#the both of them denied personhood as a means to an end

[impossible-rat-babies]

OUGH I have got to do shadowheart’s personal quest

[soulsmusings]

Maiden Astraea and the Grief of Lost Faith

Many Souls fans liken the Maiden Astraea fight in Demon's Souls to Great Grey Wolf Sif in Dark Souls, describing both as tearjerkers that made them "feel like the bad guy."

The comparison always rubbed me the wrong way—not because it was misplaced or dishonest, but because it was shallow.

It centers how the player feels, and only that. To be fair, this is an understandable response, and definitely an overt part of the text. Against both Astraea and Sif, the player's success in combat, which has thus far been their primary means of progress, is now being scrutinized in a way that casts them unfavorably. They're being forced to reckon with the personhood of the enemy, with their enemy's good intentions and noble virtues.

Suddenly the assumption underpinning most video games—that your actions are good because they're yours—is overturned, and the mechanical rewards for combat are now complicated by emotional punishment. You're fighting a good person, and so you, the player, might just be a bad person.

This is very much in tune with the video gaming zeitgeist of the early 2010s. Dark Souls released just a year before Spec Ops: The Line, which does this same trick on an enormous scale, to well-deserved critical success. Players are placed in the mind of a paranoid American soldier in the Middle-East, and slowly slip into moral depravity as they go from "fighting terrorists" to "suppressing insurgents" to dropping white phosphorous on a refugee camp.

"Are we the baddies?" was really quite a novel idea at the time. It was novel enough that it could be the driving thesis of an entire game.

Perhaps this is why it still stands as the prevailing sentiment around Maiden Astraea—especially when Great Grey Wolf Sif, whose boss fight falls pretty squarely in line with the trend, is such an immediate point of comparison.

But the fight with Maiden Astraea and Garl Vinland is saying something more than that, I feel. The comparison to Sif is what crystallized this vague feeling into a clear, certain thesis for me. It's not just that the player is set against someone "good" or "noble" in Astraea, in the way that Sif is a good dog.

Astraea sets the player against someone human, who is experiencing the height of human loss: the loss of faith.

On some level, all of Demon's Souls is about our human yearning for the sublime, be it supernal or infernal, and the horrible failure that comes when we reach too far.

King Allant reaches for sublime power. In so doing, he achieves a new perspective that shatters his previous understanding of the world—including the values of feudalism and nationalism that drove him to seek power in the first place.

Sage Freke reaches for sublime truth. He believes that with knowledge that is normally forbidden to mortals, he can achieve the just and equitable world that is normally denied to mortals. In the end, however, he fails to consider his own mortal limitations, and he succumbs to the influence of the demon souls.

So on and so forth. The pattern is a familiar one. As Arthur Machen says in his supernatural horror story, "The White People," true sin comes in the "attempt to penetrate into another and higher sphere in a forbidden manner." This plays out with many key characters of Demon's Souls, each one exploring this cardinal sin from a new angle.

Saint Astraea does this too, yet she does it from an angle that I, as a former Catholic, find uniquely sympathetic. It begins when she reaches out for God, and catches only empty air.

"Dear Lord, you are too cruel... You have abandoned us. Is that not punishment enough?"

It's never stated what exactly causes this realization in Astraea—that the God of her world is a distant watchmaker at best, a cruel absent parent at worst. It could have been a direct revelation, such as King Allant received from the Old One, but this doesn't seem likely.

From what the text offers us, I think that Astraea's faith was broken by the Valley of the Defilement itself.

We hear from Biorr that King Allant "fought vigilantly against the vile and depraved," and we see through Yuria's torture that these labels were used for people on the fringes of society, to justify their persecution. Surely this extends also to the "lost and ill-fortuned souls" who were driven to the Valley of Defilement. The land was presumably called the "Valley of Defilement" well before the demon scourge broke out, and so it's the inhabitants themselves—the poor, the diseased, the unwanted—who are the "defilement." Them, and the rubbish and waste that are disposed of there.

The fact that we see aborted fetuses at various points throughout the Valley, mingled with the muck and the refuse and the remains of animals, speaks to the dire state of living there. As the filthy beggar woman says, it's "all the rot of the world, living or not," and it leaves no room for sanity or dignity.

Whatever can be said of the exact circumstances that produced this, or of the land itself, the fact remains that the misery of the Valley's inhabitants is of decidedly human origin.

Bear this in mind when you consider that the Church of Demon's Souls sends missionaries there—as if the Valley folk were suffering from some natural calamity, and not from the malice of the ruling class.

Perhaps that's all the Church could do. After all, the real-life Catholic Church has always been a powerful political entity, but never have they been able to erase poverty or prejudice, or directly stop a monarch from doing something. The same must apply to the definitely-not-Catholic Church of this fictional world, which is pretty committed to realism in that regard.

But even so, it should come as no surprise that every missionary who entered the Valley of Defilement was killed, either by the people or by the land itself.

These missionaries come from the very society that drove the Valley's inhabitants to such inhumane lows. How would they, who live in relative comfort, know how to navigate this treacherous hellhole? And why would anyone accept charity from the hand that beats them down?

So when Saint Astraea enters the Valley of Defilement, full of genuine compassion and goodwill, what does she see?

She sees the sheer magnitude of human suffering, the depth of the squalor, the inhumanity that it represents... and no relief from anywhere. Not from the Church she serves, and not from God on high. Not even in this end-of-days scenario, when demons walk the earth and miracles are witnessed again, does God's supposed mercy reach the Valley.

Saint Urbain might be a deluded, bigoted fool, but he might not be entirely wrong when he calls the people of the Valley "those left behind by God." Perhaps all of mankind has been left behind, and only in the Valley of Defilement is that truth laid bare.

What can anyone do in the face of such a horrible truth?

If you don't run away from them, how do you answer people who are suffering and dying on this scale? If they need miracles, and God does not provide, what do you do?

These questions don't pertain solely to the fiction of Demon's Souls. These are questions that have echoed across human history, philosophy, theology, and myth. Reckoning with the impossible scale of human suffering—the inevitability of it, the ubiquity of it, the horrible depths of it—has been the preoccupation of our greatest thinkers for, well, pretty much all of our time on this planet.

Even when some of us arrive at an answer, it's never a wholly satisfactory answer, and it's usually contingent upon an existing framework of values and beliefs. The Pope says one thing, the Dalai Lama says another, so on and so forth, and the greater share of humanity continues to suffer all the while.

As for Astraea's answer, I'll once again quote the prologue to Machen's "The White People":

"[H]oliness works on lines that were natural once; it is an effort to recover the ecstasy that was before the Fall. But sin is an effort to gain the ecstasy and the knowledge that pertain alone to angels, and in making this effort man becomes a demon."

She does this quite literally. She cannot access the power of God, so she accepts a demon's soul, and uses its power to bring relief to the Valley of Defilement.

Because this power is infernal, not supernal, she cannot purify the foul stagnant waters of the swamp, nor can she cure the diseases of the poor. Rather, she gives the Valley's inhabitants an affinity for filth and disease; it becomes their sustenance rather than their bane, their strength rather than their weakness. The natural order is inverted completely.

This is why Astraea is "the most impure demon of all." Her demonic power imitates the divine mercy that she longs for, yet the results couldn't be more different—perhaps, also, because she extends her mercy to those deemed impure themselves. The description of the spell Death Cloud, made from Astraea's demon soul, says as much.

And in a cruel twist of irony, Astraea's damnation does not ease the pain and misery of the Valley's inhabitants. The Archstone before Astraea's boss room reads, "The poor journey to this rotten place to offer their souls [to Astraea] so that they might be freed from their suffering." They might be sustained by the Valley's filth now, but they are still suffering from it.

They find lasting relief only in giving up their souls to feed Astraea's power, thus perpetuating the whole horrible system.

Astraea's wounds bleed perpetually, never closing, never healing. Her blood fills the grotto where she sits as an object of adoration, still performing the functions of a religion that failed her. All she can say, over and over, is that God has abandoned her, abandoned the world—she has no fewer than three separate voice lines saying this.

Notably, though others might call her a witch, she never turns to "witchcraft" in the archetypal sense. Her grief never turns to anger; she never rails against God. She never discards her clerical robes, she never dons a pointed hat, and she never casts curses or spells. She is stuck as Maiden Astraea, Saint Astraea, frozen in a state of loss.

The moment of her trauma, of her loss of faith, is extended into perpetuity. Even the boss music reflects this:

The melody loops and loops and loops, and any resolution feeds immediately into another loop. It's a textural piece more than anything, but you can't help getting lost in the endless repetition of that simple, incomplete melody.

Astraea's knightly bodyguard, Garl Vinland, also seems to be lost in unending grief. He rests in a pile of corpses, never removing the armor that is the sign of his holy vow. If you kill Astraea before him, he simply stands in shock, unable to move or speak or act. Unable to move on.

Anyway, uhh...

All of this? A wound that never heals, a grief that never ends?

Yeah, that's... that's how it feels to have lost your faith.

That's how I feel, anyway.

As you probably gathered already, this reading of Astraea is informed by my perspective as an ex-Catholic, now agnostic. My own loss of faith was very painful. It spanned the entire length of my adolescence, into young adulthood—as my rational mind was growing, my queerness was rising to the level of conscious feeling, and nearly every support system in my life was failing me.

My parish community was run by hypocritical bullies, and harbored an actual, real, pedophile priest, but still I reached out to God for answers. I looked to theology instead of community, to study and meditation and prayer. I looked for answers to my own suffering, and to the world's suffering. I looked for resolutions to all the insane contradictions. I looked for something to sustain the faith that was being asked of me. Surely God wouldn't abandon me, even if my parents and teachers and peers were all against me.

In the end, it all fell out from under me. I found plenty to admire, but even more to doubt and disdain.

I couldn't stop loving God or Jesus, but now it felt like they were dead at my feet, and that rot and maggots were visibly eating the corpses—and that everyone around me was politely pretending that they weren't.

I remember crying to my mother when my dog died around this time, and she tried to comfort me with talk of heaven, and I was just inconsolable. All I could say, as I cried for this sweet little animal who had loved me, was that I was "scared for the world." That nothing could ever possibly be right, nothing in the whole wide world, if God weren't there. I could no longer imagine a good, just end to any human life or endeavor, because the only end was death.

I've since recovered from that very low point in my life, and grown into a much happier adult. The grief never left me entirely, though.

The loss of my faith is likely the single most impactful event in my life. Because I'm no longer Catholic, I was able to transition, and I was able to find friends and partners who mean everything to me...

...but because I was Catholic, and still feel that small aching hole inside, I've spent the greater part of my life immersed in art, literature, and philosophy that explores the space where God once lived in my heart. I've spent years studying apocalyptic religions and their various underpinnings—political, social, theological, and narratological. I've become a literary critic, and a scholar of Victorian religion. My first published article is about how Elizabeth Gaskell positions the Victorian working class as an "apocalyptic demographic."

My favorite musical is The Hunchback of Notre Dame. My favorite author is Arthur Machen. My favorite video game is Demon's Souls. The grief that I feel for my lost faith is hardly all of me, but it has touched every part of me.

So when people who have never experienced such grief compare Maiden Astraea to the big sad wolf from Dark Souls, I feel a little frustrated. As a character and a symbol, she's so much more than that.

I could go on, and resolve this rambling, messy, emotional essay in some kind of critical statement about Demon's Souls... but I think I'll just leave it at that. I suppose I just wanted other people to understand what I feel, to see what I see, and to know why this video game is special to me.

If you made it this far, thanks for reading. Umbasa.

[specialagentartemis]

made up fic title ask game: “an end to freedom”

Oooh, angsty.

This is a title that could go well with an idea that I think is compelling, that I like returning to: see, for nearly every piece of technology we make in the real world, its lifespan is way, way shorter than a human's. IRL this includes spacecraft.

I'm imagining a fic set 10-12 years in the future of The Murderbot Diaries. Murderbot itself is a lot more relaxed, a lot more emotionally stable and fulfilled, a full citizen of Preservation cause they have gotten new laws regarding construct rights and citizenship in place, several of its humans are moving towards retirement or at least more sedentary career shifts, it's doing pretty great, actually.

However, it returns from a rotation aboard ART to the news that the Pansystem University has decided to retire the Perihelion. The arguments are the same as for any other craft: it's old, it's out-of-date by now, its upkeep isn't worth the expense that could be put towards making newer and better ships, the OS that the bot pilot runs on is several releases out of date and not supported on the more current ones. It's just old. It's just the lifecycle of spacecraft and computers. You can't expect us to be shackled to running our ships on Space Windows 223 forever.

Because here's the thing: while Mihira and New Tideland have also made moves to support AI rights, ART has never been recognized as a person or a citizen. What it does is much easier to do and actually allows it a lot more freedom and flexibility as a legal non-person than it would be if it was a legal citizen bound by things like laws. This has driven Pin-Lee crazy for years - she is a strong proponent of "If it's not in the contract, it doesn't exist," and has warned both ART and MB that ART's preference for being legally unrecognized because that grants it more freedom and fewer consequences is going to bite it in the ass someday and it will make things so much harder down the road.

ART was too confident in its captain, in Iris, and in its place in the university. But now Martyn is emeritus at the AI lab and the department is hinting that it's really time Seth should retire and the university has denied Iris's application to be the new captain of the Perihelion, because the university doesn't really want to keep upkeeping it. Sure, its computing kernel can be moved back into the university's AI lab and put into storage there, they won't destroy it, they're not monsters... but its ship body materials really could be recycled into other things. (With the rising galactic attention to AI rights, they may also want to quietly end the pre-existing sapient-ship program so that they can make a show of launching the next generation of sapient AI ships properly.)

Legally, ART is still a vehicle. A computer. University property. And it is abruptly going from having free rein to do basically whatever it wants because no one can stop it to being put in an impossible legal bind. I'm interested in the turnabout: Murderbot's legal personhood as a citizen of Preservation and an employee of the University is ironclad, while ART is really grappling with what it means to be legally property.

I never wrote it because I wasn't really sure where to take it. Fleeing to Preservation to claim asylum there is constantly hovering over them as an option, but it would hugely embarrass the University as well as the whole polity of M&NT and as one of Preservation's closest interstellar allies at this point, it would cause a goddamn incident and possibly ruin that political relationship, which is so much bigger than either of them. Just straight up running away - Murderbot "stealing" the Perihelion and running - is another option. I think they try that, first. I think they think it'll be okay, just the two of them together in the outer fringes of non-corporate space where they won't get caught, for ten years till the statute of limitations expires. I think they both realize pretty quick that neither of them is particularly happy with this prospect.

The thing about being interested in painful binds and impossible choices is that I gotta figure out where to go with them!

[kingsmoot]

hi i love your asoiafposting. i also love to make asoiaf ocs and one is a baseborn girl so i’m wondering if you have any further thoughts on girl bastards, not necessarily in a gender way. for example imo baseborn girls would occupy a sort of in between of noble ladies and lowborn women: their hand is not quite as valuable as their noble sister, but they can still marry well and have trueborn noble children, and at the same time may experience much less pressure to do so than their noble sister and instead be freer to pursue a simpler (smallfolk) occupation or marriage

thank u!!!

you have no idea how nice it is to open my inbox and find a nice anon who wants to talk about asoiaf

my main like fixation with lowborn women in terms of their relation to nobility sort of centers around like, the societal revenge of their male children having access to a life they could never lead. i talked about this here re: joffrey/ramsay parallels and how both of them are the result of their brutalized mothers giving their son a foothold in the same society that brutalized them. but i think at the end of the day bastard girls are valuable in westeros for exactly the same reason that lowborn girls and wellborn girls are valuable. which is that they can make children. so i don't agree that bastard girls are any freer than wellborn girls. like alys rivers for example, who was older than aemond and belonged to a great house and still had to bear him squatting there after killing her family and raping her. i actually think that bastard girls might face even more pressure than wellborn girls to bear children for noble lords or at least for named and landed knights because then their children, at least, can have names and inheritance rights. which they do not. like. i feel like this is a little jumbled but my main thought regarding women in westeros is that often their only hope for meaning or retributive justice is that they will bear a son, and the son will have a name and a right. so like there is no way and no incentive to break the cycle if your only potential hope is a son who will get everything that you were denied. a son who by the very nature of his birth will be owed personhood when yours has always and forever been denied.

um. i can recognize that this is sort of grim so if you have ocs who are #childfree bastard girls i think that's lovely and you should keep doing that. tell me about them if u want!!!

[aquaquadrant]

So I just finished part VII of From Eden and Bravo’s chapters always hurt so much to read for so many different reasons, it’s painful to read about how Atlas gets into his head, how he blatantly lies about Tango and Bravo believes him. But it also hurts because I feel like the Bravo we met at the start, the one that first entered Hels, was on the fence about a lot of things. That Bravo was in a position where he could be equally swayed either way to being a better or worse person, more specifically, on his opinion of hybrids, he definitely had prejudices against them from the start but it wasn’t nearly as bad as what we see in the latest chapter, straight up denying Tango’s personhood because he’s a hybrid.

It’s tragic because if that portal had actually led to Hermitcraft, or just hadn’t been there at all, I feel like Bravo could have been a very different person. I mean, if Hermitcraft was a positive influence on Tango, someone who’d grown up in Hels and was prone to lash out both from his trauma and because of the general environment he came from, I genuinely think that it could have been a really good influence on Bravo as well. I mean, he definitely would have had to get over that prejudice if he wanted to stay in Hermitcraft, considering how many non-humans live there.

I still have some hope for Bravo, despite everything. There’s definitely some issues he has to work through and things he needs to reevaluate once he’s safe and out of Hels, but I don’t think that Bravo is a bad person. He’s never came across to me as acting out of malice, the closest he’s come is when his actions are driven by anger, but even then, it’s usually short lived.

I mean, a lot of the things Bravo’s assumed about Tango can be disproven by just talking to the guy. He’s working off the assumption that Tango knew about the doppelgänger thing and that he opened the portal on purpose but if he can prove that he didn’t, Atlas’s entire argument for why Bravo should help him recapture Tango falls apart. And between the fact that he’s not trapped in Hels anymore, and that Atlas’s and Al’s people are gonna be too busy fighting for their lives against the Lifers, I can totally see Bravo, if not switching sides, then at least just leaving and deciding to not help Atlas.

I keep asking myself, why did that portal lead to Hels? I understand Tango ending up in Hermitcraft, that makes sense. But why did Bravo get sent to Hels? Why did the Universe do that? Were they both meant to go to Hermitcraft and something went wrong? What happened there?

[nalyra-dreaming]

That Claudia diary entry kinda blew my mind with that bit about her wanting to make one them her *slave* as retribution for what was done to her. Feels too much of a coincidence with how in the show she insisted Louis agree that they were indeed lestat’s slaves and that she believed Magnus had made lestat a slave. I know Rolin said books 1-6 are the ones informing the show the most but were Claudia’s diaries ever made that big of a deal before book 7? The inclusion suggests so much. It would be a bit of a let down if they don’t fully delve into all that.

Claudia wanting to punish them both, blaming Louis more (which makes even MORE sense in the show since Louis is more responsible for her vampirism) and seeing it as even greater painful revenge on the one that lives on without the other

“so that his soul, if not his body, is the same size at last as my own."

Anne put crack in that line

Lots of fans love the loving aspect of the father-daughter relationship between Louis and Claudia, it’s heartbreaking, but it’s not JUST love, we already got a hint of Claudia expressing hatred for Louis at the start of ep 5 because she blames him for her creation, and then the neck slam we see Louis do to her at the end of ep 7, for that to just go nowhere would be a let down to her character. Louis edits her and therefor denies her full personhood as he gives the interview in season 1, to further sanitise her motivations the show would literally be doing the same to her, right?

Daniel seems to be really fighting to hear her voice, season 2 opening up all the characters even more…maybe we won’t have full ‘puppet-master Claudia’ revealed but it wouldn’t make sense to not anticipate something along those lines maybe. She can still love Louis and have manipulated him, she can still despite her hatred feel some love for lestat while wanting him dead, she’s as complex as any of the other characters so I hope she’s not diminished.

Her diary being presented as ‘evidence’ at the trial is an insane suggestion (I love it), and if armand is the only one who knew about it and maybe stealing it for that purpose and Louis denying that fact to himself maybe 🤔 the writers are going to make the trial as emotional devastating as possible, the diary idea is genius

You think Louis will be pushed to suicide with all the revelations in season 2, but do you think the diaries coming into his possession the first time is what provoked him to maybe ask armand to help redress his memories prior to the interview, if he had read things that upset him and then armand changed?

(Sorry for long anon!)

(All good^^)

I also think that there are too many... "hooks" in that diary entry to not mean something in the context of this show, which is where this speculation comes from of course.

Though books 1-6 have been mentioned as the "main" basis for the show (and I believe they said so as to not give the game away immediately), Fareed is already there, the silver cord has been mentioned - both are only much later in the books... I shared a quote from Sam the other day where he mentioned that they are looking at all the books, and so I cannot really believe that they will not use this.

Or, I've said it before, I sure hope they will not let the impact of it fall flat. But I really cannot imagine this, since it is such a catastrophic event for Louis.

And as per the trial... well, as said in the posts, one of her diaries was in Paris, a big change from the books (where there is only one diary anyways, and not in Paris), and in this show... that cannot be a coincidence. It's also mentioned that Louis didn't present them at the last interview, so I could easily see Armand having them in possession and only granting access (as he does for Daniel).

Personally I think Louis probably read them the first time and had a breakdown, and Armand... tried to help. In his own way. That would fit for me.

But we'll see.

I do believe that the trial (the whole season actually) will be maximum emotional carnage (again thx to the nonny who coined that phrase a while ago *laughs*), it will be harsh, brutal even. For me, using it would simply be in line with what they've already set up... especially with the condemning content in it.

Not that Armand would really need the "evidence" - but then that trial is about/for Louis, too, and (crazy as that may be) for/against Lestat in a way.

[theawkwardvirgin]

Read a great post talking about how, no matter how terrible a person is/what they’ve done, you can never start thinking of them as “not a person”. Because the second you do, the second you set conditions on human dignity, you open the possibility to expand those conditions. You become the boot of power crushing specific groups you dislike (no matter how valid the reason).

It was a great post, a secular representation of one of the foundational aspects of Catholicism: that every person is made in the image and likeness of God, and has human dignity that should be respected.

Which is why it was so infuriatingly hypocritical that they ended their post by saying, ‘forgetting to respect each person’s humanity is how we end up losing our rights, like reproductive rights’. After spending several paragraphs beautifully expounding the importance of respecting the inherent dignity and rights of each and every human person, they use the example of having the right to abort any pregnancy, for any reason, a position that continually denies the human dignity and rights of fetuses, often until the very point of birth, when they’re fully able to live outside the womb and the only difference between them and the pro-choice crowd’s definition of a person with human rights and dignity is location.

Rejecting the human rights and dignity of fetuses is, in fact, WORSE than rejecting that of war criminals and Nazis, because their only crime is being inconvenient. That’s what human dignity and rights so often rests on now: How convenient that person’s existence is. This is backed up by the Unborn Victims of Violence Act, which asserts that fetuses have legal personhood and protections…as long as their mother wants them. As soon as she approves an abortion, those rights are stripped away.

Can’t people see how terrifying that is? Can’t they see how that leads to ageism, racism, classism? To ableism on a fucking horrifying scale? Iceland claims they’ve “cured” Down Syndrome. What that really means is they abort every fetus that shows signs of it. (The doctor who discovered how to detect Down Syndrome before birth, Jérôme Lejeune, was Catholic. He strongly opposed the use of his research in selective abortions, but was ignored.)

You can’t advocate for the respect of human rights and dignity and then exclude one group. That’s the very problem they were arguing against in the first place.

(Mandatory note that respecting the human rights and dignity of fetuses does not mean disrespecting the human rights and dignity of their mothers. The Catholic Church advocates for and actively supports the care of mothers both during and after pregnancy. There are many Catholic charities devoted to providing for mothers and supporting families. The Catholic Church does not support people who harass mothers at abortion clinics. They do have prayer and outreach programs that offer financial and medical support to these mothers, in case they don’t actually want an abortion but feel it’s their only option. I have also personally met people who’ve adopted several children from mothers at abortion clinics—they support the mother throughout her pregnancy, and then adopt the child after they’re born.)

[bloodiedmedic]

Why is the ‘Am I still human’ question wrong? For Ms. Gold :3

Walking downstairs, and out one door than in through another door she had to unlock Ms. Gold was humming some soft song or another that no one around her currently would know. Pausing for a second to see a note on the floor she leaned down picking it up, and raised her eyebrows seeing the question before moving into her cafe. The “closed” sign was still up, and moving around the area Ms. Gold wouldn’t so much as start to answer the question in the note until after various ingredients were chopped and cooked and a broth was made for a noodle dish. When the broth finally was put together so it start to shimmer gently Ms. Gold heated some water and made tea for herself. One small cup was poured, and put up in front of a picture of a woman she had high up on a shelf without anything identifying who it was. Another cup was poured for herself, and taking a sip from it now she took another look at the note.

“Because it places “humans” and “humanity” at the top. It’s what allows humans to feel superior both to other species, and strangely enough to each other as well. There’s something I read once from a person born human, and who was presumably physically a human that was surprisingly well put. What was it…” Eyes narrowing for a moment she shook her head. “In essence it was that no matter how respectable you make yourself at the end of the day the current “in group”, the group currently in power, if they see you as lesser will never accept you. That they will seek any excuse to deny you your humanity, and so there is a particular freedom to be gained claiming that dehumanization and acknowledging and allowing yourself not to be “human” by the standards of whatever powerful people want you controlled or dead or subservient.”

Lips curving Ms. Gold raised her tea cup offering a little nod of her head. “However do not ever mistake not “being human”, or even not claiming “personhood” by the standards of the dominant group as actually not being a person in truth dearie. Even among humans within their own culture being “human” actually comes down to how well you can pretend because if you don’t fit in they will other you, and judge you as something else. They might not say it, but at the end of the day when they treat you like trash that’s what they mean. So when you start asking “am I still human” the odds are in many cases no you are not, and that’s not a bad thing if you use it as a way to accept yourself for who you really are and not who they want you to be.”

Scrunching up her nose for a moment Ms. Gold sighed. “These rights, or those rights are human rights! No, no they aren’t because if they were human rights you’d already have them. Do you deserve those rights? Yes. Are you a person? Yes. Are you human? By the standards of those who can give you those rights? No. Otherwise you’d already have them so…” Waving a hand she shook her head. “Anyways I am starting to belabor the point. So let’s shift in another direction shall we?”

Taking a sip of her tea she reached over to refill it. “I have never been human. I’m not a vampire, or some other such thing that started off as human. I was brought into existence as something Other, and I will die as something Other. In my time I have met vampires that are better than some humans, and demons, and so on.” For a moment her voice trailed off as she considered the past, and people she had met with a faint smile. “Even leaving aside what humans generally consider magical or mythological creatures. Dearie, I’ve met other species that are just as capable as humans, and not at all magical. If you’ve not gone into space yet no doubt you’d call them “aliens” or something as you have no idea what they call themselves, or even that they exist. If you’d even care what they call themselves since half the time humans can’t even be bothered to learn what different cultures within their own species call themselves. Some of them were horrible, but some were the best people I’ve ever met. I think you begin to understand my overlaying point yes? There’s nothing special about being human, and yet so man people I’ve met who started off as human treats it like it is. Not all thankfully, but enough.” Another sip of tea, and Ms. Gold actually looked vaguely disappointed.

“If they’d stop that everyone, and everything would be better off. Because that automatic separation of “human” from everything else, and the innate assumption that “human” is better than the alternative raising them somehow above nature and other sentient and sapient species and everything around them doesn’t just allow them to do heinous things. It both enables and gives them permission to do so. It’s not just an issue with terminology. It’s something that automatically excludes me, and others like me from ever being treated like an equal by humans as a whole which incidentally is why in so many places humanity is the dominant species… because they treat everyone else badly, and will kill us no matter what it takes without ever really attempting to understand or figure out another route. Now yes this is an over simplification, and yes there are cultures and societies within humanity that don’t do this.” Finishing her tea she turned, and went to go wash out her tea cup and the kettle. “However those cultures, and societies for various reasons almost never become dominant. The culture that does become dominant is almost always the culture that enables humans to do whatever it takes to become dominant. So when you ask “am I still human” dearie what I, and others like me hear…” Taking a moment to finish the washing Ms. Gold turned around with a sharp smile.

“Is the question “am I still better than you” regardless of if you mean it, or not. It’s not the correct question because it focuses on one very limited expression of life being the “right” one when in reality even within that species they still can’t treat each other as “human” half the time. Instead start asking a different question. A simple one, “am I still a person”, whatever being a person might mean to you within the context of your own morals and values.” Leaning in a bit Ms. Gold took the note, and carefully folded it to save it.

“So tell me dearie. Are you? Still a person?”

[blooming-briars]

Hello yes I bring to you this concept fresh from my brain:

Mika crying because he's so frustrated over his own jealousy of Shu's literal dolls and the strain of personhood and agency

Shu finding out and awkwardly trying to offer comfort

Failing

Going to Wataru for advice and getting actually good advice: why not let Mika pretend for a while now and then? What's the harm in giving it a try?

Shu making clothes for him on the sly, claiming it's just a toile for an idea he had, Mika not knowing any better...

Until of course it's sprung on him as a surprise. Maybe he cries a bit; there's just so much to feel, uncertainty chief among them. He's supposed to be a person and he really is trying, even though he's pretty sure he's terrible at it.

And Shu, having learned to be gentler and with some idea of what to do now because he spent a lot of time researching "what to do if your partner wants to pretend to be a doll", dresses Mika and proceeds to order him around for a bit -- nothing much, just making something in the kitchen together, but still.

When they finish, Mika asks if Shu will hold him, like he does other dolls...cue two very flustered boys snuggling on the couch watching a classic film while the apartment slowly fills with the scent of baked goods.

Eventually it gets late and they decide to retire, and while Shu initially planned to undress Mika, there's no denying how suggestive it would seem especially after what his research turned up so he refrains, instead bidding a quiet but very content Mika goodnight once he's sure that he'll be alright on his own.

They both think a lot of thoughts they'd never admit to, after that...

It becomes a bit of a ritual on days off. Not always, but often enough, for a few hours, anyway. Over time, they figure out what works and what doesn't. Mika likes to be admired and told he's a beautiful doll, yes, but he does still want to be kept firmly in hand by his master -- something that seems both fitting and generally agreeable to both of them as a term.

The only problem, as it were, is that Mika definitely develops some rather pavlovian responses to things he didn't expect to...some of which are a bit embarrassing, though not enough to be worth stopping. At least feeling his heart skip a beat at the sight of a garment bag is slightly less mortifying that the unfortunate response when Shu dresses him...

It helps that Shu always does as he promised and keeps his gaze above Mika's waist so as not to make him feel awkward...but it only helps so much.

Eventually this all leads to more conversations with Wataru as Shu grapples with his own enjoyment and desires. As oblique as the discussion always is, something useful generally comes of it -- and while it takes quite some time for Shu to work up the courage, he and Mika do eventually get everything out in the open about their mutual desires. Kisses are had. More is eventually had Mika certainly is

And then happy ending, I guess, because they found a healthy, moderated outlet for shared desires and proceeded to become ever better partners to one another.

Shu figuring out after just two or three instances that Mika's motivation, productivity, and performance all go through the roof after one of their 'sessions', like why did I not try this sooner, do you mean this could have been working all along and instead we struggled needlessly for months?

Anyway yeah just two gay boys with a dollification kink and D/s dynamic, that's the concept lmao

Wow my formatting is a mess wtf is this stream of consciousness nonsense go to sleep you little idiot (me)

[perfectlyvalid49]

I think it’s also really important not to dehumanize people who do terrible things because it drastically reduces the likelihood that you’ll reflect on your own behavior. Like, if the people who do the bad things aren’t really people, and you’re a person, then clearly, you’re not doing the bad things.

To make this directly relate to the discourse that’s been all over my dash recently – lets look at how this thinking can interact with antisemitism as an example.

We’ll start with “Nazis aren’t people.” We also know that Nazis are antisemitic, so that means that some antisemites aren’t people. Note that from a strictly logical standpoint, we can’t say from the above that ALL antisemites aren’t people, but emotionally that’s an easy jump to make.

So what happens when you point out that someone who holds the above beliefs is being antisemitic? Well, first, they’re going to deny it, because they know that they’re a person, and Nazis/antisemites aren’t people, so they can’t have been antisemitic. Second, they’re going to get mad, because you just called them not a person, which is both mean and untrue.

The end result of this thinking is that instead of being able to point out a behavior that needs to be examined, and a person saying, “hey, I can see where I messed up, I’ll work on doing better/unlearning my biases/whatever other self-improvement is needed,” you get people who get immediately defensive because they feel like you’re bringing their personhood into question. And this means that they can’t learn to be better because they’re too busy being defensive, and that they don’t feel the need to because clearly your accusation was false anyway.

OP posted that we need to remember that people who do bad things are still people, and still have whatever value we assign to personhood. I guess what I'm trying to add is that if you're the sort of person who needs that reminder, then you should also remember that the people that you want to class as actual people are still capable of doing bad things.

i wish ppl on this website, and within leftist circles in general, were a little less gung ho about making jokes or statements like "billionaires arent people" "nazis arent people" "police arent people"

there is no level of evil where a human stops being a human. if you decide to kill them for their crimes, then you are killing a human. and sometimes that is justified! oil execs and war profiteers have destroyed countless lives in service of their own sick greed, and given the chance to enact that same violence on them, id probably pop their heads like a pimple.

but it is important that we do not shy away from the reality of that choice. it is a human life that is being ended. a person with interiority, feelings, family.

if we stop considering any group as people, even a group defined by their own evil actions, then we are drawing a line to divide society into persons and non-persons, and stating that those non-persons do not deserve to live.

i hope i dont need to explain why that is a dangerous position to take.

these people and all of their evil, their greed, their hatred, are just as much a part of humanity as art, culture, language, food. they are a part of us that has grown malignant and cancerous, and like a cancer, they must be excised for the sake of the whole--but they are still a part of us, made of the same stuff as us, down to their cores.

evil humans are still humans.

[fadedapparition]

i am thinking… about how a high approval lavellan really easily ends up relating to solas the way briala related to felassan. and how i actually like this much more than the romance route because it’s just as interesting and possibly even sadder.

lavellan doesn’t HAVE to see him this way, but they're given room to decide that solas is their mentor in an environment where they’ve otherwise been completely cut off from their culture-group. you have the opportunity to ask him for advice on just about anything, and the transmission of knowledge/history forms the bedrock of any positive relationship between himself and the player character. the dalish have limited written records, so most lore is passed down orally from keepers and hahrens to younger members of a clan. when solas starts rambling about the fade, it’s not just some guy telling stories, but an older elf sharing knowledge with his protege that would otherwise be lost with his death. he is fulfilling the responsibilities of a hahren in the same way felassan fulfilled them for briala, and he’s doing so while secretly the most literal hahren you could find. solas can occupy the role of an elder, but he is also among the oldest elves in the setting: not only a hahren, but the most hahren.

and in being granted the honor of a position as their elder, solas must confront the fact that lavellan is his legacy. they are the product of the world he’s created, the mortal race that owes its existence entirely to the catastrophic changes he made that he’s since come to regret. they purposefully incorporate him into their cultural lineage, and by doing that, they compel him to acknowledge the ties that bind him to present-day elves. he’s meeting his descendants in the post-apocalypse, and he’s grappling with the reality that for as bad as the world might be, it remains populated by people who recognize themselves in him.

for felassan, briala was the catalyst for an identical realization, and he was willing to die at solas’ hands to affirm her personhood (and, by extension, everyone else's). solas finds himself in precisely the same situation, except he’s been murdering his dearest friends to deny this possibility since before the story began. when he meets felassan’s own version of lavellan, when he actually encounters briala herself, he describes her in glowing terms because he realizes how closely they resemble each other. maybe this is why felassan bonded with her so strongly. the person she reminded him of could easily be solas.

i don't agree with the (prevailing?) interpretation that solas tries to separate himself from present-day elvendom because he doesn’t see other elves as people. i think he’s doing it because he wants to escape the truth that destroying the world means destroying his heirs, people who are as much like him as they could be while still surviving the terrible world he bequeathed to them. if you help elves, choose dialogues that reference elven lore, or even just point out to people that you are an elf, solas throws approval at you, but if you tell him directly that you are both elves and therefore similar, he gets scared. he knows lavellan is his people, but doesn't want to internalize that because that would turn him into a second felassan - and make his murder of the actual felassan completely meaningless.

the solas romance is about this immortal promethean god-figure recognizing an equal in the present and falling in love, but i personally like this version of the story more because it places greater emphasis on the seniority and power he holds. he's one of very few lines of defense between lavellan and a chantry that has a long, storied history of elf-killing. he has access to complete, firsthand accounts of their history, and can permit or deny them that knowledge at will. they're granting him their trust and their admiration, and it's on him to decide if he's worthy of it. they are his symbolic child, and he is the only person with the capacity to prevent them from becoming a sort of isaac to his abraham.

but instead, in true deadbeat fashion, he skips town, changes his number, and stops responding to your emails. and that’s why the new game is called dragon age dad

[ennuijpg]

Hi, same anon from the past few asks haha. Anyways, saw on twt (@cutieyongsoo) that the lyrics Junji sings roughly translate to “you let my spirit free, give me permission / allow me to carve/scupt you however i want / however my heart pleases”. Thoughts ??? 🤔🤔 - 🕯anon

omg hi anon!! yes u read my mind i was planning to make a post abt these lyrics and u sent this ask at the perfect time

given that we only have what we're given in the teaser and idk korean so i cant be sure of the original tone of the lyrics, this will be less what i think the storyline is actually gonna be and more of what i hope it will be

earlier this month, junhyung said that his solo has a "dark" vibe and i really really hope that it indeed does. ik it's not everyone's cup of tea, but i want smth toxic n sexy n angsty from jolo, a story w temptation n deception and manipulation etc etc etc bc i think that would be fun and ooo has always tackled those themes well

the carving/sculpting metaphor very much reminds me of dora maar + picasso, the story of a manipulative and controlling artist who actually only sees his muse as a means to further his own artistry, to make into what he wants, rather than a person who deserves respect in her own right. in these songs, ooo portrays a relationship in which picasso continuously denies dora maar's own personhood and identity in favor of depicting her how he wants to, rather than how she actually is

this also reminds me of gaslighting, i mean the song as a whole, but also specifically this part of yongsoo's rap, in which the speaker is essentially "giving permission" for the other person to control/shape them however they want

im especially a fan of the theory that jolo and rolo will have like good v evil, light v dark, heaven v hell type vibes. im always down for a concept like that, and we know ooo deals w these themes incrediblyyyy well, both the dichotomy of it + the religious slant to it (e.g. sage, asoiaf, tear of god, etc). given junji's shirt in the teasers depicts the temptation of st. anthony, i think there's a good chance, that if the concept does end up being along these lines, that, in this story, junji will be the evil/devil/satan/tempter/temptation, and rie will be the good/temptee (?), etc etc

i know the first part especially of those translated lyrics, "you let my spirit free, give me permission," can be interpreted more sweetly, like a cautious lover seeking to find freedom in love (a la yolo/kolo), But i still think it can work in my theory's favor. of course, in biblical accounts of temptation, satan is manipulative and often tempts with sweet words and ideas that seem so good, so reasonable, so loving, etc, that it seems like there's no way this could be evil/the devil saying these things, so i think that could be the case w these lyrics too

and there's something about this shot that feels like it has sooo much potential for this theory

like the way junji is smiling, the way rie looks so unassuming and unexpecting. and also the way that junji knocks on the phonebooth while rie is here at sunset/sunrise (?) all alone. temptation is strongest when you're alone, and in biblical accounts, that is often when the devil chooses to strike, the most well-known account probably being when satan waits for eve to be alone before coming down and tempting her to eat from the tree of knowledge

this feels different from begin/be free. while we cant be sure that junji doesnt approach rie in the cafe/laundromat (?), the way the teaser makes it seem is that he first notices rie there, when kb and yoojung are also there, but doesnt really choose to make a move until rie is alone. with begin/be free, there were constantly extras outside of the cafe and esp in that final scene of begin, people passing in front of the cafe window, while kb and yoojung are inside, in a very wong kar-wai, making a story focusing on two people but very much also depicting the life of the city that serves as a background to this story, way, but so far, that doesnt seem to be as much the case here. ik for this part esp, i may be reading a bit much into it, but it's fun to think abt regardless <3

those are my thoughts for now! very very excited for the next mv teaser and to see what jolo will bring <33

EDIT: HOLY SHIT HOW DID I FORGET TO TALK ABOUT THE CAPTION

i actually dont have Much to say abt it bc these lines just make me 😵💫, but, like also these clearly have soooo much potential for the satanic tempter storyline. like junji, the tempter who ruins/makes impure rie like hello??

(also the second line is a bit awkwardly translated, but @/cutieyongsoo on twt also did a reworked translation: it’s better translated as “i’ll do whatever my hand wants” or “i’ll do as my hand pleases,” which of course has very picasso + dora maar vibes)

[drifting-pieces-blog-blog]

Complications and Solutions: Chapter 3

Summary: Layla starts to panic about the relationship. Steven tries to answer questions. Who said dating anyone would be easy?

Pairings: Marc x Layla. Steven x Layla. Jake x Layla.

Warnings: Minor hints at sexual language.

Word Count: 2702

Previous chapter: HERE

--

She waited for them. 

Layla didn’t think she would be able to sleep as she sat on the couch. Her thoughts were racing as she struggled with imaginary arguments and scenarios. 

Normally so good at hiding her emotions, she had several moments of simply sitting and trying to not break down. 

She oscillated from feeling sorry for herself to being angry at herself for feeling and reacting the way she did. She went from angry at Marc to wanting him there with her so she could hold him close. 

Irrational thoughts started to weigh her down. What if Marc left? What if Steven hated her now? What if Jake decided she wasn’t worth it and took them away from her? 

She got angry and wasn’t going to wait. She was going to walk home and wait for them to call her. But what if they thought she was the one that had abandoned them? Was she being fair?

In the end, she passed out on the couch, only waking up much later as the sun came in through the window and landed on her face. 

Squinting and making a distressed sound, Layla slowly sat up and looked around. There was no sign of either of the boys having returned yet. She glanced down at her watch. It was just past ten. 

“Probably just running late. Doesn’t mean anything.” Layla got up and went to the bathroom, washed her face, and fixed her hair. 

She checked her phone and found no new messages. Her anxiety started to creep up. 

“Fine… It’s fine.” She glanced out the window, not really sure what she was hoping to see there. Perhaps some sort of giant banner that told her things were fine. 

When her stomach growled at her, she went to the kitchen and started to dig through the fridge. It was the biggest sign of more than one person living there. Clothes and personal items could be tucked away, but a shelf of different types of tofu and fake meat, a shelf of steaks, and a shelf of vegetables was pretty telling. 

She was about to check an old takeout box to see if it was anything still edible when the front door opened. 

She spun around, nervously waiting to see who would walk in. 

Somewhere in the back of her mind she wondered who she was hoping to see. Was she supposed to play favorites? Was she supposed to want one over the other? Would they somehow know? Would it be wrong of her to declare them equally loved which might deny them their own personhood? 

More complications. 

Steven looked up at her, looking vaguely confused as he glanced around then looked back at her. “Heya, love.” He waved then looked down at the bag in his hands. “Uh… I’m going to level with you, I have no idea what time it is. We just spent the last who knows how long out in a car arguing. Jake has a car apparently. I think it has to do with his job. There’s…” 

He stopped and gave an annoyed look to the side. “Jake doesn’t want me to talk about his car.” 

“Oh.” Layla had no idea what to say to any of that. “You were arguing again?” She had a sinking feeling she knew what it was about. 

“Yeah.” Steven set the bag down and moved to feed the fish. “All three of us, actually. Usually it’s just Marc and Jake but I was tired and not feeling like having any of it.” 

“Did you guys resolve it?” She hated feeling like this. Like they had just started to get their lives together and she had come in and turned it all upside down again. 

“Well, no. Not really.” Steven shot another annoyed look to the side. His eyes flicked down and then back up. “They are actually still going at it. It’s really annoying. Kind of hard to focus. Them yammering on like this. Marc doesn’t want me to talk about it. I’ve been trying to block them out but Marc wants front and… Wow, that was rude. Well now I’m not giving you anything. You can both just sit there and have at it. I don’t care! I’ll hold front all day!” 

“I’m sorry.” Layla looked down, self consciously hugging herself. “I didn’t mean to upset everyone. And for last night. I’m so sorry, Steven.” 

Steven looked at her for a moment, confusion making his brows furrow. “Oh. No, Layla. You have nothing to be sorry about! I mean, I wasn’t thinking. I didn’t think about how this must be for you. I just… Well I assumed things and it was all before I even understood what was going on. What Marc and I were. I just thought that… Well it’s silly and doesn’t matter what I thought. I should have talked it over with you before I just jumped in and thought it would be easy.” 

Layla looked up at him. Of course he would assume he was in the wrong. He was too kind to think anything else. Too kind to see when he was wronged. 

“Steven, when I met you I thought you were Marc. Marc playing some kind of game to make me leave. Maybe Marc with amnesia or something. Something that was easier to explain than the truth.” She looked down. “Of course I don’t now. I know you aren’t Marc. You are Steven Grant and you are…” 

Her mind rushed over everything Steven was. Perfect, sunshine, adorable, a hero, kind, honest, handsome, smart, patient…. 

“You are you.” She smiled slightly. “But I worry that when I tell you that I love you, that… How is it different from Marc? I don’t love you more or less but how can I love you both the same and still say you have your own parts?” 

Steven nodded. “Is that why you are so standoffish?” 

“It’s weird to love two people. To be allowed to love two people. To care so much for two people and worry that I’m being unfair.” She sighed. “I don’t want to be unfair. I don’t want to always wonder if I’m telling Marc how much I adore and love him that you’re feeling left out. That if I’m telling you how wonderful you are that Marc isn’t in there thinking he isn’t worthy of my love.” 

Steven opened his mouth then glanced to the side and frowned. “No, she has a point, Marc. You aren’t exactly known for your self confidence.” 

Layla frowned. “If we are going to be open and do this, I don’t want Marc to feel like any less. I don’t want him to get any funny ideas about disappearing again and leaving me with just Steven.” 

Steven nodded. “Marc is going to work on it. I promise never to get jealous of Marc. If either of us is starting to feel hurt, we’re going to talk it over. Even if I have to drag Marc out and fight it out of him.” 

Layla smiled at that. If anyone was going to force Marc to face his feelings, it was Steven. “Thank you.” She ran over and hugged him tightly. “This is just relationship stuff. There are other things we need to talk about.” 

Steven blushed deeply. “Like…being closer?” 

“Very close.” She nuzzled his neck and laughed. “Sorry.” 

He looked at her with bright red cheeks and a hopeful smile. “Do you think that maybe… I could be close to you?” 

She thought about it, looking down at his hands in hers. Could she be with Steven and not constantly compare how he did things to how Marc did it? Could she look past the body and see the mind behind it? 

“I think we need to set some more ground rules first… I don’t want to make anyone uncomfortable or have any hurt feelings… And I especially don’t want to do anything that I do with Marc and find out that you hate it… And then… There’s Jake.” She looked away. 

Steven thought about it for a moment, his fingers slowly curling around hers and stroking up and down along the knuckles like he would do with his sleeves. She loved the feel of it. Of feeling him fidget and release his anxiety through her as if she could take it away for him. 

At last he nodded and moved to sit down. “I don’t know what I like. I’m an open book. Blank slate. I’m pretty sure that anything you do I’ll love, though.” 

She blushed and sat next to him. “Don’t say that. I’m sure I could do things that you would hate.” She thought back to the first week she had spent with Marc after they had been married. “And some things that maybe I don’t feel comfortable doing with you…” 

Steven gave her a curious look. “Marc says… You were pretty wild. He won’t elaborate but he says that if you ever offer to try yoga in bed again that I’m supposed to tell you no.” 

It was her turn to feel her cheeks heat up. “Yeah… I had some not great ideas when I was younger. We…We won't be trying those again.” 

As confused as Steven looked, he simply nodded in agreement. “Marc and I seem to be on the same page. And we all promise to not spy. If you are with him then I will give you as much space as I can.” 

“I don’t know how much control you have with switching…” She hesitated, feeling foolish for asking. “What if… What if I want time with Marc and…” 

“Yeah.” Steven winced. “We’re… Marc, Jake, and I, that is… We’re going to have to talk about this. I think the biggest thing is being incredibly honest. If one of us pops out and it’s not an appropriate time we need to just… Stop.” 

She nodded. “I agree. No switching without telling me. I don’t want to… I want to know who I’m with at all times when it comes to that. If I’m ever not sure, I want to be able to ask without hurting feelings. I’m going to be… I’m going to be super unsure of things for a while. I might need reassurances until things are more solid.” 

Steven nodded and took her hands again, holding them tightly. “Of course! I know this is really weird. We’ll figure it out as we go. Slowly.” 

“Not too slowly, I hope.” She kissed his knuckles gently. “Is Jake okay with this?” 

Steven frowned and looked away. His frown deepened. There was a moment when his face pulled and someone else slipped in for a second then Steven was back. 

“He says that he will let you know if he is ever present. I’m paraphrasing here. Especially he will let you know if…Marc or I are…Making love to you and he happens to be nearby. He will let it be known. Yeah. He’s fine.” Steven winced. 

“He doesn’t like me, does he?” She tried not to look and feel as hurt as she was. “It’s his right not to like me. Just because you two do doesn’t mean he has to. It's as simple as that.” 

Steven sighed. “He… He’s complicated. I think he needs more time.” 

She nodded. “I can give him that. He’s kind of stuck having to be around me. I feel a little bad for him. He can’t just leave if I upset him.” 

“He can.” Steven frowned. “Actually. It’s part of what we were arguing about out there. He’s taking his job very seriously.” 

“His job?” She gave him a curious look. 

“His role in the system.” Steven stroked her hand lightly. “As protector. He can sort of push us out of the way any time he wants. If we fight, it just makes things harder and he still wins. If he’s that upset, he can just get up and walk us out of here.” 

That sent an unpleasant jolt through her system. “I didn’t know that… Does he really have that much say in things?” 

“We’re trying to figure that one out. He and Marc keep getting into arguments. Marc doesn’t like to be told what to do and Jake… Jake doesn’t like being ignored.” Steven shrugged. “They both mean well.” 

A thought crossed her mind and she didn’t much care for it. “How long can either of you hold the driver’s seat?” She thought back to all the times she had seen them switch so smoothly. Then she thought about how Marc had been in control for most of the years she had known him. 

A stab of fear went through her. What if Jake decided he really didn’t like her? What if he took front and held it every time she was there? What if he didn’t give it back for years? How much control did Jake have? 

Steven shrugged. “Well, we’re all aware of each other now. The barrier is a bit down now. Least between Marc and I, there’s no wall usually. Marc and Jake have a bit of a wall. I can kind of see what Jake’s doing now. I don’t think he really likes that, but I’m not just here for Marc. He’s got to accept that I’m here for us all.” 

Steven gave a sneaky grin. “I think I can kick Jake out of place if I practice enough. He gets stressed out too.” He blinked and looked up. “Yeah, he doesn’t like that. He really wants me to stop talking to you about this.” 

She relaxed. Steven would stop it. Steven would make sure that things evened out. She had to trust in him to take care of things. 

“Okay. Maybe enough of me being nosy for today. I don’t want to start another fight.” She kissed his cheek. 

Steven beamed at her. “I’m kinda glad we’re talking. I feel like I’m starting to understand how things work better explaining it to you. Gets kind of weird when it’s all up in my head. Talking in there is odd.” 

“You can talk to me about anything. I like that you are helping me to understand. I don’t want to sit here in my own head either, you know.” Layla moved to lean into him. 

He blushed and pulled her close. “I still don’t know what time it is, but I’m really glad you’re here. Let’s have some breakfast and go out. I’d love a cup of coffee and Marc wants to take you to this place down the street that he says you’ll like.” 

How easy it was to slip into wife and girlfriend mode. How domestic it was and so normal to have breakfast with her husband and walk down the street hand in hand with her boyfriend. It was easy enough to forget that no one else knew that they were different people. 

Easy enough to forget the other that sat in the backseat, alone and silent. 

When the day was over, she kissed her husband goodnight and returned to her own place. Laying back, she wondered when she’d feel comfortable sleeping in bed next to him again. When she’d feel comfortable enough to at last pull Steven close and let him figure out just what it meant to him to be ‘closer’. 

She stared out the window, wondering if Jake was out there doing his mysterious work at night. 

She sighed and picked up her phone. Hesitating only for a moment, she sent a text. 

“I hope you are keeping warm out there. It’s getting pretty cold.”

She waited. After ten minutes she felt silly and supposed that maybe they really were in bed resting for a change. 

She was about to roll over and get some sleep herself when the buzz of her phone startled her. 

“I have a jacket.” 

Layla stared at the message. She gave it a minute to respond. She didn’t want to look as desperate as she felt. 

“Please remember to get some sleep. You can’t live off of coffee alone.”

This time the phone buzzed after only a few seconds. 

“I will sleep soon. Goodnight, Hermosa.” 

She smiled. “Goodnight, Jake.”  

[makima-s-most-smile]

Yep.

This and in that specific context I wouldn't say the failing communication on No Man's land/Gunsmoke is anyone's fault, which makes the whole situation so sad. Humans are dependent on words or sign, the dependent plants cannot do that. Humanity before the great fall also hadn't that understanding and what happened with Tessla is... humans denying personhood to someone and treating them like things to dissect for science... That is something that bears no excuse. We get through Chronica's and Domina's talk that humanity clashed with plants after the Great fall and knive's ascend more than once until they found a way to communicate with each other and successfully work together, e.g. Chronica and Domina.

We as readers do not know how things would have progressed at S.E.E.D. because the fall cost humanity the knowledge that plants are more than goldfishes, but beings with a higher form of sentience and feelings (and that there are independent ones) and pushed it into survival mode. From then on plants are a necessity for bare survival and if it is about your own survival (humanities) or the survival of another species, well... survival mode, like I said. We also know that a massive amount of tech and knowledge was lost with the Great Fall, in human's with knowledge and/or access to data, available tech, but also in like books or on computers. So it ends with plants being treated as things, because humanity does not know about their sentience and their ability to understand humans and does it utmost to prevail and survive just another 10-20 years and then another and then another, always waiting for help. And humanity has no real way to get that knowledge, except...

Here's were Vash and Knives come in, the independent plants. And here is were another big conflict pops up. Knives is a big L for communication and I cannot fault him. Knives only interests are the safety of all plants, including but not only Vash. But that puts Vash in a difficult spot. Team Plants or Team Human? He surely has tried to help with communication between the teams, but he cannot a) spit out that he is a planty boy because -> Tessla and b) who would take him seriously, he is a wiggly rando without any credibilities. One of Vash' core rules is to help humanity survive, because of Rem. And humanity needs his sisters right now to survive. And they get overworked and mistreated, not every sister, but many do. And he is the one person who could help with communication and everything, but no one takes him serious. After the fall humanity quickly dissolved into a dog eat dog world. Vash is Team Human, even at his sisters demise, and that would shake anyone to their core. Humanity doesn't show itself from their best side on No Man's Land, everything but that.

But even on Team Human, Vash is at a no win situation. He can barely scrape by himself, but then again there is this responsibility on him to find a solution for the plant/humanity-friendship course. Just because Vash is highfunctioning for a plant in human society does not mean he has the ability to support everyone and this scene could show his helplessness and frustration towards the big question. This whole problem could be so easily solved if his sister could talk, but she can't and that stings. Because even though Vash needs to help her in the end, Vash is completely isolated from both groups in that moment. Vash, in the end, is lonely.

It puts into perspective how othered Vash is towards both species. He is a plant, older than any human on the planet, able to regenerate from griveous wounds, stronger than many men, a great aim and having access to so much of the knowledge that was lost in the Great Fall. Humans envy him for it. He has the total and free ability to move where he wants, he has full (kinda... looking at what Knives did) autonomy over his body, his mind and his abilities and is able to connect to other living beings easily with a smile. Many of his sisters cannot even dream of that. They only have their hive consciousness and every one of them is trapped in a jar.

But he is constantly on the run, nearly noone listens to him, while he has connections and friends, they die so easily or he slips out of their live again, most people hate him because of the rumours, his aim is something he worked for and trains for daily and his autonomy is fickle, because Knives is always there ready to grab it from him like we saw in the fifth moon incident, he has no family to connect to, his plantness is foreign to him and he has no control over it or his body in regards to it, and then there ist just the whole of humanity (and plants) that he needs to take care of with noone to really take care of him.

The person Vash connected most to was Rem. She is the reason why he fights to hard for humanity. She is the human he had the most constant contact to, too. She is the reason why he identifies so much with humanity. But Vash never connects. We read how he visits Home and knows everyone's name. I am sure Vash also knows which colour they like and what food they prefer (that is hc territory), but that is not connection. That is not a relationship. That is someone artificially trying to connect to people. Brad said that the last time he saw Vash was when he was like 12 years old and Vash didn't change at all in 6 years. Vash is absent for most of their lives, just popping in here and there for a short time. Life is too hard and dangerous for them on No Man's Land to run after Vash and making him stay. They cannot make him stay. And the other humans run him out of their cities, cursing his name for daring to exist.

With Wolfwood especially, but Meryl and Milly as the first outliers. Wolfwood ran after him more than once and even through bullet hail. Wolfwood listened for the most part and tried to abide his rules of no killing, if possible, even if Vash had to remind him every fight. Merryl and Milly chose to leave their cushy jobs again to be with Vash. When Vash leaves, they show grief about it and tell him that, too! They connect to him, but that also brings their fair share of problems with it. And pain *looks at Wolfy* so much pain. qq

For his sisters, Vash is a caretaker/translator, for humanity, Vash is a visiting alien. For Knives he may even be an enabler of the abuse their sisters live through. But for everyone he has a role. And I don't know what that spells for Vash' identity as a person. It definitely reeks of guilt and shame and helplessness. It also reeks of him being not seen as a person by others, but as that role.

Then there is him being a plant. He uses his connection with his sisters to put a plaster on a bleeding wound between the species, but he hides himself being a plant so carefully. I'd even say he completely denies it in his actions and (HC-territory again) I assume that this is one of the reasons why he is unable to control and access his powers and why cuts the memory of July from his... uh... memory. I don't think he hates that he is a plant, he is very aware that he is not human, but I do think looking closer into it would unravel a massive amount of hurt in him. He didn't only endure physical pain, but also constant rejection by humanity, starting with Tesla and from then on it got worse. He still tries to connect to humans, but does that in a robotic way like if he knows enough about his target they will like him. Or in a scared way that assumes a rejection, but since he has proof that he tried, e.g. knowing all names and faces, it is not his fault. But at the same time he fails at one of the important things about human relationships: Being there. Maybe because he has noone to be there for him like he'd be or he'd need them to be. Or maybe because the last person who was there for him left him to rescue humanity.

This has always stuck in my brain because it's the first time we see Vash talk about a plant as a person, referring to the plant as a girl instead of "it" like the crew and assigning morality/emotions to her... and it's so interesting me that he's shittalking her as selfish. Whenever Knives talks about plants, he's seeing them as weak and defenseless and unable to protect themselves from humans; a lot of other talk/imagery around the plants in the manga centers on them as angelic, giving, kind. Vash is the only one who ever talks about them expressing things like fear, confusion, anger, and selfishness, which feels a lot more like recognizing personhood in them than reducing them to victims or angels.

IDK I think it ties into my general frustration when Vash gets flattened to being only ever nice, patient, or worst of all, naive. As if he's kind because he can't help it or doesn't know better, not on purpose. He's frustrated with his "sister"'s behaviour and how many lives it's threatening, and he also sees her as a person whose life an personhood are equal to theirs and wants them all to be okay. He sees the negative aspects of others, is fully aware of the consequences of his actions and the risks, and he cares despite, even so, regardless.

(Also seen in another light it's just funny. Like ugh I just wanted to enjoy my trip and then my bratty sister threw a tantrum and nearly blew us all up just because a JJBA villain attacked)

[jennycalendar]

i dont wanna DENY the genuine romantic connection btwn buffy and angel bc it was there but imo their relationship was much more abt the way both of them (buffy esp) are running from destinies they never chose that have and will continue to harm them and the general futility of that but jenny and Giles are like. theyve done that, they've BEEN there already theyve given up that fight and have told themselves they're at peace with it and THEN they meet this other person that is so fundamentally different but also Understands and theres this meta layer of tragedy in that the show never cares about Any Of This and it's just haha funny grownup romance and not like. a mirror of one of buffy's primary conflicts early in the show

anon you fucking get it. exactly. the thing that always Gets Me about jenny and giles and in my mind makes them even MORE tragically romantic is that they are in a story that does not give a shit about them as people. they are given responsibilities that remove personhood AND their place in the ACTUAL NARRATIVE does not present them as a romance worth examination or consideration. so not only are they these pointless side characters in their own lives, they are a pointless b-plot romance IN THE ACTUAL SHOW THAT THEY ARE IN. and yet giles will burn down the world for jenny -- does it twice, in canon! -- and jenny will go against everything she has been taught to believe in order to redeem herself to giles. they are so fundamentally changed by each other and this is not what we are supposed to look at or care about for anything more than a handful of seconds.

how can one NOT go crazy about that? like, even the existing narrative is saying "giles and jenny are nothing" and every second that giles and jenny spend together is clearly the happiest that the both of them ever are. EVER. giles spends the literal rest of the show miserable and adrift, and the closest thing he has to a personal/romantic relationship (outside of an accidentally magical induced romantic encounter) is a pre-existing connection with someone who knew him before sunnydale & who leaves him at the exact same crossroads that jenny chose to stay with him. (more on this -- i feel like olivia's experience in hush directly parallels jenny's experience in the dark age, and as such olivia choosing to leave when jenny eventually changes her mind -- AND giles's reaction to both of these women leaving him, at least initially on jenny's part -- says something really clear about how deep the relationship ran for both of them.)

but i absolutely agree with you that -- i have always kind of seen jenny and giles as a sort of grown-up version of buffy and angel's relationship, where the two of them have had a lot more time to be lonely and to reconcile themselves to the fact that they may end up being lonely forever, and as such there is just this giddy, incandescent joy in jenny and giles's relationship that doesn't really exist with buffy and angel. not that buffy and angel aren't joyful! just that the context is so fucking different: jenny and giles GAVE UP. they were NOT EXPECTING THIS. they had spent their entire lives resigned to never being seen or understood, and then there is this person who absolutely adores that they are mean and bitter and fighty and doesn't flinch away from the scary parts of the supernatural. this absolutely impossible person who understands them without them having to unveil themselves, which at this point in both of their lives has genuinely become impossible. giles and jenny do not know how to be vulnerable with each other, but because they are both in such similar positions, they don't actually need to unpack all of their baggage in order to know how to treat each other. it's insane.

[ot3]

Wait back up explain how yjk is a trans woman. This isn’t a hostile ask I’m actually very excited about your take

I am happy to explain my take. here’s how trans woman yoo jonghyuk can still win. orv spoilers below, obviously, mostly centered around the murim arc but up through the end of the epilogues as well. 

okay normally in terms of making this kind of post i’d go pull quotes directly from the text and i honestly really want to but i’m supposed to be catching up on homework today and can’t justify taking the time. anyway. i’m just gonna they/them yjh here because i’m never sure what pronouns to use when talking about a character who i think Should Come Out in the Future. 

first things first, everything about being a transcender is very gendery. prominent transcenders in ORV are

- kyrgios, an incredibly beautiful man who is self conscious of his small stature

- breaking the sky sword saint namgung minyoung, who is a woman of an unusually large stature, thought by some to be monstrous, who teaches a discipline of martial arts exclusively for women. 

- jang hayoung, a trans girl, who is the king of transcenders

- yoo jonghyuk. 

when they talk about transcendence in orv there are two very specific things that come up repeatedly: 1. being able to overcome the natural limitations of the body and 2. defying the structure opposed onto them by the star stream system. Specifically an interesting note about that last bit is that there’s this whole thing about how transcendence can only exist because the star stream exist - it exclusively exists in opposition to the rigorous hierarchy of the star stream, which is the dominant social narrative, and has no meaning or power on it’s own.

In a text like orv’s, i don’t think it’s too much of a stretch to see ‘characters who are social outcasts attempt to gain power by forging a sense of self outside of the dominant order and overcoming the limitations of their physical body’ and read it as a metaphor for being transgender. but then, on top of that, there’s all the stuff with the punisher

everything that’s in orv is there for a reason. there is an insanely little amount of wasted space in this novel. despite how much shit that happens it’s an incredibly tight narrative. SO WHY DO WE INTRODUCE THE CONCEPT THAT YOO JONGHYUK IS STRONGEST WHEN TRANSFORMED INTO A WOMAN? obviously it’s just incredibly fun hijinks in and of itself to have yoo jonghyuk’s gender get transed, but literally all of this begs the question of “why write it so that yoo jonghyuk’s primary martial art form is something that’s supposed to only be learned by women.” 

the narrative doesn’t ever really address the in-universe reasoning behind why they can actually learn it. kim dokja gives us what boils down to ‘he manage to overcome that’ without no real elaboration. jang hayoung learns breaking the sky swordsmanship as well. whatever gender-based qualification is used to allow people to learn the skill, it’s not a biological gender-essentialist one.

the punisher introduction pays off when YJH uses that appearance to win the martial arts festival, but to me that mechanical, narratively-oriented reason for its inclusion doesn’t justify it’s presence in the story in and of itself. 

What really stuck out to me on the read through later was this line, from the demon king selection arc, when yjh takes the punisher’s form to combat the constellations after kim dokja has passed out. 

A dazzling aura burst from Yoo Jonghyuk’s body. Soft hair poured down like a waterfall while his large size became a smaller and sleeker body. He took the form that allowed him to practice the ultimate Breaking the Sky Swordsmanship. Yoo Sangah stared at the scene from behind and couldn’t help opening her mouth. “…Yoo Jonghyuk-ssi?” 

 Yoo Jonghyuk slowly turned back, his long hair cut off by the Black Demon Sword. The ines of the face had changed but it was clearly Yoo Jonghyuk. No, it was even more than before. 

basically, after appearing to their companions as a woman, the narrative tells us yoo jonghyuk looks more like yoo jonghyuk than before. 

this reading also makes even more sense when you interpret it through the lens of how power hierarchy actually works in orv’s narrative. incarnation, constellation, and transcenders alike all gain their truest power from their stories. the Story of yoo jonghyuk as a woman is one that is, quite literally, empowering. 

although we know it’s not actually true, yjh themself and kdj’s understanding and interpretation of yjh, present yjh as a person whose only goal in life is to, by any means including the sacrificing of countless human lives, some of whom he is very personally close to, gain the power to overcome the star stream. but here we have a significant power boost yjh seems to actively avoid taking advantage of. which really suggests there’s some deeper emotional issues at play here.

which brings me to my last point: i think it would just be a very fitting end for the character.

We never see yjh’s ◼️◼️ in canon. Yjh’s entire arc is about attempting to claim agency and personhood after that has been denied to them just by virtue of his very existence, and we don’t ever see this come to completion. Which i love, don’t get me wrong. I think yjh’s  ◼️◼️ is something that could never be in canon, because it’d have to be something that happened to them outside of the context of the story, for meta reasons. but that’s an entirely other discussion. Anyway. 

but point being this means that yjh’s sense of self is, at canon’s end, unresolved. Over the course of the epilogues we see yjh become, for the first time, a reader, and i think this is really critical. it’s kim dokja’s status as a ‘reader’ that allows him to have the greatest influence on the story. back before kim dokja seems to come to grips with jang hayoung’s gender identity, what people keep telling him is that there is ‘more than one interpretation of a story’. on a physical level, constellations and high level incarnations are composed of their stories. in orv canon the Self and the Story are for all intents and purposes, synonymous. hence the entire ending.

yjh’s story has been told and read by quite literally anyone but themself up to this point. but now, for the first time, yjh has both the space and means to self-reflect. coming out as a trans woman would be a radical reclamation of his own story, both re-reading their past and re-writing their future, and i think it’s a reading the text explicitly goes out of its way to give some support to. 

also. not to mention. yjh as a woman is canonically the hottest character in all of orv. just SO sexy, guys. so extremely sexy.