#temporal rape

[veritas-dolos]

so since i recently reblogged a post with fic recommendations i realized i should maybe make a list of all of my favorite fics so you can check them out.

just letting you know, these are all going to be for the 2012 tmnt!! i'm not going to give a summary for each one, just a little detail.

tw's are stated where necessary. also, some of these are ship fics, and they're kinda spread out throughout the list so they might be hard to find.

for the future, for you. by SpectrumWriting

this one is donnie centric.

Tendencies by orphan_account

leo centric.

Under The Skin by Red_Dragonn

tw for bugs and body horror. raph centric.

on my own by feduphufflepuff

raph centric.

The Hostage Situation by taizi

mikey centric!!

Desolation by goodstoryfan

this is part one of the series (next fic below is part 2). leo centric and mind control!

Devastation by goodstoryfan

part two of the series. leo centric during the space arc!

Bro, You Literally Got Hit By A Bus by emmals16

in this fic leo got hit by a bus. it's mainly written for the 2003 show, but it can be read as 2012.

The Nature Of The Wind by This_world_of_beautiful_monsters

tw for rape/noncon. this is a dark fic, but leo centric. it's really good despite the themes.

Consequence for Indifference by Professor_Anxietree

mikey angst, and the brothers aren't abusive.

Interrogation or Malpractice? by Professor_Anxietree

more mikey angst for the end of season 3 where he goes through that thing that was supposed to read his mind.

unwavering by OverlyObsessed223

mikey and leo centric angst!

i've got my eye on you by taizi

mikey angst and donnie worries about him.

Despite Everything, I'm Still Human by WastedAndReady

raph angst!

Be like your brothers (And never like yourself) by ItzZaira

mikey angst!!

Mixup by The_Fourth_Queen

okay so this one is leo x casey but it's so funny i had to recommend it.

where it all began by a_rutabaga

leo angst where he and his brothers don't get along. this one is really good i've read it many times.

The Orange Turtle Without The Dimension of X by itz_me_E

mikey angst post dimension x.

Angry tender hearts. by Koalagriton

this one is raph x casey but it's really good.

Whatsername by less_depresso_more_espresso

another raph x casey and it's got angst what more could you want

Play the Fool, Pity the Fool. by SpectrumWriting

mikey angst, but tw for suicide attempt and self harm.

Not as Thick as Blood by thirdsday

mikey angst. (wow, i have a lot of mikey angst bookmarked)

The Arrangement by Ivelostcontrolofmylife

this is donnie x casey, and i haven't read it in a while, but it's really good.

Crash Course in Mistletoe by coolpointsetta

raph x casey. this is the first ever rasey fic i read that got me interested in the ship, so it's a good read. (this is the first in the series, the fic below is part two. there is a part 3, but i am yet to read it.)

the corner of the world we made ours by coolpointsetta

raph x casey, part 2 of the series.

(un)reality by SpectrumWriting

mikey angst fic that takes place during/after dimension x.

Notes pour trop tard by Anonymous

leo angst. tw for suicide (off screen) and suicide notes.

Breakfast for Sensei by rakuenoasis

mikey angst post dimension x. (wow i have a lot of dimension x fics bookmarked someone stop me)

How to deal with grief by ItzZaira

mikey angst at the farmhouse.

Atrophy by DerelictWreck

mikey angst. tw for very detailed and graphic suicide attempt and surgery, but it has a happy ending and mikey does not die. the brothers aren't the best but they're not abusive.

and the walls kept tumbling down by leones

leo angst. tw for eating disorders.

Temporal Differential by paranormal_worm

mikey angst post dimension x.

Into Dimension X by HolyKingWasteLand

mikey angst post dimension x.

we'll burn them down by dame_de_la_chance

mikey angst post dimension x. i have to say this one is one of my favorites of all the dimension x fics.

walk with open hands by taizi

you guys. this is so good. this is a fix it fic for the end of season 4 where mikey tries to save splinter's life.

Control by SceneNerd

mikey angst. tw for self harm.

Translate the Problem by Professor_Anxietree

mikey angst post dimension x. in my mind this is THE dimension x fic. it's the first one i ever read so it's really good. (the fic below is a continuation of this)

Mind and Matter by Professor_Anxietree

mikey angst when they're in space. (based on the episode journey to the center of mikey's mind).

to thine own self be true by inkandstone

mikey angst. this is a truth serum fic!!

and that's it!! i went through my entire bookmarked 2012 list and found each one of these. i have 261 tmnt 2012 fics bookmarked. it took over an hour to make this list and christ i am exhausted.

anyway i hope you guys read some of these! they're all amazing!!

[cult-of-the-eye]

Ok I'm gonna do it. I'm gonna make the new hyperfixation post:

CRIMINAL MINDS:

I started watching it cause I was on the internet during the Dr Reid thirst trap era and let's just say a scrawny motherfucker with autism is the surefire way to get me to watch something

Especially when everyone is going through the horrors

I am in love with the format of the show, with the whole quotes and then different characters saying the quotes and the isolated cases with the slight hints of more background for each of the characters it's really keeping me going

I'm not great with gore and shit but like it's got shitty 2000s CGI so like it's easy to tell myself it's just actors with fake blood

Also listen I had to tap into my 9 yr old undiagnosed autistic obsessed with psychopaths phase at some point

It just tickles the right parts of my brain

Anyway the characters are why I stuck around

Gideon <3333 I love that strange walrus looking man I love how he's simultaneously such an emotional rock for everyone in the BAU but also dealing with his own things, he goes into each of the crimes with such calmness and compassion and I just love that weird old man especially when he introduced himself as Jason to the little girl he was saving in that one episode, i was like HE'S MAKING HIMSELF SEEM LIKE LESS OF A THREAT BY INTRODUCING HIMSELF WITH HIS FIRST NAMEEEE, HE'S TRYING TO PUT HER AT EASE

Hotch oh man it was one scene specifically that literally started my brainrot for this guy, I wasn't that into him in the first couple of episodes and then it was revealed that he was horrifically abused by his dad and actively chose to go into a pathway that would catch people like that and people who get abused and then go on to abuse others and I just. AH. i am such a sucker for any character who has endured things that no one ever should endure at the hands of another human being and then instead of becoming completely bitter and taking the eye for an eye mindset, they vow to make sure the cycle stops with them and they may not be all sunshine and daisies and instead rough a lot of the times but they do it and they do it realistically

He's got a wife and a kid!!! He did it!! He made a better life for himself and it makes me feel like I could too, he's so strong and I feel like my strength can one day be used for more than just survival

Elle!!!! God I love her I feel like she's so realistic for a woman in her field, she's smart and strong and capable and she acknowledges all the things she has going against her, she's compassionate to the female rape victims, she gets furious at the people targeting women in particular what i would do to be this woman's friend

Reid. Oh lord. Listen I'm not on the thirst trap train but I do understand the love for this guy. My love for him however stems from the autism. The whole wanting to be useful and only knowing how to through interests and hyperfixations and feeling like he's missing out on some things cause he's different

It was the hostage situation on the train that got to me he was just so REAL and it's so awesome to see autistic people succeed in stuff like this

It's also nice to see him accepted by the team for who he is

I do also like him cause he's cool but it's easier to explain the autism stuff

Garcia - wonderful amazing spectacular I love me a confident woman in stem

Morgan - i like how he's sort of the "cool guy" archetype but his whole thing is getting into the mind of the UnSub I feel like it gives him more depth

JJ - god she's so cool and calm under pressure I love her

So yeah. The BAU is my new comfort character crew I'm taking Elle with me everywhere

But also do I have major issues with the idea of behavioural analysis in crime? Absolutely. It is so insanely subjective the way they're going off of probability, the way their precedent probably lacks temporal validity and also population validity with both the androcentrism and ethnocentrism it does feel wrong to be coming to such a conclusion about the UnSub so quickly and decisively, even though I understand their whole thing is getting there quickly. I just know that categorising human behaviour is never as simple as it seems.

Do I think they tackle some of these issues in the show? Sort of. Am I also aware this is a fictional drama TV show and it may not be that deep? Yes.

Anyway

[number1villainstan]

Making a JJK/RGU Crossover for Fun and Profit

Assumes working (but not in-depth) knowledge of both RGU and JJk.

Content warnings for anything that applies to either RGU or JJK (so discussions of abuse in general, sexual abuse specifically, rape, incest, death, gore, body horror, unreality, w/e). Ohtori Akio and Ryomen Sukuna are their own warnings.

Warnings for major JJK manga spoilers up to chapter 263 and for major RGU spoilers if you haven't watched the show.

Disclaimer for RGU fans: This isn't gonna be an in-depth analysis of either work. Or at least that's not the focus. There may be some of that in the body of the work, but if you're here for insightful commentary, this is not the post for you. However, if you're here for taking a dumbass idea way too seriously (for fun), then this is exactly the post for you.

And with those out of the way, let's get started, shall we?

What kind of crossover?

There are several different ways you can combine elements from two or more different stories, but you often end up having to throw away or twist certain elements to fit the other world/story, because lore (or magic system or a character's backstory) from one story may conflict with lore from the other story. You end up getting setups like characters from one story acting out the events of the other story, or characters living out a version of their own stories but in the other story's setting, or characters from both stories interacting in a setting separate from both stories.

However. Every once in a while, there's a combination of stories that allows you to preserve both settings, while having them be in contact with each other, and RGU and JJK is one such combination.

This lies in the enclosed nature of Ohtori (the setting of RGU) and the nature of cursed energy and techniques (part of the setting of JJK). When you combine these aspects of both stories, you end up with the crack crossover theory that Akio is a cursed spirit, and Ohtori is his domain expansion. It's a shockingly tight explanation for why Ohtori is Like That, especially coming from a work in a different genre and that is not in conversation with RGU at all (so far as I know). It explains how the world of Ohtori can be so unconcerned with physical laws, such as "there's no way for the pillar and stairs to support the dueling arena's weight" or "there's no topologically valid way to get from the forest to Akio's living room on those stairs" or "Ohtori's not by the ocean, so Ruka can't be both on campus and overlooking the ocean on a bench"; how illusions and tricks of the mind are so prevalent; why the dead can cheat death, if not forever; how Akio can be aware of nearly anything that happens at Ohtori; why time is so incredibly fucking weird (implying temporal/spacial manipulation cursed techniques on Akio's part); why Ohtori is practically fine-tuned to maximize misery in the long term.

Ohtori being a domain meant to capture teenagers and feed off their cursed energy not only provides another explanation for what Ohtori is, it fits very neatly into RGU's themes of abuse and how to break away from it, adding an extra layer onto Akio's ability to control everything about Ohtori. Akio being a cursed spirit also fits his backstory--if we take the flashbacks as indications of what happened, although not True Narratives, we can imagine Dios as a jujustu sorcerer who played the hero too much and ended up dying from exhaustion, with Akio being the cursed spirit that was his resurrection (much like how Sukuna is canonically a resurrected sorcerer). This also implies that Anthy herself may be a sorcerer, one who was likely thrown to the wolves (the cursed spirit that was Akio) upon his death, and who Akio has been imprisoning inside his domain since said death.

Unfortunately, this explanation isn't quite as tight as I would like it to be. There are several wrinkles to consider. Number one is that multiple characters leave and return to Ohtori over the course of the story, while domains are meant to be incredibly difficult to break out of given the barriers necessary to uphold them. Ryomen Sukuna and Fushiguro Megumi both demonstrate barrier-less domain expansions, but Megumi uses natural barriers (such as the inside of a warehouse), and Sukuna's usage of a barrierless domain expansion is seen as "divine". However, if we expand the boundaries of the hypothetical Ohtori domain expansion to include the town surrounding campus, and posit that there must be a second school there, we solve this problem by providing a place to go for Saionji when he's expelled, for Wakaba to go grocery shopping off-campus, for Ruka to be in the hospital, and for Shiori to attend school before transferring back to Ohtori, without them actually exiting Akio's sphere of influence, and furthermore

This is where we run into problem 2: keeping a domain expansion as big and as complex as Ohtori active for at least several months, for likely decades or centuries, requires an insane amount of cursed energy, and that we've never seen a domain expansion that large in JJK canon. Even Sukuna's 'divine' domain expansion in Shibuya, although he covered several city blocks, was a very simple domain, and wasn't as large as both Ohtori and its surrounding area. Furthermore, making Akio extremely powerful is a thematic sacrifice I don't want to make--part of what makes the finale so powerful is that Akio ends up posing less of a threat to Utena and more of an annoyance, although he's more powerful in Adolescence. (Some fans may say that I've already made a thematic sacrifice in making Akio not human, because part of the message of RGU is that normal, well-liked human beings can abuse other people without not being human, and their abuse may even be enabled by being well-liked and socially cushioned. To that I say: you are correct, but unless you have a smoother way to integrate the settings of RGU and JJK it was a necessary thematic sacrifice for this thought experiment. Also that I'm not all that interested in stories about humanity, being only technically human myself.) This is why I've made references to Akio siphoning off the cursed energy of those attending Ohtori, because it works both practically and thematically--this way Akio gains the cursed energy necessary for maintaining such a complex domain expansion by sucking it out of the students he's trapped inside, and it's a commentary on the soul-sucking (hah) nature of school and abuse and on how cultural systems of oppression and abuse need people to uphold them because they have no power on their own. But I doubt that Akio would get enough cursed energy from simply a bunch of non-sorcerers, which implies that there must be at least several sorcerers (or just people with abnormally high amounts of cursed energy) attending Ohtori; it would also make sense to say that Akio would keep these deeper energy reserves (so to speak) closer at hand than the rest of the student body. Yes, I'm going there: the Student Council + Utena are likely sorcerers themselves who haven't realized it yet, and Anthy is likely the most powerful sorcerer of anyone there, which would be part of the reason why Akio keeps her so close (and why she's implied to be able to do things like influence the arena and set all of those animals loose on Kiryuu Nanami). However, they would likely be unable to access any cursed techniques of their own, because Akio's influence would siphon away so much of their cursed energy.

So, to recap: Akio is a vampiric curse and Ohtori + the surrounding area is his domain expansion, and he feeds off the misery of the students he has trapped inside his domain; in addition, Anthy, Utena, and the Student Council all have sorcerer levels of cursed energy, along with potentially a good portion of the "unspecial" population, but in most of their cases have functionally the same power levels as normal people due to Akio's vampiric nature.

Okay, but so what?

Having a setting like this is very fun, but it can't reach the level of story as it is; currently it's just a crack crossover theory/headcanon. In order for this to become a story of its own, we need characters and we need a plot. Given how character-driven RGU is, and how the world of Ohtori responds to its characters' emotions, most of the plot can be extrapolated from our choice in characters and from how the world of Ohtori is set up. The main thing we need, besides choosing which characters, is an inciting incident. I have a simple one ready: whoever monitors these things in the jujutsu world has received reports/evidence of high levels of cursed energy where Ohtori is, and sends in our characters to investigate, thinking it would be a normal mission, and they end up entering the domain expansion and becoming students at Ohtori.

But who are the characters?

We've got several options for characters or character groups to send in to Ohtori, and we can safely assume that the RGU characters will start fundamentally the same as they are in canon, only changing in response to the actions of the JJK characters introduced to their environment. I also strongly doubt that any of the JJK characters we would introduce would have a rose crest ring, or come in with Akio's approval--in other words, they broke in, and they start as "unspecial". It would also make the most sense storywise to send in teenagers (or those who look like them); adults would likely be stonewalled out of getting close to Ohtori campus. That being said, let's go over some options and their consequences/implications:

The First Year Trio

The protagonists of the show: Fushiguro Megumi, Itadori Yuuji, and Kugisaki Nobara, with Ryomen Sukuna tagging along with them. You could do a Junpei Lives AU and include him as well, but I won't, since I'm focusing on bringing together both canons, which means Junpei is fucking dead. Let's go over each of the characters:

Kugisaki Nobara:

potential for Weird Sibling Shit: none, unless she has a sibling we never hear about in canon.

potential for Sunlit Garden Shit: low to medium. It's implied that she doesn't miss her country upbringing, and she talks about a girl she admired being bullied away by unsympathetic folk in her neighborhood, but nostalgia has a way of twisting the truth, so it's not impossible.

potential for Shining Thing Shit: low to medium. If Maki enters with her, then she may end up having her as a shining thing; however, there's not any one specific person or ideal that she tends to fixate on.

is she Stuck In Her Coffin: I'd say no. She's very assertive and seems not to care about what others think, and she's unafraid of interacting with the world.

Kugisaki Nobara would hate Ohtori. Loudly. And violently. Despite being mostly gender-conforming appearance-wise, her personality directly contradicts Ohtori's 'ideal woman', and she'd likely draw scorn from the general population. She'd probably make a fascinating parallel with Saionji; her violence is usually played for laughs at the other person's expense, or for making herself look badass, while Saionji's violence usually makes him look like a dick or earns him a trip to Clown Town. (Some of this difference is in what they direct their violence at, of course, but not all of it.) They're also both incredibly stubborn, unlikely to go along uncritically with tradition, extremely direct, and often eager to throw the first punch, so to speak. She'd also probably outright refuse to talk to Akio on the basis that he has "bad vibes", and if she ever hears about the shit he pulls with other teenagers she'd (attempt to) put a nail through his skull.

Fushiguro Megumi:

potential for Weird Sibling Shit: medium to high. We likely wouldn't see his older stepsister Tsumiki come back to life like Ruka, but healing Tsumiki is a main motivator of Megumi's actions in canon, and she was the one who took care of him after both his dad (her stepdad) and her mom (his stepmom) abandoned them (or died, in Toji's case, but Megumi doesn't know that). Strong case for Weird Sibling Shit even if Tsumiki doesn't show up.

potential for Sunlit Garden Shit: low to medium. He did NOT have a happy childhood, and he hates his dad. The only thing he would want to go back to the past for would be to see Tsumiki awake again (which would tie into Weird Sibling Shit). But, like I said with Kugisaki, the memory-warping effects of nostalgia cannot be underestimated.

potential for Shining Thing Shit: low to medium. Probably his 'shining thing' would be Tsumiki.

is he Stuck In His Coffin: Honestly, probably. At the beginning of canon he has hangups about his own power and self-worth, and struggles with expressing himself openly and honestly. (Actually, I don't think he gets better at expressing himself over the course of canon aside from whaling on curses.)

Fushiguro Megumi is probably the character who's most susceptible to Ohtori's emotional manipulations out of the whole JJK cast. His personality is most similar to Juri's, I think, in the way he's emotionally constipated and finds it difficult to express his feelings to other people. Thankfully he doesn't have a Shiori, both in the sense of being hurt and of hurting someone else from stonewalling them (unless you count Sukuna, but we all know Sukuna can take it and also deserves it). Given his relationship with Gojo (his main parental figure), he may be somewhat more vulnerable to Akio's manipulations, or he may be much less vulnerable given how much he rags on Gojo.

Itadori Yuuji:

potential for Weird Sibling Shit: none. He's canonically an orphan and an only child (iirc).

potential for Sunlit Garden Shit: high. He is not doing well--he's been possessed by a demon, slated for execution, his grandpa is dead, and his pre-canon friends are in the hospital. There's no way he doesn't wish to turn back the clock in some ways, to go back to when life was simple and safe.

potential for Shining Thing Shit: low. He doesn't have anything specific he obsesses over, although you could argue that he could obsess over the goal of beating Sukuna, especially in the late stages of the manga.

is he Stuck In His Coffin: No. He's much better at making connections and expressing emotion and vulnerability than someone like Megumi, and he's shown in canon to be respectful of others (aside from like. Sukuna and Mahito, who both deserve the disrepsect) no matter their gender.

Yuuji isn't as vulnerable as Megumi to Ohtori's emotional manipulations, but that isn't to say that he isn't vulnerable at all. He's a lot like Utena herself personality-wise, and I think he's vulnerable in similar ways as well, especially in a desire to go back to a time when life was simple and safe and guaranteed. His attachment to Gojo may also make him especially vulnerable to Akio's carefully-cultivated aura of "coolness".

Ryomen Sukuna:

potential for Weird Sibling Shit: none, unless he has a sibling that survived the Heian Era as a curse (highly unlikely) AND he's actually attached to that sibling (even more unlikely). The only time Sukuna mentions anything like having siblings it's to say that he ate his twin in the womb, I don't think he puts much emphasis on family of any kind

potential for Sunlit Garden Shit: none. Man's out here living his best hedonistic curse life all day every day; anything that might trigger Sunlit Garden-type nostalgia in someone else (like being stuck in Itadori's body or having to deal with Akio's siphoning his cursed energy away) he views as an annoyance or a threat, but not as evidence that the Past Was Better.

potential for Shining Thing Shit: none. He's practically his own shining thing.

is he Stuck In His Coffin: lmao no he got out a long time ago just cuz he decided it wasn't comfy in there

Sukuna is, hilariously, the JJK character with the most comedic potential in this situation. There's two ways he could go, with him either being stuck in Yuuji's body the whole time (which confines him to being a menace to Yuuji) or, my own preference, him getting his own body at Ohtori, which allows him to go off on his own and do weird shit, which I like too much to not do. Watch as he makes all the right logical steps as to why Ohtori Bullshit is Wrong Actually and then his conclusion veers so hard to the side that we end up in territory that is maybe actually Even Worse. "This whole Dueling Game thing is bullshit" yes "Anthy should have way more agency" yes "the kids should be fighting proper death battles cuz they value the thrill of the fight" nO. His reaction to Akio would literally just be "you need to learn how to respect your betters". He's utterly impervious to Akio's and Ohtori's emotional manipulation and yet he keeps Missing The Point. Everyone else is Suffering(TM) and he's just off doing hot girl shit with Nobara or trying to figure out how to get his cursed energy back. Ohtori may be Hell but Sukuna is literally a demon.

Bonus Characters

My original plan was to go through a lot of different JJK characters/character groups, but it's late and I want to be done with this so those will have to wait until a reblog. But to wrap up quickly, I'll do Maki&Mai and Uraume.

Zen'in Maki and Zen'in Mai:

potential for Weird Sibling Shit: very high. Not only are they twins who have been split apart by jujustu society, Mai ends up dying to 'free' Maki, and there's one panel where it looks like one of them is kissing the other one (who's unconscious) on the mouth. Yeah. They're up there with Miki and Kozue for Weird Twin Sibling Shit.

potential for Sunlit Garden Shit: medium to high. Some of the flashbacks for them heavily imply that there were some very high-nostalgia-potential moments in their childhood, before they realized their inequality.

potential for Shining Thing Shit: low for Maki (who doesn't care anymore), high for Mai (who would idolize Maki in some sense, or at least desire that Maki come back).

are they Stuck In Their Coffins: Mai yes, Maki no. Maki's already decided to leave the Zen'ins behind when canon starts, but Mai is still trapped in her own desire to go back to the way it was ('won't you stay at the bottom with me?' iirc).

Maki and Mai would be hard-pressed to survive in Ohtori's environment. Mai's something like Shiori, methinks, while Maki's just trying to get out again. They already have a deeply fucked up relationship, and Ohtori would probably just warp it further and drive them apart even more.

Uraume:

(This entry is formatted a little differently.) Uraume is an interesting character, especially with the implication that they and Sukuna genuinely enjoy each other's company. Their gender, or lack thereof, would also become much more important in RGU's story, despite being mostly just a side note in JJK's. It would be more difficult to get them in, because they don't have anyone around to order them inside, but if they got word that Sukuna was potentially lost inside a rogue curse's domain expansion they'd have a personal motivation to enter the story.

Pros of having Uraume in this story:

A straightman (straightperson) for Sukuna's bullshit to play off of, like in a comedy duo

Interesting parallels and contrasts between Uraume's serving Sukuna because they genuinely like him and Anthy's whole Rose Bride stuff, especially in the third(?) episode when she claims she wants to be the Rose Bride

Would force interesting questions and developments in the narrative of the crossover story, in the world of Ohtori (how do they deal with someone who isn't gendered if they have no information on which box to put them in?), and in certain RGU characters (Saionji: "are you a boy or a girl?" Uraume: "I'm neither" Saionji: "oh i see" Uraume internally: three. two. one. Saionji: "WAIT YOU CAN DO THAT?").

Cons of having Uraume in this story:

their no-gender swag is too powerful, if they stepped foot on Ohtori campus the whole school would spontaneously combust

[welcome-to-oslov]

"Always by painfully redrawing his boundaries" 😢

What do you think were the hardest ones for him?

Any he majorly regrets, either now while young or later in life?

There were so many boundaries that Tilrey had to give up! Maybe the biggest one was the boundary between people he felt safe having sex with and those he didn’t. When he came to Redda, he’d only had one partner, and casual sex wasn’t something he wanted or felt comfortable with. He needed the familiarity, the emotional connection.

Well, we know what happened there. After repeated rapes, he redrew the boundary to accept sex with Malsha—because at least he knew what to expect from it. Then Malsha forced him to redraw it again and accept sex with a small number of favored Councillors. Then again, when he brought Laborers like Krisha and the Brothel director into the picture. At that point, Tilrey has accepted being part of a threesome, but he still resists “crowd scenes” as the last frontier, the one big thing Malsha doesn’t make him do. And then Malsha leaves and the Island comes along. 😢

He still does have temporal and spatial boundaries—in his room, and on work days and work nights, he can have relative freedom. But there’s always the fear that it will be taken away, like when Malsha invaded Tilrey’s room on a work night just to show he could.

I think he regrets all of it now he’s older, but he also sort of shrugs because there’s no going back to the boy he used to be. If he’d been free during those crucial young adult years, he probably would have experimented and redrawn some boundaries on his own terms. But it’s too late for that now! 🥺

[witchcraftandgeekness]

Let's talk about Vicki Donovan

I am currently rewatching first season of TVD and I noticed thing that I never noticed before. A lot of people in the fandom hate Vicki Donovan, and this shocks me after understanding this character.

So, she was raised without her father and the fact that she never knew who he was is really painful for her (she mentioned it to Damon). Also, in the town so small the lack of father may produce rumours about both their mother and Donovan siblings, tho I think Vicki is more affected by this. I mean, if her mother has reputation of careless, "available" then Vicki would inherit this reputation (and she did, if you listen closely to what others say about her) because "like mother like daughter".

Her mother was ignorant and alcoholic who had little care about her children, clearly, she wouldn't abandon them if she did care. Vicki probably started working as soon as she was able to (I don't remember what age is allowed for part-time job in US, 14?) because how else can she and Matt survive? I don't say it is not possible for kids with parents to start working at young age due to financial issues, but Vicki and Matt had no parents to bring actual money home (or if Kelly cared enough to send the kids some money, I doubt it was sufficient to support both of them), only what they gained themselves.

It leads to discussion of how did Vicki, as an older sister, managed to support both herself and her little brother? Nothing was said about this in canon, but Vicki's involvement with drugs may be connected to her trying to earn money. Maybe she met wrong company, and knowing her financial struggles, somebody offered her money if she would help with dealing?

Returning to her "inherited" reputation, Tyler provided us with a lot of things that are told about Vicki among her peers. "Vicki Donovan says no, that's new". She has reputation of "available", to the extent that in the Pilot Tyler tried to rape her, probably thinking that nobody would believe that it was done by force and what is her, some lower class girl's word, against his, right? He is son of mayor(s), who would dare to punish him for anything. Especially for assault of the girl with bad reputation. Later on season one Tyler tried to ambarass and belittle her numerous times, always reminding what place in society she occupies.

Knowing all of that, Vicki still hangs out with Tyler and seems genuinely excited by the fact he gives her his attention. This tells us that she rarely receives attention from anybody, and thus boys being interested is the only substitution for what she really needs and craves – somebody to care about her.

You may say that she still had Matt who was interested in her wellbeing, but maybe that was the problem. She told that herself, it seems to her that Matt is naturally getting out of this situation – he is good at foodball and has opportunity of some college offering him scholarship, he is nice and handsome, which means that girls still like him and he can "marry someone and have kids", like Vicki placed it.

And Vicki? She is drug-addict, with reputation which makes Mrs. Lockwood wince from mere idea that her son may have something to do with this girl, Vicki is not too good in grades (was that caused by her skipping classes? Was she skipping because of her attempts to earn more or because of drugs? Or maybe first one gradually morphed into the latter?) and doubts in her ability to recieve any scholarship.

In Vicki's eyes, she is hopeless. No future, no one who cares for her, besides her brother who has his own life to live, and little Gilbert boy who wants to play white knight and safe her from her misery, stupid teenage obsession that she may see patronizing (she mentioned that his interest in her is temporal and later he will return to his good, middle-class life, and forget all about it). And his family doesn't want Jeremy involved with Vicki, Elena didn't like her brother fawning over Vicki long before she turned. Notice that nobody tries to prevent anybody from interactions with Matt. Because Matt is polite, Matt is nice, Matt is the "golden boy" who everyone likes. Vicki is none of that.

Additionally, she was tormented by vampire. She survived few attacks that almost lead to her death. At that point Vicki is so lonely and unneeded that her only option is to pour out her soul to Damon, the guy who she barely knows, who tried to eat or simply kill her more than once, and who obviously can't care less about her fate. Damon heard it. And helped in only way he knew – he killed her. Saved her from her "pathetic" life.

Of course, we know that Vicki was not dead completely. No, the life was not quite done with her yet. Vicki has last chance on life she wanted as a vampire. Damon didn't care much for his now sireling, and let her leave (tho he mentioned leaving would be a bad idea, but never tried to actually make her stay and explain her new status as undead), which lead to the line of stressful events. In her transition Vicki suffered physically and mentally, all her supressed depression and loneliness felt on a higher level due to vampire's enhanced emotions. Even then, she tried to not harm the only two people she cared for and who cared for her – Matt and Jeremy.

Despite all the effort, Vicki did in fact finish her transition. She became vampire. And I think that truely, Vicki had a chance. Vampirism would leave her with a lot of perks that might make her life better.

Unfortunately, not everyone would agree. As an addict, Vicki has little self-control because she never tried to have one – she had no hope of escaping this circle before. She probably thought that one day she will die from overdose and quit being a burden for Matt. But now Vicki needs to learn it extremely quickly because two grown up vampires are watching over her and vampire hunters are at loose in the town.

But that was not how story was destined to end. Her actions lead to her being impaled by Stefan. Which seems a bit unfair. I think that there were other options. Yes, she tried to kill Elena dearie, was that the only reason she end up dead? Because Caroline was turned too, and more than that, she actually killed a man but nobody murdered her. They helped her, they taught her, and she became one of the most natural vampires in the whole show. Why was Vicki not granted with this chance? One may argue that she had less self-control than Caroline but who may think that s1 Caroline would be so excellent in vampirism? Giving Vicki some time would have been fair.

In her 18 years Vicki Donovan suffered more than some adults, and what did she received in return? Evil words about her, terrible attitude, abjection from society. Did she deserve Tyler being ashamed of presenting her as his girlfriend? Did she deserve Mrs. Lockwood calling her trash? Did she deserve anything of what she got in her life? She went through all of this, just to end up being dumped like a trash Carol Lockwood described her as, and forgotten? Just another hopeless girl without future died, right? Not a big deal? Naturally, she wanted revenge in afterlife.

So no, I don't understand why her character is showered in hate. Vicki Donovan was complicated person with personality that was not polite or too likeable, but that was not the reason to hate or despise her. I ask for justice for Vicki Donovan.

[arwainian]

Reading This Week 2024 #26

blah (having a slow morning because i drank a lot of wine with a friend last night)

Finished:

the road to heaven, as paved by bad intentions by ineffmoth on ao3 i enjoyed this svsss porn-y modern au way more than i think i had any right to, but i think it was exactly the amount of Being Weird About It that I was seeking in my tag dive

A Transmigrator and a Time Traveler Walk Into the Bamboo House by VeryCharismaticDragon on ao3 as established in my notes last week, I think the first half of this is better than the second half, but I still had enough fun to finished it

"The Mermaid" by Kathleen Jowitt, narrated by Heather Rose Jones, aired on the Lesbian Historic Motif Podcast

"Talking to Ghosts" by Caitlin Flavell, narrated by Heather Rose Jones, aired on the Lesbian Historic Motif Podcast further historical lesbian short fiction that i get to listen to through a cool podcast I like. these little bites will simply keep showing up in my weekly recaps until I run out of backlog

"Historicizing Unreliable Narration: Unreliability and Cultural Discourse in Narrative Fiction" by Bruno Zerweck really interesting article about how "reliability" is culturally defined, and so the like label for a unreliable narrator comes out of differentiating it in a time where the narrator of a novel was not expected to be a character/expected to be objective, but now after like postmodernism took hold, "unreliability" in narration- ie. the representation of events within a text being from a particular perspective that lacks omniscient information and which is informed by the opinions of the protagonist, where we commonly understand that we likely wont get the full picture or a perfect recounting of events- is the norm

"The Empire Strikes Back: A Posttranssexual Manifesto" by Sandy Stone you saw me post an extended quotation from this, you know I liked it!

"The Rise of Fictionality" by Catherine Gallagher a good read in combination with the Zerweck article above, telling a history of the rise of novels as fiction: texts that are neither true histories, nor fully fanastical stories that aren't mean to be taken as truth, defining fiction in the novel sense as stories told to be realistic and believable, but which the reader is still not meant to be tricked into taking as fact

"The Right Language for Rape" by Nina Philadelphoff-Puren like a linguistic analysis of how victims of acquaintance/date rape defined their experiences in the moment and afterwards, coining the term "discourse maintenance" to describe the ways victims chose to act as if they were not about to be or being sexually assaulted in an attempt to resist the transformation of their situation from "bad date" into "sexual assault". i have a lot of notes on this one. i'm not sure i agree with some of the conclusions in its final paragraphs but the body of the text I think was really well argued/explained and gave me a lot of thoughts to work with, primarily the way testimony obliterates that transformation, reading the discourse of rape backwards over the original discourse of romance, rather than demonstrating the temporal shift between them. i'd recommend it?

Frequency by cryptocism on ao3 and now for something completely different! finally finished reading this longfic about comic book characters that I don't know much about, but that's okay because the end notes of every chapter literally cite every comic event that it is referencing and building the canon of this Inertia redemption arc around. it was very good

Started/Ongoing:

We Could Be So Good by Cat Sebastian this is All Vibes. not extremely compelling to me, but I do enjoy a Cat Sebastian romance so I am reading it at the pace that feels right for it, which isn't too fast

Reading Plans: pretty much the same plans as last week: articles, queer lit book club pick, stuff i need to grab from the library hold shelf in the next two days, etc but I'm also going to make an attempt to read through the fanfic tabs I have had open on my phone for way too long this week, which I already made some progress on with Frequency?

[dogma9]

Excerpt from "Disjuncture and Difference in the Global Cultural Economy" (1990), Arjun Appadurai

Iyer's own account of the uncanny Philippine affinity for American popular music is rich testimony to the global culture of the hyperreal, for somehow Philippine renditions of American popular songs are both more widespread in the Philippines, and more disturbingly faithful to their originals, then they are in the United States today. An entire nation seems to have learned to mimic Kenny Rogers and the Lennon sisters, like a vast Asian Motown chorus. But Americanization is certainly a pallid term to apply to such a situation, for not only are there more Filipinos singing perfect renditions of some American songs (often from the American past) than there are Americans doing so, there is also, of course, the fact that the rest of their lives is not in complete synchrony with the referential world that first gave birth to these songs.

In a further globalizing twist on what Frederic Jameson has recently called "nostalgia for the present" (1989), these Filipinos look back to a world they have never lost. This is one of the central ironies of the politics of global cultural flows, especially in the arena of entertainment and leisure. It plays havoc with the hegemony of Eurochronology. American nostalgia feeds on Filipino desire represented as a hypercompetent reproduction. Here, we have nostalgia without memory. The paradox, of course, has its explanations, and they are historical; unpacked, they lay bare the story of the American missionization and political rape of the Philippines, one result of which has been the creation of a nation of make-believe Americans, who tolerated for so long a leading lady who played the piano while the slums of Manila expanded and decayed. Perhaps the most radical postmodernists would argue that this is hardly surprising because in the peculiar chronicities of late capitalism, pastiche and nostalgia are central modes of image production and reception. Americans themselves are hardly in the present anymore as they stumble into the mega-technologies of the twenty-first century garbed in the film-noir scenarios of sixties' chills, fifties' diners, forties' clothing, thirties' houses, twenties' dances, and so on ad infinitum.

As far as the United States is concerned, one might suggest that the issue is no longer one of nostalgia but of a social imaginaire built largely around reruns. Jameson was bold to link the politics of nostalgia to the postmodern commodity sensibility, and surely he was right (1983). The drug wars in Colombia recapitulate the tropical sweat of Vietnam, with Ollie North and his succession of masks - Jimmy Stewart concealing John Wayne concealing Spiro Agnew and all of them transmogrifying into Sylvester Stallone, who wins in Afghanistan - thus simultaneously fulfilling the secret American envy of Soviet imperialism and the rerun (this time with a happy ending) of the Vietnam War. The Rolling Stones, approaching their fifties, gyrate before eighteen-year-olds who do not appear to need the machinery of nostalgia to be sold on their parents' heroes. Paul McCartney is selling the Beatles to a new audience by hitching his oblique nostalgia to their desire for the new that smacks of the old. Dragnet is back in nineties' drag, and so is Adam-12, not to speak of Batman and Mission Impossible, all dressed up technologically but remarkably faithful to the atmospherics of their originals.

The past is now not a land to return to in simple politics of memory. It has become a synchronic warehouse of cultural scenarios, a kind of temporal central casting, to which recourse can be taken as appropriate, depending on the movie to be made, the scene to be enacted, the hostages to be rescued. All this is par for the course, if you follow Jean Baudrillard or Jean-François Lyotard in a world of signs wholly unmoored from their social signifiers (all the world's a Disneyland). But I would like to suggest that the apparent increasing substitutability of whole periods and postures for one another, in the cultural styles of advanced capitalism, is tied to larger global forces, which have done much to show Americans that the past is usually another country. If your present is their future (as in much modernization theory and in many self-satisfied tourist fantasies), and their future is your past (as in the case of Filipino virtuosos of American popular music), then your own past can be made to appear as simply a normalized modality of your present.

[fettesans]

Top, photograph by Ci Demi, from the series and publication Şehir Fikri, 2022. Via. Bottom, Kathe Kollwitz, Raped (Vergewaltigt), 1907, Etching and soft-ground etching with drypoint, Plate: 30.6 × 52.8 cm. Sheet: 51.3 × 67.7 cm. Via.

--

For [Mark] Fisher, as we shall see, there are two opposing temporal currents intrinsic to hauntology: the no longer and the not yet. The former haunts the present from the past, an event, idea or entity whose moment is past but which continues to make its presence felt. The latter haunts the present from the future, through the unfulfilled promise of that which never came to pass but which may yet do so. In both instances, their impact is felt now, in the present, either through repetition or anticipation.

Merlin Coverley, from the Introduction to his book Hauntology, Old Castle Books, 2020. Via.

--

This client also wanted our time together to be cinematic. I suppose all clients do. The first time we met, I was struck by his impulse to narrate what was happening, as though by speaking aloud how good something is one could will it to actually be so. It’s not that it wasn’t good, or was bad—it was just mundane, the way formulaic excess often is. He loved cocaine, and he liked to inhale it off my body, and wanted me to do the same. He seemed to want to be in a party scene from The Wolf of Wall Street; a nearly prescriptive commitment to hedonism turned him on. He was also frightened by this fantasy, though that fear was blunted, a bit, by the drugs.

That first time, he took a phone call in the bathroom, and then peeked out from behind the half-ajar door, mouthing to me with his hand over the mouthpiece, “I just like watching you,” while I stretched and smiled, offering myself up through studied pose to be seen as beatific, natural, relaxed. Our afternoon was peppered by comments like that, observations of what he wanted to be so, not necessarily what strictly was so: “I’m with a hot girl in a hotel room in the middle of the day, drinking champagne, how did I get so lucky”; “Look at us, I’m doing lines off your perfect ass”; “I feel so comfortable with you, like we’ve known each other forever.” It didn’t matter that he wasn’t lucky, he was just rich; it didn’t matter whether or not my ass was perfect, because perfection is in the eye of the beholder; and it didn’t matter that he felt comfortable only because I made sure that he did, receiving every stray thought and confession with warmth, or laughter, or a doe-eyed openness. He talked himself into believing it was all happenstance, fate.

Sophia Giovannitti, from On Fantasy, for The Paris Review, April 10, 2023. This piece is adapted from Working Girl: On Selling Art and Selling Sex, Verso, 2023.

[r1yxhh444]

𝑪𝒉𝒂𝒓𝒂𝒄𝒕𝒆𝒓 𝑨𝒏𝒂𝒍𝒚𝒔𝒊𝒔 02:𝑯𝒊𝒎

"I am I. You? You were home."

𝑮𝒆𝒏𝒆𝒓𝒂𝒍 (𝒔𝒉𝒐𝒓𝒕/𝒍��𝒔𝒕𝒆𝒅) 𝒊𝒏𝒇𝒐:

Film:  mother!

played by: Javier Bardem

Alias':  Him/father/God/creator

Type of Villain: Egotistical supreme being

Occupation: God/author

 Skills:

writing

life creating

Chronokinesis

Immortality

Omnipotence

Omniscience

Temporal looping

Cycle manipulation

Hobbies:

writing

admiring worship

Goals: 

Be praised even if it means harming Mother (failed).

Start his life over again (succeeded).

Crimes:

mass murder

infanticide

Filicide

Uxoricide

Cannibalism by proxy

Rape (implied)

Domestic abuse

Psychological abuse

𝒑𝒆𝒓𝒔𝒐𝒏𝒂𝒍𝒊𝒕𝒚:

The central character, "Him," is portrayed as a self-absorbed individual who invites people into his home solely to boost his ego. His actions disregard the feelings and opinions of the Mother, who expresses approval towards him but is often ignored. Despite initially resisting sexual intimacy with her, He eventually gives in, leading to her pregnancy. This event triggers an idea in Him's mind. Driven by his desire for fame and adulation, He allows a chaotic crowd to handle their child, resulting in the child's death and subsequent cannibalism. Surprisingly, rather than seeking retribution, He suggests forgiveness for the perpetrators. Mother, however, responds by burning down the house, sparing only Him. In the aftermath, despite Him's narcissistic tendencies, he asks Mother for any remaining love within her. He then removes her heart, placing it on the mantle, which magically reconstructs the house. This ambiguous gesture could be interpreted as genuine remorse on His part, or it may signify an attempt to start anew, leaving room for the cycle to continue.

He is intricately linked to the portrayal of God, perpetually seeking the inherent goodness within individuals, juxtaposed against the backdrop of the earth and nature—symbolized by Mother. His affiliation with the divine extends to the power of creation and destruction, akin to the omnipotence attributed to God, wherein he can shape and reshape life, perpetuating a continuous cycle of renewal for Mother to align with his enduring immortality.

𝒑𝒆𝒓𝒔𝒐𝒏𝒂𝒍 𝒕𝒉𝒐𝒖𝒈𝒉𝒕��/𝒂𝒏𝒂𝒍𝒚𝒔𝒊𝒔:

The character's complexity unfolds intriguingly throughout the movie, with Him as a fascinating embodiment of God. However, this representation is paradoxical; while God is traditionally associated with boundless compassion and universal love, Him's demeanour is marked by selfishness and destruction, reflecting the harsh realities of human society. His actions mirror a societal indifference to the world, wherein acts of kindness often stem from vanity and ignorance, serving as mere ego-boosting gestures.

One of the most disturbing aspects of Him lies in the apparent absence of a clear motive guiding his behaviours throughout the narrative. Despite his goal of seeking praise and initiating the cycle of life anew, the rationale behind these objectives remains elusive. This lack of clarity intensifies the unsettling nature of his actions, contributing to a palpable sense of unease and confusion for the audience. Instances such as the murder of his child and the torture inflicted upon Mother appear devoid of rational motivation, seemingly designed only to inflict pain on Mother. This act starkly contradicts the conventional notions of a benevolent God.

𝒐𝒗𝒆𝒓𝒂𝒍𝒍 𝒄𝒉𝒂𝒓𝒂𝒄𝒕𝒆𝒓:

"Him" in the film "Mother!" stands as a compelling and enigmatic character, skillfully portrayed by Javier Bardem. His multifaceted nature adds depth to the narrative, weaving an intricate tapestry of symbolism and allegory. As the embodiment of God, Him is a paradoxical figure, oscillating between divine attributes and unsettling selfishness. Bardem's nuanced performance captures the character's complexity, emphasizing the tension between the traditional expectations associated with a benevolent deity and the harsh realities reflected in Him's actions. The character's lack of a clear motive adds an extra layer of intrigue, leaving the audience grappling with a sense of unease and prompting contemplation on the broader themes of human nature and societal indifference. Overall, "Him" serves as a captivating and thought-provoking element in the film, contributing significantly to its thematic richness, tp which i rate a 9 out of 10.

[stephsageek]

In Celebration of Fanfiction Author Appreciation Day, A Master list of all my fics:

Remember, if you like amy of these, feel free to leave some kudos or comments. If you wanna yell at me, it's your blood pressure. I'm just having fun because I own none of this stuff.

"He Sleeps with the Fishes: The Hoffa Job" (ongoing)

My current WIP and the fourth part in "Partners in Time." This features the assassination of famously MIA corrupt Teamster Union President Jimmy Hoffa. Look him up if you've never heard of him. He's something of an urban legend. On this assignment, our heroes venture to 1970s Detroit in order to "dissappear" Mr. Hoffa. Only problem? He's also being pursued by the Italian mob in the form of a couple of queer assassins, a mismatched pair of FBI agents, Hoffa's jilted lover, and somehow a sea monster? This features an established couple in Five/Lila. This fic also has some choice 70s music embedded in it. CW for violence, drug use, explosions, plane crashes, tentacles, car chases, a whole lot of exposition on the mechanics of time travel, and Five being forced to flirt.

"The London Job" (Complete)

This here is my baby and the third in my long series. It features the emotional fallout of Five and Lila finding out the true murderer of Lila's parents. It takes place on an assignment that takes our heroes to 1967 London, where Lila has been led to believe she will find her very much alive birth parents. Too bad nothing the Handler has ever told her seems to be the truth. This does feature Five/Lila but isn't explicit, does address Five being Ace/demi and also depicts a relationship between an actual 58 year-old and a woman in her 30s, so please calm down. It also features Lila's whole extended family. It's got some choice AJ Carmichael scenes if you're into that fish dude. CW for language, violence, some suicidal ideation, some racism, and a graphic surgical procedure. Great if you like hurt/comfort, some slow burn (but not that slow), and heavy angst.

"Dead by X-mas: The Santa-con Job" (Complete)

This is the second in the "Partner's in Time" series and is a holiday themed one-shot. It is an assignment of Five and Lila's that takes place during Christmas time and features the assassination of Jolly Ole Saint Nick (not really). Features drunken shenanigans, strippers, baseball bats, Lila being brought up Jewish, and Mariah Carey. CW for some misogyny and violence. Great if you want something light and ridiculous.

"The Best of the Best" (Complete)

This here is the first in my long series, "Partners in Time." It's an AU in which the premise is: what if Five had to have a partner at the Commission, and what if that partner was none other than Lila Pitts? This fic is pure platonic temporal assassin chaos, featuring such unbelievable things as murder, mayhem, nazis, werewolves, and friendship. It's great if you're looking for some Five & Lila feels. It's also a story that features old Five, as does the series as it stands. This fic expands upon the Commission lore as well as features such things as Five being Ace, Lila being bi, her upbringing by the Handler, Five's PTSD, Lila's powers, Five's relationship with Delores, Lila's and Five's commonalities, and their ever present mental health issues. CW for implied rape/molestation, lots of swearing, violence, animal torture, torture in general, child experimentation, and lots of arguing.

"New Timeline, New Me" (Complete)

The first fic I ever wrote outside of a creative writing class, and the first thing I've ever published on ao3. This story is my explanation for the fact that the actor who plays Five, Aiden Gallagher, obviously has aged over the course of the series. It's also my interpretation of some of Victor's thoughts and feelings just before he comes out as trans to his family. Great if you love all the Brellies and some siblings feels.

[athelise]

I posted 387 times in 2022

That's 297 more posts than 2021!

118 posts created (30%)

269 posts reblogged (70%)

Blogs I reblogged the most:

@vixenofcourse

@babybinxxx

@sakucrossing

@rabidbehemoth

I tagged 326 of my posts in 2022

Only 16% of my posts had no tags

#itasaku - 99 posts

#take the compliment - 50 posts

#dead dove do not eat - 49 posts

#sakura haruno - 38 posts

#itachi x sakura - 36 posts

#naruto - 34 posts

#ttc - 28 posts

#itasaku darkfic - 24 posts

#itachi uchiha - 20 posts

#darkfic - 14 posts

Longest Tag: 75 characters

#it's my favorite scene in the whole trilogy i feel very strongly about this

My Top Posts in 2022:

#5

Chapters: 44- True Panic Fandom: Naruto Rating: Explicit Warnings: Rape/Non-Con, Underage, Graphic Depictions Of Violence Relationships: Haruno Sakura/Uchiha Itachi

“She brought that out of him easily, he found as he walked back to the reception area, finding her gone yet again. She instilled panic and longing and relief so sharp it cut the lungs when he was unaccustomed to more than mild annoyance. He sometimes resented how much she made him feel, what she did to him.”

23 notes - Posted September 28, 2022

#4

Chapters: 40 “Nothing Personal” Fandom: Naruto Rating: Explicit Warnings: Rape/Non-Con, Underage, Graphic Depictions Of Violence Relationships: Haruno Sakura/Uchiha Itachi

“If he was there, everything was fine. Was going to be fine. He’d promised her.”

28 notes - Posted September 2, 2022

#3

Jake Lockley

Okay but the fact that Marc and Steven have no idea that Jake exists means he does his job??? Amazingly well?? A killer more brutal than a mercenary, so vicious and dangerous even Marc is disturbed by the carnage left behind? No memory or recall of what happened?

Pristine mental protection. Marc protects Steven, but it's Jake who protects Marc.

41 notes - Posted May 29, 2022

#2

One of the craziest parts in The Silmarillion to me is the Ruin of Doriath. To be fair, the Curse of the Children of Hurin really kicks the whole story into overdrive, but this is a favorite of mine.

So, Thingol receives the Nauglamir from a disgruntled Hurin, gets it remade + Silmaril, he is killed, and following the Sack of Menegroth and the revenge of the Sindar, Luthien keeps the necklace. Now, within that time, I'm guessing B&L already had Dior while in Ossiriand, so maybe he was a young child or even a teen when Thingol died and maybe a lil bit of time passed before Dior ascended the Throne.

Now, I got the impression when Beren went out to stop the Dwarves that he was already an old man, but maybe he was middle aged?

Fast forward, when B&L finally die (implied that they did so together) and the Nauglamir is delivered to him, Dior is already established as King. We can assume this is maybe 20 years later? 30? How long was it?? In that time, he has already married Nimloth (who was waaaaay older than him, I might add), and maybe even had all three of his children: the twins Elured and Elurin, and the famous Elwing.

The Sons of Feanor come knocking like, "Soooo, can we have that? It's kind of ours? Pretty please? (Don't make us kill you?)"

Dior says, "No, it's ours. #TwoTreesLightTherapy for Menegroth. My mommy and daddy won this. Fuck off."

Now, he is conveniently forgetting that Doriath no longer has its girdle of protection, and foolishly thought his circumstances would in anyway excuse them from the Oath of Feanor, and so when SoF came a-knockin', it wasn't very polite.

Dior, MAYBE 50 years old, MAX, faces off against his mom's one-time would-be-suitor, (that's a mouthful), Celegorm, and they kill each other. Lots of fire, lots more sacking, some child endangerment and regret, and Elwing gets away with the Silmaril to the Fallas where she later meets Earendil and the other refugees of Gondolin.

In the book, I always got a weird temporal impression with this section. In the average Silmarillion kinghood deal, normally takes maaaaybe 100 years, but with the death of B&L at presumably decent HUMAN ages, it leaves me thinking of Dior as basically a boy king.

72 notes - Posted November 25, 2022

My #1 post of 2022

Y'all....

it's here.

It. Is. Here.

Presenting.....

The first commission for "Take The Compliment"... by dolly_daughter on Twitter (https://twitter.com/dolly_daughter)...

presenting...

HWAAAAAAAAAAAAA

LOOKIT LOOKIT LOOKIT!!!!

BEHOLD!

THE BEAUTY! HIS HAND! HER DRESS!!

I have been quiet about this for a little over a month and I could NOT wait to share it! But I did, and I hope you all enjoy her works!

I'm in heaven. I have ascended. I am deceased. Go follow her!

277 notes - Posted August 11, 2022

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[imnothinginparticular]

#finishedbooks Silence and Image by Mariko Takeuchi. Picked this up from the amazing book selection at @sailobean. In my haste I did mistake the books subtitle, "Essays on Japanese Photographers" as "by" instead of "on." Really recalling this grail book I have been wanting for over decade "Setting Sun: Writing by Japanese Photographers" that I last saw for 70,000 yen when last available, so I thought I could get away with something analogous with this book here. Instead it is a writings from the photo critic Takeuchi Mariko on 11 Japanese photographers (if you squint you can see the list on the cover) and from @ian 's straightforwardness, "Oh cool, I never thought this one would sell" Haha kinda played in the back of my mind and I tore through each essay. The most notable photographer would be Ken Domon who spearheaded the Japanese realist movement and of course she focused on his Hiroshima project. Feel like Domon's Hiroshima is the equivalent of Avedon's American west as both are completely over written about so much to that point that they actually serve would be critics as classic case studies. I never took any University classes in this realm but from criminal law you get those proto precedent cases that really tick all the boxes for the would be professional and both of those projects go into issues of exploitation inherent to the medium, subjectivity v. objectivity, and essentially all of those basic topics. For me she says nothing new but does clarify a framework for its criticism but overwhelming I found that she wrote most passionately about these more obvious cause related photography then anything else including a photo portrait project on Rwanda women who had a child out of rape in '94. She does write in more everyday vernacular or transience works but the essays are remarkable short and airy in comparison. With that, it wasn't all bad. Aside from a small paragraph on comparing looking at photographs to stargazing in regard to each temporal preoccupations that made a lot of sense, was an essay on Ryo Suzuki. I like how she takes the spirit of a photographer as wanderer rather than hunter in some sort of forest. Citing a beautiful Walter Benjamin quote, "To Lose one's way in a city, as one loses one's way in a forest, requires some schooling" before going into Suzuki's aptly titled Odyssey and ending with his later Joyce inspired project "RyUlysses." Her point through is that of perspective that she wraps nicely correlating why the surrealists (myself as well) love Atget so much. Atget is the more fun classic study to me for the emptiness he offers, but overall outside of some photo books I am now curious to see that Ill check out next time I am at the Photo museum's library in Ebisu...not much else here if you have read a lot of photo criticism.

[grotto-esque]

The Flailing Superpower — Pankaj Mishra The New York Review of Books

For decades now the prolonged theater of US presidential elections has attracted a global audience keen to be educated in the arcana of the electoral college and the psephology of the “swing” states. These millions of spectators have been markedly partisan, wistfully hoping for victory to the Democratic candidate and a foreign policy that at least acknowledges the decent opinions of mankind before proceeding to disregard them.

In the early 2000s official mendacity about Iraq’s weapons of mass destruction, boosted by a compliant American media, created a vast global reservoir of cynicism about democratic American institutions and propelled the United States itself into the post-truth age. The election of the first Black man as US president, after the catastrophic years of the “war on terror” and the financial crisis, briefly sparked hopes of a broad correction. Barack Obama, who had opposed the Iraq War, quickly became the “biggest celebrity in the world” (in the deprecating words of his hapless rival John McCain), and his elevation to the White House, accompanied by slogans of hope and change and partly enabled by the politicization of young Americans, seemed an opportunity to bring fresh energy and imagination to US politics and culture.

As it happened, Obama, safeguarding Wall Street and polishing his personal brand, bequeathed to the United States and the world a volatile demagogue. Some relief was inspired by Joe Biden’s narrow win in 2020 and his early economic reconfigurations, but it could not survive his posture abroad, which was in crucial respects—confronting China, securing a “deal” between Israel and Saudi Arabia—a continuation of Trump’s. Events in the last year have now conclusively ended US elections’ emotional and moral sway over the world.

A poll cited recently in Foreign Affairs reveals cratering support for the US and an increased preference for China among prominent Asian countries as partner. But statistics alone won’t register the depth and scale of the suspicion built over more than two decades—that, by intensifying misbegotten foreign entanglements in the midst of economic decline, the United States has damaged its own institutions and social fabric, in addition to undermining international law and squandering its prestige and authority. Further, a change of occupants in the White House is no longer sufficient even to temporize against the dark and uncontrollable forces unleashed by the world’s most powerful society in severe polycrisis.

The most recent embodiment of a hectically flailing superpower for many outside the US is a Democratic president addicted to arming Israel, a reckless American protégé that pursues total war—the deliberate targeting of civilian lives and infrastructure as well as military enemies—on multiple fronts. Any great power, let alone a self-proclaimed upholder of a “rules-based liberal international order,” that cannot hold disorder within limits quickly loses legitimacy, and the implications for both American interests and image even in the present are stark.

But Israel, combining industrialized mass killing with cultural devastation, is bringing forth, with some help from Russia, another wounded nationalism seeking permanent security, a new “age of extremes.” As in the twentieth century’s seminal calamity, World War I, an extensive moral and legal arson is quickening decisive steps toward authoritarianism in several Western societies. Politicians and businessmen across the ideological spectrum openly violate long-established norms and protocols of public life, from a Tory home secretary in Britain egging on far-right mobs and the owner of X promoting the Great Replacement theory to Germany’s foreign minister, of the progressive Green Party, claiming to have seen a video of a Hamas militant raping an Israeli woman (no such video is known to exist).

That Biden, an old-machine politician who has received more money from Israel lobby groups than anyone in Congress since 1990, should fail to perceive the insidious dynamic of nihilism is no great surprise. Those who noticed him bear-hugging Indian prime minister Narendra Modi, in his attempt to globally mobilize democracy against autocracy, had already written him off as a walking ideological delusion from the cold war who is unable to spot the world’s new constellation of forces (which make, among other things, “democratic” India underwrite autocratic Russia’s war on Ukraine). Compulsively provisioning Israel’s massacres while chanting “cease-fire” over several months, Biden and his secretary of state confirm the widespread feeling that, as the famous internal memo to Robert S. McNamara in 1967 put it, “‘the Establishment’ is out of its mind.”

What’s more unsettling (and clarifying) to a global audience is that mainstream journalistic cultures in the US offer no intelligent restraint on the collective lurch, under a Democratic president, toward modern history’s best-signposted abyss. News outlets covering Israel’s “self-defense” continue to amplify, even after a calamitous year, the delusions and fabrications of the White House and the State Department, in a grim repeat of the intellectual and moral fiascos of the “war on terror.” Deliberately turning away from US-assisted carnage abroad, many liberal intellectual elites stress the urgency of mobilizing against Trump’s plan to extirpate democracy at home. But recoiling from Trump’s frankly malevolent fantasies, they keep collapsing into fresh illusions.

No other conclusion could be drawn by foreign observers as they witnessed an extraordinary recent spectacle: liberal American commentators vying with one another to hail Biden, visibly insentient and driven into retirement by ruthless party apparatchiks and donors, for his “sacrifice,” and to confect “joy” over Harris, an instantly forgettable presidential candidate in 2020 and subsequently confirmed during her tenure as vice-president as a political vacancy.

The global romance with Western political leaders of non-Western ancestry has already soured. Obama heralded a “post-racial” age, but after the demagogic flourishes of Suella Braverman, Kemi Badenoch, and Vivek Ramaswamy, politicians of diverse origins incite fear of a sinister regression rather than hope for social justice. Scribbling the words “FINISH THEM!” on an Israeli artillery shell bound for Lebanon, Nikki Haley, the second Indian American to compete for the Republican Party’s presidential nomination, helped outline what a “brown Nazi” might look like in the future. Whether crowing about her endorsement by Dick Cheney, a torchbearer for torture; promising to shoot intruders in her home; or vowing to make the US military “the strongest, most lethal fighting force in the world,” the first Indian American presidential candidate from the Democratic Party shows few signs of defying the steadily dominant far-right ideals of violent hypermasculinity.

At the same time, Biden’s last-minute replacement seems miserably unequal, as she hides from her own courtiers in the media, to the unprecedented demands arising from the threats of far-right tyranny in the US. And hardly any resources for a renewal seem to exist among an aging liberal American political and media class. Its global prominence, as is clear now, was earned with raw power, during decades of unimpeded American hegemony, rather than superior intelligence and creativity. Not even the challenge of China, long predicted and now formidable, compels policy- and opinion-makers to shake off complacency and articulate a novel political and cultural vision.

Desperate to avoid a second and potentially lethal Trump presidency, they frantically generate, for the second time in four years, some new fantasies of salvation. But the savior they offered in 2020, a candidate even then showing clear signs of decrepitude, has revealed himself before a stunned global audience to be an obsessive enabler of a mass murder spree across the Middle East. Having confirmed that there is no such thing as a lesser evil, the US presidential elections won’t ever command the sentimental hopes of the world. Just as well: skepticism and stoicism would be better shields against the coming disorder. x

[msinterpreter]

Criminal Law Review Case Digest:

CABALLO v. PEOPLE

GR NO. 198732 JUNE 10, 2013

FACTS:

Christian Caballo, then 23 years old, met AAA, who was then 17 years old. AAA’s uncle was a choreographer, and Caballo was one of the dancers. AAA was a sophomore college student at the University of San Carlos, residing at a boarding house in Cebu City. On January 17, 1998, Caballo went to Cebu to attend the Sinulog festival and visited AAA. They eventually became sweethearts. When AAA went to Surigao City in March 1998, Caballo persuaded her to have sexual intercourse with him. He had promised to marry her and assured her that she would not get pregnant because he would be using the withdrawal method. The sexual encounters happened several times more until AAA became pregnant and gave birth on March 8, 1999.

Caballo was charged for violation of Section 10(a), Article VI of RA 7610 in relation to Section 2 of the Rules on Child Abuse Cases. The RTC convicted him of the charge, while the appellate court affirmed the RTC’s decision with modification that it was Section 5(b), Article III of RA 7610 that was violated. Even though Section 10(a) was in the designation, it was Section 5(b) that the body supports.

Caballo contends that he should not be convicted because he did not coerce AAA to have sex with him as it was consensual.

ISSUE:

Whether Caballo coerced AAA to have sexual intercourse with him.

HELD:

Yes. According to Section 5(b) of Article III of RA 7610,

SEC. 5. Child Prostitution and Other Sexual Abuse. — Children, whether male or female, who for money, profit, or any other consideration or due to the coercion or influence of any adult, syndicate or group, indulge in sexual intercourse or lascivious conduct, are deemed to be children exploited inprostitution and other sexual abuse.

The penalty of reclusion temporal in its medium period to reclusion perpetua shall be imposed upon the following: . . . HICcSA

(b) Those who commit the act of sexual intercourse or lascivious conduct with a child exploited in prostitution or subject to other sexual abuse; Provided, That when the victim is under twelve (12) years of age, the perpetrators shall be prosecuted under Article 335, paragraph 3 for rape and Article 336 of Act No. 3815, as amended, the Revised Penal Code, for rape or lascivious conduct, as the case may be; Provided, That the penalty for lascivious conduct when the victim is under twelve (12) years of age shall be reclusion temporal in its medium period . . .

RA 7610 was meant to advance the state policy affording special protection to children from all forms of abuse, neglect, cruelty, exploitation, amd discrimination and other conditions prejudicial to their development. The SC cited People v. Larin, which held that a child is deemed exploited in prostitution or subjected to other sexual abuse when the child indulges in sexual intercourse or lascivious conduct under coercion or influence of any adult, syndicate, or group.

Unlike rape, consent is immaterial in cases involving violation of Section 5, Article III of RA 7610. The Court also cited its ruling in Malto that says “for purpose of sexual intercourse and lascivious conduct in child abuse cases under RA 7610, the sweetheart defense is unacceptable.”

[ao3feed-feydpaul]

Fines Equivocados, Medios Equivocados

Read it on AO3 at https://archiveofourown.org/works/59604523

by AbrilBlack2010

"Feyd-Rautha era hermoso, era innegable. De alguna manera era casi femenino a pesar de sus hombros anchos y huesos fuertes. La transparenteidad pegajosa de su vestido ciertamente no ayudó a distraer a Paul de la fina escultura de su físico. La precisión de sus visiones anteriores significaba que Paul ni siquiera podía encontrar consuelo en la idea de que esto era una locura temporal, que incluso si deseaba al otro niño, nunca correspondería. Paul entretuvo brevemente la idea de que podría ser preferible para él morir por la mano de Feyd-Rautha que enamorarse de un Harkonnen, pero rápidamente desterró ese pensamiento por lo tonto que era. Si fuera entre el amor y la muerte, él elegiría el amor, y sin embargo estaba decidido a encontrar algún camino entre ellos, porque ambos caminos sentían que debían conducir a la destrucción".

-Después del fallido ataque a Arrakis por parte de la Casa Harkonnen, el Emperador ordena que Feyd-Rautha sea enviado a vivir en Arrakis como un barrio de la Casa Atreides.

-AU en el que el ataque de Harkonnen falla y Feyd y Paul se encuentran más de una vez.

Words: 4602, Chapters: 1/23, Language: Español

Fandoms: Dune Series - Frank Herbert, Dune (1984), Dune - All Media Types, Dune (Movies - Villeneuve)

Rating: Mature

Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings

Categories: M/M

Characters: Paul Atreides, Feyd-Rautha Harkonnen, Leto Atreides I, Jessica (Dune), Gurney Halleck, Duncan Idaho, Thufir Hawat, Vladimir Harkonnen, Glossu Rabban Harkonnen, Stilgar (Dune), Chani Kynes, Harah (Dune), Irulan Corrino

Relationships: Paul Atreides/Feyd-Rautha Harkonnen, Leto Atreides I/Jessica

Additional Tags: Slow Burn, Alternate Universe - Canon Divergence, Hurt/Comfort, Angst, Recreational Drug Use, Implied/Referenced Rape/Non-con, shoutout Kwisatz Haderach gotta be one of my favourite genders, This fic does contain references to steam showers, But this Feyd is not Sting, Please refrain from picturing Sting while reading, no beta we die like 10000 Duncan Idaho gholas

[tieflingkisser]

A Critical Look at The New York Times' Weaponization of Rape in Service of Israeli Propaganda

Israel's propagandists comprehend all too well that the racist trope of the predatory Palestinian/Muslim/Arab man is the legitimizing monster that White feminists, liberals, and many progressives of color — those who are the institutionalized experts on diversity and inclusion — feed on. Thus, have we seen how the ‘rapist' has become a metonym that easily slides between words — ‘Hamas terrorist,' Palestinian, Muslim, Arab, Gaza — because sustained global media and political narratives and moral panics have long stigmatized and maligned Palestinian/Arab/Muslim/Middle Eastern men as deviant, violent, criminal, hypersexualized, misogynistic, barbaric, woman-hating. Understanding this ideological and representational context means recognizing that allegations by a colonizing entity like Israel are made in specific racially charged and politically primed environments. Zionist propagandists understand that the racist constructs and Orientalist imaginings about Palestinian/Arab/Muslim/Middle Eastern men are so deeply embedded and known that it is able to proffer hyper-inflammatory, gruesome stories and claims, produce no credible evidence, then refuse to participate in a UN commission tasked to investigate the allegations. Zionists cry rape, and the world is shocked. Meanwhile, the Israeli Occupation Forces have committed grave and systematic sexual assault against Palestinian men, women, and children taken as hostages, human rights violations that the world doesn't want to know about. Where is the outrage? Where are the tweets, Instagram posts, TikTok videos, tears, and emotions for the routine violence Israel subjects Palestinians to?

[...]

The genocide in Gaza has exposed the performativity and selective compassion of so-called progressives. Mainstream liberal feminists, academics sitting in gender studies departments, women's advocacy groups, and gender-based violence campaigners who have accepted and shared Israel's mass rape claims, or remained silent, or who have not spoken out against the cynical use of rape atrocity propaganda to justify Israel's genocidal campaign have not only completely abandoned Palestinians in Gaza to the forces of militarized violence, they have exposed their own deep-seated racism and double standards. I have absolutely no doubt that such ‘feminists' who have dog-eared pages of To Kill a Mockingbird would have sat in the courtrooms of America's Jim Crow-era southern states and silently watched on as Black men were accused of raping white women and duly sentenced to death. Today, history offers liberals and feminists temporal distance to safely posture on Black Lives Matter as a disembodied performance via posting a temporary tile on social media. They don't have to care more than that because their lives are never affected by the racist violence of settler colonial forces. They are not emotionally invested in racial justice because race does not follow them home like an Israeli missile. The genocide in Gaza has exposed the pretense. And so, I ask: what is your human rights advocacy and feminism worth if you dismiss the critical insights and statements from Palestinian and MENA human rights and feminist organizations that have rejected The New York Times report and, crucially, declared that the weaponization of rape and exploitation of women's bodies and experiences in the service of propaganda harms victims and undermines global efforts to address sexual violence? What is your human rights advocacy and feminism worth if you lend credence to war atrocity propaganda as genocide is unfolding on our screens?