#the only explanation for his guilt in this case is that he was aware that what he was doing was not purposely for a good cause either

[aroacettorney]

ludger cherish in his past life was obviously a villain/anti-villain lover and nuance understander, considering the IDs of most of his pseudonyms were either a serial killer, an ethical gentleman thief, a genius mastermind with a good public reputation, or a criminal turned detective. so it would be really ironic if he truly believes that only the outcomes matter regardless of the good intentions or that there is no redemption path for criminals of any kind since that philosophy is much closer to copaganda than caseys belief in values of justice.

[alsofoundinpeas]

Beyond the Window

Summary: With her package plan a success, the only thing standing between Y/N and Spencer now was his job. But as soon as he returned home, nothing would hold them back from finally acting on their feelings—this time, with no windows in the way. (Part One)

CONTENT WARNINGS: 18+ MDNI!! This fic is intended for adult audiences. Some might consider this dubcon (talk of Spencer watching reader through her window but reader had wanted him to) so please be aware of that! Fingering (f!receiving), oral (both m and f receiving), unprotected P in V sex (birth control mentioned), overstimulation/multiple orgasms (both m and f receiving), dry humping (if you squint), creampie (fuck I hate typing that), minor corruption kink, heavy praise, Virgin!Spencer, Sub!Spencer (he is pathetic and LOUD in this FYI), Soft Dom!reader, Perv!Spencer and Perv!Reader (they're back at it again LMFAO). Both fluffy and smutty. They match each other’s freak your honor!!

Pairing: Spencer Reid x fem!reader/afab!reader

A/N: Anddd done! This was, to date, the filthiest thing I've written so I'm nervous but I also loved writing it LMAO. I hope you guys enjoy part two as much as I enjoyed writing it :') I'll be putting out more sub!Spence in the future, but for now I hope you guys like this!! As always, please let me know what you guys think and if you do enjoy it then please like, reblog, and share it with your friends. <3 Thank you and I love you all!! :)

Spencer was certain the universe was playing a cruel, twisted prank on him.

It was the only explanation for being called into work early on a Sunday morning when he was supposed to be off. The night before, he’d gone to bed without replying to Y/N, hoping to come up with the perfect witty, flirty response the next day—when his brain wasn't a pile of mush. As he hurried to pack a go-bag and get dressed, Spencer cursed under his breath for waiting. Now, he’d have to send a hasty, jumbled apology and hope that Y/N would still want him to come over when he got back.

While Spencer drove—a task he loathed but had no choice in, given the lack of time for the metro—Penelope briefed him on the case details. The team was being sent to Wyoming to assist with a rapidly escalating unsub, which explained the need to get there quickly. Spencer couldn’t help but feel a twinge of guilt as Penelope spoke. Even with the case's urgency, his mind kept returning to Y/N.

“Reid?” Penelope sighed, then tried again. “Hello? Earth to Reid?!”

Spencer snapped back to reality, his face flushing as he cleared his throat. “Sorry, I got distracted. What was the last part again?”

Penelope's laughter echoed through the phone. “What’s keeping your mind so busy? Besides all your usual genius stuff, that is."

Spencer groaned, knowing that the blonde wouldn’t stop pressing until she got an answer. With a heavy sigh, he reluctantly began to explain.

"There’s this girl who lives across from me, and I’ve had a crush on her for a while… We’d run into each other a few times at the library and the coffee shop near my place, but recently, a package of hers ended up at my door. I took it to her yesterday morning, and we ended up hanging out—" He paused, swallowing hard as his mind drifted to what had happened that night, but he quickly pushed the thought aside. "Anyway, she texted me to come over again, but then I got called in for the case. So, yeah, she’s just been on my mind."

Spencer winced as a loud squeal erupted from the phone, quickly followed by the sound of enthusiastic clapping.

“Spencer! That’s adorable! What’s her name?”

“Nope. Not a chance. I know you’ll look her up and start stalking her!” Spencer protested as he pulled into the parking garage. “Look, I just got here, so I’ll see you when we get back. Please keep this between us for now, alright? I don’t need everyone hounding me about it while we have a case to focus on.”

Penelope groaned dramatically but gave in, sighing in playful annoyance. “Ugh, fine, lover boy. You just ruined all my fun,” she grumbled. “Be safe, my sweet angel, and tell Derek to call me when you guys land!”

Spencer finished the call and hung up, swiftly typing out a message to send to Y/N before he had to go in. His thumbs clumsily pressed the buttons as he hurried, letting out an annoyed sigh as he fumbled with his flip-phone. He’d never been a fan of modern technology, but if getting a new phone meant it would be easier to talk to her, he’d consider it.

Good morning! I hope you slept well. Apologies for the late response. I’d love to come over, but unfortunately, I’ve been called in for a case. Would you still like me to come by once I get back?

Spencer gave a nod to himself, hit send, then gathered his things and stepped out of the car.

Y/N paused when she heard her phone ding, toothbrush still in her mouth. She quickly finished brushing, swishing mouthwash as she walked to her room to grab her phone. Returning to the bathroom, she spat out the mouthwash before finally glancing at the waiting text.

A small giggle fell from her lips as she read Spencer’s message, leaning back against the sink as she responded.

Of course, Spencer. Only if you want to :) xoxo

He texted like an old man (which wasn't surprising, considering his wardrobe). She thought it was charming. She placed her phone on the bathroom counter and stepped toward the shower to start the water, a smile still playing on her lips from his message.

A content sigh fell from her lips once she stepped into the hot stream of water, letting the water relax her tight muscles.

As her soapy hands began to wander her body, her mind wandered back to Spencer and just how deliciously pathetic he’d looked stroking himself to the sight of her. Honestly, Y/N had worried she’d scared the poor guy with her message after he’d watched her the night before, so seeing his text was a relief. Now, she just had to wait for him to return from his case—and then he’d finally be all hers.

The week crawled by, each day stretching on painfully, leaving both of them restless and longing for each other's company.

Each night when Y/N came home, she’d glance out of her curtains, hoping to see that Spencer had returned, only to let out a quiet sigh when she found he hadn’t. She couldn’t remember ever being this excited to see someone before. Something about Spencer had her completely hooked—not just his looks, but the man behind them. After spending time with him, she was eager to uncover more about the sweet, brilliant person who lived across from her.

Another four days went by before the text she’d been waiting for finally came through.

Hey pretty girl, we just landed so I’ll be home in about an hour. Are you up for some company?

Y/N arched a brow as she read the message, re-reading it a few times to make sure she wasn’t hallucinating. That didn’t sound like Spencer at all… but she was too eager for him to come over to worry about it now. She’d figure out who actually sent it when he arrived.

With a small grin, Y/N typed her reply, then set her phone down to get ready and tidy up her apartment.

“Morgan! Come on! Are you serious?” Spencer griped, swatting at the man in an attempt to grab his phone back. “What did you say to her?”

Penelope had (accidentally) let it slip to Morgan that Spencer was, in her words, "dating but not dating this super cute girl who lives across from him." Naturally, she’d ignored his requests for privacy, tracked down the tenant list for Y/N’s building, and found her online after figuring out she was the one. So, when Morgan glanced over Spencer's shoulder and saw the carefully composed message he’d written, he snatched the phone and sent something entirely different.

“Relax, kid! I’m just helping you out. You’re going to scare her off if you keep talking to her like a geezer,” Morgan chuckled, tossing him back his phone before standing from his seat and stretching. “You’re welcome, by the way.”

Spencer sighed, shaking his head in frustration before unlocking his phone to check the message. He cringed at what Morgan had sent, but then his heart skipped a beat as he read Y/N’s reply.

Come over whenever you’re ready, pretty boy. I can’t wait to see you. :)

Spencer’s face flushed as he brushed off the curious looks from the team, eager to get off the jet and head home to drop his stuff off—then straight to Y/N’s. A mix of nervousness and excitement churned inside him, his hands trembling as he started the drive home. It felt surreal to him, knowing not only that she was excited to see him, but that she wanted him just as much as he wanted her.

A firm knock at the door pulled Y/N’s attention from the couch, a bright smile spreading across her face as she jumped up to answer it. "Coming!" she called, quickly unlocking the door. When she opened it, Spencer stood there, looking a bit nervous and holding a bag of takeout from her favorite diner.

"Oh, Spencer," she murmured, her gaze softening as she noticed the bag. "You’re so sweet! You didn’t have to get dinner—I was planning to order something when you got here." She stepped aside to let him in, closing the door behind him and taking the bag from his hand so he could slip off his coat.

Spencer waved it off with a sheepish grin as he followed her into the kitchen. "I wanted to," he said. "I noticed you ordered from them a lot and thought it would be a nice surprise." His eyes widened in panic. "Not that I’ve been, like, stalking you or anything! And, um, I'm sorry if I didn’t pick the right thing. I can run back and grab something else—"

“Spencer.”

Y/N sat down the plates she'd gotten out for them and silenced his nervous rambling by gently cupping his cheeks. Spencer froze mid-sentence, his mouth slightly open as he looked down at her. She smiled up at him, softly stroking her thumb along his cheekbone.

“You did perfect, sweetheart,” she reassured him, her gaze flicking to his lips for a moment before meeting his eyes again. “It was so thoughtful of you to pick up dinner. I'm sure I'll enjoy whatever you ordered. Thank you.”

Spencer swallowed, his heart pounding at the feel of her hands on his face. He drew in a deep breath, steadying himself before he whispered, “Of course.”

Y/N smiled, brushing her hand over his cheek one last time before turning back to plate the food, which looked and smelled delicious. Once she finished, she headed to the fridge, glancing back at Spencer. "Wine, water, or soda?"

"Water, please. Thank you."

Nodding, Y/N poured herself a glass of wine and then filled one with water for him. They walked into the living room, both of them buzzing with anticipation for what was to come later. They sat side by side, enjoying the warmth that came from being pressed together as they began to eat.

"So," Y/N started, laughing softly before continuing. "Who texted me from your phone earlier today? Unless the grandfather ghost inhabiting your body decided to take a rain check."

Spencer groaned in embarrassment, chuckling awkwardly as he glanced at her. "Sorry about that… that was my co-worker, Derek. And best friend too. He accused me of 'talking to you like a geezer' and decided to try and do better himself."

Y/N laughed even harder, putting her fork down to take a sip of her wine before replying. "I knew it wasn’t you!" she said with a triumphant grin, then paused, a new realization dawning on her. "You talk about me to your team?"

Spencer hesitated, finishing his bite slowly before taking a drink and nodding. "Sort of… I told Penelope about you, and then she mentioned it to Derek. I’m sorry—i-is that okay?" His fingers pushed his glasses up, a nervous habit of his.

It was more than okay. A giddy feeling rushed through her at the idea of him talking about her to his co-workers, recalling how he'd mentioned during their first hangout how much he valued them. She nodded, nudging him with her shoulder gently.

“You apologize too much, Spence. It’s totally fine. If anything, I’m flattered,” she admitted with a grin.

It didn’t take long for them to finish eating. Once the plates were cleared and placed in the sink, Y/N turned to Spencer, a small smirk playing on her lips. Spencer swallowed, leaning back against the counter, his eyes locked on her with a mix of curiosity as she began to speak.

"Do you watch every girl you're interested in through their window? Or am I just special?"

Her tone was playful, not angry or accusatory, but Spencer still tensed, stumbling over his words as he tried to explain himself.

"I swear I didn’t mean to come off as creepy or anything," Spencer stammered. "It’s just… from the moment I met you in the library, you were so captivating. And when I found out you lived across from me, I couldn’t help myself—"

Y/N's gaze softened as she realized just how nervous he actually was, and she took a step forward, shushing him with a finger to his lips.

"Spence, hey. Look at me, sweetheart,” she murmured, her arms loosely wrapping around his neck. She waited until their eyes met, then continued, her fingers gently twisting the hair at the nape of his neck. “I was just teasing. I wanted you to watch. That’s why I left my curtains open.”

Spencer’s eyes widened at her admission, a shaky sigh escaping his lips as he recalled every time she’d left her curtains open. All this time, she had wanted him to watch. The realization sent a strange warmth through him, and he carefully placed his hands on her waist.

“So, was the package at my door part of your plan too?” he breathed, his expression a blend of lust and adoration as he looked down at her.

Y/N's answer came in the form of a nod and a smug grin. Spencer chuckled, his nerves easing the longer he held her in his arms.

"I didn’t think you’d ever make a move, so I decided to take matters into my own hands," she said softly, still grinning as she met his gaze, mirroring the admiration in his eyes.

Spencer wrapped his arms around her, drawing her closer. “Is it wrong to say I’m glad you did?” he murmured, his hands gently caressing her lower back through her shirt. “You’re just… perfect. I was afraid you wouldn’t even give me the time of day if I’d tried to.”

Y/N’s mouth fell open in surprise, her brows furrowing as she tilted her head. “Are you serious?” she asked incredulously, letting her hands slide to rest on his shoulders as she leaned back in his embrace. “Spencer, I adore you. You could’ve asked me out in the library, right then, after just thirty seconds of knowing each other, and I would’ve said yes without a second thought. You really don’t give yourself enough credit.”

She tilted her head up, brushing her nose against his, continuing before he could speak. "Let me show you just how incredible I think you are. Please?"

Spencer sucked in a sharp breath, his heart racing at her words. It was exactly what he wanted, more than anything. But he hesitated, his mouth working as he fought to find the right words.

"I'm a virgin!" he not-so-eloquently blurted out instead.

Y/N's head jerked back, blinking hard as she processed his words. Had she heard him right?

"Wait... what did you just say?"

Spencer blushed hard, averting his gaze to the ground as he repeated himself.

"I'm a virgin."

It was Y/N’s turn to suck in a sharp breath, the admission arousing her more than she’d care to admit. She rubbed his shoulders gently before using one of her hands to guide his face back to hers, her gaze earnest as she looked at him.

“Honey, we don’t have to do anything you don’t want to. We don’t have to do anything at all—“

Spencer shook his head vigorously at that, a low whine emitting from his throat as he pressed his forehead to hers. “I want to do everything with you. I want to more than anything, I swear! I-I just… I don’t want it to be bad for you,” he whispered, unnecessary shame lacing his words.

“Spencer… sweetheart, it would never be bad for me as long as I’m with you,” Y/N whispered, her voice warm and steady. “I don’t want you to feel pressured, babe. Honestly, we could just curl up on the couch, watch a movie, or talk. I love talking with you, about anything.”

Spencer’s heart swelled at her words. No one had ever told him they truly enjoyed his company before, nor had anyone ever shown such genuine affection or concern for his emotions. It was a feeling he hadn’t known he was missing.

“I’m more than sure, Y/N. Please?” he mumbled, his grip on her hips tightening slightly. “I-I want to make you feel good.”

She paused, her eyes closing as she carefully considered her next move. After a long breath, Y/N gave a small nod, then pulled away from him completely.

“Follow me, then.”

Spencer hurried after her, nearly stumbling over his own feet in his eagerness to keep up. Once they reached her bedroom, Y/N shut the door and turned to face him, leaving him standing in the middle of her dimly lit room. He glanced around, almost in disbelief, as if he couldn’t quite believe he was really here—standing in her room and not caught in some dream.

“Bet it feels different being in here rather than just looking in,” Y/N teased, stepping closer to him.

“Very. I’m still waiting for the cameraman to jump out and tell me it’s all a prank.”

A soft laugh escaped her, and she shook her head with a smirk. “Sorry to disappoint, but that’s not happening. No prank, sweetheart,” she hummed, her eyes catching the way his gaze swept over her, full of unspoken desire.

Y/N smirked as she took another step forward, urging Spencer backward until the backs of his knees hit her mattress. She reached up, pushing down gently on his shoulders until he gingerly sat on the bed, looking up at her with wide eyes as she moved to straddle his lap. Her fingers carded through his hair, tugging gently and eliciting a whimper from him as she cocked her head.

“Quit looking at me like that,” she murmured, scratching her nails gently against his scalp.

A shiver ran down Spencer’s spine, his brows furrowing at her words. He shifted underneath her, resting his shaking hands on her hips. His tongue poked out to wet his lips, and he didn’t miss the way her eyes darkened at the sight.

“Like what?”

“Like you want me to ruin you.”

Y/N’s words lingered in the air, their breaths the only sound breaking the stillness. The tension between them was electric, each waiting for the other to break first. Finally, Spencer did, his voice barely a whisper as he spoke.

“That’s exactly what I want you to do.”

The slight tremble in his voice and the doe-eyed look he sported were all it took for Y/N’s resolve to crumble completely.

With a low groan, her lips crashed onto his. Their mouths melded together, the small whine bubbling in Spencer’s throat encouraging her to kiss him even harder. His hands reached up to cradle her face, matching her intensity as their lips moved together.

It wasn’t what she’d expected at all.

Spencer didn’t kiss her like the shy, hesitant man from earlier. Instead, his kiss was fiery, almost desperate, as though he wanted to drown in her and never resurface. And she found herself wanting exactly the same.

Y/N’s hands wandered from his hair down his chest, letting her fingertips dip beneath the hem of his shirt as their tongues brushed together. Her nails gently dragged along the soft skin there, and she felt his erection twitch from where it was firmly pressed to her core. Spencer whimpered, breaking their kiss with a soft gasp as he looked up at her pleadingly.

“Please,” he panted, his hands reaching for her hips to pull her down into him. Y/N rolled her hips against his, moaning lowly at the friction. She repeated the action once before stopping her movements, climbing off of him despite his protests with one simple command.

"Take off your clothes, Spence."

He complied immediately, scrambling to stand and strip out of his clothes. His fingers fumbled as he worked at his tie, his focus stuck on her as she undressed before him. A frustrated groan left his lips as he finally yanked the tie off, his hands moving too slowly for his own liking.

Y/N arched a brow, chuckling at his irritated noise as she stepped out of her pants. She reached up to stop his hands, beginning to unbutton his shirt herself. "What's got you so worked up, hm? It's not like it's anything you haven't seen before," she purred, sliding her hands under the fabric and slipping it off of him.

The shirt hit the ground with a muted thump, and her eyes roamed over his newly exposed skin hungrily. Spencer whined at her teasing, letting his hands roam up and down her sides as she worked on getting his pants off.

"I could see you like this an infinite amount of times, and it would still take my breath away every time," he murmured, his hands gently squeezing her hips.

A faint pink spread across her cheeks at his words, and she lifted her face to place a soft kiss on his lips, a silent thank you. No one had ever made her feel as treasured as Spencer did. He gazed at her with a devotion that felt almost reverent, as though she were someone to be worshipped—and he longed to be the one to worship her.

Which was highly ironic, considering she was the one sinking to her knees the second his pants pooled around his ankles.

"Wh-what are you doing?" Spencer's voice raised pitch as she steadied herself with her hands on his thighs, looking down at her with wide eyes, pushing his glasses back up his nose as they threatened to slip down from the angle.

"What does it look like I'm doing, sweetheart?" Y/N murmured, leaning forward to press an open-mouthed kiss to his hip. "I want your pretty cock down my throat. You okay with that?"

The sound Spencer made was almost pained, his fists clenching at his sides as he struggled to figure out what to do with his hands. His mouth parted, a stutter escaping him before he finally gave in, nodding instead. His cock twitched in his boxers, aching to feel her touch.

"Words, baby. Use your words."

Y/N's lips skimmed across his navel, peppering kisses along the smattering of hair there as she waited for his response.

"God—yes! I'm okay with that," Spencer whined, his hips bucking forward instinctively from her touch. "Please... please touch me—"

Y/N couldn't deny such sweet begging. It would be downright cruel if she did.

Her fingers found the waistband of his boxers, tugging them down slowly. She kept her eyes locked on his, carefully assessing his every reaction to ensure there was no trace of doubt before proceeding. When she saw none, she swiftly yanked them down the rest of the way, letting them pool around his ankles with his pants.

Spencer gasped as the chill of her bedroom air met his warm skin, goosebumps spreading across his arms as he fought the urge to shy away from her gaze. He never thought that highly of himself in the physical aspect— all lean muscles, lanky limbs, and pale skin spattered with freckles and a few random scars. But his insecurities faded the moment he heard her breath catch, her eyes filled with admiration as they lingered on him.

"You're so beautiful, Spencer," Y/N breathed, bringing a hand up to grip him gently. "So, so beautiful."

Her mouth was on him before he could respond.

A keening sound filled the room as he watched in pure awe as she dragged her tongue up and down the length of him slowly before her lips wrapped around the flushed head of his cock, a spark of pleasure shooting up his spine as his hands flexed by his side. She sucked gently, swirling her tongue around the tip before pulling off of him to speak.

"Don't be afraid to hold onto me, sweetheart. Go ahead."

Spencer's hands immediately came up to cradle the back of her head, finding purchase as she returned to what she was doing. The sight of her on her knees and taking the length of him into her mouth had his knees almost buckling. It was something he'd dreamed about for nights on end, but now that it was actually happening, he didn't know what to do with himself.

"F-fuck—" He whimpered, his eyes squeezing shut to prevent himself from cumming right then and there.

All he'd ever experienced before was his own hand (and occasionally some desperate humping against his mattress), so the feeling of her mouth around him was otherworldly. Just when he thought it was safe to open his eyes again, Y/N smirked around her mouthful and pushed her head down to take him in completely.

"Oh—!" Spencer cried out as he hit the back of her throat, jolting and stumbling backward and falling out of her mouth with a slick 'pop'. His chest heaved as he reached down to grip himself tightly, staving off his orgasm. He didn't want to cum yet. Not this quickly.

"I-I'm sorry, it just felt too... too good—"

Y/N gently stroked his trembling thighs, pressing a kiss beneath his belly button before rising to her feet. She shushed his stammered apologies with a kiss on his forehead, caressing his face as he caught his breath. His face was flushed, both from embarrassment and arousal, and the sight was more endearing than it should have been.

"You have nothing to apologize for, sweetheart. Absolutely nothing," she whispered, pressing a chaste kiss to his lips before turning to crawl onto her bed. “Get up here, baby,” she crooned as she laid back against her pillows, patting the spot beside her.

Spencer almost tripped over his pants in his haste to follow after her, kicking the fabric away before he kneeled onto the mattress, smiling meekly at Y/N as she watched in amusement. "I w-want—" Spencer paused as he watched her lean forward so she could unclasp her bra, completely enraptured. "I want to taste you. Please?"

Desire coursed through her at his words, searing through her veins as she met his gaze. She loved how pretty the word please sounded falling from his kiss-swollen lips. She slipped free from her bra, tossing it to the ground before answering his pleading.

"Go ahead, baby. Take whatever you want—I want you to have it all."

Spencer swallowed hard at that, a small grin playing on his lips as he moved forward to settle between her spread legs. He kneeled between them, taking off his glasses and setting them on her nightstand before lowering himself to hover over her. He bumped his nose against hers, his grin widening as he moved to tentatively kiss along the side of her neck.

Y/N moaned at the feeling, tangling her fingers into his tousled strands. He continued, trailing his kisses down the slope of her shoulder before pausing to suck a small mark into her skin, relishing in the soft noises falling from her lips. Once he was satisfied with his mark, he brought his lips down to mouth along her breast, laving his tongue over the taut bud of her nipple.

"Spence—" she whimpered as he closed his lips around the hardened peak, suckling with a low groan that rumbled against her skin. She tugged at his hair, pulling him impossibly closer. "Feels so good, sweetheart."

Spencer hummed, pulling off her breast after a moment and switching to the other to give it the same treatment. Y/N whined, arching into his touch as he began to move down her body. What he may have lacked in physical experience, he more than compensated for with knowledge.

Contrary to popular belief, he wasn't a prude. He'd read plenty of erotic novels, as well as countless books all centered around the female anatomy and how to inflict the most pleasure so that he could at least pretend to feel prepared for his first time. It seemed to be paying off, though, if the noises she made were any indication of how he was doing.

Spencer's hands came up to rest on her hips as he settled on his stomach between her thighs, hissing softly when his erection pressed into the mattress. His eyes met hers, and the clouded look in her eyes was all the encouragement he needed.

"God, you're soaked," he whispered in astonishment as his finger traced the damp spot in the front of her panties, causing a breathy chuckle to slip from her lips.

"How could I not be?"

Spencer blushed, leaning down to kiss her inner thigh before pulling the fabric down her legs. His breath hitched at the sight of her glistening pussy, fully on display for him without the barrier of their windows in his way. Any coherent thought that was swirling around in his head vanished, replaced with an urgent need to taste her. He moved without thinking as he latched his mouth onto her eagerly, groaning against her slick skin as he began to lap at her hungrily.

"Fuck! Spencer—" Y/N cried out, her grip on his hair tightening at the unexpected pleasure. Her head tipped back against her pillows as her hips writhed under his ministrations, rolling against his mouth as he devoured her.

There was little to no technique— just pure, unbridled enthusiasm. But it felt so good that she didn't care. He alternated between sucking at her clit and thrusting his tongue into her, needy moans slipping from his lips the entire time he did.

"Fingers, baby—" she gasped, biting her lower lip harshly to stifle a loud moan. "Use your fingers, too."

Spencer didn't need to be told twice. He pulled away from her, licking the taste of her from his lips as he brought two fingers up to her entrance. He focused his gaze on her face as he pushed them inside of her, his mouth hanging open and soft breaths panting against her skin as he began to thrust them.

"Like this?"

His tone wasn't cocky or arrogant. It was curious, like he was genuinely invested in finding out what felt the best for her. She nodded, a choked moan slipping from her lips as he grazed against that rough patch of nerves inside of her that had her hips thrashing.

Spencer watched in fascination for a moment before bringing his head back down, his eyes fluttering shut as he began to trace her clit with his tongue. His hips rocked instinctively against the bed, grinding against it in a desperate attempt to find some relief for his aching cock as he brought her closer and closer to her climax.

"Spence—" Y/N whimpered, her hands falling from his hair to grip the sheets as she clenched around his fingers. "I-I'm cumming—"

Spencer groaned against her, doubling his efforts so he could watch her fall apart on his fingers. With a soft cry, Y/N came hard, her eyes squeezing shut as she trembled underneath him. He continued his movements, pumping his fingers into her gently until she was whining and wriggling away from his touch.

Spencer watched her in awe, kneading her thighs and hips to help her come down from her high.

"C'mere," she panted after a few minutes, finally opening her eyes to look up at him as he moved to hover above her.

A proud grin made its way to Spencer's face as he obeyed, resting on his forearms as he looked down at her. The hazy look in her eyes made his heart race, knowing that he was the cause of it doing more for his ego than he cared to admit. She returned his grin, leaning up to kiss him softly and tasting herself on his tongue.

"You did so good, sweetheart. Such a good boy for me," she mumbled against his lips.

She broke the kiss to press on his shoulders, rolling them over so she straddled him once more. A lazy smirk adorned her lips as he looked up at her, his pupils so dilated that the soft brown of his eyes was indiscernible. She began to rock her hips against his aching cock, a sigh slipping from her lips as her folds dragged over him.

Spencer moaned lowly at the friction, bringing his hands up to palm at her ass as she continued her movements. His fingers dug into her flesh as she spoke, but he didn't hear a single word she said as he kept his gaze locked on where her pussy was gliding along his length.

"Hey," Y/N cooed, patting his cheek gently to guide his eyes back to hers. "Eyes on me, sweetheart."

Spencer whined, his hips bucking underneath hers in an attempt to bring back the delicious friction that had been taken away when she lifted her hips. "I-I'm sorry. I wasn't listening," Spencer mumbled sheepishly, his face flushed as he held her gaze.

Y/N chuckled, tutting in mock disappointment as she gripped his chin. "I know you weren't," she muttered with an arched brow before continuing. "I was asking if you wanted to use a condom or not. I'm clean and—"

"No condom!"

Y/N jumped, startled. The urgency in his voice sent a wave of warmth through her as she eyed him in amusement, enjoying the bashful look that immediately appeared on his face after his exclamation. Spencer cleared his throat, attempting to regain some of his dignity.

"I'm sorry… I didn't mean to borderline shout that," Spencer said softly, his voice cracking slightly. "I just— I want to feel you, please. Without a condom in the way, preferably."

The grin that spread across her face could only be described as salacious as she nodded, cradling his face before leaning in for a tender kiss.

"No condom it is, then."

Y/N shifted up onto her knees, reaching between them to align him with her entrance before pausing when he spoke up.

"I— um... C-can I be on top of you instead?" he whispered, looking up at her with nervous eyes.

Her gaze softened at the sight, and she nodded immediately. "Of course, sweetheart. Whatever you want, remember?" She murmured with a fond smile, rolling off of him to lay back against the pillows.

Spencer thanked her quietly, moving to hover above her once more. His body trembled as he propped up on one arm, reaching down to line himself up with her once more. She cradled his face, stroking her thumb along his cheekbone reassuringly. He took a deep breath to steady himself before pushing forward, sinking into her.

The feeling of her tight walls wrapping around him had him keening while she moaned just as loudly in return, dropping his head into the crook of her neck as he sucked in desperate, shaky breaths. He'd never experienced pleasure so overwhelming before. He was honestly convinced he'd died right there in her arms, pressing sloppy kisses to her skin just to prove to himself that he was, in fact, still alive.

"God— feels so good," he began to babble, moaning softly as he pulled his hips back slightly before thrusting forward again. "So tight... so wet— fuck!"

Y/N dug her nails into his shoulders, whimpering as he thrusted into her again, this time a little harder. "That's it, Spence," she panted, encouraging him to begin really moving. "You feel so good, baby. So fucking deep."

Spencer's hips jerked at that, his head dropping back into the crook of her neck as he began to drive into her in short, jagged thrusts. Moans slipped freely from his lips, mingling with hers as their bodies moved in tandem.

It didn't take long before the familiar tightening in his stomach came back, but he was too lost in the pleasure to stop. The feeling of Y/N around him was addictive. He seeked solace in her walls, rutting into her like a man possessed now as he sang her his praises against her skin. His hips stuttered as he lifted his head up, crashing his lips onto hers in a messy kiss as his hips pounded against hers even harder.

"Gonna— cum, fuck, I'm cumming—"

Spencer cried out against her lips, burying himself as deep inside of her as he could before filling her with rope after rope of his release. A pitiful noise fell from his lips as he broke the kiss, his eyes wide as he gawked down at her. His hips stopped moving, but before he could speak, Y/N was looping her arms around his neck and pulling him down.

“Did I say you could stop fucking me, Spencer?” Y/N’s voice was taunting in his ear, her nails digging into his shoulders as she wrapped her legs around his waist to keep him in place.

Spencer’s brows pinched together as confusion washed over him, and his arms trembled as he struggled to remain hovering above her. His cock twitched inside of her as she canted her hips up, causing him to hiss softly from the overstimulation. His lower lip wobbled as he stared at her with a half-dazed, half-pleading look.

"W-what?"

“You greedy boy,” Y/N purred as she rolled her hips again. She smirked at the whimper he let out before tilting her head to skim her lips across his. “Don’t you want to feel me cum on your cock? Hm?”

Spencer shuddered at her words, chasing helplessly after her lips. He whined petulantly when she tilted her head, keeping him from succeeding in getting his kiss.

“I do,” Spencer whimpered, nodding fervently. “I wanna feel it so bad,” he groaned, his words beginning to slur from the pleasure coursing through him from head to toe.

“Then keep fucking me, sweetheart.”

A determined look crossed over his face, his brows knitting together as he shifted up onto his knees and pulled her hips up before thrusting forward. The change in angles had her crying out as he brushed against her sweet spot, and he grunted as he began to rock into her slowly, pushing past the sweet sting of overstimulation. He tightened his grip on her hip with one hand while his other moved to where they were connected, rubbing small, sloppy circles against her clit as he began moving with a purpose.

“Mm—“ Y/N groaned out, her eyes threatening to close as she struggled to keep them focused on his face. “Just like that, Spence. Ah—!“

The sound of his hips snapping against hers paired with the slick, crude sound of him fucking his cum back into her had his head lolling back, a guttural moan rumbling in his throat.

His hips were relentless, chasing her pleasure more so than his own now. It was messy and borderline feral—their mixed arousal coated his pelvis and her thighs and one of the corners of the sheets had come up from Y/N yanking at them. But neither of them could find it in themselves to care.

“Cum for me, Y/N,” Spencer begged, shifting her legs up onto his shoulders and clinging to her thighs as he drove into her. “Please—wanna feel you cum on my cock… I need it—“

The sound of his pleading hurled her over the edge. Y/N’s nails nearly tore through the sheets as her eyes squeezed shut, cry after cry of his name falling from her open mouth as she came around him. Her body trembled from the force of her orgasm, her walls clenching so tightly around him that it triggered his second climax unexpectedly.

“Oh my God— oh— fuck!” Spencer wailed, devolving into a series of whimpers as he spilled everything he had into her.

After a moment of ragged breathing, he turned to press a kiss to her ankle before easing her limp legs off of his shoulders and to the bed. Y/N stroked his hair with shaky hands as he crumpled over on top of her, their bodies warm and damp with sweat. Their chests were heaving as they struggled to catch their breath, with Y/N whispering into his hair how good he did and how perfect he’d made her feel.

They stayed curled up for a while, but eventually, the stickiness became too much to ignore. They both stumbled into her bathroom—both for a quick shower and for Y/N to pee to avoid a UTI. After changing the sheets, they returned to her bed, and Y/N turned away to switch off the lamp, leaving them wrapped in the peaceful darkness.

“Does this mean you’re my girlfriend now?” Spencer asked, a shy grin on his face as she turned back to him, snuggling into his embrace as he pulled her closer.

Y/N huffed out a soft, sleepy laugh, nodding against him. “If you want me to be, sweetheart,” she murmured, her voice heavy with exhaustion as her eyelids fluttered shut.

“Of course I want you to,” Spencer replied, his words followed by a small yawn as sleep started to take hold of him too.

“Looks like it’s official then. I’m your girlfriend, you’re my boyfriend. Now, get some rest, my sweet boy.”

It wasn’t until the following evening, after a full day spent with Y/N on their first official date—a trip to the museum and lunch at his favorite restaurant—that he noticed something tucked into his pocket. A giddy grin spread across Spencer’s face as he unfolded the lacy pink panties, a small note tucked inside that read: For you to take on your next case. ;) xoxo - Y/N.

Spencer glanced down at the fabric in his hands, a soft chuckle escaping him as he silently thanked whatever force had made her the one to fill the vacant apartment across from his.

Continued A/N’s and tag list!! <3: Big big thank you to everyone that enjoyed part one and came back to read part two :’) And thank you to everyone that wanted to be tagged!! If you guys would like for me to start doing an official tag list, please let me know :’) <3 @halfbloodwriter , @opheliahotchner , @mothgrrrl666 , @silver138, @elliet1ou

REMINDER: I do not give permission for my work to be re-uploaded to any other platforms (c.ai, Tiktok, ao3, etc.) under any circumstances. If you'd like to translate my work, then please just ask me before doing so. I know it sounds whiny, but I (as well as many other fanfic writers) spend so much time on these and it's genuinely not okay to take credit for work that isn't yours. It's insulting and completely unnecessary. If I do see my work uploaded anywhere without explicit permission, I WILL say something.

[ssentimentals]

crushing doubts {boo seungkwan}

pairing: seungkwan x gn!reader

prompt: 'you brought me flowers?' (this work is part of my 1k event, go check out other works of mine here)

warnings: generally none as it is fluff, but reader is very insecure and struggles with self-worth so please be mindful if these themes trigger you!

a loud laugh echoes in the hall and you freeze, unmistakenly recognizing source of this sound. only one person's laughter makes your heart do this stupid fluttery thing that reddens your cheeks and dries out your throat. it's seungkwan, of course. seungkwan is the you had crush on since the very first day of college and seungkwan is also happens to be the very same boy who told you that he likes you three days ago. he also is the boy who you've been steadily avoiding for the past three days. today should have been day number four of your avoidance, but universe obviously does not favor you that much; you knew your luck would run out sooner or later. looking around in source of escape, with growing horror you realize that there's really nowhere to go apart from turning back to your previous class and-

'-our professor almost had a heart attack! i kind of did feel bad though- oh.'

that oh makes you want to shrink up and disappear, but some things are not possible no matter how much you wish for them. you stand frozen on the spot, caught like a deer in highlights and although you're looking at the ground, you can feel seungkwan's eyes on you. don't come close, you beg for him in your mind. please, oh please, don't make a show, just act like i'm not here. it seems like universe does favor you still because seungkwan continues his speech and passes you in a blink, not sparing you a second glance. it takes few seconds for him and dino to pass and you wait for few more just in case before rushing out of that space. stupid, stupid, stupid. guilt and blame battle in yur head as you rush back to your room, not noticing anything around you. see, anxiety is a dirty, dirty liar and you're aware of that. it's just sometimes it's really hard to pull yourself out of those negative thoughts and self-blaming, sometimes it's hard to catch yourself at the moment before spiraling.

once in the safe quarters of your room, you feel tiredness overwhelm you as thoughts come back to seungkwan. you like him, of course. how can you not? how can anyone not? he's sunshine, he's warm and loving and always mindful of others. he is loud, he incredibly entertaining but in a way that is never offensive to someone else. he is handsome also with his baby cheeks and big dark eyes that stare at you with all the care in the world. and above it all, he is kind. oh, he is so kind that you don't udnerstand how so much generosity and empathy can all be placed into a one person. that's why - that's exactly why - you don't understand how someone like him could possibly fall for someone like you. everything about is so painstakingly normal and average, not nearly enough to hold attention of someone like seungkwan. you don't think he played a joke on you when he confessed - no, he's not that cruel, you are sure. but you also can't believe him; if it's not a joke, maybe it's something else? you never really thought much about his actions towards you: seungkwan was as kind and nice to you as he is to everyone else.

why would he say that he likes you then? why would he confess?

you didn't have any explanation for these questions. what could he like? you were never someone popular and never had line of secret admirers behind your back. seungkwan looks like someone who deserves another sunshine of the person standing next to him, but in your head you'll only deem his light. fingers picking at the hem of your oversized hoodie, you think of most memorable interactions of you both together and with a startle you realize that seungkwan always, always went out of his way to make you feel good about yoursef: ('whoa, you are so smart!' seungkwan gushed, staring at your completed exam paper. 'you really are a genius, huh?'

blushing, you shaked your head. 'no, i'm just-'

'you're the first one to finish,' seungkwan interrupted in a flat voice, pointing out obvious. 'you're always first one to finish and you get the best grades. what is it called if not being smart?')

or how he always somehow knew about interactions with your other friends and he'd always point out how you help them out or how highly they speak of you: ('you are very loved,' seungkwan's voice held too much emotion for you to be able to look in his eyes. 'your friends love you a lot.'

warm fuzzy feeling filled your chest and you smiled. 'i love them too.'

seungkwan chuckled at this and you finally dared to look up, willing your heart to start beating so fast. he stared at you with incomprehensible softness and part of you thought he looked almost fond, but another part immediately dispersed that idea. 'good. i'm happy that you're surrounded by people you love and who love you back.')

he always striked conversations with you first and themes varied from latest gossips to the most random facts ever, all to keep you entertained: ('did you know that crocodiles cannot stick their tongue out?' seungkwan seemed to be fascinated by this new knowledge. 'poor guys.'

'why would they need to stick their tongues out?' you wondered out loud, smiling a little as he quickly fell into the step with you, your shoulders bumping at each other a little. 'i don't think you have history next, why are coming with me?'

'to not let you get bored, of course,' seungkwan replied like it's obvious. 'and because i love your company. but also because i just learned that fact and really needed someone to tell.')

you smile at your last memory before biting your lower lip in frustration. because i love your company. could it be true? your company was nothing special. surely not special enough for seungkwan to even consider wasting his time in walking you to your lecture even if that's exactly what he did. groaning at complete misunderstanding of it all, you grab your blanket, throwing yourself at the bed with a huff. when you close your eyes that fateful day from three days ago comes into your mind. (he caught you off guard when you were going back home and you didn't think anything much at first, because seungkwan has that tendency of coming up unexpectedly; but then you started to get worry as he looked nervous. 'is everything okay?' you asked with your heart at your throat. seungkwan never looked nervous and in turn it grated on your own nerves. 'something happened?'

'no-no, everything is fine,' he quickly reassured you and even smiled, staring at you with that same gaze that looked almost fond. 'always caring, aren't you?' before you could comprehend this and somehow answer, he continued: 'i just thought i- i feel like i gotta come clean cause i have this feeling that you're not- like, you're not... getting... the hints, you know?'

you paled at those words. not getting something is one of your biggest fears, not being smart, not being good enough- 'hints?' you asked in a small voice, trying your hardest not to overthink.

'see, this is what i'm talking about,' seungkwan shook his head and dread filled your body. 'i knew you had no idea, boys kept pestering me to just be direct, so here i am.' he took one look at you and sighed. 'even right now you don't get where i'm going with this, don't you?'

you hated bad news. god, you hated them with everything in you and only option was to run. 'i need to go,' you muttered, trying to come up with something, but lying never was a strong suit of yours. 'um, i gotta-'

'i like you.')

your eyes shot open at the sound of the knock. a tentative one at first, but then more firm. sick feeling at the pit of your stomach increased as your gut whispers who exactly is standing behind that door. you can pretend to be asleep. that's what you were going to do anyway, right? so it wouldn't be a lie. seungkwan calls out your name from the other side of the door and you sit up, shocked. why he's not on the lecture now? did something happen? before you can even process those thoughts you're up and opening the door, staring at seungkwan with worried eyes, looking him all over. physically he seems to be fine, but his face carries such a grim expression that you step back on instinct. 'can i come in?' he asks in a quite voice.

'sure,' you move automatically, closing the door behind him with trembling fingers.

god, he is here to confront you, isn't he? confrontation is something you always managed to avoid but it looks like there's no escaping this one now. seungkwan doesn't look angry, so you hope for the best. 'i came to apologize.'

these words make all the mindless and negative thoughts inside your head come to a halt. apologize? 'for what?' you ask, sincerely confused.

'i think i made you really uncomfortable with my whole 'i like you' thing,' he says, looking serious and dejected. 'that was not my intention.'

that's when you notice them. beautiful, white and green. seungkwan held flowers behind his back, hiding them like little kids do. it's an adorable sight, it swells your heart until it grows too big for your chest. your silence doesn't deter seungkwan as he goes on: 'i won't take my words back, i do like you. but i am sorry if i were too direct.'

ball's on your side and it'd be really good to say something right now. weirdly enough all thoughts - even the negative and mean ones, the ones that tear you down and make you feel worthless - fly out of your head and you can't concentrate on anything apart from those flowers. you were pretty sure that they were for you and just- no one ever gifted you flowers before. never. the urge to receive them, to hold them in your hands is so strong, it makes you blink and look up at seungkwan, only one question falling from your lips: 'you brought me flowers?'

seungkwan chokes on his words and wordlessly nods, quickly handing them to you. with awe and feeling like you're accepting something very important and big, you take the flowers from his hands, pulling them closer. they smell like spring rain, like the butterflies in your stomach, like all your hopes growing big. flower stems itch between your fingers but you don't mind it at all. 'i- these are not like 'i'm sorry' flowers, by the way. these are more 'i appreciate you' flowers.' you turn to seungkwan in surprise and he fumbles with words, getting shy. 'does that make sense? i mean, i'm not giving them to you so you'd forgive them, i wanted to give you flowers cause...'

he drifts off but you know what he wanted to say. cause it looks like you've never been given them before. and that would be the truth. you almost say it for him when he adds: 'cause i just wanted to. you do so much, you help me so much and i wanted to let you know that i appreciate it. i thought flowers would be good but now..' he scratches back of his neck unsurely. 'now it seems like a bad idea.'

you shake your head, unable to hide your smile. cause i just wanted to. what if... what if there's a tiny, super tiny chance that all of your thoughts shouting at you and calling you unworthy for him are not true? what if universe favors you, what if you are her favorite and she sent seungkwan for you specifically? 'you like me,' you say, not question. seungkwan looks surprised but nods nonetheless. and nods so confidently that your doubts start to crumble. 'why?'

it's not a question to get praise for an answer. you're not fishing for compliments and seungkwan knows it. he smiles, shaking your head. 'you are so attentive to everyone else but so blind for your own self, it actually is concerning,' he mutters quietly but you still hear him. seungkwan takes a breath: 'i like you because you are caring, and smart, and kind. and you always help me and others, and i don't know, you are funny and did i say kind already?'

this feels like a dream. you listen to him and he lists those things that are not about you, they can't be about you - it's more like seungkwan is describing himself. but he is not cruel, you remind yourself, and he is not a liar. seungkwan really does mean it all about you and your heart might burst from all the emotions.

'and i don't want to seem shallow and sound like i'm looking only at physicality, but i mean, appereance one you're reaaally easy on the eye-' he suddenly stops, alert. '- is everything okay?'

there's moisture on your cheeks and with a loud squeak you realize that you're crying. hurrying up to wipe the tears, you press flowers right up your face and their smell invades your nose. spring rain. butterflies in your stomach. hope. seungkwan looks mildly terrified and you take a steadying breath, trying to calm down. it's shameful to start crying from that but tears actually felt good. 'i was not lying,' he suddenly says, stepping closer. 'but i can stop if it's too much.'

seungkwan's so considerate that it makes your heart ache. 'i know you weren't lying,' you say just to put him at ease. 'sorry that i got so emotional-'

'no, don't apologize,' he interrupts, carefully reaching out to wipe few tears himself. 'you're feeling okay?'

you listen to yourself intently: are you okay? there's no war of anxiety vs logic happening inside, so you're experiencing any stress. it's actually rather rare for you to feel as peaceful as you do right now. 'i'm fine,' you hear yourself say and it's true. and then, making eye contact with seungkwan, you say in an unexpected wave of bravery: 'thank you. for flowers and those words. no one... no one ever said anything like this before. or gave me flowers.'

seungkwan's face is carefully blank but before you still noticed spark of surprise and bewilderment as if notion of no one giving you flowers or telling you these words seemed incomprehensible to him. 'i...' he starts, carefully eyeing you. 'i can help you like you help me.'

'help me with what?' you ask quietly already knowing the answer.

'to be kinder to yourself,' he responds. 'you'll see yourself through my eyes and that image will crush all the doubts you have in your head about yourself.'

maybe universe loves you in reality. because how else can you explain seungkwan's existence in your life? feeling this kind of peace is so rare for you and you crave that feeling all the time. what if seeing yourself from his eyes is exactly what you need?

'okay,' you breathe out before you can change your mind.

seungkwan lights up and nods. 'okay,' he agrees readily.

maybe seungkwan came right at the moment when you needed him the most. came with flowers that smell like spring rain, and butterflies in the stomach, and hope.

a/n: i wrote this down in one sitting and i'm sorry if this got too sad, but i hope by the end of it all of you are smiling. thank you for reading this! - nini

tagging @prpldahy

[partywithoutsmiling]

Do you think you can tell us what happens in would tour specifically at the end when the strings are broken? Is branch there? Does the world go gray or does it stay colourful because their technically is more strings? Oooooo how do the leaders react/find out about this random gray troll who sum how has made more strings?!?!

I think Branch would be there for sure

Skipping ahead of the timeline, after the events of the 1st movie- and realizing Poppy did miss him, he would be rather reluctant to leave his Tribe again for a while (his reawakened crush on Poppy certainly not helping matters)

However, he has now been on the move for so long, that staying in one place indefinitelly gives him jitters (and bit of a spoiler, but he did manage to meet at least one of his brothers on his travels, that made him realize that perhaps this Wanderlust is hereditary to an extent)

Also ever since returning to Pop Village, he came to realization that King Peppy seem to know more about the wide world than Branch had suspected; before, he just thought that the Pop Troll's ignorance stemmed from their isolation and decades of selective culling- knowledge and histories are bound to be lost and forgotten in that case, but given the nervous glances Peppy sends his attire and his rock guitar, Branch can put one and one together.

But Peppy doesn't ask and Branch doesn't offer any explanation, and while Poppy is curious enough to ask Branch where he went, she doesn't push when he just says 'away'. She still remembers when Branch just up and disappeared one day and no-one cared to notice that for weeks- to an extent, not even her, even though she is the most aware of his prensence than anyone.

After that fiasco with the funeral, Poppy just figured Branch holed up himself in his bunker to sulk- or so she thought- and will come out when ready. And truthfully, she thought that it was, for once, a good idea- because the mood of the community was not great, when it came to the grey troll, and she herself was at loss what to say or do to make it better. She could hardly defend Branch's actions for all that she understood his freakout (at least a little bit)

It was only when more time than usual passed that she grew concerned- while the other trolls around her didn't.

A little bit of angsty idea was that Branch, in his shame, left behind both Floyd's vest and his old Hideout Plan, as those were two mementos that really tied him to his old life, and Poppy- with bit of brute force- managed to get her way into the bunker and found both.

She was really just a teenager then- and was suddenly forced to come to a reality where a Troll that was supposed to be her responsibility as a future Queen just... left. Left, because he felt so unwelcome in the Village- unwelcome in her presence- that feelings themselves driven him away.

And similar to Branch, Poppy had no idea other trolls existed- there was only the Village and the Bergen Town, and all the dangers that existed between it. It was unspoken rule that to leave the Village meant a certain death- and here she was, holding Branch's iconic vest that he never ever takes off, holding a yellowed scrapbooked plan of childlike wonder, that revealed a familial history of heartbreak and abandonment (after all, she knows these names, she knows Brozone songs and trivia by heart)....

Honestly, She and Branch probably came to be peas in a pod, when it comes to feeling of self-loathing and lack of self-worth.

After all, perfect Queens don't allow their subject to become outcasts

Perfect Queens don't turn blind eye towards unjustified shunning

Perfect Queens don't certainly drive away their friends to perish in the wilderness

And for the next 4 years- especially after the uncomfortable realization that only handful of people even care that Branch was gone- she felt deep guilt and suppresed grief very keenly, plagued by what ifs; what if she went to him the day after the funeral, what if she checked up on him that very night- would he had stayed? What if she never pushed him like she did, secretly delighting in crafting the most annoying glitter-spewing invitations, knowing it irritated him What if she was kinder, respected his refusals better, listened to his warnings

Would he had stayed?

And honestly, up until the point that he returned, she had no answers, and thought she would never got any

So after their reunion, she burns with questions and curiosity- and holds it back, because he already left once, and she is terrified to push him away again, this time for good. Because that's what she focuses on now- he came back.

Of course, that relief changes nothing when mere seventh months after their peace with the Bergens- after they repaired their village, after Poppy got used to having Branch by her side, singing, dancing, playing, harmonizing

She is suddenly feeling like thrown into a cold water when he tells her he wants to go traveling again, and all the fears and past grief comes rushing

I believe they would have quite the row about it- unknowingly reminding Branch of the night his brothers argued and left, which only pushes him to be angrier- while Poppy uses her outburst to hide the irrational terror she feels

So it ends with Branch storming off in a huff and Poppy storming off in a huff- but when her senses catches up to her and she is quite panicked to make ammends and to sooth the argument over, Branch is long gone

Few more months passes, and while not as cheerful, Poppy tries to keep herself upbeat- then the invitation comes, Peppy finally admits to there being more kind of trolls, and to her it is like Oh, of course.

The excitement returning, she now has secondary goal to her 'unite the tribes together' under big party- she just knows Branch is living with one of the tribes now- and she is right, when she encounters him in Lonesome Flats

(Well, after he learnes that she got thrown into jail for her Crimes against Music that is pf)

Branch, naturally, still has no idea about the Strings (as he dipped out before Peppy gave that piece of history away) but learning about them now doesn't give him any more peace of the mind. Contrary to his first mindset in the original plot- where he wanted to avoid the other trolls altogether- he is now stalwart defender of all genres, and hates the idea of any of them disappearing.

(A side note: in his wanderings, I think the only rulers- or would be rulers- that he had met was Delta, Trollex and Barb; Trollex had just been freshly crowned and Barb has not been queen yet) (He and Barb probably struck a very odd friendship- where Branch had no idea he was hanging out with the princess of Rock- namely because Rock Trolls didn't use the term of 'prince' and 'princess' for their heirs- and he probably told her all about his travels) (Hearing that she is behind this mess makes him feel horrified. Did he gave her the idea to try and take over the world?)

Anyway, events happens, the finale comes- the final showdown XD

Only, the fight plays out quite differently

Branch and Barb being friends, he confronts her about what she's doing and quite stubbornly gets into her face about her ideas. Dares her to change him the way she wants to change everyone- dares her to erase him, like she dreams about

It makes her hesitate for sure- she already went so far, and wont be stopped now. Expression hardening, she aims her guitar at Poppy and strikes the chord- not expecting Branch to jump between them.

This event probably doesnt have the desired effect that she imagined. Had Branch had been just a normal Pop Troll- or as close as to one genre as one can get, he would have been Zombified without any issues.

But with the Power Chord, it's Strings against Strings- and the results are probably quite... explosive. Devastatingly so.

Only, Branch has an unknowing advantage- his seventh String, shining so innocently from his hair among the others.

When it comes to matching powers, the Royal Rock Guitar looses, pathetically so- and as the stage around them explodes, so does the guitar, taking the power of music with it, leeching everything of colours and light, untill nothing but darkness and greyscale remains.

Except for a singular troll that stands tall and proud in the middle of it all, injured, sure, but colourful, rainbow heart shining through the fuzz on his chest, the strings in his hair glowing brighter than ever XD

[toastandjamie]

Hey so… in Great Hunt when Fain broke out of Fal-Dara what actually happened there. We don’t ever get an explanation about how Fain or whatever/whoever knocked both Egwene and Mat unconscious. Neither of them were actually injured just unconscious which would indicate they were knocked out through unconventional means. Which then leads to the “Why not just kill them” question, but perhaps it would just be too time consuming. Then there’s the dagger of it all, why take the dagger, Fain was unlikely to have actually known what the dagger was or what it did. Perhaps he Did know that it was at least something Mat found valuable and in turn the others would also likely feel so. A back up plan in case the horn wasn’t good enough to lure Rand and the others after him?

On that note I also want to talk about Perrin’s monologue about the whole thing. Perrin and Rand have a lot in common including how personally responsible they both feel for the others safety, specifically Mat and Egwene. In general both of them seem to be under this impression that Egwene and Mat aren’t capable of protecting themselves- for various reasons, Mat because of his immaturity and Egwene because she’s a young woman. This lessens as time goes on and the group are forced apart and reunited with each intermittently after receiving enough experience and character development that it’s hard to keep arguing that any of them are vulnerable. The difference between them is that Perrin is able to talk himself down from his guilt, he can accept the fact that he realistically could have done anything to protect them in this situation- where as Rand tends to fully take on responsibility for any bad thing that happens. Rand isn’t able to differentiate what is and isn’t in his control whereas Perrin and is uniquely aware of his own limits. In Great Hunt Perrin repeatedly checks on Mat while he’s unconscious and notes to the audience that he feels guilty for not having been with Mat when Egwene had asked him to check on Fain with her- though he notes that he likely would’ve ended up unconscious like the other two. Then when Rand asks him about how Mat is doing, Perrin of course snaps at him to check on him himself if he’s worried, though after Rand apologizes more thoroughly to Perrin for their fight earlier Perrin does recognize that Rand’s worry is genuine and tells him. Though Rand accidentally ruins it by implying that Aes Sedai were only looking for him, further enforcing Mat and Perrin’s earlier quarrel of “Rand thinking he’s better and more important than us.”. I could say more about Perrin in this book but I’ll digress for now.

[bluewithpurplepolkadots]

Honestly I might (might) write a longer post about it at some stage but like… my current feelings on finishing MAWs second season is that the new characters (as in those introduced in this show and didn’t exist prior to it) were very solid.

Certain older characters (as in: those that existed prior to this show). Uhhhh.

Um.

In any case I feel a reason for this is because those in charge of season two did of course watch season one: or at least had it fresh in their minds.

Because of this, they were aware of some things which didn’t work in that first season in terms of its newer characters and that the ending wasn’t satisfactory (particularly for Tylor and Val) and decided to make something better out of it: all while still making it feel like something that could organically grow out of the events of season one.

Things like monsters thinking comedy wasn’t respectable feels realistic. Tylor failing hard at it is also inevitable. Val being well suited to it also. (Especially as being more like a cool babysitter rather than doing stand up). I thought the fact they made them into a comedy duo was a very clever idea I didn’t see coming: but also didn’t feel like it came out of nowhere. It’s really a way for Tylor to be realistically involved with comedy again which doesn’t feel as forced and off as season ones doughnut joke did.

This is good solid writing to me. With their own new characters that they themselves made, while they may have stumbled in season one: I feel the show really gets them now.

But… I honestly wonder if the writers watched either MU or MI upon first starting to write for this show. At least recently. Since they got the job in question I mean.

They’ve clearly seen it at some point in their life. They also perhaps fast forwarded and zeroed in on a specific scenes like Sulley in the laugh floor with Boos picture in season one. They’ve researched the sets that were available and expanded. That sort of thing.

But otherwise it feels like they based the older characters off vibes and half forgotten memories they had of what they thought they were like. Like it��s possibly been more then a decade anyway since they’ve given it a look. Even in season one something feels off with Sulley to me. I’m not sure how to describe it.

And: Randall is indeed violent in MI. There he’s the kind of guy to turn invisible, throw a scream canister at you, state he’s always wanted to do that, darkly chuckle and then choke you out while your friend blathers on at you without realising what’s happening. Randall in MI can be dark man. But: The MAW version… it isn’t really Randall at all. He’s way too… cackling and bouncing off the walls for some reason. He doesn’t know these mifters. With Sulley, Randall has been bitter as hell for a long time and he wasn’t like this. The only take away from the original movie would be a call back to Sulley unplugging the machine to save Mike: like Randall did to them to stop them from taking back the laugh power.

The only possible explanation I’ll take is that his head got scrambled by the shovel. Which would be… fairly dark and possibly interesting as an implication. For Sulley and Mike to be responsible for that happening. But rather like the fact that in season one they just have CEOs legally able to banish monsters if they have the right excuse, I kind of doubt we’ll ever get a look into it or we’re supposed to think on things like that in any real depth.

Also, as a major Sulley fan. I have to say the whole evidence in Tylors locker things and jumping to belief of guilt kind of pissed me off. Granted while better than only-fifteen-minutes-lunch Johnny, he ain’t the best boss at points. (He had his comedians work a double shift? Mike almost dying from a drug overdose on energy drinks Etc) But once again… I’m not sure we’re supposed to take it that way or as a potential thing he has to work on which is kind of… disappointing?

Like he could have an arc. Learn to be a better boss? Maybe Roz shouldn’t have done the random idea of throwing it on them immediately. (Where is the board of directors Waternoose complained about anyway? Yeah see: this is why I think it’s been a while since any major writer has seen the movie).

Johnny was actually pretty solid until the finale and until he chose to tell Tylor of his plans for…. Absolutely no reason. Like Tylor had been working there for a day. He was expressing doubt even. Before this, given vague spoilers I had, I thought Johnny was being handled well and they could make his secretly-evil!Johnny reveal be good even if Randall wasn’t exactly sounding too hot.

Like just have Tylor sneak around and be suspicious of something. Did you run out of time? I guess it’s possible. Season twos pacing before the final two is pretty solid. But if you only had ten episodes? Hrm. Idk. Hard to know what to cut honestly to make room if you don’t want a cliffhanger ending.

I guess this may be an odd example of competent original fiction writers failing to write convincing fanfic.

[befuddledcinnamonroll]

Dead Friend Forever - final thoughts

I say final thoughts, knowing I will likely have many more thoughts to come on this series. Because this is definitely one of those shows that gets its hooks into you.

I file this one under "super memorable and engaging watch that I will never watch again" because I really enjoyed it, but also struggle with such dark material (and I can't stop crying over sweet baby White).

First though, major props to BOC for doing something different in the BL genre. This is the kind of creativity that I love to see, similarly to The Sign or Playboyy. It doesn't always work, and I know there are wildly different feelings about all three of these shows, but that's the point - if no one takes creative risks, no one cares about the outcome.

In this case, the ending actually worked for me. I was expecting something ambiguous, because a) horror genre, and b) there was such a huge difference in interpretations throughout the entire series that it seemed clear they were planting a lot of things that could be seen in vastly different ways. And I think the ending stays consistent with that.

I also don't mind ambiguity if it gives me a lot to chew on in metaphorical meaning, and wow was this show a juicy one.

That said, it definitely wasn't perfect, and there were plenty of loose threads that could have been tightened. But I still found so much that worked for me.

My interpretations

So here's my thoughts on the ending, speaking for myself, within my lens and my cultural context.

I see this as a story about purgatory. Not in the sense of any religious system, but in the sense of being a human, and dealing with human emotions. It's a story about the ripple effects of our own selfishness, of how lack of empathy and caring creates a cost for ourselves as well as others, of holding on to guilt, of what happens when we refuse to reckon with the harm we've done.

I don't see anything that happened on this current day visit to the house as a literal, real life, experience.

A few reasons why (and note, I'm aware there are people who will prescribe the below to bad writing/editing, I'm interpreting these as conscious choices made by production):

The road seemed quite well maintained and straight forward on the way in on the truck (and well used enough that Por's dad put a sign up there), yet when anyone tried to leave, they ended up on small forest paths or there was damage to the road.

Similarly, Top & New rode out on the bike for a while, but then New was able to get back to the house really quickly. It had a feeling of "you can check out any time you like but you can never leave" for me.

The Janta temple. This random big building with a ton of fresh blood and lit candles, yet no one else ever being around, and Phee & Jin getting locked in.

The drugs don't explain how all the hallucinations matched so well, or that they all focused exclusively on Non. You telling me Por and Top never did any other sketchy shit in their life? Tee worked for his uncle for years, but didn't have a single other regret? No glimpse of his father, of White being hurt? Fluke didn't get any visions of his parents asking when he was going to finally be a doctor and worthy of their love? White, the one stuck in purgatory because of his love for Tee, was the only one to have a non-Non hallucination.

It's also not really well explained how New could have physically done everything here - such as set up the trap for Por while hanging out with the other guys. Maybe he did, but he never confirmed Phee's explanation for everything that happened.

But my biggest reason for feeling this way is what happens to each character.

Por was used to being the center of the group, due to his wealth and status. But he gets immobilized and silenced.

Top made Non take the fall for him, and then becomes the puppet of the killer in this scenario.

Fluke always did his best to stay on the outskirts and not be seen, but everyone here sees his paranoia and selfishness.

Tee had regrets, but he was still responsible for a huge part of what led directly to Non's death, and he ends up losing what he loves the most through his own actions (he was the one who convinced White to come, like he convinced Non to work for his uncle).

Jin knew that he was violating Non by recording and releasing the video, hence his experiencing the same violation in his hallucinations. But the crux of his situation is that he had a selfish love for Non, and therefore regardless of how much he wants to believe that Phee's love will protect him, it's not enough to save him in the end.

And then of course we have Phee, New, and White. Three people not involved in the initial course of actions, but caught up in them all the same.

White is truly innocent, but sometimes when we love those who have caused harm, we pay a cost. That's the injustice of life. He was a good boy, and learning what Tee did hurt him.

Phee couldn't let go of his guilt for what he said the last time he saw Non, and for not reaching out to him in time. He knew how much Non struggled, he came in during a self-harm attempt before, but his pride wouldn't let him help Non. He also moved on with Jin, but won't acknowledge that there are genuine feelings involved. He says this weekend is all about learning the truth, but he doesn't even care that Jin released the tape. He wants to believe he knows Non better than anyone, but he doesn't really. He wants to heroically save Jin, but he is not the romantic hero in any of this. There's a disconnect between who he wants to believe himself to be, and who he actually is. And it's why he's not really free at the end.

And New. New is so fascinating to me, because like Phee, he was trapped in his guilt. But unlike Phee, through his choices at the house (despite regretting the innocent loss of White & Dang), through his passionate commitment to doing whatever he can for Non, even if it is far too late, he is able to finally let go of his guilt. He is at peace with his choices, and so he sees Non forgiving him. And I think New is able to move on.

Because in the end, I don't see this as these boys being punished by some cosmic moral authority, but rather their own choices and own feelings of guilt/refusal to admit to said guilt.

Reminder - I make no claims of "the truth", this is just my truth.

Relatedly, they did nothing to prove that Non did not fake his death, so you can't make me think he's not having a much better life somewhere with a really good therapist and a hot boyfriend (perhaps Perth).

Last note - the acting in this show was so goddamn good. Mio and Barcode were the standouts for me, but there was a lot of talent on display. I hope they all get a nice career bump from this.

[toyybox]

Spiderwebs #36: Crocodile

Masterlist

content: nightmare, discussion of death

· • —– ٠ ✤ ٠ —– • ·

Heather was aware of Jackie’s nightmares, but she never brought them up. There wasn’t any point in that. They were unpleasant, she was sure, but it was just another fact of life that he had gotten used to. There was nothing to be done.

So when Jackie woke up with a violent jerk, pulling away from her and pulling up the bedsheets in the process, she knew exactly what had happened. But it couldn't be helped. 

She rubbed her eyes. “Jackie—“

His stare flicked to Heather. For a moment, it was like he didn’t recognize her, like he was a feral thing with eyes gleaming in the dark and a blank terror flashing in his expression—but the moment passed, and his blank stare gave way to recognition. His posture relaxed. Only a little, but he wasn’t a split second away from bolting out of the room now.

“Oh. Sorry. Bad dream. Nightmare.” That was all the explanation he offered. After a brief hesitation, he sat upright proper, shifting out of his awkward half-down half-up stance. He cleared his throat, fixing his gaze upon the bedsheets.

That was fair. That was natural. It couldn’t be helped, couldn’t be changed. This didn’t mean anything. It didn’t have to mean anything. 

“Heather…” His gaze returned to the bedsheets. “How long did you leave me down there?”

 Well. This had to come up eventually. No use in sugarcoating it. “Three months. I’m sorry.”

“Don’t try to guilt me.” But he didn’t sound angry. He sounded rather guilty, in fact. “I thought you would come back sooner.”

“I know.” She closed her eyes for a long moment. “I know. It was a mistake. I was scared, but I shouldn’t have abandoned you.”

“It’s fine.”

“No, it’s not. I hurt you. You’ve never done anything wrong to me, and I—“ She let her voice waver here, a bit, let it hitch—“I hurt you, Jackie. I’m sorry. I didn’t—“

He looked like he had run his car over a puppy. “Listen, it’s fine. I don’t care. I shouldn’t have brought it up. Just go back to sleep.”

“Don’t say that to make me feel better,” she snapped. It didn’t take much effort to make her voice tremble. A bit high pitched and a little quiet, that was all it took. “I’m a horrible person. I’m awful. I’ve been awful to you. It was selfish. I want to change, believe me, I want to fix this, but I don’t know how, and I don’t know how to make it up to you, and I want to apologize—“

He looked like the puppy he just squashed exploded into a mess of blood and bones. “Heather, I was going to kill you. I was literally trying to kill you. You’re mortal. It’s not the same thing. I needed to learn a lesson. Please just go back to sleep.”

And that was all you needed for an apology. All there was to it. Just a few crocodile tears, nothing too difficult. They could move on from that little detour.

She sighed. “You’re right. Let’s forget about it.”

He nodded. He lay his head back down. He did not face her, but that was understandable. That was only fair.

She did the same, lying on her back, staring at the dark of the ceiling. A chandelier hung from a chain, dull glass and the vague outlines of curves. The television had turned itself off. There was no more neon glare to disturb the gradual black. But the lights outside the window were as insistent as ever. She couldn’t tell the stars from the billboards. All bright and blaring, all the same. 

Without warning he shifted over, sat up again, startling her. “Heather?”

“Yes?”

“How do we know you’re not immortal?”

“That’s easy.” It was a natural question to ask, now that they knew mortality was not a given.  She had never died before, after all. Immortality was usually proven behind a sharp blade or a bottle of arsenic, something that wasn’t easy to test. On the surface, it was a paradox. But Jackie was late to the paradoxical party—Heather already had her proof. 

“So?” he demanded. “How do you know?”

“I’ve caught the flu before. A bad case of pneumonia as well, when I was younger. You’ve never gotten sick, right? Never even caught a cold?”

He nodded. 

“Exactly. Your immortality prevents it. But I’m completely mortal, on the other hand. I’m not immune to these things.”

This had upset him, for reasons she could not understand. It wasn’t obvious, but she knew him well. He couldn’t hide it from her. The corners of his mouth went tense, his gaze somewhere else, pupils shining and unfocused. 

Heather almost put a hand on his shoulder, but thought better of it. She knew, somehow, that it wouldn’t help. “Do you want to tell me something?”

“You’re going to die one day.”

“Yes. That’s the definition of mortality.”

“But I won’t.”

“We don’t know that for certain, Jackie. It’s very possible that you will die one day. Your body could simply stop healing. It could fail for no reason at all. It happens all the time. We’d be none the wiser.”

“What if I don’t die?” he asked, more insistent, almost sounding angry. “What if I live forever? What if you’re gone one day, and I’m still here?”

“Don’t dump my body in a ditch, I suppose. A proper burial would be nice.”

“That’s not what I’m talking about. I mean, I’ll do all that, but what about…” He attempted to explain with a few vague gestures, which did nothing to help his point. “What about me? What would I do? Where would I go?”

“You could go wherever you want to.”

He stared blankly.

“You could do whatever you wanted,” she repeated. “I wouldn’t be able to stop you. You could leave.”

She thought this would comfort him, but Jackie just glared at her and went back to bed. He said nothing more on the subject.

Heather blinked. People, so intricate, so easily set off. Spiderwebs of invisible strings, broken by the slightest pressure. He was tightly wound.

“Jackie, come on.” She leaned forward a little. “I didn’t think it would upset you.”

“I’m not upset.”

“If you insist, but don't ignore me. Besides, I’m not going to die any time soon. Unless something unlikely happens, I’ll live for five or six decades more. There’s no point in getting anxious over this.”

“I know.” He didn’t get up.

Heather stared at his back for a few moments. Her situation was… strange, to put it lightly. She was in bed with her test subject. In bed with the immortal Jackie Rockwell. This was not very professional. But they had crossed that line long ago; there was no point in going on and on about it like a broken record. 

It was nice, though. Not arguing. Getting along for once. He was incredibly compliant, and he was beautiful, and Heather had nothing better to do.  

Oh, it was all his fault. He was just too good at it. That poised little smile, the earnest expression so plain on his face. When other people expressed their love, they sounded like recordings, like parrots. Heather tried to think of anything else, but she found herself replaying his words over and over until they lost their clarity, until they blurred and distorted—a confession, an admission of defeat.

“Are you asleep?” he asked.

“No.”

She heard the soft sounds of shifting fabric. “I can’t sleep.”

“That’s okay.”

The headlights of a truck flashed bright-white outside; a stop sign flashed red. She bit at the edge of her lip. The stilted gaps in their conversation were getting to her. But there was no point in trying to push the discussion any further. That had died long ago, and it was nearly two in the morning. Heather went back to bed.

· • —– ٠ ✤ ٠ —– • ·

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[intercoursefluids]

Where Do I Belong Chapter 8

Damian stared down at the sleeping twins on the bed, painfully aware of Alya, Jon’s sister’s best friend, burning a hole into the side of his head.

“What?” Damian asked, looking away from the two to check his phone.

His father and Clark should be there soon, they had been packing up her room for her. (Clark had been using his super speed while Bruce handled hiring transportation to get everything shipped over.)

“So, Mari is fine now, the other guy-” Alya began, gesturing to bed.

“Jon.” Damian interrupted

“-Jon, is asleep, so we’re just gonna say he’s fine too. So how about this, we are all left in the dark in some way or other, you share what you know and we share what we know” She broached, pulling out a chair and taking a seat.

Damian thought it over, on one hand, it felt like a violation of Jon’s trust to tell them everything.

On the other hand, everyone really needed to be on the same page here.

Damian took a seat, coming to the decision to only share the cold hard facts of what he knew. Nothing about how anyone took the news or the how they felt about it.

“Do you want me to start?” Damian asked, sending one last glance to his friend and long lost sister.

They were both dead asleep, though they seemed to have migrated from their previous positions.

Well, Marinette had moved, Jon was still in the same stiff position he had fallen asleep in, lying on his back and holding on to her hand tightly. Careful not to cross any of the boundaries Alya had set up.

Marinette had no such reservations. She had tossed her arm over Jon, and her knee looked like it was digging into his side. Damian doubted he could feel it.

“Yeah, you seem to know more about what’s going on than us anyway.” Nino said, taking a seat next to Alya.

“Very well.” Damian replied, debating on where to start.

Alya must have seen his internal struggle, offering up a starting point.

“How about you start when it was decided to come get Mari? I feel like anything before that she should tell us herself, y’know, after she finds out.” She reasoned, shooting a glance to her friend.

Damian nodded, checking his phone as it dinged.

It was Father, they would be a little later than expected and were asking what everyone wanted for dinner.

“Excuse me, it’s my Father. He is bringing back dinner for everyone and wants to know what you all would like.” Damian explained, feeling a little guilt about delaying the explanation.

Alya and Nino shared a glance before shrugging.

“I don’t eat pork but other than that I think were good with anything, Mari too.” Nino said, nodding his head in her direction.

“That is fine, I don’t eat meat at all. It’s nothing they aren’t used to working around.” Damian said, sending his father their requests before putting his phone away.

“I apologize for the interruption. Now, the decision to come get Marinette was made about a week ago, when we received a call from her guardian. He told us that her adoptive parents had passed and that they believed it best for her to come live with her biological parents, if they would have her.” Damian explained, laying out the facts as he knew them.

He refused to mention how they had cried.

How Jon had shown up outside his window in the middle of the night in the middle of a panic attack.

How he had cried so hard he had thrown up in Damian’s bathroom.

How he had been unable to sleep well since the call had come in, how he hadn’t slept whatsoever in the past 48 hours as they prepared to come to Paris.

How he’d shaken the entire plane ride, terrified that she would want nothing to do with them for abandoning her.

Regardless of the fact that the Kents had not abandoned her, in any sense of the word.

“We offered to give her longer, to pack her belongings and say her goodbyes to everyone but we were assured she would be ready by the end of the week. As you can see, that was not the case.”

“We were led to believe that she was informed about everything that was happening, that she approved of the plan.” Damian shook his head, leaning back in his chair.

Nino looked understanding, if a little pained by his explanation.

Alya on the other hand, seemed furious.

She shot up from her seat, pacing back and forth and running a hand through her hair.

She was muttering under her breath, something that Damian wisely chose to tune out.

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[onewomancitadel]

It really tickles me that Jaune's anima (his feminine unconscious) and Ruby's Shadow kills Pyrrha, like an actual part of Jaune kills Pyrrha and Ruby's suppressed darkness kills Pyrrha, but it awakens her silver eyes - the heritage of her mother, which she can't speak of and knows nothing about, which the very mention of twists something inside her. I think this is where the Jung stuff actually adds another element to the story which isn't just about setting things in order and giving the characters their roles, because it is actually kind of exciting to think there is a literal explanation for Jaune's guilt beyond the fact that he feels like had he been capable, he could've gone with her up the Tower and saved her. A maligned and externalised part of him - his feminine enemy, the part of himself he hates and fears, that he will grow to especially hate - is responsible for killing his teammate, almost-Fall Maiden and love interest.

Cinder loses an eye and a arm after this sequence. Salem explains this to her that it was Ruby's fault, but I don't think this is the case: I think it's very clever of Salem to make Cinder think she's weak to the silver eyes, when the silver eyes would free her of the Grimm curse she's placed under - Cinder's White Shadow, her suppressed light, her goodness, is actually the key to her freedom from this new imprisonment.

And then there's the fact that it's Ruby's Shadow who kills Ozpin, which causes him to reincarnate into Oscar, which brings Ruby's animus (her masculine unconscious) into the story, so Ruby can actually keep going on her Heroine's Journey and reach a Jungian catharsis Salem never could. Ozpin's death is necessary for Ruby's psychological wholeness, but then there's also the fact that Oscar is the next victim of the curse, which is another obstacle to overcome; Ruby is his anima, his feminine unconscious, and she's the only one in V6 who believes he can be free of it.

I think more specifically to Jaune, to pick up on that idea of the feminine part of himself being his enemy - it's that it's very literal in his story, there's obviously a masculine anxiety in his storyline. He's worried about being a Huntsman, being weak, saving people, taking on gross responsibility beyond himself, fulfilling his family's legacy in a very particular way, which he begins to overcome when he awakens his Semblance because he can't kill Cinder. He can't fight her, he can't meaningfully hurt her (physically), and she can threaten his loved ones - she's physically very powerful, she has the Fall Maiden power - but that's kind of the answer, right, which is that he's not meant to fight her, because he'd be killing part of his soul, which awakens his Semblance. She sees into him and decides that she's not going to kill him despite the fact he's supine beneath her, physically vulnerable but at this moment, coming into spiritual awareness and unsettling her, because that's what he wants - her masculine unconscious is angry and hurting, and (physically) powerless, her worst fear - but she's not going to give him what he seemingly wants and really, cosmically, teach him a lesson, that his life matters, and he can't throw it away, because he's part of her. It's interesting that this leads to Cinder's lowest point in the series - weakened, presumed dead, without allies, her mask broken - which she doesn't recover from for a long time.

And then her animus protects her and stops her from taking the Maiden power through Penny. She's already got 'the' power, the Fall Maiden power, she doesn't need more; her masculine unconscious knows this, that she has enough already, and he sacrifices the ability she gave him, in the worst scenario possible, to not let it fall into her lap, and to give Penny what she asked of him that Ruby couldn't. In this case like... Ruby's dark reflection puts Jaune into a situation where he has to make a decision which Ruby will absolutely not approve of, which she rejected herself, which in itself will cause them to play out the same scenario as Rhodes and Cinder - Ruby is disillusioned with him the same way Cinder was disillusioned with Rhodes-the-Huntsman, which actually already had an awful reversal with Jaune and Pyrrha-the-Huntress (who leaves him behind and dies at Cinder's hands).

I want to add the caveat here that all the Jung stuff is just like... descriptive of how we talk about gender (and tbf I think Jung can be more forward-thinking than you believe; it's really interesting a lot of people think it's a novel interpretation that Paul occupies a nonbinary space in Dune, because a basic interpretation of the story that Paul has both feminine and masculine elements - he fully integrates his anima, his mother, through the awareness of the Water of Life - but also occupies a boundary outside of that, as both the one who gives and the one who takes), not really intending to be prescriptive about how people ought to be behave or how people ought to identify. Like, we know there are cultural ideas about what it is masculine and what is feminine, and what it means to have awareness of other men and women, which is an important idea in psychoanalysis, that first when you are a child you don't recognise the difference between male and female, then they grow into disparate ideas, but psychological growth is achieved through reuniting the masculine and the feminine. In a story like R/WBY this is actually something which occurs on a cosmic scale - from a Gnostic viewpoint, Salem is the fall of the Sophia - that the anima/animus of humanity is first whole then divided through Ozlem's union and then breaking of the world.

I'm not about to get into a whole Jung segue, the important part is that this is just storytelling language.

It's potent stuff, because you can see how all these characters are squared out - but then when you look at something like Blake and Yang, Yang is Blake's animus, so not even R/WBY feels particularly constrained by gender to explore these ideas. When Yang is traumatised and dismembered by Blake's persona, her false self (Adam), Blake has to flee, because she feels disempowered by the fact that what feels like a true part of herself has injured Yang. It's when she meets her Shadow (Ilia) and finally reconciles with her that she makes the choice to go back to Yang, because Ilia is really that dark suppressed part of her - someone who's stayed behind in the White Fang, who loves her unconditionally and without return and forgives her, who's not like Adam at all, and can help redeem the White Fang. I think it's pretty significant that once Yang accepts Blake again, this scary feminine part of herself (after being mother to Ruby, after her own mother fleeing, after finally finding Raven again and seeing who she truly is), that Yang can use her Semblance again - with clear vision, unclouded by anger - to protect Blake from the bull. And then you have that whole sequence with the bull sacrifice, and the sacred marriage - 'marriage and killing are related'.

I had wondered if the phases of anima/animus awareness were being literally explored, and maybe there are - maybe this explains the sequences of interaction, that at some point, say, Jaune will come to the highest understanding of Cinder as a complete person, but that feels pretty self-evident; it would make sense that something like that would happen anyway if they went in that romantic direction. What you'll also notice - if you haven't read my Jung posts before - that the twinned pairs I've explored here are mostly romantic, but I think there are some who aren't - most prominently Weiss-Whitley and Qrow-Raven - which is meaningful, probably because Qrow-Weiss are analogues of each other across team S.TRQ/R.WBY (Qrow-Weiss/Summer-Ruby are a duo; Blake-Raven/Yang-Tai are the other; there are other superficial parallels, and more specifically a Jungian parallel of Summer-Pyrrha, though).

The point of this post was just like... because I didn't want to hold back from thinking about it for once. I get a bit shy writing these posts, especially because I have so many reservations myself about how far to take all of this: from the perspective of writer, I would like this stuff to give me some foundation, but I wouldn't want to be backed into a corner either. I like how it adds a new flavour, and I like how it allows you to arrange the pieces on a board, and also how it gives you something to work with before you start stacking on the allusions and interacting with those elements people will recognise more immediately. This is all baser, fundamental stuff which undergirds the story, like the monomyth (which draws on psychoanalysis itself). I really like it, because I like thinking about where the characters are really going and where they think they're going. It's exciting to me that something so tragic, so terrible, so awful, which is the death of innocence in the story, or later the death of adolescence, is the promise of more story - of something beyond it. I guess that's why I like the broken moon or anything associated with Ozlem in this story - because in its brokenness is the promise of wholeness - I like that sense of playfulness.

More particularly to Jaune/Cinder there's just that extra flavour because they are necessary to each other without any conception of exactly how or exactly why, if anything they now view each other as absolute impediments to where they need to go. Which is really exciting. I love that. They don't know. Hahahaha.

[koskela-knights]

Shuffle your favorite playlist and post the first five songs that come up. Then copy/paste this ask to your favorite mutuals. ♥

<33 Thank you for the ask!!

Surprise (not), the Koskela playlist from my Spotify 😏

TLDR, the 5 songs are:

Heroes and Villains by PoTF

The Enemy by Andrew Belle

Achilles by GARETH FERNANDEZ

Crosses by José González

Don't Let Me Go by RAIGN

Now for a more detailed explanation on why all these songs are in my Koskela (and Huotari) list and what prominent lyrics/vibes make me think of them.

1. Heroes and Villains by Poets of the Fall

"We're heroes and villains by chance Heroes and villains by choice"

I think that sums up their role as Cult leaders. Villains to some, heroes to others even if many may not know/understand it. They chose to villainize themselves to keep their home safe.

2. The Enemy by Andrew Belle

This song was recommended after I added 'Pieces' by the same artist in this list.

"Don't try to follow me I would Hold you down if I could Make you the enemy I would Let you down"

idk, this part gives me Jaako & Ilmo vibes. Their relationship to each other, how they can be each other's downfall if not balanced out. (I think echo! Ilmo is an interesting case as what could become of Ilmo if he lost Jaakko much earlier)

"I hold you down I hold you down I hold you"

Then there's this part in the song. And what's interesting to me here, is that I can hear 'I hold you' as different things too. Either 'I hurt you' or 'I haunt you'. Which sums up the last scene of the brothers together. Getting Jaakko involved, made him end up dead (I know this is a really short-sighted observation, but I bet Ilmo feels super guilty about the Cult thing.) And 'I haunt you' is Ilmo post-Jaakko's death being haunted by his shadow and memories.

3. Achilles by GARETH FERNDANDEZ

"I want something I can touch Something I can feel I learnt that my pride is my Achilles heel And when my time is up You know my love was real"

This one's an Ilmo song to me now (used to only have it in my regular playlists lol) Again, set post-Jaakko's death where he's left with survivor's guilt and realizes that all his pride and prideful endeavors mean nothing when the most important person in his world is gone. Only after Jaakko's death, does he realize how much he loved him and how inseparable they were.

"Set me free angel from my nightmare I woke up in this hell too many times Maybe we were never meant to make it I take these words and set 'em on fire"

This line of "too many times" in particular also stood out to me becos it could imply the spiral and being aware of the spiral (self-promo right here: loop/spiral awareness is smth I've written some short drabbles/oneshots for in the past becos it's such intriguing concept)

4. Crosses by José González

"The streets outside your window over-flooded People staring. They know you've been broken Repeatedly reminded by the looks on their faces Ignore them tonight and you'll be alright We'll cast some light and you'll be alright"

Recommended to me by @zephyrone01 This is a Huotari brothers song. POV of Jaakoppi to Ilmari. This matches up with our "Ilmari was possessed by the DP and people in town got suspicious of him" idea.

5. Don't Let Me Go by RAIGN

"Carry me close like the tear drops in your eyes All I can give you is memories Carry them with you and I'll never leave

Don't let me go Hold me in your beating heart"

Another song recommended by Zephyrone01 hehe. It's a powerful song to me 👀 The Angst!!! This specific part would be a Jaakko POV "I won't let go Forever is not enough"

And this would be Ilmo's POV. Anyways, many songs in this playlist are about memories, echoes, darkness & light and moving on and not wanting to live without the other 💔

[immortalmsmoon]

My Sword

Slight Zenitsu x Fem!reader

Warnings: slight breathing technique spoiler for chapter 162, explanation of a wound, a little boring..i'm not very good at writing

Word count: 1171

The air whipped Y/n in the face, her hair blowing around her, grazing her jaw and neck. She stood on the straw roof of a house overlooking the village, as her eyes looked over the village. She stood as still as she could, urging her sense to find what she was looking for, forcing her breathing to stay as controlled as it was for just a little longer. The demon was there. She knew it. Or at least, that was what she had been told. She leaped from the roof, attempting to get closer to the small feeling she was holding on to, one buried deep within her. It felt like guilt; something that burned within her, like a fire, one that pulled her unconsciously towards her goal. It was a demon. It filled all of her senses, and made her feel like her breathing would get caught in her throat at any second. But she still couldn’t find it. Not for the life of her. Her sage green Haori flapped in the wind, her skirt following suit. She hated windy days. 

It had been 12 hours. She still hadn’t found it. She sent word to the upper ranking demon slayers, asking about the situation, and then offered to send backup. 

‘Little good that will do. I can’t find the demon!’ she thought to herself. This was all ridiculous. It wasn’t long before her backup showed up, however. In the form of 3 strange boys. 

“Hello…” she said hesitantly. They sure didn’t look like back up to her. Two of the boys greeted her, but the other, with a boar hat, mind you, seemed to be too distracted…with what, she couldn’t figure out. Their surroundings seemed pretty boring. She shook her head slightly before letting the boys in on the situation. They were to find the demon that lurked in the town, and had been kidnapping children in less than 7 hours; the situation had already dragged on long enough as it was. The only problem was that she couldnt find it. Anywhere. So the boys offered to help. 

One boy, with particularly bright hair used his extraordinary hearing to try and find it. No luck. 

One of the others, a particularly sweet one, used his nose to smell it. No dice. 

The last one tried to use his ability to feel them through spatial awareness. He didn’t sense a thing. At this point all of them were at a loss, so they called it a day, and went to get a couple rooms at an inn so they could regroup and figure out the situation. 

Once they had all settled the meeting began. 

“Hmm..perhaps a demon that can hide its scent?” proposed the red head, who had introduced himself as Tanjiro. 

“I'm not sure…that could be the case, but Zenitsu and Inosuke couldn’t find it either.” Y/n countered. They were at a complete loss. None of them had ever had to fight a demon like this, let alone find one. The more they talked, the more sleep called to them all, begging to take them over, filling their senses with the sticky feeling of being tired. It had been a long day of walking and searching for all of them. Soon they all gave in, separating to their designated rooms. 

Y/n stripped off her uniform, and bathed, scrubbing the day's dirt from her skin and hair. She then put on a night gown, one made of soft purple silk, the sleeves coming down to the middle of her upper arm. Just as she was about to settle into the warmth and plushness of her bed, she heard a bang. And a yelp. One that sounded just like the high pitched voice of Zenitsu. She sighed, standing up, heading towards their room. She swung the door open, hoping her annoyance was evident.

“Do you mind? It's late, and I think we all need sleep for-” her eyes swept over their room. The window was shattered. Zenitsu was sprawled out on the floor. Tanjiro was bleeding down his arm, staining his white nightshirt. Inosuke’s boar head was off, tossed in a random corner, his swords in hand. It took two seconds for Y/n to notice the demon. Two seconds too late. It rushed at her, claws longer than ones she had seen before. She ducked down, the demon's claws smashing into the wood of the door, and he tugged them out quickly. Y/n had already rolled away to Tanjiro’s side, Zenitsu’s nichirin blade in hand. Something about his sword sent a tingling feeling through her. That was something to think about later however. 

“Tanjiro, what the hell happened? Is your arm ok?” she said, quickly blocking the sharp claws of the demon. He spoke quickly, explaining that it had surprised them, shattering the window. As it was about to kill Zenitsu, Tanjiro stepped in the way, and attempted to block the attack, but he only managed to block some of it. Y/n fought quickly as Tanjiro recounted the story, and Y/n attempted to slice the demon's head many times, but Zenitsu’s sword was different from hers; something about the balance was off, it was much heavier than hers. Suddenly the demon swayed, and turned towards Zenitsu. Y'n rushed to his side, and blocked the Demon’s attack just in time to avoid Zenitsu’s death. She groaned as the demon’s claws sliced her upper chest, just short of the positioning of her heart. She was trying to avoid using a breathing technique so they wouldn’t cause any more damage to the already destroyed room, but that didn’t last long. Her basic use of the sword was too weak for the demon. She grit her teeth, taking control of her breath, as she prepared to end the fight once and for all.

‘Flower Breathing: Fourth Form! Crimson Hanagoromo!” swirls of pink and white flowers burst from around her and Zenitsu’s sword as she sent a single slash through the demon, killing him. As the demon finally fell, she let out a sigh of relief. At least they had finally found the demon. She turned to check on the trio of boys, all of them staring at her.

“What, never seen flower breathing before?” she giggled. She sat down beside Zenitsu, helping him sit up. She inspected him for wounds, hand fluttering over his chest. A blush spread on his face, and he could feel himself become lightheaded from the feeling. Y/n looked up to him just in time to see it, and she placed her hand against his forehead, then his cheeks. 

“Are you…sick? You seem fine..” she said, looking at him with curiosity. He shook his head quickly, yellow and orange strands of hair fluttering around his face like little butterflies. 

“It's-just…that-..well..” he stuttered, words sticking to his throat like glue. 

“Well what?” Hana asked curiously. Zenitsu brought his face closer to hers, blush intensifying, his voice a soft whisper. 

“Well…i think you looked amazing…fighting with my sword…”

Heyy :) this is my first post using Tumblr so I hope i did it right! if you like this feel free to check out my super cool Wattpad Simp_For_Anime_boys, not that i post much there lol. im pretty bad at consistency. if i spelt anything wrong, please ignore it, my grammar is terrible, and as you probably noticed i don't capitalize my "i"'s.

[nwr77]

Story of a Lady and her Home

Basically, while working on a completely unrelated project, I finally managed to come up with an explanation as to what exactly makes Sodor special, and it all comes down to Lady.

Lady is a goddess of locomotives, and she came to being in 1802, when Richard Trevithick built Coalbrookdale Locomotive - she is also the reason all locomotives are, well, how they are, with the faces and personalities. Although, at first her name was not Lady, but Jane, after Richard's wife. She did, however have the ability to turn between engine and human from the get go (and regardless of where she was, which is still true, for her and only her).

Young Jane was a friend to all engines, visiting them when they were born and seeing them regularly, but that changed in 1840 when she fell in love - and her feelings were reciprocated.

The lucky guy was Leopard, an LMR 0-4-2 freight engine, brother to Lion and Tiger. She started spending more and more time wherever he was and he always did his best to treat her like the goddess she is and a queen on top. Eventually, it became obvious to engines around them, and even some that only knew Jane; in this case we're talking about the Rocket, who possibly (definitely) had the highest EQ of early engines, and was the one to point out the possible solution to Jane's endless complaining about how they can't experience being in love to the fullest because Leo can't become a human and what not.

So, why can't she try to transform him? Theoretically, as a goddess, she should be able to do essentialy whatever she wants. And so she did... Kinda. She turned him into a humanish creature, that despite looking mostly like a regular person was still an engine at his core.

They ended up moving to Sodor (where there were no railways at the time) in Spring 1842 wearing the names Jane Taylor and Leopold Todd and got married in December the same year. And they were happy. They had a cordial relationship with other inhabitants of the island and their marriage was working out perfectly - that's also when Jane was first called Lady, as Leo called her that whenever given the chance (ex. introducing themselves to someone new, he'd say "This is my Lady, Jane"). They had mundane, human jobs, a house near the forest, and were favourite aunt and uncle of multiple kids. And, honestly, no one on Sodor was very phased by their unusual appearences (although they still made the effort to hide their wheels).

But, nothing good lasts forever. Because, as I said earlier, at the core Leopard was still an ordinary engine, that meant he couldn't just sustain himself like Jane did, and eventually time started catching up to him, the rust, lack of proper energy sources and any sort of maintenance making him unable to do more and more things until shutting his body completely - he might as well have been dead if not for retained ability to form thoughts and speak. Not long after reaching that condition, he asked to be turned back, fully aware that he most likely would be scrapped and effectively dead. And though it pained her greatly, she realized how selfish it would be to keep him like that ("Wasn't it already selfish that she took him away from friends and family so they'd have a life she dreamed of?"), so she obliged. But, first, she took him to the museum where Lion lived so he'd get to see her again and she'd get some closure as her brother was considered "the lost engine" for the past nearly forty years.

She waited, hidden, up until workers showed up, discovered Leo and took him away, and she ended up better for it, as she heard her husband tell Lion that he would not trade the life he had for anything, even the possibility of survival, so that lessend her guilt slightly.

And then, she effectively disappeared. She left the name Jane behind, and took to travelling the world, only letting herself be seen very occasionaly, maintaining a character of the mysterious Lady and never coming to Sodor - she didn't even know they built railways there - until she was truly desperate running from Diesel 10. She stayed, afterwards, because the island and now the railways, with the engines' ability... They were a reminder of what she lost, but also of what she loved. And for the most part they were pleasant reminders, even if she still sometimes saw the ghost of Leopard in places that used to be theirs. But she adjusted. She even got remarried in 2015, but that first love was what made and kept Sodor's magic alive.

[lune-moon-nuit]

I completely, 100% agree with the theory that the cliff scene from Season 1 is being utilized in Season 5. Even before finishing the series, when I saw that scene for the very first time, I truly paused, perplexed: how could a 12-year-old boy be so desperate that he would actually end up jumping off a cliff? And I was genuinely astonished to see that the general audience either forgot about this scene entirely (in the worst cases) or simply summed it up as, "He sacrificed himself for his friend; he’s so heroic."

Sure, from that perspective, it’s heroic... but when you look at the bigger picture, you see a 12-year-old child who has clearly been bullied his entire life, whose best friend has disappeared, whose lifeless body was found and even had a funeral. Despite the faint hope offered by the mysterious girl with supernatural powers, whom he met the day after his best friend’s disappearance, she ran away, and he couldn’t find her again. This crushed any remaining hope of finding his friend alive. At this moment, the most likely explanation for Will’s "death" was either a homophobic hate crime or suicide, given that Will was bullied for being—or appearing to be—gay. This mindset was normalized and widespread, even among Mike’s conservative parents.

To top it all off, the bullies who had humiliated and hurt him and his friends continued to insult Will (missing and presumed dead) with homophobic slurs and threatened to harm Dustin by aggravating his disability to force Mike off the cliff. Mike, at this point, literally believed he was worth less than Dustin’s baby teeth. Let that sink in. Viewed this way, it changes everything, doesn’t it? It becomes much less heroic, doesn’t it?

And let’s not forget that the fall was deadly—there was no question about it. The water at the base of that cliff was where Will’s body was found. Mike had no idea that El would be there to save him. He deliberately jumped off the cliff, fully aware of the outcome. He heard the second bully realizing it was going too far and trying to reason with Troy. He heard Dustin pleading with him not to jump. Even the existence of his friends and family wasn’t enough to activate his survival instinct. He jumped off a cliff at 12 years old, knowing full well he wouldn’t survive. That act wasn’t heroic; it was suicidal.

This scene is, in truth, evidence that Mike has been depressed and suicidal since Season 1—that losing hope of finding Will alive caused him to lose his will to live. Numerous analyses have already done an excellent job explaining why Mike’s character in Seasons 1 and 2 feels so "different" in Seasons 3 and 4, so I won’t delve into that here. But it’s clear that puberty, combined with the increasingly concrete realization of what he feels for Will as a teenager in rural 1980s America, and his overwhelming guilt toward El—whom he cherishes but feels responsible for—have amplified his depression.

He feels obligated to love El as she wishes to be loved because she sacrificed herself to save his life, but he knows he has failed to love her the way he "should," even though he deeply cares for her. While Will being alive has given him one less reason to jump off a cliff, it hasn’t changed the fact that he places no value on his own life. This is evident in how recklessly he endangers himself to protect the people he loves (fighting the Mind Flayer, standing up to Billy, exposing himself to gunfire in Season 4 during the shootout at the house to clear the way for others).

I also won’t dive into Mike’s low self-esteem and insecurities, as these have been repeatedly pointed out and are particularly clear in his own words during the van scene (before Will reassures him). But all this is to say: this scene would be perfect to use in Season 5—not only as a memory Vecna could exploit against him but also as a way to remind the audience of this moment. It would finally highlight all the pain Mike has been carrying silently and hiding from everyone in the series and the audience by internalizing all his emotions.

We need to see Mike undergo a catharsis—potentially triggered by Vecna—to show the depths of his suffering and the factors fueling his depression: his love for Will, his internalized homophobia, his fear of losing Will, his fear of losing El, his fear of losing his family’s love, his self-hatred, his guilt for hurting both El and Will, and his sense of never being good enough despite trying so hard to help those he loves while being completely lost himself.

It’s time for the audience to finally see things from Mike’s perspective and realize just how much he’s been bottling up, only for the pressure to make everything crack. Mike needs that breaking point, the moment where he finally lets it all out, so he can begin to heal and move forward. So he can find himself. So the audience can rediscover him. So he can rediscover happiness—and love, too.

(2/3) Stranger Things/Labyrinth Theory: MC Escher's Relativity Prediction (LONG)

PART TWO IS REAL?! (sorry for the wait, i got busy). As I was saying in part one, I think there's a chance that the climax of Mike's arc in Stranger Things will parallel Sarah's from the movie Labyrinth.

In the movie Labyrinth, Sarah had exactly thirteen hours to rescue her baby brother Toby after accidentally wishing for him to be taken away. In the climax of the movie, she finally spots him crawling up (and down) a trippy ass staircase.

As one of Sarah's last challenges within the Labyrinth, she runs throughout this maze trying to catch up to her little brother. The laws of gravity and physics do not apply here. At one moment, little Toby might be crawling across the ceiling, in the next he might be catching a crystal bouncing up a flight of steps.- fandom wiki

In Labyrinth, the setting of the “endless stairs” scene is based on M.C Escher’s ‘Relativity’.

Which is foreshadowed earlier in the movie, by a poster hanging on Sarah’s bedroom wall:

And as you know from my earlier post, I think this MC Escher poster hanging in Mike's room, was a reference to Sarah's from Labyrinth.

Because it could potentially foreshadow a Snowball/GoblinBall parallel going down in season 5. (read theory: here)

I ended part one on a cliffhanger (cue uncontrollable laughter), by hinting that Sarah's "Relativity" poster might ALSO relate to a potential s5 Mike scene (the cliff). Because, based off of pure unadulterated vibes, the "endless staircase scene" from Labyrinth seemed like the perfect opportunity to visually parallel Mike's Cliff Jump to Sarah's Staircase Jump...

AND GUESS WHAT, THE VIBES WHERE PROPHETIC OR SOME SHIT, BECAUSE IT TURNS OUT THAT A POSTER OF RELATIVITY IS ALSO HANGING IN MIKE'S ROOM?!😱WHICH MAKES THIS THEORY (SLIGHTLY) LESS RANDOM?!

(thank you to @strangerchicka for telling me this, because when i originally paused to screenshot Mike's room, he was covering it LMAOOO)

Not only that, but it's hung directly underneath the notorious One Way Sign pointing directly into Mike's closet. The one way sign isn’t just pointing into his closet, though, it's also pointing at a mirror. Maybe this is because the upside-down is a mirrored version of the other side? In any case, its Suspicious as hell. So, hear me out:

What if the scene of Mike jumping off the cliff comes full circle in s5.

because it’s the only way (?)

Which leads me back to Labyrinth:

The Climax:

the final confrontation between Sarah and Jareth happens in the Relativity-themed room. When she finally reaches the top of the staircase, she looks down and spots sweet lil baby Toby.

but lil homie is contemplating life, staring into the abyss. He's looking over the edge of what appears to be a pretty steep drop.

When Sarah looks down and sees Toby...she JUMPS.

which successfully breaks her out of the spell!

According to multiple credible academic sources (LitCharts and Reddit) Toby the physical embodiment of Sarah's own childhood innocence👼

Which got me thinking: What if the baby is the physical embodiment of Mike’s childhood as well? In other words, what if the baby parallels s1 Mike, and Sarah parallels s5 Mike

(Disclaimer: If you think I sound like a crazy person rn....you're absolutely right. I'm fully aware of my own confirmation bias, and I recognize that, while it's fun to speculate, we really shouldn't expect any of this to actually happen. It's impossible to accur-

YOU THOUGHT BITCH, the voices are back and louder then ever! :D Before escaping from their basement, the Duffers told me (in cryptic riddles ofc) that the cliff scene WILL be brought back in s5, and that they will do it through either time travel or memories. Working backwards from this (highly classified) information, I came up with a few potential scenarios which could be used to write this in:

SPECIFIC S5 CLIFF SCENE PREDICTIONS:

1: MEMORY/ILLUSION: The baby is s1 Mike, and Sarah is s5 Mike. When Mike sees his s1 self on the cliff within a memory/illusion, he has to jump off the cliff again in s5, as it's the ONE WAY to break out of the illusion.

2: TIME TRAVEL TOMFOOLERY: Somehow, going back in time causes Mike to die on the cliff in s1. For example, if El never escaped from the lab in the first place, she wouldn't have been there to save Mike on the cliff in s1 (although he prob wouldn't have in that situation in the first place, but just ignore that for now). If changing the past is THE ONE WAY to stop Vecna, this might mean in s5, Mike is forced to watch s1 Mike jump off the cliff with no one there to save him. (This scenario doesn't seem very likely to me atm,idk why)

MY FAVORITE IDEA?!:

3: TIME TRAVEL TOMFOOLERY: This one is kinda edgy, but the writers almost made El mercy kill her mom in s2, so how crazy is it REALLY?

OKAY. So what if the ONE WAY to stop the end of the world, is go back in time and change things, but Mike unexpectedly dies as a result of this?

What if in s1, Mike still jumps off the cliff despite the bullies never threatening Dustin's teeth in the first place?

Let me explain: if time travel tomfoolery DOES have to go down in s5, then that means they might never meet El or get involved in any supernatural antics.

Meaning that in s1, Mike would't learn the truth about what actually happened to Will after his body was found in the quarry.

The Cliff overlooking The Quarry is the key to all of this.

Why? because if Will's "body" was found in the quarry, then the leading theory as to the cause of his death would probably be this:

Police would suspect that Will was either:

A: hate-crimed/pushed off of the cliff

B. committed sewerslide via jumping

In this altered timeline, Mike might still watch Will's body get pulled out of the quarry. Only this time, he would falsely believe that the cause of will's death was his sexuality.

Police would probably tell him that Will died as a result of the town's homophobia:

and this isn't a crazy assumption to make in the 80’s, which is why Hopper kept pressing Joyce about Will's perceived sexuality. It is a significant factor to consider, if being gay caused his death.

Ted knows this same thing, which is why he subtly implied to Mike that Will's disappearance wasn't shocking to him:

This implication wasn't lost on Mike either, who was understandably upset by it. One can only image how he'd react if it turned out to be true...oh wait,

What if after he finds out that Will "jumped" into the quarry, Mike jumps too

I think Mike's decision to jump will remain unchanged in this timeline, despite Dustin's baby teeth never being threatened. This reveal would reframe the s1 cliff scene, by giving his choice a more profound underlying cause

Only this time when Mike jumps, El won't there to save him:

Which might be why Mike was paralleled to Romeo in s4. Because just like Romeo, what if Mike tragically dies by his own hand after finding out about Will's fake "death" and seeing the body

(someone send me the Montegue image to inset here, i'm feeling lazy)

This scenario would conveniently add a whole new layer of meaning to this joke made by Ted in s2:

“So if your friend jumps off a cliff, you’re going to jump too?”

Might this line be yet another classic case of reverse story telling antics within Stranger Things???

no, cause hear me out! Reverse Storytelling is literally how they constructed Mike and Will's entire relationship! Which suggests that reframing prior seasons and Mike himself will be a pretty major focus of the final season.

If this joke is only supposed to be fully understood in reverse it would make a lot of sense because, as of now, it’s a pretty mid joke. Considering that Mike jumped off of the cliff to save Dustin's baby teeth, the dramatic irony only applies to the fact that Mike also "jumped off a cliff". The implication that he jumped "because his friend did" doesn't even apply to the s1 cliff scene!( I’m the comedy police, and your under arrest!😡👮‍♀️)

UNLESS this joke is actually in reference to the season 5 cliff scene😨Because in s5, Mike jumps off the cliff after finding out that his friend Will did!

Side note: If they can't figure out why Mike dies when they go back in time, maybe the ONE WAY to prevent his own death will be to realize WHY he still jumps (bc he loves will+his internalized homophobia). And so the one way to survive might actually be to admit his true feelings by coming out of the closet to the party/himself! GODDAMNNNN that would be such a cool freaking twist! (Not the unaliving himself part. actually, no yeah that part. I just mean the idea would be creative, but don’t get your hopes up. IF this does actually happen, I doubt Mike would actually stay dead. The duffers are WAY too pussy to kill him off fr, so don’t worry!👍)

Who do I need to bribe in order to get the writers to see this??? because NOT using Ted’s throw-away line to set up the most legendary case of foreshadowing and time travel fuckshit in the history of the universe would be SUCH a missed opportunity!!!! It would simultaneously shed a light on Mike’s internalized homophobia, PLUS demonstrate his love for Will since s1?! just a humble suggestion! 🤷‍♀️(i'm dead fucking serious).

4. Mike has powers: Mike was the one to freeze time in the upside down and/or make it look like Hawkins, not Will. He's the "babe with the power". I'll explain why I think this could be a possible in Labyrinthgate part 3. If the ONE WAY to resolve everything, is to take control of his powers by accepting himself/and coming out of the closet, ig the cliff scene could play into somehow by visually symbolizing Mike's internal struggle ? (link to theory here later)

5. ALTERNATE DIMENSION ANTICS: The baby is s1 Mike, and Sarah is s5 Mike. THE ONE WAY to get back to the other side/upside-down, is to jump off the cliff again, because the water becomes a portal (Bc of Donnie Darco LMAOSK I’ll explain later💀it doesn't make much sense, but i'm still gonna write a theory about it just for funzies . I'll link it here at some point)

Mark my words, something VAGUELY close to at least ONE of these scenarios WILL happen in s5. And that's a connect-dots7 promise🫵. (i'm talking out of my booty hole rn)

Also-

Reframing to the cliff scene in the final season makes sense from a writing perspective:

I mean, Mike jumped off A CLIFF. He was ready to DIE over some baby teeth?! Get real🥱Even if this was the original intent of the scene back when it was first written, there's definitely potential for the writers to reframe it now. Considering the direction Mike's arc is taking, it's a wee bit suspicious how after season one, this event is never brought up again (aside from Ted's cheeky lil joke). Almost like the writers are leaving the door open to potentially revisit it later perhaps??🤨🤨

The GA still needs to be convinced that there was evidence of Mike's internal struggle from the very beginning, which the cliff scene could be utilized to do. Considering that his POV has become increasingly hidden from the audience, it leaves the door open for Mike's character motivations to be "rewritten" in s5. To me, reframing the s1 cliff scene seems like THE PERFECT opportunity to also reframe his character’s perspective. The cliff scene is one of his most memorable scenes in general, and a key moment of characterization for Mike in s1. Also: him readily jumping off a cliff is lowkey sewerslide coded?🤨and if he’s struggling mentally that’s a lil suspicious. just sayingggg🤷‍♀️ btw, that isn’t to say necessarily that Mike jumped off the cliff in s1 bc he was actually just sewerslidal (unless option 3 ends up happening lol). It could also (pretty easily) just be re-framed, or paralleled with s5 Mike, in order to visually allude to/symbolically represent his internalized homophobia. I don’t know how exactly, but (for example) I could see Vecna spelling out for the audience Mike's internal struggle, and info dumping Mike’s secret feelings while a memory of the cliff scene happens, kind of like when Vecna exposed Max for her conflicted feelings about Billy. (this would be kinda bad writing tho imo, so I hope not. I kinda just really want option 3 to happen tbh😗)

More Potential Foreshadowing (Mike/Water)(watergate?!?)

I already thought another cliff scene was a possibility (before all this Labyrinth delusion started), based off of the water imagery surrounding Mike throughout s4:

link to that here

idk guuuuys...something something about all that water symbolism around Mike really makes me of the quarry, since it’s one of the only significant bodies of water in the show. It's also literally the setting where both Mike and Will briefly "died" in s1, cementing it as a pretty significant water themed setting for both of them, but especially for Mike. Of course, the water symbolism might also foreshadow him drowning in Lover's Lake. (more on that later maybe?)

Along with this, I also think that Mike's death will end up referencing Artax's in the Never-ending Story. If Will is Bastian, and El is Ateyu...then who's Mike?

HE'S THE DAMN HORSE. Arguably the most iconic scenes in the Neverending Story is when that depressed horse Artax drowns. (just tryna think outside the box guys, idfk)

the end! hope you liked it!

[thegooseberrypatch]

Age is Just a Number (Mostly)

As long as we are not talking about some people's definition of "relationships," I feel like age is mostly just a number. Life is rarely so simple as to allow for certain things to stop just because one is 20, 40, or 70. I'm here with several examples for those who have copious amounts, or maybe just a little bit, of trauma. Trauma hurts regardless.

I'm 40. I was raped when I was 12 by a 13 year old boy. I was a ministers daughter, he was the son of a cop and a football star. I didn't tell anyone. I buried the memory. I am one of the few cases of legitimate repressed memories. I didn't remember my rape until I was 20. I was at college, engaged in my first back door experience, and the pain triggered the entire rape scene and the months after the assault. My shrink had never met anyone that had true repressed memories (I'd been seeing him for well over a year.) 20 years after recovering the memories, I am still healing from the experience. I am rarely triggered by certain pains, scenes in movie and tv don't bother me anymore, flashbacks are rare/non-existent. My husband taught me dirty self-defense and made sure I KNEW I could protect myself; so even if I froze and survived another assault, I would know that I was capable and strong. There is everything to be said for SURVIVING. Surviving is not consent. I survived my rape by dissociating. There is nothing wrong with that.

I'm 40 and I have extreme medical trauma and White Coat Syndrome. November 2023, my doctor, whom had earned my trust and respect, laughed at me during an appointment. I was in the middle of an explanation and while I was drawing breath to finish, he burst out laughing and blamed it on impulse control issues. My husband was there, thankfully, as a witness to this. Before that, I had GBS and had no medical care from either my PCP or the Neurologist assigned. He said there was "Nothing wrong with me" after 3-4 weeks of being partially paralyzed from the waist down and unable to walk, hold my urine or bowels. He didn't say "I don't know," or "We'll figure it out," or anything else that wasn't ego driven. HE didn't know what was wrong with me and so I was the one making it up. He lied in his official report in my file and basically said I was anxious and blah, blah. My husband was also witness to this. I've had 20+ years of bad health care, ego driven and incompetent doctors, and conditions no ones bothered with. I need medication to see doctors, I avoid them like the plague, my husband has to attend appointments with me, I start having anxiety attacks 3-4 days before scheduled appointments. The only doctor I trust is my dentist; she is amazing. Snapping out of it, isn't an option because I have ongoing medical issues.

I'm 40 and I suffer from Agoraphobia. I no longer fight it. If I need to go out, somehow I will. But I mostly don't leave my property without my family and I am okay with that now. I used to fight it to the detriment of my mental and physical health.

I'm 40 and I still cut. It's a tool in my toolbox that I rarely use but when I need it, I use it and without guilt. My husband is aware and is supportive of responsible use of this tool.

I'm 40 and I am in the middle of my first eating disorder relapse since I recovered in my early 20's. I got pregnant and weighted 110lbs at 5'2. I was required to gain 10lbs as quickly as possible for her sake. I was also a very high risk pregnancy. The last 2 years, since I had GBS in the summer of 2022, have been extraordinarily difficult, culminating in the near ending of my 18 year marriage. I've been in counseling for years, because I like it, he's been in counseling for well over a year, we're going to do couples to work on communication because that's our main issue: he's autistic and I have ADHD. Our communication is apples and trucks. He's also got other issues, that I won't discuss, that he is committed to working on. We had 7 days where we didn't speak, see each other, nothing. I didn't leave my room, he stayed at work. It was hell. We both came out of it different and ready to fight like hell to keep everything we've built. But that week for me, it was something else. Something scary. I *believed* it was over. I wept for days, had chest pains, anger, rage. I went through the cycle of grief, alone. When we came out of our mutual places, we realized that it was the end of a shit marriage and the beginning of a new one. But now I am in the throws of ED relapse with no tools. I haven't dealt with it in therapy in many years, haven't needed to. I've had a few blips but never a full relapse. I'm trying not to feel stupid, etc. I didn't decide to relapse and my husband is very supportive of me getting it worked out. Before November of 2023 I would have called my doctor and told him what was happening; he's not a therapist but I trusted him, with every fiber of my being. At that time, I knew he would have bent over backwards to help me until I found a new shrink, etc. Now, he doesn't even know and the one person I could have counted on medically, isn't safe anymore. I miss him. I still grieve that *MEDICAL* relationship.

Your trauma isn't you. It's part of you and it doesn't have to rule you. But sometimes, it pops up and makes lots of noise and feeling it and letting it go is probably the best way to deal with it. You aren't alone. One day you'll be as okay as possible.

[psychreviews2]

Case Studies: The ‘Wolfman’ – Sigmund Freud Pt. 3

On the cutting room floor

Being such important case studies, later analysts would unearth from them what Freud could not see in the early 20th century. Patrick Mahony analyzed some of what was missing in The Cries of the Wolf Man based on more current discoveries, just like he did in his huge review of the "Ratman." In those days, again, women were often not emphasized as much as men for their influence on a child's upbringing. "...Freud's paternalistic bias in his understanding of the case and the [minimization] of maternal transference appears in the odd statement that the father was Serge's 'first and most primitive object choice.' Finally, Freud's judgment of aggressive factors was wanting. He underplayed the hostile elements in the transference. Stressing sexual explanations, he neglected the essential connection between narcissism and aggression and the patient's identification with the aggressor; in particular, much of Serge's early [behaviour] was an identification with an aggressor, which is to be explained not merely as a reaction from passivity to activity but rather as a process whereby becoming the aggressor diminishes [low self-opinion], gratifies the self, and regains self-esteem...Sociologically we must be aware that because of the enormous wealth and aristocratic standing of Serge's family and attendantly because of its palatial mansion, it is of the greatest unlikelihood that the boy would have slept in his parents bedroom. We can hardly imagine that this reality was not brought up and discussed during the analysis, and yet Freud suppressed this in his reportage." Freud was also working through his own situation with homosexual libido at around that time with his split with Wilhelm Fliess. In a letter to Sandor Ferenczi Freud wrote that "a piece of homosexual investment has been withdrawn and utilized for the enlargement of my own ego. I have succeeded where the paranoiac fails." It was also known that Sigmund slept in his parents quarters and was more likely to witness his parents having sex rather than his patient.

Mahony further describes the improbability of the primal scene, and that the child with malaria was able to watch the parents having sex for a long period of time, even if he were only in the room once. The angle of seeing the genitals from the cot would also be improbable. "Apart from the fact that the primal scene may be absorbed into screen memories, the question remains as to whether the exposure to primal scenes must necessarily be traumatic or be interpreted as a sadomasochistic experience. The universality of incest taboos and the inevitability of unconscious guilt incurred in witnessing the primal scene and the child's possible rage and narcissistic injury are elements to be taken into account in any future answer. At any rate, Freud's focusing on direct instinctual overstimulation due to a single primal scene overlooked the possible trauma of more important factors: the pathology of earliest object relations; the psychobiological side effects of the nearly fatal pneumonia suffered at the age of three months; life threatening malaria and its sequelae in ego disturbance; and finally, what we now understand as the sensitivity of the rapproachement subphase of separation-individuation when language, secondary process, and gender identification are rapidly evolving and vulnerable." Here the rapproachment subphase he is talking about, is the age when the child has to start to feel comfortable doing some things on his or her own.

Like the mutual admiration society described earlier, prematurely believing in success can fool both the therapist and patient. Mahony adds that "[by bringing] their 'interplay of suggestion and compliance' to bear upon the so-called breakthrough at the end of the case, we see at another level the patient's submission to his insistent analyst, who all the while eagerly and self-deceptively believed that infantile material was being worked through. The forced termination gratified the Wolf Man's passive fantasies related to the primal scene and at the same time further entrenched him in a castration complex. There is a partial truth to the diagnostic account of the Wolf Man 'as having submitted in a feminine manner to Freud and as having produced a child for him - the wolf dream and its analysis - and thereby a cure in part through a misalliance and mutual inappropriate gratification. One might even speak of an '[invention] induced by interpretation whereby the dream, placed at the center of the treatment, became the object of an equal ardor and of reciprocal seduction.' In one sense the patient retreated to a second line of defense; his compliant false self gave Freud what he was looking for, with the result that the patient's infantile grandiosity remained untouched, a false-self maneuver which 'settled several critical dilemmas, and satisfied narcissism at both ends of the couch.'" Ironically, Freud was studying Narcissism at this time but all he saw was genital narcissistic masculinity rebelling against femininity.

A big possible miss comes from the former director of the Sigmund Freud Archives, after Kurt Eissler, Jeffrey Masson, who found unpublished material that could be of use to the case study. In his controversial The Assault on Truth, he was "asked...to go through the unpublished material...concerning the Wolf-Man, one of Freud’s most famous later patients. There I found some notes by Ruth Mack Brunswick for a paper she never published. At Freud’s request, she had re-analyzed the Wolf-Man and was astonished to learn that as a child he had been anally seduced by a member of his family—and that Freud did not know this. She never told him. Why? Did Freud not know because he did not want to know? And did Ruth Mack Brunswick not tell him because she sensed this?" His discovery unfortunately doesn't provide which family member it was and so it remains floating in the possibilities of interpretation. Was it a parent, a sibling, or a caretaker? Freud did acknowledge sexual abuse in childhood, but he focused more on frustrated wishes, precisely because not all victims end up with psychological problems after abuse. A more balanced view that looks at both abuse and frustrated wishes would help, and if Serge had that dealt with in the analysis with Freud, it certainly would have been more insightful.

In the end Mahony found Brunswick's analysis too timid to break with Freud's orthodox analysis. "Brunswick bore some similarity to her patient the Wolf Man, and one may wonder whether the overlap influenced Freud's decision on the referral. To complete this part of the story: during her prolonged stay in Vienna, her health deteriorated, prompting her to follow the dying Freud to London in 1938 to have further analysis with him. Imagine the desperate scene: now a recent widower, the succor-seeking Wolf Man rushing to London to see his analyst, who herself was frail and back in treatment with her own and her patient's former analyst." Mahony speculates that this could have been seen as a rejection to Serge because "in London the Wolf Man obtained relief from Brunswick but tried unsuccessfully to see Freud." Then with Freud's death, his wife's suicide, and Ruth's untimely death, he would eventually have to find others to rely on. By the time Serge was interviewing with Karin Obholzer, he was seeing Kurt Eissler and possibly Dr. Wilhelm Solms. Mahony researched the background to those interviews. "Pankejeff voiced endless resentment of others, including Eissler and Gardiner, who so generously sustained him materially and psychologically; meanwhile he was criticizing Obholzer to Eissler. This backbiting, atypical of the immortal patient, indicates another character change where senility had its say. But it is fitting to ask how much he was influenced by the anti-psychoanalytic interviews, if he spoke for himself, or even more to the point, did he ever speak for himself?"

Life after Freud

Despite the positive overtones of the Psychoanalysts, Psychoanalysis has always been under a lot of criticism, and Serge was the longest living patient of Freud's. He would provide a lot of material to analyze after so many treatments. The last part of Serge's life until his death included continued communication with psychoanalysts and an interview with an agnostic journalist, Karin Obholzer. It was very interesting to see the two sides of the Wolfman case. From the point of view of a psychologically untrained journalist, Karin was able to see Serge without the lens of psychoanalysis and to be able to notice how little he changed for an average person. Any unknown biological sources of pathology would continue to manifest in front of her. Yet, from the point of view of psychoanalysts, they are the ones trained to treat patients and are able to see more depth than Karin was able to. It's very easy when reading these books to get emotional and take sides, because it's a human life in the balance. Karin would not be able to analyze Serge's defenses and break through them. She had to take him at his word. Psychoanalysis would develop into different traditions, including Object-Relations and Self-Psychology. Reviews of later psychoanalysts could see what Freud did right and wrong and add further understanding from more recent clinical observations. After all these years of treatment, how much improvement should Serge have noticed? Also, at his advanced age of 86, how much would he remember for an interview? 

Serge's late views on Freud and Psychoanalysis

Despite all that help from Freud and other Psychoanalysts, Serge remained skeptical at the end of his life. "Freud was a genius, there's no denying it! All those ideas that he combined in a system...Even though much isn't true, it was a splendid achievement." One of the interesting sticking points for Serge was the endless debate about choice and determinism. Even though Freud was mostly of the opinion of determinism, he still talked about choice. "Freud said that when one has gone through psychoanalysis, one can become well. But one must also want to become well. It's like a ticket one buys. The ticket gives one the possibility to travel. But I am not obliged to travel. It depends on...my decision." The difficulty for therapists is how to generate desire in people to change, and certainly Freud and others tried. "He had very serious eyes that looked down to the very bottom of the soul. His whole appearance was very appealing. I felt sympathy for him. That was transference. He had a magnetism or, better, an aura that was very pleasant and positive. When I told him about my various states, he said: 'We have the means to cure what you are suffering from'...He said 'Treatment means that you have to say everything that occurs to you'...He must have thought that the important things are in the subconscious and that they emerge through free association." Freud warned him not to rationalize the material. The patient had to trust the the analyst. "That's how he succeeded in bringing about a total transference to himself. Is that a good thing, do you suppose? That's the question. Too strong a transference ends with your transferring to individuals who replace Freud, as it were, and with your believing them uncritically. And that happened to me, to a degree. So transference is a dangerous thing....Basically [hypnosis and transference] are similar. I can remember Freud saying 'Hypnosis, what do you mean, hypnosis, everything we do is hypnosis too.'"

Serge went on explaining how he "worshiped" Freud and how Freud was a replacement to a disappointing father who preferred his sister instead. When his father died, Freud would be able to use a much stronger transference in therapy, and suggestions would be much easier to be adopted. Serge then talked about the difficulty of affording treatment, and how psychology is much better than it used to be. His big concern about psychotherapy was the false promise of happiness after an analysis, and the unexpected dependence on analysts. "The analyst puts the patient back into his childhood. And he experiences everything as a child. But that doesn't mean that the suffering has to pass. That's the important question: Must it pass when one remembers something? This question has not really been answered...The disciples of psychoanalysis should have not laid hold of me after Freud.

O: You mean they should have left you alone?

W: Yes, because I would have acted more independently...That is the danger of psychoanalysis, that one is dependent on the decisions of others who are not competent and knowledgeable but who believe that they know everything and can guide one just because they are psychoanalysts...Freud was so anti-religious [but] he and all of psychoanalysis are being blamed for the very thing for which he blamed religion, that it's nothing but a faith...But psychoanalysis is complicated. Who can make definitive and official statements? The effect was salutary, in any event. But it was not a complete cure.

O: And do you still believe in psychoanalysis?

W: I no longer believe in anything.

O: Nothing at all?

W: All right, I believe in transference. I am of the opinion, of course, that improvement can be made by transference.

O: Today, they also concern themselves with the family or with the couple if that's what it is.

W: That's the way it should be, of course. [They] must also deal with Therese and not say, that isn't my patient.

[But] I never thought much of dream interpretation, you know...Freud traces everything back to the primal scene which he derives from the dream. But that scene does not occur in the dream...That scene in the dream where the windows open and so on and the wolves are sitting there, and his interpretation, I don't know, those things are miles apart. It's terribly farfetched.

O: But it's true that you did have that dream.

W: Yes, it is...I prefer free association because there, something can occur to you. But that primal scene is no more than a construct...The whole thing is improbable because in Russia, children sleep in the nanny's bedroom, not in their parents'. It's possible, of course, that there was an exception, how do I know? But I have never been able to remember anything of that sort...If one...concludes from effects to cause, it's the same thing as circumstantial evidence in a trial.

O: What about the obsessional neurosis now?

W: I believe you are born with something like that, there's nothing one can do about it.

O: Freud writes that your illness erupted because you got the clap [Gonorrhea].

W: That we have to talk about these unpleasant things!

O: What's so terrible? It can happen to anyone. Perhaps it will console you when I tell you that I had the clap myself.

W: I am amazed you should tell me. You really seem to trust me!...I had a friend, and this friend had an older friend who arranged it. There was a café with three girls in it. And this friend knew that these girls were [waitresses] in that café and that they could also be put to a different use...And they also had a room...

O: How old were you at the time?

W: Seventeen.

O: Was that your first sexual experience?

W: Yes. In any event, we went and I asked the friend - you'll have to excuse my telling you these terrible things - whether one should use a prophylatic or not. And he answered, 'The whore will laugh at you.' So we didn't take any long. And then, by way of a joke, he said that there's a superstition that the name of the first woman with whom one has sexual intercourse will also be the name of the woman one marries. And that was true in our case. Her name was Maria, I remember, and my wife's name was actually Maria Therese. So it was true.

O: The gonorrhea came later?

W: Yes, later. I got it from a peasant girl. That was a year later. I felt confident; I thought, that can't happen in the country. People always said that it was risky to go to prostitutes. And out in the country it is less dangerous. The opposite turned out to be true.

O: And you gave the peasant girl money, or were you in love?

W: No, no, you always gave something, that was a matter of good manners.

O: What did you tell Freud you were suffering from?

W: Well depressions...it was because of Therese...Everyone was against Therese: the doctors, my mother, my relatives. They all said that she was a woman with whom one could not live. Had I decided to go see Therese, things might have been alright without Freud.

O: What was the attitude toward masturbation?

W: Well, my God, people said that one became insane, that it is very dangerous, that it's harmful. And when I saw Freud, he said, 'Well, that's an exaggeration. It isn't that serious.'

O: Did Freud advocate masturbation?

W: No, no, that's putting it too strongly. He viewed it as harmless.

O: [Ruth] writes that you said, 'Of course, I only masturbated regularly on the big holidays.'

W: What she wrote there is stupid. It's absurd.

O: Why? What if you did?

W: When I was seeing her, I was with Therese. I had no need to masturbate.

O: There are people who masturbate nonetheless.

W: But that's primarily young people who haven't had the courage to go to a woman or haven't had the opportunity.

O: One also finds it among couples. It isn't that unusual.

O: Did you ever have real homosexual relations?

W: Of course not, never. But since you bring it up, I happen to remember something. In Russia, the Armenians were known as homosexuals. I was told when one went to a bathhouse in the Caucasus, they asked, do you want a woman or a boy? When I was a student in Odessa, there was an Armenian. His name was Murato. He was a good-looking person but had disquieting eyes. Very strange eyes. That was what was so beautiful about him. There was a small group of us students, and this Murato was one of us. Once, he said to me, 'You know, after the performance, we are all visiting S. P. That was an actor in Odessa who was a known homosexual...Murato said, 'We are all going to see S.P.' I knew right away what he meant. One day, I was at the university to attend a lecture. All the seats were taken except for one next to this Murato. I sat down there. Suddenly, he takes my hand and starts pressing it. That was supposed to be a test. I immediately distanced myself...I had a second experience...I was going to Paris, there was another gentleman in the compartment. I stretched out and fell asleep in the corner by the window. Then he stepped up to the window and placed his foot close to mine. I didn't know what to do, should I push his foot away? So I pretended to sleep. Then he played with my knee, but finally he stopped. He wanted to see how I would react.

O: Freud writes about your homosexual tendencies...

W: Subconscious, of course. For Freud, all relations between men are homosexual.

O: It's probably true that every human being is naturally bisexual.

W: But homosexuals are relatively rare.

O: The educational barriers are very strong...Freud says somewhere that you preferred a certain position during intercourse, the one from behind...that you enjoyed it less in other positions.

W: But that also depends on the woman, how she is built. There are women where it is only possible from the front. That's happened to me. It depends on whether the vagina is more toward the front or toward the rear...With Therese...the first coitus was that she sat on top of me."

O: [Quoting Ernest Jones here]: 'From the age of six he had suffered from obsessive blasphemies against the Almighty, and he initiated the first hour of treatment with the offer to have rectal intercourse with Freud and then to defecate on his head.'

W: For heaven's sake, what nonsense! To write something like that, I don't know, is that fellow crazy or what, writing such nonsense. He explained it to me, he sits at the head end rather than at the foot of the bed because there was a female patient who wanted to seduce him, and she kept raising her skirt...That fellow must have a screw loose."

The quote Obholzer referred to was from Ernest Jones who took the situation too literally. Thankfully Mahony referenced the original letter from Freud writing to Sandor Ferenczi about a transference insult he received from Serge: "A rich young Russian whom I have taken on because of compulsive falling in love, confessed to me, after the first session, the following transference: Jewish swindler, he would like to use me from behind and shit on my head." Whether Serge forgot the transference or it never happened, at his age during the interview it's hard to verify. Certainly it's possible there was an anal obsession with Freud doing the analysis. At this point it's good to bring in more modern understandings of obsession and homosexuality. 

Homosexual OCD

A lot of conflict between people regarding sexuality is based on phobias and compulsive thoughts. When someone looks at someone else, they don't only look, the brain assesses imitatively if it identifies with the pleasure that person looks for. People forget that their desire or distaste is their own. For those who obsess, compulsions can happen just from looking at someone or thinking about content that adds to obsession. Freud in particular is a psychoanalyst that talks a lot about obsession and homosexuality. When obsession goes to an extreme it turns into what modern therapists call Homosexual Obsessive Compulsive Disorder (HOCD). Certainly with so much emphasis on sexuality and sexual orientation in Freud's insights, it's easy for people to obsess about how they dress, how they hold themselves and think "is that unconsciously gay?" Phobias and stereotypes can easily develop if you are constantly looking for signs. The human mind has many parts to it and it's capable of imitating emotions of others, just like you see in TV shows, movies, and even singing Karaoke and singing along in concerts are great examples of mimetics. You can imitate being the singer and it creates some emotions of validation, and identity, but this short-term imitation, that can turn into an obsession, is shallow compared to being the actual person. There are more piano notes to being in a long-term homosexual relationship where you are in love with your partner and desire to have regular sex with them, but where you also have deep intimate conversations and long-term joint projects. People can be confused by imitation, identification and compulsions to act. With OCD, the intrusive thoughts are very powerful. It may seem funny to many people, but it actually affects a lot of people, and if they can't get out of their thoughts/images and into the sensations of their body, they can have doubts about their sexual orientation for long periods of time. 

Monnica Williams did an excellent review of this type of OCD. In general, with OCD..."compulsions are repetitive, ritualized behaviors that the person feels driven to perform to alleviate the anxiety of the obsessions. Depending on the severity of the disorder, the compulsive rituals can occupy many hours each day...A recent study using a broad sample of OCD patients found that 25% experienced sexual obsessions currently or in the past. Sexual obsessions may revolve around a multitude of loci. Common themes include unfaithfulness, incest, pedophilia, unusual behaviors, AIDS, profane thoughts combining religion and sex, and, of course, homosexuality. Since sex carries so much emotional, moral, and religious importance, it easily becomes a magnet for obsessions in people predisposed to OCD....Homosexual anxiety is described here as the obsessive fear of being or becoming homosexual, the experience of intrusive, unwanted mental images of homosexual behavior, and/or the obsessive fear that others may believe one is homosexual. A person may have only one of these facets of the disorder or any combination. Since OCD is characterized by doubt, the person with OCD will contemplate the uncomfortable thoughts or images, agonize over the meaning of the questions that arise, determine possible answers, and then doubt the answers. The person will continually seek evidence to help arrive at a decision, perform compulsive rituals to ward off anxiety, ask others for reassurance, and/or avoid things or situations that worsen the anxiety. At times the person will realize that the fears are extreme but at other times the concerns may seem perfectly rational...People with HOCD may engage in a multitude of checking behaviors and avoidances. They may avoid watching television out of concern that seeing a show with a gay character might trigger the obsessions, causing a 'spike,' or surge of anxious thoughts. Others might look at pornographic images of homosexual couples and repeatedly assess whether they feel aroused, or even compare their responses to when they look at heterosexual images. Many people with homosexuality fears worry about a sudden lack of attraction to others of the opposite sex. They may attempt to have intercourse with their partner or masturbate to pornography just to ensure that they are 'still straight.' This form of checking is particularly destructive because the anxiety from the OCD typically results in decreased sex drive and/or an inability to perform, which the patient then misinterprets as further evidence of homosexuality. People with HOCD will often solicit reassurance from others then feel temporarily relieved, but the doubts always return. No amount of reassurance is ever enough because complete certainty cannot be obtained. Even though the person may be diagnosed with OCD, until they are treated they often will doubt the diagnosis...Homosexuality anxiety is not caused by dislike of homosexuals, but rather a fear that the person will no longer have access to the opposite sex, something they highly value."

An example of how extreme it can get is an OCD patient Monnica describes. "I have been diagnosed with OCD for a while now. The therapist I was seeing told me that I should try to be with a man, and that everybody is bisexual. It really freaked me out, and I was suicidal for five months thanks to what she said. The thoughts grew even stronger. Eventually, I couldn’t be with any person of the same sex alone in the same room, watch TV, read the newspaper, or listen to music with male voices." So this is important for Freudian psychoanalysts who are comfortable with bisexuality, but their patients are not, and also have OCD, especially if they are undiagnosed. Another example is of a 20 year old male masturbating to see which pornography creates the largest pleasure. "I’m struggling with these bloody urges, and I can’t stand it any more. It keeps saying, “You want it,” [obsession] and eventually I say, “Fine,” and I just masturbate to things I hate [compulsion]. It does a little bit for me, but I’m pretty sure that’s the stimulation and not the content. But then as soon as I think of a girl [compulsion], boom, I finish, and I know I am straight. But how am I supposed to get these thoughts out of my head? These urges feel real. I don’t like this. I don’t want to be gay at all. It’s a scary thought that I'd have to spend the rest of my life with a guy [obsession]. I can’t handle that, but something keeps telling me that’s what I want [obsession], even though in reality that’s disgusting to me. OCD is so confusing isn’t it?"

Of course this doesn't only affect men. "This is all started about two years ago, with obsessions about being gay. Over the past several months my thoughts have been insane. I can't do anything without freaking out that it is a sign [obsession]. I am in the medical profession. If I have to do an...exam, and a girl is skinny (and of course I'm jealous), I get visuals that I don't want. If a couple comes in and the husband is ugly, but the wife is pretty and thin, I think, 'Oh my God, I would rather be with the wife than the husband [obsession].' Then I try to picture myself years down the road [compulsion], and I can't see who I am with – a man or a woman. I feel like I have become obsessed with the female body, which could either be due to my horrendous self-esteem or that I'm really gay. I used to be obsessed with the male body and always talking about how hot this guy was or that guy, and now I feel like I can't do that anymore. These thoughts are shifting my entire outlook on who I want to be with. I have been dating someone for the past seven months, and he is aware of what has been going on. He tries to help, but doesn't really know how. It seems like it has gotten progressively worse since I have started dating him. In the beginning, sex was awesome, and now it's all I can do to make it through sex without crying because I feel like I'm going insane. And at times I feel so full of sadness and depression, that I forget how much I love (or think I love) [obsession] my boyfriend."

Like with most OCD, the treatments involve tackling the logic of obsessive thoughts. "I realized that when the phrase 'You're gay' popped into my head I was telling myself the following: (1) You are inferior to other men, (2) You are effeminate, (3) You are a sissy, (4) No woman would be interested in you. When I saw the lies in these statements, I said to myself, 'You know what, even if I am gay this distorted belief system is a problem and needs to be fixed.' Once I saw the lie, it was like a fog lifted, and the horrible depression disappeared instantly. I thought this was really too good to be true so I called my therapist. She told me that, yes, once you realize the distortions in some of your thoughts your mood can change instantly. It was unbelievable."

Fred Penzel, from the International OCD Foundation, provides some tips for resisting checking behaviour. "Not checking your reactions to attractive members of your own sex. Not imagining yourself in sexual situations with same-sex individuals to check on your own reactions. Not behaving sexually with members of the opposite sex just to check your own reactions. Resist reviewing previous situations where you were with members of the same or opposite sex, or where things were ambiguous to see if you did anything questionable. Avoid observing yourself to see if you behaved in a way you imagine a homosexual or member of the opposite sex would." The problem with checking behaviour is that it can become addictive because of the relief. Yet the relief doesn't last because doubts keep returning because it's hard to be absolute about fuzzy areas like sexual orientation, and certainly having other non-professionals suggest your orientation is to give them too much power. One has to develop skepticism of people who rattle off suggestions that "your clothes are gay, your interests are gay, you saw gay pornography, that means you're gay, you had thoughts about being gay, then you're gay." You can reverse it to see how unscientific those suggestions are. "Your clothes are straight, your interests are straight, you saw straight pornography, that means you're straight, you had thoughts about being straight, then you're straight." Another area of healing can come from exposure therapy, where you actually entertain more ideas of homosexuality to face your phobias. Now this isn't a checking obsession, these are actually attempts to learn. Depending on how serious the compulsions are, a patient has to be ready to deal with the anxiety. This includes..."reading books by or about gay persons. Watching videos on gay themes or about gay characters. Visiting gay meetings shops, browsing in gay bookstores, or visiting areas of town that are more predominantly gay. Wearing a T-shirt at home with the word ‘gay’ on it. Wearing clothes in fit, color, or style that could possibly look effeminate for a man or masculine for a woman...[Read] about people who are sexually confused. Reading about people who are transgendered. Looking at pictures of people who are transgendered or are transvestites."

As an aside, on the checking behaviour with pornography, people need to be aware of how much disgust towards any sex is held back in things like pornography. Just like in advertising, all undesirable details are removed, or participants act as if undesirable details are desirable to get the brain to imitate. As long as participants look like they're having a good time, the brain wants to imitate pleasure. This habit can sneak into areas that require more authenticity. Long-term sexual relationships require a lot of love, caring, and concern. Most of these things are missing from pornography. The relationship template the brain is learning from in pornography is based on what's left out. This isn't to bash pornography but much of it leaves out long-term relationships, envy, jealousy, STIs, and relationship skills. Lust also gets boring. What is attractive at the beginning in a relationship can become quite boring after a certain amount of time. Long-term relationships have passion, love and interest that doesn't fizzle as easily. Having gay or lesbian sex without the human connection that goes beyond a sexual connection is too superficial to be full sexual orientation. Pornography is not a good example for people to decide what their sexual orientation is. At most it can help condition an appreciation of the same sex in terms of lust, but it doesn't condition romantic love and relationship skills because those things are absent in most pornography. The piano notes of a loving long-term relationship have a lot more variety than sex addiction, and like any addiction, overemphasizing one note is all about short-term quick relief to regulate the emotions, just like alcohol and other substances. If boredom rules addiction and it requires more novelty and intensity then in the example of relationships, long-term relationships would be boring and partners would have to be exchanged constantly. What people with different sexual orientations are fighting for in claiming equal rights is much more than just sex. 

Outside of sexual orientation, a person has to look beyond needing a response from society or authority figures to bless a relationship, and one has to get to a point as if you and your partner are on your own, making your own decisions, without needing validation from others and to be able to feel relaxed, comfortable and happy. This is actually a difficult thing to do. To look at actual relationships and actual objects for their actual value, without needing validation, and agreement from others is an advanced level of intrinsic motivation. Many people want what they want and demand that everyone agree with them, even if opinions from others are irrelevant. A lot of the high people get is on social validation and it can distort any individual's decision making strategies, and is a huge source of conflict internally and externally. People want you to agree with their religion, philosophy, sexual orientation, and cultural habits. Rewards and punishments constantly steer the mind away from authentic choices. To mind your own business and live your own life actually takes a lot of courage, but the reward is psychological freedom and independence.

Horace Frink & Proto-conversion therapy

Of course this mistake of needing help from authority figures to work out sexual orientation also happened in Freud's time and he was also implicated in those mistakes. Serge wasn't the only one that became a ward of psychoanalysis, and this can happen in any modality where the therapist receives a parental transference respect from the patient. Freud over emphasized unconscious homosexuality in a way that helped but he was too omnipotent to understand how unbending many sexual orientations are. He eventually figured it out, but it didn't start off that way. The Frink Fiasco was almost as bad as what happened with Emma Eckstein. [See: Dreams: https://rumble.com/v1gtf6j-dreams-sigmund-freud.html] Horace Frink was a former analysand of Freud's and he impressed him enough to have Horace selected as Freud representative in America. Frink was having an affair with the banking heiress Angelika Bijur, and Freud suggested that Frink was in love with her and should divorce his wife, which he had two children with. After the divorces and the new marriage to Bijur, Frink's mental health deteriorated with feelings of guilt. His depression and anger increased with accusations that his new wife was ugly and looked like a man or a pig. Freud responded "Your idea Mrs. Bijur had lost part of her beauty may be turned into her having lost part of her money. Your complaint that you cannot grasp your homosexuality implies that you are not yet aware of your fantasy of making me a rich man. Let us change this imaginary gift into a real contribution to the Psychoanalytic Funds." Freud was in the dangerous position that most psychologists face, which is how to make money and follow ethics. The pressure to have famous successful cases pushes people to take short-cuts, and is always an influence therapists have to ignore to protect their patients. Frink himself was now stuck analyzing patients for the needed money, even as he started losing faith in psychoanalysis. His ongoing fights with Angelika resorted to blows and she filed for divorce. Freud was forced into having to dismiss Frink from leadership in America, and it turned into a resentment that Freud had against his followers in the United States. Frink continued to deteriorate, including two suicide attempts, leading to an admission in a sanatorium. Now on Freud's side, he wasn't responsible for Frink's affairs, but psychological suggestions are dangerous, partly because it's actually hard to be a therapist and avoid suggestions, but this is also compounded when important individuals in family relationships are left out of the analysis. Angelika's ex-husband Abraham asserted himself in a letter to Freud that should be an example to all therapists who should think before they offer any suggestions, especially match-making suggestions. "Dr Freud: Two patients presented themselves to you and made it clear that on your judgment depended whether they had a right to marry. The man is bound in honour by the ethics of his profession not to take advantage of his confidential position toward his patients. The woman was his patient. The woman is my wife. How can you know you are just to me: how can you give a judgment that ruins a man's home and happiness, without at least knowing the victim, so as to see if he is worthy of the punishment, or if through him a better solution cannot be found? Great Doctor, are you savant or charlatan?"

This is just as much a problem today as it was then. Going back to the concern of the 'Ratman' Ernst Lanzer, Patrick Mahony said "it was years later [than his analysis] before Freud fully realized that the uncovering of guilt could lead to the negative therapeutic effect of worsening a patient's condition." This is a great example for budding therapists to study before they start the profession. Blame, as is known in the court system, can be accurate, but it also can conflate all the problems that a person has onto a scapegoat and therapists can be scapegoated. Both the therapist and the patient have to take on their own responsibilities for making decisions. Patients need to find second opinions, and if they are capable of agency, they should be doing their own research. The challenge for therapists is to make sure the client knows that psychology is not a magic wand that will make you rich and find the perfect spouse. Psychologists are not experts in every field of life, and suggestions outside of their expertise must be looked at with skepticism. Many things are uncertain, and in a world where people glorify intuition, it can be as dangerous as a random guess. Daniel Kahneman describes when intuition works best "We have seen that reliably skilled intuitions are likely to develop when the individual operates in a high-validity environment and has an opportunity to learn the rules of that environment. These conditions often remain unmet in professional contexts, either because the environment is insufficiently predictable or because of the absence of opportunities to learn its rules." What this basically says is that you can only trust intuition when you know a lot about something. The best attitude to have in therapy is to be skeptical of all intuitions until the patient's family and friends are understood very well. Even then, there will be mistakes, so an emphasis that people have to take responsibility for themselves instead of relying on their psychologist like they are a child dependent and the therapist is a parent, must be communicated to the patient. The patient needs to inform themselves and read different points of view, and if they are capable of learning a lot about reality, and the different scientific disciplines, then they can be independent minded enough to make their own decisions, and hopefully, if their problem is not genetic or biological, they can let go of dependence on a saviour therapist. For most therapists, success is when the patient doesn't need to come back, and the ex-patient now cherishes their own research and decision making skills. 

Why so few talented therapists treat clients with challenging disorders - Marsha Linehan: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=d5mTLFfCQyY

Bisexual erasure and psychological templates

Jonathan Barrett from the University of Nevada, did a good review of early conversion therapy philosophies in Psychoanalysis and how it's toxicity split off into the United States. Freud eventually learned that “It is not for psychoanalysis to solve the problem of homosexuality...one must remember that in normal sexuality also there is a limitation in the choice of object; in general to undertake to convert a fully developed homosexual into a heterosexual is not much more promising than to do the reverse, only that for good practical reasons the latter is never attempted." Here he suggests that object choices are made early in life and they are very persistent throughout life. By the time someone is an adult and a patient, unless there is some intensity and pleasure with either object choice, a conversion therapist is in the position of trying to make someone straight when there isn't enough pleasure already there to support it, and maybe even disgust towards the opposite sex. Another pitfall is bisexual erasure, where again labels are used to block possible experiences. Labels can be useful, but not if they repress real object choices. The actor Alan Cumming provided a warning that repression can go in many different ways. “I see a worrying trend among LGBT people, that if you identify yourself in just one way, you close yourself off to other experiences. My sexuality has never been black and white; it’s always been gray. I’m with a man, but I haven’t closed myself off to the fact that I’m still sexually attracted to women.” This statement is helpful for people who are in homosexual or heterosexual relationships, because they don't have to pretend they don't have other desires as well. Having those desires also doesn't mean people can't be in a committed relationship with one person. The typical mistake is labeling someone as homosexual or heterosexual when they are concurrently in those kind of relationships, as if they can't carry both desires in their mind at the same time. Accusations of bi-sexuals being greedy or cheaters can also be put to bed. Cheating can happen in any sexual orientation.

Alan Cumming fan page: http://www.alancumming.com/

Mel B and Ginger Spice: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Q7rqO-PjxQg

Geri Halliwell Mel B Lesbian affair: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=aGqhC4tejLA

Like in HOCD or in situations of internalized bigotry against homosexual desire in oneself, the brain can move into self-attacking, and that's what is the pathology. Self-hatred can inhibit at one degree but it can also become more severe with suicidal ideation. Real therapy is to accept desires in oneself without resorting to pathological self-recrimination. Ultimately you are not falling in love with a category, but an individual. More important relationship questions that are not to be overlooked are "am I in the cycle of abuse? Do I have a habitual template to be with abusive people? What is a good relationship?" What a successful relationship looks like, has more to do with relationship skills, and in places like the Gottman Institute, there are so many skills partners have to develop to achieve great long-lasting relationships. Too much focus on sexual orientation may make one miss why you wanted to be in a relationship in the first place. To be with people who are non-abusive and who love and understand you. Ultimately that's what Serge was not doing. He was moving from one influence to another. Religious influences grafted on him, but then in the presence of an atheist he would lose belief. He was moving from doctors to psychoanalysts, and being swept along cultural changes, but was not able to row his own oar. In the end, Serge's template of relationships was more important to analyze than what his sexual orientation might turn out to be. Tragically, he learnt that too late.

The Gottman Institute: https://www.gottman.com/

Luise and the cycle of abuse

Towards the end of Serge's life, his greatest weakness was choosing the wrong relationship template. His last intimate relationship was with a women that Serge called "Luise." This story should trigger a lot of recognition for those who know about the cycle of abuse. 

W: [Luise] is a very impulsive woman...Twenty years ago...we ran into each other on the street. And she said, let's make up. I shouldn't have done that.

My father restricted my inheritance until I reached twenty-eight because he was afraid that I might fall into the hands of...a robber. And I always felt, that's not a danger for me. I never thought that I...would become involved in such an affair with this Luise...This Luise was completely unsuitable. Luise is an oaf. It's through her that I spoiled everything for myself.

Therese died and she wrote in her farewell letter: 'Marry a decent woman and go to Sister...and seek her advice, and don't become attached to some slut because that could be the end of you.' She had understood the important thing.

O: That you feel drawn to sluts?

W: Yes, she understood that that's where the danger lies. When I am friends with a decent woman, I can marry and live in some fashion. But there's nothing to be done with a slut. Because sluts...either they demand money from you all the time or who knows what...Well, and that's what happened, and so I find myself in an awful situation with this friend. 

O: But in what way is she a slut?

W: Isn't it being a slut when the woman gets married and tells me nothing about it...and kept coming to me the whole time? Had she said that she had got married, I would have stopped seeing her. But then she divorced him. All right, slut, what does slut mean? The word isn't attractive. Couldn't we find a better one, one that isn't so offensive? Twice I associated with impossible women, and with the first, things turned out all right. I even wrote about it, I was lucky, I got away from her...And then I got involved with this other one and I can't get away from her because the woman has nothing. She has no pension, no health insurance, and she is ill...There's something wrong with her heart, she has angina pectoris, there is something the matter with her kidneys, with her gallbladder, and she has diabetes. What can you do? And now she says she has cancer. I don't know if it's true, of course. And she constantly tortures me with reproaches and wants me to marry her. One cannot marry this woman, she is a serious psychopath. I don't even know what I should talk to her about. It's always the same thing that interests her. We pass a house and she says, 'I wouldn't mind having a house like that...' She makes demands that are altogether absurd...and I have been her lover for twenty-five years, as it were. I only see her on Sundays...She has had two divorces!

O: And she doesn't get anything from those men?

W: Nothing. She is so clever, when people are standing in line at the movies or the theater for tickets, she simply walks up and says, 'I ordered tickets,' and they give them to her. You'd think she's really clever. She has no interests, nothing. She says she has read a great deal. But when I saw what was on her shelves, it isn't true. She is only interested in material things...Constant reproaches. Everything is my fault. I never had any idea that there are people like that, women who are so impossible in every sense...Eissler writes, 'Let her scold, let her rage, what of it?' It's easy for him to talk...But if that woman is constantly causing scandals like one time...We were quarreling on the street and people were already calling the police - that sort of thing is unacceptable. Perhaps you could give me some advice. Solms once said, 'Men are stupid.'

O: There's only one advice one can give, and that is that you dissociate yourself from that woman.

W: Solms says that 'If it didn't work back then, it won't change now.' There were a few occasions when I could have broken with her. But this idea that Solms expressed, that this is the way it has to remain, prevented me. Instead of doing me some good, psychoanalysis did me harm.

O: What was it that attracted you about that woman? Did she have such a strong sexual attraction for you?

W: She had sexual attraction. And the absurd thing is that the sexual attraction wasn't really all that strong...In the beginning, perhaps, but then it decreased...This woman is always ready to quarrel. That's her element. To slander, to berate others, to feel the victim...that all kinds of injustices were perpetrated against her. And everywhere she goes she must have her way. Even in restaurants: her portion is so small, the person at the next table had a larger one. Then she has a heart ailement and says, 'The air is bad.' Or, 'It smells of mothballs, that coat hanging there, it smells of mothballs.' She can't stand it, the window has to be opened. But the waiter says, 'We can't do that, there are other people here, there's a draft...' There is nothing you can talk to her about...There's nothing you can say to her, she immediately starts threatening...It's forever the same thing: disputes with neighbors, the old Bohemian who doesn't open the windows along the corridor, there's a bad smell there, the air is stale...Her interests are so limited. Nothing but constant demands...I feel a certain obligation, because I have been with this woman for such a long time. And she really is ill, isn't she? But the terrible thing is, one cannot talk to this woman. She wanted to report me to the police. She will make her case public - this injustice, this terrible viciousness, what I did to her because I was so old and she is still so young. The public must hear about this; it must be shown on television...'That should be brought to public notice.' You can't talk to her. I sit there like an idiot and keep my mouth shut. And she says, 'You are having another one of your spells.'

O: What sort of spells?

W: A depression....She has the idea that you must be a fool to have depressions...An entirely primitive idea. Well, and what does Solms say? 'A serious psychopath with paranoid ideas.' Wherever she goes, she feels persecuted. She feels disadvantaged by fate.' She demands money for her health and then she buys clothes. And yet she is sixty years old and hates old women. It seems she feels she's a teenager.

O: She's forever buying clothes?

W: Now she has lost weight. And altering things costs more than buying them new.

O: And you go along with that?

W: As you see, unfortunately. But I don't know how it's all going to end.

O: Can you afford it?

W: I got money from the book.

O: And all the money you got...you spent nothing on yourself, you gave it all to your friend?

W: Only she benefited, really. I was so restless at home, and so I gave her the money. I did make that mistake.

O: But she is never satisfied?

W: No, never. And now it's always the same thing: 'What am I going to do when you die?' And I console her. Eissler sends me small amounts of money for her.

O: He sends you money? For what?

W: For that woman.

O: He helps you for humanitarian reasons, or did you give him something for the archive?

W: I gave him quite a few paintings.

O: And the archive pays for them, or does Eissler pay out of his own pocket?

W: The archive.

O: Regularly?

W: Yes.

O: So you actually get a kind of pension from the Freud archive.

W: ...which does me no good, it's for the woman. If they sent it to me, and I kept it, I could live quite well...You can see that everything is full of conflict. And that also influences how I feel.

O: And Luise knows about this?

W: She knows about the archive. I haven't told her anything about the book. But begging isn't pleasant either. And it is not a pleasant feeling that they send me something because they feel compassion for the woman.

O: Will she get something after your death?

W: I'm uncertain. At times, Eissler says one thing, at others another. So a dependence on Eissler has arisen, and so it drags on. And I receive free treatment. A whole number of dependencies arise, and that's harmful, of course. It harms the ego I'd say....

O: In other words you have no talent for making life pleasant for yourself...I would not have taken that much from anyone.

W: That's it: I put up with too much.

O: I find your behaviour odd. If something is proposed to me, I ask myself, what do I want?

W: Yes, yes, I believe the ego is damaged somehow.

W: Eissler wants to keep track of the case that has become so famous - Freud's most famous case - and see how it ends....Eissler has one opinion, Solms another, and Gardiner a third...One becomes involved in a labyrinth of dependencies that contradict each other...According to the theory, one would have to be completely free, uninfluenced...Psychoanalysis should really enable one to live without a father figure. But what actually happens is that one goes on living with the father figure... Sometimes, when I think about all those things, it seems the only way out...Should one kill oneself? I have gas.

O: Gas, you know, is not what it was in 1938. Today, it's practically impossible to kill yourself with gas. The gas is detoxified.

W: Thank you for having told me about the gas.

O: Had you seriously considered it?

W: Yes, but now its out of the question."

Serge did continue on living and enjoyed the company of Karin, and the reader can witness the pleasure that he enjoyed of someone just listening, mirroring and validating him, even if it the interview was about an exposé of psychoanalysis.

"If I were younger, one could at least try it, make an attempt but...You would really be the right woman for me. I get along with you. I don't get along with the other one, and she clings to me. Because you said that you also had gonorrhea, you caused a profound change in me."  Unfortunately for Serge, it was too late to make changes and he had a circulatory collapse. "In early July, the Wolf-Man had received his pension for two months, the monthly check and vacation money. Luise supposedly appeared abruptly at his door, he admitted her, and the meeting ended in a loud row. Finally, she simply snatched 10,000 schillings from his hand and ran off. [He] was terribly upset...During the afternoon of this very hot day, as he was coming back from the tobacco shop, he collapsed."

Serge deteriorated and Karin detailed his last days in the Vienna Psychiatric Hospital: "The Wolf-Man takes a postcard from the open drawer of his nightstand and hands it to me. Here's what Luise writes to a deathly ill, ninety-year-old man who, confined to his bed, is constantly fighting for his breath.

'My dear Serge, I have heard that you are already feeling much better, that your appetite is good and that you can already wash yourself. I am pleased. As you are eating with such a hearty appetite, aren't you thinking of me, that I go hungry, that I am about to be evicted if I cannot pay the rent, that the gas and electricity will be cut off if I can't pay? How can you do that to a person with whom you have spent forty years? I would like to see you, talk to you. I was already there a few times, but the attendants always tell me that that young girl is visiting you again, so I didn't want to disturb you. You must be very much in love if you ordered two flannel suits for 4,500 schillings each and pay all that money for her housekeeping expenses as you told me. Unfortunately, I have no money for stamps or letter paper. So far, I have received nothing of the royalties for August from your book The Wolf-Man by the Wolf-Man. They say you gave it to the professor so he would pass it on to me, but he demands that I pick it up at his place, which is absurd, my lawyer says, and I have it from you in writing that I would get money from Gardiner even after you die.'

[After a brief moment he mumbled,] 'The woman is crazy.'"

As Luise faded into the background during the last two years of his life, Serge had that feeling that so many people feel at the end of their lives. "Life was in vain, everything was pointless, we must build something, something new, begin at the beginning once more...Give me some advice!" His strength faded and his last gesture to Karin was a heartfelt kiss on the hand and a feeble wave before he died the next day.

Amber Heard and Johnny Depp: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=aca0KWoHtqQ&t=331s

Modern psychoanalysis

"Take what you can from your dreams, make them as real as anything." - Dave Matthews

Like with many other case studies of Freud, so many disorders have genetic and early life challenges as their source. Is it OCD, Borderline and Narcissistic personality disorders, or a severe masochistic co-dependency? Or is a mixture of all of them? Using the metaphor of the childhood "lucky caul," Serge was stuck inside the veil or caul of dreams and specialness to the end, and so were his therapists who sought to make a name for themselves. By not seeing how the sense of specialness and entitlement would interfere with reality testing, the dreams and desires Serge had would fail to find realistic outlets with independent and assertive decision making, especially with choices of partners. The healthy way to attach importance to specialness is to effort. Special effort, not entitlement. The metaphorical veil or caul is ruminating about possibilities and dreaming about changing the past. Being stuck in painful thoughts while remaining inactive leads to a habit of inhibition.

Serge's past may have looked like a heaven with beautiful estates, servant women, and a sense of entitlement to a great future. It could easily add to the sense of specialness. But when you are at the end of your life, the memories of what actually happened can bring up the question "what if?" He attempted to get his fortune away from Russia, but the inflationary pressures of war diminished it. With his sister's and his wife's suicides, and possibly his father's, the mind could easily think "what if I did this or said that? Maybe they wouldn't have taken their lives." Once the past can't be changed, and in the end, depression never left completely, all that was left for Serge was the hope to "begin at the beginning once more." What motivations would he have needed to make difference choices when he was younger? Most importantly, what was so pathogenic that he couldn't have made better choices?

Nicolas Abraham and Maria Torok, in The Wolf Man's Magic Words: A Cryptonymy, engaged in an abstract word analysis of all the players in the Serge's psychoanalysis, and interpreted the wolf dream as the father having incest with his daughter Anna, and Serge being a witness. The English Governess is told by Serge what had happened and she uses it as blackmail to torture Serge and his family. Serge then oscillated between desiring Anna and imitating her, which would be desiring the father in the latter. He would also have knowledge that could hurt both his parents. This theory, and it's only a theory, brings up a lot of questions. If his father committed suicide, was it because he abused his daughter? Was it because of the political changes he saw in Russia? Was it because he had manic depression? Or is it a combination? Also if instead, Masson and Brunswick were right about Serge being sexually abused, and possibly groomed to desire anal stimulation [anally seduced], both cases could lead Serge to imitate a passive sexual choice. If Serge felt shame about those impulses, then his lack of self-worth and need for repression would continue. A false self that is beyond shame would have to be developed as a protection against a pathogenic secret. The pathogen could be an array of possibilities supported by these theories. For example, shame over wanting to be like Anna, shame over wanting Anna, shame over wanting his father, shame over wanting to be his mother, and shame over wanting to give or receive anal sex. In the end, whatever combination, it would lead ultimately to shame over socially unacceptable sexual desires. Since this "crypt" of a false self in Serge's mind is hiding a body of pathogenic shame, and most importantly, it's somehow unconscious, then he did not recover because his pathogenic secret remained a secret, even to himself. The coffin remains shut and the Russian Iistina, or hidden truth, remains hidden. If on the other hand, this secret was conscious all along, but he did not want to share the information for obvious reasons, he would have to take what he learned from Freud's work and heal himself, if he didn't trust anyone else.

For example, if he read and understood Remembering, repeating and working-through, and if he could see his sexual appetite as a worthy foundation that could go beyond a sister template, then maybe that knowledge could help him identify with different relationship choices and he could avoid choices like being with "Luise." To grow better crops, so to say. In his interviews with Obholzer, he clearly identifies his sister as an object choice, identifies Karin as a good example and even admits that if he were younger he would pursue her. Though this could appear insulting because his template includes an aggressive sister, women with less power, prostitutes and "Luise." Yet reading those interviews with Karin, even if she's aggressive with trying to land an exposé, one gets the impression that she was desired by Serge because he enjoyed being with a woman who listened and accepted him. She accepted his having gonorrhea and his masturbation as normal. That made him feel better. Feeling better, meaning less stress. The stress was caused by some pathogenic desire that he was ashamed of, whether it was a desire for his sister or desires from one of the theories above or else something he never communicated. Shame, we have to remember is a fear of rejection from important social contacts.

Too much shame means you accept bad people in your life you think you deserve, which stops further development. The low self-esteem made him desperate enough to choose mostly one-night-stands, women who had little in common with him, women with less power and prostitutes. He also chose Therese when she really needed his help financially, after the condolence letter reintroduced them to each other. Therese, despite being suicidal, ended up being the best woman for him and even warned against another improper choice, which he ended up choosing. Self-esteem becomes a necessity so you can choose people who care about you, and of course you have to do the same for them, so that as a couple the individuals have permission to improve themselves. Obholzer pointed out before that Serge lacked the assertiveness to ask for what is good for him. If he wanted to look for further methods from Freud, if he read about his letter to Ferenczi, about how he was able to increase his ego by dropping homosexual friendship with Fliess, it happened naturally with disenchantment. Fliess did malpractice on Emma Eckstein's face and Freud distanced himself from him. Serge would have to be disenchanted with his toxic relationship template before he could find a replacement. Since so many women he was involved with didn't want to improve themselves, he would have to be disenchanted by them and move on, while also developing himself. There's really no reason, even for a criminal, to not improve themselves if they believe they have a foundation for different choices. Regardless of dream therapy and it's value, one has to accept oneself and be disenchanted with people who don't allow that. Who's supporting your goals for self-improvement, and who's not? Either your biology prevents improvement, in which case you must accept, or it's just the ideas about yourself that need to change. People have to experiment with their choices to see what's possible for them and not rely on beliefs.

With scandals of people thinking their parents sexually abused them because of Freudian analysis, with some cases being true, but others not, how accurate of a method is it for courts? Like Mahony says about Abraham and Torok's theory of father and sister incest, "coherence is not proof." If some people are capable of passing a lie detector test, and the results are not admitted in all court systems, then certainly dreams could be open to lies and manipulation by so many people. At best dream analysis can help the patient if convincing memories return. They may get a relief where they are able accept what happened, grieve and move on with their life. Phenomenology can only be accessed through the subjective, but unless there is concrete evidence that is objectively available, the whole process moves back onto patient and only they can benefit, since only they can experience their memories. The reader can choose to believe, or leave a question mark for these dream analyses. The memories of the patient must resonate clearly with no skepticism, otherwise it becomes a form of brainwashing where the patient has to believe. 

The biggest question is that if bringing something up into consciousness is supposed to create relief, that may not be the case. Many abuses are not in the unconscious and the patient is very aware of what happened. They don't talk about it because of possible stigma. For example, if the accusations from Brunswick and Masson were true, and the abuse was conscious, who would want to talk about how their anus was groomed to enjoy sexuality and now impulses are being fought over with repression? Anal flashbacks that are conditioned to repeat impulses and desire for anal pleasure, that are also conscious, would continue to cause stress if the patient ruminates on it and what it means in an obsessive way. When something is conscious, guilt and rumination cause their own problems. Serge was aware of his desire for his sister, but it still influenced him even when conscious. Some people go through horrendous abuse that is unconscionable, but they are still able to thrive. Others go through no abuse, or less abuse, and are psychologically compromised very easily. There could be genetic factors with that. And finally, anybody going through two World Wars, family suicides, and a loss of a fortune, are going to be consciously traumatized. No therapy will bring those people back.

Another area that only René Girard tackled in a major way, is what happens if you remove your transference to God, or imitation of Jesus? His warning is that we can just imitate the people around us and that's exactly what happened to Serge. From an atheistic perspective, if Serge wanted to be independent of a father figure, then he would have to consciously not worship a God, another human being, or himself. Now that is a difficult meditation practice! In reality most people have a hope for a loving God, even if it's not aimed at a particular religion, and many people have role models for success. That means social exchanges of trust. Those social exchanges have to be done carefully to avoid exploitation. Like Karin pointed out, if people are making suggestions for you, you have to ask "what do I really want?" Without the ability to negotiate, predators can take everything away from you.

I like Mahony's description of how challenging a patient like this would be for any therapist, in any modality. "The total profile of the Wolf Man's analyses constituted a muddled picture. True, a marriage replaced the flight from woman, and the defective capacity to work gave way to the successful [completion] of a doctor's degree in law and employment for over thirty years in an insurance position. There will surely be those who will criticize psychoanalysis for its technical limitations because of the psychic distress and disorder that stayed on with the Wolf Man: though the depression, guilt, ambivalence, compulsive doubt, and narcissistic demands were abated variously at times, their overall force remained considerable. Whatever shortcomings obtained in the analyses conducted by Freud and Brunswick...I do not think that the best-directed therapy could have sufficiently rehabilitated the severely defective psychic organization and narcissistic structure of the Wolf Man or compensated for the lack of early parental care. He is one of those tragic individuals who remain forever inside a gaping wound and whose hopes grow mostly in lonely dreams." 

Manchester by the sea - "I can't beat it": https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=kAcYyreYFyk

Resources:

The Wolfman and other cases - Sigmund Freud: https://www.isbns.net/isbn/9780142437452/

The Wolf Man by the Wolf Man - Sergei Pankejeff, Ruth Mack Brunswick, Muriel Gardiner, Anna Freud: https://www.isbns.net/isbn/9780465091973/

The Wolf Man: 60 years later - Karin Obholzer: https://www.isbns.net/isbn/9780710093547/

The Cries of the Wolf Man - Patrick J. Mahony: https://www.isbns.net/isbn/9780823610907/

Freud Standard Edition Vol 12: https://www.isbns.net/isbn/9780701205256/

The Correspondence of Sigmund Freud and Sándor Ferenczi, Volume 1: https://www.isbns.net/isbn/9780674174184/

The Assault on Truth - Jeffrey Masson: https://www.isbns.net/isbn/9780345452795/

The Wolf Man's Magic Words: A Cryptonymy - Nicolas Abraham & Maria Torok: https://www.isbns.net/isbn/9780816648580/

Freud and the Rat Man - Patrick J. Mahony: https://www.isbns.net/isbn/9780300036947/

Violent Origins: Ritual Killing and Cultural Formation - Walter Burkert, Jonathan Z. Smith, René Girard, Robert G. Hammerton-Kelly, Renato Rosaldo, Burton Mack: https://www.isbns.net/isbn/9780804715188/

The War that ended Peace - Margaret MacMillan: https://www.isbns.net/isbn/9780143173601/

The First World War - John Keegan: https://www.isbns.net/isbn/9780676972245/

The Origins of the War of 1914 - Luigi Albertini: https://www.isbns.net/isbn/9781929631261/

Lothane, H. Z. (2018). Freud Bashers: Facts, Fictions, and Fallacies. Journal of the American Psychoanalytic Association, 66(5), 953–969.

Homosexuality Anxiety: A Misunderstood Form of OCD - Monnica Williams: https://www.psychologytoday.com/sites/default/files/attachments/72634/williamshocd2008.pdf

Misusing Freud: Psychoanalysis and the Rise of Homosexual Misusing Freud: Psychoanalysis and the Rise of Homosexual Conversion Therapy - Jonathan Barrett: https://digitalscholarship.unlv.edu/cgi/viewcontent.cgi?article=1027&context=psi_sigma_siren

How do I know I'm really not gay? Fred Penzel: https://iocdf.org/expert-opinions/homosexual-obsessions/

Sigmund Freud urged his disciple to divorce: https://www.latimes.com/archives/la-xpm-1987-11-12-vw-20532-story.html

The Master's mad move: https://www.theguardian.com/books/1999/jan/30/sigmundfreud

Conditions for intuitive expertise: a failure to disagree. Daniel Kahneman, Gary Klein Am Psychol. 2009 Sep; 64(6): 515–526

Alan Cumming Is Bisexual — And You Might Be Too: https://www.advocate.com/bisexuality/2015/03/30/alan-cumming-bisexual-and-you-might-be-too

Alan Cumming Sounds Off On Being Bisexual And Being Married To A Man: https://www.huffpost.com/entry/alan-cumming-bisexual-_n_4460070

Psychology: http://psychreviews.org/category/psychology01/