#not out of some moral principle but just out of practicality

[wavesoutbeingtossed]

*

[autolenaphilia]

The anti-kink moral crusade rests on a lot of transmisogynistic assumptions.

Of course it’s no surprise, since it rests on ideas from the moralizing arguments about bdsm made by radfems in the 70s. The only change is that they are being massively hypocritical and inconsistent about which kinks are bad now, as I pointed out before. Now it’s only certain kinks, like consensual non-consent and fauxcest, that are bad because they “fetishize abuse”, and not bdsm as whole, despite that being inarguably true about bdsm.

And that’s purely to broaden the appeal of such arguments, so that even self-described “leatherfags” can moralize about fauxcest. The morals and principles are frankly just “It’s okay if gay men call their boyfriends “daddy”, because I find that hot, but if a trans lesbian couples pretend to be sisters it’s evil.”

And you can’t really appropriate the radfem arguments about kink without taking their transmisogyny onboard, since they stem from the same transmisogynist bio-determinist root ideology. Janice Raymond in The Transsexual Empire explained trans women through a lens of pathological sadomasochism. Years before Blanchard’s autogynephilia concept, radfems have seen transfemininity and kink as the same thing.

The image of the trans woman painted by radfems then and now, is of privileged males appropriating the pain and suffering of real wombyn, and playacting this suffering for their own perverted sexual amusement. And that is the same image painted of trans women with incest and cnc kinks in modern callout posts. They just remove the explicitly terfy language to make it less obvious. Instead of making a mockery of misogyny in general, we are instead accused of mocking the experiences of the survivors of sexual abuse.

And that boils down to the same thing. Survivors of sexual assault are often as a group assumed to be afab. This ties into a specific transmisogynist discourse. It’s one that argues that afab children are more often sexually assaulted, and that trans women are not targeted by sexual violence pre-transition, and comes to the conclusion that this proves that trans women are male socialized and privileged. This is the fairly nasty transmisogynist undercurrent here.

And it’s proven when in discussions about the transmisogyny of callout culture, a common cliché line in response is that “clearly some people’s worst oppression is being told they are freaks for shipping incest.” This treats transfems as ultra-privileged and transmisogyny as not real at all.

Of course in reality, transfems are disproportionate targets of sexual violence even in childhood and pre-transition. And many survivors of childhood abuse have these problematic abuse-fetishizing kinks, and use it to deal with their trauma, including many of the kinky transfems being called out.

And even if no one involved in the sexual roleplay and fiction being criticized have trauma, the trauma of other non-involved people is not a good argument for its destruction. It’s a reasonable demand to ask for triggering material to be tagged properly so you can avoid it, it’s unreasonable to demand it shouldn’t exist.

Yet transfems are expected to accede to the latter demand. And I think this is because of what May Peterson calls transfeminized debt. It’s how we trans women in feminist circles are expected to be perfect women and perfect feminists to be acknowledged as women at all, instead of as monsters to be destroyed. Of course because nobody is perfect, this leads to every trans woman eventually being thought of as a monster.

We are treated as having to pay off the debt of male socialization/privilege to get basic human rights. And this in practice means conceding every disagreement with TME people, and agreeing to every demand they make of us. Or else we get the hot allostatic load treatment.

And that’s why kinky transfems are expected to fulfil the ridiculous demand from certain puritanical TME people that “I’m not involved in your kink, but I have trauma relating to it, so you can’t do it.” And are treated as evil monsters for not fulfilling it. It’s clearly transfeminized debt and transmisogyny, we are treated as privileged perverted monsters, inherently exempt from sexual violence. And that is used to justify sexual harassment, in the form of callout posts for our sex lives.

[brucewaynehater101]

Emperor Obi Wan Tim Kenobi has a different crown from each planet that is under his control, there are historians and fashion designers trying to figure out a singular imperial crown for Tim to wear everywhere in the empire instead of changing his shiny hat all the time in an attempt to be considerate and also because before Tim they were all trying to kill one another for the glory of their respective tyrants and a single crown for the united empire seems like a nice peace symbol. Prior to the C4 interfering, there was definitely a near genocide and all the planets are coexisting peacefully but that's mostly because they're all a little scared of one another and still healing from all the harm they inflicted on one another.

The problem with the singular imperial crown is that more planets keep joining and bring their own shiny hat for the emperor which makes the historians and fashion designers start all over again since it wouldn't be fair for the peace symbol/imperial crown to not include the newbies.

Any time one of the planets has rumblings of a rebellion wanting to overthrow the emperor because he's "soft" and making noise about returning to the bloodshed of the "good old days" they get very quietly nipped in the bud before their emperor gets any idea they existed. Tim has become a good luck charm and symbol of peace in the empire and they don't want to scare him off.

The lack of rebellions and general acceptance of his rule is, however, actually making Tim more paranoid rather than more comfortable. After all, he's used to Earth.

Earth is fucked, so I don't blame Tim at all. I wonder if Tim is scared that these planets are trying to hide their horrible history (as some powerful nations on Earth try to do with their actions).

Imma call Tim's hero name as Patron for this AU (feel free to hc a different one). Anyways, Patron is trying to find out what shit his newly acquired planets have done in the past, what sort of shit they may or may not be hiding, why absolutely no one is against his rule, and why there's been no rebellion. It's practically unheard of (especially on a human standard where some people disagree seemingly on principle) that there would be no dissent.

Is Tim helping them? Yes. Was he given the power instead of him taking it? Yes. Yet, there's also the fact that he's human. He (at the beginning) has no information on the culture, values, morals, traditions, etc. He doesn't know what's important to them. How can he thus lead them?

(Slight debate on the "lead" portion since he seems to be guiding them to self-sustainability rather than control them)

But you are absolutely correct that the zero dissent would freak Tim out. It should.

The idea about the crowns is adorable, though. I've got a somewhat simple idea for them, though. What if he had an elegant and simple design of some type of metal twisted on his head? Then, as decorations, little spheres of each planet is added. Whatever the planet looks like, it's added to the crown when Tim gains it. Just miniature planets that can easily be added or taken away based on how his empire changes over time.

It sadly doesn't have as strong of a tie as incorporating the essence of the planet into his crown, but it does allow each planet to be proudly displayed.

[artbyblastweave]

As a game mechanic, Karma was disadvantageous because it injected obtrusive level of awareness of authorial intent into every situation that raised or lowered your Karma (and in doing so frequently demonstrated deranged moral reasoning in how the points are allocated.) In New Vegas specifically, though, I found Karma advantageous in conjunction with the reputation system, because it tracks your character’s long-term behavior on an axis that the reputation system isn’t measuring. “Principled Person Despised by Authority” and “Omnimalevolent Weasel with A Great Eye For PR” are both well-worn archetypes that a dual Karma/Reputation system is able to model to some extent. It also provides another fun axis on which to engage with your companions- Boone leaves you if you piss off the NCR, Veronica leaves if you piss off the Brotherhood, but Cass leaves if you're just generally, generically a shithead- which is an incomplete venn diagram with those other two, and the contrast can serve as an interesting characterization vehicle IMO.

There are ways in which the affinity system in Fallout 4 was a step forward, primarily in how it lanced the obtrusive authorial judgements and more-or-less coherently tied it into the values of whichever companion you're currently travelling with. It also smoothly got around one failure mode of New Vegas- the incredibly specific, poorly telegraphed and thus frequently inorganic sequence in which you had to bring followers to places in order to trigger their affinity points. However, I've always had the vibe that the intended dynamic for Fallout 4 was that you'd pick and stick with a companion that would mesh with your intended playstyle- but I get the impression that what happens in practice is that players instead alter their playstyle for as long as it takes to juice up each companion's affinity meter, which can result in some pretty wild behavioral swings that you have to put some legwork into justifying from a roleplay perspective. And this compounds with the fact that the game isn't really tracking much else about who you are as a person. Your special stats are way less rigid. Nuanced faction reputation is out the window because factions themselves are sort of sidelined as a relevant mechanic outside the big four, and with the big four it's kinda all-or-nothing as to whether you're in their good books. Side quests tend to be fairly siloed in their impact, and Karma's gone. My decision to open fire on a population center, or lack thereof, feels more acknowledged in New Vegas than in 4. I guess If I were made Fallout Czar I'd probably do a tripartite system- Companion Affinity AND the New Vegas 4x4 faction reputation system AND some re-implementation of Karma, or some analogous system of tracking in which direction you break when asked to make a decision. Deontological vs. Utilitarian. Authoritarian vs Libertarian. Practical vs. Sadistic. Track everything. Break out the quadrants. Make the engine weep blood

[thatscarletflycatcher]

There's something that has been gnawing at me since I saw some comments on the look-how-they-massacred-them poll for Daniel Sousa -with which I didn't want to engage then and there because I really didn't want to pick up a fight with another Daniel fan, there's few enough of us, but also because the argument was very difficult to articulate.

It is difficult to explain how Daniel Sousa is screwed over by Endgame without making it look like either "he deserved Peggy as a prize" or "he was the perfect prize for Peggy", because it all begins by understanding the experience of WWII and the building of the morale of WWII. Something that Markus and McFeely seemed to perfectly understand in Agent Carter, which inclines me to believe it was specific insistence of the Russos, whose concept of narrative and storytelling is at the level of a belligerent and not very bright 4 year old, that gave us that mindblowingly stupid "happy ending" for Cap and Peggy. Or maybe Markus and McFeely are just arcane creatures, at times intelligent and at times really dumb. Anyways.

Point is that both CATFA and Agent Carter understand that for these characters, fighting WWII is a matter of "each doing their bit", of, as Steve put it in The Avengers, to lay on the barbed wire so the one that comes after you can pass on. And in the process of doing that, you have great loses and suffer great grief. The price of war is immense, and for these people the price of war is the price of freedom (yes, that celebrated Steve speech from CATWS is also sharing in that same spirit. It's kind of impressive how until that awful mess of Endgame, the perspective of Steve as a character from movie to movie is one that addresses how some 1940s things are outdated, but how many others are still relevant and inspiring. It is a surprisingly nuanced take on History, that of course the Russo "Cap is an outdated relic that belongs in the past and should stay there" brothers don't seem to have what's needed to grasp).

In that context, the most coherent tone for Steggy is tragedy. Because that is what happened to many, many, many people during the war. You meet, you fall in love fast, because there is no time. And then suddenly the other is gone, never to come back. And all the promises of youth and life and future the other person represented, are gone with them. People who lived through 2020-2022 have some idea of what it is like for projects, opportunities, and years of your life to just vanish. Now you make that five years, eight months, and to mention "just" the British, 1 out every 100 people live in 1939, dead, and over 350.000 permanently disabled. If you were 20 in 1939, your life would be practically on hold till you were 26. It's a whole lot of grief, and an intense grief, that you don't solve the way you solve a random missing connection in a romcom like Serendipity or The Lake House. Doing so is cheapening and bastardizing the grief and trauma of a whole generation of people in different countries.

So, Agent Carter. Here we have a story focused on a group of people, spies, who, in different fronts and with different outcomes, made it through the war and are now facing this new world they are living in, and all the grief of their respective losses. The focus of the story is Peggy, a woman who, like many others, was allowed a wide range of action during the war, and is now subconsiously perceived as a threat by many of her male coworkers. It's a desperate bid to "go back to the way things were before", and her presence is a constant reminder that they can't.

Sousa occupies a very similar position to Peggy's: he's also a reminder that the war happened and that there is no way back, no magic solution, no pretending. And that's why both are ignored, and displaced, and why both struggle to prove themselves in a subconscious way while living by the continued principle that they are doing their bit. That is their lifeline that keeps them sane and working all throughout s1 of Agent Carter.

That's what we mean when we say Peggy and Sousa are equals, and that Sousa is contented with letting her have the spot; not because he's her inferior or her dependant, but because he's her equal -in intelligence, in ideals, in resourcefulness, in loyalty, but also in their relative positions in the power ladder- and does not feel threatened by her because of it.

(It is in this context, btw, that Peggy's rebuke of Daniel's "rescue" of her in the first episode must be understood. Because she was once treated like any other officer/agent of her same rank, she has knee jerk reactions to both being demeaned and being protected. It's also an important theme of that beginning of the series that Peggy needs to learn to let her friends in, and that she needs their help, and that that doesn't make her too weak to protect and defend them.)

But also, in another way, when we talk about Sousa becoming Peggy's husband, it has to do with the sentiment Krezminsky expresses in the series:

The ship of Steggy had sailed and was gone forever since the moment Steve became the legend in the ice and Peggy "Cap's Girl", this embodiment of the ridiculous damsel in distress we hear in the radio drama that plays on one of the episodes: Peggy fell in love with Steve when he was a scrawny, sickly lad, because she loved the man he was inside, but now forever for the world she is just another superficial, weak girl lusting after the handsome godlike rescuer, the picture of the eugenic dream of the übermensch. In Daniel Peggy loves and finds all the same things she found and loved in Steve, but in a different light, because Sousa is a different person, with a different life story, plus something else: they have both gone through war and its loss and grief, and come to the other side in need of rebuilding and finding new meaning in life and hope for the future.

In a world where the Dark, Tall and Handsome Hero of the Six Pack, Alpha Dominance and Endless Stamina reigns supreme, Sousa as a love interest is a remarkable and -sadly- bold statement about the things that truly matter in finding one's life partner.

So I think here is a reasonable point to start talking about Sousa in Agents of SHIELD. Because here's where someone would rationally say "well, but you see, there he's also chosen as a love interest!", and the reasons why context in AoS changes everything are multiple, so let's go there.

But before that, let me make clear that I do wholeheartedly believe the writers of AoS meant to honor Sousa, and sincerely tried to do their best with what they were given. That doesn't change what the end product ended up doing and saying about him.

Like Peggy is the main character of Agent Carter, so Daisy is the main character of Agents of SHIELD. As much as you can say all the team characters are important and get the focus, Daisy is the one which the narrative insists on making the focal point, as the arcs of several seasons hinge on her, and we are expected to sympathize with her first and foremost in any situation in which she is personally involved. But unlike Peggy, Daisy is a superpowered individual. She's more like Steve than Peggy; she's practically a demigod. She is capable of ripping Earth apart with just her hands. Where Peggy and Sousa were equals in the power ladder in-universe, in AoS the distance between Daisy and Sousa is abysmal. That imbalance is the first thing that leads to Sousa being put in the position of Daisy's Boy. The fact that he ends up in space with Daisy's last minute sister who is ALSO an inhuman does not help things.

As a side note, there's something to be said about futuristic prosthetics in AoS and how they interesect with disability. But I'd rather not get into it because it is a thorny subject and I don't feel qualified to speak of it.

In a different way, Daniel being Peggy's love interest in Agent Carter is balanced out by his having a life of his own and many interactions with other characters throughout the series. He pursues his own lines of investigation, he conducts interrogations of his own, he comes up with plans, he teams up with Krezminsky and with Thompson and in s2 he has downright made a life for himself as chief in California with a fiancé and all. There is a clear sense that he exists as a character outside of pining for Peggy.

In AoS, the opposite happens. Part of it is owed to the writers writing themselves into a corner: to take Sousa out of his timeline, they have to do it in such a way that his disappearance is inconspicuous, which means killing him. They do it the best way they can think of, honoring his alertness and intelligence, by making him realize HYDRA is infiltrated in SHIELD decades before anyone else does. But as a consequence, Sousa becomes the man out of time: there's no future for him, because he has died, and unlike Steve, he's not being brought back because he himself is required. They just save him because they take pity on him and the tragedy of his life. So he has no mission and no significant previous connection with anyone on the team. One of the concrete things in which this is evidenced the most is with the switch from being addressed as chief Sousa to Agent Sousa. He was chief, but between that SHIELD and this SHIELD there's not such a connection by which he can claim that title. There's no subordinates to manage. So he's sort of default-called agent without really being a proper agent.

So the writers choose the fish-out-of-water concept for him. Which is far fetched. This guy lived through wwii in a high spy setting where intelligence has knowledge of powerful interstellar aliens. He's most definitely not bewildered by phone cameras, guys. He would quickly adapt... if, again, you know, he was brought back for a mission. But the reality is that from a Doylist POV, he was brought in to be Daisy's love interest, and the only thing he can offer to her, in this huge power imbalance I have pointed out, is chivalrous manners and quaint WWII style references like when he tells her "Agent Johnson, we are going home"; both can be very charming to a modern woman, but they are things that highlight the cultural and psychological distances that separate them, and make it glaringly obvious that they have barely anything in common.

The series tries desperately to give them common ground in the time-loop episode, with this idea that Daisy is like Peggy because she sacrifices herself for others and to protect others all the time. Which is laughable because, again, in Daisy's condition of beloved main character that embodies the tortured, quasi byronic heroine that we understand to be the hallmark of about one half of the contemporary superhero type, the narrative and the characters in it bend all sorts of ways to accommodate her, not the other way around. Peggy's type is different because it is rooted in that WWII morale/frame I was talking about at the beginning of the post.

As a consequence of all of this, Sousa barely interacts with anyone that isn't Daisy (he has of personal scenes, what? one or two with Coulson, the scene where Jemma gives him a new prosthetic, and then he's given an idea to give to Mac in the finale. I don't remember any other non-Daisy ones), has no unique role to fulfill in the mission (specially because so much of the plan is entwined in Fitz and Jemma's rescue plan that was NOT counting with Sousa) and no personal goal to achieve, which weakens his standing as a character outside the romance plot, and when it comes to the romance plot, he has nothing in common with Daisy, and he brings nothing to the partnership other than... narratively forced love, and chivalrousness.

In the end, Daniel, who was a character and a person of relevance in Agent Carter, is nerfed and turned into a prop for the rushed happily ever after of the main character of AoS. And that, in my books, is being screwed over. That's what makes his becoming Peggy's husband and building a life and a future with her a much better and more preferable outcome for Daniel; he gets to build a life of meaning by his own significant work and significant connections, in his own time and place, with a wife who is his equal and with other people that have lived through the same collective experiences of trauma and grief he did.

[film-in-my-soul]

Think of the Children, Bucky Barnes | 1,214 | RainyForecast

Summary: Clint Barton, Bucky Barnes decided, was on his shit list. Officially. And seeing as he was currently dressed as Santa Claus, the threat should carry some symbolic heft.

undersell, overcommit | 10,222 | silentwalrust

Summary: Steve goes so hard for Bucky that he becomes a licensed, practicing massage therapist.

Glitter in the Air | 11,625 | BonkyBornes / @padfoot-and-the-marauders

Summary: James was standing when Steve turned around. His backpack hung from his left shoulder. Somehow, he’d managed to buckle the strap across his chest. He looked at Steve, his gaze simultaneously expectant and far away. Guarded. Waiting. For what, Steve didn’t think he wanted to know. “Are you in trouble?” Steve asked again. His voice was quiet, barely there. “No.” Steve looked at him. At the dark bags beneath his eyes, at his dirty hair, the sweatshirt he’d been wearing since Steve had first seen him. There was a hole in the left cuff. It was none of his business. “Is there anyone I can call for you? Is anyone looking for you? There are phones you can use.” “No. I’m—” He stopped and looked at the door. His eyebrows furrowed. “I’m looking.” “Looking for what?” If Steve could help in any way, he would. James looked at him again. It was the first time he’d fully met Steve’s gaze. “Myself.”

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I [Heart] You | 1,138 | writeonclara / @writeonclara

Summary: “Steve’s been hit with a curse,” Natasha said. She said it calmly, so Bucky didn’t immediately go flying out of the apartment to tear apart the Tower in search of Steve. Then again, Natasha would probably be calm if New York City spontaneously burst into flames. He lowered the coffee pot and squinted at her. “Of course he has,” he said. He felt, abruptly, exhausted. “What is it?” “The witch kept ranting about sexual repression and archaic moral principles,” she continued blithely. “It’s not like you to prevaricate, Romanov.” Natasha pressed her lips together. For a moment, Bucky thought she might start laughing. “It might be easier just to show you.”

Small Truths | 1,311 | crackdkettle / @crackdkettle

Summary: Five times Steve shrank and one time he didn't change back.

Van Goghing Slightly Mad | 1,541 | Xanoka / @adventures-in-mangaland

Summary: Damage control. Now would be the perfect time for damage control. “I’m sorry for calling your painting porn!” Well shit. Bucky is a Security Guard at a fancy art gallery and is absolutely not crushing on the Tiny Blonde Guy who frequents the Modern Art section. Nope. Not at all.

unlocking | 2,636 | glim

Summary: Written for Shrinkyclinks Fest for the prompt: Winter Soldier Bucky is recovering and trying to learn about/integrate into society. So, to kill two birds with one stone, he goes to the library. Steve is the librarian in charge of the history section.

Winter, New York City | 3,688 | unicornpoe

Summary: Between the rough sheets stretched rumpled across the bed, two boys curl like a set of parentheses around each other and their breaths mingle arhythmically in that dark place behind Bucky’s eyelids. It’s still night until he looks; it’s still night, and he doesn’t have to move. But then: a shift, Steve’s head rolling a little where it rests on Bucky’s chest, soft-fine hair rasping against Bucky’s collar bone. A quiet, wet cough. And Bucky opens his eyes.

Love in an Elevator | 3,785 | leveragehunters (Monkeygreen) / @leveragehunters

Summary: Bucky wanted M&Ms. Steve just wanted to go home. Neither wanted to get stuck in an elevator. (Warning: may contain traces of peanuts, banter, and some fluff.)

The Bucky Barnes Guide to Household Management | 5,506 | CryptoHomoRocker / @feelingsaboutgaysuperheroest

Summary: "Steve doesn't even notice at first, is the thing." Or: Steve is unobservant, Bucky learns to be good at things that aren't killing people, and knitting happens.

Stitch Me Up Right | 5,954 | sirsable

Summary: The Avengers have a new fashion designer and suddenly Bucky has a lot of problems with his suit.

Nailed to the Wall | 645 | Catchclaw

Summary: “Shhhh,” Bucky says for the dozenth time. “If you’re that afraid of getting caught, you should probably keep your mouth shut, huh?”

Snap Him Up | 647 | Catchclaw

Summary: “Rogers, those do nothing for you.”

You're Back | 779 | Catchclaw

Summary: He dreams that he’s spread on Bucky’s fingers. Not the blood and bone ones. The metal ones; the cold, killing kind.

Mistake on the Part of Nature | 1,274 | idiopathicsmile / @idiopathicsmile

Summary: Steve takes in Bucky's betrayed look and Sam's confusion, follows Sam's gaze to the pile of mangled fruit in the trash can. Sudden comprehension fills his face. "Oh," he says. "Bucky found out about bananas."

Resist / Delay / Obstruct | 1,321 | ladivvinatravestia / @ladivvinatravvestia

Summary: Who uses their mug shot as their dating profile pic? Steve Rogers, that’s who.

then we shall need each other | 1,425 | tsunderestorm / @tsunderestorming

Summary: In which Bucky returns to Steve, just not in the way he'd expected.

Phases of the Moon | 2,359 | Catchclaw

Summary: It’s not so much that Steve Rogers is a virgin, it’s that he’s a virgin.

They Say That Time's Supposed to Heal You | 4,939 | untune_the_sky

Summary: The thing they don’t tell you, don’t warn you about, when you make that first connection – when you feel somebody else’s breath in your lungs for the first time – is that it fucking hurts when that’s gone. They don’t warn you, because it’s a difficult thing to comprehend; it’s a difficult thing to understand.

One-Armed Pushups | 5,033 | k8erwaul

Summary: Saw one of those "AU prompt" posts on tumblr and this one stuck out to me as perfectly appropriate for Stucky: “i came to the gym to work out but holy god i can’t stop watching you do one armed push ups that’s so hot” AU

Just let me (kill) love you | 5,041 | Chim / @chim-aceyliz

Summary: The Winter Soldier has a mission: killing Steven Grant Rogers. Too bad the whole universe is getting in his way.

"Lunch" | 5,140 | cleo4u2 / @cleo4u2 & xantissa / @xantissa

Summary: Bucky Barnes, the feared Winter Soldier, is working hard at becoming a person again. He doesn't understand a lot of the modern world, yet, but he Avengers help him with that when they can. They don't always get it right.

Something Fishy | 5,254 | leveragehunters (Monkeygreen) / @leveragehunters

Summary: Steve meets Bucky. Bucky meets Steve. Some things are meant to be. But even when something's meant to be, you might need to work a little to make it happen. (And that's made a tiny bit harder when your universe, out of all the infinite multiverse, managed to get things so completely mixed-up.)

When You Come Home | 5,978 | unicornpoe

Summary: “Nice to meet you, Bucky,” says Steve. He lets go of Bucky’s hand, and it doesn’t feel like a retreat, but it does feel like a promise: like the end of a sentence left uncapped, hanging there for one of them to finish later. There’s a cold wind blowing, but Bucky feels warm. “Please don’t try to come in here,” Bucky says. “There are alien corpses. It’s really gross, and really dangerous.” “Alright,” Steve says, and he’s not quite laughing aloud, but one lingers in the corners of his smile, in the way his blue eyes brighten.

special delivery | 6,049 | glim

Summary: It's not that Steve's bad at taking care of himself when he gets sick; he just wishes he didn't have to all the time. At least he can order most of what he needs online. That's some small comfort, that he can have soup and ice cream and everything else brought to his door.

asthma attacks, fire escapes, and chai | 6,657 | beemotionpicture / @beemotionpicture

Summary: It happens because of his asthma of all things. As soon as he feels short of breath he starts rooting through his messenger bag for his inhaler. Steve has a moment to think aha! and then fuck, before he's losing his grip on the thing and it’s skidding across the pavement and into an alleyway. He freezes when he realizes he’s not alone. Steve hears a muffled sound coming from behind the dumpster, but that’s not what makes him look; no, it’s the metallic scent in the air which, with a creeping feeling of dread, he hopes isn’t blood. He looks. It’s blood. And there’s a man sitting right in a puddle of it, leaning heavily against the brick wall and clutching his side with a metal hand.

re(dis)covery | 7,024 | glim

Summary: Wherein Bucky Barnes, SHIELD operative, discovers he has feelings for the nurse down in medbay and rediscovers a few more things about himself along the way.

Blind Date | 8,294 | AggressiveWhenStartled & quietnight / @quietnighty

Summary: “I just had the best idea I have ever had in my life,” Bucky said, punching straight through a doombot with his metal hand and clutching the napkin with Steve’s phone number in the other. The formerly (somewhat) dark and peaceful corner of Central Park was now lit up with energy beams, flashing robotic lights, and panicked astronomy buffs running for cover. Oh well, it wasn't like they'd been going to see many stars what with all the Christmas shit everywhere. “The bar you are setting for that is not high,” Natasha told him over the coms.

Brooklyn | 8,749 | togina / @toli-a

Summary: "Captain America, what's your stance on gay marriage?" Everyone knows that, by now. Everyone but Bucky.

Here comes the feeling you thought you'd forgotten | 8,946 | bangyababy / @bangyababy

Summary: So he eats his cake and sips his coffee, occasionally glancing up from his phone to Steve. If Steve sees him he’ll give him a little smile, which he tries to return, but judging from the look on Steve’s face, it’s probably not working. Still, Steve doesn’t stop smiling at him. It makes him feel almost…real. Today, he thinks, he can be James. Recently escaped from Hydra, the Winter Soldier stumbles into a bakery where he meets the worker, Steve. Being around Steve helps him remember things about his past, makes him feel a little more like a person, so he keeps coming back.

The Long Road to Lynbrook | 9,306 | monicawoe / @monicawoe

Summary: Six years ago, Bucky left the hamlet of Lynbrook to battle against the Knights of Hydra. Steve has missed him ever since, and refuses to believe he's dead. One night, Steve finds a frog at the well— a frog with one metal arm.

Breadth Requirements | 9,438 | SkyisGray / @skyisgray

Summary: Steve's never met his Psych TA in person, but he's a little obsessed with their snarky, flirty email conversations. Steve's never made any headway with the hot guy who sits in front of him in Psych, but he's a little obsessed with his mouth.

if you keep reaching out (then i'll keep coming back) | 10,517 | unicornpoe

Summary: “Do you mind if I work a little, Bucky?” He says Bucky’s name as often as Bucky says Steve’s, like maybe he likes the feel of it, the music of it—like maybe it’s at the top of his list, too. He’s using strong-looking hands to pick up the satchel he’d been carrying when he came over, lifting it up and sitting it on his lap. “I’m an artist, and I’ve got a couple commissions I hafta finish up here soon.” Artist. Of course he is. “I don’t mind,” Bucky says. He doesn’t. He likes the idea of sitting across from Steve while he works, sipping his coffee, finishing the book he was reading, and maybe looking up and meeting Steve’s eyes every now and again. His shock-blue eyes. His eyes framed with golden lashes, like seagrass. The Winter Soldier, and a man made of spun-strong gold.

Wrap Battle | 10,604 | GoodbyeBlues

Summary: "Hey, fuckface!" Steve called out after him. "What name do I put on the order?" The man stopped short, turning and looking at Steve from under a cocked brow. "Do you talk to all of your customers this way?" "Yes," Steve nodded. It was the truth. The man grinned, his straight white teeth flashing and the creases framing his eyes deepening with the motion as he continued to gaze unflinchingly at Steve. "You can call me Bucky."

Nokken Wood | 10,616 | leveragehunters (Monkeygreen) / @leveragehunters

Summary: When Sam's friend needs a house-sitter for his place in the country, Steve jumps at the chance. Six months rent-free to do nothing but draw and paint and wander the countryside, looking for inspiration? It was like a dream. But when he gets lost in a storm and nearly falls into a pond he starts to rethink the whole like a dream aspect of life in the country. And when a red-eyed, sharp-clawed, silver-fanged creature rises out of the darkness, Steve is one hundred percent certain the dream's morphed into a nightmare. ...until it gives him a cup of tea.

miles to go before i sleep | 11,910 | Avelera / @avelera

Summary: Steve finds Bucky outside of the Smithsonian and invites him home.

Under the Skin | 18,447 | leveragehunters (Monkeygreen) / @leveragehunters

Summary: "Brooklyn, like I said," he replied, taking Steve's hand and shaking it, then he paused, tilted his head, and said, "Actually, since you're staff? It's Bucky." "Bucky," Steve repeated, feeling oddly touched. "Always Brooklyn in front of the clients, though," he added seriously. "No, of course," Steve promised. "Good to meet you." "You too," he said, glancing down to where Steve was still holding his hand. Steve let go with a sheepish smile. "Sorry." Working in a brothel wasn't somewhere Steve ever expected to find himself, but then he'd never expected to quit his shitty corporate hell-job to apprentice as a tattoo artist. Great as it was, his apprenticeship didn't come with a pay cheque, so eating and keeping a roof over his head meant finding a job that paid actual money. Which was how he'd ended up as the night receptionist in a brothel, accidentally holding Bucky's hand, with no idea Bucky was going to turn out to be something else he'd never expected.

Decoys | 19,540 | littlerhymes / @popliar

Summary: The serum makes Steve stronger, but not bigger. Instead of a superhero, he becomes a spy.

Something New, Something Gold | 20,385 | Nonymos

Summary: Bucky Barnes, retired black-ops operative and Archeology professor, spends a long weekend in the Brazilian rainforest toying with his own mortality and puzzling over the mystery of Steve Rogers. (Also, like, the lost city of El Dorado. But seriously, Steve Rogers.)

The Day the World Went Away | 21,323 | 74days / @74days

Summary: Bucky Barnes has survived the Virus that devastated the world, leaving him road-tripping over America dodging violent gangs and trying to get through another year. When he manages to find a radio station still broadcasting, he's not aware that the voice on the other side of the country will soon become the driving force behind his actions.

This Side | 35,321 | orphan_account

Summary: Bucky Barnes restores antiques for a living. Steve Rogers saves the world. Bucky has no reason to believe their paths will ever cross, right up until they do.

Graphology | 55,177 | leveragehunters (Monkeygreen) / @leveragehunters

Summary: "Steven Grant Rogers," a voice said from somewhere near Steve's front door. "Professional inker. Maybe you'd like to explain why you're leaving us messages about our good friend Bucky?" The redhead currently pinning Steve to the couch said, "Really?" "Alright, her good friend Bucky. My tolerated friend Bucky." "My phone's on the table," Steve ground out. "Grab it, have a look at the last picture." The guy grabbed it, and his obvious double-take would have been funny if Steve wasn't being crushed into his couch. He held it out and the redhead peered at it. "It could be fake." "That's right," Steve said, digging down for all the sarcasm that existed in his skinny body. "I scribbled all over my own thighs and took a photo so I could lure a pair of hostile weirdos to my apartment. That's how I enjoy spending my time." "You know what this means, right?" the guy said, sounding deeply bemused. "Bucky has a soulmate.

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[kuwanxs]

The two faced spectre and his poor guise of duplicity

jujutsu kaisen as a manga is very carefully curated to lay some of the key themes out. For characters like Gojo, and Geto, it takes a painstaking amount of care to carefully lay out the intricate details and nuances of both their characters and their relationships and the inherent symbolism in it. Something as such would convince you that Jujutsu kaisen is very generous with its explanation of themes to its readers. However, I think this act of laying bare the key details is what really tricks the readers and convinces them into believing Sukuna is a standard, evil character. With no real motives or purpose, just simple need for violence.

Sukuna’s curation, by far, consists of the most intricately picked out details that intentionally create a barrier between him, the reader and the characters he interacts with. He belongs to an ancient era, much of what he speaks is often lost in translation to the sorcerers and curses of the current era. You may find a lot of Japanese speakers/readers break down multiple panels of Sukuna’s speech bubbles and more often than not, his speech bubbles dissect to give us a deeper, more complex dialogue which neither the reader nor the listening character will grasp at first. This barrier of language is intentional to create an air of mystery and confusion on both ends, it tricks the readers and the characters in verse into believing Sukuna as a being is shallow enough to simply fight for the hell of it.

A very essential part of Sukuna’s character is his curiosity. He is curious, at his very core. He is curious to test someone’s limits, to see how far can someone really go, how far can they be pushed? He is curious about human food (cue to him trying and disliking popcorn) His curiosity is a very significant cause that steers him into battles. He treats every opponent differently, he praises some, he belittles some, he encourages some. It’s his way of understanding and testing the true limits of his opponents. He praises Jogo, Kashimo, he asks Higuruma to heal himself, he acknowledges Gojo when the narrative itself brushes past his death. His candidness in every character interaction during a battle is what makes him raw and hard to stomach beyond the surface level.

Sukuna is both similar to, and different than gojo. In a way they're perfect anti parallels to one another. In their shared loneliness and dehumanisation, they find a common ground. Yet it is also what differentiates them. Gojo's isolation renders him impenetrable by those around him, so he becomes a pillar that ensures the security of the jujutsu society, despite acknowledging its flaws, his existence on the mounted platform makes him shoulder the burden of being a beacon that needs to guide his students in order to bring about a change. However, Sukuna's loneliness is a trait that had been engraved into his being from his time in the womb itself as a taboo child. So his isolation as the strongest only strengthens his beliefs of living as he chooses to. Which is why there is a stark contrast in the two panels between Gojo and Sukuna wherein both are titled as the honoured ones.

Sukuna is a very refined character. He recites haiku in midst of his battles, he knows poetry, he knows the language of flowers and knows archery. He praises the moon during his fight with Jogo whilst simultaneously belittling him.

Sukuna’s character often comes with an air of duplicity. It’s not greatly intended on his part but rather something that is reinforced by Gege. Its a very funny way to trick your readers into doing their homework for their characters.

He is a man rooted to his principles and beliefs, a lot of his practices reflect the traditions of his time. But him being grounded to his principles doesn’t really equate to him being moral. He lives the way he wishes to, he fights and destroys and pushes everyone to their limits, his beliefs are limited but stay unshaken.

For a character like Sukuna, who is a product of neglect, and someone who’s very existence is reduced to a title alone, his isolation from human sentiments is very understandable. He was a taboo child, someone who’s very existence stems from negativity cannot understand the concept of “love” so he rejects Yorozu. Sukuna is a character who was robbed off the very chance to be human, he lived and died as the “two faced spectre,” and the effect of this dehumanisation reflects itself in the final chapter. He dies in Yuji’s hands calling himself a “curse,” yet when confronted by Mahito he expresses his true feelings of both fear and regret.

His confrontation with Mahito was extremely fitting for his character because throughout the story, Sukuna, sticking to his beliefs, lives the way he wishes to. He partakes in all heinous acts and stoops low enough to deceive and kill when necessary. When he fights Yorozu, in megumi’s body, he tells her she can do anything she wishes to if she defeats him upon being questioned for marriage. This really grounds Sukuna’s belief of loss and defeat to be equivalent to death itself. He cares not for what Yorozu does to him if he is defeated because a defeat to him, is shameful enough to be considered death itself.

Which is why the only time he directly confronts Mahito, and through him the very narrative itself, is after his defeat. He loses so he finally let’s go of his arrogance. And we find out who Sukuna really has been all along.

[m4rdb]

An insight into the characters based on their approach to the “Allie problem”

If good writing means that every scene has the potential to say something about a character at their core, then the girls' attitude towards the "Allie problem" is an interesting example.

Taissa

The one who comes up with the very plan. This establishes her as ambitious and extremely rational, but it’s the type of rationality that without grounded moral principles could degenerate into violence and cruelty at any time. It’s what we see with adult Misty and Walter, who are both so practical-minded that resorting to murder is nothing more than a smart option to choose to them.

Like Jackie says, Taissa has so much fight in her. The way she handles the Allie situation shows that if she has a goal, she’ll do whatever she finds necessary to obtain it.

How does that translate into their time in the wilderness?

Taissa’s the first to make the call that they should leave the plane and find water. She’s the one who sleeps in the attic when everyone else wouldn’t, she’s the only one who tries to tell Jackie she shouldn’t leave. And in season two, she’s the one who says, “We need to find a way to stay alive, and it can’t be her [: Lottie]”.

Then we see them drawing cards. We’re not shown how they get to that very decision exactly, but it’s important that we know that the two things are tied. The hunt that follows, their first conscious hunt (let’s not forget about Travis), wasn’t supposed to happen—it’s rather the consequence of the designed sacrifice refusing to take on the role.

Though there’s an obvious religious aspect to it, drawing cards isn’t just letting fate/the wilderness decide in their place so that they don’t blame themselves. It’s also the girls’ attempt to give the ritual some semblance of logic and structure—on a normal day, they would draw cards to decide who gets which task. They’re using the same mechanism, except that they’re now deciding who should die and get eaten. And it starts with Taissa’s very rational and straightforward remark about needing to survive.

Natalie

She openly and passionately goes against Taissa’s plan. Despite being presented as the outsider who doesn’t really engage with the team and disregards rules by smoking and doing drugs, she’s the one who fights to play fairly. She most likely doesn’t care about Allie personally, but she’s a teammate, and they should treat her as such.

While Tai’s ultimate goal is winning at Nationals, Natalie doesn’t want to win more than she wants to be a team (T: What’s your plan, then? / N: I dunno, play like a fucking team and win? It’s worked so far.).

It’s quite ironic—yet not that surprising—how, despite being opposites, Natalie and Jackie share a similar mindset about this.

The scene establishes Natalie as a sympathetic character with grounded and noble moral principles, no matter the adversities. In the wilderness, she’s the first and possibly the only one who acknowledges Travis’ grief and sees through his unsufferable attitude and understands that, as much as questionable his methods are, he’s trying to make sure Javi gets over their father’s death and wants to live on.

It's also meaningful that Natalie’s not there when Jackie and Shauna fight and Jackie ends up leaving the cabin. The night earlier, Natalie was the one who let her out when Lottie and the others locked her in and went to hunt Travis down. Natalie basically saves the girl who just had sex with Travis being perfectly aware that it would hurt her, and she doesn’t even know. Viewers do know, though, and we’re instinctively led to think of her as even more noble and deserving of empathy.

Jackie’s death certainly comes from an irrational choice, but the deepest reason is the others’ lack of sympathy towards her at the end of the season. It could be delusional, but I can’t see Natalie turning a blind eye on the whole thing, had she been there.

Jackie was their captain when they had a normal life. Natalie becomes their leader thanks to the constant effort she’s put into the group ever since they landed there—and possibly, as the matter with Allie shows, even before that.

Lottie

Lottie’s phrasing for her refusal is telling. She says, “It doesn’t feel right.” It’s not that she thinks it is, or that it seems like it is. She feels like they’re not meant to go through with it. A simple yet fitting choice of words foreshadows Lottie’s spiritual nature and her connection to the wilderness as well as her role of prophet/messiah.

It’s also important that she’s not shown as particularly proactive. She does express her opinion, but she’s not as passionate as Natalie about it, who instead actively tries to convince them what a terrible idea it is and interferes with Taissa’s plan on the field. This shows how Lottie never cared be a leader, but rather follows where her feelings lead her.

Van

We’re not really shown Van’s reaction until they’re in the locker room after the scrimmage. We just learn that she’s impressionable, as she almost throws up at Nat’s mention of Allie’s bone being visible, and that she’s so devoted to Tai that she won’t let Shauna talk shit about her at the party.

Laura Lee

Of course, nobody would even dream of telling Laura Lee about an act of such misconduct. She would never go along with Taissa’s plan, she wouldn’t even fathom doing something like this. She’s more clueless than Jackie, because Jackie at least did notice something was off on the field. Even at the party, Laura Lee is the only one who still has no idea there were such tensions.

Her blissful ignorance keeps her kind and pure, apart from the ruthless tendencies of the team. It doesn’t change once they’re in the wilderness—Laura Lee dies trying to help her friends, and she fortunately never gets to witness their worst moments.

Shauna

Unsurprisingly, Shauna’s a tough one. Her attitude towards the Allie situation is as ambivalent as it will be for the rest of the story towards everything else.

Shauna keeps her thoughts for herself until Nat and Lottie leave and it’s just her and Tai, and even then, the first thing she says is, “Jackie’s not gonna like it.” The moment she’s asked to make a personal decision, she talks about what Jackie would think, and it’s not because she herself doesn’t know what to think, it’s just what she chooses to say outright. If anything, Shauna isn’t against Taissa’s plan entirely, and bringing up Jackie rather sounds like an excuse so that she doesn’t dwell on her own dark thoughts.

When Taissa says, “Then we probably shouldn’t tell her,” we expect that to upset Shauna—she wouldn’t keep things from Jackie, right? They’re best friends. While it does upset her, it still doesn’t stop her. We understand why later in the episode, when we discover that she’s no stranger to keeping secrets from Jackie, between her affair with Jeff and the admission letter to Brown (it also recontextualizes their first scene together in Shauna’s car, where Jackie addressed literally both).

On the field, when Taissa plays aggressive and forces Allie to play under pressure, Shauna tells her, “It’s not helping,” and once Allie’s on the ground, she’s one of the girls who runs to her first and tries to comfort her. Even though she didn’t openly disagree with Taissa’s plan, she didn’t want or expect things to escalate the way they did. She’ll make the same mistake when Jackie leaves the cabin, Taissa tells her to go talk to her, and Shauna just goes to sleep, underestimating the consequences of it.

Her ambivalence—if not hypocrisy—is shown later that night at the party, when she tries to pick a fight with Taissa while drunk. I think some part of her felt guilty to an extent, so she tries to fight with Tai out of remorse and because she wants to make her look like the only culprit, since she hates that she was so close to being complicit in it. Who calls her out when she defends Nat from Taissa’s slut-shaming at the party? Natalie herself slams in Shauna’s face that she is complicit.

If Shauna had told Jackie, she would’ve put a stop to it for sure. In the 2019 script for the pilot, Jackie says, “You should have told me about Taissa and Allie.” Shauna’s choice to keep the secret directly anticipates their falling out towards the end of the season. Shauna’s continuous lying drives Jackie mad until she explodes and they have that fatal fight.

Shauna’s the one who tries to act as a person who has it together but really doesn’t. She has the potential to be a good person, friend and mother, but she ends up flunking everything and she barely understands why.

Finally, she tells Tai that she’s “a fucking sociopath”, which, considering everything that happens later in the series, is sort of rich.

Jackie

Like Laura Lee, Jackie has no clue the whole “freeze Allie out” strategy is even happening. Shauna didn’t tell her, she was left out, and she doesn’t find out until Allie’s already hurt and there’s nothing she can do about it.

She watches the others as they rush to help and comfort her and handle the situation, but she doesn’t partake in it because she’s too shocked to move. After the scrimmage, she tries very hard to do as Coach Martinez told her—as captain, she’s meant to glue them together (“When it gets tough out there, these girls are going to be looking for someone to guide them. Can you handle that?”). It’s more than that, though—the way Coach put it, if Jackie can’t do that, then she isn’t really anything special. She’s not as fast as Shauna and her footwork isn’t as good as Lottie’s, and there’s something else that Taissa’s better at, too, though Jackie stops Coach before he can tell her that bit. But nobody seems to care about what she’s saying, and Natalie storms off.

Jackie’s inability to handle the Allie situation and lift the others’ spirits foreshadows her incompetence as well as her progressive loss of influence in the wilderness—in Lottie’s words, “You don’t matter anymore.”

Allie’s accident marks the beginning of Jackie’s downfall even before the plane crashes.

[thislovintime]

Photo 1 courtesy of Disc & Music Echo, January 1968. "When they shot them down at Kent State, that was the end of the flower-power era. That was it. You throw your flowers and rocks at us, man, and we'll just pull the guns on you. Essentially, the revolution, which was sort of tolerated as long as it wasn't a significant material threat, was not tolerated anymore. And everybody went 'Ooops' and scurried for cover and licked their wounds. They became isolated – which was the point of it all. 'Togetherness isn't going to get it' was the moral they tried to lay on us, because the less togetherness there is, the more room there is for exploitation. Kent State was an attempt. Let's try this and see what happens. And what happened was the shooting and vast inflation and a swing to the right — the moral majority. The whole thing was inherent in the situation. A certain amount of loosening up, a certain amount of extra leisure, and people are going to try to improve their lot instead of just barely hanging on. If you had a little extra you're going to try to make everything better. And if you see that your own happiness, or the lack of it, is tied in with the sadness of your neighbor, you're going to start feeling communal. And that's going to expand until the crunch comes. As long as people are educated to believe that isolated self-interest is the only way to go, when the crunch comes they'll withdraw from each other. And only now, in the faintest glimmerings, do I see any sense that people are realizing that togetherness and flower power alone won't get it. It's got to be togetherness, flower power, plus a willingness to do something pretty stern from time to time. If you're not willing to behave sternly, people who won't stop short of stern behavior are going to keep on going. It's taken a while for that message to sink in." - Peter, When The Music Mattered (1984)

“I personally find the idea that we (as a country) never did anything bad to anybody else, and that the only reason anyone would do anything to us is their unbridled inhuman evil, to be very far wide of the truth. The number of times I have been accosted in one way or another where I had nothing to do with it is maybe in the 3-5% range, if that. I’m not excusing anyone from blame. But the more we think we’re all good and certain others are all evil, the worse things get, not the better they get. Only the humility to realize my part in the events of my life allows me to walk in relative peace. The other attitude is called pride, in the seven-deadly-sins sense of the word, and the Bible is dead right when it says it goes before a fall.” - Peter, Ask Peter Tork

Q (from a 15-year-old): “[W]hat do you think young-ish people can do to help the world 'situation’?” Peter: “You can fool some of the people all of the time, and there’s no getting over that. The job for the rest of us is simply not to demonize anyone, and to fight as hard as needed for what we are sure is right. As to what the ‘young-ish’ can do, I propose what I propose the old-timers do: do what’s in front of you to do with gusto (you’ll never find out how things are if you do them half-assedly), and remember that everyone’s doing his or her best, no matter how awful that may be. Thanks for asking. Keep up the good fight.” - Ask Peter Tork

“Those of us who were truly interested in liberty, fraternity and equality, however, knew we were onto something good and real. What had been called democracy was, and to some extent still is, a pretext for wrapping the will of the greedy and aggressive in a mantle of public acquiescence. Now, the business of wresting power away from those who make a specialty of wielding it will be a long and protracted struggle, with a lot of setbacks along the way. The outlines of the new style of governance are only dimly perceivable, and won’t become clear for a long time to come. In the meantime, our job is to practice the principles of fairness and service to the extent possible. One thing is clear: there is a much higher joy in service than there is in acquisition of wealth. (Remember that it isn’t money that’s the root of all evil, it’s the love of money.) Hanging together in brother — and sisterhood is so happy-making you want to sing right out loud. Yeah, I feel the same about those ideas as I did then…in case you couldn’t tell. heheheh” - Peter, Ask Peter Tork

“I believe very much in all that I believed in back in the 60’s. I hope I’m more aware of the practicalities than I was then, but I am positive that the values and principles I held then are critical to the well-being of the planet, or at the very least, critical to growth and contentment in the population. As to the practicalities: the chance of no more war in our lifetimes is so close to zero that I don’t imagine it possible, tho’ there well may be progress along these lines. May be. Sometimes I see the world as an eternal horse race between salvation and dissolution, now one, and now the other gaining the lead. But to the extent that we can learn, each and all of us, that the cooperative good is good for the greatest individual good (with safeguards, to be sure), that forgiveness is the route to true inner peace, and that not everything we deem wrong or bad may be so, to that extent hassles of all shapes, sizes and colors will diminish. I am so sure of all this that I would, I hope, be willing to bet my life on these principles.” - Peter Tork, Ask Peter Tork

[rinainshadows]

𝕿𝖍𝖊 𝖊𝖌𝖔 𝖎𝖓 𝖒𝖆𝖓𝖎𝖋𝖊𝖘𝖙𝖆𝖙𝖎𝖔𝖓

"𝔶𝔬𝔲 𝔠𝔞𝔫 𝔡𝔬 𝔢𝔳𝔢𝔯𝔶𝔱𝔥𝔦𝔫𝔤 𝔴𝔯𝔬𝔫𝔤 𝔞𝔫𝔡 𝔰𝔱𝔦𝔩𝔩 𝔞𝔠𝔥𝔦𝔢𝔳𝔢 𝔶𝔬𝔲𝔯 𝔡𝔢𝔰𝔦𝔯𝔢."

🪽 ♡₊˚ 🦢・₊✧

TW: Delves into psychology theory. Very lightly brushes on themes of having a negative childhood. Overall positive message, though, just want to put that out just in case!

I wanted to make a post talking about the ego and how it may "hold us back" in manifestation. This was inspired by a YouTube video I watched and I want to give credit to the original creator because I'll definitely be quoting parts of their video!

(TLDR at end, approximately 4-5 minute read)

𝄞⨾𓍢ִ໋

Firstly, one must ask, "What is the ego?" The concept of the ego, as first propagated by psychologist Sigmund Freud, signifies the "self" or "I" and serves as our intermediary with the external world through perception. It is the segment of our being that holds memory, evaluates, plans, and in various manners, responds to and acts within the surrounding physical and social world. According to Freud’s theory, it coexists with the "id": our base and primitive drives and instincts, and the superego: the ethical and moral component of our personality. The ego operates on the principle of reality, which acts to satisfy the id's primal yearning for instant gratification while upholding the superego's aspirations for maintaining social and moral standards.

This delicate balance is dictated by the strength of the ego. An individual with lacking ego strength may find themselves torn between the demands of the id and the superego. Conversely, one possessing an overly fortified ego might become rigid and resistant to compromise. A well-balanced ego is deemed essential for assisting an individual in coping with stress, setbacks, and other hardships in life, without resorting to unhealthy coping mechanisms. A person with low ego strength may struggle to withstand adversities and might seek to evade reality through wishful thinking, addictions, or delusions.

With an understanding of the ego and its role in balancing the id and superego, one might ponder, what transpires when the ego does not exist? The phenomenon known as ego death can occur through the practice of deep meditation, the use of psychedelics, near-death experiences, or rigorous spiritual discipline. This process involves a loss of self, of all emotions—both benevolent and malevolent—and a sensation of oneness with the universe. This elevated state is akin to what some may describe as "enlightenment." Though any person on a spiritual journey might experience ego death, maintaining such a transcended state is nigh impossible in a world where the ego is requisite for survival. Oftentimes, only monks or those who wholly sequester themselves from society in an effort to negate karmic debt can sustain this enlightened state.

I bring this discussion to light because, within the realms of manifestation and spirituality, we are frequently advised to purge ourselves of doubts and limiting beliefs, ultimately striving to dissolve our ego. Our ego is formed in infancy and evolves throughout our development. It serves as our shield in this intensely stimulating and, at times, perilous world. Often, a weakened ego strength stems from external sources within one's childhood—perhaps an unstable upbringing, a childhood bereft of freely given love, or a sense of unworthiness. Thus, when we endeavor to manifest our desires and any doubts arise, merely suppressing them and admonishing ourselves for feeling thus is a misguided approach. It is imperative to bestow upon our ego, our doubts, the love and validation they require; otherwise, they will persistently clamor for our attention.

Self-transformation and the spiritual journey, which are inadvertently related to manifesting, is not often a process achieved overnight. There may be days of immense confidence, where one resides in a state of knowing. Yet, on subsequent days, doubts may cascade, highlighting every contradiction in our circumstances and physical reality. We are often advised to enhance our self-concept and strive to reach a higher vibration aligned with our higher selves. Whilst this counsel is admirable, why can we not simply be deserving as we are? When we convince ourselves that we must embody a particular state to attain our desire, we are merely affirming the deep-seated belief that we are undeserving.

Thus, I implore you to reflect: are you condemning that inner voice? While it may suffice for some to ignore it and persist regardless, this approach may prove counterproductive, especially if this issue recurs, causing you to waver. The next time this occurs, take a moment to sit with yourself. Remind yourself that this may be your inner child. Assure them that they are accepted, that they deserve to be heard, and that they do not need to change. Learn to cherish that aspect of yourself and the lessons it imparts. Worry not that perhaps by "validating" and attending to these doubts, you might find yourself in a perpetual state of negativity. Contrarily, by providing that voice the love and validation it seeks, you will discover that it in fact soothes and dispels the worries more rapidly.

In truth, all facets of the ego are equal. The version of you that is joyful, the version that is sorrowful, the version that feels deserving of love, and the version that does not—all coexist. The reason you deem them as "bad" or "unwanted" is because you assign them such labels. They exist to protect you and are neither inherently good nor bad. This is why, in ego death, all emotions cease—there is no joy, sorrow, desire, or contentment. It is a state of nothingness. You are the one ascribing meaning to your feelings, creating a duality that may generate unnecessary resistance.

I once encountered the advice that "you can do everything wrong and still achieve your desire." Of course, this is not an endorsement of self-destructive habits. Rather, it is a call for kindness towards oneself. Remind yourself that you are deserving of your desires exactly as you are. Practice self-parenting and self-soothing. If we are all interconnected with the divine, then every part of us, even those that seem unseemly, is still imbued with divine love. Cease demonizing certain parts of yourself. Abandon the notions of "I should not think this way" or "I should be making more progress." We are imperfect beings, but this does not render us any less deserving of our desires at this very moment. Why must we attain a particular state to be worthy?

Happy Manifesting,

ℜ𝔦𝔫𝔞

TLDR: The ego, as defined by Freud, mediates between our primal desires (id) and moral standards (superego). A balanced ego helps us cope with life's challenges, while an unbalanced one can lead to unhealthy coping mechanisms. Ego death, achieved through spiritual practices, leads to a loss of self and a feeling of oneness with the universe but is hard to maintain in everyday life.

In manifestation and spirituality, we're often told to eliminate doubts and dissolve the ego, but this isn't always helpful. Our ego, formed from childhood experiences, protects us. Suppressing doubts isn't the answer; we should validate and love our inner voice instead.

Self-transformation is a gradual process. It's okay to have doubts. Embrace all parts of yourself, as they all serve a purpose. Being kind to yourself and practicing self-soothing can help you manifest your desires without feeling undeserving. You don't need to be perfect or reach a specific state to be worthy of your desires.

I feel that perhaps talking about the psychology of the ego may be a bit unnecessary, but, what's wrong with learning something new?

[leviathan-supersystem]

you know, in the abstract, i think there can, and have, been decent arguments for deontological morality. i don't quite find myself convinced by those arguments personally, but some of those arguments are actually decently well-constructed and coherent. Kant gets a lot of shit, but like, "I ought never to act except in such a way that I could also will that my maxim should become a universal law,” while a pretty flawed and incomplete concept, isn't terrible. like i can see the logic of it, and a community where that was the guiding principle everyone was attempting to follow would probably function at least somewhat adequately.

but like, in practice, outside of the context of philosophy wank, when i encounter deontological moral arguments in the wild, it's always the most mindless thought-terminating shit imaginable. like this:

and to be clear this is extremely standard for libertarians, a vast number of them hold as their core deontological moral belief that it is never under any circumstances acceptable to have taxes, and while they may sometimes make arguments that hinge on the supposed utilitarian benefits of a libertarian ethos, this is mostly a show put on for outsiders. the bulk of libertarians and similar (ancaps, objectivists, etc) believe as this guy does that even in situations where following the libertarian ethos would lead to certain disaster, we are nonetheless bound to do so anyways. Because.

similarly from antiworksters- the whole thing hinges on the core deontological rule of "it is always bad to incentivize labor in any way whatsoever" and when you point out that if this were to be implimented on any kind of large scale, it would make it more likely that disabled people who require labor to care for them would be left to die in the absence of incentives to ensure that the labor to care for them is performed, instead of acting like a reasonable person and going "oh jeez! that's a massive oversight in our ethical framework, we should revise our framework to better account for that, perhaps jettison the 'never incentivize labor' rule since it's apparently deeply flawed" instead they either dodge the question or go "it doesn't matter if paraplegic people end up being left to die as a result of antiwork principles being implemented, the "never incentivize labor" rule can never be broken! Because."

and it's like. why not. like you guys realize you made these rules up. if following this moral code ends up bringing disaster or leaving disabled people to die you can just. not do that. no one is forcing you to follow this poorly thought out ethical code. quite the opposite in fact, since both anarcho-capitalism and anti-work anarchism are fringe ideologies at odds with how the vast majority of contemporary societies function.

and in both cases it's so obvious that the ideologies in question fundamentally hinge on a knee-jerk emotional reaction of not wanting to work/pay taxes, and then just deciding that actually, the very universe itself agrees with you that you should never ever have to work or pay taxes, and therefore the world should have to bend to your- sorry i mean the universe's will, even if society crumbles to dust as a result. fundamentally juvenile.

[aroceu]

some thoughts on leaving a social media website...again

as of 10/16/2024, twitter has announced its intention to implement a new feature into the platform: instead of blocking allowing you to block certain accounts from viewing your profile if it's public, it now just... doesn't do that anymore. it only limits interaction. though this certainly isn't a surprise with musk's twitter rollouts since 2021—when i first saw people start to trickle out—this, in particular, breaks a lot of users boundaries and has prompted many to private their accounts and move to bluesky.

i'm in support of this, btw—the ceo of bsky is strongly opposed to ever running any sort of ads on the site ("won't enshittify the network with ads"), doesn't use any blockchain technology, and has a culture where supplying alt text on images is the norm. your main timeline is in reverse-chronological order (like intended), but there are other separate options to create a custom algorithmic feed for certain types of content, only if you wish to. though bsky is a work in progress, i have high hopes for what it can be in the future: that is, usable, practical, and more reminiscent of what it was like when twitter first started, than how twitter currently is.

but despite my love for bluesky, i won't spend too much time glazing yet another microblogging platform. instead, i'm here to ponder the concept of social media: why we have it, why we use it, and why these moves happen in the first place. people have been trickling in and out of twitter ever since the richest and evilest man in the world took possession of it; especially in a fandom sense, there's been a back and forth between twitter and tumblr due to tumblr's former porn ban, as well. we all have principles and morals that guide the decisions we make, including what websites we decide to use. they speak to a pattern of not only our culture as people at any given time—but how these platforms have the power to implement these changes whenever they want. and we, as individuals, must make decisions both based on those principles, but also our desires to fit in.

i'll start off by saying this—eventually i'm going to start talking about what social media means for creatives. but there is in fact an extremely well-written article about this already that goes into more detail. if you're more interested in that, let me direct you there first: R U AN ARTIST ON SOCIAL MEDIA??? by omoulo

with that out of the way, let's talk about me, shall we?

i got onto the internet through geocities—crazy sentence to say now after all these years. of course, i played neopets and flash games like many other kids, but that was mostly through knowing those websites and urls existed, and preserving them in my mind so i could return to them for some mindless minutes of entertainment later. geocities was my first introduction to the creative, user-designed web, so to speak. instead of being a number to interact with a thing that someone else has made—a flash game, a youtube video, a website where you can collect fictional pets—the idea of geocities to me at the time was this idea of participating on the internet. being a part of it. writing whatever i wanted and posting it. sharing the link with others. having others find it and read it too—a part of me, my method of creative self-expression, whatever i desired to write and post on the less than permanent internet.

my best friend at the time was the one who needled me into creating accounts—first an email address, then an AIM, then a myspace, then an IMVU, so on and so forth. i wasn't going out looking for these, and though i'd heard of them before or seen ads of some of these sites, i wasn't interested in actually being on these platforms and making these accounts until my friend told me that i should. call me a people pleaser or easily influenced or whatever; i was 12. but it was through this link sharing, this naivety and ignorance of the vastness of the internet, that allowed me to be fascinated with the world wide web in the first place.

i usually cite quizilla as my first "fandom" website, because it was—but it wasn't because i found it by accident. it wasn't that i googled it or looked for a personality test and stumbled upon it. no, it's because i was chatting with a friend on AIM, and she had found some crazy chain letter story and shared it to me for how absurd it was, and sent me the link. it was on quizilla.

literally the moment i clicked that link changed my life forever. even though i read the crazy story, i also clicked on the username of the person who posted it, out of curiosity. that person had jonas brothers fanfics on their quizilla profile, of all things, which led me into an obsession with the jonas brothers in the 2 years that followed. through that link—that account—that platform—i got a lot more interested in writing, webdesign, and what it meant to be on the internet, not just as a numbered participant, but also as someone with an imagination, who finds fulfillment in creative expression. i wrote the longest thing i'd ever written in that time (30k of a self-insert, but we won't go into that), began to experiment with css and website design, and participated, sharing stuff that i thought was interesting or fun, worth 5 minutes of anyone's time.

the internet wasn't just about being a place where my presence didn't matter anymore—it became a medium of self-expression. more than that, it became a place where i could meet and socialize with people, especially as i developed avpd in my high school years.

the internet wasn't always like this. right now, when we talk about the internet, we don't talk about the random websites we find, the links we stumble upon. (i have an entire website dedicated to those for me, though.) the games we spend hours playing, by ourselves, without interacting with others. random personality tests, or just simply the news. we talk about google, but in the same way we talk about facebook, or even twitter. it's a verb; it's omnipresent; it exists within the context of our internet culture, but becomes meaningless outside of it. it's not to say it doesn't have meaning—but that the language we use represents our relationship with it, this assumed normalcy. this assumed dependence.

i bring up my own history because as young as i feel compared to many of my older internet friends, and how late to the game i always felt—i was there. i was there on the internet before twitter (since 2009), tumblr (since 2010), facebook (i lied about my age), bluesky now, and whatever will come in the future. i was there when people were saying that the internet was still being written; when websites were made with tables (eugh); when email was the primary way to connect with others, because irc was for nerds and nothing else had been invented yet.

i'm a big advocate for not looking at the past with rose colored glasses and getting caught up in nostalgia and greener grass. i believe that technology is not inherently harmful or bad—it creates more options for accessibility, especially for those who are disabled. and even outside of that, it allows us to learn about more people, communicate with others with a few keystrokes, and form relationships that we otherwise would never get to have. i don't want this to seem like i'm saying "man remember how good the internet used to be?" because i'm not—i believe that as things change, there are benefits as much as there are hindrances.

of course, it bears saying that the primary hindrance—of current twitter, of many platforms over the years, and the internet with increasing recency—is corporations. big money interests. capitalism.

it's why we get so tired of ads—it's why ads exist in the first place. it's why these social media platforms that used to feel like they were made by the same people who would use them (livejournal, youtube, twitter) have suddenly become these soulless impersonal websites. it becomes more obvious that they want you to use them more because they sell you on exclusivity and visual minimalism, rather than because that's where your friends are, and you have this unique way to express yourself.

in fact, i'll say this: the first time i learned about facebook when i was too young to use it, i was not impressed. i had a myspace at the time that i had dolled up to make pretty with sparkly gifs and obnoxious colors and weird fonts. when i saw how boring and samey everyone's facebook profile page was, i was like, what's the point? sure i could talk to my classmates and random other people in my life that i didn't really care about, but what about making myself different from others? what about my creative expression? what about having an account that makes me look unique, instead of blending in with everyone else?

and so here i am nearly two decades later pondering about the use of social media, our individuality as well as our collective interests, and how the internet has changed so much, both in itself and how it affects us, in that time.

i'm here because i want to talk to my friends and meet new people with common interests and get excited about them. i don't want to feel left out, but that's a normal experience—outside of fomo, it is in our core to connect with others. it's the whole meaning of everything. it's why i even made an email in the first place, in my basement with my best friend, secretly setting up a yahoo account because she wanted another way to talk to me, and i wanted another way to talk to her. it's why people have been leaving twitter little by little for another site—the same site as many others, because that's where all their friends are. whether it's bsky or mastodon or misskey or just back here on tumblr, we're here not just because of our desire for community, but even as simple as our desire for a bond, a relationship with another human being. to me, that is how "social media" is defined—a medium through which we socialize because of this innate desire.

and yet, of course the enshittification and corporatification makes this more difficult for us, in ways more than one. because the fact is that as we (as people) became better at using the internet, finished writing it, and understood it—psychologically and sociologically—so did the corporations. or advertisers, you take your pick. we, the everypeople who use the internet as means to fulfill our social and other self-indulgent desires, are not the only people here. as with many things else in the world, the internet turned from an unpredictable but fun mess of us figuring shit out as we went along, into a product designed to keep us using it and engaging with it more, so some rich people can put even more money into their pockets. it's why twitter is the way it is now; even why tumblr is the way it is. why social media has become about "content creation" and "small businesses." why it feels like, every day, we see more ads and AI generated bullshit, as a little bit of the original soul of the internet gets sucked away day by day.

but even there, i don't want to come across as cynical or world-weary. though i believe this to be true, i don't think it says anything about our lack of agency, or our lack of innate humanity. instead, i believe that this means, at least on the individual level, that we should think more about not only what we're doing on the internet, but why we're doing it. how we're doing it. are we here because we're addicted? or is there something we're getting out of it? sure, many websites now have more addictive UI and algorithms that tell the receptors of our brain to return to them because we were getting so much dopamine from them earlier. but i also wouldn't necessarily argue that the only solution to this is to, then, go offline.

i have many friends who've elected to depart social media but stay online—friends who i met through website building, to be fair, but that's one of my main points. i already wrote a manifesto on my love letter to the personal website; but the tl;dr is this:

the internet is not evil, it is not good, it is just a form. if we desire to express ourselves and socialize with others in this space, it does not have to be just about social media, and creating a new account on a new website every time people move. instead, we have personhood—we have individuality, we have agency. we have the ability to build our own websites, no matter how shitty or times new roman comic sansy or color clashy or sometimes inaccessible they can be. regardless of all these seeming impractical setbacks though, it does not absolve us of that ability to do whatever we want on the internet. and it also bears saying that websites, both the personal and impersonal, can change over time, for better or worse.

i am a huge proponent for people making their own personal websites. it makes me so so happy that neocities is gaining popularity, mostly because i love seeing people try their own hand at making a website for themselves, a new form of self-expression. i won't go into too much detail on this because i've already said everything i want to say about it (see above), but if you take away anything from this post, let it be this: consider making a personal website, a corner of the internet, for yourself, by yourself. not just because you want people to engage with it, or because you want to curate to an algorithm or an artistic/fannish trend. not because you want the things you make to gain traction, to get bigger numbers without considering the people behind those numbers, as soon as possible.

do it because you want to. because you have to. because you think it's cool, and because it's you. people may find it and judge it; but they may like it as well. the more unique and authentic and weird we are with each other, the more we are able to appreciate each other for who we really are. the internet is one of many places we can do this.

i don't really see these forms of self-expression separate from social media, but i do see social media separate from it. to me, social media is a vehicle to strengthen those connections, those relationships, much like DMs and IRCs; but it is not the be-all, end all of the internet. it's only a small part of it. not everything is permanent on the internet; but everything that ever has been online is a microcosm of the human experience, whether it's an old cloudflare site or twitter dot com in 2010.

our experiences on the internet are not about corporate interests. it's about using limewire to download pirate music, sharing random links we find, building a design that may not be practical or universally appealing but still represents a form of individuality. when i think of how the internet has grown, i don't think about what it means for companies or advertisers or what meetings must go on to get people like me to keep using it—i think about remembering the difference between addicting games dot com and addicted games dot com, clicking links on websites to find even more websites, sitting at the family computer and deciding if i wanted to spend hours on neopets or that one willy wonka flash game i grinded like several hours on one night when i was 7. i think about what it's always meant to me, because the internet was not always a centralized place where i was going on the same website every day. the rise of internet centralization to the point that it's become expected, the norm, the primary way any of us to be online, is not inherently a bad thing—but i wouldn't say it's a universal good, either, when the internet is a wide and vast space, and can be so much more than that.

because the one thing that remains throughout the years is our agency and choice. we still have the ability to make the internet what we want it to be, or at least a corner of it, something separate from the corporations, the enshittification, economically researched user interfaces and experiences, the advertisements, the "like and share so the algorithm boosts me more." there's still a point to it all without the money, and without twitter. and it's both our desire for creativity and self-expression, as well as our intrinsic bonds with each other. despite it all, it's about our humanity.

as the internet continues to grow, so do we. nevertheless, the importance of our humanity, and retaining it, will remain. oftentimes it is up to us to remind ourselves of that.

-

links here, for access:

Bluesky CEO Jay Graber Says She Won’t ‘Enshittify the Network With Ads’

R U AN ARTIST ON SOCIAL MEDIA??? by omoulo

links @ kingdra.net (my links, like bookmarks)

A manifesto of sorts; or, my love letter to the personal website by me

[slutty-transformation-stories]

The Rise of a New Empire

Part 1 here:

https://www.tumblr.com/slutty-transformation-stories/732173276837707776/the-fall-of-the-empire?source=share

Mara Jade had always been different. As a child she had felt a strong connection to the force, and her family and caregivers had tried their best to curb her enthusiasm or, as they saw it, her acts of defiance. But nothing seemed to stop her and, as she grew older, her connection only seemed to strengthen.

Now, years later, Mara found herself a lucky few among a galaxy infected with the goon virus, unaffected by the virus that had decimated most lifeforms in the galaxy. With her newfound power, Mara was seen as a blessing, a gift from the gods. A goddess.

Energized by this newfound recognition, Mara assumed a form of seclusion, wanting to understand more of what this power actually meant. After a few short years, Mara felt a strange urge to return home, back to the galaxy that had given her so much new attention.

But she was not prepared for what she found when she arrived back home. Entire monuments had been constructed in her honour, new religious factions had sprouted up that were devoted to her, worshipping her as if she was some kind of deity.

Despite her strong moral upbringing, Mara found her moral principles waning as she became intoxicated with her power and the attention of her devoted followers. This newfound position of power had awoken something dark in her, the desire to be the one in control, reigning over her subjects as a sith queen, with enslaved gooners at her feet.

For months, Mara lived in luxury, surrounded by her new worshippers, learning more about the dark side of the force and casting aside the values she had been taught in her younger years. Eventually, all that remained was an evil Sith queen, ready to take control of the galaxy and bend it to her will using the power of the force.

Mara was always a fierce leader. Her rule was almost absolute, but that did not stop some of her followers from attempting to get more control over the galaxy. After the bloody conflict with the rebels, Mara returned to her base - wounded and not expecting what was to come next.

Little did she know, but one of her religious factions had infiltrated her ranks and had secretly modified her bacta tank. Unaware of the modifications, she stepped inside the tank and closed her eyes.

At first, she felt nothing but the coldness of the liquid as it began to wrap around her every crevice. Then, the liquid began to heal her wounds and she quickly started to feel a bit better. After a few hours of being submerged in the bacta tank, Mara felt different, her mind foggy and dull. When the pod finally opened up and Mara stepped out, she was filled with a mixture of dread and anticipation.

Mara gasped in horror as she looked at her reflection. She now had bigger breasts, a plump butt, sexy long nails, thick glossy hair, and plumped lips that spoke in a lisp. Her first words spoken were "tee-hee im so hawt" She couldn't believe it, but her transformation had been complete.

But it wasn't just Mara that noticed her new look. Her followers were also quick to take notice. Once they saw her new, bimbo-like body, practically all of her enemies submitted to her rule. She had become a figure of respect and power, and despite the shock of her new look, Mara was pleased with the outcome.

[heylavellan]

Happy Friday. "Alright, that's it. You're going to bed, and I'm not taking no for an answer." for Carver and Cullen, maybe? Intrigued by this ship >;3

the easy route is to do templar!carver and cullen in da2. i however am insane and thought up a warden!carver au in inquisition where carver is the warden at skyhold and his sister brought him to support the inquisition. also for @dadrunkwriting

a man's dreams and a dream man

rating: t

words: 1000

notes: idiots to lovers. pre-adamant.

Warden nightmares were bad. The Blight, the darkspawn. That damned song. Nathaniel lied when he said the dreams got better, because they really didn't.

Usually a workout got Carver to a place where resting felt safe. Yet knowing that the siege on Adamant Fortress was in his future kept him awake. At times like these, he wished he regretted going to the Deep Roads. He'd probably have some cushy templar job and be bored out of his mind making sure mages weren't doing blood magic. Maybe he'd be in Starkhaven with most of the other templars.

The thing was, he never regretted for a second making sure his stupid older sister made it out. He hated her then. But he was one of Ferelden's greatest wardens. Apparently, one of the only sane ones out there if his sister had to reach out.

The only thing left to do at this absurd hour in Skyhold was drink. If he was at Soldier's Keep, he'd be drinking with some of the other senior wardens and the seneschal would send another letter to Warden-Commander Howe about his lax leadership. Howe would write him a letter saying he received complaints, and it would be business as usual until another late night party incurred the seneschal's wrath.

Since his wardens weren't here, he had no one to drink with. For Carver, drinking alone was an indignity he refused to suffer. So, to the chapel he went. Quiet prayer always helped him focus his mind. When things were too much for him in Lothering, he always found himself in the chantry, listening to some priest prattle on about the Chant of Light. A habit that stuck, even when he lived at Gamlen's.

Actually, especially when he lived with Gamlen. That shack was worse than most of the Deep Roads.

That evening, it appeared the Commander of the Inquisition had a similar idea. Hunched over in a front pew, blond curls hanging down with his head bowed in prayer.

Knowing that the former Knight-Captain of Kirkwall was the Inquisition's commander set him on edge. But if his mage sister who was practically married to Merrill thought he was fine, he had to be. Even if Felicity was a poor judge of character, she knew who the Commander had been. And if she was willing to put up with him?

It spoke very highly of who he had become.

Carver disliked him on principle at first but... This wasn't the same man he met in Kirkwall. He was calmer, more confident. He radiated authority and competence. Somehow, he made stubble look incredibly attractive. And Carver wasn't sure if he was jealous of him or if he was experiencing his first crush on a man.

It was frustrating and exhilarating in equal parts. With a deep breath, he composed himself and decided he would pray on the pew across the aisle from Cullen. Just before he kneeled, the Commander quietly snored.

Wait, snored? Surely the man wasn't running himself that ragged. Staring meant potentially getting caught, which he wasn't sure if he wanted to risk. But a cranky commander was worse for morale.

Reluctantly, he crouched before Cullen to see if he was actually asleep. Carver regretting knowing what he looked like asleep. Now, he was certain that falling in love with Rutherford was an inevitability.

Cullen unburdened was a wonder. The creases in his forehead were relaxed after a day of wrinkling it in concern and to focus. Thin lips that were begging to be kissed and a thin rivulet of drool falling out of the corner of his mouth.

Felicity had always said he was impulsive, and she was one hundred percent correct. He realised he'd wiped the drool off Cullen's face far too late and poked the proverbial bear. Andraste's ashes, he was never going to live this down.

Cullen woke with a start, looking up at Carver crouched between his legs. "Couldn't believe you were actually sleeping," he stammered out. Smooth, Carver. Really smooth.

Twenty emotions Carver couldn't name crossed Cullen's face as he realised where he was and what the position the two of them were in looked like. "Um, right. Sorry if I disturbed you," he demured, looking away. Carver chose to believe that he was blushing, that the candlelight wasn't playing tricks on him.

"I wasn't sleeping anyway. But you? You should make your way to bed," Carver replied. Cullen opened his mouth to respond, so he kept talking. He was, at least good at that. "I'm not taking no for an answer. Surely your bed is more comfortable than these pews."

Carver hopped to his feet and offered a hand to Cullen. The commander examined him carefully. At that moment, Carver wondered if he had already given away his interest in Cullen. After careful consideration, Cullen took it and rose to his feet.

If they stared into each other's eyes and kept their hands clasped for just a bit too long, neither of them said anything about that. Carver nodded his head in the direction of the chantry doors, and followed Cullen out. The curve of the man's rear didn't escape his notice.

They made quiet conversation as Carver walked him back to his quarters. Before Cullen went inside, Carver grabbed his arm. "Wait. Um, I just. I don't want things to be awkward between us before a bit battle. Grab a drink with me sometime?" he asked, stumbling over his words like he imagined schoolboys did.

"That. Sounds nice," Cullen replied, almost surprised by his answer.

"Good," Carver laughed.

"Great," the commander responded, laughing along too.

"Well," Carver said.

"Tomorrow. For saving me the embarrassment of waking up in the chantry again," Cullen confirmed, nodding to himself.

"Perfect," Carver replied, perhaps a bit too genuinely.

They bade each other good night, and went their separate ways. As Carver fell asleep that night, maybe he thought of steel blue eyes. And maybe, he realised that he really wanted that man. Fuck.

[beevean]

What did you think of Olrox from Nocturne?

Personally, I couldn't care much about him. They put so much focus on him that he's more of a main character than the actual protagonists of Nocturne. Not to mention, his romantic subplot with Mizrak came out of nowhere and it's only there for "diversity", but I considered it to be a waste of time that should've been spent on anything else.

On top of that, it seems like the writers are desperately pushing to make him likeable for someone who killed Richter's mom and caused his trauma in the opening episode. If the writers decide to pull an Abby (from The Last of Us) on N!Olrox and give him a redemption arc or make Richter forgive him enough to not kill him in the next season, I'm gonna riot.

I would say they split Isaac into two characters: Olrox got the alleged moral complexity, and Annette got the favoritism :P

Anyway, in a show that has regressed to the level of "vampires are 100% evil bastards with no souls", quite a far cry from the original show's insistence that vampires are actually a noble superior race with a culture and all, Olrox feels like he wants to recapture that sort of "depth", being evil but still principled enough to fall in love and go against Sun Thundercat. In practice, I stopped taking him seriously the moment he let little Richter live, because my good man, wouldn't a more appropriate revenge against Julia be killing the brat and forcing the mother to live through the pain? C'mon game Isaac understood this! Leaving the child alive and allowing him to grow up with a grudge is so fucking stupid, it was mentioned in the Evil Overlord List written in 1990 😭 "All younger siblings, spouses, children, students, and old army buddies of an enemy I have just killed will be hunted down to prevent them from attacking me at some future point in a quest for vengeance."

I'm also betting that the moment they reveal more of Olrox, or force him to take a stand, he'll lose most of his charm. In S1, his allure comes from him being a wild card, other than him being hot: the moment he becomes yet another one of Richter's allies, he'll have very little for himself other than his sexiness. Kind of like a male Lenore, now that I think about it, although her hotness was enough that she still has fans and Olrox has yet to rape be a BDSM king to Mizrak :P

Speaking of which! I actually don't mind the relationship between the two. One, we finally moved past from the cliché of lesbians solely defined by their relationship cutely holding hands like Striga and Morana. The original show was a coward that played it safe, and it had the chance of giving Alucard a boyfriend if he was meant to be bi for reasons other than making his rape scene more palatable, but no, he got yet another sassy girlfriend. By contrast, the chemistry between Olrox and Mizrak is positively smoldering, and they do have the relationship issues you'd expect from two who jumped into bed before even learning each other's names lmao. At this point, if every character is allowed more love and care than Richer, I'd rather spend time with these two disasters than Maria, Annette or Alucard.

Of course, that doesn't make them great, and it's because Olrox tries too hard to be hot and tragic, and the most memorable thing about Mizrak is that he looks like Agent Stone from the Sonic movies hjdfkshdk - oh, and alright it is very funny that a man of the cloth apparently stops being religious the moment a piece of vampire ass sways in front of him.

"it seems like the writers are desperately pushing to make him likeable for someone who killed Richter's mom" the original show wanted you to cry for a vampire lord planning to slaughter all humankind and vampirekind in a long agonizing death because 😭wife died😭, a jihadist who killed people for being rude to him and then defiled his corpses to make himself an army because he was ✨philosophical✨, and an abusive rapist willingly engaging in slavery and aiding continental conquest who got a bit 🥺sad🥺 that her friends were pushing her to the side. Olrox is just keeping the tradition of being an unfairly sympathetic antagonist contrasting a much more shallow one, Carmilla/Sun Thundercat - and while his sin is nothing compared to those other three, the idea that we should blame Julia for killing his vampire bf is just tiring, because 1) in this setting vampires are nothing more than greedy monsters, I don't feel sympathy for one we don't even see in flashbacks; 2) it reminds me too much of Alucard being a cunt to Trevor because the Belmonts kept vampire child skulls in the hold, which was a way to tell us that the Belmonts were "morally grey"; 3) will you stop shitting on the whole Belmont clan for fuck's sake?

Anyway, Olrox is far from being the worst part of the show, but I have no faith in how they're going to develop his character while still keeping up the intrigue.

[renaultphile]

Propaganda for Andrew's moral code....

Time for a bit of Andrew love I think.

@telltaleangelina I loved your post about Ralph/Laurie’s philosophy of life compared with Andrew’s, which so resonated with me - they have a kind of heroic idealism which is very attractive, and apart from anything else it supplies most of the drama and action of the book!

But it also made me want to think more about Andrew and his motivations. So, inspired by the 'Hot Austen men' polls, here is some propaganda for Andrew. At fifteen he had to decide whether to throw in his lot with the military side of his family or the pacifist one, and it is made clear he took this decision seriously:

“I thought all around it. I thought there might conceivably even be some circumstances when I felt it was right to kill. If I knew whom I was killing and the circumstance and the nature of the responsibility. What I finally stuck at was surrendering my moral choice to men I'd never met, about whose moral standards I knew nothing whatever."

He becomes a CO not to abrogate moral responsibility but so that he can take responsibility for his actions.  Later he and Laurie have this exchange:

“One has to draw the line where one sees it oneself."

"Is that what you call the inner light?"

"If you like, yes."

So the thing that strikes me about the Charlot incident is that his principled stance is not blind faith or rigidity of thought. His main regret is that fighting with Laurie prevented him finding a solution to the problem.  He says:

“If I ... if my mind had been where it should have been, I'd have known what ought to be done, something would have come to me."

Laurie says:

"I do this kind of thing. I get steamed up about things that happen to people till I've got to do something or burst, and if it turns out to do more harm than good, hell, what's the odds, it did good to me. At school for instance. A man -- one of the boys I mean, was going to be sacked, and because I liked him I took for granted he couldn't have done it, and I was all set to have raised hell and involved a lot of other people. And all the time he'd done it after all."

Laurie admits that actually it feels good to ‘do’ something, even if the other person doesn't want it. It is easy to see that both of them have a valid point when it comes to the practicalities.  But for me, the point is that as long as they are trying to impose their will on each other, and operating from a place of ego, there is no possibility of finding another solution.  There are a hundred things they could have done to ease Charlot’s last moments if they had stopped thinking about themselves for one moment.  I think it's interesting for example that Laurie is the only person Charlot still recognises but he wants to 'outsource' comfort to someone else.

And then I realised that when Laurie is referring back to his 16 year old self getting 'steamed up' it is Ralph who points out to him that however much he might ‘want’ to ‘do’ something, it will be hurting other innocent people such as his own family (and very likely including Ralph himself).

Often, Laurie is annoyed at Ralph's inability to stand by.  The bit on the stairs at the party, for instance, and the bit where he tells Ralph "You can't eat and breathe for me, or live for me. No one can."  Pretty strong stuff to say to the man you just made passionate love to a moment ago! And let's not forget the comment about the drunk trying to mend the watch.

Sometimes I think the really sad thing is that Laurie is locked in to a different system of morality (The Phaedrus), one which means he is Andrew’s mentor and protector and Andrew is the innocent and therefore had no real moral agency. I'm not sure that means he could have or should have been with Andrew as a romantic partner, but the loss of that relationship feels real to me.

And finally....I think you have made me understand something that has always puzzled/amused me a little bit about the arguments that Laurie/Ralph have. He uses all those military analogies that seem to suggest that even while he sees that Ralph is trying to dominate him and battles with it, he is also, kind of, comfortable with it. And maybe it is that he sees himself in Ralph, he completely understands why Ralph is behaving the way he does. I always find that so touching (a little bit funny too, especially the captain shouting 'fire'!)