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agape-philo-sophia · 5 months ago

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➝ Belief in "Authority" — The Most Dangerous Religion We've Bought Into. 🧭

To perceive someone (or a group of people) as "authority" is essentially to place them above the objective moral standard... to deify them.

Consider the word itself: AUTHOR-ity. What does an author do? They write. In your subconscious mind, you’re thinking “they make things right… they are the RIGHTERS.” That’s how mind control works through words. And people never see it because they never stop to even break down a word or consider where it came from.

So, we believe "authority" WRITES what is "RIGHT," basically saying "I decide and write down what Right is and what Wrong is." In other words, "I am a god." And then they call their arbitrary decrees "legislation" or "laws" which keep all of us in a constant state of duress. If we don't abide by those decrees (most of which are NOT in alignment with Natural Law), we are threatened with violence. And what is that called, without euphemising? SLAVERY.

THERE IS NO SUCH THING AS "AUTHORITY" VESTED IN ANY MORTAL BEING.

Believing that other human beings are "authority" is nothing more than deification, placing them above human and believing them to have a god-like power to decide what morality is and isn't, therefore believing them to have special "rights" to rule and command while the rest of us have a moral obligation to obey. They do believe themselves to be gods. That is their mentality. This is what they truly believe they are – our rightful gods, owners, and masters – and that we are "morally" obligated to give them tribute (taxes), adoration, servitude; and our lives and souls.

This false, delusional belief in "authority" has served as a massive hinderance to our Conscience where we end up falsely justifying and condoning immoral behavior in the name of "the greater good." There's a difference between adhering to the direction of someone you work for (due to their greater skill and knowledge) and seeing someone as a master/ruler that you must obey under duress and threats of violence. That kind of "authority" is completely immoral and illegitimate. It's the ideology of a psychopath.

If a thug comes up to you on the street with a gun and demands your property, do you perceive that thug as an "authority" of any kind? No. If rightfully armed you would defend yourself and your property from the thug. If unarmed, you may only hand over your property out of self-preservation. You wouldn't believe that you had a moral obligation to give them your money. But if government demands a portion of your money under coercion and says "it's for the common good," you pay willingly. You perceive them as "authority," and therefore believe they must be obeyed, that being a "law-abiding citizen" makes you a good person. Imagine if you didn't perceive them as "authority." Would you give up that money then? Or would you defend yourself and your property from this group of thugs coercing you and threatening you with violence for not complying?

“To make a contented slave, you must make a thoughtless one. It is necessary to darken his moral and mental vision, and, as far as possible, to annihilate his power of reason. He must be able to detect no inconsistencies in slavery. The man that takes his earnings must be able to convince him that he has a perfect right to do so. It must not depend upon mere force; the slave must know no Higher Law than his master's will. The whole relationship must not only demonstrate, to his mind, its necessity, but its absolute rightfulness.” – Frederick Douglass

Again, this erroneous belief in "authority" interferes with our exercise of Conscience. So much violence and other immoral behavior is excused, justified, and condoned because of it. They want us to believe that the world would be in chaos if they weren't here to protect us. This is 100% delusion. When we, as a species, abandon this false belief we will begin to see a world returning to Order because more people would be exercising their conscience where they typically didn't.

Government cannot protect you from Violence and Chaos because government IS Violence and Chaos.

What about democracy? A democracy is a system of rule by a majority, that 51% of a population gets to declare what is or isn't Right/Moral while the remaining 49% must abide by those decrees. It's the same immoral "logic" as any other form of rulership. A majority cannot legitimately rule anymore than a single person can legitimately rule, nor can they decide for themselves what Morality is or what Rights are. The individual rules himself/herself, period, under the Laws of Nature.

The belief in "authority" is the false abdication of personal responsibility, giving your power away to someone else to protect you or nurture you. This is a child's view, not the view of a mature and evolved adult. We are responsible for our own Freedom, our own safety and security. When you falsely give that responsibility away you are basically saying to yourself and everyone else, "I am not a sovereign being, I am a subject to someone else's will."

If we the people have no "right" to steal from others, assault them, murder them, coerce them, rape them, trespass on their private domain, or maliciously deceive them, then no one has that "right." There is no such thing as "authority" vested in any amount of human beings to rule, therefore ALL government is immoral and illegitimate. The belief in "authority" and "government" is nothing more than a dogmatic religious belief, and it's the most dangerous one. It is the ideology of a psychopath. To believe in or condone these things IS to believe in and condone slavery.

We are Sovereign Beings. The word 'sovereign' comes from the Latin super meaning "above" and regnum meaning "rulership or control." Therefore, a Sovereign is NOT A SLAVE. Not a physical slave nor a mental slave. To be sovereign is to be above rulership, a free being. That's what it means and what it has always meant. You cannot express your sovereignty under anyone's rule. You cannot have Freedom and Government at the same time. We're here to experience, to grow, to learn and evolve, not to be stagnant under illusions of "authority."

"GOVERNMENT" IS JUST ANOTHER RELIGION

The word 'government' comes from the Latin verb gubernare which means "to control" (also the root for the word 'gubernatorial'), and the Latin noun mens, mentis which means "mind." Put them together.

In colloquial English, the suffix '-ment' means "the state of or condition of," but all things must first begin in the mind. Those who formulated the English language knew this which is why they used the Latin word for "mind" to mean this. All creation emerges first from thought. So, if you want the world to be a certain way then you have to steer and control how people think. If they think and believe what you want then that is the reality they will manifest. So yes, "government" does mean mind control. Through the control of our thoughts with false ideologies (religion, culture, statism, solipsism, scientism, and other erroneous and dogmatic beliefs) resulting in Wrong Action in the world, we are – as a species – manifesting a reality of suffering and slavery.

Statism – the belief that some people have the "right" to rule and command while the rest of us have a moral obligation to obey – is the most dangerous religion we've bought into. Again, the belief in "government" is the relinquishing of personal responsibility to a higher power. It has rituals, dogma, commandments, punishments for "sin" and disobedience, and savior figures. That's why they tell you to "have faith in the system." It's all just a religion... a mind-control cult that is based entirely in coercion and violence.

You have to get out of your mind the idea that "government" is about people coming together in mutual consent to plan, organize and manage community infrastructure. That's not government, that's called Voluntary Cooperation. That's True Anarchy. This idea that government's purpose is to protect Freedom and Rights is just that, an idea. It's a construct of the mind, a belief system. It has never actually served that purpose because it's not meant to serve that purpose. That responsibility belongs to each and every human being, not to be falsely abdicated to some exclusive group and called "authority." Government is and always has been a control system of covert rulership / covert slavery. It is the operational arm of the Dark Occult controllers to dictate commands that must be obeyed which are always followed by threats of violence if not complied with. Believe and obey, or be punished. That isn't Freedom.

Kingship of the ancient past is the "Old World Order," or "authority vested in one." What we have today called "government" is the "New World Order," or "authority vested in few."

Ultimately, nothing has really changed between those two periods of time. It's still rulership – we've just euphemized it differently – therefore it's still slavery. You cannot have morally legitimate government because you cannot have morally legitimate slavery. "Without government, who would build the roads?!"

People would, just as they always have, under Natural Law. There would be more cooperation because we would have to actually be adult human beings with Response-Ability for our own lives and communities. This idea that everything would just go to hell because "government" wasn't there to manage everything is complete childish delusion. Government doesn't make anything function, people do. It's time to grow up and evolve out of our childhood where we think we need a proxy mommy and daddy to take care of us and protect us. We can handle it just fine on our own in Sovereignty.

And instead of being forced to pay taxes (legalized extortion), having no control over where that money is going, we would have voluntary contributions to projects and necessities to keep our communities functioning (until we fully abandon monetary systems). Taxation isn't necessary, it's nothing but theft and slavery.

Do you own your own body? Yes. And since you own your body, you also own your skills, therefore you own your labor. And if you own your labor then you absolutely own the product of that labor. Since no one else owns your body, they cannot rightfully demand any arbitrarily decided percentage of the product of that labor to distribute as they see fit. That's theft. Even if a portion of that money is going towards public welfare programs, it's still theft. And since you are put under duress and coercion to pay that percentage every year by thugs calling themselves "authority," that's slavery. People will always be willing to contribute to things that they believe in. There will always be voluntary charity. There is no justification for theft no matter what someone claims the "greater good" is.

THE OBJECTIVE MORAL STANDARD

Human beings – when the belief in "government" and "authority" is abandoned – will no longer hold anyone above the objective moral standard and therefore will not tolerate violence. They will take responsibility for their own defense, as well, instead of waiting on "authority" to show up when it's too late.

Bad people will even reduce their wrong behavior; not because they are suddenly moral beings, but out of self-preservation, knowing that they won't be able to get away with as much criminal behavior if the majority of people no longer depend on and believe in "authority" and "government" for protection (which more often protect the criminals over the innocents).

When human beings have awakened to and embraced their Sovereignty, and therefore understand and embrace their Response-Ability for protecting their own lives and freedom, the chance for suffering and chaos is reduced. There will always be conflicts and real crime (not victimless "crime" based on arbitrary and immoral "laws"), but the belief in the myth of "authority" would no longer be there to get in the way of Conscience or to justify that behavior.

When most of society holds EVERYONE to the objective standard of Morality (Natural Law), that society becomes and remains Free, and Order emerges. No "government" has ever ensured that, nor will it ever, because that has never been its purpose. It only exists in your mind, in the false belief that some people have a moral "right" to rule while everyone else has the moral obligation to obey. That isn't Order, that's Chaos. That's Slavery. And that's the Satanic worldview.

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evilkitten3 · 9 months ago

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i try to keep volume 65 on my person at all times lol it is literally two inches away from my hand right now

tbh there's not really any way to handle this well, i think? like i have no clue what would be a better way to handle your mortal enemy slash best friend's little brother getting mortally wounded by his mortal enemy slash your little brother. what do you even say to that

concerning hashirama's healing abilities, i'm pretty sure all we know about it is what madara said during his fight with tsunade. i don't have all the volumes but i do have volume 61 right here, so let's see what we got 「そこの医療忍術の女・・・お前こいつの血を引いてるな？」「だったら何だ！？」「まずはお前からたたく」「・・・・・・・・・！」「小隊の医療忍者をまずたたくのは定石、それを分かってるこっちが簡単にやらせると思いで？」「違う・・・その女が千手柱間の子孫だからだ」「・・・なっ！」「お前ごときの医療忍術とやらは死をほんの少し先延ばしにしているに過ぎん。千手柱間と比べれば取るに足らぬ術だ。奴は印を結ぶことすらなく傷を治すことができた・・・全ての術がケタ違い・・・人は奴を最強の忍と呼んだ。奴とは命懸けの戦いをしたものだ・・・こんな遊びではなくな・・・」 madara: "the medical ninjutsu woman over there... you have this guy's (hashirama's) blood, right?" tsunade: "and if so, what of it!?" madara: "i'll start with you." tsunade: ...! mei: "attacking a squad's medical ninja is standard practice, so knowing that, you think it'll make dealing with the rest of us easy?" madara: "that's not it... it's because that woman is senju hashirama's descendant." mei: "...huh!" madara: "medical ninjutsu like yours merely delays death a bit. if you compare it with senju hashirama, it's worthless jutsu. he was able to heal wounds without even tying a seal... all of his jutsu were an order of magnitude higher... people called him the strongest shinobi. i fought a life-or-death battle with him... not playing around like this..."

all that that really tells us is that hashirama could heal without any seals, and that madara isn't particularly impressed by what he's seen from tsunade so far. finally, we get this:

「印を使わぬ再生体・・・そうか。それが第四項のお前の術の本当の能力という訳か・・・柱間の能力と同じだな・・・」 madara: "a regenerated body without the use of seals... i see. this is the true power of your jutsu in the fourth clause (referring to tsunade listing off the rules for medic nin, the last of which being that the first three don't apply to anyone who's mastered the byakugou)... the same power as hashirama..."

so really all we know is that hashirama could heal himself like tsunade can, and while there's nothing indicating that he couldn't do the same for other people, there's also no mentions of that happening to my knowledge. we really have no clue what hashirama's medical capabilities actually were at all, since our only source is madara and he's,,,, a tad biased. there's just not really enough evidence to say whether hashirama could've healed izuna or not

tsunade probably could've but unfortunately she was busy dealing with a deadly case of not-born-yet-itis

But listen, if Izuna had said yes to Hashirama's help after he was injured and he still died, would Madara rampage like in canon? Would he still chase the infinite tsukyomi?

the thing is, hashirama never offered to help izuna. i'm actually not sure he could have - the hiraishingiri pretty much cut through him like butter. moreover, while madara himself lauds hashirama's medical prowess, we actually know very little about his capabilities with medical ninjutsu. he could heal wounds without any hand seals, that's mostly all we know.

here are hashirama's words immediately after izuna is injured:

「マダラ・・・お前はオレには勝てない・・・もう・・・終わりにしよう・・・忍最強のうちはと千手が組めば・・・国も我々と見合う他の忍一族を見つけられなくなる・・・いずれ争いも沈静化していく」

"madara... you can't beat me... let's end it already. if the strongest shinobi, the uchiha and the senju, form an alliance... the country won't be able to find another shinobi clan able to counterbalance us... the conflict will eventually calm down"

he doesn't acknowledge izuna at all. whether he intended an offer of medical aid to be implied or not, it's never addressed. a bunch of people have claimed that this makes hashirama a jerk, and while i definitely get that viewpoint, i do think offering to help izuna without being absolutely certain he was capable of doing so would've been a terrible move, politically speaking. madara might have known that hashirama isn't the sort of man who would do something like this, but the rest of the uchiha clan would have no reason not to assume that hashirama didn't just take advantage of madara's kindness/trust/desperation/whatever to ensure that izuna died while potentially leaving room for madara to feel indebted to him for trying in spite of all the reasons he had not to bother.

hell, the clan might even come to the conclusion that madara intended for izuna to die so he could get his eyes, given what ended up happening in canon, so his fallout with them might actually happen even faster (and without the uchiha ever joining konoha at all, although without madara around to counter hashirama, i have no idea if/how the uchiha would manage against the senju from there)

all that aside, if hashirama had indeed offered help and izuna had agreed to take the risk and died anyway and the uchiha clan trusted that that was what had actually happened, i think pretty much everything else would've proceeded according to canon.

there's definitely plenty of fun possibilities to play around with concerning madara's path in life, but tbh i personally believe that without a massive deviation from canon, he would've eventually become who he became. hashirama definitely fucked up here and there, but i honestly don't think there was anything he could've personally done alone that would've changed madara's fate short of killing him back when they were kids, which he was never going to do. he was always doomed.

#naruto #naruto shippuden #meta #uchiha madara #senju hashirama #senju tsunade #uchiha izuna #btw this took me so long bc initially i had a paragraph concerning the part where madara brings up his brother #but then i realized it was kinda irrelevant lol

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vermillioncrown · 3 years ago

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the skeleton to alternate universe-ity au is:

lxc starts w very favorable but skewed opinions on zyx, which keeps inflating until the whole things pop

zyx is like two children stacked in a trench coat, which somehow passes muster until it doesn't

zyx is also balancing new responsibilities, continuing to avoid lwj but not letting lxc know that, the new interest of another cute but annoying boy (wwx) that turns into a fun new friendship

build up is lxc and zyx navigating an undefined relationship, both people having slightly wrong/adjacent assumptions of the other person and feeling like they need to 'play along'

the big break is that dream/nightmare i had of other college au, but she's over at tenured college professor lqr's place bc of lxc's invite and now forced to confront many lans at once

zyx ends up figuring out but attributing malice/carelessness to wwx's desire to 'get to know the girl that was weird enough to catch lwj's (friendship) interest', a friendship breakup

the second half is 1) wangxian getting together, 2) wangxian friendship foundation establishment w zyx, 3) clearing the air between zyx and lxc

#zyx au's #mdzyx #oblivious university #alternate universe-ity #there are some parallels to what i have to write for lxc pov in mrts #there's a lot of stuff going on and without additional exposition it makes very little sense #but trust me in my head the simulations have a Vibe ok #there's also a lot less propriety than in dbd actual since we're in college #dirty dancing + drunken bs + weird 12am-6am interactions that can only happen in a college town where everyone doesn't live At Home #Intricate Rituals™#the reckless abandon that comes with being in your early 20s and ignorant of your mortality #also: the central thing is that undergrad zyx was burning candles at both ends and on the sides; wearing too many hats #undergrad zyx (aka undergrad verm)#to the point it'd give any one group whiplash to see me outside of the context of their setting #or someone will say something 'i didn't expect ____ from you'#'do you sleep?'#'i blink extra-long between labs'

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a-heart-of-kyber · 2 years ago

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Listening to the Mortal Engines series, mostly to potentially steal ideas for dnd. I'm on book two and they literally went from "Tom is a wonderful cutie." In book 1 to "cue *ity bitty teenie weenie shriveled little short dick man don't want don't want don't want*" in book 2. Like, Wow.

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presidentstalkeyes · 3 years ago

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Journal D - Ghosts Vs Demons

Another day, another exorcism. Since departing California, it’s occurred to me that the layperson may not understand the distinction between a ghost haunting and a demon haunting. The Author went into great detail behind the various Categories of ghost that may spook up the place, but not so much into demons. For convenience, I shall go over them in the ever-reliable bulletpoint format.

GHOSTS:

Are the spirits of deceased humans (and other beings), tethered to a physical location. Reasons for this vary, but typically some form of unfinished business.

Come in various categories, each more powerful than the last. As more time passes and the ghost’s connection to its former humanity (or other being-ity) fades, its tether to the living world grows stronger, enabling it to further influence its surroundings.

Must usually be removed via exorcism, or ‘busting’. This is sad, but ironically the conditions by which a haunting can even be noticed usually mean it’s too high a category to pass on peacefully. Some ghosts can pass on peacefully, however, if its unfinished business is resolved (e.g. the ghost of Northwest Manor, my first ever busting! I wonder how Pacifica’s doing)

Are typically found in areas of great pain and turmoil, such as Los Angeles.

DEMONS:

Are entities residing in other dimensions, but may interact with ours via the Mindscape. However, it is limited to invisible observation unless some idiot summons it.

Like to make deals with mortals. This is the chief way by which they can gain further power in our world, up to and including possession. Asking for your firstborn son in exchange for the Super Bowl results is a favourite.

Unlike ghosts, demons are bound to its summoner - the anchor - and the anchor’s descendants by parenthood. If you happen to be one of them, you’re kinda screwed. Otherwise, just get far away from the offending person and you’re golden.

Require fulfilment of a contract to banish. Best way to deal with a demon summoning - DON’T SUMMON IT. Just don’t. (Theoretically you could wipe it out with some sort of memory-eraser but you’d have to let it possess you and wipe your own mind in the process... seriously, it’s not worth it. If you’re that strapped for cash, just stop playing those stupid gacha games)

Are typically found in areas with a history of ill-gotten wealth, such as... well, Los Angeles again. It’s harder to find a part of the city that isn’t haunted.

#gravity falls fanfiction #Inheritance AU #Dipper Pines #I don't hate LA (never been there) but Dipper's from the San Francisco area so he buys into the rivalry :V #He's also had troubles with free-to-play games #Implied past Dipcifica #Journal D

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violenceviolence-rp · 3 years ago

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oh, playing with Punch really WAS the funnest way I could spite that idiot Magician for cursing me with temporary mortal-ity,

ANything I can do to o'James pisses him off Much More if I do it with his favorite toy while making him watch, heheh

#i 'shipped' slappy/wood as a kid & am not gonna stop now lol #so blacklist the tag if it squicks ya #i dont consider them literal brothers bc they arent human/alive But the power imbalance is an obvious metaphor & Wood lampshades it A Lot #meaty wally #squishy slappy #yeah i just wanted to draw ✂️ what of it #self indulgent as fuck #doodle #made for each other #cockroach waltz

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merry-melody · 3 years ago

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Sex with Consequences: Sexuality and Its Discontents

From Tony Magistrale’s ‘Stephen King: America’s Storyteller’

Stephen King's universe contains ample evidence of free will at work; characters flourish or perish primarily because of choices they make. John Smith makes a conscious decision to thwart the political career of Greg Stillson, Louis Creed elects to revisit the Micmac burial site to bring his son and wife back from the dead, and Andy Dufresne makes up his mind to "get busy living" by disappearing through a tunnel under the bowels of Shawshank prison. More often than not, in the King universe free will and moral choice are solidly within the individual's purview. As Carroll Terrell points out in his discussion of the religious implications in The Stand , "This confirmation of the power of light over the power of darkness allows for free will as Harold Lauder, the bright boy of the book understands. He may go with the light or the dark, but whatever he does, he agrees with Jean Paul Sartre, that he's condemned to be free".

In the choice of good or evil, how King's characters respond to the issue of personal sexuality is often the clearest indicator of a man or woman's true nature. People of good will in his canon tend to gravitate toward sexual relationships that mirror their personalities: nurturing, open, and responsive to others. Correspondingly, the sexuality of evil is sterile and isolating. When King's characters are seduced by the corruption of what the writer tends to view as a warped sexuality, it is symptomatic of moral failing. Once they succumb, they eventually forfeit their identities and the ability to control their own destinies. In contrast, characters who manage to forge sexual unions that do not rely upon the oppression of someone else tend to create happier and more heroic lives. In the Playboy interview published in 1983, early in his career, King was remarkably candid on the subject of sex, acknowledging his own personal conservatism which, in turn, will be seen to inform his fiction as well: "I think I have pretty normal sexual appetites, whatever the word normal means in these swinging times. . . . There's a range of sexual variations that turn me on, but I'm afraid they're all boringly unkinky" (Underwood and Miller).

As a purveyor of horror art, King is professionally disposed toward speculating on worst-case scenarios: What happens when the government loses control over its germ warfare program? What happens when substance abuse addictions or obsessions with power grow beyond the individual's ability to regulate? And what happens to sexuality when it expresses itself outside the guiding strictures of love?

This last question must be viewed in light of what the writer deems a "normal sexual appetite"; as deviant sexual practices become more frequent and intense in each of King's books, the participants' affiliation with evil becomes correspondingly stronger. In King's world this means that sex performed without the blessing bond of heterosexual love is always lascivious and malefic, while the capac- ity to control lust and violence —that is, maintaining sexuality as a means for the expression of love —is related to the ability to resist evil and choose good. The fall from innocence in King's universe is not simply the loss of physical virginity, for King has very clear demarcations regarding sexuality. Innocence is in fact affirmed in normative heterosexual relationships. By contrast, those characters that participate in "alternative sexualities" usually mark their fall from grace through deviant sexual expression. Once this fall occurs and a character is marked with deviance, the effects usually prove fatal, morally and mortally. The severity of King's judgment here might be tied to his career-long association with the Gothic, wherein transgressions against the status quo —particularly sexual transgressions —result in horrific consequences; or perhaps it is the influence of the writer's strong Methodist upbringing, or the ambiance of New England Puritanism with which King has lived nearly his entire life. A combination of all these factors, in addition to his own forty-year monogamous marriage, invariably translates the sexual behaviour of his fictional characters into spiritual barometers. And nowhere is this moralistic paradigm more in evidence than in the unexpurgated edition of The Stand.

FREE WILL AND SEXUAL CHOICE IN THE STAND

When we first encounter Glen Bateman, arguably King's philosophical spokesman in the novel, he is reprimanding his dog, Kojak, availing him with instruction on behavior that is notable for its relevance to both thecanine and human worlds: "Always remember, Kojak, that control is what separates the higher orders from the lower. Control!". Bateman's seemingly innocuous remark turns out to be one of The Stand 's guiding principles. Throughout the novel, the degree to which an individual is capable of adhering to Bateman's principle of self-control signifies which side of the Rockies that character will call home. And this is especially true when this standard is applied to sexual choices and behaviour. In the Free Zone, we see ample evidence of healthy sexual unions; most of Boulder's men and women do not use sex as a form of manipulation or degradation.

Perhaps the best examples of such relationships are between Frannie and Stu and between Larry and Lucy. When Nadine Cross tempts Larry with the offer of her virginity, it is not an offer inspired by love or genuine affection; she comes to him out of selfishness: she wishes to use him to erect a barrier against Flagg's design to make her his dark bride. And it is thus significant that her seduction is interpreted by Larry as a kind of rape, since, like a rapist, Nadine is far more interested in power than she is in sex: "Let me finish. I want to stay here, can't you understand that? And if we're with each other, I'll be able to. You're my last chance. Make love to me and that will be the end of it. I'll be safe. Safe. I'll be safe".

In his refusal to succumb to her demands, Larry shows a level of self-control and loyalty (to Lucy) that has long been missing from his personality. The scene highlights a moral "crossroad" for both Cross and Underwood. From the point of his rejection to the end of the novel, Larry's personal ethics are never again in doubt. It is important to note that his passage through the dark night of the soul is associated with refusing sexuality because the act would take place for the wrong reasons. His self-denial provides him with the opportunity to lay claim to Lucy —who is pregnant with his child —as a reward. Nadine, on the other hand, views her rebuff as destiny; unlike Larry, who finally discovers the capacity for exerting his moral will, she surrenders hers to the dark man. As she walks away from Larry, her corruption is symbolically ordained in King's description of the landscape with which she merges: "She was a black shape distinguishable from other black shapes only when she crossed the street. Then she disappeared altogether against the black background of the mountains".

Women such as Nadine Cross or Nona, in the early dark dominatrix tale named after her, employ sex to seduce and to manipulate rather than rape in King's universe. In both cases, however, King is unequivocal in the association he makes between violent or manipulative sex and the corruption of selfhood.

At the opposite extreme of the self-control extolled by Bateman and illustrated in Larry Underwood's final rejection of Nadine, King provides a group of immoral men who have used the collapse of civilization to indulge their hostility toward women. The four men who maintain "the zoo" have kidnapped eight women and hold them as sexual slaves. The sole purpose of this enterprise is the carnal gratification of the men involved; their captives are stripped of their humanity, reduced to orifices which are filled or tortured according to the daily whims of the men in charge: ��I'd get up in the morning, be raped two or three times, and then wait for Doc to hand out the pills,' said Susan matter-of-factly"

In light of the close affiliation between sexuality and personal morality maintained throughout The Stand, it is interesting that when the women in "the zoo" are liberated by Frannie, Harold, Glen, and Stu, their response toward the men who have mistreated them is to return violence for violence. Dayna Jurgens, Susan Stern, and Patty Kroger, in particular, behave in a manner that is decidedly "unfeminine," shattering one captor's head with the stock of a shotgun, violently squeezing another's crotch, and releasing "a long primeval scream of triumph that haunted Fran Goldsmith for the rest of her life". Rape has forced "the zoo" women to break with traditional feminine behaviour; to survive these vicious sexual circumstances, they emulate the worst behaviour of men. Their experience as sexual victims goes on to affect each of these women for the remainder of the novel. None of them fully recovers, suicide and self-immolation haunt them, and all are left incapable of divorcing sexuality from violence and deception. Dayna's choice of suicide, rather than aiding Flagg with information about the Free Zone once her identity as a spy is revealed in Vegas, is the first indication that Flagg's indomitable will, particularly over women, is not so indomitable. Dayna's suicide must be seen as an act of defiance against Flagg, and it points the way to Nadine's own death. In Flagg's city-state and in the parallel microcosm of "the zoo," women exist to satisfy the dark and salacious sexual urges of the men in control. Nadine's artificially imposed virginity —insisted upon by Flagg and imposed at the expense of her natural and spontaneous emotions —is a condition analogous to that of the women who are held in sexual bondage in "the zoo." The language used to describe Flagg's "seduction" of Cross is always suggestive of rape. Interestingly, he "enters" her for the first time in a kind of psychological rape —sustaining the novel's affiliation between rape and a conscious choice to perform evil —that occurs the moment after she elects to ignore the voice of her conscience in order to plant the bomb that will destroy members of the Free Zone committee. The cold numbness and eventual catatonia Nadine experiences during and after Flagg's defilement is reminiscent of the chemically induced impassivity and sexual stupefaction experienced by the women held against their will in "the zoo": "Nadine was blind, she was deaf, she was without a sense of touch. . . . And she felt him creep into her. A shriek built up within her, but she had no mouth with which to scream. Penetration: entropy . She didn't know what those words meant, put together like that; she only knew they were right". Nadine Cross sells her soul to the devil, serving as a dark parody of the Madonna herself. Her job is to provide the Dark Man with a Dark Child, and she does so first in the corruption of the boy-man Harold Lauder.

In fact, Harold and Nadine are cast as parallel figures in their mutual loneliness, psychological susceptibility, and their view of sexual choices as a determination of selfhood. Not only does Nadine prey upon Harold's virginity, tempting him with promises of sensations never known, she likewise encourages his penchant for sexual perversion: "'We can do anything —everything —but that one little thing. And that one little thing really isn't so important, is it?' Images whirled giddily in his mind. Silk scarves . . boots . . . leather . . . rubber. Oh Jesus"

It is important that Nadine's "one little thing" is forever denied to Harold. The fact that Lauder technically dies a virgin, never having actually participated in intercourse, serves to highlight his failure to view sex as anything more than a self-enclosed masturbatory act —its sole purpose, his own orgasm. Nadine is willing to manipulate him via his own sexual fantasies, and she accomplishes this primarily through oral sex, becoming nothing more than an extension of Harold's chronic urge to masturbate (as he does on even the most inappropriate occasions —e.g., after stealing and reading the negative commentary in Frannie's journal). Harold and Nadine's sexuality thus mirrors their isolation in life; seduced by the urge to control the other rather than motivated by the selfless action of love, both characters end up committing suicide.

Most of the major events that occur in the novel —the choices that are made, the consequences that result from actions initiated —are sexually motivated. Those characters in The Stand unable to resist sexual entrapment sever their connection to humanity and forge a link to evil. Flagg, Harold Lauder, The Kid, the "zookeepers," and others like them are modern versions of Adam after the Fall, who instead of only losing the Garden of Eden, have also relinquished their self-respect, the love of Eve, and the hope of any reconciliation with God. Other characters —Stu Redman, Larry Underwood, Glen Bateman, and Frannie Goldsmith —demonstrate control over their sexual selves and behave in a manner that is both altruistic and morally responsible. In this latter group, the truest model of human survival, we find the greatest hope for the future precisely because it has main- tamed contact with the greatest virtues from the past. Frannie and Stu begin to revivify their empty lives through the act of sexual intercourse: "Fran cried out her pleasure at the end of it, as her good orgasm burst through her".

In contrast, as Harold watches this healthy exchange from deep within the shadows, the seed of corruption is planted within him: "Neither of them saw Harold, as shadowy and as silent as the dark man himself, standing in the bushes and looking at them". His next choice, to steal a look at her diary without permission, is another, metaphorical extension of the novel's rape imagery, as Harold violates both Frannie's trust and her personal privacy.

As T. S. Eliot lamented the death of civilization through sexual encounters and inferences devoid of love in The Waste Land , King likewise suggests that humankind forsakes its connection to both God and man in the degradation of sexuality. Ultimately, over the course of his writing career King has established a rigidly didactic continuum, especially in light of the consistency with which the subject is treated in his fiction and films. Only the most conservative form of heterosexual expression —missionary position intercourse between a man and a woman who love each other — is deemed `normal", homosexuality is overwhelmingly viewed as deviant and corrupt; heterosexual sex that occurs outside the perimeters of love or as part of an adulterous relationship usually evolves into coercion; while bondage, cross-dressing, fetish indulgence, and even oral sex between consenting partners (recall the disastrous consequences of car sex in Thinner ) verge into the abject.

As King opines in the Playboy interview: "I'm not into the sadomasochistic trip, either, on which your competitor Penthouse has built an entire empire . . . despite all the artistic gloss and the gauzy lens and the pastel colors, it's still sleaze; it still reeks corruptingly of concentration-camp porn" (Underwood and Miller). The collapse of civilization and civilized values in both The Stand and within the city of Lud in The Dark Tower III: The Waste Lands is signalled by many disruptive elements: the abatement of law, the physical degradation of the social infrastructure, the omnipresent threat of violence. But once again it is in his treatment of sexuality —specifically homosexuality —that King highlights most dramatically societal unravelling into perversity. The superflu in The Stand and post -nuclear war environment in The Waste Lands has not only depopulated the respective landscapes; it has also placed those few remaining survivors into an ethical vacuum: in the absence of official law, institutions, and traditions, the very concept of "civilization" is deconstructed and then reconstructed as deviant. Without an existing system to enforce restraint, individuals uprooted and wandering the waste land feel free to indulge in behaviour that would have been socially objectionable in pre-apocalyptic America. Survival becomes an essential goal, decency and restraint are no longer operative values, and suicide is sometimes a preferable alternative in these landscapes without pity. As Gasher cautions Jake in The Waste Lands , "Beg if you want, dear heart. Just don't expect no good to come of it, for mercy stops on this side of the bridge".

In both these texts, sexual deviance is the unnatural outgrowth of unrestrained impulse and expressions of fear and paranoia; and frequently, whenever King wishes to illustrate the large-scale breakdown in both societal and personal ethics, he does so through either the threat or the actualization of a violent homosexuality. This level of intimate deviance appears in the form of homosexual rape, and for those characters who embody its permutations most fully, The Kid (The Stand) and Gasher and Tick Tock Man (The Waste Lands), reliance on such an intrusive violence is an extension of their degraded personalities. For these adult males, boys and men are reconfigured as feminine, leading to warped expressions of homoerotic frenzy. Without the blessing bond of love, sex in King's world is always lascivious and malefic, as we find in the sadomasochistic intercourse that takes place between Trashcan Man and The Kid in The Stand: "Whining, Trashcan began to stroke him again. His whines became little gasps of pain as the barrel of the .45 worked its way into him, rotating, gouging, tearing. And could it be that this was exciting him? It was . . . 'Like it, dontcha?' The Kid panted. 'I knew you would, you bag of pus. You like having it up your ass, dontcha? Say yes, or right to hell you go—‘”.

Sex without love, be it homosexual or heterosexual, in King's moral universe is always a manipulative force that belies fundamental character flaws in anindividual. Although he is confronted with heavily armed strangers at the gate of his dystrophic city in The Waste Lands , Gasher is focused only on capturing young Jake; his warped sexuality, in other words, has reached the point at which he is willing to risk even his own life and to allow the gunslingers to pass freely in order to possess the boy child. Gasher's sexual fascination with Jake, to whom he constantly refers as a "sweet little boycunt" and "sweet cheeks" (430) is an extension of his venereal illness, so advanced that Roland recognizes Gasher's imminent mor- tality and is sobered by it: "The oozing sores on his face had nothing to do with radiation; unless Roland was badly deceived, this man was in the late stages of what the doctors called mandrus and everyone else called whore's blossoms".

The city of Lud in The Waste Lands has as much in common with Dante's city of Dis as it does with a post-apocalyptic portrait of New York. Along with its decaying bridges and populace on the verge of extinction, the city's value system is similarly fetid. Controlled by roving gangs of violent thugs who have separated into two warring groups the Pubes and the Grays, bent on mutual annihilation —the city's corruption is highlighted in the dark subplot of an adult masculine obsession with young boys. After crossing over the bridge into Lud, it is as if the Gunslinger and his posse have entered into a place that "reeks corruptingly of concentration-camp porn" with its corresponding social Darwinism and inversion of any notion of an acceptable sexuality. Indeed, normative heterosexuality and homosexuality defined between consenting adults is displaced by a rape culture that appears to prize young boys as the ultimate sexual prize. Gasher's violence toward Jake as they make their way through the forsaken cityscape on their way to the Tick Tock Man barely masks his sexual arousal; in fact, the two obscene impulses feed each other. In King's universe, this perversion of both healthy homosexual and heterosexual response is a metaphor for the loss of spiritual and social codes of ethics in a post-apocalyptic world. Homosexual pedophilia is thus coded by King to signal the final degeneration of an entire world gone insane.

In his article discussing homosexuality in King's novel IT , Douglas Keesey, attempting to rescue the narrative from the charge of homophobia, argues something different: "[I]f society is disturbed by the homo- phobic violence in [King's] fiction, it should recognize and criticize its own homophobia rather than blaming the writer for it. In such accusations, the writer becomes the scapegoat for homophobic attitudes that society can continue to hold". While argued reasonably, this position completely lets King off the hook. He is, after all, the man in control of his art, and we should demand that art do more —by way of confronting instead of simply mirroring —existing social injustices. Indeed, over the years in nearly every other possible cultural context —the public school system, religious zealotry, governmental authority, gender relationships, and race and class delineations —King's fiction has relentlessly challenged the status quo. But whenever the writer confronts the issue of personal sexuality, particularly non-traditional forms of sexual expression, his staunchly progressive politics take a sharp turn right.

THE LIMITS OF LIBERALISM: HOMOEROTICISM

King's treatment of homosexuality throughout his literary career has been particularly less than enlightened. I can think of no evidence of gay or lesbian relationships that King portrays as mature, morally responsible, or loving, but there exist plenty of examples to assert that he employs homosexuality as a metaphor for oppression, and this is especially true in the context of adult male homoeroticism. In The Shawshank Redemption, for instance, bogs and the sisters are ‘bull queers’ who assault Andy Dufresne, making his first few years at Shawshank prison nearly unbearable. While

their intrusive violence leads Red to acknowledge that they ''have to be human first'' to qualify as homosexuals, the fact that both the novel and film define The Sisters solely in terms of their sexuality works as an implicit indictment of their homosexuality. The director of the film adaptation, Frank Darabont, has tried to distance himself from charges of homophobia by insisting that The Sisters are not gay but rapists who substitute men when women are unavailable (''The Buzz''). But as Edward Madden counters more convincingly, "The rapists, however, are still labeled 'queens' or queers: they are still marked as homosexual''.

Apt Pupil, like many other King narratives, features an old male-young boy relationship that protects a shared secret. Although this secret concerns Nazi criminal activity during World War II, the malefic bond that Dussander and Todd develop also possesses strong homosexual overtones, to the point where Todd has difficulties with impotence when his girl-friend Becky tries to perform fellatio on him; she later mocks him in the assertion that "maybe you just don't like girls." In the novel, Todd's homo- sexual impulses are more explicitly formulated; he fantasizes himself in front of a half-naked Dussander and a young Jewish female, the latter bound to the four corners of an examination table. The Nazi directs the boy to secure a hollow dildo over his erect penis, which he then uses to penetrate the girl. In this sadomasochistic threesome, Todd becomes a literal sexual "appendage" of the older man; the boy rapes the defenceless woman while Dussander is raping Todd scientifically, recording "pulse, blood pressure, respiration, alpha waves, beta waves, stroke count". In the film version of Apt Pupil, the Nazi acknowledges that he and his pupil are "fucking each other," even though he means this metaphorically rather than literally. The homeless man that Todd and Dussander murder, however, interprets their relationship on a physical plane, initially offering himself sexually to the former Nazi under the not-so-mistaken belief that Todd and Dussander are engaged in a sexual liaison.

The physical connection that the teenager and Dussander do maintain includes a scene of quasi-erotic dress-up, where Todd insists that the old man wear a Nazi war uniform and parade in front of him. While Dussander prepares himself upstairs, Todd eagerly awaits his return in the kitchen; the sequence is highly suggestive of a lover anticipating the emergence of his beloved adorned in fetish clothing recently purchased for their mutual sexual arousal. Indeed, in this film homosexuality becomes yet another secret linked to the various historical secrets shared between the apt pupil and his teacher; as such, homosexuality is demonised by virtue of its association with Nazism. At the end of the film, Todd resorts to homosexual accusations as a means to intimidate Mr. French, the school guidance counsellor; the boy's level of aptitude in manipulating the negative implications of homosexuality is meant to signify his graduation to a higher grade of evil. Though the novel details explicit homoerotic dream sequences to underscore the corruption of the Dussander-Bowden relationship, the film covers a broader range of implications —all of them negative. The murder of the homeless man, by self-admission homosexually inclined, is treated as nothing more than a final test of Todd's Nazi education, a rite of passage into the sensation of murdering ("How did it feel?"), while Todd's threat to blackmail Mr. French with a false sexual assault allegation carries the dual weights of paedophilia and homosexuality.

These examples underscore a plethora of similar homosexual and homoerotic couplings that appear throughout King's work. Without qualification these bonds are used to illustrate only psychological maladjustment and sexual depravity, as well as the degree to which the individuals involved have been morally tainted. Yet, ironically, some of the strongest and most life-affirming unions that take place in this writer's world occur in same-sex relationships. Andy and Red in The Shawshank Redemption; Edgecomb and Coffey in The Green Mile; Vera and Dolores in Dolores Claiborne; Roland, Cuthbert, and Alain in The Dark Tower: Wizard and Glass; and the numerous male-bonding permutations found in Stand by Me , Hearts in Atlantis , and Dreamcatcher are intensely intimate, but never sexual. King appreciates the value of same-sex bonds; they are, in fact, some of his most compelling portraits, but he steers clear of investing them with any kind of homoerotic charge —at least overtly.

In her essay "White Soul: The 'Magical Negro' in the Films of Stephen King," Sarah Nilsen argues that homoerotic interracial bonds exist throughout the cinematic universe inspired by King's narratives; covert same-sex sexual desire is located in a symbolic realm that is diffused through heterosexual coupling. Thus, the "homoerotic implications of the relationship between Red and Andy are neutralized through the cinematic fantasy of Rita Hayworth".

Similarly, in The Greer. Mile , when Coffey cures Edgecomb's urinary infection by squeezing his crotch, any homosex- ual rape inference is deflected when Paul later employs his newfound sexual potency to please his wife "several times" in one night. "The homosocial bond between Coffey and Edgecomb," Nilsen writes, "is a friendship dependent on the necessary sacrifice of the magical Negro so that white masculinity can be sustained, while simultaneously negating homosexual desire".

However, in a parallel scene that occurs later in the film and novel, Wild Bill expresses his sexuality without similar obfuscations, when he strokes Percy Wetmore’s crotch while whispering in his ear that he is soft like a girl and that he wants to fuck his asshole, and later invites him to "suck my dick." Although his real crimes are murder and paedophilia, Wild Bill is a compendium of psychosexual perversions, and King makes it clear that overt homosexuality is among them. Thus, unlike the bond that exists between Red and Andy or Coffey and Edgecomb, where homo- erotic impulses are kept in check by the presence of sexualized cinematic starlets and an erotically responsive wife, respectively, Wild Bill becomes another example of the nexus King forges between out-of-control (homo)sexuality and malefic intent. As with Wild Bill, The Kid (who rapes Trashcan Man) in The Stand, and Sunlight Gardner in The Talisman, many of King's most perverted adult male figures underscore their mental instability and social pathology through an out-of-control homosexual corn- pulsion to rape boys and sexually naïve heterosexual males. Although these figures try hard to disguise their ardent homoeroticism through macho displays of masculine toughness and bravado, eventually their dictatorial violence expresses itself most essentially through their homosexuality. This compulsion, finally, should be viewed not just as an extension of their need to dominate others sexually; it is also a means for King to distance these characters from any degree of reader/viewer sympathy.

DOMESTIC HETEROSEXUALITY

Just as tightly controlled as his efforts to portray homosocial unions that negate or defray erotic desire in order to legitimize de-sexualized same-sex relationships, King shows no inclination to provide a counterbalancing force —examples of homosexuality as a potential alternative to the marital violence and sexual tyranny that the writer frequently associates with heterosexuality. Interestingly, the examples of homosexual rape and hetero-sexual marital sex in King's world are often disturbingly similar. King's gay men typically prey on the weak and vulnerable, take what they need with- out consent, and are concerned with only their own sexual satisfaction. Many of King's husbands share a similar bedroom agenda, particularly those males who populate the writer's "domestic fiction" beginning with Cujo in 1982 and culminating with the 1990s trilogy of patriarchal abuse: Dolores Claiborne, Gerald's Game, and Rose Madder. In all these texts, feminine bondage, as both literal erotic sexual foreplay and as feminist metaphor, is aligned with father-daughter incest, sexual and psychological violence against women, and the financial and cultural domination of women. Susie Bright recognizes and objects to the limits imposed by these gendered constructions when she posits that "King is an architect of female protectionism playing hard and fast under feminist rhetoric. Men exemplified by Daddy and Husband, are pretentious brutes who are impossible to identify with". Although King's intention is to create strong female protagonists who discover their own selfhood by eventually standing up to brutish fathers and husbands, he does so at the expense of men —who emerge as violent caricatures —but also at the expense of all sexual expression.

The important solar eclipse in Dolores Claiborne and Gerald's Game should be read as a metaphor for the condition of being female in a patriarchal culture: cut off, blocked, obscured. The symbolic eclipsing of a woman's life, these two texts suggest, occurs in that period when a man is sexually prominent in it. A female is free only when she acts on Vera's recognition that "sometimes being a bitch is all a woman has to hold on to" and escapes from beneath the sexual shadow cast by a man —be that man her father or her husband. Thus, it is no accident that each of these texts ends with women estranged from any kind of sexual activity, and they certainly want nothing more to do with men, especially in the bedroom. In some fashion, Vera and Dolores marry one another as a natural consequence of two "widowed" women who have "remarried," this time into a relationship based on respect and friendship instead of sex. Though Jessie Burlingame appears attracted to yet another disturbingly familiar lawyer-type, Brandon Milheron, at the end of Gerald's Game, it is also clear that her drawn-out foursome with husband Gerald, Raymond Joubert, and her father Tom Mahout has so scarred Jessie sexually that her libido may be stunted forever. As she concludes in a confessional memoir to her friend Ruth: "[I]f I never go to bed with another man, I will be absolutely delighted". In Gerald's Game and Dolores Claiborne, all of King's female protagonists grow so disillusioned by abusive male sexuality that they retreat into asexual, exclusively female relationships.

Violent sexual predators roam the landscapes of King's universe, and they are invariably male. The figure of the heterosexual serial rapist is a recurring male figure throughout King's film and fictional canons; the prototype is Billy Nolan from Carrie , and his line of primitive descendants includes Steve Kemp and Joe Camber from Cujo, Frank Dodd in The Dead Zone, Buddy Repperton in Christine, the "zookeepers" in The Stand, Henry Bowers in IT, George Stark in The Dark Half, Joe St. George in Dolores Claiborne, Norman Daniels in Rose Madder, Ace Merrill in Stand by Me, The Sisters in The Shawshank Redemption, Wild Bill in The Green Mile, Jim "Zack McCool" Dooley in Lisey's Story, and Jim Pickering in "The Gingerbread Girl." So pervasive are these sexual deviants that one or more of his brethren haunt the perimeters of nearly every King film and fiction; he occupies a central narrative presence in at least half the examples cited above, and he is the violent antagonist against whom King's heroines must struggle.

All of these males bear easily recognizable familiarities: short of temper and intelligence, they cannot separate sexuality from sadism, and they view sexuality solely as a vehicle for controlling and punishing, particularly women and children. In the short story "The Gingerbread Girl," Jim Pickering, who is "not a very nice man", has assembled a home in Florida that is used for the singular purpose of torturing and sexually abusing women, the "nieces" he brings in for his forays into perverted pleasure. When the murder of one these girlfriends is noted by Emily, the protagonist of the story, Pickering provides her with a dose of his charming hospitality: first duct-taping her to a chair, promising to rape her before he kills her, and then assaulting her with a variety of kitchen implements. He has no problem putting this perfect stranger into the role of one of his "nieces," picking up with Emily where he left off after bludgeoning Nicole. In fact, Emily recognizes her bond with his other women victims when she acknowledges herself as "The last niece . . . the one who had survived". Like the archetypical Gothic heroine trapped in the Gothic villain's dungeon, Emily quickly recognizes that Pickering's house structurally serves his homicidal purposes: "The whole house was, including the room from which she had escaped —the room that looked like a kitchen but was actually an operating theatre, complete with easy-clean counters and floors". All of King's villains are reminiscent of classic Hollywood monsters in both their relentless pursuit and the capacity for both receiving and inflicting pain. In his quest to subdue Emily, it is clear that Pickering is motivated by more than just the fear of being caught and punished by the law; like the serial killer who cannot control his compulsion toward mayhem, he has developed an obvious mania for violence against women.

Devoid of tenderness and the capacity to love, these savage boy-men spend their days devising methods of spreading torture and destruction. They are always products of abusive and frequently broken families, and the levels of anger and hostility with which they greet the world reflect the parental legacy of neglect they have inherited. Over the decades, King has written about many unsavoury male characters, but this group represents the "bottom feeders" among them. Alcohol and the incessant urge for vengeance inflame psychopathologies that point the way to rape and sex- ual perversion; in fact, most of these males, if they function at all sexually, require a strong element of violence as erotic foreplay. Consensual sex holds no real attraction for them. More preferable by far are the variant acts outside of procreative intercourse: sodomy, oral, hand jobs, and in the case of Jim "Zack McCool" Dooley in Lisey's Story, meticulous attention to pain: ‘…it was the sound of her screams when Jim Dooley attached her can opener to her left breast like a mechanical leech. She had screamed, and then she had fainted, and then he had slapped her awake to tell her one more thing". Most indicting —unlike King's flawed fathers, those men whose good intentions are always thwarted by the need to feed some personal narcissism, such as Jack Torrance in The Shining , Louis Creed in Pet Sematary, Andy McGee in Firestarter, and Larry McFarland in The Girl Who Loved Tom Gordon —the sexual predators in his work are with- out redeeming values; motivated almost entirely by self-interest and sadomasochistic pleasure, they lack the conflicted natures that inspire reader sympathy and identification with King's equally doomed fathers and husbands.

King "balances" his sexually maladjusted fathers and husbands with idealized figures of perfect husbandry. The moralistic boyfriends and husbands in his narratives —Stu Redman in The Stand , Scott Landon in Lisey's Story, Bill Denbrough in IT, Bill Steiner in Rose Madder, Mike Noonan in Bag of Bones, and Edgar Freemantle in Diana Key —are more than just good; they are chivalric counterpoints to the sexually depraved males who terrify women and children elsewhere in King. Wholly pure in mind and body, these mates prove, however, to be just as unimaginative as King's sexual predators. The latter repulse readers in the wake of their constant brutality, while the New Age perfectionism of their predictable counterparts bore us with their cloying sensitivity. Not coincidentally, perhaps, many of King's New Age males are also famous novelists, and they are married to women who worship their husbands' genius, both in and out of bed. Those few successful marriages that do exist in King's world are so traditional that they are reminiscent of the 195os, King's own childhood reference point. Although King himself grew up the child of a single parent, the domestic idyll of the American nuclear family is clearly what the writer has found in his own marriage and continues to employ as a model for several of his own fictional alter egos. When sexual intimacy occurs in these idealized relationships, however, it is of a highly sentimentalized variety: contact shared between appreciative men and women who neither resent one another nor harbour secret agendas in the bedroom. Consider, for example, this rarefied moment from Rose Madder : "He began kissing her. Five minutes later she did feel close to fainting, half in a dream and half out, excited in a way she had never conceived of, excited in a way that made sense of all the books and stories and movies she hadn't really understood before but had taken on faith, the way a blind person will take on faith a sighted person's statement that the sunset is beautiful".

This response resembles less adult sexuality than the puerile headiness of adolescence, less the sharpened instincts one would expect in a woman emerging from an abusive marriage than the cultivation of childlike innocence. Even after one of these spouses dies, as in Bag of Bones and Lisey's Story, the memory of his or her presence is so strong as to preclude a viable life outside the marriage years after its end. Although the surviving spouse is left young and vital, the loss of an idyllic marriage —and especially the lingering recollection of its sexual aura —makes the remaining spouse reluctant to pursue new, inferior partners. In Lisey's Story, Lisey views herself as the caretaker of her husband's literary and cultural legacy; this becomes her life's work. The novel begins with a sentence that essentially defines her place in the one-sided union: "To the public eye, the spouses of well-known writers are all but invisible, and no one knew it better than Lisey Landon". Never once, however, in the course of this long novel does Lisey resent or struggle against the fact that her life —which continues long after Scott's death —has remained subordinate to her husband's success and fame. "With the curiosity of an archaeologist and the ache of a lover", she immolates herself at the altar of his memory, even as the reader is left questioning the rationale behind such unconditional love. In the end, although Lisey proves far more interesting than the husband she idolizes, she adds to the roman- tic cliche of their marriage in perpetuating the role of the grieving widow. Moreover, while Scott's voice channelling through Lisey permits him a kind of spectral presence throughout this narrative, that voice never once chastises his wife's decision to sacrifice her life in the present in favour of paying homage tohis dead past. Beneath the veneer of Scott's vigilant husbandry, then, lurks the need to maintain his superstar entitlement, even post-mortem.

As a chronicler of postmodern Americana —particularly those elements in American culture that tend to provoke controversy and challenge norms and assumptions —King's attitude toward sexuality is remarkably staid. While highly attuned to the negative abuses that often characterize heterosexual marriages and the worst homoerotic compulsions, the writer is, on the other hand, closed to portraying liberated constructions of either homosexual or heterosexual unions. In fact, despite his occasional romanticized marriage, and that typically between a grieving widow or widower and a dead spouse, King tends most to envision sexuality in Victorian terms: as a vehicle for expressing darker visions of lust, the wellspring of a more thoroughgoing iniquity, with women and young males as the usual targets for such temptation. King's body of work acknowledges that in spite of its various concessions to sexual liberation since the 1960s, American culture still remains deeply conflicted in its attitude toward the subject. Although sexuality is a ubiquitous presence in American life —in advertising, on the streets of our cities, and in an array of video formats that promote its ease of consumption and levels of promiscuity —we are still remarkably terrified of its deviant potency, no closer than were our parents and perhaps even our grandparents to viewing sex as an inclusive, less-than-monumental normative activity. As Bright ponders: "Why is semen —more than blood, pus, and sewage put together —the most grotesque bodily fluid in American literature? The King James Bible seems to be our companion reader to every Stephen King novel".

As is the case for many Americans, sex in Stephen King is either cloyingly romanticized —locked in the domain of rarefied white, bourgeois marriages, such as those found in Bag of Bones and Lisey's Story —or it sinks to the level of vulgar appetite, in the form of brutal male rape assaults, both heterosexual and especially homosexual, and femme fatale duplicity, the latter best exemplified in Christine, Nadine Cross, and Nona. In either case, the subject remains imprisoned in the domain of juvenilia, outside the realm of a mature middle ground. As representation of a Victorian marital ideal or as a specific manifestation of gendered evil, King's attitude toward sexuality is typically to render it functional; sex in his work is never just harmless erotic play or a satisfying extension of adult need and expression. In fact, sex in Stephen King never just is, but instead exists metaphorically, in constant service to the author's larger narrative and moralistic designs.

#stephen king #meta #the stand #the green mile #apt pupil #the shawshank redemption #tony magistrale

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the-finch-address · 4 years ago

Text

Tag: Word Find

Tagged by @sharraus! Thank you!!

tHO isn’t at the stage where I can find half of these words in a comprehensible state since most of it is Draft 1 gibberish. So instead I’m using the opportunity to write something new for each prompt; some being canon from the book and others just standing as an excuse to write the characters interacting. Bc of this the length got a bit......Out Of Hand. Sorry about that. Putting it all under the read more so I don’t bombard anyone’s dashboard

> Prompt: Work [Note; This occurs years before the plot begins]

Vestiel ran his fingers through the grass and picked at early yellow blooms. The harsh clang of metal against wood echoed around him, the sounds of the forest easily lost behind it.

“Can we go home soon?” he whined, “I’m so hungry I could eat a bear.” His bottom lip is brought between his teeth, and he waits. Clang. Clang. Clang. “Please?”

The axe stills. Andi turns, wiping the sweat from his brow while fitting Vestiel with a look. Magpies trill in the wake of his silence, the flutter of fallen leaves following the breeze. Andi straightens his back. “Silas won’t have finished dinner yet, lad, the sun’s still well up the sky.” He answers, looking annoyed, “We’ve plenty of light to finish this up first. Fill the baskets if you’re so restless.”

He reaches for the axe again. The disappointment must have shown on Vestiel’s face, though, since the tool remains lodged, and Andi continues to look distracted. He knew the boy was too young to understand how important this work was, how it kept them warm and fed. He couldn’t blame a child for prioritizing an empty stomach over harsh and thankless labor. Still, that morning’s storm had downed too many trees to not take advantage of. It had to be done.

“Tell you what,” Andi resigns himself, a weary smile lifting his eyes, “I’ll let you do a few strokes, but Vestiel-”

The boy is already up and on his feet, dandelions forgotten in the sunken spots of grass where his legs had crossed, “You mean it?” He brightens, “I can do it all by myself?”

“Listen to me,” Andi lifts a hand, demanding attention, while the other remains on the hilt, “you’ll start with the axe wedged in and bring them down together-” he offers a stern look, “--and I don’t want to hear any complaints. This is your first time, I don’t want you lopping off a toe or, North forbid, a whole foot. You need a feel for the tool before you do anything else.”

Vestiel acknowledges this with a hasty nod, the muttered agreement of “Yeah, yeah, sure” crossing his lips, hand already reaching for the axe.

Andi comes between him with a harsher expression than before, eyebrows raised expectantly. Vestiel lets out a sigh.

“The axe will start in the wood. Got it.” The impatience hasn’t fully left his tone, but it’s an improvement, and Andi appears content by it.

The wood is already a narrowed size when the axe is driven through its flesh. The blade settles halfway down the block and wedges itself firmly along the grain with little resistance, just on the edge of splitting. He brings it to Vestiel, who takes the closer end of the block with his left hand and the hilt with his right.

“Now, you’ll want to bring it down towards the back of the splitting block,” Andi starts, “Make sure you do so with both hands together, or you’ll only-”

Clang. Vestiel opens his eyes, already knowing that Andi is going to ring his neck for having closed them in the first place. All is forgotten at the sight of the severed wood, though, and he can’t help but be excited with the results. It isn’t perfect by any means, but it’s his, and he’s no less proud of it despite his brother's hand-holding. He looks to Andi in hopes of praise.

“Mother’s grief, Vestiel, have some patience!” Is the chastised response he receives instead. “You couldn’t have at least waited for me to finish?”

Vestiel makes a sour face. “I did it fine, didn’t I?” He retorts, “Isn’t that good enough?”

Andi raises a hand, pinching the bridge of his nose, a long and tired breath escaping him. After a minute of patience himself he’s able to give Vestiel the reaction he was looking for. A smile, small but proud. “It’s not bad for your first time,” he says, “but you’re going to need more practice, and patience, than that if you want to hack apart whole trees in a few years.”

He extends a hand to bring Vestiel near, pulling him snug against his side. “You did well.” Andi continues, “but, lad,” his voice lowers to a stern whisper, and

Vestiel pales, “If I ever see your eyes closed with an axe in hand again, you’ll sweep the whole corridor. Twice.”

He swallows harshly and answers only with a nod. The pride blooming in his chest doesn't falter.

> Prompt: Weather

The evening sky flashes white, casting shadows across paintings framed in gold and goblets of silver. Across the room, Caprice of the North hunches over a desk painted in candlelight. He draws a finger across the map in study of its various routes and borders, frowning. Behind him, thunder crashes down. He flinches. Pitiful.

Shaking away the thought, the young deliverer refocuses. His back arches further towards the desk until braided locks of gold spill over onto the wood. Especially now, as he squints in the darkness of his shadow, does he wish this dreaded storm had chosen another night. It brought a miserable chill to his bones despite the grizzly pelt draping heavily over his shoulders and brought an ache to his bones.

Lightning comes again, its brilliant light cutting into the room with the swiftness of a sword’s blow. Capri anticipates it this time. When thunder claps against his window he’s decisively ready for it, his knuckles gone white against clenching fists. He can’t stop their trembling no matter how tightly he’s squeezing.

A knock at the door sends him out of his skin.

Like a sharp wound, the anticipation drives him into a panic. Young flesh grasps aimlessly for a new frame to stretch into, finding nothing but mortal bones. By the time the door swings open he is straightened, remembering a human form, begging the drum within his heart to settle.

Silence greets him. A form approaches from the doorway and draws towards the light, illuminating their features quick enough that Caprice’s hand stills where it rested on the hilt of his sword.

“Dove?” He relaxes and lets himself breathe, forcing air into his lungs with more effort than is needed. “I thought you were with Eivind."

“He was needed elsewhere,” Dove signs. His hands portrayed a sense of disappointment where one couldn’t be seen in his expression, brown eyes seeming indifferent.

Caprice looks away shamefully, “You didn’t have to come,” he says.

“I wanted to.”

His gaze again lifts to meet the other with only a grunt, reluctant to answer in words for fear that his voice might betray him.

Light consumes the room with blinding force and concurrently Caprice’s hand reaches blindly for the edge of the desk to ground himself. It’s silly, he thinks, ruined pride staining his cheeks red. Internally he’s counting the seconds as they go by, steeling himself.

Dove reaches for him--

Capri recoils just as thunder cracks and booms overhead. The approach was too quick, well-meaning as it may have been. Dove understands the reaction. He reads Caprice as well as the noble reads his sign.

The thrashing of rain fills the aching silence and neither of them dares interrupt it. Seconds pass by without distraction until Dove again extends his hand forward. He moves slower than he has to under the young emperor’s weary gaze as though addressing a wounded animal.

When Caprice notices it’s not without backlash. His eyes turn hard, looking fussed. His nails dig into the wood beneath them until angry lines form on the underside of the desk and pain shoots up his fingers.

Dove’s palm settles over his hand, squeezing.

He flinches but can’t bring himself to shake the man away. The silence between them stretches on unbearably after, broken only by the rain. He releases the desk and turns his palm face up, intertwining their fingers wearily. “Thank you.” He whispers.

When the thunder comes this time, he doesn’t flinch.

Prompt: Help

Vestiel’s heartbeat thuds like thunder roaring inside his ears. He stares with too much intent at the earth beneath his worn shoes, doing his best to concentrate on the hole boring over the space near his toes.

Much to his dismay, Fannar-Haise appears to notice.

She carries herself past the snow huts and politely cuts through the crowd, stepping lightly around the fire and between celebrants, their songs alight with a different kind of flame.

Vestiel can’t hear them past his own thoughts. Get out, get out, get out. He forces some semblance of greeting out as she approaches but can’t manage to look her in the eyes. It’s hard most days, but especially now.

“Enjoying the party?” She asks, making no mention of the answer being pretty obvious. The smile on her lips is pitying, judgemental at worst, he just knows it. He can’t bear to lift his chin and see. If Andi were here he could explain himself easily but, as it was, he was going into this situation alone. Completely, utterly alone.

“Yeah,” he lies, “just tired from all the traveling.”

It’s a witless excuse and she knows it. Instead of pointing it out, though, she only offers a shake of her head. There’s a lot to say about communication and Fannar-Haise considers herself an expert on the subject. She watches him fumble about; the trouble in getting his tongue to do its job sticking out to her as sorely as the restless, rhythmic tap of his hand against his hip and the blatant avoidance of eye contact. It answered her question more than his words could, and that was okay.

“You’re overwhelmed,” she nods to herself this time, having seemingly come to a conclusion all on her own, “Let me help. You don’t have to answer with words, a nod will do just fine. Can you walk?”

Vestiel squints at the sole of his shoes, looking confused, then apprehensive, “I’m-”

Silence. No matter how hard he pries, not a single word comes loose from his tongue. The thoughts are there and plentiful, excuses and apologies, maybe something more, fastened tightly like honey coating his throat and hidden away between his ribcage, leaving him breathless and useless.

His chin tilts upward, lips parting, but he can’t manage it. Instead, he allows himself the nod she had been looking for.

“Good. That’s good. We’re going to go somewhere quiet and after that you can tell me what you want to do. Can I touch your hand?”

She patiently waits for the resulting, albeit cautious nod, and takes his hand within her own.

She guides him past the bustling scene like this. As they reach a distance where the noise has muffled he finds it in himself to speak again. It’s slow, at first, allowing his mind time to find the right words. “How did you know?”

Calmly she turns her gaze from the sky, not looking directly at him but rather just past where he stands. There isn’t a soul there when Vestiel follows her gaze over his shoulder, but he’d only half expected one. Andi had learned with time not to stare too long; something told him Haise was just as quick of a learner.

“Call it a hunch,” she hums, “I’ve experienced my fair share of things, Vestiel. This isn’t new or strange, it’s just you.” She pauses to face him, eyes still averted. He returns the favor and looks at her nose like it’s his only salvation, seconded only by the sight of his snow hut in the distance and the soft murmur becoming of the crowd ever fading behind them.

“Besides,” she continues, “these celebrations aren’t a requirement by any standard. They’re here to bring happiness. If something causes you to be unhappy you have no obligation to stay. If you need to step away, I will understand. We will always understand.”

Vestiel doesn’t know what to say when they reach the entrance. Despite her words, he can’t help but feel a wave of guilt wash over him for having both left the celebration early-- a celebration of his arrival, no less--and now, leaving their leader at the door.

She picks up on this, too.

“I’m going to head back to the others for a while longer. You can join us if you’re feeling up to it, or you can stay here and get some rest. Don’t overthink it, okay?”

Her warmth is everything to him, more grounding than a hole in his shoe could ever be. He wants her to know, wants to find the right words to explain how much her actions mean to him, but there isn’t an easy way to go about it without making a greater fool of himself. He answers with a weak smile and a simple, “Okay”, the best he can offer in way of thanks.

She matches his smile and bids him goodnight.

Prompt: Hope

The scent of leather tanning above flame clings to his nostrils. It fills him with a sense of despair unlike any other, weighing different from the miserable few weeks he’d spent mourning Andi, even. Putrid, a nauseating sort of agony like snakes writhing and tearing at his stomach. Burning. Burning. Burning.

The forest was ablaze. That was all he could possibly know, here in the dark. Shadows drove past him in a stampede of bodies carving through the night, survived only by a name and footprints worn into the poaching grounds.

He scares awake. Stars wink faintly above him, hidden behind the morning sun.

“Bad dream?”

Tupelo’s voice startles him a second time from where he lay, their trek up the hill all but forgotten until that point.

Vestiel slowly drags himself into a sitting position with a grunt of effort. Sweat collects at his jaw, cold against his cheeks. He licks his lips and tastes salt.

“A fire, just to the north of here-- tonight maybe--the forest, the people-”

Tupelo tends to the campfire, looking drained. It was suddenly apparent neither of them had slept well. “The forest?” they ask with a shake of their head, “Not to the north, yet.”

“Yet?”

Vestiel draws his shirt away and uses the

bottom corner to dry his face. Goosebumps still clinging to his arms, the memory remaining like a fresh wound.

“You don’t have to believe me,” he says, “I can’t explain it to you and if I do, you’ll just think I’ve gone strange. I’m only asking that you take me north of here.”

He reaches for the map tucked inside his rucksack, spilling a few more items in the process, “It shouldn’t be too far off from where we’re going already. I’ll show you.”

Tupelo is quick to rest their hand against his wrist with a sympathetic, albeit calm look on their face. “We’ll go.” They assure him, pointing to the north. “If it’s important.”

_________________________________

It quickly becomes evident that Tupelo is just as ill-equipped for this kind of travel as Vestiel. For as nimble as they are the hill obviously called for a different kind of strength. The original path would have taken them up and around, but this new direction was a straight shot to the north, uphill for the better half of it.

Tupelo watches Vestiel out of the corner of their eye, checking up on him every now and then as though waiting for Vestiel to change his mind, or hoping he’ll get around to it if they climb for long enough.

However, Vestiel remains steadfast in the endeavor, eyes locked on the horizon. He’s certain of what he saw, having learned to trust the dreams long ago, and he had no plans to stop now. The smell of burning flesh still lingered undeniably.

“We’re almost there.” Tupelo breaks the silence.

“Finally,” he gasps, “I don’t think my legs can go on for much longer.”

He can feel it already. The weight of the earth shifting beneath his feet, a familiar pressure that seeps into his bones, pungent smoldering inside his nostrils once more. “It’s right over here,” he drags himself the last few feet to the summit, “It’s-”

Dead. Every tree, every blade of grass, the entire opposite face of the hill lie dusty and black, an empty expanse of burnt trunks where the forest should have been.

Tupelo comes up beside him.

“What happened here?” Vestiel gasps in disbelief, “I was sure-- my dreams have never lied, not once before. Were we too late?”

“Your soul tells stories, not prophecies.” Tupelo answers, “Father told me you can hear them.”

“Them?”

“The spirits,” they gesture to the barren woods, “they speak because they know you will listen. Come.”

Vestiel follows their lead. Dry grass crunches underfoot as they descend the hill. Patches of green pop up here and there, but aren't constant and don’t compare to the full weight of the forest that should have been in its stead. It’s a sight he feels the need to grieve over as though his own soul were tied to the scorched land. The thought scares him.

Tupelo steps ahead and crouches to their knees, hands smoothing over a ring of stones that would have gone unseen had they not brought attention to it. Wordlessly, they pull the canteen from its strap and let the remainder of its water drip out.

Vestiel inches closer now. He kneels beside the other, “What is it?”

Tupelo sits back on their heels, palms opening to show a young sapling, green and healthy, standing tall, small as it may be. It rests in a forgotten graveyard.

“A tree?” Vestiel reaches for it and thumbs carefully along the juvenile bark. “What is one tree to an empty field?”

Tupelo cradles the sapling fondly. “Hope.”

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I'm tagging @faenova @squid-scribe @zmlorenz @ashen-crest @henrike-does-writing-sometimes and @sharraus (can I tag the tagger? I'm doing it anyway)

Your words are Drenched, Gather, Cradle, and Howl

#finch writes #tHO #vestiel #andi #capri #tupelo #haise #dove #tag game

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