#not the best BUT in my defense this was impulse written so.

[seelestia]

— 𝐇𝐎𝐋𝐃 𝐒𝐓𝐈𝐋𝐋, 𝐏𝐋𝐄𝐀𝐒𝐄?

SUMMARY. in which you decide to do their eye makeup for them and the many antics that come with it.

CHARACTERS. zhongli, alhaitham, xiao, wanderer, gorou, itto.

GENRE. fluff, slight crack, established relationship.

CW. close proximity, one use of pet name, zhongli sorta acts like a cat, alhaitham is a lil insufferable but you love him, wanderer is also an inch away from choking you (affectionately).

THOUGHTS. question: is their eye makeup waterproof or do they apply it every morning?? fascinating. p/s: happy birthday to @zhongrin! lots of love to one of the best people i've ever met on this site <3

✰ masterlist.

© written by @seelestia. do not copy, translate, repost to other sites nor claim as yours!

— ZHONGLI.

❝Apologies, dear. Is this distance acceptable?❞

ZHONGLI smells of rich cologne and the vapor of tea brews wafting through the air when you step into a teahouse. You know this, of course, you've buried yourself in his embrace countless times before — but to have your face so close to his like this, you've never felt an urge to look away quite this strong before.

You stay composed, however, Zhongli can't always be the only one with the cool composure in this household, after all. "Mhm, perfect," you nod with a quiet hum as he closes his eyes, settling his chin in your palm so snugly that you laugh.

"You're like a cat," you remark, trying to suppress the littlest impulse to bump your forehead onto his in an affectionate way. "Is that so?" Gentle eyes that resemble amber gemstones flutter open to meet yours.

(Almost, were you accidentally about to poke his eye out of sheer panic from his beauty. Almost.)

"I'm glad to know that comparing me to felines seems to bring you amusement," Zhongli brushes his hand against your hair, "But let us focus on the task at hand, my love."

"Lest we miss our reservation at Liuli Pavilion. It is most polite to be punctual," he reminds you. How mean of him; to say such things and expect you to fully register it when he is softly rubbing your cheek like this as if lulling you to sleep.

Seriously, the amount of self-control you have to muster spontaneously in order to fight off the need to lean further into his hand is indescribable. Who's supposed to be the feline again? Anyway. "Okay, okay, I won't dawdle anymore," you adjust his chin in your hold as your other works to bring up the eyeliner to his eye.

"My husband has to look his best, after all," you slip in a little joke."Of course, darling," but Zhongli's answer doesn't sound like he's kidding at all.

(How can he say that with such a straight face? This man, seriously.)

— ALHAITHAM.

❝You're actually concentrating, I'm impressed.❞

"Hey, what's that supposed to mean?" you scrunch your face, frowning at how his words are jabbing at your pride. Has he not realized the power you have in your hands right now? You could actually poke his eyes with the eyeliner you're holding if you want to — not like you would, but Alhaitham is making it a smidgen harder to resist.

"I can focus, alright?" Huffing, you put aside your trivial grudges to grab his chin softly with your other hand. Alhaitham relents with an entertained smile, "All those times you fall asleep every time I read to you says otherwise."

"Well, that's— that's different," you stammer. In your defense, most of the books he chose to read to you are either theoretical physics or philosophies; it's a wonder how you're lulled to sleep even though it isn't a storybook. Of course, Alhaitham's library is a range of wide genres but you're starting to think he picks those books solely for you.

You're pulled out of your train of thoughts when you put in some distance to view your finished artwork. With Alhaitham's face as the canvas, somewhat comically.

(Well, aren't his eyes pretty? They look even sharper when accented with the eyeliner... whether that be for better or for worse. You shake your head internally at any poor person who happens to test his patience later today.)

"Wow," you mumble dazedly, "Red eyeliner really suits you." He raises an eyebrow at the genuineness in your quiet voice but only lifts his face away from your hand in response. Alhaitham regards your efforts in the mirror beside the two of you with a hum, "Maybe we should make this a routine, then."

There is a little something oddly hidden behind his sentence. Accusingly, you voice your suspicion by squinting your eyes at the Scribe, "...You just don't wanna do it yourself, do you?" And he enables it without a doubt, "Feel free to speculate."

(Ugh, this man.)

"But regardless..." he crosses his arms against his chest with a nod, "It doesn't look so bad."

(Would it have killed him from the inside out to say a compliment with a positive connotation? Okay, whatever, you love him.)

— XIAO.

❝....❞

Silent, quiet, and frozen in place like a statue.

The mere presence of those traits are more than enough reasons to have you worrying whether or not XIAO is still breathing. He is, thankfully, you can confirm that from the close proximity between the two of you and you mentally let out a sigh of relief.

(Thank the Archons you didn't lean in any further lest you would've heard how terribly his poor heart is faring and he doesn't want that.)

There is one more problem, however.

"You don't have to close your eyes that hard, you know..." you try to start, but Xiao still doesn't falter one bit; "It is of utmost necessity," he insists for the nth time since you've lost count.

"Are you sure?"

"Yes."

(Talk about stubborn.)

Your question is coming from a place of genuine concern because the frown on his forehead looks like it's going to engrave itself there forever from how intensely he is closing his eyes... Doesn't that hurt? You resist the urge to soothe away that frown with your thumb.

It's a good thing that it's only the two of you here right now, though. A stranger would be scared to death if they were to be gazed at with such an intense look and from the Conqueror of Demons at that. Oh, whatever will happen to your efforts of trying to prove to the children at Liyue Harbor that Xiao is actually a softie? Gee.

(But still, you can't help but smile.)

"Utmost necessity, huh?" you echo back his words with a hum. Your intentions bear no mockery but it seems the adeptus still manages to find some sort of dissatisfaction in your reaction. "Do not smile at me like that," Xiao mutters within a choked exhale that only serves to make him come off less stern than he would've liked.

His eyes are still, very much, closed as far as you can see.

The irony of it all tickles a chuckle out of you, mirth glazed over your eyes. "Is this an Adepti art I'm not aware of or are you secretly looking at me even with your eyes closed?" you ask cheekily. Xiao's cheeks are but a mere inch away from bursting into flames and he can only use words as his defense.

"...There is no need for you to know," he huffs.

Well, he isn't denying it, that's for sure.

(The answer is intuition.)

— WANDERER.

❝...Are you done yet? Any more second of this torture and I might just perish from boredom.❞

You're doing his makeup for him and this is the kind of treatment you get? You would've faked a gasp if you weren't so busy holding in a laugh over how his body is betraying his speech. That flustered look on WANDERER's face isn't helping his case at all.

"Uh-huh," your drawled out reply is enough of an indication to show that you're not really taking his words (threats?) seriously. Wanderer's bark can be as harsh as his bite, but you've never minded all the barks he sends your way — so much so that you barely even spare him any eye contact in favor of perfecting the red shade you're trying to blend around his eyelids.

(Perfection requires concentration, they say.)

But that doesn't mean you can't see anything else, though. You're uncertain if the Wanderer realizes this or somehow forgets because you can, in fact, see from your peripheral vision — and from said peripheral angle, he seems to be looking at something of yours rather intensely.

"You're staring at my lips," you point out.

"Shut it," he grumbles out his defense as fast as lightning.

(Caught him red-handed.)

"Sorry," you chuckle teasingly, "If you want a kiss, you're gonna have to wait for a bit." The way he looks so undeniably irritated by your statement makes you have no other option but to burst into a mini chuckling fit.

"Ugh, it's not like you can't lean in closer to—" His mouth snaps to a stop once it dawns on him; that your words are an attempt at reading his mind and he is technically confirming it to your face.

"Actually, nevermind, whatever. Just get this over and done with," he averts his eyes quickly with a scowl that feels as harmless as a naby deer (to you, anyway). "Giving up already?" you raise an eyebrow jokingly. With how Wanderer closes his eyes with a sigh, you assume he is only mere seconds away from giving your forehead a good flick.

"Don't think you're completely off the hook," he sternly interjects with a huff, "You still owe me some kind of compensation for taking your sweet time with this."

"And will that compensation be in the form of a kiss, per chance?" you hum amusedly.

"...It better be," he closes his eyes as if to signify the end of his willingness to comment any further.

Wanderer has never been one to shy away from the truth, but that is only because its taste always turns out bitter. Yet, in this case, when the truth entails something as embarrassingly sweet as desiring a kiss from you, then it becomes a conundrum for him.

After all, he is not fond of sweet things but he is fond of you. Maybe, this close proximity is getting to his head a little too much for his liking — darn it, he knew this was a bad idea the moment you showed him those puppy eyes.

— GOROU.

❝This is... embarrassing...❞

GOROU looks like he is merely a hair's breadth away from digging a hole into the ground and burrowing in it forever. But thankfully, the only thing keeping him on the surface happens to be you, the person holding him still by the cheek.

"There is nothing to be embarrassed about," you squish his cheek gently and Gorou lets out a noise akin to a little whine. "What if one of the soldiers sees us?" he protests, yet makes no actual initiative to remove himself from your grasp.

"Let them," you tap the eyeliner pen against his forehead two times and he winces dramatically as if you just struck him over the head. "Ouch!" Gorou rubs the sore spot instinctively and you can feel a faint trickle of guilt (even though you only hit him with the amount of strength someone would need to blow a dandelion), yet that is still not enough to the little lecture you're about to give him.

"Being the General of the Resistance doesn't mean you have to do everything yourself. It's okay to rely on someone to do something for you once in a while, you know."

"Even something as small as letting them do your eye makeup for you," you huff with a proud smile as an emphasis, carefully tracing a line on the outer part above his eyes.

"...Mmpf," the muffled noise that comes out of his mouth has you raising an eyebrow. Although unsure if it's because of that pout on his lips or his puffed cheeks, you still let out a little laugh at the thought of said possibilities anyway.

"Pfft, what's that sound?" you tease, "Does that mean you agree with me or not?"

"[Y/N]," Gorou calls your name in a stern tone or at least, tries to.

(He has never been good at scolding people but he swears if you keep on teasing him, he'll actually explode. ...And by that, he means melting into a puddle of jelly on the ground.)

— ITTO.

❝You gotta make em' look super dope, alright? Make sure you put more highlights on this one! And oh, this one right here too!❞

No one really knows whether the tattoos on ITTO's skin are actually real or not. Knowing he is someone of Oni blood doesn't narrow down the answer any further but if you were to ask him about them yourself, Itto prefers to call them "100% natural, baby!".

Not to mention, he is always looking for ways to make them stand out or look cooler — which led to this grand idea of asking you to do his makeup for him because apparently, your touch is magical since you're his favorite person on this emtire planet (his words, not yours).

...He can come up with the most random things to say sometimes. But hey, seeing a grown Oni beg on his knees sure was something and you didn't have the heart to say no to him.

"Sooooo," Itto starts with an attempt to clear his throat professionally, "How does it feel like having the honor to prepare me for my next battle?" he accentuates his sentence with a series of haughty laughter that cause his shoulders to shake vigorously.

"Don't move," you scrunch your face with a frown, pinching him indignantly for nearly breaking your focus. "Yikes! Sorry, sorry, I'll stay still!" the Oni yelps, a noise so embarrassing he almost cups his mouth like second nature.

But he doesn't do that, in fear of being pinched by your lovely fingers and proceeds to look at you with eyes befitting that of a kicked puppy's. "...You'll come and cheer for me, right?" Itto asks pleadingly and you smile.

"Of course," you say and he has to resist the urge to do a full-on fist bump into the air. But you still have some more left to say as you continue, "Just don't cry if you lose, alright? You'll ruin the makeup and besides...." There is a devious grin resting on your face now, "You don't want the kids to think your face makeup look like tear marks, don't you?"

Yup, there comes that offended gasp you've been waiting for.

"What— heck no!" Itto places a hand on his chest dramatically, "Tear marks?! Preposterous! The Arataki Itto doesn't shed tears! Of course not!" You can only hide your giggles behind your palm while Itto struggles to defend his wounded pride.

"...Forrealthough, doesitactuallylookliketearmarks—"

Now, you've got him second-guessing himself (but at least, he's cute?).

─ ⊹ ⊱ ・・・・・・☆・・・・・・・⊰ ⊹ ─

© SEELESTIA, may 2023. do not repost, plagiarize, translate nor claim as your own.

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[adventuringblind]

Offense is the best Defense

Oacar Piastri X Verstappen!Reader

Genre: angst to fluff

Request: no :’( but I’m taking them! Send theeeeem. I’m going to die without them. Jk but do feel free to flood my inbox with ideas.

Summary: Oscar is new to the grid. Meaning he’s also new to the Verstappen family dynamic. It sucks that he has to watch the girl he fell for get berated by her father. So he decides to do something about it.

Warnings: Jos Verstappen, allusions to verbal abuse, allusions to physical abuse

Notes: written in third person

Masterlist

Oscar first met her when he was in formula 2. She’d been walking around the paddock before her brothers race and right after his.

She looked like she was debating something. Frozen in time. So frozen that he literally ran into her and she hardly moved. Aside from her mouth which was rapidly spilling apologies.

He started looking for her every time the races lined up. The boy wanting her number but it always seemed like the wrong time.

When he caught her walking alone, the sun illuminating her features, he knew it was now or never.

Thus started their friendship.

He didn’t have to try with her. Even his dry sarcasm that other people hated made her snicker. They shared the latest gossip over late night video calls. She listened intently to his frustrations. In his eyes, she’s an angel.

When he signed with Alpine, he was excited to see her more. Now that he would be in the same area all the time, it would be easier.

She often found herself in the Alpine garage watching the race with him. The small touches she left on his arm when things happened made his heart melt more for her, if it was even possible.

The first time he noticed something was a bit off, was when ended a call for her. He’d been yelling in a language he didn’t understand. Then a slamming door, her rapid breath, his angry mumbling, then silence. He was aware something was going on in the Verstappen family. Everyone knew. Max has repeatedly said things his dad has done like it’s normal. Laughed about it even.

Oscar saw Max knew that not everything that happened was normal. His body usually a half step in front of his sister when their father started getting aggressive. She always celebrated Max’s race results even if he DNF’d. Her attempts at soothing her father before he got to Max in vain, but she didn’t care.

The first time Oscar caught it, he’d wanted to step in. Christian grabbing his shoulder before he could get into the Redbull garage. “I know you care, but it might make things worse for them.” He’d said. A frown on his lips.

“Isn’t there anything I can do?” He didn’t want to leave her like this.

“Be there if they need someone.”

Oscar had taken those words to heart. Making sure he was always available to her as she was to him. He held her when she needed a hug. Lent her say everything she’d wanted to say to her father.

This continued even as he got a seat with McLaren.

She was the first person he called. They celebrated by driving to where there was no light and just staring at the stars.

He didn’t know where the burst of impulsiveness came from. His lips were on hers at one point. Softer then he’d imagined. Then he was pulling away, realizing what he’d just done. He didn’t get far however, as she wrapped her hands around his and pulled him in for another.

Things changed after that. Their feelings now on the table. It was obvious they were in love and he knew it. Lando teased him relentlessly. Max shockingly congratulated him, then threatened him, followed by a plea to take care of his baby sister.

She started staying in his hotel room. The relief of not having to be around Jos as much showed in the way she carried herself. Her confidence seemed to go up. She smiled and waved at everyone. It made Oscar happy to know she was starting to feel the way he had always seen her. Perfect just the way she is.

Unfortunately, Oscar knew he wasn't going to be able to solve all her problems. Jos is still active in her life and Max's racing career. What's worse is that Jos didn't seem to like him all that much. He'd tried introducing himself only to be waved off.

It didn't make any sense to him, but if she was smiling, then so was he.

~

The next time she ran into trouble was when she came to a race in a McLaren shirt with Oscar's number on it. She had started dividing her time evenly between her brother and him.

Jos was less than happy about this. Consistently finding excuses for her to be away from the papaya team.

Both her and Max went home for the week off. Both want to see their eldest sister and her family.

When she got back to her room at her father's house, the majority of her clothes had been ripped to peices. A lovely note taped to her door reader: 'If you're not going to support this family, I won't support you.'

Max had been waiting for her to grab her things. Though he was getting annoyed with how long she'd kept him waiting. Finally, after an hour, he decided to see what was keeping her.

He made his way up to her room. The muffled sounds of tears could be heard from down the hall. He peaked his head into her door, not bothering to knock since it was halfway open.

The sight of most of your belongings being ribbed to pieces shattered him. Jos had done it before. The first time was when Victoria had her first relationship, then when Max back talked, she the youngest broke curfew by five minutes, and so on.

Max thought they were over this. Turns out he was wrong. He was down on his knees, trying to help soothe her. Her fingers clutched pictures that had been ripped to pieces. Her clothes scattered around the floor with scissor cuts through them. Anything glass or fragile had been smashed.

It took them hours to get everything clean. Max grabbed an extra bag and they packed whatever she had left into it.

"Obviously, I'm forcing you to move in now."

Max had offered it to her a few times. She always turned it down. Jos made it a point to say she would be another added distraction. As if Kelly and Penelope weren't enough already. Now, he wasn't giving her a choice. Jos didn't come and visit Max's apartment, so he knew it would be safe there.

She called Oscar that night from Monaco. He instantly knew something was wrong by the look in her eyes.

"What happened?"

"I moved into Max's apartment... kinda."

"Are you alright, love?" He was trying to be gentle. She looked so pained. She shook her head no in response.

"What do you mean by kind of? Do you want me to come to Monaco?"

"My dad shredded all my clothes and broke most of my stuff. Kelly is taking me to get some essentials tomorrow's before we have to leave."

She turned her camera to show Oscar her new room. "I do like it here for what it's worth."

Oscar had made up his mind that night. "If you want to, you could always come live with me." He sounded unsure of himself. The two had never talked about it before.

"Wouldn't I be a distraction?"

"Where on earth would you get that idea? I think you make me drive better, personally."

It was settled that she would go home with him after the race. Max was elated for her. She finally found someone who saw her and wasn't intimidated by their father.

~

The race weekend went by so fast. The McLaren boys did amazing, placing p2 and p4.

She quite litterally was crying in joy for Oscar. Max had never been prouder of Lando. From their start to now was a big achievement.

The two knew that Jos would have their ears for it later. Congratulating competitors isn't how you make a name for yourself. It's why she hugged Oscar a little more than normal in front of him.

The garage was a nightmare. She didn't want to be here anymore. Jos had been hounding both her and Max.

Oscar had been on his way to find her. She couldn't have gotten far. Probably just to her brothers garage to celebrate his win.

Oscar is normally able to stay calm, level headed in many situations that require it. This was not one of those situations.

Similar to the first time he saw Jos interact with his kids, he felt the need to step in. Or at least say something to him.

There was nothing standing in his way this time.

He straightened himself. Mildly nervous at hearing the sounds of angry Dutch.

Oscar took long steps and placed himself directly between Jos and his children. The older Dutchman shot him a look of confusion. Then recognition formed in his stern eyes.

"Get out of my way." He seeths. He can feel the woman behind him trying to tug him away.

Her concern for his safety was rapidly approaching the heart attack range. Her brother spinning on his heels only to see her on the verge of hyperventilating.

The two had a shared fear. They knew how to evade their fathers hand. He'd not hesitated to be aggressive before, and they doubted that had changed recently.

It didn't matter, though. Oscar grabbed her wrist protectively, tugging her slightly behind him.

"No." He sounded more sassy than intended. Challenging the older man.

It didn't take long for the people around to realize something was going on. Oscar is dressed in his race suit still and stands out, the girl behind him is damn near petrified and Max just hit the wall with his hand.

The youngest Verstappen inched her way around Oscar. His stare off with the older male distracting him more then he thought.

“Max asked you to leave.” She said. Trying to hide the waiver in her voice. Oscar flinched at the sound. How had he not realized she was now in front of him? Regardless, he goes back to holding her protectively, just with an arm around her waist this time.

She felt better now that he was there. The confidence he’d been helping her gain was finally paying off.

Jos was turning red in and her now. His hand quick to move towards her.

Oscar was able to react faster. He yanked her body backwards into him, stumbling as they moved dodged his swing. The two still managing to stay upright.

Max was also quick to react. Weaving himself between the younger two and his father. Max didn’t hesitate to shove him away.

Everyone stood in shocked silence for a moment. The only sound being heavy breathing

~

Everything had moved fast after that. The young woman clung to Oscar, both in fear and joy.

Oscar held her tightly. Hand pressed into the back of her head. Lost of the words of praise in encouragement they were whispering to each other.

They let themselves enjoy the moment. Completely tuned out of the world. Both had been successful in something. Something that had been a long time running and they had helped earthed through the worst of.

It was something both of them could be proud of, for themselves and each other. So they let themselves bathe in the euphoric feeling that they earned.

[shewolf-sinclair]

I HATE when people dumb down Jason Todd “he’s impulsive/irrational/erratic/brash/dumb/the angry robin!”

WRONG

let me break it down for you fools because he’s actually like one of the most nuanced and complex characters to ever bless my presence (and he’s the best ((my fav)) robin argue with the wall) (tldr at the end but please read the post)

Starting out as robin they are ALL orphans. because that’s like bruce’s thing. BUT dick and tim had families before bruce adopted them. Jason did not. HE GREW UP ON THE STREETS. (+10 points for truama✨) which led him to grow up to be independent and resourceful. Bruce literally met him because he was trying to steal the bat mobiles tires with the intent of reverse engineering them to sell to the people of gotham because bullet proof tires in that kinda city would save lives source

As for being brash. Yeah. he is. he lacks people skills because HE GREW UP ON THE STREETS. yet he still knows how to sympathize with people and not be an ass ALL the time. he’s cocky sure but it’s a defensive mechanism after years of being treated like he doesn’t have value/having to prove himself. and damien is worse lets bsffr.

He’s impulsive. (likely adhd) Teenager. next question.

He’s the angriest robin! he only ever wants vengeance! WRONG. dick is angrier! he was so petty he left gotham and got a new identity just as a fuck you to bruce. any anger Jason has is not unmatched or outdone by other robins and he is rightfully angry he’s been dealt a crappy hand in life. he’s jealous of dick because bruce was ALWAYS comparing him and telling heroic stories of dicks feats. it’s hard not to push yourself to be as good as or better than the og and not to crack under said pressure.

He’s dumb! NOPE. he is as smart if not smarter than tim. He is BRILLIANT when he wants to be. (see above: resourceful) if you take titans (cw) as canon (why wouldn’t u its as canon as any other tv show??) he is a GENIUS. he taught himself chemistry so he could invent and mass produce drugs. he had a genius strategy to fuck with the titans; the puzzle of clues for which dick needed scarecrow, kory, gar, and conner to solve. Not to mention him finding doctor light earlier in the season. He leads the outlaws bc he is a natural leader and good at handling the details!!

He’s a villain! OKAY AND? SO WAS HARLEY BUT WE LUV HER !! DAMIEN WAS A TRAINED ASSASAIN! he puts so much effort into helping people (see above: resourceful) HE RISKED/LOST HIS LIFE FOR IT. HE IS FIERCELY LOYAL. even as red hood he obtains a strict moral code; no drugs to kids or by schools, don’t kill innocent uninvolved people(depends on which media you’re looking at). serve karma on a gold platter. unlawful but USUALLY NOT unethical. he also becomes a vigilante (and the JL for a bit) and does so much good! none of them are perfect ALL of the time. and considering the other DC villains, he’s not that evil.

strength?? no problem! he almost beat dick and bruce several times in the comics!! source

not to mention his proficiency for new things (see above: chemistry) his whole time as robin he uses bat tech. but redhood uses guns and knives. he just picked that up and was a skilled marksman immediately. (also truama response after nearly dying to death stroke)

so what hes kinda fucked in the head. aren’t they all? isn’t that… the point? it’s justified after everything he’s been through AND it makes hims a better character, more 3D more realistic and relatable.

also for the sake of this thesis partially disregard the wonderful work of art that is WFA it’s a fixit. for a reason. because the it was broken and needed fixing.

TLDR; you don’t have to like Jason Todd, or think he’s the best Robin, but you have to admit, he is a complex, layered, well written character. And stop mischaracterizing him and dumbing him down to this impulsive, angry, weak kid.

bonus: my Jason playlist

[cenorii]

Chris Redfield: personality

This is my psychological analysis of the character, which includes important details of the story, an analysis of the decisions they made and the concept of the phenomenon of «Guiding Fear». Contains spoilers!

Even if you know lore 100%, you will be able to learn something new from my thoughts

I did this to practice analyzing personalities and reliably prescribe my own characters.

[These are all my personal reflections that I have been accumulating and analyzing for six months. You can see the same analysis with Wesker here. In Chris' case, I want to dispel the myths that he is unstable and stupid. Thanks to everyone who reads this, I really appreciate it and it's nice to know that my thoughts are of interest to someone!]

Chris devoted his life entirely to the fight against bioterrorism, renouncing normal life so that others could have it. We don't know much about his thoughts and feelings, as it's in Chris' character to hide such things deep within himself so they don't interfere with his work, but his kind and honest nature shines through. His probable motto is «If not me, then who?»

The main theme of Resident Evil is the struggle with fear. We can speculate endlessly about which characters struggle with which fear, but I'm pretty sure Chris embodies the «fear of loss».

In his 48 years of life, he has lost many partners and squad members, as well as family and friends. Death follows Chris, and he is unbearably afraid of his curse. But who is Chris? In the eyes of many he is a hero, famous for his impulsive character and unbending sense of justice, because of which he is ready to argue with his superiors to prove his point. But behind the legend is a sensitive, respectful and careful man, able to recognize the best qualities in people and guide them.

«I'm not a hero» © Chris

Because of his fear of losing his loved ones, Chris needs control and order in his life, he avoids and minimizes any risks. For this reason, in re8 organized his own squad, separated from the organization, to have full control over the situation. This obsession to control his environment and outcomes to avoid the pain or disappointment that he has experienced in the past is a defense mechanism.

Chris is not an overly sociable person or someone who is eager to make new friends. Although he is easy to communicate, Chris still refrains from frequent socializing with people to avoid forming attachments that could potentially lead to losses in the future. He is used to formal communication between subordinates and colleagues, and informal communication only with those close to Chris who have been with him for a long time.

But let's go his way.

Chris and his younger sister Claire lost their parents when they were children, they died in a car accident. Since then, Chris has taken responsibility for his sister and they have become very close. The first major loss in his life.

At the age of 17, Chris joined the United States Air Force, where he stayed for 6 years. From there he has flying skills, and he is also good with various weapons and is known for his hand-to-hand combat skills, which will not once help him in life. A capable man who was fired for disobeying senior officers, because he didn't agree with them. Barry Burton, a friend he met in the Air Force, recommended Chris to S.T.A.R.S. (elite special forces division under the jurisdiction of the Raccoon Police Department), and that's how his fateful meeting with the Alpha and Bravo teams happened. On the team, Chris was valued for his versatility and was assigned as a point man.

There Chris won at least one award as the best shooter and also met Jill Valentine, who later became his good friend and partner.

His desk in S.T.A.R.S.'s office stands out with its perpetual clutter, scattered folders and disks. He tends to bring things from home, decorating his place with them. For example, next to his desk, Chris put a guitar and also hung a jacket with "Made in Heaven" written on it, which is a reference to a song by the band Queen. Did he risk using the guitar in the presence of the Captain?

On holidays, he would often go to the suburbs with his teammates to drink, which sometimes caused riots. At that point, Chris was chaotic, but because of a difficult fate in the future, he had to tame his inner chaos.

All good things came to an end when contact was lost with Bravo's team in the mountains near Raccoon City. Alpha, meaning the team Chris was on, went to investigate and stumbled upon the Spencer's Mansion. But it wasn't an accident, it was just part of the plan of Wesker, their Captain. The mansion was only a cover for the Umbrella lab beneath it. All the inhabitants of the place had become mere shadows of their former selves, turning into zombies. In order for Chris to explore the building more safely, Wesker left supplies for him in some places, which may not be canon, but only a game convention. But this is quite normal for Wesker, he maintained the image of the captain until the very end.

When Chris caught Wesker off guard in the lab, he was finally convinced that his fears were correct... the captain was a traitor. But even knowing that, realizing how many squad members he ruined, when Wesker was mortally wounded Chris didn't hide his excitement for him. In the re1 remake Chris twitches in his direction, but then recoils. Chris has compassion even for those who betrayed him.

Chris lost many friends, including Wesker, during this assignment. And that day left a strong imprint in his mind. It was later dubbed «Mansion Incident». Something that divided the lives of many into «before» and «after» and began an endless nightmare.

Chris, Jill, Barry, Brad and Rebecca survived and took it upon themselves to figure things out. Upon their return, Chris reported the horrific incident to anyone who was willing to listen, but Police Chief Irons hushed up all the gossip, being under the thumb of Umbrella, not to mention that even the government refused to listen to what Chris had to say. Umbrella had too much influence for it to be that simple, but that only fueled the fire of Chris's fighting spirit. He went on «vacation» to Europe to do his own investigation without saying anything to Claire. Chris wanted to keep his sister out of danger, but there were consequences. Concerned about her brother's disappearance, Claire found herself drawn into the chaos of the fall of Raccoon City, where she met Leon Kennedy (events re2).

During his time at S.T.A.R.S., Chris saw his sister often and taught her shooting and combat skills. Thanks to her brother's attention, Claire learned the skills she needed to survive.

When Claire learned enough information about her brother and left the infected city, she traveled to Europe to continue her search for Chris, but found herself caught by Umbrella. She was sent to Rockfort Island prison, which was more like a concentration camp. (Code: Veronica). Thanks to information from Leon, who Claire managed to contact, Chris set out to help his sister. On the island, he encountered a few revelations - Wesker was alive for some reason, and he was also after some Alexia.

The former captain who got Chris's friends killed. The one who was presumed dead has once again cast a shadow over Redfield's life. Their fates intertwined.

Since Wesker's presence has been causing disasters as of late, Chris decided not only to find his sister, but also to investigate the situation on the island to prevent his new enemy from giving him what he was looking for. Upon meeting him, he discovered that the former captain was no longer human. Chris was only able to defeat him by stealth, suffering greatly in the process.

He eventually saved Claire, and they left the place together. Deep in his heart, Chris realized that Umbrella must cease to exist so that people like Wesker would disappear. So that unfortunate people would not repeat the fate of Steve (Claire's dead friend) and the people of Raccoon City.

In 2003, he traveled with Jill to Russia because of reports of infected people in that region. Their visit to a biological weapons factory ended with a victory over a new enemy, T-A.L.O.S., as well as the collapse of Umbrella, because now Chris and Jill had all the evidence against them. It was not without the help of Wesker, who had contributed to this collapse, because he wanted the same thing. Since then, Chris had become very attached to Jill, as if he was responsible for her life.

However, bioweapons and viruses have affected civilians many more times. That's why Chris and his partner joined the young BSAA organization to prevent the disaster in Raccoon City from repeating itself. In 2005 they were drawn into a conflict with the terrorist organization Veltro, in the investigation of which revealed unpleasant information about traitors in their (BSAA) ranks. There, by the way, Chris becomes the partner of a certain Jessica Sherawat, who is clearly partial to him, but he pretends that he does not notice the hints, softly rejecting the feelings of the future traitor. Inside BSAA, the leadership had to be changed, and that was the first seed of doubt that settled in Chris's mind. The first feeling of distrust for the place he was involved with.

Life continues to put Chris on the spot, forcing him to go on various missions with little or no time to rest. Thanks to the huge number of things, he has dedicated himself to, Chris is at the top of the organization. His endless hard work is summed up in his own phrase: «I'm Not Going To Stop Until I'm Dead».

Let's travel back to 2006. DLC for re5 «Lost in Nightmares». Chris and Jill go in search of Spencer, the last remaining bit of Umbrella, its founder. This man is responsible for many things and deserves to be punished, and could help them find Wesker. But when the partners arrive on a tip-off at his mansion, they find only a bloody corpse with their former captain standing over it. The latter in turn was displeased with the intrusion and immediately attacked them, during the fight Chris was caught off guard. A couple of seconds separated him from probable death. But Jill intervened and pushed Wesker through the window, she falling with him into the cliff. Chris could only watch helplessly as they fell, realizing that once again he had lost someone dear to him. Here Chris wonders for the first time if his struggle is worth it.

Jill's body was never found, and neither was Wesker's, so the former was pronounced dead. The empty grave with the headstone that had been erected in her honor was not deprived of Chris's attention. He probably went there often and grieved. What he swore over Jill's grave was unknown to anyone, but it made Chris investigate even more and put himself through even more training.

Since 1998, his body has changed a lot. Knowing that one day he would meet Wesker again, Chris diligently grew stronger, pushing his body to the limits of human capability so that he would be ready for anything.

What follows are the events of re5. In 2009, he travels to Africa to stop a bioweapons deal, where he meets his new partner, Sheva Alomar. Although they don't have the reliving of the past that they had with Jill, they hit it off well, thanks to which they accomplish a lot together. At the very beginning they encounter a new enemy, Majini, the same Ganados that Leon once encountered in re4, only from an improved version of the Plaga parasite. They also meet a virtually immortal mutant created thanks to the new Uroboros virus. After defeating him, Chris gets the data and learns that the deal was rigged to test this virus. In doing so, he lost several more of his men and painfully realized that if he had arrived on the scene a little earlier, his corpse lay with them. The data also contained a picture of a woman who looked strangely like the dead Jill, but with blonde hair. Chris secretly believed that maybe his old partner was alive.

Sheva was disappointed by the deaths of her comrades and frightened. Not wanting to put anyone else in danger, Chris asks her to leave him, but Sheva refuses. She assures Chris that they are partners until the end. Somewhere out there, her people are dying, so she can't drop everything and turn back and leave Chris alone. Then Chris tells her that he's on this mission for personal reasons. His former partner Jill may be alive and she needs his help, so they need to hurry before it's too late. To which Sheva agrees, not doubting her new partner's theory.

Eventually, after going through many trials, they came face to face with Wesker. He revealed that Jill had been with him the whole time, but was under a mind-altering drug. Jill, being zombified, fought on the same team as Wesker against Chris and Sheva. One of the dearest people to Chris had been enslaved for two whole years, which was beyond his mind with horror and sadness. He had almost buried her, almost given up looking for her, but Jill was literally under his nose, in a terrible situation. Struggling with his best friend and partner, Chris never stopped trying to get the truth into her head so she would recognize it, and he's succeeding.

Running away on urgent business, Wesker leaves Jill alone, forcing Chris and Sheva to fight her. During the fight, they remove the injector from her chest that was controlling her mind.

A disoriented Jill repents that she realized everything but couldn't control herself, to which her partners reply that they understand. Jill is back in action and off to the «Desperate Escape» DLC, while Chris and Sheva continue the main plot and head off on Wesker's trail. For Chris, this was already a personal vendetta. Having suffered so much loss through this man's fault, he would no longer be able to look Jill in the eye if he didn't stop him.

While searching for Wesker, the team encounters an Uroboros mutated Excella, Wesker's his ally, on whom Wesker decides to test the virus, to see if Excella will prove to be the «chosen one».

After an exhausting battle, the partners find the man they came for and decide to use the serum stolen from Excella. It is an injection that, under the right conditions, stabilizes Wesker's powers, but when overdosed makes him weaker. A weakened Wesker tries to flee to his plane, refusing to be confronted any further. His partners, who managed to climb with him, cause the plane to crash into an active volcano, where their final battle takes place.

Wesker, having lost most of his powers, finds himself in a difficult situation and decides to resort to overdosing on Uroboros. Against him, Chris and Sheva are once again at odds, but the fragile rock in the volcano plays into their hands, and Wesker falls ridiculously into the lava as the ground beneath him collapses.

This allowed partners to take advantage of his helplessness and fire the rocket launcher twice at the target. Although not shown, it is assumed that Wesker was killed.

After that, Chris finally realized what he was fighting for, realizing that his fight was worth the lives saved. Jill was sent to rehab after everything Wesker had done to her and didn't get back to normal until closer to 2015, causing Chris to change partners again. Chris wrote in his notes, «Defeating Wesker's undoubtedly a turning point for me. Due to this battle, I found the meaning behind what I'm fighting for».

In 2012, during the events of re6, Chris and his new partner, Piers Nivans, were sent to Edonia to prevent the spread of another bioweapon, but things didn't go quite as they expected. Another mission, another loss for Redfield.

At some point, he learns about Jake Muller and the fact that his life is in danger. After learning that he was Wesker's own son, Chris thought deep down, probably about the fate that has been intertwined with this man since the days of S.T.A.R.S.

At the very beginning of the mission, Chris loses almost his entire squad, once again convinced of the curse he carries behind him. And amnesia during the trauma incapacitates him for six months and Chris becomes an alcoholic.

In 2013, Pierce brings his captain back into the service, forcefully reclaiming unpleasant memories in order to continue the mission. The losses that Chris has suffered have affected him greatly, and he worries for the lives of every member of the squad, making foolish and rash actions that put him in danger. It is only after talking with Piers that Chris comes to his senses and becomes his old self again, because being gripped by fear you can't save anyone. And he really couldn't save anyone again, only the two of them survived.

After meeting Jake again, Chris confesses that he killed Wesker, his father, which leads to an argument in which Jake pulls a gun on him. Chris at this point says, "Go ahead, shoot. You have every right to. Just promise me you'll survive. The world depends on it." Jake shoots past and declares that there are more important things at stake than their problems. Chris probably feels guilty about him.

On a mission to protect Jake and many others, Chris and Piers have to face a new bioweapon, HAOS. Piers, sacrificing himself, becomes infected with the C-virus and forces Chris to save himself by being alone with HAOS. In doing so, he became another wound on Redfield's heart. Another loss on the account. Chris had planned to retire, lay down his weapons and turn everything over to Piers, but now he is forced to continue his service, thus honoring Piers's memory. Chris once said he would fight to the end, and he doesn't throw words to the wind.

2017, re7 events. Bakers and Mold incident, which Chris was unlucky enough to be involved in. He once again tragically lost all of his people. Once again, fate has struck a sore spot. And that seed of doubt that had settled in his mind back in 2005 finally blossomed. After this incident, Chris became even more distrustful of the BSAA, because they had hidden the incident from the public, which had never happened before. He formed his own Hound Wolf Squad, gathering people he could trust, and spent the next three years tracking down a certain mother Miranda, with absolutely no authorization from headquarters. He became an outcast in BSAA for this cause and for justice.

As Chris got older, he stopped acting impulsively and began to act more uncompromisingly, clearly following the plan regardless of any interference. He saw no obvious reason why he was obligated to inform Ethan of his next course of action before shooting his «wife» during dinner in 2021. He believed that Miranda would realize that Ethan knew something, so such sacrifices had to be made.

Ethan thought until the last minute that his wife was gone and the baby had been taken away. What loss and stress Ethan went through Chris didn't even take it upon himself to imagine. In the end, it turned out that it wasn't his wife at all, but Miranda, who had pretended to be her, changing her appearance at the expense of Mold's abilities. Chris's plan had gone awry from the start, but it could hardly have been worse if he had prematurely informed Ethan. From now on, Chris tried to keep random people out of his plans to minimize any potential casualties.

On this mission, for the first time, Chris didn't lose anyone from his squad, but he did lose a friend. Ethan died to protect loved ones, and it hit Redfield and his fear once again. He experienced grief and anger at the realization that he would never be able to save those whose lives he held dear. Perhaps he chastised himself for the mistakes he had made during this assignment. Blamed himself for not telling Ethan the whole plan beforehand. He had plenty of reasons to hate himself.

But this small victory over Miranda doesn't mean victory in the never-ending war against bioterrorism. On the way back, one of his squad discovers that the body of the BSAA soldier on their plane was a bioweapon. This is the last straw for Chris, and he decides to look into everything, which will most likely lead to a coup in the organization.

To summarize, Chris is sometimes hard to understand, as he hides his emotions and feelings under a meaningful silence. The kindly man who was the soul of the company, by 2021 looks as if he has lost all hope, but it still burns in him. Every dead person he failed to keep safe feels like they destroyed his heart. Christopher is a huge wound in the fandom that is not easy to heal. His storyline is likely coming to an end, which makes me sad to see Chris meet his old age in sadness and loneliness. At the time of re8 (2021), he's already 48 years old, which is a lot considering he's been fighting bioterrorism since he was 25. Has Chris ever thought of his own wants and needs since then? He has such dedication and concern for others that it seems as if he is completely oblivious to himself. With his endless responsibilities, it would be impossible to take a vacation, but there are indeed moments of calm, does Chris never rest?

On a more personal note, he has always treated his squads like family, "I know it is not any of my business, but I want you to think of us as a family... no matter how this all ends" (Philosophy University Incident 2010). Nothing is known about Chris' relationships, except for one non-canonical instance of dating a girl in «Viral Campaign». Apart from his living friends, he has no one else. It wasn't until Ethan's death that he found something resembling a normal life. Chris helped Ethan's wife raise and educate their daughter Rose, becoming an uncle and father figure to her. It is unknown if Chris ever returned to alcoholism after his amnesia, but I can assume it is unlikely. A lot of things happened to him during that period of his life that affected his view of the world. Surely he no longer allows himself to behave so recklessly, even in the most stalemate situation.

Interesting detail, Chris is constantly contrasted with Wesker, as if he's a better version of him. Both were Alpha squad captains, both have blood type 0, and were once the same weight class and same height. Probably the same eye color, as well as great weapons proficiency. Their encounters in re5 don't look like a fight, it's more like a dance between two people with equally good fighting skills. Sure, Wesker is much stronger than Chris due to his situation with the virus, but he never let himself use more strength than necessary to keep Chris fighting him, prolonging any fight with him. It's possible that Wesker's attempt to kill Chris in «Lost in Nightmares» is just a ruse, and he was going to toss him aside somewhere, as he never seriously intended to hurt him enough. Chris' age at the time of his last official appearance in re8 is 48, which matches Wesker's age at the time of his supposed death. Their conflict isn't over yet, so it's fully expected that Wesker survived and will once again surprise Christopher with his presence. They need to finish what they started, as adults and having already been through a lot. Without the pointless fights that the current Chris is unlikely to get into. There's no telling what the modern Wesker might be like, but if he's stayed in the shadows for so many years, it's not like he's planning to be too reckless either.

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

Due to a misunderstanding, I would like to supplement my text. This analysis is only my personal interpretation and my personal view of the character and his story. I do not claim that it is 100% canon, because canon is so vague and disjointed that it is impossible to fully assemble it objectively. Everyone is entitled to have an interpretation different from mine. Best wishes to all!

[telvess]

Pizza delivery girl

higuruma hiromi x reader fic, a bit of smut content (nothing extreme, only kissing, touching and inappropriate dialogues). 🔞 MINORS DNI 🔞

wc: 3,390

Big thanks to my @teatreeoilll for correct spelling and supporting me the entire time. You're the best 💕 This fic would never have been written without you!

He doesn’t even like pizza.

And yet every time he has to do overtime in the dull room he calls an office, all while working cases and overwhelming his mind to the point where he just wants to see the bed, he finds himself thinking of you - the pizza delivery girl - and wondering if he should order another damn pizza. You slip to his mind unannounced once the tiredness takes over and his brain needs stimulation.

Higuruma Hiromi never took himself for a daydreamer, but here he is - imagining scenarios that will never happen with a woman he barely knows.

Ding dong!

Hiromi feels his co-workers' eyes on him when he gets up from his desk, their gazes follow him all the way to the door. As he walks there’s a new spring in his step. It's that time of day.

He opens the door and sees you, the woman who rules his irrational side. You smile at him, freckles clear on your fair skin.

“We meet again,” Hiromi welcomes you, looking at your peach colored hoodie with a print on it that he assumes is the cover of some band’s album.

“I’m starting to think that there’s hidden reason you order from the same place almost every day,” you point out with a smirk. Hiromi likes the way your voice changed over the last few meetings - how it became partly coy and… seductive.

“Well, I'm starting to wonder what are the odds that you're always the one who delivers my orders,” he bites back.

Your smile deepens and with slight shrug you mutter, “Touché.” You hand him over the pizza. “But don’t jump to conclusions. I’m just worried about you”— and your voice lowers to a whisper as you lean closer—“a little birdie told me you’re living here, Higuruma-san.”

Hiromi enjoys the softness in your voice, but for the love of God, don't use this tone when you say his name. You straighten up with a contented smile when you notice him swallow.

“You’re looking more tired every day,” you admit.

It’s not that you're innocent in all this.

“Nothing gets past you, does it?” As you nod the brown hair in your pigtail sways.

“You should take care of yourself before helping others.”

“Tough case,” he tries to shrug it off.

“Yeah, I heard.” Hiromi looks up to see genuine concern in your eyes. Before he can ask, you continue, “I read the papers. You did good job.”

Hiromi wants to say the case it’s far from over, but instead he decides not to; he accepts the compliment with a nod.

“Work goes better on a full stomach,” he says, raising the pizza box to light up the mood. You snort and bite your lower lip.

“Well I’m sure it could go even better if you relieved the pressure here and there.” You massage your shoulders and move them as if you were exhausted. You catch Hiromi a bit off guard with that.

“Well, I”—He rubs his hand over his two-day stubble—“Heh…” He smiles and can’t force himself to look you into eyes, feeling annoying heat spreading over his cheeks.

“No comeback, huh?” He hears you barely holding your laugher. Soon both of you laugh, more or less openly. For a moment Hiromi forgets he's at his office. The burden that weighed upon his mind lately suddenly becomes bearable.

“You know, I was wondering…” He scratches his cheek with a finger. His head is still full of doubts, but the timing feels so right that Hiromi gives in spontaneous impulse.

“About what?” you tilt your head.

“I—” “Excuse me, is this the defense attorney’s office?”

That’s not the right question.

For split of a second Hiromi doesn’t register the man appearing by your side. Then he notices a patch on the man's jacket with the symbol of the courier company.

“Yes, it is,” you say.

“Mr. Higuruma Hiromi?” The man asks and Hiromi confirms with a nod. His eyes are still on you, observing how you smile with what he hopes is some sort of disappointment. You shrug, then wave at him and finally turn away.

Hiromi watches over man’s shoulder how you go down the stairs. One last peek at your ass before the disappointment in his chest slowly builds up. He takes the package, closes the doors and comes back to his desk, too pensive to feel his co-worker's eyes on himself.

“Oh enough already!” Hiromi flinches at the woman's voice. It doesn’t happen often for her to be this angry, especially not at him and not about matters that aren’t work related.

“Why won’t you ask her out already?” She asks, crossing her hands over her chest.

If there’s one thing that Hiromi is grateful for, it’s definitely the ability to keep his cool in stressful situations. Professional habit.

“Why would I?” His voice is drier than when he was thanking the courier for his service.

His co-worker takes a deep breath, then asserts, “Because every time she turns her back you stare at her ass with those sad puppy eyes of yours.”

Is this how criminals feel when they speak to him through the glass windows in the visiting room? Because he definitely feels like one of them caught red-handed.

“There are no puppy eyes. And besides,” he pauses, lacking a counter-argument, “I don’t stare.” It takes one long skeptical gaze to break his façade. “Fine. But I wouldn’t call it staring.”

The co-worker raises her brows.

“Then how would you call it?”

“Admiring?” he mumbles, hoping she doesn’t hear it. His co-worker chuckles from behind her desk. He sighs as he looks at her, and puts the package and pizza box on his desk.

“I don’t think she would decline though.” It was naive of him to assume the conversation was over.

“Don't you have work to do?” He tries to separate himself from her by breaking the line of sight with a book. His tie starts to irritate him, but loosening it up means giving more opening to his co-worker so he lets it choke him.

He hears how her heels knock on the floor as she comes to his desk and lean over to reach the pizza box.

“It’s very unusual to see you like this. I’ve always thought you were a robot when it comes to your personal life,” she takes a piece of margarita.

Hiromi raises eyebrows. The book in his hands drops down.

“What's that supposed to mean?”

She shrugs.

“You know… very, hmm… economical?”

“Nice save,” he mumbles.

Economical was the last word Hiromi would have used describing his personal life. Not after wasting so much money for a food he never eats.

“So, are you going to ask her out?”

“No,” he says but sounds very disappointed. Damn courier.

“Why not?” She frown.

“It’s complicated—”

“Rubbish! You could sell me that crap at the beginning when the both of you were acting like teenagers. Now”— she snorts—“you basically flirt like normal people do on the third date!” she waves her hands, as if trying to convince an invisible witness. “Except you never went out once and it seems that the two of you would rather die than change that…”

His co-worker takes a bite and looks at him, but this time Hiromi’s facade doesn’t break that easy. He only shrugs.

“Ugh! What’s the matter with you?” she snaps at him. “Have made it a mission to complicate everything in your life?”

“Guilty,” he admits without a blink. There’s no point in denying this. “And you can’t do anything about it. We aren’t at court.”

Hiromi watches as she chew in silence.

“You can have all of it.” He moves the box towards her.

“I know,” she answers. “It isn’t the pizza that’s on your mind.” She takes the box and walks back to her desk. Hiromi knows what she's about to say before she opens her mouth, “But with that attitude you never gonna taste that in your lifespan.”

How vulgar…

Hiromi sits on the couch in his dull living room, with a glass in one hand and a remote in another. He flips through channels, staring at the TV without a hint of interest. When exactly did he become the person who comes back to home and has absolutely no idea what to do with himself? Everything feels like an empty time filler at this point.

Click, click, click…

Hiromi maintains a fast pace, his eyes on the screen, but mind barely present. Drama show, reality talk, an okonomiyaki advertisment… “Our national pizza!” Says a lady with her mouth full. Not the best marketing gimmick, he thinks. But yeah… He could go for a pizza. Today someone has interrupted his little tête-à-tête with you, but maybe it isn’t too late to fix it?

Before he can think it through, his hand reaches for the phone and opens the food app on its own. The pizzeria you work at is marked with a star as the only one in his favorites. Hiromi chooses a margarita, pays in advance, and hopes that your boss has forced you to work overtime today.

And then… what remains to be done? Just wait. But this time sitting in his dull living room doesn’t feel awfully boring. Hiromi finally finds a comfortable spot on his couch. He leans back and puts his feet up on the table, feeling strangely relaxed. As if he has found the missing piece of the puzzle. The advertising marathon has finishes and he watches the beginning of unknown romantic comedy. A pleasant drowsiness slowly befuddles him…

Knock knock!

Oh? Is it already time?

Hiromi gets up from the couch, his body feels dizzy at first but with each step towards the doors it gets more and more tense. Dozens of thoughts run through his head as his hand reaches for the door handle. Will that be you? What should he say? He haven’t thought of any opening line… Now, that’s the lawyer everybody needs, right?

Very slowly he presses down onto the handle and opens the door.

“Hello, your pizza- Oh! Hi, Higuruma-san! What a surprise!” Your expression changes from weary to genuinely happy; Hiromi feels your smile deep in his chest. “So you don’t really live in your office, huh?” You try to take a peek over his shoulder.

“I have to come here from time to time. Otherwise they will start imposing rent at my workplace,” he answers, shrugging.

Your whole chest trembles as you laugh, you have the same hoodie you had afternoon with faces of some band on it. Hiromi catches himself at staring for too long at your chest. It draws your attention.

“Do you like this band?” you ask, pulling the hoodie to stretch the fabric, which reveals a bit of your neckline.

Hiromi finally raises his eyes to meet yours.

“I don’t know them,” he says honestly and, given the cheerfulness in your eyes, you seem to be content with this answer.

“Ah, I see,” you slowly nod. “That’s not what interested you.”

“Nothing gets past you, does it?”

He doesn’t feel too embarrassed when you smile like this at him. Maybe his sad puppy eyes come in handy…

“Now that I caught you red-handed I won’t feel bad telling you something like this -” You smirked, “Don’t be upset, but you don’t look like a guy who likes pizza.”

You would think, huh?

“That’s a bit judgmental,” Hiromi says with unusual sensitivity in his voice that immediately puts you in defensive mode.

“Oh, no! I’m sorry!” You raise your hand in apologetic gesture. “It’s just”—you eye him up and down—“I don’t know, I guess it’s the suit. It makes you look…”

“Pompous?” he slips watching you struggle to find the right word.

“No!” you quickly deny. Too quickly. “I mean… well, kinda.” You gave up.

“Ouch.”

Hiromi has never heard you giggle before, but he could definitely get used to it. He couldn’t explain the phenomenon that makes him seek for your reaction - any reactions, really - but the idea of closing the doors right now and not getting more out of you seemed awful.

“Do you ever take it off?” you ask pointing at his loosened tie and wrinkled dress shirt.

I could for you, he thinks to his own surprise.

“Well, I was waiting for the pizza,” he reminds.

“Right. Can’t collect your order in pyjamas.” And you laugh again, which causes a rush of heat in his belly and bellow. Cursed thoughts suddenly take him to very inappropriate places where you tell him about the band printed on your hoodie as you take it off. He wonders what color of bra you wear. The white one would suit you - in his modest opinion.

“You weren’t wrong though.” He breaks himself out of the trance. “I don’t like pizza." After all the orders he made for the past few weeks.

You blink at his words, definitely not as surprised as he thought you were going to be. In fact, your reaction tells him that you knew and have played along this entire time.

“Then why did you order so many of them?” you ask, a soft smile forming on your lips.

“I was ordering you,” he finds himself saying. The moment the first word left his lips, Hiromi felt in his guts it was a bad idea, but the rest of the sentence left his lips anyway, leaving sweet-sour flavor on the top of his tongue.

He watches your eyes widen for a second, and your lips part - then close - then open again as you try to say something back, but your mind can’t find the right words.

Well, this is it then…

A lonely “oh” slips quietly out of your mouth.

Oh?

“Well, you are my last stop today.” Your rosy cheeks rise up as you smile. “Why don’t you invite me in?”

For a moment the world stops.

“Are you sure?” The lower parts of Hiromi call him an idiot, but the lower parts have never been in charge. Biting his tongue wasn’t an option.

Sudden embarrassment takes over as you look sideways and as both of you wonder about the simple “should I or should I not?” You smile and Hiromi smiles as well.

“Do you think my boss can sue me once he finds out that I’ve made him lose a regular customer?” You break the silence. Hiromi watches at the corners of your lips twitch, then raises his eyes at yours.

“Why do you assume I won’t order any more pizza in the future?” You shrug.

“Why would you if you can just call me instead?”

“So you can have nice break at work,” he answers. This is enough to make you burst out laughing.

“I see you've thought everything through carefully.”

“I only try to keep you here as long as I can.”

You make a step towards him, standing on the threshold. Much, much, much closer than usually. Hiromi could smell your perfume, but he mostly focuses on the soft smile you give him.

“Well, can’t deny it isn’t working. Lemme in,” you whisper, fidgeting with the collar of his dress shirt as you speak.

Once Hiromi opens the doors wide for you to come in and you cross the threshold, letting the pizza box fall on the ground, making you giggle again. Hiromi presses you against the doors, his hands finally on your waists, fingers tightened to feel you under the fabric of hoodie.

You are the one who closes the gap between your lips. Your smell stupefies Hiromi as you kiss him without hesitation, shamelessly penetrating his mouth with your tongue. Your fingers slide right under his collar, slowly moving around his nape, tickling his skin and sending shivers down his spine. Hiromi feels dizzy from the excess of stimuli.

“Tell me about this band,” he says once you two break away to catch a breath.

“I know only one song…” you mutter, too focused on undoing buttons of his dress shirt to give the song name. “It was an accident. I spotted the hoodie on the sale. L—Liked the color. Later found out it’s them,” you babble.

The feeling of your fingers exploring his bare chest and belly is blend of disconcerting relief and irritation. He waited for this moment for so long that now, when he finally has you, the touch of fingers isn’t enough to meet his expectations.

You place a kiss on his chin but before you can reach higher, Hiromi’s mouth is on your neck. One hand wraps around your waists, pulling you closer to him, yet still not close enough in his opinion. He wishes he could absorb you. He wants to feel the heat coming from your skin and your heartbeat quickening.

The other hand finds your buttcheek and squeezes it hard. The moan that escapes your lips is like long-awaited music in his ear. Hiromi can’t help himself and bites your earlobe to get more reactions out of you. And when that stops being enough, he starts sucking your neck and giving you hickeys while his hands roam freely all over your body, finding their way under the hoodie.

Considering how your fingers have made big mess out of his haircut and how now they dig deep into his shoulders, he assumes he's doing a good job so far.

“These damn legs of yours,” he mumbles into your ear while lifting you up so you could wrap your legs around him.

Hiromi carries you to the couch where he takes off your hoodie together with the work uniform underneath it. Your sports bra is black, and nicely molds itself to your breasts. He can see your perky nipples through the fabric at which his erection grows larger.

You pull him towards you by tugging on his tie. Very soon your bra ends up on the floor as well when Hiromi places himself above you. The way he cups his hands around your breasts, squeezing your nipples between his thumbs and index fingers, puts your dirty needs to another level.

“I’ve been waited for so long to feel them,” Hiromi whispers right before your face, a hair's length away from touching your lips. His voice is so quiet you have a problem hearing him. “You’re blushing,” he notices, making you look away and mutter an embarrassed “shatap”.

“Better hurry up and suck them,” you pout at him, you have hard time talking at this point, your throat dry and voice distorted by hoarseness.

Hiromi’s smirk gets bigger.

“It’s nice to know you want it as bad as I do,” he says before leaning over.

DING DONG.

Hiromi opens his eyes. At first he doesn’t even recognize his own apartment, the view from the couch is downright unrealistic. With his swollen eyes he looks for any sign of yours presence, because even if he knows you weren’t here, his mind doesn’t want to give up. Not yet. He can’t help it, his professional tendency to hope for the best and be ready for the worst speaks through him.

But the longer he stares at his empty apartment and the longer he can’t find any part of the clothes that he just took off of you, the more and more the disappointing reality seeps through his mind.

Ding dong…

Oh, right - the doorbell. He looks at the door, then at the bulge in his pants, sighing at the bitter unfinished business. What one pizza delivery girl can do to a man who doesn’t even like pizza…

He slowly gets up, massaging his sore nape that the couch header have gave him as he approaches the door. A doubtful thought on the back on his head whispers to him that he may see you behind it - with your high-tied ponytail, a hoodie and unearthly legs - and that his dream have been prelude to the main event.

Hiromi opens the door and sees the most average looking stranger.

Yeah, he thinks, taking the pizza and mumbling thanks, life isn’t that pretty, is it? He doesn't think about covering himself or even feel embarrassed about it. There’s just pure disappointed in his heart and an annoying tightness in his boxers.

He closes the door. What a shame it wasn’t you.

there is a possibility that a second part will be written. thanks for reading!

[aortaobservatory]

what are your thoughts on the time aspect? ive always loved the theme of clocks, rhythm, death, and of course dave and aradia are the best characaters ever lmfaoooo. also random rambling: i feel like i often have this sort of ticking metronome in the back of my head that makes me feel very time-y and ive always LOVED music and cool antique stuff. im not sure how much of that is an indication of my actual claspect though lol

(apologies for the ramblings xD)

Apologies; you sent this months ago and I am only answering it now! I hope these thoughts of mine are still satisfactory to read about.

I feel as though Time's inverse, Space, is understood to be "creativity", and those who may not entirely understand what an aspect is meant to be tend to take its inverse's opposite. However, the "opposite of creativity" doesn't paint a very fun picture. While "creativity" isn't necessarily wrong for Space, I understand Space to be a journey, joy in the traveling. Time, therefore, would be an ending goal, the satisfaction of victory.

From The Extended Zodiac, I pulled these keywords from the Time Aspect description. These would be the "canon" traits; they are what I adhere to when analyzing, but it should also be understood that this concept encompasses much more to do with than these keywords. Its "vibe", if you will, is much more than what is written.

TEZ Time Keywords: Struggle, restless, action, goal-oriented, relentless, empathetic, problem-solvers, (ruthless, defensive, impulsive)

The keywords I chose to represent Time are "Repetition, Goals, Efficiency, Restlessness". This aspect, like all the other aspects, is inherently neutral. It is not good or bad, but has the potential to be either.

Time is about optimization. Timebound do not create new solutions; they use what they are given within the finite and refine it into the tools they use to achieve their goals. Their satisfaction comes from the end product of their labor, and they are not satisfied if they are not working towards something; anything can be a goal to work towards for the Timebound. If Space is an infinite destiny (a course of events within the present moment), then Time is a finite fate (the future outcome).

If it's not broke, don't fix it; an efficient method is a good method, and a good method is an efficient method. It is the nature of Time to stick to what it knows works well rather than attempt to figure out some other way of achieving the same goal. (Code, and the action of coding, is a good example of this.) This repetition of methods can certainly translate into a metronome of sorts; monotonous and keeping a beat. While music is the logical conclusion to draw from this, I could make a case that it is specifically rap that is Time's purest form of music, since it focuses on the rhythm of the words rather than singing a tone. At the very least, I would say each Timebound has their own rhythm and way of doing things that is simply what makes the most efficient sense for them to do. (Perhaps that is why Dave is so fixated on being ironic when he grew up under the care of a Prince of Heart...)

Dave is the poster child for all Timebound everywhere, of course. As the Knight of Time (Active Utilizer), Dave is extremely skilled with his aspect; since Time is about efficiency, Dave would be able to achieve a great deal of things in a very short amount of time. And he does! I would almost say that if he were any other class but a Knight, the beta kids probably would have crashed and burned hard. Meanwhile with Aradia, the Maid of Time (Passive Enhancer), she would rely on others for her aspect; this manifests in a few different ways. She documents the code on the frog temple for Sollux to then adapt into SGRUB. Ghosts are considered to linger behind after their deaths due to a state of unrest and "unfinished business", which is quite in line with the nature of Time. She relies on the destruction of alternate timelines to guide her choices, which ends up amassing an army of Aradiabots to passively help the trolls in their battle against the black king.

[drifloonz]

s!3v3n headcanons bc i've been thinking of him and nobodys specifically requested s!3v3n yet? just my default version steven ( post incident post Manicness ). also yea dating hcs too This is an x reader blog primarily you should expect this by now

_____

♡ S!3v3n isn't an alternate personality of Steven's. I mean like ok technically but not in the DID way. it's just basically steven when he's manic or incredibly upset. he will most of the time go into this form when he feels these intense emotions that he can't exactly grapple with or handle. especially anger or rage or revenge and things of that sort. aliken it to more of a werewolf transformation but like personalitywise. does this even make sense.

♡ despite this S!3v3n can be passive, but he's always on the defensive in some way or another. he's always protecting something he loves from any danger no matter the cost - usually you or miki.

♡ he can loosen up in this state of course, but usually just when you two are cuddling. physical affection seems to soothe him easiest, as he'll just relax and de-tense a lot, but will still hug you nice and tight. he also might purr but who can say. smiles.

♡ prefers he/it, while steven prefers he/they. state of mind based secondary pronoun changes we love to see it

♡ not missingno possessed per se but missingno fucked with a lot of his body, mentally or physically, which is why he gets like this sometimes. missingno isn't possessing him ( missingno does not have desires it is just a jumbled mess of code that can do whatever it wants because it's not supposed to exist ) but being around it made him go a little bit insane, basically. Frenzy area of effect that permanently damaged him /hj

♡ s!3v3n isn't nonverbal per se but he's a lot less verbal than steven already is, unless he's really mad. see; doors open and strangled ( with image examples this time just cuz i wanted to, i guess. the last one is so funny. once again steven/s!3v3n is not written well in these. this is also s!3v3n / steven around the ages of what i'd assume to be 16-17 so take it with a grain of salt bc my hc steven/s!3v3n i write for these requests by default are like 19-28 or over )

♡ he still speaks in a lot of noises over words, and if he has to speak usually does it in very short sentences, but unless he wants to talk he'll always opt for just silent communication or little noises.

♡ tends to growl a lot. notably, steven grumbles and groans and sighs, but never growls. s!3v3n growls and hisses and snarls. things like that. he's more animalistic and impulsive.

♡ due to his impulsive nature he doesn't make the best decisions. s!3v3n is mentally unstable ( not like steven isnt but as said, s!3v3n's emotions are much stronger than stevens ) and very clingy. he does things with 15-35% good intentions, at least to him, and the rest of that percentage is impulse. what he wants in the moment. he's more passive than he used to be when steven was actively fucking killing people, but he'll still be like this sometimes. although, most of the impulse is when he's angry and towards people he doesn't know, doesn't care about.

♡ i state this like he's actively really shitty to be around but nowadays tbh this just shows in s!3v3n not asking you about things and just doing them most of the time. if he wants to cuddle he'll grab you and take you to bed and cuddle with you and you Aren't escaping his arms. he's still mindful of your needs to some degree of course, but he's just sorta like that. this can obviously still lead to discomfort and disagreements though.

♡ he'll be more mindful about it if you seem genuinely upset with him for doing these things, though. although since his emotions are heightened he has bad reactions to being rejected in any way so he'll just lock himself in his room and avoid you because he thinks you hate him ( or is scared of getting angry and hurting you, because hey, he's hurt loved ones over accidents and disagreements before. ) it'll usually take half a day and then his 'being loved' battery runs too low so he gets over it and walks back into your arms with your permission and snuggles up like a big cat.

♡ very very prone to moodswings and is easy to upset. this is a lot harder with anybody he's clingy or protective towards but can still happen. but like i said, easy to soothe with physical affection from his loved ones. he's a moody black cat except a black cat that's like, 6'8 feet tall. and is a lion.

♡ s!3v3n's a lot more buried within steven these days since he's less actively manic all the time, but he'll still come out, usually after traumatic experiences or when steven is extremely upset and can't handle himself. often times he'll lock himself in his room if he can figure that he's about to lose control of himself for everybody's safety. the last time he let himself get lost in his intense emotions he let that control him for like 1-5ish years and killed like 3 or more people and also flew to johto for some reason ( escapism, s!3v3n sort of fucking hates kanto due to how everyone there treats him ) and killed one of those 3 people there.

♡ extremely overprotective and clingy. steven himself already is, but s!3v3n basically just makes his emotions 10x worse. he will not let you leave his sight 99% of the time, will cling onto you literally, and hold you extremely tight in bed so you don't leave because he's kind of selfish and likes your warmth and everything else about you. he'll let go with an annoyed grumble if you have to go to eat or go to the bathroom or something, but he'll let you go. he might follow if he cares enough.

♡ s!3v3n specifically is way more obsessive with miki. she's out constantly when s!3v3n is, getting so much attention. sometimes even more than you. miki's his main priority even if she's perfectly fine and alive - at least to him. you are an extremely close second though, sometimes tying depending on how he feels and how close steven is to you normally. if you're dating but like, only recently, s!3v3n will basically still care about you but will barely be around you unless you need something or come to him first. but if you two are very close he is all fucking over you and is as obsessive about you as he is with miki sometimes. have fun! ( also obviously if you don't fuck with miki this pisses s!3v3n off way more than it pisses steven off. So don't be rude!!! )

♡ he does not go outside for any reason unless it's at midnight. the last time he did he flew to johto and beat a kids ass for no reason. he'll go on strolls in his secluded little forest area of pallet and maybe fly with miki to take his mind off or to go somewhere to do something cryptic, but otherwise he stays holed up in his house as usual. he's much more active than steven though, often pacing or sometimes stomping around if he's upset.

♡ speaking of which he doesn't engage in most activities other than ones to keep him alive like eating and whatnot, but. the exception to this is videogames. canonically, probably, since its noted that he loves videogames and has old consoles. which is really fucking funny. imagine him with his scary ass red eyes and messed tangled hair growling and yelling at a multiplayer game or something. ( he is very competitive </3 ) ( canonically, he probably wouldn't even have any newer consoles with online multiplayer. but for the sake of my headcanons he does. )

♡ likes to cuddle up with you sitting on his lap while he plays games or watches tv or something. another easy way to soothe him.

♡ because he's clingy, this also means he'll take you literally everywhere he goes because he's too afraid and paranoid of leaving you alone. the only time he doesn't is when he himself is going out, is sure you're safe and won't try to do anything, and is sure he'll be quick ( for example him getting a midnight snack and then just coming back to bed after )

♡ type of guy who triple-checks everything - if locks are actually locked, if doors are closed, if wires are working and connected properly ( iykyk ), etc. so does steven, but as per usual, less than s!3v3n.

♡ if you like try to go to the store or something he'll be staring at you like an upset dog the second you get close to his homes door for any reason. he will not break eyecontact until you leave or move away from the door. he'll peak outside just to make sure you're safe, but will try to leave it alone despite his mind desperately telling him that something bad will happen to you if he leaves you alone.

♡ extremely easily jealous. if you ever somehow were to rope s!3v3n in an actual factual public setting ( likely via doing so with steven and something happening to make him s!3v3n during that ), he'd curl his form around you protectively, a hand always on you. it grips tighter whenever he's jealous - not intentionally to hurt you, but just out of impulse.

♡ hair is a lot more wild than usual, sometimes floating a bit off the ground, sometimes even longer than normal? it's also usually even darker than normal, too...

♡ although steven has cooking knowledge when s!3v3n's there, he doesn't really mentally care enough to cook so he just eats frozen meals. its why.. most of stevens kitchen is full of frozen and easy to make meals - because he was in a much worse mindset in most of his years of living at his somewhat decrepit home. said mindset being called Whatever the fuck S!3v3n is.

♡ s!3v3n loves physical contact as mentioned previously, but one thing he likes is to hug you from behind or to rub his cheese-grater feelin' ass chin stubble against your shoulder or something like that.

♡ that borderline certainly can personality a disorder! goddamn!!!!!!!!

♡ he's clingy! obsessive! jealous! terribly paranoid! has a lot of emotions he doesn't know why he feels or how to handle! but he still loves you at the end of the day, he's just easily upset and doesn't know what you want sometimes.

♡ he finds anything strange or new a threat most of the time and will either be cautious or defensive around said things. most true of people, least true of items. i feel like if you poisoned him he wouldn't even feel it so he wouldn't care ( although he does check food for poison if hes giving it to you or miki ). due to this if you want to order delivery or something he will be like "we have food at home." but in a less verbal sense ( probably just dragging you to the kitchen and scrounging around for something to eat that doesn't require social interaction )

♡ while pokemon avoid steven and leave him alone, pokemon and people fear s!3v3n. it's like a magnet aura of people leaving him alone out of fear. this is also kind of canon in strangled red after he gets missingno, where every npc turns away from him after he obtains it. it's not like s!3v3n specifically ever willingly goes out into public settings anyways, but if he were to nobody would bother him out of fear.

♡ if you two run out of food he dreads going to the local pokemart but does it begrudingly, being silent the entire time and just throwing food he wants or needs into his cart. he uh. he doesn't have money after the events of strangled red ( unless he stole mike, gold, or That one kid he presumably killed in strangled's wallet. ) so i don't know how he pays, he just does. or he steals at the dead of night via breaking in. either works. if someone catches him he just turns slowly and stares. the glowing red eyes usually convince them to leave him alone.

♡ he really likes putting his hands through your hair. its soothing and calms him down.

♡ s!3v3n isn't only active when stevens going through an episode, it's just 99% of the time when it happens. but when he just comes out through normal(ish) means, he's pretty passive. just quiet, giving single word responses usually and following you around his house with intrigue. he likes observing you passively throughout the day. just looking at you makes him that much calmer.

♡ sorry if you don't like being stared at s!3v3n does that a lot with his big glowey red eyes. the 'tism. he's staring at you lovingly if you can't tell dw

♡ if anything hurts you he will fucking go after whoever did it. you have to hold him back from seriously hurting anything or anybody. he just growls and stares at whatever hurt you in an attempt to hold himself back but make his intentions known. despite steven himself getting better to a degree, s!3v3n isn't one to be messed with still. He will actually beat your ass and possibly kill somebody over things still, just not as easily since he's ever-so-slightly more well adjusted than he was a few years back.

♡ the only difference is the s!3v3n back then relied on miki and various versions of her to take care of annoyances. s!3v3n nowadays will just beat somebody's ass with his bare hands for the hell of it if they piss him off enough and especially if they are trying to hurt you.

♡ if you two don't live together he'll collect various knickknacks you lose at his house and stash them somewhere safe, close to his bed as a good-luck charm of sorts. he's unironically not trying to be weird, he just thinks its cute and is a little too awkward to tell you that something of yours is left with him... he wants something to remember you by as cheesy as it may seem.

♡ s!3v3n is especially careful to not squeeze you too tight due to s!3v3n allegedly being stronger than steven since he's more emotional in this state than steven is, but at the same time he likes squeezing you a little roughly, but not enough to be uncomfortable. just in a playful and affectionate way. obviously he's mindful of it though, this is the version of steven that did snap his brother's neck after all. as much as he wishes to forget about that.

♡ s!3v3n holds grudges like a motherfucker and will not let them die. he's obviously more forgiving towards partners and usually flags relationship issues as his fault, but he will get vindictive and upset sometimes regardless - he just tries to not act on these feelings and have a moment to himself so he can calm down instead of immediately acting on it like he used to.

♡ doesn't eat a lot. s!3v3n usually comes out when stevens manic / having an episode / extremely depressed, which. Symptom of depression number whatever; Not taking care of yourself. which steven already does, but like stated many times before, s!3v3n is always way worse about stevens flaws

♡ if you like mostly solitude and if you don't like when stevens all snarky to you sometimes, s!3v3n tends to be more quiet if he's happy as stated before. he's just happy existing around you.

♡ often times he'll do his own thing while you do your own thing if the two of you don't want to be super touchy. parallel play behavior. it's usually him taking care of miki while you do whatever hobbies you have.

♡ face is usually shaded over way more than stevens and thats the main visual indicator along with his eyes being glowy usually. which should be known but In case it isn't. oh also he's probably taller or bigger sometimes in this state.

♡ he has a lot of issues but he's trying his best! big scary animalistic boyfriend who is always thinking of giving you a little smooch and cuddles all over.

♡ i'm writing too much and a lot of this boils down to the same things so im sending the fucking post and worrying about it later. amen.

♡ tldr the type of dude to wrap his arms around you tight to his chest and growl at any sort of threat. overprotective clingy boyfriend x 10.

[cinderella-ish]

JuJutsu Kaisen Personality Types Part 1: Suguru Geto

Okay, here we go!

Geto is absolutely the character that inspired me to expand this series to JJK, so I figured I should start with him. He's such a beautifully written, tragic character, and one whose descent feels inevitable by the time it happens.

Anyway, here's how I see his personality type!

Geto Suguru's Enneagram

Wound: We don't know a ton about Geto's life before he entered JuJutsu High, so it's hard to say.

Wounding message: Also hard to say.

Core desire: For the world to be just, and to play a role in making/keeping it that way.

Core fear: an unjust world, loss

Defense mechanism: Geto has a strong sense of justice that guides him in his decisions; he falls back on this when he's unsure

Strengths: Geto is highly attuned to the people he cares about, he's principled, responsible, rational, idealistic, hard-working, empathetic, organized, strategic, and he seeks input from people he trusts

Challenges: Geto is resentful, scapegoats non-sorcerers, rigid, thinks of the world in black-and-white, obsessive, easily demoralized, looks down at others

When healthy: Geto has a sense of fun, trusts in his friends, and respects other worldviews

When unhealthy: Geto is angry, vengeful, self-important, envious, uses his empathy as a reason to hurt others

Looking at all of this, here's what connects when I go back to the Enneagram post:

Wound: again, hard to say

Wounding message: I didn't give a wounding message above, but I could see a case for 1, 2, 3, or 8.

Core desire: 1, 3, or 6

Core fear: 1, 3, or 9

Defense mechanism: 1

Strengths: 1, 3, or 8

Challenges: 1, 4, or 5

When healthy: 1, 3, 6, or 8

When unhealthy: 1, 7, or 8

Geto is an Enneagram 1.

I actually think Geto is a pretty clear 1, though maybe that's because I'm a 1 myself and found some of his thought patterns during his descent to be uncomfortably close to home. When things aren't "right," I totally get the impulse to burn it all down. Especially when lives are at stake.

That's the thing about Geto; even though he hurt innumerable people after he turned, he did so out of deep compassion for the people who he'd seen get hurt. He couldn't bear seeing Gojo nearly die; he couldn't deal with Haibara's death, and he finally lost it when he saw Nanako and Mimiko caged by those villagers. No disconnect exists in his mind because he no longer sees non-sorcerers as humans. He even viewed them as lesser before he flipped, constantly referring to them as "the weak."

Ones live in the Gut center, and tend to repress anger. From Personality Path:

Anger is typically repressed by Type 1s. Type 1s try hard not to express anger as they associate it as a “bad” emotion. Instead, they report a lot of irritation. Interestingly, when their anger is eventually expressed, it can be intense, with a laser focus. A harsh inner voice dictating rigid internal standards is often at the bottom of each of the three core emotions for Type 1s.

Wing

The Enneagram Institute calls 1w9s "The Idealist" and 1w2s "The Advocate." I think Geto's wing is a little tricky to suss out, and I could see a case for either.

Geto is fine with conflict and will readily stand up to others when he disagrees with them. However, he loves when Gojo relies on him, and spirals when he's no longer central to Gojo's life. When he turns, he immediately inserts himself into a leadership position in the religious group. His desire to be needed makes him much more likely to be a 1w2, in my opinion.

From Truity:

These Ones are more focused on the livelihoods of other people, and champion causes focused on meeting people’s needs. They may appear overly controlling or critical of other people in an effort to help them become the “best version” of themselves. Like the Type Two, this type wants to help and feel appreciated.

I think, the fact that Twos go to Eight when stressed, and Eights can have more of a "burn it all down" mentality than others, also makes a good case for Geto having a Two wing.

Subtype

In reading about the different subtypes of One, Geto clearly connects the most to SO 1w2.

Enneagram Explained describes SO Ones like this:

Focuses On:  The need to be correct/right with their groups and communities. SO 1s often take on being the teacher or role model with those around them; trying to show others the right way to live. These 1s are often concerned with fairness and justice. Relationship to Their Vice (anger): SO 1s often suppress their anger but are also a bit ok with showing it. Potential Mistypes: SO 1s can often look like type 3s or type 5s.

Tritype

With One as his Gut type, I could see Five or Six as his Head type, and I could see any of Two, Three, or Four as his Heart type.

After reading the descriptions on Katherine Fauvre's website, I think 1-4-6 (The Philosopher) is the best fit:

If you are a 146, you are diligent, intuitive, and inquisitive. You want to be ethical, original, and certain. You are a private and introspective person and prefer to keep your world small to pursue your creative interests. Only one or two know your true thoughts and insecurities. Morally focused, you voice your expectations and criticisms, hoping your insights will help them to improve. However, you are kind-hearted, and cannot turn a blind eye to others you feel you should assist.

Suguru Geto's MBTI

Here's how I see Geto's Type Dynamics:

Feeling: Geto feels things deeply. I believe his Dominant Process is Introverted Feeling (Fi). At its best, Fi can look like someone who "seeks harmony of action and thoughts with personal values. May not always articulate those values. Empathetic, sensitive, and idealistic." At its worst, Fi can look like someone who will "carry the weight of the world on their shoulders, hypersensitive, pompous, feel sorry for themselves".

iNtuiting: Geto is strongly intuiting, making big leaps and connections by noticing patterns. I believe he uses Extraverted Intuiting (Ne).

Sensing: This would make his Tertiary Process Introverted Sensing (Si).

Thinking: Last, his Inferior process would be Extraverted Thinking (Te). Te as an Inferior Process can look like being "overly critical and negative toward others, judge others harshly, quick to take action to try and control/correct their own imagined incompetence which often backfires making the problem worse".

This would make his Type Dynamics Fi Ne Si Te, and his MBTI INFP (The Healer).

Here's how the Myers & Briggs Foundation describes INFP:

Idealistic, loyal to their values and to people who are important to them. Want to live a life that is congruent with their values. Curious, quick to see possibilities, can be catalysts for implementing ideas. Seek to understand people and to help them fulfill their potential. Adaptable, flexible, and accepting unless a value is threatened.

This comes as a bit of a surprise, as I was certain Geto would be a Judging type, but this actually does sound like him.

Interestingly, this means Geto has a lot in common with two Fruits Basket characters: Mayu and Kazuma.

With Mayu, he shares his Enneagram, Wing, Subtype, and Tritype, but not his MBTI or any Type Dynamics (Mayu is ENFJ, The Teacher).

With Kazuma, he shares his Enneagram, Subtype, Tritype, and MBTI, but not his Wing (Kazuma is 1w9, The Dreamer).

I think this gets to the heart of what makes Geto such an interesting and well-written character. He has qualities we associate with deeply compassionate and empathetic people. Arguably, he is an extremely empathetic and compassionate person, but seeing the death and mistreatment of his fellow sorcerers was just too much for him. His empathy (toward his fellow sorcerers) led him to effectively start a genocide.

So, to summarize:

Enneagram: SO 1w2 (The Reformer/The Advocate)

Tritype: 4-6-1 (The Philosopher)

MBTI: INFP (The Healer)

At his core, Geto is someone who thinks and feels deeply about how the world should be, and tries to do what's right according to his own (sometimes very warped) moral code. He is extremely loyal to those closest to him and thinks of himself in terms of his role within the community of JuJutsu sorcerers.

[newobsessioneveryweek]

Oo what is business as usual and sex, drugs, rock and roll 👀👀👀👀

I'm so glad you asked!

Here is an excerpt of Business As Usual for your viewing pleasure (unfortunately I haven't actually written anything for SD&RnR but I'll explain a little bit of what I'm thinking)

Excerpt start

“What are you reading?” came a sudden, soft voice. Loki turned to meet Hogun’s passive face. He was riding beside him. If he had been there the whole time Loki hadn’t noticed.

“Shapeshifting and Illusions,” he replied cooly, banishing the book to his pocket dimension. Hogun’s sudden interest was not unwelcome, just odd- his choosing to talk even odder. “Have you read it?” Loki asked dumbly. He would bet good money that no one in this group had ever glanced at let alone picked up a spell book, especially one that was meant to be locked away in Odin’s library, never to be seen or read.

“No,” Hogun said simply. He looked forward, wrinkling his nose at the conversation happening around them. Loki took note of the odd way he seemed both fond and exasperated. “But tell me about it. I doubt it’s worse than this,” he nudged his chin to where Thor and Volstagg continued to entertain Fandral with questions and comments while Sif listened disinterestedly.

Loki tried to quell a stab of disappointment. Of course, there was only personal gain to be thought of instead of genuine interest. But he indulged him nonetheless. “As the title so deftly put,” he deadpanned, “it’s a spell book on shapeshifting and illusions.”

“I gauged that,” Hogun said dryly. “Tell me more.”

What more was there to tell that he would be receptive to? “Well,” he thought, “contrary to popular belief, illusionary magic is intermediate at best, but often child’s play. I caught on to it quite quickly in my hundreds. However,” Loki paused, drawing in a tired breath, “shapeshifting is an advanced art, one that presents potential… complications if done incorrectly.”

Hogun hummed quietly. There was a beat of silence before he asked, “What would you deem advanced?” His head tilted a fraction as though he were actually intrigued.

“To put it in terms you would understand, it’s the equivalent of shooting a running target in the head from one hundred metres away on horseback.”

Hogun whistled lowly. “Have you ever tried?”

“Tried what?”

“Shapeshifting.”

Despite himself, Loki laughed. Hogun flinched but his expression remained impassive. “Yes,” he confessed, holding back a sudden tidal wave of emotion and the urge to end the conversation at its zenith.

“Why?” 

Why? Loki wanted to scream. He let the question marinate in the awkward silence it caused. He drew in a breath, held it, and exhaled at length. “Because desperate people do desperate things.”

Excerpt end

I might change some things about this wip. In my defense I wrote it months ago. But I hope it's got you hyped!

Here's a bonus because I couldn't resist! I can't keep it to myself🙈

Bonus!

“Curious,” he said, holding the bottle up to the light.

Loki rolled his eyes affectionately. “What is?”

“Red is my colour.”

“And?”

“Then by association, this potion must make you devilishly handsome like me. You could use some. I’ll buy it for you.”

“You’re an ass.”

“I would be offended if that wasn’t a lie.”

Bonus end!

Now, SD&RnR doesn't reeeaaallly have a plot rn. I just thought it would be neat to explore Apollo's past of "living life to the fullest" in a protective bubble of perfection and indifference. The title is meant to allude to impulsive grabs for satisfaction and surface level pleasure that doesn't really treat the deeper parts of one's longing and desire (such as that of wanting to be accepted and understood by your family for instance).

So yeah, that's the idea behind it. I haven't written a word but it's coming! Bet your autumn harvest it'll be here!

Thank you this ask and for letting me talk about my babies☺️💛 you rock!

[princeescaluswords]

Rather than ‘transformative’ I often feel that there should be a shorthand term for fandom/fic writers who attempt to reassert traditional, racist/heteronormative patriarchal social orders into properties that even marginally dare to push against them,

What's he gonna do? Get a job?

The term you want already exists, though it may not have occurred to you in this context.

Bourgeois.

This adjective describes actions or aesthetic choices which support middle-class and conventional values. I will further narrow it in this instance to white middle-class conventional values of the United States, as those are the ones that I know best.

First caveat: of course, this doesn't apply to all fanfiction, even to all fanfiction within a given fandom or even a given ship. But the bourgeois strain of writing definitely exists within the phenomenon. Second caveat: I am not a radical progressive by any measure. There are certainly some conventional values of the white middle-class that I appreciate and embrace. However, that doesn't prevent me from identifying trends in group behavior. If it looks like a duck, and it walks like a duck, and it quacks like a duck, it's probably a duck.

I will now illustrate what I mean by this with examples from my primary fandom, Teen Wolf, but what I found is that this can easily be applied to many other fandoms, to greater or lesser extents: the Star Wars fandom, the MCU fandom, the Lord of the Rings fandom (!), and so on. The bourgeois need to support aristocratic, privileged, white males as cultural objects and status leaders pervades all of these fandoms; there's a reason Kylo Ren, a genocidal space fascist, received such manic devotion.

What I find extraordinarily interesting is how often elements of transgressive or counter-cultural behavior is introduced to conceal the bourgeois impulse from the audience, or sometimes even from the authors themselves. In the case of my fandom, there is an emphasis on the inhumanity of the characters as werewolves, or a defense of a serial killer, or the reconstruction of the primary romantic relationship as gay (often ignoring canon gay relationships), but this transgressive element never actually threatens the conventional social structure. On to the examples.

Peter Hale's vengeance is recontextualized as justice. The triggering event in canon is the Hale Fire, which is presented as a disruption of the social order, as it should be. And yet, canon's insistence that Peter's resulting murder spree is both self-serving and absolutely destructive vanishes from fanfiction, because it doesn't reinforce the bourgeois idea that the tragedy must be corrected to the satisfaction of white men because of the Hale's privileged status. Peter's actions are vindicated through claims of mental incapacity (which canon rejected), through the conjuration of non-existent social roles (the mythical Left Hand), or through uncritical sympathy (fanon Stiles claiming that he'd do the same thing). You don't see this impulse in fanfiction extended to Noshiko Yukimura's actions at Oak Creek or Tamora Monroe's crusade against the supernatural, because they don't have the same social status.

Ste rek (and Ste ter) is written as heterosexual romance in gay drag. While presented as something radical, the actual details of these relationships are astoundingly conventional. Why, as it often seems, is it required that Derek and/or Peter be alphas? There's no romantic or emotional reason; the impulse is purely about social status, like the heroines of fairy tales discovering that their handsome rescuer is actually a prince. Or how the canonically brave, impulsive, and audacious Stiles is written as a neglected, wilting dormouse, waiting for his (her) true love to rescue him (her) from her oblivious, selfish friends and family. The fact that it's between two men doesn't make it any less a PG-rated rehashed variation on Cinderella.

Scott McCall's role as heroic protagonist MUST be delegitimized. That canon chose a working-class Latino as it's primary focus over wealthy white men is, for many in the fandom, the production's original sin. As a consequence, his role must be rendered invalid. His struggles with school work are presented, contrary to canon, as a result of stupidity or simply being a bad student. His morals are presented as foolishness, tyranny, or the manipulations of a sinister black man. His romances are presented as either vapid infatuation or a dangerous sexual obsession. Above all, he is presented again and again as uncultivated, immature and driven by appetite.

Ever notice how often Scott appears in these fanfictions as a gluttonous eater? How he is portrayed as someone who doesn't know how to cook or clean or take care of himself? How his musical tastes run to the most banal of banal pop? How he's characterized as stubborn or incurious about lycanthropy? Of course, it's all designed to make him unworthy of his position as lead protagonist by positioning him as inferior to the white intellectual middle class, but what strikes me as funny is how much it resembles the critiques of the anarchist labor movements of the late nineteenth/early twentieth century, which portrayed labor agitators as an uneducated, unenlightened foreign mob threatening the prosperity of hard-working people.

These are just three examples. I could go on for like, an hour. And then I could select another fandom and give you examples of the same type of behavior, the same laborious defense of white middle-class patriarchal values hidden behind a very carefully constructed transgressive act, one that somehow never seems to disrupt the society in which they live.

Yeah, bourgeois pretty much covers it.

[beingdreeyore]

I'm raw today. I haven't cried, but several times I've wanted to.

Today was one of those days where the frustrations created weren't from my own actions, but the response inside me is all mine. Perhaps I'm pre-menstrual? Then again, it's well-established by now that I'm a sensitive soul at the best of times.

I started the day with a phone call to a mother. I was asked to call her to just tell her to restart a certain medication her son had been on. Simple. Easy. I'd never met her. Never met her son. I was relaying a message. It took her less than twenty seconds to unleash at me. I'd gotten no further than saying where I was calling from and the yelling and crying - both from her - began. It went on for over twenty minutes before I calmed her down. Or maybe she calmed herself down. But it was twenty minutes of being abused by someone I had never met. Finally I met her needs on some level. The yelling stopped. When I called her back an hour later to update her on the crisis steps I'd put in place given her complaints, she cried again but this time thanked me. She apologised. It was too late though. My skin was already on fire. My muscles were already tensed too much to be able to relax again in any reasonable time period. My guard was up. I was on the defensive. Ready to see the attacks coming from everywhere.

A consultant from another specialty then attacked our management plan of a patient who was only mildly unwell. The plan - a psychiatric plan - was simple. Standard. Usual practice. It had already been implemented and was working well. My boss and I had discussed it. Then this random doctor decided to write a note in the patient's medical record that was a thinly veiled sermon on his personal beliefs regarding antipsychotic medication. But he chose to attack me personally as mine was the name in the computer that had written the plan. He's never met me before. I doubt he'd heard my name before today. Then again, I have a pretty generic basic white bitch name, so maybe he'd heard my name before, but he didn't know it was mine. He doesn't know me. But he came for me as if I somehow represent psychotropics. I bit my tongue. I took a lap of the block. I kept my eyes down. I breathed deeply.

My team leader saw the note a short time after I did. He appeared in my office, checking I was okay, aware of just how personal the words had been. But it was too late. That was two hits now. There wouldn't be a third. Or, rather, I know myself well enough to know that if a third person appeared, they wouldn't be getting away with it as easily as the first two had. I knew that if a third person came for me, the warrior woman inside of me, the impulsive and reckless side, it would wage war on whoever was brave enough to be the third today before I'd had a chance to stop myself.

Please don't let there be anyone else...

The phone was quiet all day. It's Wednesday. The phone shouldn't have been quiet all day. It's the day Dad calls. But he didn't. He'd gotten distracted by something else. It was something important. I get it. But I felt like an outsider. Alone in it all. Like I didn't belong anywhere.

There was someone else I'd expected to hear from. A man. But the phone has been quiet. I think that's the final straw. Would I normally care? Probably. I don't do well with being letdown or with broken promises, but I probably could've managed okay. But now, in the evening with the phone quiet, it's all a bit much. The silence is better than the contact that is rejection though. At least today. I doubt I could've controlled my response today. So no message is a message but it won't trigger anything inside me. It's awful and painful and also some kind of small mercy. If I don't hear from him, then I can't impulsively lash out in anger.

It's funny. I can rationalise it all. I understand it all. That doesn't mean the world feels any less alone though. I wish it did. I wish intellectualising allowed it to sit more gently. To take up less space inside me.

I saw Z today. It's been so long. He didn't see me. I was thankful. I didn't want him to see my weight gain or the dark circles under my eyes. I saw him. He's gained weight too. He looks older. Worn out. It was the first time I've ever seen him with his hair in need of a cut. I wonder if everything is okay? He looks like trash. Like he's not sleeping either. What is happening for him? Is something happening in his life that's making him feel the same kinda way...? I wish I could will him into smiling my way again. Not that it would get me anywhere, even if I could. If he'd said hello, there's every chance he would've been on the receiving end today. He's never apologised. He's a fair target. Right?

I'm alone today. But I understand this is best in some ways. I don't trust myself to regulate my anger after being so defensive. I'm home now. It's quiet. It's lonely. Again though, it's some kind of small mercy.

It's just harder some days than others. The things that are fine some days can just not be fie the next. I'm okay. For goodness sake, we all know by now that one way or another I'm always okay, but today is a tough day.

It was a really tough day and I hope tomorrow is better.

[bonesandthebees]

hi bones!! i have recently read what you have written so far of through a glass divine!! i have a lot of thoughts so i will talk about the two most recent chapters.

i actually adored the writing at the end of chapter 8 when tommy calls wilbur by his name. its super in character of him because imagine you've just met this guy and you ask him his name and he keeps insisting that he doesn't have one and that he really isnt a person. and i think glass!tommy sees how fucked up this is and it's shown earlier that he's a caring person. i mean in the first few chapters he freaked out when he found out wilbur had gotten hurt, even if it was just a few little scratches. glass!tommy just kind of wants to help, but in the end he's just a kid with his own issues too and he doesn't exactly know how to do that. he's seen wilbur as a person since the get go even if wilbur himself didnt. that's the reason he didn't tell the others wilbur's name because he's not some secret to be passed around or a shiny crystal ball he is a person with free will and thoughts and he wants to treat him like a person because it's the least he deserves. i think maybe glass!tommy has some experience with being seen as something rather than someone being in the "scary death cult" and branded a terrorist rather than someone with admittedly messy motives and a good heart underneath it all.

also glass!wilbur pitching in that you know what yeah the others should kill him? fantastic. i love how shocked aimsey was by the way because wilbur still doesn't view himself as a person. i love the part where niki and jack jump to his defense and he is just so freaked out by it. he's been trying to figure out why everyone is being so patient with him especially jack and niki and in the end it's again because they value him as a person and understand that he has his reasons he has feelings. while yes wilbur was being a pain in the ass it is understandable to some degree and they acknowledge that they would do the same. and they never once say attacking tommy was okay but they do understand where he's coming from. glass!wilbur has been so conditioned to not recognize his own emotions and motives and has been taught time and time again to be a vessel for someone else and to finally have someone acknowledge his agency and understand it? yeah of course that's scary and it's brilliant writing!! the part where tommy gets mad at tubbo for comparing him to a stray dog? cinematic masterpiece by the way. also having chinese satellite on the glass playlist? AMAZING CHOICE. i can't wait to see where wilbur ends up on this journey!!

-🌙

aaa hi!! I'm so glad you enjoyed the end of chapter 8! it felt super in character to me too. it's exactly what you said. tommy is a caring person, and he sees how fucked up a lot of the pythian traditions are, so he wants to help. but he's not going to go about it in the best way because, again, impulsive teenager that's part of a death cult. but he's seen wilbur as a person this whole time. him finding wilbur's name wasn't meant to disregard his personhood, which is why he doesn't tell it to the others either. he doesn't want to keep affirming the narrative of calling him by his title instead of a name, so yeah in tommy's mind it was just kind of his only option. but he's going to try and not be a dick about it. at least as best he can.

oh yeah aimsey was playing a very interesting role in the argument because while they defended tubbo, they weren't really on his side. they don't want to kill the pythia and they were horrified when he agreed with it himself. they were only defending tubbo because tommy shoved him, and they didn't want things to get physical.

niki and jack my beloveds!! yeah they've actually spent a lot of time with him alongside tommy, so they jump to his defense because they both have a better idea of what he's actually like as a person compared to most of the deathlings. they also both know they're bitchy people who would probably react the same way he did to the entire situation, so they just get it.

wilbur is terrified that he's finally being perceived as a person and not a deity. the fear of being known and all that. he's not used to that acknowledgement in the slightest and it's just scary!!

i'm so glad you're enjoying so far! the tubbo dog line I actually came up with on the spot while I was writing and i was thrilled with how the scene played out in my head

(also, love chinese satellite as a song so much. I especially think the lines "Pretending to be myself / Why would somebody do this on purpose / When they could do something else?" fits glass!wilbur so much. ty eli birdfeet for suggesting it to me)

[raccooncourt]

The Magnus Archives is just Gossip Girl but Spooky (A Raccoon Court Case)

I wrote this essay as my argument for my podcast (which you can listen to here!), but I feel like the TMA tumblr community will get a kick out of it. Enjoy!

OPENING ARGUMENT

Hi, my name is Mel, and today I will be defending myself against the claim that “I believe The Magnus Archives is just Gossip Girl but horror.”

Hey Upper East Siders - Today, I would like to open with an honest admittance - I simply do not know what our audience is into. Usually, I just get put on trial for things I enjoy and hope that someone out there can relate. I’m not sure if the trash collectors are fans of both Gossip Girl and The Magnus Archives, but I am and so is Jess, and thats enough for me. If you are familiar with both of these franchises, I imagine that you are yelling into the void right now, screaming and crying and throwing up over how I could make such a controversial yet brave statement. That’s exactly how I felt when my best friend and co-historian of Gay Britain, Jessica Harkness, posited, “isn’t Gossip Girl just the Eye?” over zoom one night in January of 2022. This revelation truly rocked my world, and after further consideration, I have decided to explore all of the ways in which The Magnus Archives is just Spooky Gossip Girl.

In this case, I will identify the similarities between the omnipresent life ruining forces that are Gossip Girl and The Eye, the ways in which money and prestige are powerful enough to destroy anyone’s life, and the impulse of general public to snitch on everyone at all times.

Is London just a spooky version of Manhattan? Are rich white people the root of most evils? Did anyone actually have control over their future or was it all decided for them by forces unknown? These questions and more will all be answered in my analysis so stay tuned.

Defense case-in-chief

Members of the jury, I believe that The Magnus Archives is just Spooky Gossip Girl for a variety of reasons, but before we begin, I will provide a summary of both Gossip Girl and The Magnus Archives in case any members of the jury are unfamiliar.

Running from 2007 to 2012 on the CW, Gossip Girl was a targeted critique and celebration of the exorbitant wealth guarded by the upper east side elite of New York City. In the show, we follow a group of teenagers who go to private school together, some wealthy and some on scholarship, as they navigate the intense pressures of NYC high society. This would be a normal rich teen drama if not for the existence of Gossip Girl, a blog/messaging service that collects and distributes tea about the students. The messages are basically just 2007’s version of getting twitter notifications for a gossip account. Over time, Gossip Girl bullies teens, causes infighting, endorses taking advantage of others, and exposes a number of social and literal crimes. Over the course of 6 seasons, we explore the impact that gossip, money, constant surveillance, and the internet has on the livelihoods of the Upper East Siders, from the snotty teenagers to their prestigious families.

Now, The Magnus Archives is a podcast distributed by rusty quill, licensed under a creative commons non-attribution sharealike 4.0 international license, written and performed by Jonathan Sims, and directed by Alexander J Newall. This short form audio drama, produced from 2015 to 2021, follows Jonathan Sims, the newly appointed head archivist of The Magnus Institute in London. Jon’s primary task is to organize and digitize the statements given to the institute with the help of three assistants, most of which which we hear throughout the podcast. While the statements are originally written off as the ramblings of lunatics, it soon becomes clear that the paranormal stories given in the statements hold some truth to them. Eventually, the paranormal aspects of the statements are revealed to be the manifestation of the world’s worst fears. In an unfortunate turn of events, Jon becomes an avatar of The Eye, which is the fear of being watched and surveilled and known, and unwillingly brings about the end of the world. The show focuses mainly on the ways in which we are shaped and guided by our fears as well as the issues of predetermination and fate when it comes to our decisions. While Jon and his coworkers/lover try to save the world, we get to explore guilt, responsibility, and determining the fate of others without their consent.

Both of these shows obviously rely on group efforts to source information and power for the entity that rules (Gossip Girl and the Eye respectively), but neither Gossip Girl nor the Eye actually does the heavy lifting in their operations. Through a variety of tactics, these two entities collect information constantly without doing much work themselves. This is the key to their success as harmful information spreading powers. In this section, I will catalog how these powers surveilled their targets before we dive into how that information was used against others.

Gossip Girl starts out small, with Lonely Boy Dan Humphrey at the helm. In the first season, Dan reports on drama happening at the small private school that the main cast attends. Members of the school are encouraged to report on any suspicious behavior that they see their classmates partaking in. Their reward is not monetary - instead, they ride the high of being credited as an informant in a Gossip Girl post. Teenagers are cruel and short-sited, so it makes sense that they would chase the high of this notoriety without considering the impacts that the drama had on their fellow classmates. This demographic of informants was insatiable - they demanded to know everything that was going on in the lives of their classmates and they were going to help expose them in any way possible. However, while the early Gossip Girl posts merely reported on what students saw other students getting up to, it wasn’t long before Gossip Girl began weaponizing the drama (real or otherwise) to ruin lives. Throughout the show, we watch Dan and Georgina collect any information from the now sycophantic following that Gossip Girl had amassed. This information was not fact checked or considered. Anything went. Something as innocent as spotting Serena Van Der Woodsen outside of an apartment building could be spun to insinuate that she’s back into drugs. Regardless of whether it is true or not, Gossip Girl specialized in character assassination, and even when they didn't have proof, it didn’t matter. The damage done by Gossip Girl in some cases was irreparable - Jenny has to pack her bags and move away to escape constant harassment, Nate nearly goes to jail for drug possession instead of his dad, and Chuck and Blair get in a car accident that causes Blair to lose her baby. Real people were getting hurt, and in the end that was the high that Dan was chasing. He wanted to ruin lives, and his following was willing to help him do so even if it could hurt them just as easily. Dan never needed to rely on hacking security cameras or following people himself - the members of the Upper East Side community and those adjacent to them observed and reported back without any real incentive. It’s fun to speculate about people’s lives, especially when you can distance yourself from the fact that those people are real people, not just social objects for us to gawk over and pick apart. Gossip Girl shows us just how eager even the nice, good people are to publicly scrutinize others without turning that scrutiny on themselves.

Dan finds people to run surveillance for him, but he still partakes in the evil of celebrity shaming. The important part to remember about wielding power gained through surveillance is detaching yourself from those you hold power over, and Dan succeeds at doing so. Gossip Girl becomes a money making venture for Dan, one where he no longer cares about whether his only friends are hurt in the process of his successes. He truly becomes Gossip Girl rather than a real human being. Not only that, but Dan fully commits his life to Gossip Girl’s cause, which is the celebrity gossip economy. While Dan may believe that he is doing something revolutionary by exposing the Upper East Side, he is really just feeding into the mass market we have created for celebrity monitoring and surveilance. It doesn’t matter if it is paparazzi, TMZ, or Gossip Girl, they all serve this bigger purpose. In this way, the show Gossip Girl is identical in framework to The Magnus Archives. In the world of The Magnus Archives, The Eye acts as spooky Gossip Girl, collecting as much information as it can on the fears and secrets of everyone. In The Magnus Archives, one of the 14 majors fears is manifested as The Eye or the fear of being watched and known, the fear of having no secrets. The more information and secrets that The Eye knows, the more fear it sees and the more power it can wield over the general population. It can specialize the way it attacks it's victims the more it knows about them, so the major goal of The Eye is to know as much as possible. Like Gossip Girl, The Eye can’t do this on it’s own, and instead relies on a variety of mechanisms to gain it’s information. Primarily (as far as is discussed in the podcast), The Eye is fed through statements given to The Magnus Institute by people who have been touched by other fears. People who have been haunted by their fears come into the institute, desperate for someone to listen to them, to validate their insane experience, and to make it stop. While the Gossip Girl informants also just wanted to be heard and to be a part of something, those informants weren’t all being tormented by the thing they were reporting back to. The Eye also collects information through the physical eyes of it’s avatars and employees (and maybe any eyes in paintings too?). At the Magnus Institute, once employees are hired to the archive, they are forever tied to The Eye. While all of them work for The Eye, it is the Archivist that becomes the most important worker and acts as the avatar of this fear. Whether knowingly or not, the archival employees purpose in life quickly becomes to collect information and report back. Their service can only be ended through blinding themselves or dying or maybe killing the Archivist, inherently ruining all of their lives in the name of knowledge. The avatars that serve The Eye vary in their willingness to serve. Throughout the series, we see the ways in which Elias Bouchard (DILF)/Jonah Magnus (Not a DILF) have no boundaries when it comes to collecting information for their master. They don’t care if any of their employees die in the greater search for knowledge and actually they will actively put them in harms way if it means getting closer to completing the Watcher’s Crown. That is contrasted by employees like Melanie King, who gouges her eyes out in order to break her terms of service. Here is a key aspect in which TMA ratchets up the horror aspect of the Gossip Girl playbook. While Gossip Girl gains information through willing participants snitching on unwilling participants, The Eye commands unwilling participants to snitch on unwilling participants. The added layer of nonconsensual abuse that The Eye relies on makes it much spookier. Both shows expose our desire to be heard, whether it is airing our worst nightmares or talking about someone you saw cheating on their boyfriend - we need to share these thoughts with others regardless of the impacts, and both Gossip Girl and The Eye relied on this human need to ruin lives.

Now, let’s look at how surveillance and the congregation of information by one all seeing party is used to manipulate others in both of these shows in a way that is vital to the plot and messaging of the show.

I’m not going to belabor the obvious point here - both of these shows are about white men using information to control everyone in their community to everyone’s detriment, and before you say “but mel! Elias Bouchard/Jonah Magnus isn’t ever physically described. How do you know he is a white man?” Guys, he is the literal physical embodiment of capitalism and constrictive, all knowing governments. Of course, he is a white guy. Anyway, this is the basis of these shows, and they would have no story if not for this unifying theme. What ties these two shows is the need to surveil and report back to a greater power, who then uses information to ruin lives and inform fear. Gossip Girl fails to exist without the inclusion of constant surveillance. If we didn’t have the omniscient internet god that was weasel faced Dan Humphreys, Gossip Girl would’ve just been a show about vapid rich kids complaining - I have no interest in that show. Instead, we get to see how people lose their agency and their minds when other people have the ability to scrutinize their actions out of context. Throughout the show, we watch Gossip Girl utilize surveillance to ruin lives - not only the lives of those targeted by the texts and posts, but also the lives of the informants. These young teens (and sometimes adults) became completely obsessed with getting whatever information they could to send to Gossip Girl. They became addicted and were willing to endanger themselves to get the scoop for literally no reward. Even though no one was safe from Gossip Girl’s targeted shots, no one, not even the adults, could resist the rush that came from submitting a tip that Gossip Girl used. In the end, they couldn’t even help themselves by destroying the entity that ran their life. Our addiction to knowing and judging is our downfall, and that’s the message of Gossip Girl. The happy and bizarre endings we see for the main cast in Gossip Girl only occur when Gossip Girl is exposed and shut down. Dan comes clean and gives a pretty shitty apology/explanation for his actions and the group can move one with the master manipulator Gossip Girl finally retired.

The Magnus Archives is also a show that ceases to exist if you remove the powers of surveillance. If The Eye didn’t collect information, it would have no need for the archival staff and we would have literally no show. Easy as that. Instead, we get to delve into humanity’s darkest fears and the ways in which fear motivates us and ruins our lives. The difference between Gossip Girl and The Eye however comes when we discuss the motivations for collecting and using the information. The Eye’s sole purpose is to sow fear and feed off of the destruction of lives. Gossip Girl aims to destroy lives and manipulate/profit off of the Upper East Side, and the fear of being watched is a nice by product.

There is a similarity in message between these two shows that goes beyond just cautionary tales about surveillance. The message may be partially to fear everyone having access to everything about you, and I believe that is a wise moral. However, these shows deal with more than just the fear of being watched - they dive into the ethics of using that information to change the lives of others. Dan originally is trying to gain justice for the unfair ways in which his peers were acting - putting others down, cheating on their partners, and beliving that poor people were useless. However, the power corrupted him, as it usually does, and Dan became obsessed with controlling people through blackmail and their fear of being exposed from his safety in the Brooklyn Poverty Loft (TM Mike’s Mic). Years go by in this dystopian hell where Gossip Girl is in complete control over the lives of the Upper East Side. Now, in the end, Gossip Girl doesn’t win. Dan realizes how fucked up everything he did was (way too late in my opinion, but thats besides the point). In the last episode of Gossip Girl, Dan sacrifices his social life and reputation to start making up for his mistakes. He allows his best friend to break the story that he is Gossip Girl, and he personally apologizes to the main cast, knowing that he likely will be shunned for all the shit he did. This desire to fall on your sword and sacrifice yourself to save others from a future of survielence hell actually is the main message - if you fuck up this bad by abusing the excess of information at your fingertips, you can prevent it from happening in the future, or at least stop the issues you have created yourself. Obviously, Gossip Girl could come back (and she does in the new series of Gossip Girl), but Dan realized that he didn’t need to keep it going. If he quit and exposed himself, at least he could stop the madness for a little while.

Surprisingly, a nearly identical ending occurs in The Magnus Archives. Despite his best efforts, Jon (now the avatar - the Archivist) acts as an unwilling participant in the bringing of the end of the world. Not just a metaphorical end of the world - the literal end of the world. The fears take over the planet and divide it’s inhabitants into those who watch and those who are watched. The latter of the two is doomed to live through their worst nightmares for the rest of eternity. Now, you can make the argument that Dan chose to be shitty while Jon did not - and I agree. If that’s really gonna make or break this argument for you, we can use Jonah Magnus, who did make the choice to bring about the apocalypse. Jon, however, at fault or not, knows that his actions in the past ruined lives and he has a chance to potentially fix it. Over the last season of the podcast, Jon and his boyfriend Martin make their way back to London through the fear domains. Once in London, they realize that Jonah has become The Eye - he is no longer human and is just a fear. The boyfriends are informed that there are a couple of theories as to how they can reverse the end of the world - Jon can kill Jonah and become the eye himself, trying to fix the world from the highest point of power OR they can destroy the eye and banish the fears to another world. There is a ton of super interesting discourse about these options in the last few episodes, but the group agrees to banish the fears.

Jon, the love of my life, then makes a decision for the group. As a believer that it is his mistake that caused the fears and his desire not to doom another world for the sake of his own, Jon decides to become the eye and destroy the entire world - fears and people involved. He is in his Eren Jager in S4 of Attack on Titan era. This decision and commitment to Jon’s selfish line of thinking best lines up to Dan at peak Gossip Girl / Famous Author times when he goes behind the back of his team to chose his plan - becoming the fear and trying to fix it himself. This is a mistake, and in the end, Jon convinces Martin to kill him in order to banish the fears. The team knows that the fears will likely do this to another world, in the same way that someone was likely to pick up the Gossip Girl mantel - BUT they did what they would to stop the immediate suffering. Obviously, this is Spooky Gossip Girl, so Jon and Martin sacrifice themselves literally and not metaphorically like Dan does. However, it reinforces the message that when you have the power to influence and control people, you always have the opportunity to change their lives for the better and fix your mistakes. Just because you have all of the information doesn’t mean that you can’t give it all up to protect others.

These two shows are inherently examinations on agency and our ability to chose what happens to us. In both The Magnus Archives and Gossip Girl, the fate and life plan of the main characters is relatively set in stone and chosen for them from an early age. In many ways, their actions and the hell that they must live through are predetermined by the bigger powers.

In Gossip Girl, as with many shows dealing with rich and powerful families, one of the main non-Gossip Girl caused conflicts revolves around predetermined fate. The rich families set out the life plan of their children from birth - where they will go to school, where they will go to college, what they will study, what families they will marry into. The children are expected to follow this plan and join their parents in upholding the family business and the family legacy. Some of the children chose to follow these plans, like Chuck Bass who follows his father’s footsteps by purchasing and managing high scale hotels (but then does end up murdering his father so ¯\(ツ)/¯ ). Some of the children fail to follow the steps but execute the plan, like Blaire Waldorf who doesn’t get into Yale but does end up running a successful fashion line just like her mom. And then, there are the kids who just don’t follow the plan at all, like Nate Archebald who ends up running a newspaper and puts his dad in jail. This variety in how parents deciding on fate actually plays out is not a new story.

In the show, we also see some levels of fate come into play when we look at Gossip Girl himself. Dan originally uses his power as Gossip Girl to try and hold the elite accountable for their shitty behavior. He tries to break into the upper levels of society, but is told that even if he were to enter the Upper East Side, he would never really be a part of it. This ends up becoming true. As Dan recognizes his ability to manipulate public opinion in his favor, he collects information from the public with the explicit goal of character assassination. He can’t even help himself. He believes that he is in control, when in reality he is a victim to our obsession with celebrity. He becomes well known but he never becomes one of the Upper East Side because he ruined their lives. He isn't in control. In Gossip Girl, Dan acts as the collector and abuser of knowledge, organizing the statements that his followers bring him and weaponizing them, but in the end, his work serves the insane economy of celebrity judgement that ruins lives daily.

Now, in TMA, we deal much more concretely in the ideas of predestination and fate as not expectations that parents and friends put on us but as actual forces in the world. Employees of the archive collect information to serve the Eye. While they believe that they are in control of their lives and their motivations, all along the Eye is compelling them to seek knowledge. Even when anyone in the archive thinks about quitting, they just can’t bring themselves to do it.

Throughout the podcast, we see this predestination of “service to the Eye” observed in a variety of ways. Jon, the Archivist, becomes an avatar of the Eye just as was planned for him (we will discuss this more later). Martin fails to follow the steps but executes the plan nonetheless. Rather than staying as a sole employee of The Eye, he is also working for the Lonely but refuses to help the Lonely hurt the Eye. In the end, he completes his work as an avatar by giving Elias/Jonah valuable information on Peter Lucas and his attempt at completing a Lonely ritual. Then, we have employees that refused their fate, like Tim who dies stopping one of the other fears or Melanie who gouges her eyes out. Even when fate is undeniable, we see it take different forms in two it controls the lives of the characters.

Let’s get back to Jon. Jon, the love of my life, is partially predestined for his future and partially responsible for it. As a kid, Jon was marked by The Web, one of the other 14 fears, when he read the Lietner “A Guest for Mr. Spider” and then watched his bully get pulled into a magical door and is never seen again. Jonah Magnus, when looking for an Archivist to make into an Avatar, knew that they would only be powerful enough to work if they were marked by all of the fears. Now, Jon wasn’t special because he was marked by one fear - plenty of people were marked by a fear. However, the show does bring up the fact that he was picked for this job even when there were other, way more qualified people who applied, like Sasha who also worked at the Institute. This implies that Jon was always going to be picked, none of the other applicants ever had a chance because he was picked despite not having any relevant experience. Throughout the show, the Eye continues to force Jon into being marked by all of the fears so he can complete The Watcher’s Crown.

TMA 160 → https://snarp.github.io/magnus_archives_transcripts/episode/160.html

Once he is the archivist, we see him fight to decipher what is him and what is the eye. We actually see this to a degree with all of the staff, because once they realize who they are working for, they realize that they have no power to leave. While Jon (the Archivist) realizes that The Eye is evil, he cannot bring himself to stop working for it. Jon tells his boss that he never chose to be an avatar, to serve a fear, to which his boss says this -

Whether Jon ever had a chance to leave and to not chose this life, we have no idea. This could just be Elias being a shithead and deflecting. However, we see Jon become unable to leave when he realizes that you can become freed by blinding yourself. Melanie was strong enough to do so, but Jon was not.

And because of this, he inadvertently ended the world. Depending on where you are in the show, you will see very different versions of Jon. Sometimes, he feels no guilt for his actions because he knows they are controlled by the eye. Other times, like when he doomed the world or Tim and Sasha die, he decides to accept those actions as his own even when they were not. It’s a very interesting look into choice and blame that I think both of these shows look into.

Obviously, this example is way too spooky for Gossip Girl, but the sentiment applies all the same. Various times throughout the show, a main character brings up how Gossip Girl is only given power by people giving her material - so, if they stopped giving her material, they could stop her power. However, not one bitch actually stops snitching to Gossip Girl, the detached entity. In ways, both shows follow characters that have issues with taking responsibility with their actions and the ways in which they themselves are ruining lives. Dan essentially says that Gossip Girl would’ve been nothing if people hadn't been obsessed with tea, so its really not his fault that lives were ruined. After all, if people hadn’t done things they were ashamed of, he would’ve had no gossip to spread. Similarly, Jon causes many people incredible pain by reading their minds and mind controlling them and haunting their dreams, writing it off as “feeding the eye.” It doesn’t matter because it wasn’t really his choice. The difference between Dan and Jon in this case is that Jon eventually realizes that it doesn’t matter what is truly his choice - he enjoyed causing fear and knowing these people without their consent and that’s wrong. This discussion of individual fault and responsibility ties nicely into my next point of comparison. In addition, regardless of morality and the desires of the main cast, those with the most money or prestige have the power to determine any aspect of the life of their community. The parents and the rich kids have the most power in Gossip Girl until Dan manages to increase his following and prestige enough that Gossip Girl is in power. In the Magnus Archives, power and prestige are linked in the institute already. The Institute seems to have endless resources and because of that they have endless power. Hiring staff to manipulate and murder is no issue when you have no limits on funds. The police are essentially ignoring all of Elias’s crimes until season 3/4. There was no chance for any opposing forces to silence Gossip Girl or The Eye - they were the ones in ultimate power.

Finally, I would like to touch on a few character comparisons that I feel exemplify how not only the messaging but also the story itself is similar in these two shows.

Let’s start by making a clear distinction between the two people portrayed by Pen Bagley in the series. Originally, we meet “Lonely Boy,” the “poor” kid from Brooklyn going to the private school on a scholarship. He is painted as a total outsider who feels deeply unloved outside of his family. His main goal, whether he admits it or not, is to break into the group of friends that run his school, so he can feel connected and normal. However, Lonely Boy dies as soon as he is accepted into this friend group. In season three, we truly start to meet Dickhead Dan, as I like to refer to him. Rather than the sweet older brother character, Dan becomes selfish, big headed, and self important as soon as he goes to college. For the rest of the show, we watch Dan take out his vendetta against his so-called friends, the only people who really tolerate him in NYC. He weaponizes Gossip Girl to manipulate the lives of his friends until he can finally profit off of it by publishing a tell all novel. Even though Dan had been Gossip Girl the whole time, his intentions originally were just to teach his classmates a lesson on gossip and how harmful it can be. As soon as Dan gained enough social power, he changed his motives and deliberately used surveillance to control every aspect of his friend’s lives before defaming them publicly. Dan sucks. Anyway, I think that this duality can be represented by a few characters in TMA. First off, “Lonely Boy” begins as a guy who has a crush on Serena Van Der Woodsen, a mysterious girl outside of his friend group. Most of Dan’s original motivations are to get Serena to notice him, and eventually, continuous pining worked. I will say that in early seasons of TMA we see this same pattern with Martin and Jon. In the first season, Jon refuses to discuss his personal life or beliefs with his coworkers, remaining a dark academia enigma until a literal worm woman enters their workplace. Martin pines after this man he knows nothing about and stays at his job that sucks in part because this cute mystery boy is there, even when the cure mystery boy accuses him of being a ghost. While I see aspects of Martin in Lonely Boy, mainly the aspect that they are fundamentally lonely despite their best efforts, Dickhead Dan is a total different beast. The secondary, power hungry, selfish version of Dan Humphrey is nearly identical to the character of Jonah Magnus, if Dan could hop between bodies and control people’s minds. I will argue that Dan’s use of information and decision to knowing spread misinformation is a form of manipulation that on the scale of Gossip Girl is a form of brainwashing, so maybe these boys aren't so different after all. Anyway, Jonah Magnus is a servant of The Eye. His whole life’s purpose is to provide the eye with as much information it can about others that it can use to become more powerful. Now, Jonah employs people unknowingly to assist in his work, but he has no care for whether they live or die, much in the same way Dan does. I mean, Dan’s work as Gossip Girl causes his sister to get into drug dealing and exposes how she lost her virginity, which forces her to move to upstate NY just to escape the drama. If you don’t care about what happens to your sister, you probably wouldn’t care if other people were hurt in the same awful ways. In this way, Omnipresent Dan and Jonah are in their basic form the same man. The way that TMA makes it is a little spookier is the fact that Jonah forces people to give him information and the only way to escape is to scoop your own eyes out.

Finally, I want to quickly talk about love interests. Gossip Girl wouldn’t be Gossip Girl if the teens didn’t all have complicated emotional and sexual relationships that breached usual friendship bro code rules. We obviously have pairings that are considered “end game” in Gossip Girl like Chuck and Blair and Dan and Serena. We also have the pairings that overlapped - Jennie and Chuck, Dan and Blair. This intermixing was purely for spectacle in Gossip Girl - most of these pairings were just to shock the audience and keep us interested. In The Magnus Archives, we see this same overlap in relationships and interesting boundaries being broken (i.e. office relationships). Daisy and Basira in my mind are lovers who also happen to be Police Officer partners. It is revealed that in college, Jon and Georgie dated. Later in the seasons, Georgie dates Melanie, who is an employee of Jon’s, and Jon dates Martin. Now, I do not want to make our jury think that I am saying the Jon/Georgie/Melanie/Martin story line is like the Chuck/Blair/Dan/Serena stories except in that there is gay overlap as the seasons go on. How are these honest, beautiful portrayals of different forms of love somehow spookier than the raunchy, debaucherous relationships of Gossip Girl? The relationships of TMA are honest and vulnerable and fragile - and isn’t that the scariest thing a relationship could be?

Closing Argument

Members of the court, today I truly put myself out there by being not only controversial but also brave. I ask that you carefully consider my argument and see that Gossip Girl and The Magnus Archives are basically the same story. The Magnus Archives just adds a little bit of horror through being in London, introducing mind control, and actually manifesting the end of the world. I urge you to see the similarities between Dan and Jonah Magnus, Gossip Girl and the Eye, and the conclusions of both stories. I think it only makes sense that I love both of these pieces of art so much given their near identical structure. Honorable Jury members, do not find me guilty of having a bad opinion today. If you do, I’ll snitch to Gossip Girl AND ask the ceaseless watcher to turn his gaze on you, and that is a threat.

[grandhotelabyss]

If you haven't already, I highly recommend Philip's Against Self-Criticism in the LRB. It's one of my favorite essays written in the 21st century. The piece explores Hamlet, Freud, Lacan, etc. (All of which, as you've persuasively argued, emanate from mind of Shakespeare.)

Thanks, just read it, a literally perfect essay, and, re: a previous post, one of the best defense of Freud ever made: the way it begins with Hamlet and ends with Don Quixote to start and finish at the origin of modernity, the way it connects Freud to the tradition of liberal jurisprudence and the thought of Mill, and above all, most movingly to me, the way it defends overinterpretation (metatextually, given Phillips's own close readings):

After interpreting Hamlet’s apparent procrastinations with the new-found authority of the new psychoanalyst, Freud feels the need to add something by way of qualification that is at once a loophole and a limit. ‘But just as all neurotic symptoms,’ he writes, ‘and, for that matter, dreams, are capable of being “over-interpreted”, and indeed need to be, if they are to be fully understood, so all genuinely creative writings are the product of more than a single impulse in the poet’s mind, and are open to more than a single interpretation.’ It is as though Freud’s guilt about his own aggression in asserting his interpretation of what he calls the ‘deepest layers’ in Hamlet – his claim to sovereignty over the text and the character of Hamlet – leads him to open up the play having closed it down. You can only understand anything that matters – dreams, neurotic symptoms, people, literature – by over-interpreting it; by seeing it, from different aspects, as the product of multiple impulses. Over-interpretation, here, means not settling for a single interpretation, however apparently compelling. The implication – which hints at Freud’s ongoing suspicion, i.e. ambivalence, about psychoanalysis – is that the more persuasive, the more authoritative the interpretation the less credible it is, or should be. If one interpretation explained Hamlet we wouldn’t need Hamlet anymore: Hamlet as a play would have been murdered. Over-interpretation means not being stopped in your tracks by what you are most persuaded by; to believe in a single interpretation is radically to misunderstand the object one is interpreting, and interpretation itself. In the normal course of things, tragic heroes are emperors of one idea: they always under-interpret. Hamlet, we could say, is a great over-interpreter of his experience; and it is the sheer range and complexity of his thoughts – his interest in his thought from different aspects – that makes him such an unusual tragic hero. ‘Emerson was distinguished,’ Santayana wrote, ‘not by what he knew but by the number of ways he had of knowing it.’ Freud was beginning to fear, at this moment in The Interpretation of Dreams, and rightly as it turned out, that psychoanalysis could be undistinguished if it had only one way of knowing what it thought it knew. It was dawning on him, prompted by his reading of Hamlet, that psychoanalysis, at its worst, could be a method of under-interpretation. And to take that seriously was to take the limits of psychoanalysis seriously; and indeed the limits of any description of human nature that organises itself around a single metaphor.

If I have a pedagogical rather than just a literary vocation, it is to teach the art of overinterpretation, an art that testifies to the abundance of the universe. How does this affect me as an artist? Wallace Stevens's second criterion for "Supreme Fiction" is that "It Must Change." I believe that means that the greatest art makes itself maximally available to overinterpretation (while still retaining its discrete form). It therefore presents itself variably to different audiences and epochs.

[mattydemise]

23:34. 6th November, 2022.

Working a lot. Not a lot of time for art. Not a lot of time for writing. I need to juggle this all a little better. Went out this morning with friends. Sat around drinking coffee and shooting the shit. Teagan and Jake. Tigs is an angel. Jake’s a good bloke. What I like about Teagan is how warm she is. She carries this beautiful presence with her. I’ve not met many people like that. Most people have an agenda, a secret, something to hide, but not her. Teagan wears it all on her sleeve. I admire that sort of simple honesty. Jake’s just your typical Aussie bloke. My game was seeing how hard I could make him laugh in the middle of the busy cafe. I ended up having a pretty great time.

I was behind the bar making cocktails. Pornstar martinis and Hawaiian mimosas. A lot of drinks, a lot of alcohol. A young woman. Pretty. Fiery red hair. Tattoos. Relatively revealing outfit. Mischief written all over her. Comes up to me and asks if I made her cocktail. I told her “Yeah,” and she replied with “They were the best I’ve ever had.” She then told me that I’m the “most beautiful man” she’d ever seen. Flattered, I simply told her “Thanks,” and continued making the cocktails. Later on in the night she came up and asked for my Snapchat. I love my job but there’s just something unsavoury about it. It’s constantly putting me in these situations where bad things can happen and my most terrible impulses are indulged. I got a Snapchat from her later in the night asking “What are you doing?” I told her I was about to shower and she asked if she could come around to wash my hair. It’s hard to defuse a situation like that. The entire situation has danger written all over it like a crate of dynamite in an old cartoon. I imagined the unprotected sex and unplanned but entirely deserved pregnancy. The loss of my freedom and, by extension, my life. I’m not being an asshole, I’m mature enough to know when something is a bad idea and no matter how good the sex might me, no matter how tender her touch may be, I know enough to know when something’s going to be bad for everyone involved.

I love my job, I’m fucking good at my job, but it’s not good for me. The potential for hurt is too great. I don’t want to hurt people. I had a coworker tell me someone had serious feelings for me and it made me feel fucking awful and like I needed to get on the defensive. The worst part about life is the unnecessary hurt you cause others whether it’s by action or inaction. The potential for hurt is ever-present, as inescapable as the grave. There’s a girl I work with, my type, small, thin, and built to further break the fragments of my heart. She’s got this deviousness about her. She gets excited to show me her nails and we joke around about going out. I’ve never met someone so utterly sinful. I want her to kill me and sacrifice me to Satan. Just plunge a knife right into my fucking chest. She’d probably smirk. Her laugh haunts me. Everything about her is unholy. But she reminds me of my ex and so I won’t go there. We’ll just continue smirking at one another and if she kills me, well, she kills me. Not much I can do about it.

[ahb-writes]

Comics Review: ‘Kings of Nowhere’ #2

Kings of Nowhere, Vol. 2 by Soroush Barazesh My rating: 4 of 5 stars The social and ethical dilemmas facing the hybrid animal folk of the Kings of Nowhere comics leap forward, as repeated sparks of gang violence threaten to burn away more than the usual foolhardy thug. In this world, life is only easy if someone much stronger than you is in a position to make life easier for you. Otherwise, you scratch and you save and you keep your wits and you pay your dues. For an old mechanic and his impulsive grandkid, the truth of this conceit runs deep. KINGS OF NOWHERE v2 makes good on the comic's larger themes of witnessing the many ways urban violence tends to converge and coalesce the lives of innocent or unrelated parties. Kiyoshi is an old dude known for running an honest body shop. He has to fend off the occasional idiot from the Tundra Renegade group, a local gang, but otherwise, he's a solid businessman. His grandson, Dante, age 11, follows suit, but would honestly rather take up a sword in defense. Both nudge their way through life, despite their troubles. Neither expect a run-of-the-mill customer, a monkey named Bass, to bust a thug's nose, drive the guy's face through a coffee table, and challenge the senior leadership of the Tundra Renegade group to a brawl. But then again, that's the kind of world these characters live in. The enduring irony of urban gangsters extorting small businesses for protection money, only to require a bit of protection themselves when circumstances shift, has been tread many times over. For readers interested in where this comic book differs, then one need only consider the author's integration of extraordinarily well-drawn fight scenes, affection for back-biting and sarcastic character dialogue, and knack for the fundamentals of plotting. On the surface, readers may not see much new in KINGS OF NOWHERE v2, but they'll find plenty storytelling that's fun and engaging. The previous volume of the comics series is a vibrant primer. The current volume kicks things up a notch. Bass is a guy with a dark past. He tries to avoid trouble. But his temper often catches up with him. And he's not so foolish as to ignore the consequences of his actions. It also helps that he's a ridiculously skilled fighter who knows how to put his body on the line, if need be. The book focuses on characters whose actions or behaviors stand as representative vanities of violence as it moves, shakes, and unmakes the urban environment. Bass is quiet and ruthless and doesn't like talking to idiots, but he'll admit when he's made a mistake. Giovanni, a foot soldier of the Tundra Renegade group, is an incompetent dreamer who reasons bigger guns are better because that's always worked for him before. Stone, a rockhopper penguin hybrid guy, adores alcohol, adores things that explode, and rarely hesitates to kiss up to his gang leader; his nonchalance is both humorous and unsettling. And Dante wants cold-hearted revenge, despite his lack of experience, lack of knowledge, and lack of strength. Few of these characters get what they want out of life, much less what they expect. But all of them have forged some passable relationship with violence that enables them to scrape by for yet another day. KINGS OF NOWHERE v2 is written and drawn exactly how action comics are meant to be written and drawn: the point of view shifts reader attention to details that factor into play (e.g., bloody nose, dropped weapon, glass of milk); weapons are only as functional as their operators are competent (e.g., wine bottles, ice grenades, katana swords); and the best fights make use of everything imaginable (e.g., lane-changing cars on the highway, comically weak thugs who pass out, a vantage point for the Shakespearean chorus to provide running commentary). It's no surprise the best martial arts films of the past decades have integrated these features as well; good action storytelling with engaging fight scenes requires extraordinary attention to detail and an ardent affection for characters with more to lose than they care to admit. In KINGS OF NOWHERE v2, Bass's 20-page fight scene with Jo, an arctic hare with telekinetic abilities (and a misguided sense of fatalism), is a fight that's all kinds of insane; it's also incredibly fun. KINGS OF NOWHERE v2 is the type of comic book that's a blast to read because it's all parts chaotic and clever and ridiculous. The current volume is more subtle in its moralizing of the limits of human resilience in the face of urban decay, but with characters who deliver on these conceits on every page, the book's pulse refuses to fade until the final panel.

Comics Reviews || ahb writes on Good Reads