#it takes 3 people to form a cult. please join us
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koumeowkami · 1 year ago
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OHHH btw I used to have an insane 2winmez brainrot too so I get you so much. I started with the Nayu-Hina and Kana-Yuta parallel too but then I moved on to something else and I actually believe that it'd be fun to see Yuta and Nayuta interacting, I think Nayu would definitely feel that Yuu is similar to Kanata and would (perhaps) become comfortable in his presence a bit easier?
As for Kanata and Hinata I have a whole writing in which Kanata starts being so annoying by Hina because he's unbearable until they reach. a point. in which Hina opens himself and Kanata sees past his cheerful facade and sees all the pain. It's then when he understands, and perhaps he also sees that at the end of the day, he's not too different from Nayu, but to him either. As a person who sacrificed everything for their beloved brother.
I think that once they bond they'd understand each other so much. Both pairs have a reason to respect the other because they literally match each other's moral criteria which is insane to me. I also want to see the Aois teaching the Yatonokami some acrobatics while skating because I'm so fucking sure Kanata would be like "pff I can do that too obviously" and proceed to fail miserably
(srry for the amount of text, my brain randomly started braining and I had to share)
ngl the pairings are pretty changeable cause generally speaking they all get along well together!! and i get that nayuta would feel at ease with yuta since his attitude is similar to kanata's, he'd be instantly attracted to him and maybeeee finally have a chance to be a kind of an older brother (since he can't do that with kanata) ???? tho yuta probably wouldn't let him do that, i don't think nayuta would baby him a lot since he doesn't like that either djdbdj
kanata would definitelyyyyy get closer to hina once he finds out his true feelings, i really think he would relate a lot to him and hinata would even help him understand nayuta's point of view better?
GOD THE AOIS TEACHING ACROBATICS TO KANATA WOULD BE SO FUNNY. i think kanata would hate being taught something since he's a bit prideful (hence him immediately trying to do that and failing miserably) but then end up loving it and probably mixing it with his breakdancing!!
anyways DON'T BE SORRY AT ALL. please share more if you can !!!! i love having people to ramble about 2winmez with 🩷💜
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obsessivevoidkitten · 2 months ago
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The Invasion
Cat Man Alien Yandere x Gender Neutral Reader
CW: Painful noncon, reader gets smacked, biting, collaring, owner/pet, pet reader, reader tied up, reader is an idiot, alien invasion, shapeshifting, general yandere behavior
Word Count: 1.2k
(Popped into my head, finished at 2-3am this morning, hope you all like it. Please leave comments and consider tipping to support the senior's bake sale, I love you all <3)
Twiggy was a rescue. He had been brought into the animal shelter you worked at and was pretty injured. Once he was nursed back to health, you immediately adopted him.
He was a bit standoffish, even by cat standards, but he slowly seemed to tolerate you. Then, almost actually like you. It's like he would enjoy affection and then catch himself and hiss before running off.
Even though you made sure never to let him outside, he always seemed to get out anyway, mostly in the dead of night. 
In an effort to discover just how he was escaping, you set up cameras. But they always ended up knocked down or broken before catching anything. Then you put a cat cam on him, but every night, he would fling it off after you went to sleep.
You had enough. It was getting creepy. You decided you would follow him. He never tried to leave while you were awake, though, so you had to pretend to sleep. 
The sound of the door could very faintly be heard closing, so you got up silently and slunk into the living room.
Astonished, you looked at the door. It had been unlocked, and Twiggy was missing. He had somehow figured out how to open doors. It wasn't entirely unheard of for a cat to manage a door handle, but the lock?
You quietly left the building and saw Twiggy moving with purpose down the road.
After a while, you thought yourself stupid. He was just going to do random cat stuff. Why were you following him? He probably just smelled something that gripped his attention.
But as he kept going through various alleys and back roads, a few other cats joined him without any reaction from him. They proceeded in orderly and determined fashion right into the old abandoned factory. 
You followed and had to hold back a gasp at what you saw. Down in the basement level was Twiggy standing on a pile of scrap with dozens of other cats gathering below him.
It was some sort of cat cult. 
But if you thought that was shocking, you hadn't seen anything yet. Suddenly, Twiggy effortlessly shifted into a nude man with curly brown hair, a tail, and cat ears on his head.
After he transformed, all the others did the same. The room was filled with naked men and women with tails and cat ears. This was getting too weird. The best course of action now was to make a silent retreat.
As you began to back away, Twiggy pointed in your direction and stated something you were too far to really hear.
In a flash, the cat people were upon you, dragging you over to Twiggy and forcing you to kneel before him before they tied you up and gagged you so you couldn't speak. 
He addressed the others without sparing a glance at you. 
"I infiltrated this human's place of employment and then their home." 
He stroked your hair in a manner similar to the way you would pet him in his cat form. 
"I have learned that we can use their workplace as a front and get adopted as their pets. We will use this method to infiltrate every home before taking over and turning humans into OUR pets!"
Twiggy turned to an androgynous looking cat person.
"River, I need you to take the form of this human and work at the shelter as we discussed at the last meeting. Come over tomorrow to my human's house, and I'll give you the schedule."
River nodded in affirmation.
After that, the meeting came to an end, and Twiggy dismissed the others. He pulled the gag off of you and allowed you to speak.
"Twiggy, w-what's go-"
The cat man smacked you harshly. It left an echo resounding through the large empty room. 
"That's a gross pet name. My real name is Declan."
You whimpered and then flinched when he pet the spot he had smacked gingerly. 
"Sorry, I shouldn't have hurt you, you didn't know… You probably have lots of questions."
Of course, you had questions. And Twig- Declan… answered every one of them patiently. 
He explained that the cat people were aliens who just happened to have a form that looked like a common earth house pet. They could also look like any human they wanted, though they had to hide their feline features. He was the leader. And now that you were aware of everything, you got to be the first pet. His personal one. He promised to treat you well.
After the Q&A, he put on some clothes he had and took you back to what was no longer your house. He put your gag back in so you couldn't scream on the way.
True to his word, he treated you like a precious pampered pet, since you had helped heal him and took such good care of him. He even gave you a jeweled collar for you to wear as proof he owned and cared for you.
Though he had started to care about you in ways that he probably shouldn't have.
But after a while, he couldn't help it anymore. One night when your head was laying on his lap while the two of you watched a show he liked, something he forced you to do as he stroked your arm and side, his cock stirred under your head, and he had to give in.
He stripped you of all your clothes; you struggled and protested, but his strong, lean body easily overpowered your own.
He pulled off your collar and bit your neck hard to get you to submit as he mounted you, before shoving his cock in you deeply all at once with no preparation. 
The cat man fucked into you ferally, going off pure instinct, pushing your head into the couch cushion so no one could hear your screams.
You were sure you were going to die, that you were going to be split apart by his girthy cock, that the last things you would hear were your muffled screams, the sound of his nuts slamming into you, and his animalistic growls.
Declan's cock pistoned in and out roughly as tears streamed down your face. You felt a sense of shame as he forced you to orgasm despite the cruelty of the way he was violating you.
It wasn't enough that he took your house, job, and way of life and eventually would take your planet, but now he was claiming your insides with his throbbing cock as well.
He came in you roughly and finally seemed to gradually come back to his senses. He licked away your tears and the blood and cum that were mingled and leaking from your hole.
"I'm so sorry, I just couldn't help myself! I'll be more gentle and use lube next time, okay?"
The cat man comforted you as best he could, bathing you as you sobbed. He sincerely regretted hurting you, but he couldn't deny his instincts and really needed some release. Going forward, he decided you would be his mate as well as his pet, so he didn't go wild with pent-up emotions again. 
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strawberrysands · 2 years ago
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ouu! can i request you write a nate x reader(in a relationship) where theyre in the odessa catacombes w sam and colby? :)
Odessa Catacombs - Nate Hardy
Roughly based off of this video
This is my first request ever ashakjht thank you so much anon! I hope you like it :)
Disclaimer: The video and the story take place before the whole war thingy. I just want to say that I am not in the slightest way ignoring anythinig that is happening at the moment and that my heart goes out to everyone there <3
Summary: you join Nate, Sam, and Colby to explore the Odessa Catacombs in Ukraine
Word count: 3.8k
Warnings: fluff, mentions of death and hauntings, sum kissing, again not proofread lmao
“Babyyyy.” Nate drawls out the last syllable. A small smirk forms on your lips, knowing that he only did that when he wanted something from you.
You’re currently sitting on his couch, feet on the coffee table, mindlessly scrolling through your phone. Nate walks closer to the couch and hugs you from behind, burying his face in your neck.
“Yesss?” You say innocently in the same tone that he did.
“You would do anything for me, right?” He asks, voice muffled by your hair.
You laugh. “Depends on what you want me to do, babe.”
“Sam and Colby are going to Ukraine for a video and asked me to come. Come with me?” He says, and even though you can’t see him, you know that his puppy eyes are on full display.
You pretend to think about it for a moment. “What’s in it for me?” You tease. “What do I get in return?”
You feel the corners of his lips curl up against your neck. “I can think of a few different things.”
He starts placing kisses on your neck and you immediately know you’re  a goner.
“Pretty please?” He pleads. You let out a breath of air when he kisses that particular spot on your collarbone, and he smirks at your reaction.
“Not fair, Hardy.” You huff and you turn around to face your beautiful boyfriend.
“As long as I get the window seat on the plane there.” You say.
So here you are, in Ukraine, countless hours later. You had met up with Sam and Colby as soon as you arrived and are now preparing to start the intro to the video.
“Today, we are going to be visiting the Odessa catacombs, the single largest group of tunnels and underground city in the world.” Sam says to the camera.
“During Odessa’s industrial ‘boom’, they started digging for limestone underneath the surface. But because there were no regulations, they just dug at random.” Nate says.
“Which basically created a massive labyrinth that’s only like, half mapped. So  it’s like, really easy to get lost in there.” You add.
“There were literally like 2 people found dead this year in here.” Colby states.
“Wait really?” You ask. “No one told me about that part.” You chuckle but the fact kind of creeped you out. One of your worst fears about this place was to get stuck down there and never find your way out again.
Colby nods and continues. “Yeah, this isn’t like from ancient times. Even today, people get lost and there’s even cults down there.”
“Right now, we’re at the catacombs museum, a pretty popular tourist spot, but later today, we’re also going into the uncharted catacombs.”
“The wild catacombs.” Nate says dramatically and you snort.
“Wild, seriously? How can a bunch of tunnels be wild?” You ask. Sam had cut the camera by now and you start walking towards your guide.
“Babe, I know a wild thing when I see one.” He smirks as he puts an arm around your shoulders. You playfully roll your eyes at him, and you see Colby in front of you who had turned around to listen to your conversation now turn back again with an odd expression on his face, making you chuckle.
“Alright everyone, this is Ivan, our tour guide. He’s going to be helping us through the tunnels since we have no idea what we’re doing.” Colby says. “Can you maybe tell us some history about the museum and the catacombs itself?”
“The museum here was built in 1960 to remember the partisans who were hiding here during the second world war.” Ivan starts. “But the catacombs are actually just stone mines. Odessa was basically built from this material.”
“If the mines are that big, isn’t there a high risk of it collapsing while we’re in there?” You ask slightly worried, and you feel Nate take your hand in his own.
Ivan nods. “In these types of things, there’s always a risk involved. In fact, there are still many bones of miners buried underneath the collapsed parts. But hopefully everything will be safe today.” He says with a small laugh.
“Hopefully.” You mutter. You feel Nate give your hand a gentle squeeze before he turned to Ivan.
“Do you believe this place is haunted?”
The tour guide shrugs nonchalantly. “Yeah, maybe.”
Sam laughs. “He’s just like, oh whatever.”
 
“Dude, it’s so much colder in here.” You remark as soon as you step in the tunnels, your worries from earlier disappearing to the background.
“Yeah, it’s gonna be cold like all day.” Sam agrees.
Ivan takes you through numerous rooms and you already feel like you’re completely lost. You learn that the miners often take horses in here and that they would eventually go blind because of the absence of light. After discussing what this place would do to your biological clock and seeing the shooting range, Ivan takes you to the partisans’ hospital.
“Isn’t this like, way too small for all the people that lived down here?” You ask.
“Yes, of course. I am convinced that there are lots of other hospital rooms like this one throughout the tunnels. Obviously they won’t have like the beds in them because this is just part of the museum, but there are lots of places that could have been a hospital like this one.” Ivan says.
“C’mon dude, get it up.” You hear Sam say. You look over and see that Nate was messing with a blood pressure device thing.
“A lot of guys struggle with this, okay.” He says.
“I can help if you like.” You say seductively, winking at him. You see Colby fake gag and you’re pretty sure that if it hadn’t been for this odd lightning, Nate would have been blushing.
“Wrong website, guys!” Sam shouts laughing,
“Join xplrclub for only one dollar this week for more exclusive content.” You say at the camera, wiggling your eyebrows.
---
The hospital was the last stop of the museum tour, and you had to take a different entrance to go to the uncharted catacombs. What you didn’t realize, however, is that you had to walk up like 5 flights of stairs just to get back to the surface.
Once you get to the top, everyone’s panting heavily.
“Oh, fuck me.” You say, since that was more physical than you thought it would be. You realize how your exclaim sounds and you hold up one hand to Nate. “Don’t you dare make a joke out of that.”
He chuckles as response and puts both of his hands up defensively.
---
Once you get to the other entrance, you instantly notice the difference with the tunnels from the museum. The ground is muddy and slippery, and you have to carefully pay attention so you don’t end up on your ass.
“Somehow, you have to get down.” Ivan says, and we all let out a laugh.
Colby goes first. “It’s doable.” He says after he gets down. “I only caused like one avalanche.”
Once Nate had safely gotten down there, he extends a hand to you which you gratefully take.
A few meters further, Ivan stops and scans the area. “The entrance of the catacombs is blocked because of the flood. We’ll have to get in this way.” He says, gesturing to a tiny hole in the ceiling.
“We have to fit through that?” You ask perplexed.  You turn to look at Ivan, but he was already gone.
“Bro, our guide just disappeared.” Sam chuckles.
Once again, Colby decides to go first on this one. After a couple of moments of struggle, he had disappeared, and it almost looked like the ceiling had swallowed him. Sam is up next and then it’s your turn.
“Wish me luck.” You say and Nate kisses the top of your head gently. You hand him your go-pro and start climbing up.
“Did you hear that?” Colby asks as soon as you get your head up through the hole.
“What?” You frown, pushing yourself up as gracefully as you could.
“Dude, where did Ivan even go?” Sam wonders while looking around, the sound now completely forgotten.
You lend Nate who was right behind you a hand and pull him up.
“He went left, for sure.” Nate says, going in that direction. And sure enough, you suddenly bump back into Ivan, making your heart skip a beat.
“I checked and the lower levels are ruined from the flood. A lot of small tunnels, so probably not the best idea to go down there.” Your guide says and Sam’s eyes were already screaming ‘hell no��� at the small tunnels part.
“So, I propose we climb up.” Ivan continues, pointing a big gap in the wall about a meter and a half up. He shows us how to climb up and makes it look way easier than it would turn out to be.
“Why do I always wear skinny jeans when we do these types of things?” Colby sighs before holding onto the wall and climbing up. Nate is up next and this time it’s his turn to stretch out his hand for you.  Your foot suddenly slides off the wall and you feel Sam’s hands supporting your butt in order to not make you fall.
“Were you seriously groping my girlfriend’s ass, Golbach?” Nate asks once Sam gets up as well.
“Would you rather she broke her neck?” Sam says and Nate begins laughing. “Dude, I’m joking. Thank you so much for saving the life of my one true love.” He says dramatically, putting a hand over his heart.
Even though he had a playful tone, you couldn’t help but smile at his words.
---
You gather around the camera to start explaining the ghost stories of this place.
“It’s not just the biggest labyrinth in the world, on top of that, it’s also haunted.” Colby laughs.
“It is. There are a lot of ghost stories from here, one of them being Masha.” Sam says.
“Masha and her friends decided to explore the catacombs here late at night. They were drunk, it was New Year’s eve, and they were just some teenagers looking for some fun. They ended up spending the night here, and when they woke up, Masha wasn’t there anymore. Her friends tried to look for her but they never found her, and now she’s rumored to haunt these tunnels, still looking for a way out.” Colby says.
“Damn, that’s sad.” You say. Nate nods and continues the story.
“There were a lot of search parties sent out to look for her. A while later though, a group of young explores thought they had found her body and took pictures in front of it. A lot of people believed that this story was all a myth. So much even, that a journalist had to pressure the police to get the body out. From the looks of it, she had spent three days in pitch black and cold trying to find her way out before dying to dehydration.”
(A/N: I did some research on this story and there are a lot of different versions. Some of them say that Masha went in alone, others say that her friends went with her and ‘abandoned’ her in the tunnels. Some even say it never even happened. I just went with what I wrote here)
“Another entity that supposedly haunts this place is Bout.” You say. “He is said to protect any treasure from these tunnels. Bout was an officer from Odessa who was on board of the Titanic. They rescued him and he made like a small Titanic out of gold. He hid it in these catacombs and never came back for it.”
“For three generations though, people have come here to look for treasure. As the legend goes, if you took anything from here, Bout would cause amnesia and make whole tunnels collapse to make sure you never got out again. If you died here because of that, you would become the next Bout to protect the treasure here.” Sam says.
“There are actually a few versions of this legend. Another one is that it’s Brigantine, and not the Titanic. We’ll see some pictures of it later.” Ivan says from behind the camera.
“Obviously there are many ghost stories from this place, but I think the last one we should talk about is the White Hunter.” Sam says. “A long time ago, there were two guys down here and one of them got trapped. His friend ended up not helping him get out.”
“You guys better help me get out of here.” Colby says, looking at us.
“Yeah, 100% dude.”
“Oh hell no.” You say and Colby looks at you with a fake shocked face. “You put green hair dye in my shampoo. I’m still not over it.”
“For the record, that was three years ago, as a revenge prank. She had swapped my toothpaste with soy sauce.” He says while looking at the camera, and you grin at the memory.
“Anyway, this guy had so much anger at his friend that he came after anyone that was in here. If you didn’t, like, make the right offering, he could make you the next White Explorer.” Sam continues.        
“Then, there’s another version of this story, that if you do make the right offering he would actually help you get out.” Colby says.
“Do we have anything to offer though?” You ask.
“We have Nate.” Sam deadpans and we all burst out laughing.
“Oh hell no, I don’t want his angry girlfriend putting ketchup in the coffee maker.” Colby says, looking at you with a scared expression.
----- Tiny time skip yall im sorry lol -----
“I can give you, like, a small task to test your orienteering skills if you want.” Ivan says, “if you go left on each crossroad, you should end up right here where we are now.”
“You’d be able to find us if we got lost though, right?” You ask, slightly nervous about going into the catacombs on your own.
“Yeah, I hope so.” Ivan says and everyone starts laughing uncomfortably.
“I’m going to need that hat of yours for this.” You say, taking Nate’s hat off of his head and putting it on your own.
“You look better with it anyway.” Nate flirts and Colby groans.
“Sam, why did we invite the lovebirds?” He says, seemingly annoyed, but you know he doesn’t mean any harm with it. While Colby was the one usually complaining about you and Nate being all cute together, he was also the one who rooted for the two of you the hardest when you weren’t dating yet.
 
“This is like, my worst nightmare.” Sam says and you immediately agree with him.
Nate places an arm around your waist and pulls you closer to him as you all start to walk into the dark tunnels.
“If we don’t find the way back, at least we’ll die together. That’s kind of romantic, right?” He says, probably attempting to comfort you a little.
“Dude,”, Colby says, “since when is dying together romantic?”
Nate rolls his eyes. “Have you ever heard of Romeo and Juliet?”
You take the first left turn before Sam replies. “Juliet was literally thirteen years old.”
“Guys!” you say loudly. “I don’t see any of you getting comforted by your significant other. Y’all are just jealous.”
Colby laughs. “Fair point.”
---
“Are we sure this is the right way?” Sam asks as Colby and Nate had already climbed through a hole in the wall.
You shrug, “It’s the only way to go left here.”
“Alright, so far we’ve taken two lefts and now we’re taking a right. So that means we should take two more lefts to make a square.” Sam says, slightly confused. “No wait, one more left.”
“So after three lefts, straight should come here.” Sam continues, pointing at a brick wall. “So if we take a right, we should take one more left.”
You laugh. “I didn’t understand anything of that and I’m pretty sure none of the viewers did too.”
“Wait, guys look.” Colby says, walking to a small hole in the wall.
“We’re not going down that, right?” You say as your eyes go wide.
“Yeah, no, Ivan said we’d come through that massive hole. If the massive hole is through the tiny hole, there’s no fucking way bro. I don’t want to go down that.” Sam says, and he looks just as scared as you.
“So we must have taken a wrong turn.” Colby says, thinking, and you nervously fumble with your hands. Nate notices and takes both of them in his own to calm you down.
 “But we only took left?” Colby wonders, looking confused as shit.
“I guarantee you, the big hole is through the little hole, but I don’t want to go through the little hole.” Sam says, letting out a laugh.
Just as his sentence ends, you hear a bang down the small tunnel, making you jump. Nate lets go of your hands and hugs you from behind, leaning his head on your shoulder.
“Did you hear that?” Colby says with wide eyes.
“Yeah I heard that too.” Sam confirms.
“If this doesn’t work we’ll just go back the way we came, right?” You ask and you feel Nate nod against your shoulder before letting go of you to go first.
Nate attempts to shuffle through the small tunnel, and as he’s almost at the end, he quickly tries to get back as soon as possible.
“Did you hear that?” He asks, still halfway in the hole.
“Dude, that shook the ground. It sounded like giant rocks falling.”
“That means something collapsed, right?” Sam says.
“Ivan!” Nate yells through the tunnel.
“That’s got to be him, right?”
“Oh! Ivan, what’s up?” Nate says relieved as he pokes his head through the other side of the tunnel.
You let out a breath and Sam laughs. “Oh man, I was scared for a moment.”
Sam’s up next and after he tried to crouch through the whole thing, you start to go, but Colby holds you back.
“Wait, let’s mess with them for a bit.” He says and you grin at the idea. After dimming your flashlights, it didn’t take long for your friends to start calling out for you.
“Colby? Y/N?” You hear Sam’s voice. “Guys, are you coming?”
“Y/N? Please, this is not funny, okay?” Nate shouts and you almost feel bad for him.
“Nate really doesn’t give a shit about me.” Colby whispers, laughing,  and you snort before covering your mouth to stifle the sound.
“Should I go check?” Ivan says,  his voice muffled by the rock between you.
“Nah, we’re just messing with you.” Colby says, turning on the flashlight and you hear the others starting to laugh.
Once you got through, Nate places his hands on your hips and pouts. “Don’t do that to me, okay?”
You put your hands on his shoulders, looking into his adorable puppy eyes. “Aww, I’m sorry. A kiss to make it up?” You ask, eyeing his lips.
He grins and connects your lips, lightly squeezing your hips. Your hands make your way up to his hair and you forget where you are as that glorious tongue-
“They’re definitely dying here together.” Sam says and you notice his voice sounds a little too far away.
You pull away from Nate to see that the others had already started to move further down the catacombs.
“Forever lost in eternal love. It’s a good headline.” Colby snickers, looking at the two of you.
You shake your head at your friends before looking back at Nate who had the most adorable expression on his face.
“So it’s totally the hat, right?” You say, smirking. Nate usually wouldn’t let himself go this far when his friends where near.
“Yeah,”, he breathes, “it makes you look really fricking hot.”
--- time skip to the rituals lmao ---
“We are here, us four, all the way from the United States, to talk to any sort of spirit down here.” Sam says.
You were all set up, equipment scattered through the room and candles on the table in front of you. Not to mention the burning goat heads on the walls that made this place look even creepier.
“We don’t mean any harm or disrespect, we just want to hear your story.” You try.
“Woah, look!” Sam exclaims, pointing to the thermal camera that Nate is holding. “That just shut down!”
“And it has like no automatic shut down, right?” Colby asks.
“Yeah, after what happened at the conjuring house I checked, and it didn’t.”
“If anyone is down here, could you maybe try to communicate with us using one of these devices?” Nate asks. “You can come up to them and touch them, to let us know you’re here.”
After getting no response, you tried again with Ivan translating, but that didn’t seem to work either. You decided to move on after about thirty minutes, but then one of the candles from the goat heads fell down.
“Woah, holy fuck!” Sam shouts, walking over to where the candle fell. Just then, another one in the back of the room tumbled down.
“Look! That one as well!” You say, both scared and excited that something was finally happening.
“What?”
“Dude, two candles just went down, it was like the devil just winked at us.” Sam says.
Almost immediately after Sam said that, a cloak that hung on the wall fell down too, right next to Nate.
“Did you just hit that off?” Sam asks, pointing at the cloak.
“No, it just fell down right next to me!” Nate says with wide eyes.
“Nothing has ever happened before you, so maybe we should just go.” Ivan says from the side of the room, his eyes going between the cloak and the music box going off every now and then.
“Bro, it smell horrible in here.” Colby says.
“Honestly, let’s just get out of here.” You say, now definitely on edge.
“Yeah, if Ivan wants to get out, so do I.” Sam agrees, but another candle falls down.
As Sam and Colby are shouting about it, you grasp Nate’s hand and he squeezes back, just as scared as you are.
“Alright, I’m done.” Ivan says, and everyone agrees to get out of the tunnels.
After the fifteen-minute walk all the way back, you are finally able to breath in fresh air again. You close your eyes as the sun warms your skin, and Nate swears you had never looked more beautiful. The afternoon sun makes your hair look like it’s glowing and a peaceful expression on your face.
“Dude, you’re whipped.” Colby says with a smile, patting him on the shoulder before getting ready to film the outro to the video.
A smile forms on Nate’s face just by looking at you. “Yeah, I am.”
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yes-divine-ruler · 2 years ago
Text
𝐑𝐈𝐕𝐀𝐋𝐒
Tumblr media Tumblr media Tumblr media
part 3
pairing: Kai Anderson x fem!reader
cw: mentions of sex tape, minimal physical violence, blackmail
Taglist/ @v-love @evanpetersfav @demxnicprxncess @kitwalkersgfff @quicksilversg1rl @iruzias @alexxavicry @soaringcloud @laynna-mcknight @humdrumexistence @simp4petermaximoff @sultrysullen @evan4ever @paujmr @jangsuzchap
all parts
Kai plugged the USB into his laptop, waiting for the ping to tell him it's ready to open. He scrolled through the files with determination, squinting his eyes so he doesn't miss the one he's searching for.
last night.mp4
He lets out a small chuckle, clicking on the file and opening it. Winter stands behind him, her eyes narrowed and her forehead creased with worry as the video loads.  Her eyes almost fall out of her head when she realises what it is.
A sex tape. A sex tape she knew that you didn't know was being taken. A sex tape that so clearly shows your face and how it twists with utmost pleasure.
Conveniently, Kai was cut from the shoulders upwards, not even a strand of blue hair on show to help identity whether it's him. It was an ingenious form of blackmail, and so conniving.
Winter covers her mouth in shock, stopping the gasp before it escapes her lips.
"What do you think?" Kai asks, the smirk not leaving his lips as he scans Winter's face for her reaction. He can tell she thinks it's an awful thing to do, but it only makes him more pleased with himself.
"What are you going to do with that?" Winter asks, her voice small and slightly frightened.
"We've got an upcoming council panel, I think it might be good material to use against my opponent before we carry out plan B," Kai explains, shrugging his shoulders as Winter turns away. A tear falls from her eye and cascades down her cheek.
"How did you even manage to sleep with her? She hates you," Winter's voice was laced with confusion.
"She doesn't hate me as much as she lets off," Kai spoke smugly, "I think she might be wrapped around my finger, shame we have to get rid of her."
Winter knew it wasn't unlike Kai to manipulate people into doing his bidding with sex, the same way he was planning on using his fellow cult member, Meadow.
"Okay Kai, whatever you say," Winter knew she couldn't talk back to her psychotic brother, and instead ascended the stairs to leave his vicinity.
—-
It was the morning of the campaign panel, and you had never felt a bigger weight on your shoulders. It was a big day for you and your small team of women, who had banded together over the past couple of weeks to support you, volunteering their free time for what they thought would look good on their resumes.
"Ready? You look great," Jude was by your side, adjusting the lapels of your navy blazer. You'd never dressed so formally in your life, but you felt like you had to match your male opponent, who would definitely be wearing a suit.
"Thanks Jude, I'm nervous," you confide in your best friend, rubbing your hands together in an attempt to alleviate some anxiety.
"You'll do great, don't even worry. Kai has nothing on you," Jude reassured you, rubbing a hand up and down your back to comfort you. If only she knew that you'd caved and slept with him, she'd be so disgusted and disappointed.
You sucked in air deeply, exhaling a shuddering breath as you approached the lectern. You hadn't yet seen Kai, but you weren't sure how you would react. After all, you'd slept with your worst sworn enemy only a couple nights ago in a drunken lapse of judgement. It made you feel so dirty, but for some reason you couldn't shake the thought from your mind.
Almost as if he was summoned, Kai appears from the entrance of town hall to join the rally. Your breath catches in your throat as you drink in his appearance.
Navy suit, white button down, red tie and tan loafers. He looked undeniably good, his hair back in a high man-bun, his face clean shaven.
You shifted your weight between your legs, your heels beginning to hurt the balls of your feet. It didn't take long for Kai to make eye contact with you, his lips curling upwards into a menacing smirk. It was almost as if he knew something you didn't.
He turns to the crowd next, offering up a wave as they erupted into a round of applause.
It was sickening how these people had fallen for Kai's trickery and fear-mongering, but there was nothing you could do to prove it until you had the incriminating evidence. Until he decided to raid your apartment and kill you.
For now, you would play fair.
"Thank you everyone for being here today," Kai began, tapping his fingers on the edges of the wooden lectern, an award-winning smile on his face. A smile so big and contagious that it could persuade anyone that it was sincere, honourable and for the greater-good.
You knew better, slitting your eyes and shooting daggers into the side of his head. He turns briefly to catch your gaze, and only shoots you a wink, not even remotely threatened by you. Nothing made you want to annihilate him more than his blatant smugness.
The crowd was relatively evenly divided, the people supporting Kai seemingly more rowdy and passionate, and all of similar calibre. There were a lot of men in uniform, you noticed, but not a uniform you'd recognised before. You could see Jude in the crowd, and women from college and you'd even spotted Ivy. She only glanced at you briefly, not being able to afford to break her cover and according to everyone else, there to support her leader.
"I just want to begin by welcoming my opponent, Y/N, to the stage today. It's great to have some strong competition. I hope it doesn't end up being too much pressure for you like our last candidate, may she rest in peace," everyone gave Kai a round of applause for his good faith acknowledging the deceased, without knowing that it wasn't a suicide like he'd painted it to be.
You took a breath before speaking into your microphone, "thank you Mr Anderson for your kind words. Best of luck to you. I'd like to begin by-"
He'd cut you off, tapping on his mic like he was checking to see if it was working. High-pitched feedback whirled around the rally, everyone cowering from the sound and covering their ears in irritation. You couldn't help but grit your teeth behind your fake smile.
"News just in, we have received quite an explicit and confronting video I must show you all. I may have spoken too soon about our strong competition, because it seems she's weaker than I thought. You are all entitled to see us as open books, Miss Y/N, it seems you may have been lying about your fight for equality."
You didn't get another chance to speak before the projector screen lit up behind you, something that was supposed to be used for your 20 slide PowerPoint. You turned to look over your shoulder, to see footage of the night you'd spent with Kai. Your mouth drops open in surprise, noting how strategically placed the camera was, your face fully on display, your body bent forward in doggy style. The crowd erupted in gasps and murmurs.
"You're such a little whore, you like that don't you? You like how I degrade you, such a fucking worthless piece of cunt,"  "yes, yes- oh my god I'm a little whore, please don't stop."
Tears well in your eyes, as you glance over at Kai a second time. Your heart had dropped to the depths of your stomach, still hammering at an alarmingly fast pace. You felt like you were about to pass out. What do you do? Own it? Or run off stage in a sobbing heap?
Kai glances over at you and crosses his arms over his chest. His lips form a tight thin line, and he shakes his head at you as if he was disappointed in your actions. Like he was your dad finding out you'd failed a class, like it was something he wasn't a part of. Like he wasn't the biggest two-faced lying cunt of all.
The video cuts as soon as a tear trickles down your cheek, sure to leave a trail revealing your bare skin from under your foundation. You didn't want to face the crowd in front of you again, but something inside you told you to do it, to settle on the stronger choice, to keep chasing your better cause. Eventually you do turn back to the crowd; most with their jaws hung open in shock, some looking repulsed, some almost intrigued. It made your stomach churn uncomfortably, but once you'd made eyes with Jude, your confidence seemed to peak. She didn't have even a glimmer of judgement on her face, instead looking appalled and angry that Kai had violated your privacy like that. And maybe that was how you should be feeling too.
"Everyone, thank you all for being here today, truly, it has already made such a difference that you all were able to attend," you clear your throat, standing tall behind the lectern and not making eye contact with anyone in particular, "what you have just witnessed was a violation of my privacy, a time that I'd shared with a partner that wasn't supposed to be witnessed by anyone else."
The crowd in front of you doesn't bat an eyelid, but you took it as a sign they were listening. You take your chances by looking back over at Kai for the third time, and he was still looking as smug as ever. His corner of his lips were curled upwards into a sly smirk, and his eyebrows were raised, crinkling his forehead with a few deep set wrinkles. You weren't going to let him see you lose.
"It seems that Mr Anderson had to really fish for that video of me, how comfortable would you be if you knew your council could easily expose you like this? Am I any less of an advocate for women's rights if I enjoy sex? If anything, going out there and exploring my sexuality proves I'm for women's sexual liberty, which was stripped from us for so many years." You weren't sure where that came from, or how you managed to spit it out of your muddled head, but it enticed a different reaction from the audience. You could see a small glint in people's eyes, and it looked an awful lot like hope.
"Thank you Miss Y/N," Kai cuts you off, coming in close to the microphone, "I think we all know what you really want."
You wouldn't let his remark get the better of you, and instead decided to stride off the stage after your final argument. You knew that it would speak to your supporters and that's all that mattered to you. Kai's followers, his cult, had to be thick in the head to not see how evil and corrupt his plan, he, was.
Jude met you off stage, now back in town hall. She pulled you into a bone-crushing hug, one which you happily returned. It was her encouragement that pushed you to the finish line.
"I'm so proud of you Y/N," she whispered in your hair, pulling away to showcase her glowing smile, "I'm not gonna ask anything about the guy in the video, I don't care, everything you said was perfect, I told you, Kai doesn't know who he's messing with."
"You cunt!"
You were almost too caught up in Jude's string of praise to notice she'd stormed off in the opposite direction, right towards Kai and his entourage of uniformed men. Before you could stop her, Jude raised her hand, and slapped Kai across the face. The sound of skin hitting skin rung in your ears, and you couldn't help the gasp that left your lips. Kai doesn't move, you don't think he even flinched.
"You have no idea how out of line you just were! You wanna play dirty? We'll show you dirty!" Jude was screaming at Kai, inches away from his still very smug face.
Kai held back, instructing his henchmen to stay put with outstretched arms, his vision never leaving Jude's face, that you knew was undeniably red in anger from the base of the neck up. He stared at her for a moment, his face expressionless as if he was trying to calculate what to come back with, Jude's handprint on his cheek glowing redder by the second.
"Sweetheart," he says finally, his tone cold and condescending, "your little friend over there already showed me dirty, and let me tell you, it was a night I'll never forget."
He turns away from Jude, who only storms back over to you to grab you by the arm, and drag you into your candidate's office. She slams the door shut behind her, and paces the room in front of you, her fingers tugging her hair from the roots. She was absolutely furious, and all the volunteers that stood in your office could see that too with the way they cowered to a corner.
"What is he even talking about? Does he really think you'd sleep with him? Is he out of his fucking mind?" Jude's volume is lower but the anger still radiates from her voice. You were taken back by the rhetoric question, but still nodded your head in a lie.
"He has no idea what he's talking about, he is just so fucked up!" Jude seethes, before continuing to mutter on about the indecency of the man that was Kai Anderson.
Although you couldn't agree more, the guilt began to eat away at you. What made you think you could have downright dirty sex with your murderous opponent and there wouldn't be any repercussions? If you didn't hate him before, you definitely did now, and there was no way you were going to cave again to those x-rated urges.
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plethomacademia · 11 months ago
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dark urge modern au: horrible influencer edition
I was talking dark urge modern AUs in a discord and decided that Maeve would be a Goop-style toxic influencer with a certification in Reiki that sells pussy candles and @todderwodders gave me the prompt to write a drabble of her doing an instagram live. I feel like I haven't posted writing lately so here, have a cursed object which is the most toxic influencer doing a non-apology to head off being cancelled.
For people who haven't met this horrible woman, she is a charismatic cult leader archetype in the BG3 universe.
559 words, Sceleritas is her head mod and assistant, I'm sorry.
Maeve adjusts the large tablet in front of her, smiles at her own beautiful face, flipped horizontally by the front facing camera. She reaches to turn on her ring light, then checks her angles. It’s almost perfect, which is just the right amount of perfect, she thinks. Too much more and people will notice the effort.
She picks up her phone and swipes through her texts. Her mod team is small but mighty, her best people ready to help her contain the chaos of one of her scheduled lives. She opens one from her assistant, Scelly. u totally got this <3 truly the master, love u so much, it says. Maeve sends back her Memoji blowing a kiss. She checks her hair again, smooths it out along with her facial expression, then hits the go live button. Immediately, she sees them joining, her lovely followers. She wiggles her fingers at the screen. “Hey guys, get settled in! How are we doing this amazing Thursday?” She does not try to keep up with the scroll of the comments as they fly across the bottom of the screen. There are far too many and the number increases as more and more people join in. The pre-show is her favorite, all the excitement, the multiple exclamation points she sees as people tell her hello!!!! omg i caught a live!!!, the emojis as they float past her view. She takes a glance at her phone again to see if her mod team has anything to say, but it’s blissfully clear. This is good, because she has to start with a hard topic that she is not looking forward to. As happens regularly, someone is trying to cancel her. “Ok guys, let’s get started. Welcome to everyone new! I am so excited to show you some sneak peeks at a prototype that we’ve been working on for you!” She takes a beat to look at herself and force her smile to flatten out, her eyebrows upturn slightly, the expression she has been practicing all day. Scelly had helped her figure it out, the perfect combination of concern, contrition, and her normal charm. It was perfect, but not too perfect, of course. “First of all, I want to take some time at the top to address some comments that I have seen floating around. I am truly sorry to anyone who misinterpreted my interview with the Gazette last week. My brand has always been inclusive, of course, and it breaks my heart when someone does not understand that. So please, remember lovelies,” she puts her hand to her chest, “no matter what gender, all pussies can benefit from having their aura realigned. So please, she, he, they, anyone is welcome to use my offer code for 25% off their first purchase when over the limit. Scelly or one of the mods, can you throw that in the chat please?” She watches the emojis fly across the side of her screen, hearts and smiles and she forms a heart with her hands. “You guys are so great, I knew you would understand. It’s just so hard, you know?” She touches the corner of her eye, the suggestion of a tear. “But enough of that, we all know why you are here! And please remember to shoot the mods any questions for the Q and A later!”
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woltourney · 1 year ago
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ROUND 3 / SIDE A / POLL 4
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Galvin Foixewesfv (@elizabethrobertajones) v. Eisha Pantera (@umbralaether)
Galvin Foixewesfv:
q. What is your WoL name and pronouns? a. Galvin Foixewesfv
q. What is your WoL's species? a. viera
q. What is your WoL's class? Or classes? a. Black Mage, Summoner, Reaper
q. What data centre/server are you on, if you want people to find you? a. Goblin (have been in alliance roulette with other Galvins this is very important)
q. Tell us a bit about your WoL! a. A forest prince, eighth child with seven sisters, Galvin felt spare and at odds with his family as he became fascinated with dark magic after early encounters with voidsent that left him confused about their true monstrous nature. As he grew up and realised he was a rare son and due a life as a roaming forest warder and trophy husband, he felt too nerdy and bad at climbing trees for one and too gay for the other. After less than a year training with the other men of the forest and sensing they were growing sick of his poor aim with a bow and weedy lance arm, he slipped away in the night, travelled by boat to Limsa, and devoted himself to learning the forbidden maths of true magic. Drawn by the calling of the Echo, he joined the Scions on a whim despite having been warned by his eldest sister he was extremely susceptible to falling prey to a cult some day, and it was with much relief he realised they were not evil so his next letter home would not be met with a furious rescue party of dozens of furious armed viera storming the Waking Sands. He then picked up thaumaturgy and found one of his true loves. The other was teasing Urianger from across the Waking Sands, and flustering the shy elezen. Somehow, this has turned into a loving and stable relationship, mostly because they make up each other's deficits in a perfect puzzle piece joining and not because they are much alike, book learning aside. Though clumsy, brash and frequently knocked down, his determination to not be anything he once dreaded about his fate and to carve his idiosyncratic path, his raw stubborness got him through every trial thrown at the WoL. Barely. The only rules: always take them on as black mage and never give in and take the easy path (ooc: hit the 'very easy' button the trial is begging me to do by take 8) His witchcraft and void lore honed, he stumbled into the art of the reaper, and formed a pact with the voidsent he had felt himself bound to since youth, a keening sad creature that aimlessly wandered and wailed; these cries having once pierced his heart, he found it easy to reach out and make the connection once more, and binding the voidsent to his purpose, it found direction and he found a combat art that he excelled at - provided you allow that it's really the voidsent doing all the work lifting that heavy scythe, and Galvin is merely casting the spells. Having surmounted the main story, he retired immediately to the island farm, and spends his time pulling turnips and lazing about, often with Urianger at his side, and it is important to say, for Galvin, achieving doing nothing at all is in itself the most incredible achievement for a lifelong avoider of - well, everything - who crawled and moaned and complained and fussed so hard to get there.
q. Why should YOU win? (Answer IC!) a. I have never, ever won anything in my life, and I think I should be allowed just one. Please.
q. Anything else you wanna add? a. =:{)> moustache bnuuy
Eisha Pantera:
q. What is your WoL name and pronouns? a. Eisha Pantera, she/her
q. What is your WoL's species? a. Female Keeper of the Moon Miqo’te
q. What is your WoL's class? Or classes? a. Astrologian, Summoner, Reaper
q. What data centre/server are you on, if you want people to find you? a. Aether DC, Midgardsormr
q. Tell us a bit about your WoL! a. She’s been a part of more adventures than the ones told in storybooks— and she never asked for any of it. Even with the odds stacked against her, she’s somehow made it this far. Perhaps plucked by fate and sent off in pursuit of glory, or perhaps she’s just lucky. Either way, she’s had her taste of fame and would really just like to be obligation-free, for once.
q. Why should YOU win? (Answer IC!) a. “Why shouldn’t I win? Not even the Twelve could beat me, after all.”
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fuzzydreamin · 1 year ago
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3, 9, 26, 30, & 36 for Nora & Al?
3. What is something other than money that could make your character do something they otherwise wouldn’t want to do? What about something they otherwise really, really, really wouldn’t want to do?
Neither of them is materialistic enough to compromise their morals for a mere object, not unless it was something they desperately needed for someone else's sake, which is what would do it. They would both go to extreme lengths for the people they care about, there are just far more people on Nora's list than on Al's.
9. Is there anything that anyone who knows better should avoid bringing up to your character (i.e., any conversational landmines)?
✪ Nora is fairly open to talking about most things, she might just change her approach on how they are talked about depending on the subject and who she's talking to.
✝ Alberta: their father/family, and a lot of the things they went through shortly after leaving the vault. They might bring it up on their own in their own time, but generally they don't want to think too much about it and do not like being pushed to by others.
26. What kinds of things fascinate your character? Do they have any personal interests that aren’t necessarily practical, but that they just like?
✪ Nora is most fascinated by people. Seeing how they talk, move, act, and figuring out why they do things or think certain ways. She enjoys meeting all kinds of people because of this.
✝ Alberta enjoys watching things visibly change. They're a bit of a pyro because they like seeing the reaction caused by a bomb, and how whatever it's made from and how powerful it is effects the area around it. They like to pull apart the top layer of power armour and see how the servos and gears inside shift as the suit is moved. Same with other machinery and robotics. They often stare into campfires if they don't have something to fiddle with. Al would really like one of those liquid motion toys.
30. Suppose your character just wants to disappear; where would they want to disappear to?
✪ Nora: Probably somewhere highly irradiated, since she can survive in those areas a little better than most other humans. Taking inspo from Virgil there ig. She might even join a cult of atom just to be able to have somewhere to hide, not that she'd be particularly devoted as it would literally just be for the sake of staying hidden.
✝ Alberta: They wouldn't go anywhere in particular but rather keep moving. They would obfuscate their trail and make sure no one could point anyone else in their direction.
36. What keeps your character going? What is the one thing that they have that could motivate them to keep persisting if they lost literally everything else?
✪ Nora: Knowledge, and how that could potentially be used to bring back or rebuild what she's lost. Nora is smart, it's something she cultivates, and at her core she wants to find a place she truly feels she belongs. Without that place or anything else she would simply seek all forms of knowledge to expand the power of her mind in order to once again pursue that place or those things, whether she knows exactly what they are or not.
✝ Alberta: Freedom and the ability to do what they want. It isn't much, especially if they really do lose everything, but Al is very stuck on their ideal of being able to come and go where and as they please, and the opportunities for meeting new people and learning new things this opens up. Even when everything else is gone from their life, they could still be found shuffling about the wasteland, even if dispassionately.
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ir0n-angel · 2 years ago
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I posted 17,622 times in 2022
That's 2,641 more posts than 2021!
104 posts created (1%)
17,518 posts reblogged (99%)
Blogs I reblogged the most:
@madangel19
@crackinglamb
@steamcaptain
@lilbittymonster
@taygertot
I tagged 10,640 of my posts in 2022
Only 40% of my posts had no tags
#minerals - 1,851 posts
#hahahahahahahahahahahahahaha - 1,066 posts
#i'm hungry - 873 posts
#awesome art - 685 posts
#gaming dice - 496 posts
#sound on - 406 posts
#this - 249 posts
#but also - 241 posts
#cute art - 237 posts
#for reference - 179 posts
Longest Tag: 140 characters
#can you imagine what the world would be like if our governments weren't run by people with fortunes tied to harmful environmental practices?
My Top Posts in 2022:
#5
Please use punctuation.
Please use punctuation, especially if you’re making a long post. I don’t care if it’s the wrong one. It can be all commas all the time. Or periods. Or be radical and use a semicolon. It’s hard enough to read walls of text. It’s impossible to read them when there’s nothing to break up the sentences.
This message brought to you by one of the millions of users with dyslexia.
18 notes - Posted October 2, 2022
#4
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@fiadhaisteach 
A present for you.
21 notes - Posted November 23, 2022
#3
*skin crawls* *hits the block button*
Okay, because there seems to be a little bit of miscommunication here, please take note of the following:
I’m a bi/pan-romantic demisexual, ADHD sufferer, and I have a tenuous acquaintanceship with gender at best. I’m an atheist omnivore that believes black lives matter, trans men are men, trans women are women, nonbinaries are awesome, children are real people and not property, love is love, vaccines save lives, climate crisis is a real problem, platonic love is just as important as romantic love, abortion should be safe and legal and none of your damn business, social media is bad for your health, no one should own assault weapons, and diet culture and capitalism and cult of celebrity should die in a fire.
We got that? Good. I’m not interested in having a debate with y’all over this. I don’t care to hear your point of view and I don’t dance with devil’s advocates. I’m here for rocks, recipes, and the occasional awful pun. If it ain’t enough for you to sit quietly and enjoy the pretty pictures, get blocked. Do not pass Go, do not collect $200. Good riddance.
29 notes - Posted July 20, 2022
#2
If you have the spoons (& willingness), I am curious & would love it if you could tell me why so many pretty minerals look like red lyrium.
Manganese! Also traces of iron, magnesium and/or calcium. But mostly manganese! Manganese gives you red!
I assume we're talking about this bad boy right here:
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Rhodochrosite.
Also known as manganese carbonate (MnCO3), it occurs as a hydrothermal vein mineral along with other manganese minerals in low temperature ore deposits such as silver. In its purest form, it creates beautiful crystals like the one pictured above. However, calcium (and sometimes magnesium and zinc) frequently replaces the manganese in the structure, leading to shades of pink, the most common color encountered:
See the full post
31 notes - Posted February 18, 2022
My #1 post of 2022
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💙Back again for the third year in a row, with new prompts!💙
FLUFF-uary is a creation celebration designed to display all your sweetness and light for the whole month of February. There will be a prompt for each day and you can do as many as you like, in any combination or order.
Feel free to write, draw, edit photos/videos...whatever you're inspired to create. Have fun, it's not a contest. You can join in for the whole month, do one or two, or even come up with your own. Do it at your own pace, even after February is over. There's no word or size limits or restrictions other than to keep it sweet (no whump, please – we're all about the comfort zone here).
When uploading your fluffs, please tag properly with the prompt, the tag fluffuary2022, and any other applicable tags (like genre, characters, any content warnings if you decide to go NSFW etc.) Any questions can be directed @ir0n-angel​ and @crackinglamb.   As always, we hope everyone has a good time.
(reader-friendly plain text under the cut)
1. Holding Hands
2. Long Conversations
3. Trust
4. Being Silly
5. Moral Support
6. Shopping Together
7. Love Letters
8. Taking a nap together
9. Caretaking
10. Cooking Together
11. Compliments
12. First 'I love you'
13. Night Out
14. Mutual Pining
15. Love Bites
16. Flower Crowns/Putting Flowers In Their Hair
17. 'This Made Me Think of You'
18. Domestic Intimacy
19. Spooning
20. Acts of Devotion
21. Trying Something New
22. Bearhugs
23. Reminiscing
24. Wearing/Stealing Each Other's Clothes
25. Adopting a plant/pet
See the full post
358 notes - Posted January 26, 2022
Get your Tumblr 2022 Year in Review →
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goqmir · 6 months ago
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if anyone wants to throw around some ideas for me to maybe use as names for the groups, the jist of the groups i need to name are (and theres a lot of them, 15 total with 5 main groups and 10 sub-groups):
red/blue/white: scientists and community builders who create exclusive neighborhoods and private schools to raise resources to build a big machine
---red/blue: the subgroup of the above that contain the scientists who want to work on the great machine, whose purpose is unknowable. many of them have shed their mortal flesh to become artifact creature robot pooltoys
---blue/white: the subgroup of the above that are a bunch of wealthy businessmen, politicians, and professors who create wealthy and exclusive communities to provide the red/blue scientists with resources
blue/green/red: stoner bioengineers who are experimenting on plants, sealife, and each other with radiation, and their experiment test subjects who act as their bodyguards
---blue/green: the bioengineers and cultivators who perform the fucked up radiation experiments. they wear gas masks and are stoner birds and might be a little bit mutated themselves
---green/red: the creatures they experimented on, a lot of plants, sea life like crabs, and even some irradiated mutant scientists
green/black/blue: religious cult that reveres the power of emotion, whose leaders want to harness the raw emotional power of great love and great loss to ascend to a form of godhood, and whose agents have learned the ability to manipulate and delete peoples emotions at will
---green/black: the wealthy leaders of the religious cult and the general populace of the church. they are very emotional and form strong attachments with one another (as per church doctrine)
---black/blue: a subgroup of more combat-oriented church members who are the muscle of the operation who can control others emotions and also give people amnesia
white/red/black: embassadors from a new empire that is forming who want to persuade the city's leaders into joining under their banner, and the junker group of city natives who they hire to perform wetwork for them (the overall group name needs to represent both groups)
---white/red: the name of the empire that has recently been unifying the nearby city-states under a single banner, very militaristic and nationalismpilled
---black/red: the name of the junker group that was hired and put together by the embassy military of the red/white empire, who are very artifact-core and also implant mechanical devil horns in their heads to give them abilities and make them look cool
black/white/green: a crime syndicate who wants nothing but wealth and power, whose members believe in equity for all and perform heists on the other more wealthy groups to even the stakes
---black/whte: the leaders and organizers of the crime syndicate who are powerful mages that can drain lifeforce from their opponents and organize all the crime
---green/white: the group of the foot soldiers and thieves who are in the crime syndicate who complete the heists, care a lot about taking from the rich to give to the poor and their mechanic is being mages who summon little enchantment creature token golems to do a lot of the thieving for them
please understand that by submitting names to me you sign off on letting me use the names or similar ones for my custom mtg set <3 im going to sleep now im tired and my brain hurts from thinking too hard
i need to come up with like 15 magic the gathering color pair and trio names for this custom set omg. thats so many fuckkk
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demonslayedher · 3 years ago
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The Sound Pillar past, I have heard that explore a bit in databook about being ninja.
Also what happened his sibling that still remain.
Also what there react
Combining info from the fanbooks and Chapters 80, 87, and 90 we get the following narrative of Uzui Tengen and his family, as complete as I could fill it in. It's always possible the anime version will expand and give us more, but here's what I've got in chronological format.
Uzui Tengen's father was the leader of their clan, one of a few ninja clans who lived in close community. Ninja were regularly sent on missions, but it is not clear what those missions were. Women and children were also expected to undergo strict training and go on missions, but women were primarily only valued as baby-makers, and it was common for one man to take multiple wives. The wives, at least in the Uzui case, were chosen upon agreements between families. (For more commentary on the unusual and cult-like nature of the Uzui ninja clan, please see this post.) In Chapter 80, Makio recalls how she never used to be afraid of dying because she was so brainwashed to believe her only value as a kunoichi (female ninja) was to put her life on the line in support of the strong male ninja. Tengen is the oldest of nine children. Of note, Fanbook #2 states that he has a mother and father from whom the nine children came, but as multiple wives is the norm in this village and Uzui was 15 when they were forced to fight each other, I think it's reasonable to assume many of them were half-siblings (even if all with one very busy wife, that would make the youngest one only around 7~9 years old or so, by my guess. But, it doesn't seem unreasonable in this clan that an 8-year-old would be expected to take part in this fight.)
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Tengen had his three wives by the time he was 15. Since he is 23 when canon takes place and Hinatsuru (from a ninja clan second in rank to the Uzui clan and who has a good balance of core ninja skills) is 21, Makio (physically a highly capable ninja but her short temper causes her to fail her missions and yes, she is Tengen's cousin, please restrain your knee-jerk reactions and accept the cultural difference and move one) is 20, and Suma is 19 (and yes, Fanbook #2 said she likes both men and women), that means his wives were respectively 13, 12, and 11 when they fled the village. As Suma's younger sister was originally the one being considered as a bride, this means they were willing to marry off girls even younger than that. See this post for more commentary on multiple wives in the Taisho period, and as an added note, the legal age for women to marry in Taisho was 16. The Uzui ninja clan was entirely counter-cultural in the first place, though, so this doesn't apply very directly to them. Furthermore, due to their curse, the Ubuyashiki clan had very usually early expectations for children to wed, and they always run a not officially recognized organization. Otherwise, most of the cast seems to follow more usual Meiji/Taisho family patterns. Of the nine siblings, three of them died before Tengen turned 15, simply due to the lifestyle. When Tengen was 15 (clarified according to Fanbook #1), Tengen's father pit the remaining six siblings against each other so that only the strong would remain. They were all concealing their identities and did not know they were fighting their own siblings. According to Fanbook #2, Tengen killed two of them, and his younger brother (second oldest) killed another two, and Tengen was pissed when he realized what was happening. He couldn't bring himself to kill his remaining brother, though that brother was just like their father when it came to his values that only the strong should survive, and he really didn't care about killing his own flesh and blood. This was when Tengen decided he didn't want to live like this, and he took his wives and fled. For a while (according to Fanbook #2), he often said he should go to hell, but this made Makio angry, it made Hinatsuru cry, and it made Suma bite him so he stopped saying that. He did continue to think that he should eliminate the rest of this evil Uzui clan, but he could never bring himself to kill his father and little brother. (So, fanfic writers, grab your pens, we can assume the Uzui clan is still active.) Anyway, once he was free of that lifestyle where he had to constantly hide his presence, he thoroughly rebelled and embraced the flamboyant.
It's unclear when and how Tengen learning Breathing technique. It's possible there was knowledge of this technique in some form or another among the ninja (though his wives don't seem to display it), and it's also possible he learned from a cultivator. Sound is an off-shoot of Thunder, but it's unclear whether Sound was established before he came along, or if he created this Breath to make extra use of his keen hearing. (What I would give to see Tengen/Kuwajima interactions, preferably arguing about which Breath is superior.) It's unclear how much time passed between fleeing the clan and joining the Demon Slayer Corps. Given his ninja skills, as soon as he found out about the Corps (and perhaps by extension, demons), passing the Final Selection was probably a breeze for him. It was either right after the Final Selection (and therefore still waiting for his uniform), or just as he had made up his mind to join the Corp that he declares his new rule to his wives: their lives are #1 priority. #2 priority is morally upright humans, and #3 is Tengen himself.
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And they're like, "whaaaaaaaat."
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But sure enough they all accept the demon slaying mission, and before long, Tengen and his wives meet Oyakata-sama one fine spring day, I assume upon attaining the rank of Sound Pillar. Oyakata-sama sympathizes with how hard it must had been for Tengen--for all of them--to go against what they were raised to believe, and to fight to protect people in what they've deemed a morally upright course of life. Tengen's like, "this guy gets it" and becomes as big a fanboy as any other Pillar is for Oyakata-sama. It's purely conjecture, but I'm guessing he and Oyakata-sama both were somewhere around age 15~17 at this meeting (again, we don't know how much time has passed since Tengen left the ninja. Due to Kanae and Tengen's shared presence at later flashbacks, he couldn't had been older than 18~19). Tengen goes on to be super popular. The most popular Pillar in the Corp, Taisho Rumor has it. His wives all help on missions too, but there's an agreement that they'll get out and live a happy domestic life once they've bagged an Upper Moon--enough of a contribution to, perhaps, to feel they've atoned for the sins they committed as ninja (or at least, this was how Hinatsuru proposed the idea). Once the arm gets chopped and the eye gets cut, Tengen gains a really good excuse for retiring, but it was just his luck to have declared three Tsuguko within hours of his forced retirement. (Like, I doubt this counts for anything. And if he ever calls them that again his trio of Tsuguko are probably going to be more confused than anybody else.) Anyway, Nezuko brings him back from the brink of poison-induced death and he basically walks home. While still involved in the Corp in training the rank and file members and guarding Kiriya upon his becoming Oyakata-sama (meaning he, like Himejima, was trusted with knowledge in advance about Kagaya's very flamboyant exit plan). After that he truly goes into domestic retirement mode and makes friends with a fellow lop-sided former Pillar, however drab he always thought that person was. He takes enough of a liking to said former Pillar that he brings him along on co-ed hot spring dips and lets him hold his first child. Which of the three wives birthed the first child, we don't know. And then one of his descendants goes on to be a flamboyant gymnast, but still gathers once a year under Ubuyashiki's leadership to perform the Sound Breath forms as a sacred Kagura dance. And we still don't know what became of Tengen's brother. For all we know, modern gymnast Uzui Tenma and his six other siblings regularly avoid explosive attacks on their life from a generations-held promise to eliminate them. PARKOUR---but more flamboyant. (I hope it's obvious that I am being silly here and have no canon basis for this.)
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skeletalsepulchre · 3 years ago
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okay so im seeing people get anons about this and its coming up in friend groups so i think now's actually a pretty good time to tackle the idea of religious (specifically cultic) abuse in media and how we as an audience interact with it
TLDR: dehumanization and sexualization of cult victims furthers the misunderstanding that cults "don't exist now", and RA survivors would feel much safer in fandom spaces if people acknowledged and analyzed the harmful portrayals of cults in media.
cw: discussions of cults, abuse, and sexual assault
also, if you have questions, please shoot me an ask or dm (off anon preferably, though)
let me start this with a disclaimer that i dont think every media that features ra is inherently bad. i think thats a bit harsh and as an ra survivor ive come to terms with the fact that there are going to be depictions of it in ways that maybe dont give it the respect it deserves, and trying to "what about [x]" everything will only lead people to talking in circles with themselves. what i want to address here is how you, as a consumer, respond to and parse out what cultic abuse means in any particular portrayal of it.
*also please don't harass people about their RAS status, like, if you see someone enjoying something with a less than stellar portrayal of cults, don't send them asks or dms like "well are YOU a cult survivor?" reducing the consumption of media to a yes or no game based on identity-- especially an identity that comes as the result of explicit pain and spiritual violation is not only derivative but also degrading to survivors and the people you're grilling. all we want is for people to think carefully about what they spread and portray, and how they think about those situations.
so, i think the first thing to tackle is...what is a cult? This is something that's surprisingly hard to define, especially in fictional settings with fictional cults. For example, (and pardon the use of this example, I don't feel like hunting for others), My Hero Academia has an organization in it that I would say fits the criteria for being a cult, but by and large isn't considered one by fans because it's not explicitly called a cult. (Although numerous cult jokes have been made about it). It also has an organization that IS explicitly referred to as a cult.
So, when you're dealing with how to process what is and is not a cult-- and how to make your presence safe for RA survivors, you have to be able to sift through more than just "did the narrative tell me this is a cult?"
There's a few different models people use; one of the most popular being the BITE model-- but I should clarify that the BITE model is really tailored towards religious and strictly hierarchal cults, but can be applied to other kinds of cults.
(and yes, there are cults other than religious/spiritual ones. corporate cults and wellness cults have been on the rise, and it's good to keep that in mind both when engaging with media and also in the real world.)
However, I'm a religious cult survivor, so a lot of my experience is strictly irt this, so please take what I say with a grain of salt, and know that I don't speak for every cult survivor, every religious cult survivor, or every religious abuse survivor. I am One Guy on the internet.
When it comes to media, I have a few questions I run through in order to figure out if something is A Cult.
1) Fringe Ideas. This one is one of those that most people know-- and often incorrectly use to attribute cult status to other things. However, it is worth mentioning, that you don't become a cult by following mainstream ideologies. BUT. BUT. not every group with weird ideas is a cult! Some groups are just weird and are fine being weird. It's a rectangles and squares situation. All cults have fringe ideas and behaviors, not all fringe ideas and behaviors belong to cults.
2) Hierarchies. Cults always have people in power, at least in my experience. There have been ideas thrown around about "completely decentralized cults"-- but to be honest, I'm not sure how I feel about that concept, and I don't know enough about it personally to say whether or not it's legitimate. If you have any sources, hmu.
BUT. Most cults have a power structure. You're going to have leaders, usually with a handful at the verrrrry tippy top, whose word is law. This can be associated with things like religious ideas (channelling god) or being "a genius", like in corporate cults.
3) Control. I cannot stress this enough; cults are all about control. How you think, feel, behave-- they discourage critical thought, encourage snitching on each other, buddy-group behavior; the BITE model explicitly lists these models of control.
4) Us V Them. Cults will give all those that oppose them or simply don't believe them a bad name. They're uneducated, they're evil-- it varies cult to cult, but you'll see them turning the non believers into a homogenous, frightening group. They want to discourage looking outwards, and they want to viciously isolate members.
Other things of note are extremism, talks of enlightenment, harsh punishments, the cult eating large portions of the member's finances, etc.
However, this post is largely to address FICTIONAL cults. and the unfortunate fact of the matter is that fictional cults are rarely fleshed out in a way that can be held one to one to a model, and, more often, don't even afford the victims of a cult humanity.
and this is one of THE biggest issues you find in cult portrayals. the leader is usually a charismatic, or perhaps menacing, figure, one that usually our protagonists-- who are rarely cult victims, they are typically outsiders (not inherently bad, mind you)-- faces personally, with the hoardes of mindless zombies forming one giant hurdle.
Naturally, this can be...hurtful. There's nuance to who is and is not a victim in a cult (although my rule of thumb is to look at what abuses that person specifically exerts over others-- and you can be both a victim and perpetrator of abuse. to treat them exclusively is lacking all nuance), but the people are the bottom, even if they joined willingly, are people who were preyed upon. Not only that, but many media cults forget that people can be born into cults, and never really had a choice to begin with. To treat these people like they are mindless-- or that they deserve the suffering they are in because they are there-- completely erases all nuance, humanity, and understanding to the cult survivior struggle. Not only that, but it continues to sensationalize and deify cult leaders, which is doing their job for them, really.
The second biggest issue is the romanticization and sexualization of cults, religious abuse, and cultic abuse.
(yes...this is a thing.)
The use of cults as a way to make a character edgy or tragic is one thing, but there's something sinister about using it to project a certain sexual behavior onto that character-- whether it be as the subjugator or subjugated. Sexual abuse is rampent in cults, and ritualistic sexual abuse is used to justify it. To sexualize the idea of a cult(ist) raping and abusing someone is...beyond offensive to anyone who has been in a cult where their sexual safety and autonomy has been compromised. Or, in some cases, the cultist is so naive and sheltered they can be easily coerced and taken advantage of due to their brainwashing.
This is...bad? This is bad. To ignore the fact that these depictions are just as harmful as any other romanticization of abuse is to ignore the real suffering of cult victims.
Really, the larger problem is that people don't really think cults exist, not really. They're all things of the past, or things that exist solely in fiction-- when in reality, every day cults form and continue to grow. If you've ever met a mormon, you've met a cultist. The moment you begin to process and parce the fact that this isn't as bizarre and unusual and fictional as it seems, you take the steps to respecting people who have been in that situation and become better at detecting cults, cult recruitment, and are able to more clearly assess what you take in.
Once again, there's so many bad portrayal of cults that it would be...stupid to call for an immediate disowning of anything with it in it. I personally have come to terms with the idea that I will have gripes about these portrayals in most cases, but rarely do I see people other than fellow RA or cult survivors discussing these portrayals. I'm hoping people can become more aware and willing to discuss cults in a serious and analytical context and criticize how they're portrayed in the things they love.
And once again, cult survivors are NOT a monolith. If a cult survivor expresses they are uncomfortable with something I said here that I'm not, or vice versa, listen to the people who actively surround you and whom you care about.
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potteresque-ire · 3 years ago
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This post is Part 3 of the five-part meta series on the Zhang Zhehan (張哲瀚) Incident, based on what has transpired up to 2021/08/22.
1) The 2nd Sino-Japanese War (1937-45) & the Yasukuni Shrine 2) Post-War Sino-Japanese Relations; “Every Chinese should visit the Yasukuni Shrine” 3) The Summer of 2021: The Brewing Storms for One 4) My Thoughts on Zhang’s Incident, Part A 5) My Thoughts on Zhang’s Incident, Part B
3) The Summer of 2021: The Brewing Storms for One
Parts 1 and 2 are my very rough, … kindergartenish introduction to the historical background of Zhang’s incident. For the sake of brevity (please don’t laugh), there are so many things I haven’t touched on (such as the role of the U.S., the geopolitics). There are even more things I’ve likely missed from my admitted ignorance (Sorry).
I think a fair summary of what I’ve written so far would be as follows, before we move on to other sociopolitical factors related to Zhang’s incident?
It is true that the Japanese government, while having shown signs of repentance, has yet to truly face its own past. 
It is also true that the Chinese government has been taking advantage of its national tragedy to fuel nationalistic sentiments, to spread hatred for the purpose of propaganda ...
... Propaganda that is highly sensitive to timing, the message the regime wants to send at the moment. 
In August, 2021, Sino-Japanese relations is at a nadir. The brief thaw in early 2020, initiated by the Japanese government donating masks to Wuhan when COVID first broke out, seemed to be as old as the Chinese poem printed on the shipping boxes:  山川異域 風月同天 (“Our mountains and rivers are on different lands, but our winds and moon share the same sky”)—from the 779 BCE work of a Tang dynasty monk who had sailed to Japan as a missionary, affirming the long cultural bond between the two nations. China would give masks back to Japan.
Fast forward eighteen months later, this good will is all but gone in Chinese news, on Chinese social media. The Japanese government had just vowed to join the United States to protect Taiwan, should the Chinese government furthers its military threat towards the island — the People’s Liberation Air Forces had already intruded Taiwan’s air defence zone 393 times between January 1st and August 17th of 2021 — or should the Chinese government attempts to take over the democratic island nation by force. 
Late July came, and the Tokyo Olympics presented the opportunity for the Chinese state to broadcast anti-Japanese sentiments among the general populace. 
Like USSR and the Eastern Bloc before, the Communists-ruled China saw the Olympics medal count as a matter of national pride. After the Games began, the hot search turned immediately from the Henan flood to stories of the Tokyo Games’ subjectively awful organisation, alleged cheatings by the Japanese athletes, and the perceived unfairness of, in particular, Japanese judges towards the Chinese team that cost the latter more and better medals. This fervour cumulated to the cyberbullying of Japanese athletes by high-on-nationalism Chinese netizens, who brought back Japan’s past as a reason why Japan and its people should be universally hated. Reminders of the horrific brutality of the Imperial Japanese Army eighty years before the Games surfaced in Chinese social media posts. The derogatory slangs 小日本 (“Little Japan”), and 鬼子 (Guizi “demons”), the latter harking back to the nickname of the Imperial Japanese Army during World War II, populated online Olympics discussions.
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Japanese netizens are aware of the derogatory terms Chinese nationalistic netizens use against them. In 2010, they fought back the 小日本 and 鬼子 insults by designing cute anime characters for these names. (Source1, Source2). 
August, 2021 is not a good time to be accused of liking the Japanese.
August, 2021 is not a good time to be accused of liking the Japanese, especially if the accused is a celebrity in the c-ent industry. The ongoing Clear and Bright Campaign (清朗行動) includes, as its 8th aim, the “regulation of stars and the organisations behind them, internet behaviour of their official fan clubs”. Possibly as a welcome to the summer vacation for the country’s youth, on June 15th, 2021, the Cyberspace Administration of China (CAC) had announced it would spend the next two months focused on rectifying the “chaos caused by fan circles” (‘飯圈’亂象). 
The Kris Wu (吳亦凡) case that had exploded in July then turned the public’s attention (and imagination) squarely on c-ent and the alleged “insanity” of c-ent fandoms, particularly those of idols. Wu’s fans had been met with ridicule and cyberbullying, especially those who had tried to “save” their idol by attempting to perform, when the incident had first broken out, what is customary per Chinese fan circle culture—to drown the criticisms with their supportive messages, their defences of their favourite stars; with their offences towards the accusers and in some cases, who the fans point to as the true culprits accompanied by the necessary “evidences”. Widespread reports of Wu’s fans planning a prison break after Wu’s arrest, propagated by the state media despite the number of such fans could’ve numbered to no more than a handful, further fuelled the narrative that c-ent idol worship has become cult-like, with the fans being so brainwashed that they can no longer distinguish right or wrong. 
This narrative of “fans would say or do anything to defend an idol” means that if or when accusations fall on the latter, little can be said in their defence even if the defence has its merits. Fans who make the defence are accused of being “brain-disabled” (腦殘); non-fans, of being brain-disabled fans in disguise.
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Political cartoon from People’s Daily, 2021/08/02, 2 days after Kris Wu’s arrest (English translations by me). The slogan at the bottom says “The Deformed “Fan Circle Culture” has turned cold”. “Turning cold” (涼了) means to lose popularity. (Source) 
Last but not least, in August 2021, the online platforms that host the content of state propaganda, of fandom talk, of c-idols’ works are also in quicksand themselves. Without getting into too much details, since earlier this year, the Chinese government has been targeting the tech giants, once considered untouchable with their significant contributions to the economy. Most international fans of c-ent are likely familiar with Tencent. Alibaba is also a major player in c-ent: it’s the owner of Youku, for example; it is also a major investor of Sina (the company in control of Weibo) and also—a piece of trivia for turtles—of Yuehua (Dd’s management company). These tech companies have been charged with antitrust violations, been the target of cybersecurity probes, accused by the state media of hurting China’s youth with “spiritual opium” in the form of video games etc, and their stock prices have been tumbling as a result. 
The tech giants, and the online platforms under their ownership, have therefore been extra vigilant, extra compliant to messages from the state, in attempts to gain the government’s favour. Just a few days ago (2021/08/21), Tencent vowed to donate 7.7 billion USD to the government, heeding Xi’s call for “common prosperity” (re-distribution of wealth), adding to the 7.7 billion USD it already donated in April for the government’s “sustainable social values” program. While both donations are officially philanthropic, most political and market watchers interpret the donations as Tencent trying to achieve a less-than-philanthropic goal—to get the state regulators off its back.
Following this line of logic then, these tech giants, and their online platforms, have got to be extra quick on their feet in August 2021 to sever ties with anyone perceived to have drawn the displeasure of the government. If that anyone is a c-ent idol, the loss for removing their works and fandom content is nothing compared to the price these companies may pay if the eyes of the state regulators train upon them: the latest fine Alibaba paid for breaking the anti-monopoly law, in April, amounted to 2.8 billion USD.  
All these factors considered, there are better days … far better days than the ones in August 2021, for a c-ent idol to have his Yasukuni Shrine visit become an item on Weibo’s hot search.
===
The Zhang Zhehan Incident Meta Series:
PART 1 PART 2 PART 3  <- YOU ARE HERE PART 4 PART 5
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ward-leon · 11 months ago
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ok! they're not my ocs lol, the fandom is just. really small (~5 people on a good day, but usually i see 2 other ppl who i won't mention here twaposting)
im gonna try to go through the characters involved in that post from the side blog and i'll probably make this short
(ramen, if you see this and feel like i left something important out please put it in the replies. thank you!)
so, first of all...
1. dark lord (left is the og design, right is the s3 redesign)
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he's the first one to do jp's ad reads (oh yeah i forgot to mention the entire series he comes from is. well. Terrible Writing Advice: Sponsorship Wars), and while he usually tries to acquire the sponsor through peaceful means, he's not afraid to resort to violence (killed a member of the conspiracy that poisoned everyone else there, tried to fight greed). fun fact: likes mlp. this is canon. :)
2. conspiracy guy!!!!! (left is the og design, right is the s3 redesign)
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thats the!!! thats the them!!! my blorbo my beloved <3 spinning in my mind as if it were a microwave since october
appearing in the next episode after dl, they underbid him and took over for one (1) episode before being betrayed (poisoned) and getting better (his actual explanation). might be immortal (or that's just a continuity error), might be 264 (or so chainsaw claims), got the sponsor 5 times and still lost it, backstabbed a guy who got written out (re: The Incident), complimented the ancient conspiracy while disguised a few times, and won the space federation election by an impossible percentage despite not even participating. i can't really say why i love him bc i think i'll just sound like a serial killer lmao
3. megacorp ceo
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i have no thoughts about him. i care not for him. i mean, he's joined greed? that's the most notable thing he did. moving on
4. evil ai
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same as with megacorp ceo but they also scammed the evil emperor along with dl and the rebels.
5. cult leader
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leader of the chtulhu cult (their goal is to summon chtulhu so he'll end the world). will try to recruit others through pamphlets and donuts (always unsuccessfully). actually a tentacle monster taking the form of a human. kinda silly (affectionate) ngl :3
6. general chainsaw
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i do not respect this man but i still consider him a part of the ""main cast"". loves war, commited war crimes against blue space alien cat people, wants a battle (but only the one where he'll win). pretty insecure (painting himself as this spitting image of masculinity and conspiracy guy as a weak girly man in one of the sponsorship segments). got devoured (not in that way lmao) and spit out by cult leader after challenging them to a battle. his election policy for the space federation elections was just "war good, pick me" iirc. got put into space federation prison and now has to work for greed
7. the adblock force/knights of artistic integrity
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in order from left to right:
sir adblock - kind of a mentor figure for knight commander, the holder of the braincell
pop-up crusher - tries to mediate arguments, as seen when knight commander accuses sir adblock of being the traitor
knight commander - hates ads with a passion. attempts to use peaceful methods of resolving conflict even when the conflict is "holy shit we're being attacked by eldritch hand monsters!!!"
sir newguy - totally not conspiracy guy trust me (/jk)
sir adnnihilator - literally why is he there
sir commercial breaker - a participant of The Incident (got backstabbed by conspiracy guy and disappeared from the plot)
8. the rebels
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claim to be rebelling against the evil empire, but they're usually seen arguing over branding. wanted to join greed but dropped out when he said that they'll have to change the branding to make it more profitable
anyway i ran out of images. will continue soon
good morning!! i forgot to ask you this before but how much can i spoil in the explanation? are minor spoilers fine?
I have no idea what you're even spoiling and also thought it was an oc because of how little I knew and how much you post these characters
anyways so spoil as much as you like
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stillness-in-green · 3 years ago
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Ahistorical, Absurd, and Unsustainable (Introduction and Part One)
An Examination of the Mass Arrest of the Paranormal Liberation Front
INTRODUCTION
The title states my premise here: the breezy way My Hero Academia presents and resolves the mass arrest of the Paranormal Liberation Front is ludicrous. If taken as presented and allowed to stand without being further addressed, it serves as a breaking point from which the series will be incredibly hard-pressed to recover. Why, you ask?
From a logistical standpoint, it strains credulity. From an ethical standpoint, it suggests deeply troubling problems with the state of Hero Society. From a thematic standpoint, it unravels whole portions of the narrative’s spine. I’ll be looking at each of these facets in turn to discuss the questions they raise which My Hero Academia has not yet seen fit to answer. Many in fandom don’t seem to be thinking about it too hard, so I’d like to lay out—in exhaustive detail—all the reasons I find this plot element so wildly out of touch with causal reality.
Please note that while they are discussed when relevant, this essay is not principally about the named characters in the League of Villains or the erstwhile high command of the Metahuman Liberation Army. The sorts of consequences Shigaraki Tomura or Re-Destro would and should be facing in a courtroom are orders of magnitude beyond what Random Liberation Warrior X would be, but it’s the mass numbers of Random Liberation Warrior Xs that this essay is most concerned with, as they are the ones most in danger of being swept under a rug and forgotten by the series in its current state.
Further, be advised that this essay in its full form is both very long (about 21K words excluding Sources and Further Reading) and will contain extensive discussion of real-life Japan—comparisons to historical events, minutiae of its legal and carceral systems, and general cultural views on criminality. This will include references to imprisonment, government oppression, and incidents of terrorism both real and in the context of My Hero Academia.
Being as it is about quite a recent event in the series, it will also contain heavy spoilers all the way up through the most recent chapter as of this writing, Chapter 310. It likewise contains spoilers for the spin-off series My Hero Academia: Vigilantes up through Chapter 95.
The essay will be posted in parts on tumblr and in full on AO3. For the tumblr posting, I will provide links to other tumblr posts as I reference them; however, as I would like this to actually show up in the tags, outside links containing my sources and further reading will be provided in a separate post following the conclusion of the essay.
Lastly, I spent an entire month writing this as a fan who is sympathetic to the villains in general and the MLA in particular. If your response to the very concept of this essay is anything to the tune of, “Who cares what happens to a bunch of disgusting quirk eugenicists?” know that you and I have radically different views on the MLA, and the role of the justice system in general. You are, of course, welcome to read the essay anyway, but, having said my piece about the MLA and their relationship with quirk supremacy elsewhere, I will not be engaging with arguments or gotchas on that subject here.
PART ONE: The Facts at Hand
Before we get too deep into things, let’s lay out the basic facts: how many people are actually involved in the arrest, as well as some comparisons to real-life events to contextualize that number and provide some referents for the issues the arrest raises.
Re-Destro gives the numbers of the Metahuman Liberation Army as 116,516. A lot of people go on to die in Deika, though we’re never given a solid count. The biggest batch we see killed in a single go are the press of sixty or so people Shigaraki decays, then the sixteen-ish Toga drops, though some of those might possibly have had quirks that allowed them to survive. Any number of people certainly died as well simply in the moments we didn’t see, and who even knows how many were caught in the radius of Shigaraki’s last attack.
Further, there may well have been a measure of organization bleed when the MLA became the PLF (though I imagine trying to leave was a very dangerous proposition, giving an additional reason to stick it out on top of the general cult-like mindset the MLA displays); likewise, I find it hard to believe that there wouldn’t have been some deaths at the Gunga Villa, be it from Gigantomachia’s departure, Geten cutting loose, or combatants—be they hero or comrade—overcompensating somewhat in the middle of a chaotic melee.
I suspect it’s overestimating the depletion, but for the purposes of simplicity, let us call it 115,000 remaining members at the time of the raid.[1]
We are told that, in all, 16,929 people were captured at the villa—just about 17,000. 132 escaped in the confusion; this is a fairly negligible number, save for the fact that it includes high-ranking advisors, but not Machia and those of the Front that were with him.
We are further told, and I quote, “Their bases scattered around the country were hit too, and the sympathizers rounded up.” Horikoshi did not provide any solid numbers for this,[2] but if we’re to assume that it is just the rest of the group (more on the logistics of that bit of spycraft later), “the sympathizers” would be 98,000 additional people.
However, 98,000 may be a significant underestimation. It’s based, after all, on a number Re-Destro cites to describe “warriors lying in wait, ready to rise to action.” This begs the question: is Re-Destro quoting the entire membership of the group, or only those who actually are ready to take action? In other words, does his number account for non-combatants? Is he counting young children? I tend to assume the MLA doesn't have a retirement age as such,[3] but if they do, does his number account for the elderly?
How many more people might be “sympathizers” to the PLF insomuch as they are e.g. the six-month-old infant daughter of an MLA couple? What about the ninety-year-old man in the retirement home whose only real act of war these days is tying up the phone line at City Hall to complain about repressive quirk use laws? How about the fired-up fifteen-year-old that was going to get their official code name next month, just in time to join the first wave of attacks? If he’s being literal in his usage of “warrior,” the actual count of the MLA could easily be twice as high as the number he actually gives.
But okay, maybe Re-Destro’s number does include absolutely everyone. Maybe he’s just being rhetorical—maybe, in his mind, even the six-month-old is waiting to rise to action; she’s just going to have to wait a bit longer than the rest, is all. For simplicity’s sake, let’s stick with the numbers we have: a low-end of 17,000, a high-end of 115,000, captured not merely in a single day, but allegedly in the span of a few hours.
I’m sure I don’t need to stress that that is a lot of people. But how many people is it, practically speaking? Is there a precedent? Anything we can look to for guidance on how this kind of thing would go in real life?
Comparative Analogues
The PLF is tricky to categorize for the purposes of real-life comparison, especially compared to how they’re treated in-universe. In some lights, they resemble a protest movement; in others, a terrorist group. Just looking at the way the government reacts to them—and certainly in terms of their combat capabilities—they might as well be an all-out insurrectionist uprising! Below, I’ll examine a handful of historical incidents that cover that spectrum; they will continue to provide useful reference points throughout the rest of this essay.
The March 15 Incident
In the first half of the 20th century, Japan saw a huge uptick in socialist and communist activity, much to the general dismay of the ruling powers. In response, they passed a series of laws commonly referred to as the Peace Preservation Laws, designed to better enable authorities to suppress political dissent and freedom of speech, particularly that of leftists and labor movements.
The Japanese Communist Party was founded in 1922, but outlawed in 1925. This merely drove members underground, however, from which position they pointed supporters towards the numerous other parties with more legally tolerated leftist policies that had cropped up in the wake of the JCP’s dissolution. Following the February 1928 General Election (the first in Japan held with universal male suffrage), those parties supported by the JCP saw enormous gains in representation in Japan’s National Diet. Alarmed, the Prime Minister declared the mass arrest of known communists and suspected communist sympathizers. Accordingly, on March 15, 1,600 people were arrested throughout Japan.
Over the course of twenty years, some 70,000 people would be arrested under the auspices of the Peace Preservation Laws, the majority of them in 1925 through 1936. The laws would eventually be repealed by American occupation forces after WWII, and the JCP allowed to operate openly once again.
The Rice Riots
In 1918, an inflation spiral had driven the price of rice out of control, exacerbating economic insecurity and hardship. Farmers were being paid a pittance of the market value of their crop by rice buyers and government agents, while urban consumers were being charged an exorbitant price for the staple food, as well as a great many other consumer goods, and their own rents. In response, a series of riots ripped across Japan in late July through September. Beginning with peaceful protesting in a small fishing town in Toyama Prefecture, the unrest escalated to involve riots, strikes, looting, even bombing in demonstrations that reached major cities like Tokyo and Osaka. The scope was and remains unprecedented in modern Japanese history, seeing some 25,000 people arrested.
The Sarin Gas Attacks
If you’ve heard of any of them, it’s probably this one. On March 20, 1995, members of the cult Aum Shinrikyo released sarin gas on five different Tokyo Metro trains in the middle of morning rush hour. Thirteen people were killed and over 5500 injured, about a fifth of them moderately to severely so. If not for small errors in the production of the gas and the rudimentary distribution method thereof, loss of life might easily have been catastrophically higher.
Aum Shinrikyo was a doomsday cult, but the motives for that particular attack were much baser than bringing about the Apocalypse: at the time, the organization was under police investigation for its involvement in the kidnapping of a public official. Its leader, Asahara Shoukou, hoped that the attack would divert police’s attention from a planned raid.
It did not do so; police executed raids on numerous of the cult’s compounds, arresting many of its senior members both immediately and over the course of the following months as the investigation unfolded. In all, over 200 members were arrested of an organization that counted its membership prior to the attack as numbering 11,000 people in Japan.[4]
The February 26 Incident
There have been a significant number of uprisings and violent protests in Japan’s modern history; when looking for a representative example, I focused my attention on the military coups of the 1930s and 40s, largely because they took place in what was closest to the modern Japanese legal context.[5] Of that subset, I chose the February 26 Incident for the severity of the government response. The others disintegrated before they could be properly carried out or were met with sympathy for the dissidents despite the obvious illegality of their actions. The February 26 Incident, however, was when they finally became too troublesome to dismiss, and the Emperor himself ran out of patience.
In this period, the Japanese military had become drastically factionalized into two main groups—an ultra-nationalist group, largely powered by a group of young officers, which supported the Emperor and wanted to purge Japan of Western influences, and a more moderate group mainly defined by their opposition to the above faction.[6] Occurring in 1936, the February 26 Incident involved the young officers, believing that they had tacit approval from higher-ranked officers of their own faction, launching assassination attempts against the nationalists’ most prominent enemies in the government (six assorted Ministers and former Ministers in the Emperor’s Privy Council and the Diet) and a bid to seize control of the administrative center of the capital and the Imperial Palace, after which they planned to demand the dismissal of more officers and the selection of a new Cabinet.
The seven ringleaders had convinced eighteen other officers to lend their forces to the attempted coup, a total of around 1,500 men, calling themselves the Righteous Army. Several of their assassination attempts failed, however, and while they succeeded at taking the Prime Minister’s residence and the Ministry of War, they did not manage to secure the Palace. The outraged Cabinet demanded the Emperor take a hard line with the rebels, and by the 29th, the Righteous Army was surrounded by 20,000 government troops and 22 tanks. In this hopeless situation, the officers dismissed their troops; two committed suicide (a third attempted it unsuccessfully) and the remainder were arrested by military police.
International Examples
For obvious reasons, I prefer to limit my examples to events that happened in Japan. However, I will also be briefly referring to a few international incidents of mass arrest, taking place in India, the U.S., and Egypt, respectively.
In the following parts, I'll use these facts and comparative analogues to take a closer look at what readers were told became of the Paranormal Liberation Front.
Part Two
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Footnotes (Part One)—
[1] Over three months’ time, they likely gained some new blood also, simply in the course of their usual recruitment tactics. You don’t get an underground organization that size by sitting back and waiting for people to come to you, after all. I don’t know a practical way to calculate that, though, so just bear it in mind for when I talk about new members later.
[2] Possibly because he was aware that 17,000 people captured in one fell swoop was difficult enough to swallow without adding on more than five times that number.
[3] We do, after all, see some very aged people fighting in the streets of Deika.
[4] They were considerably more international than you may have heard. They had 50,000 members at the time, some 30,000 of them based in Russia.
[5] The Meiji Constitution was ratified in 1889; universal suffrage (for men) was granted in 1925. The modern constitution was enacted in 1947.
[6] More moderate, mind, in the context of the Imperial Japanese military. Neither of these factions had any time whatsoever for leftist movements, hence all those suppressive crackdowns.
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rhys-rambles · 4 years ago
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FIGHT CLUB | 1999
I was introduced to the movie Fight Club around 3 years ago. It wasn’t until recently I’ve become interested in it. So here’s my Fight Club breakdown :) WARNING FOR SPOILERS!!
For those who don’t know, Fight Club is a cult favorite novel that was later adapted into a film released in 1999, directed by David Fincher. Starring Brad Pitt, Edward Norton, and Helena Bonham Carter.
The story of Fight Club revolves around three main characters. It’s told from a first-person perspective by a nameless character that’s commonly called ‘the narrator’, who has a dead-end white-collar job at a major car company and has fallen prey to what he calls the ‘Ikea-nesting instinct’. Dictated by social norms he walks perfectly in line like a docile sheep, which translates into an inauthentic, repetitive and empty life.
He suffers from a bad case of insomnia, which causes him to be neither fully awake, nor fully asleep. Sometimes, he entertains self-destructive thoughts: as he flies around from state to state for his job, he prays for a crash or mid-air collision every time the plane bankes too sharply on takeoff or landing.
During a flight, he meets an eccentric and hypermasculine character named Tyler Durden.
Tyler seems to be the direct opposite of the narrator. He’s a wolf rather than a sheep, disentangled from society, and impervious to social norms. He takes what he wants, without asking, and whenever he pleases. He’s self-sufficient, has no superiors, and doesn’t care about material possessions.
The movie later reveals that Tyler and the narrator are the same person, as Tyler is a product of the narrator’s imagination, that’s probably induced by severe insomnia combined with dissatisfaction with a dull, meaningless existence and a lifetime of repressed urges.
The narrator is addicted to going to support groups for specific illnesses because these give him the opportunity to cry, which seems to be a remedy for his insomnia. The downside of his behavior is that he isn’t genuine; he has no testicular cancer, or blood parasites, yet acts as if he does, so he can reap the benefits of these sessions.
But these benefits come to an end when another non-genuine visitor starts to join the sessions as well. This is a woman named Marla Singer, and her motive for joining these sessions is, and I quote: “It’s cheaper than a movie and there’s free coffee.”
Marla is a self-destructive, chain-smoking fatalist, who’s expecting to die at any moment, but finds it tragic that it never happens. She steals food and clothes for a living and attempts suicide by overdosing Xanax.
Even though the narrator, Tyler, and Marla are totally different personalities, they all live their lives accompanied by a nihilistic undercurrent.
Tyler seems to have figured out what causes this emptiness, and during the course of the story, his solution unfolds. Unfortunately, his character slides from a sage-like father figure to an anarchist terrorist, who’s out to destroy modern civilization. Nevertheless, he exposes a series of harsh realities about modern life that are worth contemplating.
Anti-consumerism
The anti-consumerist stance of Tyler Durden becomes obvious when he verbalizes his concern about the modern way of life. Shortly after the narrator meets Tyler, he discovers that his apartment went up in flames. After this unfortunate event, realizing that he has no friends to call, he calls Tyler. The two meet, and the narrator complains about losing his furniture, and his respectable and almost complete wardrobe. Tyler responds rather indifferently and slightly sarcastically before he begins to express his views on the matter. Quote:
“We’re consumers. We are by-products of a lifestyle obsession. Murder, crime, poverty, these things don’t concern me. What concerns me are celebrity magazines, television with 500 channels, some guy’s name on my underwear. Rogaine, Viagra, Olestra…”
It becomes clear that Tyler has quite an unconventional view of what’s good and bad. Murder, crime, and poverty are generally considered bad things, while consumer goods like televisions, clothing from a certain brand, products that help to hide aging, enhance bedroom performance, and help us with weight loss, are considered preferable.
Tyler has a contempt for the artificial, as opposed to elements that have been a natural part of the human condition, probably as long we exist. This way of thinking touches upon an ancient Cynic philosopher named Diogenes of Sinope, who believed that modern, civilized life hinders our natural state.
At the end of the movie, it appears that the narrator has destroyed his apartment himself when he was taken over by his alter ego, Tyler Durden. This deed was the first step onto the road of detachment from his property, into a more authentic way of life and to (how Tyler puts it): “reject the basic assumptions of civilization, especially the importance of material possessions.”
The narrator moves in with Tyler, who lives in a dilapidated house with ongoing leaks, power failures, and no Ikea furniture. Slowly but surely, the narrator indeed detaches from his previously destroyed property. “Things you own end up owning you,” Tyler tells him. And this simple piece of wisdom probably hits home, when the narrator realizes that he doesn’t need all these worldly goods, and is actually much happier without them.
Non-conformity
Tyler Durden is a non-conformist, and shows, again, similarities with Diogenes, who not only purposefully lived in poverty, but also rejected social norms. For him, social constructs are nothing more than a superficial layer of culture that represses our true nature.
Diogenes lived in a barrel, Tyler lives in an abandoned building. Diogenes urinated in public, Tyler urinates in the soup of a restaurant.
The narrator, on the other hand, seems to be the embodiment of conformity, as he adapts his lifestyle completely to societal expectations. The problem with this behavior is that we dedicate our existence walking the paths that people other than ourselves have laid out for us. This need to conform, the fear of falling by the wayside, this sickly preoccupation by what others think of us, this necessity to keep up with the Joneses: what an exhausting way of life, just to feel ‘accepted’.
So, what if we stop caring? What if we reject the generally accepted norms, and choose our own values, elect our own leaders, determine our own goals, regardless of the social expectations? This is a fundamental difference between the narrator and Tyler Durden, who puts it like this: “I am free in all the ways that you are not.”
Ironically, later on in the story, Project Mayhem, a terrorist organization led by Tyler that grows out of Fight Club, is a textbook example of conformity, as it’s members wear the same clothes, are absolutely equal, abolish their names, and are referred to as space monkeys that sacrifice their lives for a greater cause. We could say that by rejecting one doctrine in order to be ‘non-conformist’, we often imprison ourselves in another one.
Fighting and masculinity
Fighting and the experience of pain play a significant role in Fight Club. At the beginning of the story, Tyler asks the narrator to hit him as hard as he can. He explains his strange wish by saying: “How can you know yourself if you’ve never been in a fight? I don’t want to die without any scars.”
So, the narrator hits him. Tyler hits him back, and the two engage in a fistfight. Both seem to feel surprisingly pleasant afterward and decide to do it again. Their nightly activities on a parking lot attract the attention of other men, that are also interested in joining these non-hostile fistfights. And thus, Fight Club is born.
It’s widely known that voluntary exposure to certain forms of pain makes us stronger in the face of adversity, which could be a legit reason to partake in these fights. As the narrator states: “After fighting everything else in your life got the volume turned down.”
However, Fight Club is more than just a metaphor for dealing with hardship through exposure: a physical fight, and the violence and aggression that goes with it, resonates with the primal part of our being.
Not only the men in the story are attracted to the violence of fighting; Fight Club as a movie and novel was so impactful on its audience, that real-life Fight Clubs started to emerge.
The story shows an experiment in which the members of Fight Club pick fights with random strangers (and are supposed to lose), which isn’t as easy as it sounds; most people do everything to avoid physical conflict.
But Fight Club makes us wonder if it’s a good thing that we’ve lost touch with these primal tendencies. Should we repress this part of human nature? Or, perhaps, integrate it in healthy and constructive ways?
Self-destruction
When the story progresses, Tyler and the narrator begin to see the world through a different lens. Tyler criticizes the modern self-improvement hype by saying: “Self-improvement is masturbation. Now self-destruction… ”
This statement is slightly confusing, as the increasingly destructive nature of Fight Club, in which faces are permanently mutilated and teeth are knocked out of people’s heads, doesn’t seem to be a sustainable way to live.
But Tyler might be onto something when we look at self-destruction as the destruction of a false self.
‘Self-improvement’ often points to the accumulation of external goods: a better house, a better job, a better body, more money. But why should we endlessly want to improve ourselves? Why can’t we just be happy with how things are, and take life as it comes? Or as Tyler states:
“I say never be complete, I say stop being perfect, I say let’s evolve, let the chips fall where they may.”
We create an identity through material wealth, and social status. And as far as Tyler is concerned, this false sense of self must be destroyed, before we are free to do anything we want. Therefore, the ‘space monkeys’ of Project Mayhem live by a mantra which goes like this:
“You are not your job, you’re not how much money you have in the bank. You are not the car you drive. You’re not the contents of your wallet. You are not your fucking khakis. You are all-singing, all-dancing crap of the world.” - Tyler Durden, Fight Club
Tyler makes a so-called human sacrifice, namely a man called Raymond who works a dead-end job in a convenience store. Raymond wanted to be a veterinarian, but didn’t make it because it was “too much studying.” Tyler threatens Raymond, saying that if he doesn’t start studying within six weeks, he’ll kill him.
In this scene, Tyler points to another aspect of self-destruction: the act of letting go of fears, negative self-talk, and all distractions, so we can fully focus on our purpose. It’s the destruction of everything within ourselves that holds us back from living life on our own terms.
A near-life experience
Many people go great lengths when it comes to pain avoidance. The problem is that running from pain means running from an inevitable part of life.
The prospect of incurring pain makes us anxious, and often leads to self-indulgent decisions. That is: choosing the less painful path, even if a more painful path guarantees more success and pleasure in the future.
Tyler Durden deals with this by inflicting a chemical wound on the narrator’s hand using lye.
As expected, the narrator does everything to escape the pain: he uses visualization techniques he learned at a seminar, and retreating in his cave to find his ‘power animal’. But Tyler slaps him in the face, forcing him to stay with the pain, saying: “This is the greatest moment of your life, man. And you’re off somewhere missing it.”
For the narrator, Tyler has one central goal: he must reach bottom. After putting him through suffering, and destroying his false identity, there’s yet another aspect that must be crushed: hope. Losing all hope is freedom. And, therefore, he must reject what has rejected him: his father, and God. I quote:
“Consider the possibility that God does not like you. In all probability, he hates you.” - Tyler Durden, Fight Club
Tyler states that we don’t need God. That we shouldn’t care about redemption and damnation. And if we’re God’s unwanted children, so be it. Thereby, we lose all hope, but are also liberated from religious doctrine and fatherly authority.
Now we’re truly free. Now we can create our own meaning, and live how we want to live.
Tyler emphasizes the importance of knowing what we want in life. To achieve this, we must be willing to get out of our comfort zone and jump into the unknown without safety brackets.
The narrator, however, has difficulties letting go of security. He begs Tyler to not mess around when he lets go of the steering wheel in a driving car while hitting the gas. Tyler calls the narrator ‘pathetic’, and yells: “hitting bottom isn’t a weekend retreat. It’s not a goddamn seminar. Stop trying to control everything and just let go!”
After an inevitable car crash, Tyler states that they just had a ‘near-life experience’.
Wrap up
Fight Club is a story about rebellion against the status quo and a plea for the simple life. It criticizes the ways in which we are so hung up on security, and material possessions, and how people let social norms dictate their lives.
‘Stuff’ has become our religion. The idols we worship are Ikea and Starbucks. And the more we immerse ourselves in such an empty and unfulfilling existence, the more we start to resemble the things that we produce: manufactured products rather than authentic human beings.
Tyler shows us a way out. And even though his insights are profound, the execution is questionable. Fight Club, and its terrorist branch Project Mayhem, show us how easy it is to oppose one ideology, in order to fall into another, and how a cult-like echo chamber built on rigid beliefs could become very destructive.
Nevertheless, Tyler challenges us to be self-sufficient and disobedient to the authorities that let us down, to live authentically and in the moment, to confront our fears, to boldly step out of our comfort zones, and let the things that don’t matter truly slide.
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ginazmemeoir · 4 years ago
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From Goddess to Victim - a history of the Devadasi system in India
Ok guys I’d researched about this last year as a side project, and after seeing how virtually nobody knows about this cruel system, I would like to wake everyone up (bangs cymbal on face).
Known as Devadasi and Krishnadasi in South India, Jogini in Maharashtra and Mukhie in North India, devadasi literally means “God’s servant”. Traditionally, a devadasi was a person (mostly women and trans people, but there are instances of male devadasis too) who were “married” to god. There was a proper procession, wherein the person was then married to the local deity. Such women were also called “Akhandasaubhagyavati” - or She who is eternally fortunate - for they could never be widowed (Indians believed a woman’s happiness is linked to her husband - they still believe this).
While we find the first mention of a devadasi in Buddhist scriptures as Buddha’s disciple Amrapali, there is no mention at all of this system in any Hindu scripture (this practice is followed in Hinduism) at all. Anyways, being a devadasi was a great honour, since you were actually god’s wife, and were treated as such. Nobody could dare even question a devadasi, for their word was above law (although this was on a local basis).
They were extremely skilled dancers, musicians and artists, and routinely danced in temples. They performed all religious duties in the village, and they were the only ones allowed to enter the garbhagriha (the place where the idol was stationed) in temples. Many of them are known to be lesbians and bisexuals, but they were allowed to practice their sexuality without any hindrance since ultimately their true soulmate was believed to be god. There are also instances of devadasis practising polyandry or remarrying! For example, the second wife of Krishnadevaraya (Emperor of Vijayanagar), called Chinnamma, was a devadasi, who later married him.
However, slowly this practice started taking the form of the cruel system it today is. The age for being a devadasi was removed (most women became devadasis at the age of sixteen), and it became common to see little girls performing devadasi duties. The final blow came from the British Empire. The British couldn’t stomach the thought of “married” women being sexually active, and hence termed all devadasis as prostitutes. They even encouraged them to be treated as such!
From the nineteenth century onwards, devadasis began losing their respect and honour, and were increasingly used for prostitution and slavery. The only way for a devadasi to improve their condition became marrying a rich, influential man, or being his mistress. However, the worst was yet to come.
Today, this system is mostly practiced in Karnataka by members of the Yellamma cult. Girls as young as 3 years are forced into the system, which had become a family bondage - from grandmother to mother to daughter - and become part of a brutal sex racketeering system. Devadasis are regularly tortured and raped, and the intergenerational trauma they go through is so severe that it takes years of rehabilitation and therapy just to get them to trust other people again. This practice has been banned by the Indian Supreme Court, but is still prevalent in South India.
There are many people who have helped devadasis, and forwarded their cause. The most popular example is Sudha Murthy, Indian author and co-founder of the India based IT company Infosys. She has been helping the devadasi community for the past 40 years now, rescuing them from the clutches of sex slavery and providing them with employment and education. Another example is Sitavva Joddati, a victim of this system. She joined MASS (Mahila Abhivrutti evam Samrakshana Sanstha - Institution for Empowerment and Security of Women) when she escaped at the age of 17, and has since then rescued over 50,000 devadasis and inculcated them into mainstream society, with over 4000 devadasis joining MASS in its initiative.
People today are split into two factions on devadasis. Many want this system to end for good, with devadasis being inculcated into society and provided with the necessary tools to start life anew; while some want it to be revived - they want devadasis to be skilled in dance and music again, participating in cultural and heritage programs, with the govt. supporting them. (i prefer the former)
I request you to please reblog this, so that other people too can know about this inhuman system, and help the devadasi community in any way they can.
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