanfiction 2023 #fanfiction #fanfic #ml adrien #ml marinette #adrien agreste #marinette dupain cheng #ml ladybug #cat noir #chat noir

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dragoneyes618 · 6 months ago

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"Corsets were worn throughout Victoria's reign by women of all classes. Even records from prisons, asylums and workhouses contain corset provisions for female inmates. They offered fashion, naturally, but to the Victorian mind they also offered self-respect, sexual attractiveness, social conformity and a range of health benefits.

The belief that a woman's internal organs required support was a strong and persistent one. Men, it was thought, were much tougher and less in need of this assistance, and yet even for them it arose as a concern, with the popularity of 'flannel body belts' widely reported. Dr. Jaeger fretted about the need for men to 'gird their loins' (the loins being not the thighs but the muscles that run down either side of the spine). To 'gird' did not mean to tense but to cover these muscles. For women - the weaker vessel - the need was seen as all the greater. In Victorian thought, the womb and other reproductive organs made female midriffs more delicate and problematic. Ironically, this may well have come to be the case, as a corseted woman, especially one who had been corseted from childhood, did lose muscle tone. With a corset to perform many of the supportive functions of the back and stomach muscles, these muscles went largely unused and therefore became, to some degree, weak and atrophied. If such a woman left her corset off for a day or so, she would probably find the lack of them disconcerting and tiring, and would struggle with the floppiness of her middle regions. She was likely to return to her corsets with a sense of relief, confirmed in her opinion that they were a necessary garment.

Periodicals such as Female Beauty stated that 'women who wear very tight stays complain that they cannot sit upright without them, nay are compelled to wear night stays when in bed.' The erect posture that was required of both men and women gave this feeling added potency. Unlike the stigma-free, laid-back culture of the twenty-first century, relaxed posture, for the Victorians, went hand-in-hand with slovenly behaviour and loose morals. The good-looking, the successful, the fashionable and the strong were those who stood or sat erect.

Standing and sitting up straight is much easier in a corset than without. From my own experience, you can slouch as much as you like and still look impeccably upright. If you are sitting in a chair, it helps if you perch on the front edge so that you can settle the edge of your corset at the right angle. In this way, you can stay, with no effort at all, beautifully poised for hours on end.

In addition to the benefits of support, it was thought that a corset provided the warmth a woman's vulnerable insides required, and that allowing the kidneys and other organs to become chilled was foolish and dangerous and could lead to a range of illnesses and disorders. In wearing corsets, women were protecting themselves from the vagaries of British weather. Corsets were particularly valued for being a windproof layer. Many medical men praised women for wearing them, contrasting their healthy behaviour with the propensity of some men to leave themselves exposed. Doctors, in general, were very supportive of female corset-wearing. Their only reservations concerned not the corsets themselves but the practice of 'tight lacing' - of using corsets to change the shape of the female body dramatically. Mainstream medical thinking was that an uncorseted woman was as foolish as one who was tightly laced. A properly fitted and properly worn corset, on the other hand, could prevent the straining of the ligaments supporting the womb. It was also good for a healthy bladder, averted back injuries, helped in the recovery from childbirth, facilitated healthy digestion and generally assisted a woman in leading an active life. Or so it was thought.

A neat, corseted figure was, ultimately, what society expected of a woman. Wearing one meant that she was daily proving to herself, and to her neighbours, that she had standards and, more importantly, self-respect. An uncorseted woman was thought to lack self-control and would have faced public disapproval and crude assumptions about her lifestyle. Only those who were prepared to be social outcasts went without.

The corsets of the 1840s and early 1850s were often home-made and were no more complicated to make than the bodice of a dress. Patterns and instructions were to be found in many women's magazines up until the 1860s. One of the best and easiest to follow appeared in the Workwoman's Guide of 1838. The corsets shown consist of four cotton panels sewn together, with the addition of gussets: two for the breasts and, sometimes, two more to go over the hips. The boning in many of these handmade corsets was often minimal, just a couple of pieces either side of the lacing holes to prevent the lacing from rucking up when fastened and a single rigid 'busk' resembling a ruler slipped into a pocket in the cotton at the front of the corset. This central busk would form the primary stiffening, and could be of wood, whalebone, horn or metal. The rest of the shaping was achieved by cording, the threading of lengths of cord or string through closely sewn channels. The corset was then laced together at the back.

A lightly boned, corded corset like this is a very easy thing to wear, more comfortable, in my opinion, than the underwired bras of the twenty-first century. A corset moulded the body into an elegant shape, supporting the bust and smoothing out the lumps and bumps. It is warm to wear, and not too constricting. Even with enthusiastic tugging on the lacing, it is hard to achieve more compression than is produced by the shopwear currently on sale in today's high-street shops. A corset is perhaps too hot to wear in the height of summer, and the busk length must be just right so that it does not dig in (contrary to popular expectation, longer is better; ending somewhere on the pubic bone seems to be most comfortable), but it provides a smooth, compact solidity to the torso that looks attractive through the outer clothing of the day, holding everything firmly in place and providing a fashionable high bust-line.

Professionally made corsets and more fashionable corsets of this date usually contained more panels, eight being a common number. In addition to a central busk, bones were fitted front and back and also followed the curves of all the seams holding the eight panels of material together. With these corsets, a much tighter lacing was possible, and was practised. Wooden busks were replaced with the more flexible whalebone or steel, which meant they could be pulled in against the stomach as the laces were tightened.

As the 1850s slipped into the 1860s, the pressure to show oneself possessed of a small waist continued to build. The old homemade corsets began to dwindle away as more people turned to professionally made equivalents that could enable them to attain a more fashionable shape. This was the age of the corset horror story. There is one frequently quoted letter to a women's magazine that sums up the worst excesses of the practice, written by a woman who had not only gone through the experience but was perfectly happy to have done so: 'I was placed at the age of fifteen at a fashionable school in London, and there it was the custom for the waists of pupils to be reduced one inch per month until they were what the lady principal considered small enough. When I left school at seventeen, my waist measured only thirteen inches, it formerly having been twenty-three inches in circumference.' That this is no exaggeration is proved by the survival of a few of these tiny-waisted corsets. To put this into perspective, the waist measurement of the average toddler is about twenty inches. Such drastic reductions in waist size could be achieved only by a woman wearing, over a period of time, a series of smaller and smaller garments and corsets, both day and night, and eating a very regulated diet with a number of tiny meals replacing the three main meals of the day.

In other reports of the practice at fashionable schools, it was stated that he corsets were removed for only one hour a week, in order for the girl to wash. Several accounts talk of the 'pain' of tight lacing, but also say that it passed if you could just bear it for a while. Girls would compete with each other for the smallest waist and, amid the admission that they sometimes fainted and suffered from headaches, they also remain positive about the experience. It seems, for some young women, to have given them a 'high.' As with painful initiation ceremonies and rites of passage, a small group of young women found in tight lacing an excitement, a pride and a sense of belonging. But it was a small group of young women at this extreme end of corset-wearing. The vast majority of surviving Victorian corsets and outer clothes of this period are nothing like so small in the waist. Nineteen to twenty-four inches is the common range for fashionable young women's clothing, with clothing for older women usually rising by several inches. By twenty-first century standards, these are still very small waists. A size ten dress is currently averaging twenty-four inches at the waist. By Victorian measures, my own figure would be described as 'corpulent', requiring the larger pattern sizes stocked by the paper-pattern shops. Adverts promising to contain and control the 'stout' and 'matronly' figure would, confronted with a thirty-six-inch chest and twenty-nine-inch waist, only just do it. And yet, according to current statistics, I am still very slightly slimmer than the average British woman of today. All the evidence suggests that most Victorian women were - be they rich or poor - slim.

As a 'corpulent' woman with a 'matronly' figure, I have worn several styles of Victorian corset for extended periods of time. When I reduce my waist by two inches, I adjust very quickly and suffer no real problems. I, of course, do have some excess body fat that can be compressed; a slim woman with less spare flesh would find it harder. However, when I take four inches off my waist, things do start to become more difficult.

Allowing the body time to adjust is important when wearing a corset. Most people, including practised corset-wearers, find them tight to put on at first but, after a couple of hours, they can manage with them much tighter than initially. When making a bigger change, there is a much longer adjustment period and you have to be willing to be patient, and not get upset or anxious. If you are not used to corsets it is very easy to feel constricted and to imagine that you are having trouble breathing. The panic can make it difficult to breathe and the situation can escalate. I arrived at Victorian corset-wearing as someone who already had plenty of Tudor corset-wearing experience, so although the two experiences proved to be very different, I was at least aware that I needed to give myself time. The body does adjust. After a few days I found that I was able to be as vigorous in my corset and with my waist reduced by four inches as ever I was. I was soon charging around after escaped pigs and scrubbing floors, just as before.

The problems I did experience with wearing such corsets were not the ones I had expected. The most immediate was trouble with my skin. Twenty-first-century underwear can leave me sore in the areas where shoulder straps and other bits of elastic press. The corset caused the same problems as the elastic, but all over my upper body. It was worst when I had been hot and then cooled down, as the sweat left salt on my skin, which then rubbed. This could be agony. After an eighteen-hour day working hard in my corsets, my skin would be an angry red mass and the itchiness almost unbearable. In my experience, corset itch rivals chickenpox.

The other problem I encountered took slightly longer to manifest itself. I was experiencing some problems with my voice and eventually went to see a speech therapist, who noticed that I was breathing almost entirely with my upper chest and hardly using my diaphragm at all. It seemed that I really had adjusted and adapted to the corseted life. With my lower ribcage compressed, I had learned to get the oxygen I needed without troubling my diaphragm. It certainly made sense of some Victorian health advice I had previously found rather quaint. Dr. Py Chevasse in his Advice for Ladies extols at some length the virtues of singing as good exercise. Now I knew why: Plenty of strong, diaphragmatic singing was just what I needed.

Many people, when they think about the compression caused by corsets and hear about waist sizes, are under the impression that it is the soft area above the hips and below the ribcage that is affected. This is only partly true. The lower sections of the ribcage, as Victorian medical treatises made clear, were also very much involved in the squeezing. If you look at an image of a tightly corseted Victorian woman, you see that the waist decreases in size smoothly down from the bust, but there is no sudden angle where the ribs stop. When you wear a corset, you become very aware of this. It is the compression of the ribcage that interferes with the breathing, and I certainly found that it was this area that was most uncomfortable. The soft tissue around the waist didn't give me much trouble at all. As a corset is tightened, the lower ribs are pushed down and inwards. At the same time, the whole torso is remoulded from being, overall, oval to becoming round. It is this change in shape that gives those first two inches of compression much of their visual impact. It is an optical effect, for the same volume presented as a cylinder appears much smaller.

At the end of the day, when I took off my corset, there was always a strange moment - an odd sensation when everything tried to return to its natural shape. I felt my ribcage re-inflating, which took a rather disconcerting five or six seconds.

My experience of corsets have come after a lifetime mostly lived without them, so will always be different to those of people who have worn them since childhood. I cannot expect really to know how Victorian women felt in their corsets. They were entirely used to them; their stomach and back muscles had developed - or not - to take account of them; and they had grown up with ways of moving that suited what they were wearing.

The Victorians themselves did have a raft of concerns about corsets and waists. Various authors warned women that tight lacing would cause problems with the chest, with digestion and reproduction, would deform the skeleton and (this is the one that was often presented as a clinching argument when seeking to persuade women to stop) give rise to a red nose due to poor circulation. The problem, however, came in defining 'tight lacing.' Where did health-giving support and moral control give way to health-impeding tight lacing? An inch or two off the natural circumference of the waist was clearly not a major health hazard in the eyes of the majority of the population. People were accustomed to the idea and used to seeing their mothers so girded.

Trying to ascertain what was healthy and natural for women could be problematic. If corsetry was near-universal and waists really did reduce in size as a result, it could be hard to find a model or exemplar. Most writers turned to Greek and Roman statuary as a socially acceptable way of talking about female bodies. Classical statuary showed the naked female form in a respectable manner and combined that respectable nakedness with a useful lack of corsetry. The Venus de Medici was much discussed as a model for women to emulate, for here was an avowed beauty, life-size and with a twenty-six-inch waist.

In addition to mainstream fashion corsets came 'health' corsets. We might well imagine that these garments - the commercial result of the strong and frequently published worries about corset wearing - would be less constricting. However, a quick glance at both adverts and surviving samples confirms that they were generally as stiffly boned as the fashionable corsets. Their claims to health rested instead upon features such as air holes to allow the skin to breathe, which, following my own experience of skin problems when corset wearing, I would be happy to try out."

- How To Be A Victorian, Ruth Goodman, pages 63-73

#how to be a victorian #ruth goodman #history #women #victorian era #corsets

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blueflame · 5 months ago

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Oh boy be warned. I’m about to info dump hard. I fucking love Qibli to pieces and this is going to be several paragraphs long of just rambling.

Oh my God fucking finally someone else says it. people act like qibli is some sort of golden child as if he’s never gone through anything. When compared to the rest of the Jade winglet he’s had the worst childhood. And everyone always wants him to do something really fucked up because they believe that he’s just a goody two shoes with no faults or something. The point of his character is that despite everything he’s gone through, growing up in a situation where cruelty not only encouraged, but expected and despite the fact that he was supposedly regularly abused by his siblings, mother and grandfather, he still actively chooses to be nice. He knows more than most what it’s like to go through hell and back and he refuses to let anyone else suffer like that.

In my opinion, he has the most depth of any of the characters in the jade winglet, besides maybe winter. he has layers to him and you can see those layers depending on who he’s talking to. around most dragons, he puts on this façade of being a loud funny guy so they like him more, around his close friends his protective side comes out and he does whatever he feels is necessary to help his friends, around moon he finally lets down all his guard and just exists as himself. This is one reason why I absolutely adore moonbli, around the moon he can just completely drop the façade and be serious and concerned he doesn’t need to act around her or pretend to be someone he’s not he can just be. Am my opinion this is the edge that relationship with moon has over a relationship with winter for qibli.

Also, his whole relationship with Thorn is really not explored as much as it should be by the fandom. he was literally bought and taken in by someone completely out of his world for no reason he could understand. He is convinced that he is unworthy of love and that anyone who would love him has to be truly extraordinary. In his mind, they can’t just love him for him. They have to be almost a God like figure. This is why my opinion his relationship to thorn is actually incredibly sad and definitely unhealthy to some degree. Along with practically worshiping her, he believes that he needs to give his entire life to protect her that he can’t let her get hurt in any way shape or form. He almost falls into this way when thinking of moon, but thankfully he doesn’t.Some of the actions he takes within his own book really show how unhealthy attached he is to thorn.

The main example is when he stops the fight between onyx and thorn by summoning lightning. He put lives at risk because he was terrified of losing his mother figure even in an honorable battle. It’s almost like he can’t function without her to some degree. Qibli at his core is a severely broken child. Of course, none of this is Thorn’s fault She could’ve never predicted this but from what I can tell, she is trying to give him the help he needs, sending him to school and in general getting him to make more friends.

Hell, even his thinking patterns are more proof of how messed up he really is. Moon interprets his thinking as smart and problem-solving, but really it’s more like spiraling and overthinking. he is constantly aware of everything around him for his own safety and trying to understand who everyone is to figure out whether they’ll be a threat or an ally that he needs to befriend. Yes, he is really smart, but most of just thinking patterns to me, across more as overthinking and defense mechanisms rather than actual problem-solving. I really think that is what Tui actually had in mind for him instead of just the funny guy. I think this because we get more of this overthinking in his own book where he’s constantly second-guessing himself constantly worried about every possible angle and whether or not people will hate him. Basically the dragon has SEVERE imposter syndrome.

Anyway, his story was never about him having to make some questionable decisions that go against his moral code. He’s already been doing that since he was a kid, his story is about a guy coming from the worst possible situation and choosing to be a good person regardless despite having every reason not to.

This dragon is mentally ill

get him some Prozac

I hate how a good 60% of the entire fandom completely ignore Qibli’s trauma and acts like the way he acts is him doing that for no reason.

“he’s trying to hard to be liked!!,😡” why the fuck do you think he’s doing that you toe eyed cabbage. Qibli is a traumatized child and I’m so TIRED of people acting like he isn’t.

I’m TIRED that this fandom treats characters who have trauma as if they’re either boring, annoying or terrible when they aren’t. I have yet to see someone say they hate Qibli without completely ignoring his trauma and WHY he’s like this in the first place.

this is specifically directed at a post I saw on the WoF wiki that pissed me off so BAD.

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dissociacrip · 1 year ago

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So uh. How does one go about getting tested for Williams syndrome if they weren't tested for it as a baby because like...I have a lot of features (primarily neurological, intellectual, and behavioral, the rest of me aside from fat pockets in my spine and neck is fairly healthy aside from "obesity" but like...I'm fairly healthy) that are indicative of williams syndrome. I read about Williams syndrome in like 7th grade in a book about neurodevelopmental disabilities and music, and one of them was on Williams syndrome, and the way the author described the patients i fit every characteristic BUT the distinct facial features which kinda leads me to assume (medical special interest + slight hypochondriasis from it) that I have some sort of mosaic form of Williams, which isn't the first time I believed I had a disorder I feel like I need to test for but my mom would dismiss bc I'm being a hypochondriac (the other major one is nontypical congenital adrenal hypoplasia, which I have signs of to various degrees, such as obesity, early puberty, a rather blocky, apple shaped body type more typical of...not cis men but rather trans men on t and also a lot of trans women starting on estrogen, and I've had very little, thinning, often greasy hair since puberty, when before it was thick and wavy; think a kind of harry dubois kinda hairstyle with more hair on the scalp thankfully). Idk I just dont know if I should get tested for either two of these things (and I know if I do have ncah it would explain why my periods are so long, heavy, painful and disabling to the point I can't move and I have to take birth control) or if I should just let it go for now since I don't have any severe symptoms such as salt wasting (ncah) or heart disease (Williams syndrome) yet

there's no surefire way of getting dx'd with anything. my first pcp i got after leaving home acted like i was just drawing connections that weren't there when it came to my POTS and generalized joint hypermobility. i didn't rly continue my appointments with her after i was lucky enough that she referred me for a TTT after i sent her a highlighted list of my symptoms and asked for it directly.

i'm also someone who wonders abt smth like NCAH but i doubt i'd ever get evaluated for that and even then. something i said recently said a lot of people display little to no symptoms of it. i have relatively thick body hair, the vaguest hints of hirsutism, a voice that sounds almost pubescent (best i can describe it lol), and enough "masculine" features that people have gotten confused about my gender/called me a man/called me slurs over it on a routine basis since at least 3rd grade (and it had continued into college.) the last time my testosterone levels were measured they were within "normal" ranges for someone who was CAFAB though. that's not nearly as much reasoning as you might have but your best bet there is an endocrinologist. salt-wasting is a risk with CAH rather than NCAH because NCAH centers around reduced cortisol production and increased androgen production and doesn't impact aldosterone as much i think. treatment for NCAH usually centers around androgen levels and period regulation (as you said) in cases where people do have symptoms/need some kind of treatment. could bring up to your doc that you have concerns around hormones and ask for a referral to an endo or something but aside from that, 🤷🏻‍♀️

WS seems like something that usually wouldn't be missed in childhood so long as your mother's pregnancy and your growth and development were routinely (and responsibly) monitored by doctors (bc we know how doctors can be, and also parents). idk anything about WS though or any kind of genetic disorders like that. i would guess anything with a clear genetic marker like that is most accurately dx'd by a geneticist or through genetic testing, which is expensive/highly inaccessible, although apparently WS is usually identified at a young age through its cardiac symptoms. i'm def the wrong person to ask about that.

#asks #Anonymous

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cyarsk52-20 · 1 year ago

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Home

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NEWS

Denver Sean

Tory Lanez Denied Bond, Will Remain in Jail

September 14, 2023 12:59 PM PST

Tory Lanez will stay in jail.

His request to be released on bond pending his appeal was just denied.

If you recall, Tory asked the judge to let him return home to live with his son and new wife during his appeal process.

The judge wasn’t having it, noting that Tory has been convicted of a violent felony along with a history of violating court orders — and he’s not a U.S. citizen.

via Rolling Stone:

Representing Peterson in court were attorneys Crystal Morgan and Michael Hayden of the nonprofit legal group Unite the People, which is representing him for his appeal. The group’s CEO and director, Caesar McDowell, previously spoke about Peterson’s character during his sentencing hearing, noting that Peterson has donated time and resources to the organization. Outside the court Thursday morning, McDowell brought up concerns about the initial trial and said Peterson’s conviction and punishment wasn’t fair. “To be convicted for 10 years in state prison for your first time being in prison, we feel that that’s disproportionate, We feel that he wasn’t given a fair shake,” he said. Given the results of Peterson and his team’s previous efforts to lessen his punishment, getting granted bail was never the most likely outcome. The request came after Peterson was denied probation prior to last month’s sentencing when his attorneys said Peterson suffered from alcohol and drug addiction and should go to rehab instead. Herriford also denied Peterson’s request for a new trial in May. Peterson was sentenced for the shooting in August, nearly eight months after he was found guilty of first-degree assault with a firearm, discharge of a firearm with gross negligence, and having a concealed firearm in a vehicle. Ahead of his sentencing, Pete wrote a statement about the hardships she has endured since the shooting. “I struggle with being present. After everything that occurred I cannot bring myself back to being in the same room with Tory,” Pete wrote. “He paid bloggers to disseminate false information; he treated my trauma like a joke when I could’ve been dead. He blamed the system, he blamed the press, and as of late he is using his childhood trauma to justify his actions.” Peterson pleaded for leniency from Herriford prior to the sentencing, noting he needed to be in his son’s life and refuting that the shooting represented who he is as a person. “I’m standing in front of you as a father to a six-year-old who needs me every step of the way,” Peterson told Judge David Herriford. “There’s been this misconception about me being this monster, not having remorse, that’s just not true,” he said, noting that he couldn’t go into specifics about the evening at the advice of his legal counsel. “That night, everyone was drunk, I said things I shouldn’t have said. The victim was my friend, I still care about her. We both lost mothers, we’d sit there and drink until we felt numb. Everything I did wrong that night I take responsibility for.” Never having admitted to the shooting, Peterson wrote a letter to fans days after his sentencing maintaining he was wrongfully convicted and refusing to apologize. “I have never let a hard time intimidate me. I will never never let no jail time eliminate me. Regardless of how they try to spin my words, I have always maintained my innocence and I always will,” Peterson wrote. “This week in court I took responsibility for all verbal and intimate moments that I shared with the parties involved… that’s it. In no way shape or form was I apologizing for the charges I’m being wrongfully convicted of. I remain on the stance that I refuse to apologize for something that I did not do.”

We bet he wishes he would’ve taken that plea deal now…

#This whole case had me changing my opinions and views(at least for the moment)#celebrating the police and the system #being xenophobic towards Canadian people #posting stories with reader plus white celebrities with fluffy or smutty material #nearly being racist towards black men #saying that some of them nigcels deserved to be another hashtag #and backing the death penalty.#megan thee stallion #i’m not sad for her #i’m outraged #i’m just glad she’s in a better place now #those people can speak for themselves they know who they are #and they can go straight to hell #they will pay for their crimes #for sucking that abusers meat #Instagram #As always a loud and sincere fuck you to everyone who has doubted her and supported that Canadian cuntery who must not be named #She went through unnecessary trauma for two years #That’s unforgivable #Next level fuckery #That that type of ish that would lead to an episode of snapped or deadly women #once again #🖕🏿daystar Peterson #annnnn boom #just like that #may all who come against black women rot #Don’t fuck with black women #If you can’t love them then at least don’t harm them #can’t wait to see that sociopath locked up on August 7th.#can’t wait to see that sociopath locked up on august 7th

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theheartofrelationshipcounseling · 2 years ago

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Get To Know Neha Rathaur

Tell us a little about you.

I was born and raised in the Bay Area, mostly, as I did spend a couple years of my childhood in India. Being bicultural has played a major role in my life and development as it has shaped the way in which I learn information and make connections with others. I received my Bachelors in Psychology from San Jose State and my Masters in Counseling from Santa Clara University. At the moment I work with individual adults and couples to manage anxiety, trauma, and relationship concerns.

What inspired you to work as a therapist?

I have a great affinity for writing and initially pursued a degree in literature but shifted my focus to psychology after having a great experience in my own personal therapy. I also have always had a strong desire to reduce human suffering and believe that the space that is created in therapy allows for this to happen.

What’s one personal value you hold dear as a therapist and why is it important to you?

Being nonjudgmental is a value that I hold close both personally and professionally. I feel it is essential to this particular space because it takes courage to be vulnerable and explore emotions like pain, anger, and shame. Sometimes the ways in which we learn to go about our lives are flawed, sometimes for reasons out of our control, which is part of the reason why I feel that being nonjudgmental is a vital part of the human and therapy experience.

What is your approach to making change in therapy?

I believe making change comes from a desire to persevere. For one to want to make a shift in the therapy space, there is often an underlying desire to persist and push through what is challenging so that we may find ourselves somewhere lighter and better prepared. I recognize the difficulty that can come with making a change, and my role is to help clients through this process.

After a long work week, how do you de-stress and unwind?

To physically de-stress, I enjoy going on long walks and doing yoga. To unwind I like to watch films, listen to music, dance, go thrift shopping, and spend time with close friends and family.

Click here to schedule an appointment with Neha.

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iimpavidwrites · 4 years ago

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Benzaiten Steel and the Fragility of Perception

or: reasons why setting boundaries is important #1283

I’ve figured out a reason why Benzaiten Steel stayed with his mother instead of doing the “sensible” thing and moving out. I think that it’s possible, too, that Juno has always been aware of the answer but, in the scope of Juno Steel and the Monster’s Reflection, he isn’t able to face it head-on because it contradicts his black/white, either/or sense of morality.

TL;DR: Despite Juno Steel’s unreliable narration we are able to see clearly the enmeshed relationship Benzaiten had with their mother Sarah and the ways in which that unhealthy family dynamic shaped Juno Steel as a person.

Sources: 50% speculation, 20% lit crit classes, 30% my psychology degree.

Juno’s perception of Ben is shallow and filtered through the limitations of human memory. We all know by now, too, that Juno’s an Unreliable Narrator™. In light of this, we need to ask ourselves why it is that Juno remembers Ben as happy, supportive, and only ever gentle in the challenges he poses to Juno. Throughout the episode, Ben’s memory is clearly acting as a comforting psychopomp: he ferries Juno through the metaphorical death of his old understanding of his mother (and also himself) and into a new way of thinking. He does this through persistent-but-kind questions, never telling Juno what to do or how to do it. This role could have been played by anyone in Juno’s life (Mick and Rita come to mind first) which makes it telling that Juno’s mind chose Ben to fill this role.

Juno’s version of Ben is cheerful, endlessly patient with Juno and Sarah, and above all he is compassionate. He acts as a mediating presence between Juno and Juno’s memory of Sarah and he doesn’t ask a whole lot for himself. If this is Juno’s strongest memory/impression of Ben’s behavior and perspective, then we can draw some conclusions about the roles they each played in the Steel family unit: Juno was antagonistic to Sarah and vice versa, and Ben was relegated to the role of mediator for the both of them.

Juno: She’s just evil. Ben: That’s a big word. Juno: “Evil”? Ben: No, “Just”.

We can see in this exchange that Ben is a vehicle for the compassion Juno needs to show not only to Sarah but to himself, too, in order to move on and evolve his understanding of his childhood traumas.

This is not necessarily an appropriate role for a sibling or a child to hold in a family unit.

In family psychology, one of the maladaptive relationship patterns that is discussed is enmeshment. Googling the term you’ll find a lot of sensational results (e.g. “emotional incest syndrome”) that aren’t necessarily accurate in describing what this dysfunction looks like in the real world. This is in part because enmeshment can present many different ways. So, in order to proceed with this analysis of Benzaiten Steel’s relationship with his mom, I need to define enmeshment.

Enmeshment occurs when the normal boundaries of a parent-child relationship are dissolved and the parent becomes over-reliant on the child, requiring the child to cater to their emotional needs and to otherwise become a parent to the parent (or to themself and/or to other children in the family). This is easiest to spot when a parent confides in a child as if they’re a best friend, disclosing details of their romantic life, expecting the child to give them advice on coping with work stress, and similar. Once enmeshment occurs, any kind of emotional shift in one member of the enmeshed household will reverberate to the others; self-regulation and discernment (e.g. figuring out which emotions originate in the parent and which ones originate in the child) becomes extremely difficult for the effected child and parent. When an enmeshed child becomes an enmeshed adult they often have issues with self-identity and interpersonal boundaries. For example, they may struggle to define themselves without external validation and expect others to be able to intuitively divine their emotions. After all, the enmeshed adult could do this with their parent and others easily due to hypervigilance cultivated by their parent and they may not understand that such was not the typical childhood experience. These adults are often individuals to whom the advice “don’t set yourself on fire to keep someone else warm” is often relevant and disregarded. They may perceive their own needs as superfluous to others’-- and resent others as a consequence.

Another layer of complication is added when the parent in an enmeshed relationship is an addict, as Sarah Steel was. The enmeshed child often times becomes the physical caregiver to their parent as well and must cope with all the baggage loving an addict brings: the emotional rollercoaster of the parent trying to get clean or the reality of their neglecting or stealing from their child to support their habit or their simply being emotionally absent. Enmeshment leaves children with a lot of conflicting messages about their role in the family, how to conduct relationships, and how to define themself.

We only get an outside perspective on this enmeshment in the Steel family. It’s clear in the text that Juno’s relationship with his mother was fraught. He jokes in The Case of the Murderous Mask that she didn’t kill him but “not for lack of trying”, implying that Ben’s murder wasn’t the first time Sarah Steel lashed out at Juno-- or thought she was lashing out at Juno but hurt Ben instead. During the entire tenure Juno’s trek through the underworld of his own trauma, Juno asks the specter of Benzaiten over and over, “Why did you stay?”. This is a question that Juno himself can’t answer because Ben, when he was alive, probably never gave him an answer that Juno found satisfactory. There are a few possibilities, which I can guess from experience, as to what the answer was:

Ben may never have been able to articulate that his relationship with their mother left him feeling responsible for her wellbeing.

Or, if he ever told Juno that, Juno may have simply brushed off this concern. After all, as far as Juno was concerned, Sarah was only ever just evil. To protect himself from his mother’s neglect and codependence, Juno shut down his own ability to perspective-take and think about the nuances that might inform a person’s addiction, mental illness, abusive behavior, etc.

It is likely that Ben thought either his mother needed him to survive or, alternatively, that he couldn’t survive without her-- as if often the case with children who are enmeshed with their primary caregiver. It was natural and necessary for him, from this perspective, to stay. Enmeshment is a very real psychological trap.

It is often frustrating and hard as hell to love someone who is in an enmeshed relationship because, from the outside, the damage being done to them seems obvious. See: Juno’s assertion that Sarah was just evil. Juno is, even 19 years later, still angry about Sarah Steel and her failures as a parent and as a person. His thinking on this subject is very black-and-white. He positions Sarah as a Bad Guy in his discussions with Ben-the-psychopomp and the childhood cartoon slogan of “The Good Guys Always Win!” is repeated ad nauseum throughout Juno’s underworld journey. This mode of thinking serves two purposes:

First, it illustrates the role Juno played in the household: he was opposed to Sarah in all things and Sarah did not require any compassion or enmeshment from Juno. Juno was, quite possibly, neglected in favor of Ben which would create a deep resentment… toward both Sarah and toward Ben. This family dynamic would reinforce Juno’s shallow moral reasoning and leave him with vague, unachievable ideals to strive for like “Be One of the Good Guys” or “Don’t Be Like Mom” -- ideals that he can’t reach because he is a flawed human being and not a cartoon character, creating a feedback loop of resentment toward his mother and guilt about resenting Benzaiten. That guilt would further bolster Juno’s shallow memory of Ben as being infallibly patient, kind, loving, etc.

Second, Juno’s black/white moral reasoning is an in-text expression of the meaning behind Juno’s name. When “Rex Glass” points out that Juno is a goddess associated with protection, Juno immediately has a witty, bitter rejoinder ready about Juno-the-goddess killing her children. Juno was named for a deity who in some ways strongly resembles Sara Steel and he resents that he is literally being identified as his own mother. Juno-the-goddess has one hell of a temper, being the parallel to Rome’s Hera. Juno is not a goddess (detective) who forgives easily when she (he) knows that a child (Benzaiten Steel) has been harmed. This dichotomy of “venerated protector” versus “vengeful punisher” causes psychological tension for Juno that is only partially resolved in The Monster’s Reflection. The tension is not fully resolved, however, because Juno never gets a clear answer for the question, “Why did you stay?”

The answer is there but it is one that Juno doesn’t like and so can’t articulate: Ben is enmeshed with Sarah who named him, of all things, Benzaiten and that is why he stayed. We’ve already seen that names have intentional significance in the text. Benzaiten is hypothesized to be a syncretic deity between Hinduism and Buddhism, is a goddess primarily associated with water. Syncretic deities are fusions of similar deities from different religions/cultures; their existence is the result of compromise and perspective-taking and acceptance. Water, too, is forgiving in this way: it takes the shape of whatever container you pour it into... not unlike a child who is responsible for the emotional wellbeing of their entire family unit. Not unlike Benzaiten Steel.

Ben stayed with his mother because his relationship with his mother was enmeshed, leaving him little choice but to stay, and this ultimately led to tragedy. Sarah Steel’s failures as a parent are many and Juno still has a lot of baggage to unpack in that regard, especially where Ben is concerned. It’s unlikely that we’ll get the same kind of “speedrunning therapy” episode again but I know that The Penumbra is committed to a certain amount of psychological realism in its character arcs so I am confident in asserting that Juno Steel isn’t finished. Recovery is a journey and he’s only taken the first steps.

#juno steel #benzaiten steel #meta #the penumbra podcast #benten steel #sarah steel #psychology #enmeshment #bad parenting #iimpavid writes #chatter #the monster's reflection #the case of the murderous mask

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flowerbloom-arts · 2 years ago

Text

A compilation of Moominpappa being the most Well-Adjusted and Normal Neurotypical Individual to have ever narrated a story about his own life, and someone who nobody should be concerned with the mental well-being of for

(all copy-pasted passages from Moominpappa's Memoirs, 1968, translated into English by Farrar, Straus and Giroux, with added context in brackets [] by me);

✒️

However, the Hemulen who had built the Foundling Home was interested in astrology (somewhat), and wisely enough she observed the dominant stars at the time of my coming into the world. They indicated the birth of a very unusual and talented Moomin, and the Hemulen accordingly worried about the trouble awaiting her (geniuses are often regarded as being disagreeable, but I must confess that this has never disturbed me).

I used to stand before the tiny mirror in the hall and look deep into my unhappy blue eyes, trying to penetrate the secret of my life. With my nose in my paws, I heaved sighs such as "Alone!" "Cruel World!" "Fate is my Lot!" and other sad words, until I felt a little better.

I was a very lonely Moominchild, as is often the case with original talents. No one understood me or could make me out, least of all I myself. Of course, I was aware of the difference between me and the other Moomin children. It lay mainly in their deplorable incapacity for wondering and marvelling.

For example, I would ask the Hemulen why everything was just as it was and not the other way round.

"Wouldn't that be pretty indeed," said the Hemulen to this. "What's wrong with things as they are?" She never explained anything, and I felt more and more strongly that she was trying to shrug the whole matter off. "What, when?" and "Who, how?" have no meaning to Hemulens.

Or I asked her why I was I and not someone else.

"Bad luck for both of us! Have you washed your face?" was the Hemulen's reply to this important question.

(A dim but unavoidable notion told me that the line of fathers and mothers that had to do with myself was something rather exceptional. I wouldn't be surprised if my swaddling-clothes had been embroidered with a royal crown. But alas! old newspapers tell nothing!)

One night I dreamt that I was holding my tail at a wrong angle, namely, seventy degrees, when I said good morning to the Hemulen. I described this nice dream to her and asked if it made her angry.

"Dreams are trash," said the Hemulen.

"I'm afraid not! You are very real!" said the Hemulen dejectedly. "I haven't time for you now! You give me headaches! What'll become of you in this un-Hemulic world?"

So passed my early childhood in quiet and constant wonderment. I was permanently astonished, always repeating my questions of "What, when?" and "Who, how?" The Hemulen and her obedient foundlings avoided me as best they could; the word "why" seemed to make them uneasy.

(I have later learned that a talented Moomin always wonders about things that seem self-evident but finds nothing strange in things that an ordinary Moomin thinks are curious.)

But by and by a change came: I started to muse about the shape of my nose. I put my trivial surroundings aside and mused more and more about myself, and I found this to be a bewitching occupation. I stopped asking and longed instead to speak of my thoughts and feelings. Alas, there was no one besides myself who found me interesting.

Finally, one windy morning, I had a feeling that. . . well, I simply had a feeling. And I walked straight down to the sea that the Hemulen didn't like and consequently had forbidden us.

The bright and shiny ice was much wider than the Hemulen's hall mirror. I could see the clouds of the spring sky sailing past my small, pretty, upright ears. At last I could view the whole of my nose and the firm, well-rounded rest of myself all the way down to my paws. The paws were really my only disappointment: they had a look of helplessness and childishness that bewildered me.

"However," I thought, "perhaps it will pass with time. Doubtless my strength is in my head. Whatever I do, I will never bore people. I'll never give them time to look as far down as my paws."

Vague shadows were moving about in the unknown world that led its secret life under the ice. They looked threatening and very attractive. A giddiness came over me and I thought, "To fall down there. Down among the strange shadows ..."

The thought was so terrifying that I thought it once again: "Deeper, deeper down . . . Nevermore! Only down and down and down."

It made me extremely upset. I rose up and stamped my feet to see if the ice would hold. It did. I walked a bit farther out to see if it would hold there, too. It didn't.

Perhaps one of the threatening shadows would devour me! It was not impossible that he would take one of my ears along to his children and tell them, "Now, eat up before it goes cold! This is genuine Moomin and not to be had every day!" Or I would float ashore with a tragical clump of seaweed behind one ear, and the Hemulen would weep regretfully and tell everyone she knew, "Oh, he was such a singular Moomin! What a pity I didn't understand it in time . . ."

I was just starting on my funeral when I felt something very cautiously nipping my tail.

I felt cold all day, but no one asked me why. This fortified me in my resolution. At dusk I tore my bedsheet in long strips and tied them into a rope. I made it fast to the window-sill. The twelve obedient foundlings looked on but didn't say a word, and this hurt me.

I was simply a very young Moomin, gloomily wandering over the heath, sighing in desolate gorges, my loneliness increased by the terrifying sounds of the night.

"Better be careful, " said Moomintroll. "How are the Memoirs going?"

''Quite well,'' answered Moominpappa and hauled his trembling legs to safety over the windowsill. "I've just run away. The Hemulen cries with grief. I think it will all be very moving.

I tried to sing "How Un-Hemulic Is This World," the morning march of the foundlings, but my voice trembled so much that it only frightened me all the more.

Even the redoubtable company of the Hemulen would have comforted me just then. But as for turning back— never! Not after such an imposing letter of farewell.

"A Hemulen has terribly large feet and no sense of humour," I explained. "She has a protruding, slightly depressed snout, and her hair grows in indefinite tufts. A Hemulen does nothing because it would be fun to do it, but only because it must be done, and she tells one all the time what one ought to have done and—"

"Good gracious!" cried the hedgehog and backed away among the bracken.

"Well," I thought, a little huffily (because I'd have liked to tell her a lot more about Hemulens).

"Hodgkins," said the owner of the ears. "And who are you?"

"A Moomin," I said. "A refugee, and born under rather special stars."

"What stars?" asked Hodgkins, clearly interested, and this made me very happy because it was the first time anybody had put an intelligent question to me. So I climbed out of the brook and sat down beside Hodgkins, and without being interrupted a single time I told him about all the signs and forebodings that had accompanied my coming into the world. I told him about the pretty little basket of leaves I lay in when the Hemulen found me. I told him about her terrible house and of my misunderstood childhood. Then I went over my adventure on the spring ice and my dramatic escape and described the gruesome wanderings over the heath.

Hodgkins listened gravely and wiggled his ears at the right moments. When I finished he thought for a long time and finally said, "Strange. Rather strange."

"Yes, isn't it," I said thankfully.

The sun was gone. The horizon was gone. All was different, strange, and inimical. Hissing specks of white foam from the waves were flying past us, and beyond the railing everything was black, inconceivable chaos. Suddenly I understood with blighting insight that I didn't know anything about the sea or about ships. I called out for Hodgkins, but he didn't hear me. I was totally alone and deserted, and it was of no help to be in the midst of an unquestionably Highly Dramatical happening. I felt no desire at all to enlarge the frightfulness; on the contrary, dear reader! Perhaps one makes the most out of an awful situation only when one has onlookers? I decided quickly to make less of it instead. I thought, "Now, if I close my eyes and pretend that I'm nobody at all and that no one remembers my existence, perhaps all this will go away ... As a matter of fact, it's nothing at all to do with me! I'm here quite by mistake ..." And I closed my eyes and made myself small and said over and over, "Never mind. I'm quite small. I'm sitting in the Hemulen's garden hammock, and I'll be going inside to eat porridge in a little while ..."

"Moomin!" Hodgkins shouted through the gale. "They're smaller!"

I didn't understand.

"Smaller!" he cried. "Much smaller waves than in the picture-book!"

But I had never seen the waves in Hodgkins's picture-book, so I shut my eyes, as before, and took a firm hold of the Hemulen's garden hammock. It helped. In a little while I really could feel the hammock quietly rocking back and forth. The gale subsided and nothing felt perilous any more. So I opened my eyes and saw an unbelievable sight.

"Terribly, Your Majesty," I breathed, enchantedly looking at my prizes. I think 27 was the nicest. It was a drawing-room decoration: a small meerschaum tram on a coral pedestal. The center was designed as a small box to keep safety pins in. Number 67 was a champagne whisk set with garnets. The other prizes were a shark's tooth, a preserved smoke-ring, and a decorated barrel-organ crank. Can you understand my bliss? And can you understand, dear Reader, that I almost forgave the Autocrat for not being as Regal as he should have been, and all at once thought him a rather pleasant King?

"Hodgkins," I said cautiously. "If you're going to invent things for the Autocrat, then we can't do any travelling, can we?"

Hodgkins made an absentminded sound.

"And inventions take a long time, don't they?" I continued.

As Hodgkins didn't answer me, I cried in full desperation, "How can you be an adventurer if you live in the same place all the time? Don't you want to be an adventurer?"

But Hodgkins replied, "No. I want to be an inventor. I want to invent a flying river-boat."

"And what about me?" I asked.

"Why don't you found a colony with the others?"

Hodgkins replied kindly, and left.

[Explaining Hodgkins' arrangements with the Autocrat about being a royal inventor and working on the Amphibian/Oshun Oxtra 2.0] All this I heard about afterwards. At the time I only felt abandoned. I began to mistrust the Autocrat again, and did not feel able to admire Kings. And I didn't have the least idea of what was meant by the strange word "colony." At last I went to the Mymble's house to be comforted.

"I'll come along with you," declared the Mymble's daughter, and stopped pumping [the water spout].

"There's a lot of difference between Hodgkins and you," I said in a tone that wholly missed its intended effect.

"Indeed there is!" she cried happily.

I remember so very clearly looking at Hodgkins's old tool-chest, which the Hemulens of the Autocratic Guard had discarded because it wasn't fine enough for a royal inventor. I thought, "Now is the time I ought to think up something that's as remarkable as his inventions. How will I be able to impress my colony? They're all waiting for it, and very soon it will be Friday, and I've been talking much too much about how talented I am . . ."

For a moment I felt quite sick. I looked at the waves rolling past, and I had a vision of Hodgkins just constructing and constructing and constructing and making new inventions all the time, and totally forgetting me.

I very nearly wished that I had been born a Hattifattener under the Hattifatteners' vague and drifting stars, and that no one expected anything else of me than that I also should be drifting along towards an unattainable horizon, never speaking to anyone and never mindful of anything.

This sad state of mind lasted until dusk.

With a deep feeling of the uselessness of everything, I walked to the Garden of Surprises, where all was silent. The waterfalls were shut off and the lanterns dark. The merry-go-round was asleep under a wide brownish cover. The Autocrat's throne was covered also, and under it stood his fog-horn. The ground was strewn with toffee papers. Then I heard the sound of hammering.

"Hodgkins!" I cried. But he just went on hammering. I blew the fog-horn.

After a while I saw Hodgkins's ears penetrate the dusk. He said, "You shouldn't look before it's finished. You're too early."

"I'm not going to look at your invention," I replied sadly. "I want to talk!"

"What about?" he asked.

I was silent for a bit. Then I said, "Hodgkins, please, what does an outlaw and adventurer do?''

"Whatever he likes," Hodgkins replied. "Anything else you wanted to know? I'm a little busy." He wiggled his ears in a friendly way and disappeared in the dusk. After a while I heard him hammering again. I walked back home. My head was awhirl with thoughts I really had no need of, and for the first time I found no pleasure at all in thinking about myself I had sunk into a state of deep gloom, which has also come over me at times later in my life when other people are achieving more than I myself.

But in a way I found this new feeling quite interesting, and I suspected that in spite of everything, it had something to do with being talented. I noticed that if I allowed myself to feel really lugubrious, sighing and staring out over the sea, I began to feel almost contented. I felt such a colossal pity for myself. A fascinating experience.

While this was going on, I distractedly started to make some small changes in the pilot-house, using Hodgkins's tools and some pieces of flotsam and wreckage from the shore. I had an idea that the house wasn't tall enough.

This sad, and to my development so important, week passed slowly. I hammered and brooded, and sawed and brooded, and didn't feel a single "click" of the sort I'd felt before.

But Moominpappa went down and seated himself in the drawing-room and looked at the aneroid barometer, which he kept hanging over the chest of drawers. Yet this was no pilot-house; this was a drawing-room. What had Hodgkins said when he saw Moominpappa's house? "You've really been exerting yourself, I can see!"—in a patronizing way. The others hadn't even noticed that the house had been rebuilt and was higher. Perhaps he ought to shorten that chapter about feelings. Perhaps it seemed silly and not moving at all. Perhaps the whole book was silly.

One of my characteristics is wanting to make an impression at any price by awakening admiration, sympathy, fright, or, on the whole, any feelings that include interest. That's probably because of my unappreciated childhood.

I cannot stress enough the perils of your friends marrying or becoming court inventors. One day you are all a society of outlaws, adventurous comrades and companions who will be pushing off somewhere or other when things become tiresome; you have all the world to choose from, just by looking at the map . . .

. . . And then, suddenly, they're not interested any more. They want to keep warm. They're afraid of rain. They start collecting big things that can't fit in a rucksack. They talk only of small things. They don't like to make sudden decisions and do something contrariwise. Formerly they hoisted sail; now they carpenter little shelves for porcelain mugs. Oh, who can speak of such matters without shedding tears!

Worst of all, I was infected by it all, and the jollier I was in their company by the fireside, the harder it became to feel free and daring like an eagle. Dear reader, do you understand me? I was shut in, but an outsider nevertheless, and finally I felt myself to be nothing at all, and there was nothing but gales and rain.

All was secure and cosy, family life at its best, and the more I looked at it, the more uneasy did I feel. My legs prickled.

Every now and then a gust of sea-spray washed over the dark and rattling window-panes.

"To be out on a night like this ..." I mumbled distractedly.

"Eight on the Beaufort scale. Possibly more," concurred Hodgkins, staring at his picture-book waves.

"I'm going to have a look at the weather," I mumbled, and slipped out through the leeward door. For a moment I stood listening on the doorstep.

The dark night was filled with the menacing crash and tumble of the surf. I sniffed at the wind, turned back my ears, and went over to the windward side. The gale rushed at me with a howl and I closed my eyes to avoid seeing all the unmentionably fiendish things that may be on the move on a stormy autumn night. Gruesome things that are best ignored and shouldn't be thought about . . . As a matter of fact, this was one of the few times when I didn't think at all. I only knew that I had to go down to the beach and the hissing breakers. It was the kind of magical Foreboding that also later in my life has led to surprising results.

Moominpappa is so very Mentally Ill in his Memoirs actually like. Why is he the Sane One in fanon when he's the least Normal about anything or anyone.

#moomins #moominvalley #exploits of moominpappa #moominpappa's memoirs #adventures of moominpappa #moominpappa #if anyone knows a diagnoses for this man please tell me because I don't want to be the Armchair Therapist for this particular bag of issues #I'm 90% sure he has multiple disorders actually but like. I want someone else to doagnose them for him

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