#the titles without saying their names was a deliberate choice

[littleeyesofpallas]

Hi,

would you make meta stuff about Mayuri's way of speaking? I mean guy speaks strange way compared to other characters and me with friend don't speak japanese and would like to know more about it.

Thank you! 💜

So, i do want to remind anyone reading my blog but please remember i'm not at all fluent in Japanese. I understand the grammar on a textbook level, and with enough dictionary resources I can poke around and sus out nuances of some word choices (particularly stuff like fictional names of people and swords and attacks and stuff, as those kinds of creative choices are very overt*), especially in irregular usage, but when it comes down to things like dialect, slangs, vernacular or phraseology, or more subtle tone indicators I'm pretty blind.

*(sorry to further clarify: when it's stuff like fantasy jargon it's stuff no one would ever actually say, and so the choices made in crafting those words or names from scratch are all reliably very deliberate. But when looking at more casual speech a lot of character voice just kind of defaults to what "sounds" right, and so the distinction between choosing one common word over another isn't always meaningful or readily apparent, both in general and to someone not fully fluent like me.)

Like if someone talks in a stilted overly technical or dry way I might be able to tell that much, but I'd totally miss more structural things like whether it makes them sound more like a mad scientist -vs- a tryhard edgelord fake intellectual -vs- a man out of time -vs- a stuffy rich person --or what the differences i'd even be looking for between all those would be-- I really can't tell outside of what i might be able to glean from things like narrative context more than the dialog itself.

With the exception of some very tropey, and thus easier to identify things like, movie-esque yakuza slang, or melodramatic historical feudal drama formal titles --and even then those are things i might more readily catch when actually spoken than when written on the page-- i'm just as lost as the next person.

That all being said, there are still a few little things i can sort of pick at without feeling totally out of my depth...

I think it's been brought up on some random post of mine before that Mayuri does notably use a "more feminine" 1st person pronoun, watashi[私] which is a pretty common pronoun, although its usage feels weird to explain in English?

Like... it is considered "gender neutral" in that there are other pronouns that are more specifically feminine or masculine and it's not one of them. But then in practice, you'd basically expect men to opt for one of the more overtly masculine pronouns, which just sort of leaves women with watashi as a default?

So it's not that it explicitly makes him sound ""feminine"" so much as it makes him sound less masculine; which suits his intellectual, non physical inclined, and at times cowardly or at least scheming demeanor. But like, it's also considered a little stuffy and sort of overly formal, or technical which is also appropriate to him.

Oh right and it's a formal pronoun as opposed to informal, but there's also a level of very formal pronouns, and it's not one of those, so that doesn't so much triangulate a position as it just leave in vaguely in the middle of the road...

Does that all make sense? it feels like super overexplaining for what is an extremely commonly used pronoun with mostly very neutral implications.

He occasionally ends sentences with a single katakana syllable rather than hiragana, indicating... not quite an "accent".. but like a sort of emphasis. Like a punctuating lilt in tone. Actually Nakao Ryuusei does this really noticeably in the anime and I don't know for sure if I heard it that way in my head and he just nailed it, or if i heard him first and it's just always colored my reading since.

A lot of the rhetorical NE[ネ] which begs confirmation, often translated into English as "...right?" (It's part of that desu ne[ですね] that you hear a lot in anime, where the desu[です] is just the verb to be, so together they tend to translate as "isn't it?")

YO[ヨ] which is again a sort of rhetorical thing that usually gets translated as something like, "...you know?"

and E?[エ?] which isn't even a word or part of speech so much as it's just like, an interrogative noise? Quite literally just "eh?"

But see this is one of those things were like... I can tell it's different from a sort of default neutral mode of speech, but I don't know what that indicates as, like, a point of characterization... Is it specifically condescending? Is it there to sound mechanical or stilted? Is it somehow old fashioned or polite/formal? I have no clue as to these sorts of specifics.

[edit]: I want to reiterate this is a rhetorical device, he's not literally asking a question and waiting for a response. If anything it's functionally the exact opposite, he's saying it to emphasize that he's stating things meant to be taken as facts, it actively closes the dialog off from further questioning.

He also says HOU[ホウ] a lot, which also isn't really a word so much as a sound, but given the pattern in speech above I feel like it's kind of inquisitive, or at least contemplative, which is (i think) how I remember Nakao delivering those lines too. Like a sort of, "Oh?" or "Huh..." or "Hmm..."

And given how close the camera gets to his face most times he says it, it gives an impression of being, not "quiet" exactly, but like you had to be close to hear it, so like, almost under his breath? Like it's clearly a noise he makes to himself, it's not like a thing or expression he's making to the other people int he scene.

FUU[フウ] or alternatively HUU, and I think once or twice FUN'/HUN'[フン] as a sort of grunt? not quite as guttural as that, but not quite a sigh? Like a "hmpf."

He also does your classic YARE YARE[ヤレヤレ] which definitely isn't unusual or unique to him but it has this kind "tut tut" or "tch"/"tsk" tone to it and tends to translated very loosely like, "oh my" or "good grief", but I think of it more like a "well, well, well..." but like kind of implicitly more exasperated than that sounds in english?

I don't know where to start trying to qualify, like... what kind of character says yare yare a lot, but it's definitely something that suits some characters more than others, and Mayuri it definitely fits.

He tends to laugh like ...KU KU...[...クク...] which is a kind of sharp snigger, sneer, or scoff. He really doesn't guffaw or cackle or have much of a more typical dramatic villain laugh, it's very understated.

Although in his fight with Pernida he does let out a full on maniacal FUHAHAHA[フハハハ] laugh for the first time in the whole series

I do love the fonts Kubo uses for a lot of Mayuri's dialog. At a certain point he starts to lean intothe same basic font as everyone else, but particualrly at the beginning he switches between a few unusual ones that are specific to Mayuri.

One's got that rough kind of pseudo handwritten quality to it. It reads to me as kind of scratchy, like a sharp pen nib on thick matte paper, with a kind of clotty ink flow that starts thick and wet but sorta tapers out too fast, leaving the lines spotty and rough.

But he also alternated with a thicker rounder font that has these subtle curls to them that I don't see other character use often.

and then he's got a second font choice that basically has all the same tones as the first one, except maybe a bit, like, louder(?) implicitly just based on context? It tends to be used in creepy action scenes where as the thinner one is more for creepy conversation?

In his very first appearance he chastises Gin, and he changes font between sentences, giving a very distinct sense that it's a change in tone. It reads to me like a low heavy hiss, almost like his voice is normally shallow or throaty, but when the font changes he suddenly drops his voice into a chestier range and speaks almost more smoothly?

Then there's just the perfectly regular fonts he uses sometimes, basically any/every other character uses these same fonts at some point or another.

and he has a neat thin wispy font that he only uses the one time when he liquefies himself. Along with the voice bubbles used, it gives a super distinct impression of his voice barely being audible.

He also one time speaks enthusiastically in an italic version of the more standard font when he arrives in Hueco Mundo.

And then in the Hell Jaw one shot he just has a completely different standard font because Kubo probably didn't keep track of what fonts he'd been using from like 8 years ago

There's also a subtly funky sort of font he uses briefly in the tbtp sidestory? I dunno what to say about this honestly. It gives me these vague 60s-70s vibes that I can't quite place? (I feel like I know i've seen it before but on what? A bowling alley sign? A little back alley cafe? a jazz album cover??)

I have no idea that the take away from that is supposed to be though.

And I guess that's it. I dunno how I thought I was gonna end this. It didn't really reveal any new facets to his character that weren't pretty apparent from the rest of his whole design and demeanor. Plus Nakao's performance in the anime basically nails all of this and i think makes it pretty apparent in tone even if you don't know much about Japanese.

[modtheartifex]

i wrote this into a youtube comment like moments ago, but i feel strongly enough that i will put it out here as well;

Lego Monkie Kid Season 5 does NOT have villains. it has characters that are antagonistic forces and layered with nuance on top of nuance.

not to say previous seasons didnt do this, but this season ABSOLUTELY is entirely filled with characters like this

lmk season 5 spoilers, as well as anything from previous seasons just in case cause idk. might get long too tbh oopsies JINNGFDOIJN

we have a few characters to consider for LMK s5's "villains".

we have Ne Zha's dad (i forget his name, ill probably call him pagoda man), nine headed dragon (consort, 10th king, xiangliu) and nuwa. we could theoretically consider thousand eyed demon, however hes only relevant in one episode so id hardly count that

pagoda man is the easiest to explain, he is an antagonistic force because hes trying to hold onto what little order there is left of the world, he is trying to be the duct tape keeping the sawed in half boat together, and hes trying to minimize risks. does that excuse how he treats ne zha? fuck no, but thats a whole different discussion and depending on your interpretation of how much of the chinese mythos you use for this work will vary. he is just like mk as mk himself points out, it doesnt have to be just pagoda man doing the work, theres people willing to help, and then he joins the heroes side for the end.

cool, great, now. what the fuck do i mean by nuwa?

this is where interpretation is strongest, where it is key. ill just be sharing my perspective. when i was first watching season 5 my partner pointed out to me that in chinese mythos chaos is a core element of the world, it is necessary. this, coupled with the fact that nuwa made mk to fix a cycle she created (which we also dont know how many cycles the world has gone through, it could be one, it could be two, it could be in the hundreds if not thousands, whos to say.) and to keep chaos out... she is keeping the world from being complete. her little cave without the outside world, without proper balance, her little people living blissfully apocalypse to apocalypse. "but theyll all die!" "theyll live again" nuwa says, smile on her face.

she is disconnected from her cave, her world her people, her creations, who knows how long shes been in the limbo, how well she can perceive time, how many times a sacrifice comes in, they get a few words exchanged before they just leave, her in the pillar, only getting glimpses when the cycle is ending of the world, only to be shut in again.

neat, ok, but xiangliu??? hes who was gestured at from the BEGINNING of season 4.

see. heres where we get into the GOOD shit.

this is why it is important to establish that we dont know how many cycles have happened. we do not know how long he has been stuck, how many times he has tried to fix the world over and over. he makes it clear in his ending dialogue, if only he knew how to fix it, that sharing the power of the stones was the key to his freedom. the fact that he goes from what most would consider the least important title to the most important one, his own name, the fact he states he was wukongs friend, his enemy, both, wukong just doesnt remember

that implies longentivity. that implies so many cycles and lifetimes lived inside this cycle, being aware of everything, being so damnably aware of what one considers true freedom, and having to sit at the precipice of that.

it is agony.

xiangliu for the majority of the season is the only one to call mk by his name. mk gets so often called child, kid, nicknames by the others, maybe mei refers to him as mk, but xiangliu has it be DELIBERATE. he altered the course of the cycle to give mk a life, to let him HAVE a life where nuwa didnt care for one, he WANTED mk to grow enough that he would be able to choose. because everything is about mks choice, his ability to choose it all matters on HIS. CHOICE.

the only time this falters is when xiangliu thinks he is trapped for good. he rushes at mk, one final chance at freedom seemingly taken from him. xiangliu never fights mk. he only fights the others when they start fighting him. when its just him and mk at the edge of the world, at the edge of chaos, he talks to mk. tells him what to expect, mentions a mysterious "he" now that mk has opened the cage. and he pushes mk back so he gets to go back to his life. so that mk can have choices still. xiangliu got what he wanted, so its only right mk gets what he wanted too. to live with his friends and let everyone live a life where they can figure something out.

that is why i do not think there are villains in lego monkie kid season 5. they are antagonists with layers of nuance, nuance we arent privy to for reason or another, be it episode count, length, screentime, or that were just not supposed to yet. season 5 does not have an obvious bad guy, a villain, because the nuance is right within our grasp.

thank you for reading this. fucking essay apparently oopsies JINNGFDIJN

[goodbyeapathy8]

Review so far of "Will Love In Spring" (ongoing Cdrama). Spoilers below up until episode 8.

[Image ID : Actors Li Xian and Zhou Youtong are on a sofa. The man is smiling while the long haired woman looks up at him and also smiles. Title shows the name of the drama, Will Love In Spring.]

I'm glad I didn't let the poster influence me because I don't feel like it's a very accurate depiction of the drama.

Poster makes it seem like a very run of the mill romance. THANK GOODNESS IT IS NOT.

"Will love in spring" has unexpectedly been one of the best depictions of grief and death and life in a drama that I've seen. And I've seen many many dramas at this point in my life so, suffice it to say, it is incredibly well done.

Pros so far :

- Fair depiction of disability. Zhuang Jie is an amputee but there's just enough emphasis on the realities of living with a prosthetic (including the detail about her needing baths) without it being the ENTIRETY of her personality. Every drama needs to take notes on this.

- Blended family without drama. Although some may argue this is not realistic, I've become really tired of the exaggerated dynamics of step siblings/children/parents having manufactured arguments. He Shu is a wonderful stepfather while the siblings have an adorable relationship with each other. The mom is quite realistic as well, tough but loving.

- Interesting career choices - there's definitely morbid aspects of the hybrid mortician/embalmer job of Chen Maidong but that's not the main point. Yes, he's seen a lot of death and grieving but it also dictates how he views life and how to live life, with respect towards the dead

Cons (sort of) :

- This is not a con for me but I think some people may find the pacing very slow. To me, this is a VERY deliberate choice. It's a tried and true slice of life drama, not a romance. You'll be disappointed if you go into it with the expectations of a romance but I think you'll be pleasantly surprised at the many details that show what life is like in Nanping

- There's a LOT of death and discussions around it. This is not a con for me but I do tend to avoid hurt/comfort. I literally cried for an entire hour during episode 7 and my dogs were Very Concerned lol

- My actual one 'con' is that there's some very obvious nationalism that seeps in, especially regarding the push for the younger generation to return to "smaller" hometowns like Nanping instead of staying in cities like Shanghai/Beijing etc. To me, this shows a lot of government influence if not general Chinese nationalism vs a natural flow in the drama. There's definitely manufactured nostalgia that tends to be jarring but I've been ignoring that for the most part.

---

I do need to go and rewatch some episode of ShenLi because my chest still feels really spicy after watching episode 7 and 8 LOL So I'll get back to my thoughts on that but I hope other people give this new drama a shot.

Last but not least is a shoutout to legit the entire cast for their well-seasoned acting. Augh. Definitely a big reason why the drama is making a big impact on me.

[late-sundown]

When people say the message of Avatar is "Enviromental harm bad" separate from Indigenous people's issues, they're probably right... (+other related issues).

A family member of mine told me the lesson of the movie was "Humans destroy everything." (Meaning nature). That take ignores how the Na'vi are Indigenous peoples, and also ignores that real life Indigenous humans are at the forefront of climate change activism and environmentalism.

1️⃣ Here's the thing, the Indigenous people being represented only by the Na'vi, and the fact that they're creatures- non human with cat ears, cat eyes and a tail- people can interpret them not as Indigenous, but instead, just intelligent alien animals. Aliens whose closeness to nature is just obvious because they Are Nature, like animals are.

And well, the film doesn't help with that idea when the Na'vi do act like animals, and I don't mean that as an insult, it's just how they will express themselves anyways- their ears flop down, their tails swish, their pupils dilate, they hiss. I like that about their design, but to uncritical consumers, it can contribute to dehumanizing Indigenous people... The things the antagonistic humans say remind you of real life racism: "They're monkeys", "Savages." Etc. That's a deliberate writing choice. Cameron admits so.

If they're more like animals instead of people, we can see helping them as part of saving nature. That's where the indegeniety becomes a background theme for those who don't already care about Indigeniety.

You Know already how some people will see this, "Humans are the virus", "Nature's revenge" type of mentality. Again, ignoring how sustainability does exist outside of capitalism & colonialism.

2️⃣ In other related issues... The main heroes, helping the Na'vi, namely Jake Sully and Dr. Grace, are white (centering white PoV). Add to that, the appropiation Jake does,

A.becoming Toruk Makto by force (title sacred to Na'vi of people who ride the Lenopteryx), how they weren’t going to (quote Cameron) "fight harder" unless Sully interferred,

B.wearing dreads, and the theme of Avatars in general where these white humans can become "one of them" by giving Na'vi minimum decency... This IS white saviorism.

The Na'vi are there for aesthetic and serving as love interest or supporting cast for Jake, as well to expand the (very aesthetic) world building of Pandora. It makes people feel good to watch a successful revolt in which in the real world they feel compelled to do nothing.

3️⃣ IF meant to be a "show, don't tell" method here, why are we focusing on how this white guy experienced all of this, especially starting with how he fell in love with a native woman? Why did we start with Magical cure for disability? Why do we continue to add to the mythification of Indigenous people? Why didn't Way of Water evolve? I know there are limitations to making film, but sheesh... those where certainly choices that Don't help the message.

The mythification helps with the idea that white people can become another's culture (because under racism they're the "blank slate") instead of looking inside or to their own ancestry for meaning and spirituality. "This drab human world is just nothing compared to Pandora! I want to be Na'vi, not human!" Goes indirectly towards appropriation, doesn't it?

4️⃣ What about Earth? Humans, we could say, have a connection to Earth as much as Na'vi have to Eywa. We are dependent of nature and a part of it. But that's Not what a colonized mind thinks.

In Avatar there's no theme of acknowledging Earth's colonial history, of noting how this has happened before, of humans sharing solidarity with Na'vi because they know where it's leading- and if they don't take action or don't know, talk about WHY that is!

⏭️ Tldr: The story is still done through a colonized lens. We can't talk about (fantasy) racism without addressing race, we can't talk about the exploitation of land and nature without addressing how the people who originally cared for it were pushed out, colonized, assimilated, and exploited as well. Colonialism & capitalism are closely linked.

[religion-is-a-mental-illness]

By: James Lindsay

Published: Mar 13, 2024

I’m here to talk about Queer Theory. Some major points can be summarized very easily.

Queer Theory is the doctrine of a religious cult;

That religious cult is based on sex;

That sex-based religious cult primarily targets children; and

Almost none of it has anything to do with gay identity.

Let’s address the last point first because it’s the least obvious.

The term “queer” in “Queer Theory” gets its definition from David Halperin in a 1995 book called Saint Foucault. The first words of the relevant paragraph (on p. 62) are “Unlike gay identity.” There, Halperin explains that gay identities are grounded in a positive fact of homosexuality. That means homosexuality is in some way real. “Queer,” by contrast, he says, need not be based on any positive truth or in any stable reality. There’s nothing in particular to which it refers. It’s an identity without an essence. That means it’s not based in reality.

What is Queer Theory, then, if it’s not based in reality? It’s a radical political view. Halperin tells us “queer” means adopting a politics that is whatever is at odds with the normal, the legitimate, and the dominant. Just to prove I’m not making it up, here’s the relevant quote.

Unlike gay identity, which, though deliberately proclaimed in an act of affirmation, is nonetheless rooted in the positive fact of homosexual object-choice, queer identity need not be grounded in any positive truth or in any stable reality. As the very word implies, “queer” does not name some natural kind or refer to some determinate object; it acquires its meaning from its oppositional relation to the norm. Queer is by definition whatever is at odds with the normal, the legitimate, the dominant. There is nothing in particular to which it necessarily refers. It is an identity without an essence.

To underscore his point, he then continues with,

“Queer,” then, demarcates not a positivity but a positionality vis-à-vis the normative—a positionality that is not restricted to lesbians and gay men but is in fact available to anyone who is or who feels marginalized because of her or his sexual practices.

In other words, you cannot be queer. You can only do queerness. It’s an act. 

So nobody is “queer.” People feel “queer” against some standard, perhaps imagined, and people act queerly. By that, it means they act defiantly against normalcy and legitimacy while denying reality. You can only perform queerness—or, if you refuse, straightness. Performing straightness, to Queer Theory, isn’t being who you are if you’re straight; it’s just another kind of performance, one that upholds the allegedly oppressive “status quo” instead of opposing it.

Now let’s consider the Drag Queen Story Hour curriculum paper from a couple of years ago.

It explains in a section titled “from empathy to embodied kinship” that queer programs are presented as improving LGBT empathy, and that Drag Queen Story Hour makes use of such “tropes,” their word.

It then says that’s not really what Drag Queen Story Hour, queer education, or “queer worldmaking” are about, though. Instead, they use the “tropes” of empathy “strategically” as a “marketing” platform to justify getting it into schools, libraries, and in front of kids, but it’s actually about leading kids to see the world and themselves in a queer way. Here’s how they word it:

Finally, it is often assumed that the primary pedagogical goal of queer education should be to increase empathy towards LGBT people. While this premise has some merit – and underlies many sincere projects in educational and cultural work, including DQSH – the notion of empathy has also been critiqued by feminist scholars of colour and others for the ways in which empathy can enable an affective appropriation of an individual’s unique experiences and reinforce hierarchies of power. … Whether through literature or virtual reality, these tropes tend to reflect an overstated ability to understand difference, as well as empathy’s potential to preclude meaningful relationships of solidarity. It is undeniable that DQSH participates in many of these tropes of empathy, from the marketing language the programme uses to its selection of books. Much of this is strategically done in order to justify its educational value. However, we suggest that drag supports scholars’ critiques of empathy, rather than reifying the concept…This approach can support students in finding the unique or queer aspects of themselves – rather than attempting to understand what it’s like to be LGBT.

That’s what Drag Queen Story Hour is actually about. It’s not about empathy—that’s a marketing strategy that is, in fact, a bit problematic. It’s about getting kids to discover any aspects of themselves that might be considered “queer” and developing those into a queer political stance that will be conflated with who they believe they are. More than that, they’ll be told they’re not truly allowed to be who that is, even though it’s who they really are. Society will object. Their parents will object. It has to be kept secret from their parents in case it isn’t affirmed by them.

Now, I’m not supposed to use the word “grooming” to describe this grotesque set of activities. It’s part of a major controversy—one the Pitt students showed up (potentially menacingly, but in fact as clowns) to protest outside. So I’ll ask a question instead. I’m going to show you something, and then I want to know what word am I supposed to use for this. This self-characterization for the program comes up shortly thereafter in the same paper.

Drag Queen Story Hour presents itself as “family friendly” in a way that it characterizes as a “preparatory introduction to alternate modes of kinship.” What does that mean? 

It then says that the “family” in “family friendly” refers to a “queer code” for the “other queers [they connect with] on the street.” So they’re not just lying about the empathy but also what they mean by “family”—which is a “queer code” for a “new family” that Drag Queen Story Hour is teaching kids to be “friendly” to. 

The paper repeatedly invokes the concept of a “drag family” for the kids too, and then the paper ends with “we’ll leave a trail of glitter that will never come out of the carpet.” What’s the carpet here?

Here’s the full quote of the “family friendly” part, so you don’t think I’m lying.

Queer worldmaking, including political organizing, has long been a project driven by desire. It is, in part, enacted through art forms like fashion, theatre, and drag. We believe that DQSH offers an invitation towards deeper public engagement with queer cultural production, particularly for young children and their families. It may be that DQSH is “family friendly,” in the sense that it is accessible and inviting to families with children, but it is less a sanitizing force than it is a preparatory introduction to alternate modes of kinship. Here, DQSH is “family friendly” in the sense of “family” as an old-school queer code to identify and connect with other queers on the street.

So, I’m asking. What word am I supposed to use for that? I know which one I can’t use, and that puts me at a complete loss.

So here’s how Queer Theory works. You can’t describe it unless you support it—just like a cult, one we now see targets kids. If you criticize it, that’s “hate.” The rumor widely printed about me is that my using that word, “groomer,” to describe that, above, implicates me in some social crime called “anti-LGBTQ hate,” which is very bad, very serious, and utterly toxic. It’s not just “harmful rhetoric” but a “conspiracy theory.” I am a very bad person, apparently, for naming the obvious, not as a result of inference or guesswork but from their own proudly printed writings.

The accusation and resulting social dynamic, which is always hostile, is straight out of Maoist China. I am alleged to be engaging in a crime called “anti-LGBTQ hate,” and “the right side of” society is to judge me and hold me to account for that crime by whatever means it can manage. This bullying is to continue until I learn to recognize from the “queer position” (that is, standpoint) how what I said was socially criminal and pledge to reform my thought, adopt Queer Theory, and not only do better but also become an activist on behalf of Queer Theory. This is identical to the thought reform of Maoist China with a slightly different ideology.

The accusation is obviously nonsense, but that’s not the point. The point is to initiate the social struggle session on me to “transform” my views. The accusation is of an old Marxist standard form, though. It’s a truth married to a lie.

Here’s the truth: Gays and lesbians fought for decades to break the public perception that they are predators and groomers of children. Here’s the lie: That’s who and what I’m talking about when I criticize their theory and activism, which is the very groomery thing I just described previously, in their own words.

As we saw from Halperin and from the “marketing” admission in the Drag Queen Story Hour curriculum paper, Queer Theory doesn’t represent gay identities. It hides behind them and uses them. 

The truth is that “queer” used to be a slur for gay people, one many activists took to describe themselves in defiance of prejudice and bigotry. The lie is that Queer Theory ever represented a civil rights movement for anyone. It’s a destructive form of radical activism that actually historically opposed gay civil rights and equality. Why would it do that? Because gay equality and acceptance would normalize being gay within society and legitimize gay people as fully equal members of society, and Queer Theory is, by definition, radically opposed on principle to anything normal and legitimate. They even have a word for it, homonormativity, which is also very bad.

Gay activists from the 1990s will readily attest that the Queer Activists were often strongly opposed to their ambitions: civil and legal equality, marriage, and social acceptance. Queer Theory needs radical activists, not stable citizens who can go about their lives in a society that doesn’t discriminate meaningfully against them. Those activists fought hard for decades to overcome stereotypes of predatory behavior and the idea that they’re intrinsically groomers. That’s why the Queer Activists can claim that calling out their blatant grooming is an “anti-LGBTQ” theme. Those were stereotypes that good people fought like hell to overcome.

The fact is that Queer Activism, exactly as described here, puts the appearance of glaring truth back into those stereotypes, and then the Queer Activists hide behind gay people and say, “see, they’re attacking you; see, everyone hates you.” Of course, everyday gay people who are good citizens lose the most from this little trick, and the Queer Activists gain the most. Queer activism is strictly parasitic behavior.

On the theme of grooming, specifically into a cult, I want to direct you to another scholar, Kevin Kumashiro, who wrote a paper in 2002 called “Against Repetition.” In that paper, he describes the purpose of queer education of children. Kumashiro explicitly says that teaching children about social justice, including about ideas from Queer Theory, induces emotional and identity-based crises in them.

He then says that’s why it’s important to have queer educators who can guide the vulnerable students who are experiencing their crises to resolve them in favor of social justice and Queer Theory beliefs and actions. The relevant quotes are these:

Repeating what is already learned can be comforting and therefore desirable; students’ learning things that question their knowledge and identities can be emotionally upsetting. For example, suppose students think society is meritocratic but learn that it is racist, or think that they themselves are not contributing to homophobia but learn that in fact they are. In such situations, students learn that the ways they think and act are not only limited but also oppressive. Learning about oppression and about the ways they often unknowingly comply with oppression can lead students to feel paralyzed with anger, sadness, anxiety, and guilt; it can lead to a form of emotional crisis. (p. 74) Once in a crisis, a student can go in many directions, some that may lead to anti-oppressive change, others that may lead to more entrenched resistance. Therefore, educators have a responsibility not only to draw students into a possible crisis, but also to structure experiences that can help them work through their crises productively. (pp. 74–75)

This practice is indoctrination, and it is knowingly willful and deliberate. In a 2019 paper, Torres and Ferry say explicitly that what their model of education represents is indoctrination. Here’s how they said it.

For all the criticism teachers receive for ‘indoctrinating’ students, turning them into liberal-minded cry-babies, not much has been said in defense. At the very least, a shy denial is made. It is time for educators to own this criticism and admit that is exactly what we do. (“Not everyone gets a seat at the table!” p. 33)

What Kevin Kumashiro is describing, though, is worse than indoctrination. The cycle of inducing crisis and then resolving it toward a doctrine, though, isn’t indoctrination. It’s a technique called trauma bonding, which is a practice of cult grooming and ideological transformation—that is, thought reform or brainwashing.

It can be said plainly, then. Queer Theory practices thought reform because Queer Theory is the doctrine of a religious cult. That cult is based on sex and primarily targets children, and it has little or nothing to do with being gay.

Nobody joins a cult to join a cult. People join a cult because they are suffering in some way, and the cult offers them a resolution to their suffering. Virtually everyone who has escaped a cult tells the same story: they wanted to belong, they wanted a social circle, they wanted understanding, and they wanted purpose. The cult preys upon these people and slowly locks them in.

Trauma bonding is as harmful and manipulative as it sounds. It is a technique of cult initiation and abuse. It’s like a kind of hazing. The basic formula is simple. First you traumatize your targets until you’ve harmed them enough for the process to work, and then you celebrate them when they do what you want.

In Queer Theory, you tell them the world isn’t at all the way it seems. It isn’t the way they’ve been led to believe. If they’re different, it’s because they’re oppressed. If not, it’s because they’re hurting other people. If they’re interested in exploring, even though they’re young, they should. If they’re uncomfortable with their bodies for any reason, perhaps their body is wrong for who they really are. If their parents might disagree, they shouldn’t be included in the decisions. Queer Theory is then offered as the lens that resolves all of the confusion, shock, dissonance, and pain. 

Then you affirm and celebrate them when they show interest. You lead them to believe they’re making brave decisions that are worthy of interest and respect. You coerce their social groups to participate in this ritual and tacitly threaten anyone who doesn’t want to go along with it. You make them feel like they belong and that they—just for being who they are—are special and have a special purpose to fulfill. You teach them special words that describe the very small but growing number of people who identify just like them.

This cult programming—or grooming—takes predictable paths. First, it leads people into emotional vulnerability followed by resolution. This generates personal and social interest, then psychological and social commitment. This is then deepened into an increasingly deep social and emotional commitment achieved largely through trauma bonding techniques, among others, detailed below.

This process creates emotionally and socially bonded members who populate the wide majority of any cult’s membership: those who are socially and emotionally locked in even without necessarily understanding the doctrine. This is sometimes called the “outer school” of the cult. The social, psychological, and emotional cues are steadily deepened over time, particularly increasingly playing upon themes of guilt, shame, isolation, alienation, and confusion on the one hand and hope, excitement, inclusion, and belonging on the other. Shunning “haters” who don’t support and affirm them, even within their own families, is also increased to make sure the cult environment is the predominant influence in the victims’ lives.

When commitment is high enough, a process of “study” begins, where the more committed outer school members start learning the cult doctrine. Here, they’d be studying Queer Theory. They’re not just learning how to use pronouns, present themselves, denounce everything against Queer Theory, and shut people out of their lives for disagreeing with what the cult thinks is good. They’re learning to defend it with pseudo-intellectual arguments based in Queer Theory. They’re also doing a lot of Queer Activism, which in turn deepens commitment. Why would you do this stuff, which is unpopular and difficult, when you have other and better things to do unless you are really committed? These people, who are socially and emotionally dependent on the cult and intellectually committed to it form an “inner school.” They are the “adepts” of the cult, where the “outer school” are its initiates. Most of the scholars and community organizers in the Queer Theory cult are in this tier.

There’s another tier, of course. The so-called “inner circle.” The members of the inner circle of a cult direct it and profit from it. They might or might not believe its doctrine, depending on their motivations. With Queer Theory, undoubtedly some of the biggest organizers and financiers of the movement, which primarily targets our children, do not believe it in itself but fully believe in its destructive and disruptive potential. Others believe in the enormous amount of profit that’s available from destroying lives and turning them into permanent, complicated medical or psychiatric patients. Others see the political utility of a permanently disaffected group with partially legitimate demands against a system they hate. Others see getting millions of people participating in the cult and its affirmations as a way to affirm themselves in their own “journeys,” and they just so happen to have the money to finance a campaign for mass affirmation.

The most important thing to remember about these tiers is the basic structure and the guiding principle behind each. The “outer school” initiates are seeing psychological and social reward through the cult’s manipulative offering, and they’re the overwhelming majority of captured cultists. The “inner school” seeks the same with existential fervor and some degree of intellectual and moral superiority. The “inner circle” is very small in number and ultimately is using the whole cult to their own twisted purposes. In the case of Marxist cults, the inner circle always uses the revolutionary cult of the era and then disposes of it when it’s time to move on to the next “phase of the revolution.”

The environment in which cults transform their victims is worth understanding in greater depth. According to Robert Jay Lifton, who studied the Maoist cult in detail as it was happening, cults effectively take advantage of up to eight qualities. Queer Theory very obviously utilizes all of them in sophisticated ways. I’ll touch upon them briefly.

Milieu control: Cults control the environment and make sure it only reflects cult doctrine. This is why they cut people off from friends, family, and outside information and views. This is your inclusion policies to ensure institutions and people only present cult-agreeable views and affirmation and remove anything that might cause doubt in the cult. This is cancel culture. This is immersive media and messaging from all levels.

Mystical manipulation: Cults create an appearance of total agreement (silencing all disagreement), inevitability (“there’s a change coming and there’s nothing you can do about it but get on the right side of it”), planned spontaneity (organized protests that look organic), and a higher purpose (like being on “the right side of history”) in order to convince their victims of their power and influence. It makes the cult appear more “right” and righteous to those captured within its spells. Think of the film The Truman Show. Jim Carrey’s character, Truman, was at the center of a huge operation of mystical manipulation within a fully controlled milieu.

Demand for purity: Cults are almost always puritanical in their values systems. They present their victims with stark contrasts of good and evil, right and wrong, on virtually every issue, and they demand purity with being on the “right” side of every issue. These dynamics manifest in dichotomies like pure vs. impure, absolutely good vs. absolutely evil, sacred vs. profane, or, specifically in the “social justice” cults like Queer Theory, affirmation vs. existential denial and care vs. “hate.” They are also interested, if not obsessed, with the binary of innocence vs. initiation to various levels of standing within the cult, including inclusion in the cult itself. In the extreme, this demand for purity sets up a dichotomy as stark as “the people” versus “the enemies of the people,” who must be destroyed in the name of “the people.”

Cult of Confession: The demand for purity leads the cult’s victims to readily identify how they fall short of cult perfection, leading them to both fear and desire to confess their failures and evil ways. Cults often encourage this behavior to facilitate the trauma bonding process. The trauma bonding wheel-of-pain is turned through pressuring people to confess—say to homophobia or transphobia or being a made-up gender or sexuality, and then rewarding them when they do—only to later indicate the confession wasn’t sufficiently total or sincere enough, initiating another round.

The milieu control and demand for purity come together to create a uniquely exquisite psychological environment. In this environment, almost everyone believes everyone else is pure while they, themselves, are not. You are the one falling short, even though you see your “classmates” confess to their own failures. You alone have the deepest, darkest failures. The guilt and shame are overwhelming, and they fuel even more accusation (criticism) and confession (self-criticism). This is the part of the environment that does the bulk of the thought-reforming work.

A “Sacred Science”: At the heart of the cult is what Lifton refers to as a “sacred science” that is infallible—though people can and do fail it all the time—into which people are being brainwashed. The point of the cult of confession dynamic is to force people to confess their failure to understand, internalize, enact, and even embody the “sacred science,” while accusing others of their failings as much and often as possible. The point of the confession is to get people to willingly adopt the lens of the sacred science so they can “recognize their crimes” against it and pledge to “do better.” “Do better” means “ideological remolding.” Here, Queer Theory is the correct understanding of sex, gender, sexuality, and all “normal” features of society. 

Doctrine over person: Cults place doctrine over people (“History uses people and then discards them.” -Hegel) The person isn’t even a person if they don’t hold and enact the doctrine. “Not to have correct political opinions is like not having a soul.” -Mao)

Loading the language: This is painfully obvious at this point, isn’t it?

Dispensing of existence: At the deepest level, the cult decides whose existence counts and who doesn’t. The punchline is that those who accept the cult doctrine (the “sacred science”) and its application are people, and no one else is. Only the doctrinally legitimate are allowed to exist. Others are “haters,” effectively enemies and non-people, justifying their abuse, disenfranchisement, silencing, etc.

Under the standard Iron Law of Woke Projection, the dispensing of existence aspect of cult environments is why Woke activists say everything is “denying their existence” or a “genocide.” They’re projecting. You don’t have a right to exist if your beliefs “deny their right to exist.” In Queer Theory, this means if you don’t affirm their embodied political activism against the legitimate and the normal, you’re denying their existence. You are therefore beyond the pale of humanity and do not deserve to exist. All totalitarian genocides come from this darkest piece of cult logic.

Frankly, we could go a lot deeper into the cult nature of Queer Theory than this. We could talk about how it’s ultimately a Gnostic and Hermetic conception of the world with “normal society” acting as an evil spirit that imprisons everyone into performing a fake persona for the world so they can never be liberated to be who they truly are. I’ve done that at length elsewhere.

That would require us to talk in depth about one of Queer Theory’s progenitors, Judith Butler, and her belief that gender and sex aren’t actually real but are performances we learn and repeat to satisfy normal society. Her whole body of work could be summarized in six words and a little explanation: “Drag is life; life is drag.” Everyone, always is doing drag in everything they do, whether they realize it or not. Society writes the scripts for how their drag (usually “cishetero”) is to be performed, and that imprisons their souls, which they then have to script physically onto and through their bodies. Becoming aware of the “doingness” of gender and even sex and sexuality opens a door to a “queer horizon” of possibilities beyond the norm.

Judy got those ideas in turn from people like the postmodern philosopher, sadomasochist, and pedophile Michel Foucault, from whose work David Halperin derived his definition from Queer. Foucault was asking what it means to be a homosexual absent society’s definition of the term, absent the homosexual versus heterosexual binary and privileged status of being straight within it, and absent the patterns of discipline and punishment that enforce these definitions on people through society, most frequently through themselves. The idea that it is the soul that imprisons the body, exactly in this way, didn’t originate with Judith Butler. She got it from Foucault.

Interlaced into aspects of Queer Theory from the broader milieu of the sexuality studies and sex-positive radical feminism from which it was born are the ideas of people like John Money and Alfred Kinsey, among others, who sought to divorce sex and “gender identity” completely and to liberate sexuality to the greatest possible extent.

Most of the inspiration, outside of the sexual aspects of Queer Theory, however, derive from gender-critical feminism, as it evolved eventually into the sex-positive branch, which went to war with its prudish sisters primarily through the 1980s and eventually won. That, in turn, means to understand this cult deeply, we’d have to start with the first truly gender-critical feminist, Simone de Beauvoir, who initiated the pressing question of our day way back in 1949: What is a woman? Her point was the same as Foucault’s: what does it mean to be a woman when no one else—and particularly society and patriarchy—are defining it for the people who actually are women?

In short, we are imprisoned by the features of our social reality but can escape with the right hidden insights about who we really are and into what we have been thrown. The thinkers above derived this transformative Sociological Gnosticism from earlier mystics of greater fame. We don’t have time for that now, but it’s not a hard legacy to trace from characters such as Rousseau, Hegel, and Marx through Beauvoir, Foucault, and Butler to arrive at the conclusion that we’re dealing not with social science but social alchemy here. One of its primary laboratories is our children.

Why children? Four reasons, mainly. First, children in schools and even with their entertainment are a captive audience. Second, children have not achieved the necessary cortical development to distinguish reality from fantasy, so the mystifications of Queer Theory can be considered plausible to them where adults would be less interested. Third, children are going through the developmental process of identity formation, which needs to be hijacked for this ideology to take firm root. Finally, children become a gateway and a wedge to other targets, like their families, faiths, and other institutions in which they take part.

So that is Queer Theory. It’s the doctrine of a religious cult. That cult is primarily sex-based. It predominantly targets our children. And it has little to nothing to do with being gay. But what can we do? 

Normally, we would turn to our institutions and ask them to see the light and step in. That isn’t working. We face a problem of captured institutions. Our institutions accept and promote Queer Theory. We therefore cannot count on our institutions—educational, psychological, medical, or governmental—to help us here. They are all captured. They are all part of the controlled milieu, creating the mystical manipulation, and peddling the sacred science of Queer Theory.

We find ourselves in the position of a pilot who has lost all of his instrumentation on his aircraft and has to fly it safely to a runway and land. No navigation computer, no altimeter, nothing—just him and his wits and hopefully his ability to see what’s in front of him and do the right thing. Our institutions are like the instruments in the cockpit but for society. Right now, they’re putting out all the wrong information. They cannot help us find the runway or land the plane safely, upon which our lives and the lives of others depend. What would we do? We would use our senses directly to find the runway, line up and lower the plane, and land it. We wouldn’t look to the broken instruments at all. We’d look at reality and navigate without the intermediary. That’s what we need to start finding ways to do at the societal level now—one individual at a time.

What, individually, though? What we must do is start with the truth. Not the mediated “truth” peddled by the corrupt institutions. The plain, simple truth. There are two sexes. Most people are straight. Gay happens. Queer isn’t an identity; it’s a defiant political stance we don’t have to tolerate or accommodate. If someone claims to have an identity or sexuality that requires an explanation, it’s fake and doesn’t demand our respect. Predatory behavior of any kind in any place and perversion outside of the confines of consenting adults acting in private do not deserve our tolerance and shouldn’t be given it. Pornography doesn’t need to exist in children’s libraries, and children do not benefit from its presence there. Enough.

Regarding the truth, though, I want to make a point. It’s important to say the truth, but you actually have to do more. You have to love the truth. You have to love the truth with all your heart and all your mind and all your soul and all your strength, and then you have to love your neighbor enough as you would yourself to tell him the truth that you love. These are basic commandments.

But you have to love the truth. If you love the truth, you’ll say it. You’ll also seek it and defend it. You’ll defend other people saying it. You have to love the truth because if you don’t, when the pressure mounts, you’ll eventually buckle. You’ll be asked to care and affirm, but there’s no caring and no affirmation that isn’t built upon the truth first. So you must love the truth. Every time you tell a lie to be nice or to fit in, you’re selling a piece of your soul. You have to stop doing that. That takes loving the truth.

When you do this—which is what it means to be based—you break the milieu control. You break the mystical manipulation. You call doubt upon the sacred science. You break the cycles of abuse and confession. You tell people that it is okay to trust their eyes and ears and even their gut intuition that what they’re experiencing from Queer Theory is abusive and manipulative.

Queer Theory is the doctrine of a cult religion based on sex that primarily targets our children. It is our necessary responsibility to learn about it and to oppose it. If you are so inclined, I’m releasing a new book, primarily written by Logan Lancing with my contributions, called The Queering of the American Child. I recommend you pick it up and get in the fight.

[suffering-is-cute]

the problem is, I know how to get you to love me

i've always been perceptive

and can work a pattern up from nothing

i have no excuse for falling in love with someone braver than myself

someone who doesn't need to be fixed

instead of the helplessly vulnerable you

who needs more than is yours to take

who needs a healer, with time to bind bandages over your wounds and patience to blend the tears away into your concealer

and i am not available.

the problem is, you are in love with a girl who does not talk.

her silence is the mirror of a rushing river in which you can see only yourself, and her voice rings clear to say the truths you hide from yourself,

no less ugly,

but framed in a way that it appears so beautiful.

the problem is, you fall straight for the nightmare which looks like a dream -

you are so eager for love that you declare you love her

because you don't have to think about her reaction to you

stranger and stranger,

you guess she sees virtue, value

you selfishly love to be genuinely yourself,

which means the less she says the more you love,

and you meander around topics that mean something to you without knowing anything about her.

the problem is, i know how to get you to love me,

and the more i act it out, the more i am convinced that you are not looking for a girl to love.

you want a doll to play with, made up into your ideal,

and you do not change for her.

she compromises for you.

the problem is, the more masks i wear, the more sick i become of you.

i promise, perhaps unnecessarily (I have told so many lies) that i did not mean to.

i truly did see you for who you were, only i don't think you ever saw me as rightly

not at my worst, not when i was flustered

not possessive, not exhausted, nor ready to give up

you haven't seen a me who loses control

running without inhibition, desperately

towards the only thing i love

no, i know you by heart

but you haven't uncovered mine.

the problem is, i have fallen in love with someone who is never here.

always wandering, always searching, for the face i can't even see clearly through familiar tears

the problem is, i cannot turn away those in need of love, even if it means lying to you and tarnishing your puremetal heart.

and i am so lonely in his absence.

so, devastatingly, incomplete.

words can't tell the half of it.

grief, carving the life away from me, so that I don't know how to say my own words anymore.

the problem is, darling, i'm waiting for someone who hasn't come back yet.

and a dawn is a dawn, no matter how bleak.

and a shawl is a shawl, no matter how thin.

oh, i am so good at feigning reciprocity that it is second nature to smile at you and imagine his face as your arms close sweet around me.

to bury myself in your problems like i am playing a game and this is a quest to be solved,

if only to forget for a while how he waltzes straight into the room and catches my eye

out of a million, the singular live coal.

out of a lineup of laughs, his the one that makes me feel like more than i am.

out of every choice open to me, oh God, oh dear God, i don't need to know what could have happened in any other life.

i don't need to know what could've been if i'd never met him or if anyone else had gotten to me first,

if only you will let me live this one life, with him here for keeps, this single coin

i would give up everything.

it sounds ridiculous, but for one who carefully considers every step, who deliberates,

and yet I say,

everything. every eventuality.

it is his, everything of mine,

he is the title of my history.

if you run your finger daintily down the spine of my heart, a thick and bleary tome gathering dust on the shelf, there is his name.

my life is a story with him at the center,

the worst thing a writer can be is in love.

the problem is, i know that i am using you in the same way as you are using me;

with more deception than is necessary and with gentle cruel wishes for you to stay in love with the world,

so, only for now, if you could while away the scraping and overwhelming edges of grief and loneliness biting tooth and nail into my skin,

hold the ceiling up like Atlas,

i will make you do it, flashing a conciliatory smile so bright you will wonder if there is any pain there at all.

i will make you do it, knowing that i hold your pain at bay the same way.

and you will think i am ignorant for loving you,

when really i would throw you over if i so much as sensed him walking our way,

even from a kilometre afar.

the problem is, we are craning so far forward off the balcony, looking for faraway loves, that we neglect to notice ourselves slipping off.

and there is only you here, and only me, so what is it if we grab hands to prevent ourselves from being dashed to pieces on the pavement below? what is it, really, if you and i share a kindred look of sorrow and a kiss we wish belonged to another?

the problem is, when they finally find us, we will be attached at the hip.

and knowing you so well, having loved you as a bosom friend, i will still let you go and dash straight into those long-awaited arms,

drinking the draught of love's utter completion,

and you, having endured so long and so much, will be left without a hand to hold as you continue to wait.

you, with your empty hand, flexing muscle memory over air where my hand should've been.

the problem is, i will leave you at the altar, and for the one who was gone for three-quarters of the movie.

i will be the second flame to burn your matchstick of a heart up.

and this time, there won't be anything left to incinerate.

it will be quiet and true, like the beginning of a fated legend.

one minute i will be in your arms, and the next, he will be in mine.

satisfactory, expected, sudden.

don't you get it, darling?

i will leave you anyway. i know you hope otherwise but i never change my choices and this was what i set my heart on and made my mind up for so long, long, ago.

you will be the end that serves as the start of my everything, and then the opening song's first notes will hum from my mouth.

when my wedding rolls around, i will write your name on a card. as if i have not hurt you enough, i will put it on the mail with a gentle rejoinder.

as if to stroke your pride as i always knew how to do, it's how you fell for me after all, I'll say-

I did love you, in my own way.

that is the problem.

i have a choice of who to keep loving, and i knew before i let you love me -

you were there to stretch my days.

if it helps, here's your straightforward answer. the only one you'll get from me.

you were never going to be my enough.

the problem is, i am already loved.

and you don't match up.

knowing this, i chose to let you love me.

you made it so easy, i just couldn't resist.

- don't feel bad; requisite lies,

lacunasbalustrade. 17. sep. 2023

@lacunasbalustrade mainblog, @suffering-is-cute poetry sideblog.

[irandrura]

3, 6, 31!

3. What titles have you played?

Finished: 7, 8, 9, 10, 11, 13, 16

Started but haven't finished: 6, 14, 15

I feel guilty for not having finished Shadows of Valentia, because it's genuinely excellent, and probably the second-best game released since Tellius. However, I remember getting stuck on one of those frustrating missions with teleporting long-range wizards and just getting too fed up to continue.

I haven't finished Binding Blade mostly due to laziness. I haven't finished Fates because its writing was just too awful for me to put up with it any more, and I made the deliberate choice to stop subjecting myself to more of it. Of the FE games I have played, Fates is the only one that I outright think is a bad game.

6. Who’s your favorite lord/protagonist?

Tricky one. I remember at the time I played Tellius I felt Ike was on the dull side, but after the next six games to follow I find myself really missing him - in particular his character growth was just really well-handled, especially if you try to compare him to Chrom or someone. That said, I also have a fondness for all three Elibe lords (yes, even Eliwood, I make no apologies), for Micaiah, and for Alm and Celica. The best lord in Awakening is Lucina, though I don't know if she counts as a protagonist.

I think I'll say Ike, since he does manage to keep growing on me, with a second place finish for Celica, but perhaps that's mainly because I like sincere religious people.

31. Some moments of Fire Emblem you keep thinking of?

These are going to be really arbitrary, and just moments that lodged in my head.

From FE7 (Blazing Sword), I'm going to nominate two. Firstly, the conversation between Lyn and Hector on the pirate ship. That always stayed with me as a fantastic moment of characterisation for both of them, showcasing both Lyn's pride and Hector's ability to be surprisingly aware and empathetic.

Also, from the final battle: The nomads of plains do not abandon their fellow tribespeople. Eliwood and Hector are my dear friends. Their sorrow is my sorrow. Their anger is my anger! Nergal! In my friends' names, I will cut you down!

As far as pre-battle speeches go, it has a really nice cadence to it, and while the message is generic "I fight for my friends" Fire Emblem stuff, I feel like the game really earned it by putting the three protagonists and their evolving friendship at the centre.

From FE10 (Radiant Dawn), I'll also pick two. Firstly, the mission in part one where the Black Knight appears to defend Micaiah. Playing Path of Radiance first really conditions you to feel this sense of terror whenever the Black Knight appears, because he's indestructible and he's this mysterious enemy you cannot defeat. For his first appearance in the sequel to be to aid you, for reasons as inscrutable as ever, is bound to make the player nervous and suspicious, and I enjoy the ambivalence it creates.

Secondly, the river crossing missions. You know why. I know lots of people hate playing the Dawn Brigade, but I unironically love the mission where you play the Dawn Brigade and have to try to hold off for the Greil Mercenaries - for this one moment you get to experience (not just witness, experience!) what it's like to be on the other side, and man, is it terrifying.

From FE16 (Three Houses), I'm going to pick a weird one. In the Blue Lions ending cinematic, after Dimitri is forced to kill Edelgard and he and Byleth leave... the door opens, Byleth steps into the light, and then turns to see Dimitri hesitating. Dimitri looks away from the light and moves to look backwards, but Byleth catches Dimitri's hand and looks downwards, almost (but not quite) shaking his head. A moment of understanding passes between the two men, and Dimitri follows Byleth out into the light, where they face the cheers of their victorious army.

It's a small moment, but I appreciate just how much it does without any dialogue, with only very small, subtle expressions, particularly from the emotionless Byleth. It's a moment of letting go - Dimitri's complex feelings for Edelgard, from friendship to sympathy to murderous hatred, are all dissipating. You can almost hear Byleth whispering, "It's done. Let's go."

And, though this might sound odd, it stands out to me because in my opinion the scene just genuinely doesn't work with a female Byleth, particularly given, as far as I can tell, the popularity of romantic f!Byleth/Dimitri ships. So much of Dimitri's former life was consumed by his obsession with a particular woman, so going the otome route with Dimitri and redeeming him via the love of another woman, a 'light' woman to contrast with Edelgard the 'dark' woman, doesn't feel like the clean break that scene should be. I'd rather cut out any such implication and have Byleth and Dimitri's relationship be clearly Platonic - no longer one of teacher and student, certainly, but perhaps one of equals and allies, of people who've achieved a kind of brotherhood through shared suffering. They've both, after all, lost close family members to Edelgard's ambition.

I don't know. I just liked that moment - Byleth catching Dimitri's hand, as if to say, "Let go."

[uwu-twistedthorn-uwu]

How about 6, 28, and 30 for the ao3 ask game?

AO3 wrapped ask game

6. Favorite title you used

Continuing the tradition of you always picking the most annoying question whenever I participate in an ask game, I don't really know. My absolute favorite titles I came up with this year were for a fic I haven't posted yet (it's first chapter has been a wip since early August) and for a fic I haven't even started yet (because it's based on an event not yet in the English version). So just looking at the fics I actually posted this year, I guess I'll just go through process of elimination to pick a fave.

First of all, fuck all the one word titles. Every single one of them was created on the spot because, I didn't come up with a name before it was time to post (the one exception being that unfinished fic). Next up, the sexual titles (aka NRC Masturbate Chef and Monster Fucking). Though I do love shitty puns, these have one major flaw. I die of embarrassment every time I have to say them out loud. I prefer fic titles where I can talk about them in public without anyone within earshot immediately realizing that when I say "creative writing", I mean porn.

Out of the remaining options, I guess I'd pick While Floyd Was Off at Camp? I don't have any reason for choosing beyond the fact that I like how it sounds when I say it out loud. (I don't hate the ones I eliminated, I just needed to narrow down the options somehow)

28. Favorite work you wrote this year?

This is another hard one, but for the opposite reason. For the first time like ever, I adore basically everything I've written this year. Even fics I felt meh about when intially posting, I've since reread and gone "Oh wait, this isn't bad at all, I'd just been staring at it too long."

So I suppose I'll go with Our Little Secret, because for something written in such a short time I'm awfully happy with how it turned out. But basically all of my Twisted Wonderland fics are my precious babies, and I could have just as easily picked any other one.

30. Biggest surprise while writing this year?

Just the fact that I've written (and posted) all these fics. If you told me back in January that I'd post 11 one shots in less than a year, all of them extremely self indulgently horny, I'd have laughed in your face.

Like, I had written some yugioh smut fics a couple years ago, but they were explicitly (lol) created with the intent of never posting them ever. NRC Masturbate Chef was supposed to be yet another of these forbidden fics, created for my enjoyment and no one else's. It was freeing, because at the time I fucking hated my writing, so not having to worry about what others might think meant I could just have fun with it.

But after finishing the fic (and starting on the next one, Sleeping Moray) I realized "Hey wait I'm actually proud of this, when did that happen?". I wanted to share my writing, but didn't want to post it on my ao3 account, as I wasn't visibly proship on main at the time (I'm still not, but now it's because I never post anything there and not out of any deliberate choice). So I created Twisted Thorn, with the intent of it being an alternate account for my "problematic" works.

Turns out I have a lot more fun writing incest smut then the stuff I used to write, so instead of being a side thing for hosting the occasional bit of porn and/or incest, Twisted Thorn became my main focus and I basically abandoned my previous wips in favor of solely writing Twisted Wonderland stuff.

[miidnighters]

A choice. How diplomatic of him.

Still, Hartley can appreciate a man who says no without outright refusing - and best believe, now that the invitation has been extended, she will be returning to tease him a little more.

"During office hours? When any of your students could stumble upon you overseeing my exam? When I fully intend to exceed the expectations of such a harsh grader? Why, Dr. Dekarios, how scandalous of you."

The use of his title is deliberate - both to sell the tease they're crafting, and to put him a little on the back foot. Hartley Greer doesn't use anything so personal as names.

"I don't doubt that, darling. Your skill with the Weave is not what I'm questioning - I know you could blow just about everyone else out of the water with theory alone." How, then, to politely explain that it was his ability to apply that skill when faced with an imminent threat like the one they'd been discussing? More than once Hartley had seen someone freeze up at the last moment. Maybe she just leaves that thread dangling and instead moves swiftly on to the offer of a demonstration.

"It's incredibly sexy to watch a skilled man work, you know." Ah - she just can't help herself, can she? "A demonstration would be very helpful, actually. What did you have in mind?"

He goes still before she answers. Ah. It seems at last he's realized the extent of his blunder. Her lips quirk, eyes glimmer, and he takes a breath.

"That would be-" That would be what, Dr. Dekarios? "A choice, to be sure," he settles on. So cool, their prim Mr. Grundy. "Unfortunately, I'm afraid just like my office hours, that particular seat is quite closed right now. That said, you're more than welcome to try your luck on another day of your choice. After all, an enterprising spirit should be both encouraged and tested, and I've ample experience in seeing firmly to the latter. I've been called a harsh grader." Ooh. "My office hours are on the syllabus."

My, my this man is! Well, insufferable, of course. Still, it's humorous, she must admit, this crackling back and forth in their little war of nerve. To be sure, he's a man of strong whiskey and is prone to misbehaving, but those matters of the heart? That realm of deep emotion? Well, ruffle all she like, but Gale is little budging. Jane Austen, one could argue, had crafted him herself.

He's a gentleman scholar. A paladin of love! And offering to help, apparently filled with nerve, too. He thumbs the book, considers, and digs in his heels. "I can't say I've tried my hands at its more 'practical applications'," Gale admits, "but I would hardly be a wizard were I to leave a challenge unmet." Besides, he's storms in his hands, hasn't he? "Believe me, my considerable presence can be felt beyond the classroom. If it would soothe you at all, perhaps I can offer you a demonstration of sorts."

Now, that, while new, sounds surprisingly fun.

[aragornsrockcollection]

Hello I’m here to talk about an opinion that isn’t so much unpopular because people don’t like it, but because it is splitting hairs and basically an argument based in semantics that sane people reasonably do not waste their time caring about it.

I am neither sane nor reasonable and therefore think about this a lot, and get ready to pull out a soapbox and type the Text Wall of China any time I hear people offhandedly contradict this opinion, and so I have come here today to die on this molehill, and write the over-long post of my dreams, because fuck it, it’s my blog.

Drumroll please:

Sauron is not The Lord of the Rings

The Lord of the Rings is the main antagonist though, so furthermore,

Sauron is not the main antagonist of The Lord of the Rings

I internally go insane every time someone says “Sauron, the eponymous Lord of the Rings” or “The antagonist never actually appears in Lord of the Rings” or uses Lord of the Rings as an penultimate example of having a flat ‘evil for evil’s sake’ villain. This is mostly in YouTube videos so I’m not calling out anyone here.

So who is the Lord of the Rings? Where do I get this shit? Why should anyone care?

I will tell you in far too much detail under this cut, because I told you I was gonna be extra about it and this is already long enough to inflict on my followers without their consent.

First and foremost, Frodo is not the Lord of the Rings either. Let’s get that out of the way. Gandalf explicitly tells us that in Many Meetings (the first chapter in Rivendell in Fellowship), when Pippin greets a newly awakened Frodo with quintessential Fool of a Took™️ swagger.

‘Hurray!’ cried Pippin, springing up. ‘Here is our noble cousin! Make way for Frodo, Lord of the Ring!’

‘Hush!’ Said Gandalf from the shadows at the back of the porch. ‘Evil things do not come into this valley; but all the same we should not name them. The Lord of the Ring is not Frodo, but the master of the Dark Tower of Mordor, whose power is again stretching out over the world! We are sitting in a fortress. Outside it is getting dark.’

So that’s my theory busted right off the bat! Gandalf straight up tells us the Lord of the Ring is Sauron (‘the master of the Dark Tower of Mordor’ which is Sauron).

But I already told you, this is a hair-splitting semantics-based theory! He said Sauron was the Lord of the Ring. Not the Lord of the RingS. Yes, this whole theory revolves around a single letter difference between the title of the series and Gandalf’s statement, WHAT OF IT?

But in all seriousness. Tolkien was a linguist. There was no way this choice was not deliberate, not on something so important to the narrative. And there is a very important difference between what he is referring to when he uses ‘The Ring” singular, and “The Rings” plural. The Ring that Frodo carried to Mordor has it’s singular nature highly emphasized by the language that surrounds it. THE definite article Ring, the ONE Ring. Just the One. Singular Singular Singular.

The Rings (plural) refers to the rings of power which Celebrimbor wrought, with Sauron’s help, but Sauron is objectively not the Lord of those rings. Not the three Elven ones at least, which he never touched and only suspects the location of. Without his One Ring he has no power over the Three, and a big problem with him regaining his Ring is that he would gain power over those rings, the ringbearers, and the safe realms that had been wrought with them, basically crippling those with the power to resist him.

Him NOT having the Ring, and therefore NOT having lordship over all the rings, is a pretty major plot point. Like, it’s not a reach to say Sauron not having the Ring is what drives the entire story. And he is NOT the Lord of the Rings without it.

And he never gains it, so is the whole series named after Sauron’s aspirations, that the main characters are trying to prevent? I mean, from an angle yes. But also no.

Because while Pippin and Gandalf’s exchange is the closest we come in the text to seeing the title, let me show you the only place within the covers that “The Lord of the Rings” is presented, at least in my beat up third hand 70’s edition. It may not be formatted like this in other editions, but I still think it says something about how we are supposed to read the title:

[Image ID: Masking tape can clearly be seen holding together my poor abused copy of Fellowship, open to the title page. THE LORD OF THE RINGS is written across the top of the page in all caps, directly below it is the Ring Poem, as if The Lord of the Rings is a the title not only of the series but of the poem. /.End ID]

The One Ring is the Lord of the Rings, not Sauron, who is the Lord of the Ring.

“What?” Say imaginary naysayers in my head, “How can a Ring be a Lord? And why does this matter, if Sauron is the Lord of the Ring, doesn’t that make him the Lord of the Rings by proxy? Why are you wasting your and my time making an argument about this?”

I’m glad you asked imaginary naysayer, let me speak to your first point. How can a ring be a Lord? Well, like any good first time speechwriter, I’ve turned to Miriam Webster, and asked it to define a word we already know, in this case ‘lord.’

[Image ID: Screenshot of the Miriam Webster definition of ‘lord.’ The ones that are relevant are 1: One having power and authority over others. 1a: A ruler by hereditary right or preeminence to whom service and obedience are due. And 1f: One that has achieved mastery or that exercises leadership or great power in some area /.End ID]

In the poem, it is the Ring that is spoken of as ruling, not Sauron. Sauron is actually listed in the same position as all the others who receive rings, “The Dark Lord on his Dark Throne” occupying the same place in the sentence structure as the “the Elven-kings under the sky” and “the Dwarf-lords in their halls of stone” and “Mortal Men doomed to die.” It is the One Ring, not Sauron, who rules them all, fulfilling our first definition “A ruler by hereditary right or preeminence.” In this case it would be by right of preeminence, or superiority. The One Ring outclasses the other rings and thus dominates them, binding them to obedience and service. Gandalf calls it “the Master-Ring” when it is first revealed for what it is in Bag-End with the words appearing from the flame.

The Ring has it’s own will too. It’s repeatedly stated to be in control of Gollum when Gandalf is first telling us about it. I’m literally so spoiled for quotes about this that I was paralyzed with indecisiveness over what to use but let’s keep it simple with this one. It’s from Gandalf explaining why Gollum didn’t have the Ring allowing Bilbo to come upon it in the chapter “Shadows of the Past” from Fellowship:

‘It was not Gollum, Frodo, but the Ring itself that decided things. The Ring left him.’

So if Sauron is the Lord of the Ring, and the Ring is the Lord of the Rings, isn’t he Lord of the Rings by proxy? Yes, when he has the Ring. But also being the ruler of a lord doesn’t make the title of that lord your title, if that makes sense. People don’t call Aragorn the Prince of Ithilien, that’s Faramir’s title, Aragorn is King of the Reunited Kingdoms, he rules Ithilien, sure, but by proxy. Ithilien reports to Faramir who reports to Aragorn (I should be calling him Elessar since I’m talking about him as king, but whatever). If Aragorn lost the ability to contact Faramir or Ithilian, he would still theoretically be king there but he would have no practical control, just like Sauron with the Rings of Power.

Why does this matter? It mostly doesn’t. It does not change anything practically in the story at all.

But it matters to me, because it might help change perspective on the antagonist of LotR. It’s the Ring. Sauron is a force in the world, one the Ring is closely allied with, and from whom many of the obstacles come, but the entity that our protagonist is really fighting on every page is the Ring.

If Gandalf were the main character, or Aragorn, or almost anyone else on Middle Earth, Sauron would be the Primary Antagonist. But they are not. Frodo is the Primary Protagonist, and his struggle is NOT against Sauron, it is against the Ring.

If destroying the Ring had not destroyed Sauron, would Frodo have kept fighting in this war? NO! He had his task, and once it was done he was done, even if the world ended afterwards. Everything is driven by the Ring. The threat to the Shire comes from the presence of the Ring, so Frodo takes the Ring to Rivendell. The danger of the Ring is not neutralized by it being brought to Rivendell, so he continues his journey to destroy it once and for all. He doesn’t fight Sauron, he fights the Ring. He fights with himself to keep going in spite of the despair it levels on him, the poisonous words it whispers in his ear, the physical toll it takes on his body. He fights Boromir and Sam (not to the extent he does in the movie, but still a bit) and Gollum over the Ring. He negotiates with Faramir over the Ring.

And the Ring is SUCH a more interesting and nuanced villain to struggle with than Sauron. Sauron is representative of a force in the world. He controls events but never appears, because he acts as the source of all evil, it’s representation on earth (at least now Melkor is in the Void), but it is far more interesting to watch the effect he has on others than deal directly with a character that is so obviously in the wrong in every way. Making Sauron a physical character in LotR is like making the Devil a present character in basically any piece of media that deals with evil.

Evil at its purest isn’t that interesting, because it contains no conflict. Leaving Sauron as an offscreen player leaves us to see characters that are not pure evil struggle with that conflict.

The fascinating thing about the Ring is that it has no power outside of what you give it. But given enough time even the best people, like Frodo, will end up losing themselves to it, as it whispers in your ear with your own voice.

I want to go ballistic when people point to LotR and say it has a one dimensional villain. EVERYONE’S OWN VIOLENCE, DESPAIR AND THIRST FOR POWER IS THE VILLAIN OF LORD OF THE RINGS! Brought to the fore by a small unassuming golden trinket which just happens to also be the titular Lord of the Rings.

Honestly “The Ring is the Villain of LotR change my mind” should be its own big long post with lots of quotes and shit, the fact that the Ring is The Lord of the Rings just being a small point in it.

But unless you are a specific type of interested in story structure and stuff none of this is at all meaningful and it really, really doesn’t matter, so I’m gonna go.

Thanks for coming with me on this dumb journey.

[hitchcock-winter]

Chinese editions of Simon Snow: Part 1 of 2

So my wonderful girlfriend decided that she wanted to read @rainbowrowell 's Simon Snow series, because she knows it's my favourite. She thought getting the Chinese versions would be a faster and easier read, and I obviously benefit entirely from this decision.

Initially, I was excited to just get a hold of these stunning covers, but I'm fascinated by translation and it turns out that there's so much to say about these editions.*

The titles

I'm obsessed with these choices, to be honest. Not only did they decided to give the series a name, but the original titles do not resonate to the general Chinese audience so they all have brand new ones:

The series: The Son of Prophecy

Carry On: Burnt Forest (or essentially, what's left in the forest after being burnt)

Wayward Son: Exile Desert

Any Way the Wind Blows: Silent Battlefield

I'm gonna leave that without comment, but I'd love to chat about it with people!

All of the titles have 4 characters, which is a deliberate and popular aesthetic choice in Chinese.

The covers

You know those little mini black jackets in the pic above? They use those to give a quick sales pitch for the books. The Carry On book, for example, says, roughly, "Magic school roommates + mutual pining nemesis = to love or to kill??".

Carry On:

Wayward Son:

Any Way the Wind Blows:

This book is so big they decided to break it into two. Though the covers are exactly the same, they've differentiated between them with characters that translate roughly to "top" and "bottom":

Additionally, the AWTWB came with a first edition bonus mini folding screen of all three covers:

An interesting choice the artist, Marlowe Loop, made was drawing Baz shorter than Simon. I have a theory as to why, but I don't want to speculate without any proof here so dm me if you're curious.

To be continued...

This post ended up being way too long, so stay tuned for Part 2, where I'll talk about the text itself. (Be sure to check the original post for the link to part 2 when it's live!)

*I'll be talking about the translations, but please note that I can't read Chinese myself, and the gf grew up in Beijing and typically reads simplified Chinese rather than the traditional in these books. Our translations are rough.

[coffee-in-veins]

Since we both want to forget about the DD tinfood; what do you think would be some good rations to take into a dungeon? What do heroes like/despise? Eating habits? Bonus points for the heroes' favourite foods, or some signature dishes from their homeland.

Thank you for this ask, and sorry for taking so long to answer! This ask actually allows me to share a lot of things I've looked into for my writing of "Restructured, refractured, recalled" - but it’s mostly background flavour work to add the text its flavour, and usually isn’t too noticeable. Still, I’ve spent quite some time reading and thinking about it. Hyperfixation at its finest, what do you do.

LOADS of ramblings are incoming! Thee hast been warned.

So the thing is, I have to admit that I'm biased in a way - I was researching it all from the perspective of my Heiress, and thus, the decisions made in the food provided (and the housing, technically, but that’s a separate story) are made with her personality in mind, that being cold, calculated and completely, utterly devoid of any understanding of empathy. Therefore, the sustenance was akin to solving a puzzle - how to feed the heroes without it being too costly.

The biggest number of heroes Hamlet could house at any given moment (provided there are fully repaired and upgraded barracks and we count one additional slot provided by Shieldbreaker DLC and no one is out on a mission) is 29. This is huge, considering that Hamlet, if taken in its most literal sense, is a tiny settlement, with a population of fewer than 100 people from what I could gather. Interestingly, “hamlet” is defined as “a small settlement that has no central place of worship and no meeting point, for example, a village hall”, but Hamlet in DD has a whole Abbey. Which I think is supposed to be bigger than mere church...? But frankly, I’m far from being a religious person, so I’m not sure how that is supposed to work or is it yet another “here’s a tin can, don’t think about it if you want your sanity back” thing. We might never know. If someone knows about it, feel free to write to me; I’d love to understand it.

The point of this tangent is that if we assume that Hamlet has a population of 100, adding 29 heroes is impossible for the town to feed on its own. That might explain the need to provide the sustenance for the expeditions out of the Heiress’ pockets at a full price instead of getting it as a tax, for example, from the lands she supposedly owns. And an argument could be made that it’s only a 2:100 ratio when we first come to Hamlet and that the first Vestal is from the Abbey itself, and the first PD is a scholar from a Sanatorium (hence them always being the first additions to your team that you get), and that the population of Hamlet increases with the infrastructure you re-build and the more monsters you clear out the more people come to Hamlet, thus making the food situation more manageable. Another argument can be made that Hamlet is merely a name that historically stuck, and the actual population is much higher than the name would suggest. The fact that even in its most dilapidated state, the town has stone buildings and bridges, and a working harbour, as well as noblemen with titles as high as Countess coming to the Estate in the past somewhat supports this idea. A small settlement wouldn’t be able to feed and support the revelry that Ancestor was supposedly having before your time. Then again, it’s very hard to understand what is a limitation of the game, what is a deliberate artistic choice and what is simply the rule of cool, here.

Now to the food itself.

First of all, there’s foraging during the expeditions themselves. Save for Ruins, there’s always a non-zero chance to find or get food if you know what you’re doing. A bag of herbs can cleanse enough things to sustain a party for at least some time. The real quality of said sustenance is dubious at best, but when the alternative is starvation, one cannot be picky. It’s hard to say for sure what can be found in each location but we can speculate. There’s fish, sea monster meat, whale meat (based on the corpse in one of the rooms) and seaweed in Cove; most likely wild game carcasses and gnashers in Weald (fun fact! rabies virus is extremely susceptible to heat, just 50 degrees Celsius is enough to destroy it, so technically, cooked gnasher meat should be safely edible for heroes); stolen food from surrounding farms and swine carcasses themselves (for completely desensitised heroes) in Warrens - based on the quest for stealing their food, humans and swine require the same or extremely similar sustenance, after all. Also, there are molluscs and barnacles in Cove, rats and mice in Ruins, Weald and Warrens, nuts, berries, acorns and wild greens in the Weald and lichen most likely everywhere, all of which can be used to stretch the rations for longer. 

Second of all, Hamlet is sea-side which has a huge benefit we might not appreciate enough nowadays, that being - an abundance of relatively cheap (Hamlet seems to be in middle latitudes (despite there being surface corals, I hate it here, I hate it here so much), so salt extraction cannot be achieved by solar power alone and requires some fuel source; fortunately, Weald is in the convenient distance), available sea salt for any needs. Namely, for food preservation. Yes, one can argue that having fishfolk in the Cove increases the cost, but I'd argue anything in Hamlet is far from being monster-proof, so I assume that the possibility of being butchered by some eldritch horrors during work hours is simply included in the baseline cost.

Regardless, having access to the sea/ocean and a huge forest, as well as farms (we know they canonically exist because of the Bumper Crop event and well, Farmstead) makes salted meat and fish quite readily available for heroes during their expeditions. Moreover, salted meat, fish and lard can be used in cooking during camping and eliminates the need of salting the pottage it is added to, serving a double purpose. 

Now, on the topic of something more affordable - such as bread. Bread in itself isn't as storage-efficient as it may look at a first glance - even if we're talking about denser, heavier "peasant" (that is, rye, oats or barley instead of more expensive wheat) wholewheat bread. However, considering there's a town which can be tasked with it, ordering the baking of hardtack and flatbreads specifically for the purpose of providing for the expeditions looks like a reasonable choice. They are cheaper (requiring no yeast, beer barm or beer), and need only water, flour and salt, all of which Hamlet has access to. And, well, this is one of the most sufficient, calorie-dense and cheap options - ideal for our heartless, calculating Heiress. Far more affordable than meat, for example. Furthermore, it can be used to thicken and enrich some sort of stew or pottage, and we can see some sort of (presumably?) stew, pottage or soup being cooked during the camping in the pot that heroes canonically carry with them. Providing hardtack instead of grains can even be considered being "merciful" or "caring" since cooking them in some sort of gruel is far easier, and the resulting dish is far more nourishing than having to deal with plain grains on the expeditions (by either making porridge/gruel out of them or having to make some sort of flatbread by themselves). 

Also, an abundance of salt means we probably have pickled/brined vegetables as a part of the rations. Pickles are sturdy, easy to transport, don’t require refrigeration and again, have the added bonus of salting otherwise unsalted stew. What types of vegetables those might be is tricky to suggest, but it is known that onions, carrots, peas, beans, rutabaga and cabbage were used a lot during medieval times. Parsnips were used up until the 16th century, from what I can find, and considering other anachronisms, they are a safe bet to add. Dried beans and peas are easy to transport and can be used as a base for stews and pottages, especially combined with other ingredients. The inclusion of fresh vegetables is more up to debate since they require more prep work. But onions, carrots and other roots are quite easy to transport and deal with, even during the expedition, and should last the canonical week well enough while adding quite a lot of nutrition to the supposed pottage. Especially if we consider that cabbage, peas and carrots were the cheapest available options for nourishment - again, ideal for our Heiress, who is only interested in keeping her hired muscles fed, not fed well. 

Then there are eggs. They have an added bonus of not requiring to kill the hen, and therefore are relatively cheap. Cheaper than chicken meat, that’s for sure (and yes, I am aware, that cockerels were mostly raised for meat, killing a hen was more flaunting wealth than anything else in medieval times). Raw eggs are rather fragile, however, fresh eggs can last a week or two without refrigeration making them a nice addition to the meal, if it was possible to carry them - because honestly, adding just a couple of eggs to the gruel adds a lot to its nutritional value. On the contrary, hard-boiled eggs only last a couple of hours before starting to spoil but are far easier to transport, possibly playing the role of some sort of "on the road" snack, for a lack of a better term. However, they are far better used as an ingredient for our next option.

And the option is pastry! There is evidence of pies being abundant in the medieval period and them being used as meals during the working day. Pies had a wide variety of fillings, from extremely expensive beef or veal and venison to much more affordable pork, to fish, to fruit. Pies are not considered long-lasting provisions, but they could’ve been used as a “food for the first day” sort of rations, while longer-lasting products or raw products that required cooking were kept for the last days of the expedition. Again, there were types of very bland pastry, basically water with flour and a bit of salt, which was merely a holder for the filling, and I think it would fit the type of food the Heiress could provide for her mercenaries. More costly fillings (such as meat or cheese) can be diluted with vegetables while providing more volume, thus lowering the cost even further. I’m not entirely sure what can be the thing that heroes fry during their camping. It can be some sort of root vegetable, chopped and cooked. Or can be some sort of pastry or dumplings that have probably gone stale during the expedition and are re-heated in molten lard to make them edible again. Honourable mention goes to halusky, a variety of dumplings cooked in the Central and Eastern European cuisines. These are small lumps cut from a thick flour and egg batter and dropped into boiling water. The lack of filling makes them – say it with me – cheaper and thus, more valuable as food to give to the mercenaries, however (and I can say it from experience) they are extremely filling, especially if combined with lard.

Also, one cannot forget about cheese as a product with high nutritional value, good shelf life and the added benefit of easy transportation. Cheese as a type of food was commonplace in medieval times, as were whey cheeses (cheeses made from by-products of the production of harder cheeses) due to having no other ways to increase dairy shelf life. Again, because there’s no need to kill the cow to get the cheese, the product was way cheaper than meat. It is dense, has a good nutrition-to-volume ratio, and can be used in stews or eaten by itself, making it very versatile.

Another way of sustenance that was mentioned before is lard and butter. Although butter production in large quantities is way more cattle-heavy, and thus less probable in Hamlet which is canonically situated in dense woods on the seaside. On the other hand, lard is way more available, especially if we consider that pork was the staple meat of medieval times, much like poultry is now. Lard can be salted and/or smoked, and preserves extremely well after it, while serving as a meal when combined with bread. Also, hot lard can be used for meat preservation and cooking, but since it’s liquid, I doubt any of it was used during expeditions. Lard itself, however, in its solid form, is far more viable, as a very calory-dense product, an oil source for frying (since we see some sort of a frying pan during camping) and as a reliable, relatively cheap ingredient.

Another way of adding sustenance was using mushrooms. There’s a history of mushroom consumption, and we even have some medieval recipes requiring mushrooms. Wild mushrooms can add nutrition to pottage or be fried with onions and leaks on lard as a separate dish. They also can be dried to last for a while. The problem is the bigger bipedal mushrooms of the Weald that wouldn’t mind reversing the roles and eating the mushroom hunters and the fact that they possess danger in themselves. While it would be bad enough to have food poisoning, having food poisoning in the middle of an expedition surrounded by eldritch horrors sounds like a very high-risk play. I have no doubt that mushrooms were given to Seekers (level 0 heroes) instead of meat when they were in-season as relatively cheap sustenance, but adding avoidable risk factors for high-level expeditions sounds like a bad investment. After all, high-level heroes are money sinks with their skills, gear and weapons. Therefore, they most likely got other foodstuffs instead of mushrooms.

One more good food that could’ve been used and is relatively cheap is dried fruits. Nothing fancy, though, something simple and readily available in middle latitudes such as dried apples, pears or plums. There’s a source called “Naturalis historia” which, while describing real-world Italy (which is undoubtedly far more southern than Hamlet’s position, not gonna lie), mentions twelve kinds of plums, thirty kinds of apple, forty-one kinds of pear, sorb, cherries and multiple nuts including chestnuts which would’ve probably been available in one capacity or another. Dried berries could also be added as long-lasting, easy-to-transport addition to rations. Namely, dried berries, including rosehip berries, were often used to simply eat or brew drinks.

If the topic of sweeter foodstuffs is touched, one cannot forget about honey. Sugar wasn’t readily available due to sugarcane not being grown in Europe until the mid-15th century and therefore was stupidly expensive. Moreover, sugar was considered valuable mostly for its “medical properties”. Honey, while also isn’t particularly cheap, was far more available for the population. It can last for years without the need for preservation or refrigeration, making it an enticing option for more valuable mercenaries.

On the topic of pottages, stews, drinks and basic sustenance, we cannot forget one crucial component without which no long-term expedition can be carried out – fresh water. In cooking, for drinking, water is required in expeditions, especially when there’s basically zero chance of finding it, like in the Cove or the Ruins. Therefore, the heroes would also have to carry waterskins with water. Said water would most likely be diluted with either wine or vinegar to prevent it from going bad. It is unclear whether Hamlet uses wells or the bridges we see are over actual rivers, but medieval settlements were seldom created without direct access to some source of fresh water.

Finally, there’s the question of flavouring. And while true, spices were extremely costly in the medieval period, costing a ludicrous amount of money, there were quite a few options to spice things up that could’ve been used – especially for preparing the food for longer-lasting, higher-value mercenaries (levels 4 and up let’s say) which Heiress would be interested to keep around at least as a money investment she had committed to. Such spice options include garlic, leeks, onion, rosemary, mint, thyme, horseradish, basil, oregano, sage, parsley, dill, lovage, marjoram and cilantro to name a few. Maybe ginger and some types of pepper (long pepper I believe) that were native to the east.

Thus, the average rations that could’ve been provided could include:

hardtack or flatbreads;

some sort of treated meat (most likely salted due to availability of salt, but cured and smoked, or processed into sausages are also an option);

lard;

cheap dried fruits (like apple, pear or plum);

cheese or whey cheese;

root vegetables (maybe pickled);

dried peas or beans;

drinking water in a waterskin;

additives (salt, flavouring, honey) if provided and/or available.

Again, we know that the meat is provided based on Reynauld’s paranoid barks (“Look, it's all pink. Cook it properly”), and we know that the bread is provided from Junia’s paranoid barks (“The Verses say nothing about fuzzy bread... hmmm...”). “Apples and cheese” and “Stale bread” are foods available in DD2 (as much as I hate to mix those two together, especially because of the potato mentioned there...) and the picture for Hunger shows us some bread, waterskin and sausages, so we know they were canonically offered to heroes.

Now, bonus round!

Please note that mostly I have headcanons for characters used in the fic the most (since the abovementioned work was done mostly for writing RRR), and some will be far less thought-through than others.

Abomination/Bigby – he always gives me pause, so again, thank you, @engelsschwert for discussing him with me and offering help. Probably a very polite eater and tries to mimic someone whom he sees as “refined”, such as Alhazred, because he sees himself as eating “like an animal” otherwise. Rather territorial about his food and has food anxiety after being held captive by the cult. Probably loves stews and hearty, hot pottages because they feel “homey”. Doesn’t like fish because fish bones tend to stick in the teeth and make transformations even more unpleasant than they already are.

Antiquarian/Josephine – I can easily picture her loving sweet pastries of more expensive variety and especially those which included almond milk or almond puree. With saffron, if we want to make it extra rich.

Arbalest/Missandei – she is a girl of simple needs, those needs being a mug of good booze and a fine piece of roast fresh from the fire, still dripping fat. Her guilty pleasure is venison and bear meat. Probably used to be a poacher to satisfy them.

Bounty Hunter/Tardif – he loves tooth-rottingly sweet Turkish coffee (or the closest equivalent DD world has to offer). The problem is, despite the fact that Hamlet is a settlement with an operating harbour, I doubt he can enjoy that quite often. The price is simply too high for a mercenary. The idea of dairy makes him sick unless it’s used in baking. One of the few people in Hamlet who knows what carob is and what it tastes like. Prefers any fruits in dry form. Preferably in a pie. Uses kneading dough as an outlet for anger issues – he needs the process, not the result, but just throwing it away is wasteful, so he ended up taking baking as a hobby. Rey is wisely silent about cooking being “unmanly” when Tardif is the one doing it.

Crusader/Reynauld – he’s the only man in Hamlet who knows how to dance around Lent rules without technically breaking them, from arguing that barley geese are grains to guiding pigs into rivers to make them mythical waterhogs or asserting that beavers are fish, Rey knows what he’s doing and isn’t afraid to abuse that knowledge to the fullest when the need arises. Can cook for sustenance but would rather not, since it���s “women’s work”. Has a huge sweet tooth and love for snacks and is in even bigger denial about it because it’s “unmanly”. He spends time blessing every meal even when in a hurry, even for his teammates, and even when they would rather him not do it (eventually most heroes just accepted it as inevitability). Has access to Abbey’s alcohol stocks but doesn’t see much point in inebriation. I have to thank @engelsschwert for his fav food, that being “the poor knights”. Preferably with cream and marmalade with just a pinch of vanilla and cinnamon but he’d rather die of shame than ask for those.

Flagellant/Damian – tried almond milk because of Tardif. Flagellation has not been the same ever since. Actively denies loving it while Tardif nods in agreement and makes another batch of almond cookies. Which mysteriously disappear each and every time. Because of Rey and him, Tardif takes part of his mercenary wages in almond flour. Not that anyone but the Heiress would know. And live.

Grave Robber/Audrey – she would kill for spices. Literally. Ma girl is starved on spices she had as a noble lady. Cinnamon, cloves, nutmeg, peppers, saffron, vanilla – all of those make her mouth water and rational decision-making take a backseat. Probably receives part of her wages in spices. Is extremely picky about her food if she has an option to be. Became friends with Rey because he always knows how to get adequate food during Lent. She loves custard tarts with spices and sugar.

Hellion/Boudica – canonically is fine about eating raw meat and cannibalism but is rather peer-pressured by the Spirits and tribe elders to follow the tradition than sees it as desirable on her own. Has a soft spot for animal and bird-shaped pastry. She sees complicated dishes as a show of weakness but is drawn to them out of curiosity and because they, well, taste good. Her favourite dish is a wild boar roast with cranberries and wild garlic and a slice of black blood bread.

Highwayman/Dismas – is utterly feral about his food and keeping it safe. Whenever he shares food, it’s a big gesture for him. If he actively caters for another person’s food preferences, it’s adoration. Food is basically his love language. Has a taste for meat, and yes, knows well how to cook rats – along with stray dogs, cats and whatnot. Can find food in the most improbable places. Desensitized to the point of being fine with eating cooked swine and fishfolk if it means survival. Loves jerky and needs to have some sort of emergency ration hidden on him to feel sane. Tried coffee once a long time ago and regrets not knowing what it was to look for more of it. His favourite dish is baked pork foreshank which was pre-boiled in dark beer with spices. Not that he can afford this dish often. Or at all.

Houndmaster/Willam – he loves some hearty pork pie, especially of gala variety. Preferably with a pint of nice ale. I wanted to give him some nice shepherd’s pie as his fav dish but it has potatoes which are blasphemy. Dunno why, he gives me strong Irish vibes. I can easily see him enjoying some crubeens and sharing them with Fergus. He’s a bad drinker and cannot hold liquor well but wants to keep up with others (namely Dismas), and usually, it ends badly for him. Has a habit of giving Fergus a bite of his own food and then finishing it, which some find endearing while others view as disgusting.

Jester/Sarmenti – has chronic lead poisoning from sugar of lead he was fed in the Court. Because of that he is irritable and has headaches and abdominal pains. He loves garlic and eats it demonstratively while showing off his Crimson Curse mutations to mess with people. His favourite dish is baked hedgehog with cameline sauce. He hates fruit pies because those were the ones which contained sugar of lead and he has had bad associations ever since. Overindulges in wine and has quite a taste for it thanks to Baldwin. 

Leper/Baldwin – not gonna lie, ancient Israelite cuisine isn’t my strong suit. Probably milk- or broth-stewed meat with spices, from what I managed to find…? Veal meat was considered opulent, as was the meat of wild game hunted during the royal hunts. His eating habits most likely changed a lot after his illness, and now he simply prefers softer and lighter foods, which are easier to digest and usually reserved for the sick. Based on being an absolute unit of a man, eats quite a lot. Probably has a strong longing for olives. Has a softer temper and is willing to share but when stress mounts on him, snaps at people because of their table manners and their constant tries to cheat him out of his portion of rations since “he won’t be alive for long anyway”.

Man-at-Arms/Barristan – used to love rather opulent dishes back in his days of glory hounding, something like cherry chicken with rose water. Might enjoy stews and soups more now simply because they remind him of how he was humbled during his campaigns.

Musketeer/Margaret – canonically has a masochistic bark about loving Wraith peppers (a type of chilli peppers native to South America) and makes me cry in tin cans. No further comment.

Occultist/Alhazred – canonically likes or at least drinks coffee based on his masochistic bark. May have shown it to Dismas as a re-discovery. Has an affinity for consuming inadequate quantities of dried fruit, especially southern ones and tiny crumbly biscuits. Dislikes greasy foods because they leave stains on scrolls and books easily and he has a bad habit of absentmindedly eating whatever is in the vicinity while reading, and because of his concentration on the text, he doesn’t really register the taste or what exactly he’s eating. Once, someone placed a wax piece where his biscuits usually are as a joke. Alhazred didn’t notice and doesn’t know to this day why he had that weird constipation one time.

Plague Doctor/Paracelsus – she eats butter. No. You don’t get it. She just eats it as is. Plain butter. In chunks. Preferably from cold storage. Splintered in tiny frozen bits. Sometimes with a sprinkle of flaky unrefined sea salt. It’s her favourite. Says it saves time for more important things. Junia used to cook meals for them both, and Para doesn’t have the heart to throw away the jars and pots she used to bring food in. Now dragging Para to eat so she won’t die from her horrendous diet is mostly Audrey’s and Bigby’s job.

Shieldbreaker/Amani – again, ancient Turkish cuisine isn’t my forte but I can speculate. Because she is a woman in an ancient ottoman world, and an “object”, she probably didn’t get much meat to eat previously. And she might love her dolma, but the allure of breaking a taboo and eating pork is incredibly alluring, so she gets cheap thrills from that. Has a sweet tooth, even though you wouldn’t think that based on her physique and misses more intricate desserts dearly. Is disgusted by what people in Hamlet consider to be “tea” and would rather drink spoiled water. Is forced to eat in a specific manner as it is uncomfortable for her to hold the bowl and eat as most heroes do during camping due to lacking one hand.

Vestal/Junia – loves cheese, especially soft cheese and cream cheese. Especially loves to incorporate them into baking. Making cheesecakes is her passion, she ponders a lot about recipes and she silently respects Tardif for it and is probably the only person who can cook with him even if she is intimidated by him at any other time. Characters in her steamy novels often indulge in cheesecakes too. Is generally saddled with making church bread and cooking during camping much to her chagrin. Knows how to turn a stirring spoon into a weapon. Has a knack of taking grumpy and/or antisocial heroes and making them finally eat.

PHEW! This was a lot. Hope it answers all your questions :}

What’s my final score? ^^

[lilliankillthisman]

Crown Him With Many Crowns as Corona's new name honestly rattles so fast around my head it's mad. a) it's incredibly gender BUT the choice of song is just. So wild to me and has so many layers to explore.

Crown Him With Many Crowns the 1851 hymn obviously focuses very much on Christ as King, while also taking lines to explore his grief and pain as Christ the Martyr, which means it's incredibly John Gaius-coded through his own self-presentation and dashed with Gideon vibes through her presentation in the narrative... and both of those have me going mad thinking about them.

On the John Gaius front this is the least subtle song for him possible, even compared to most hymns of praise. The parade of titles- "lord of life/who triumphed o'er the grave", "lord of heaven", "lord of years" etc. are if anything more something he emulates than a reference to him, but for the reader it's more explicit than that - the theme of John subsuming the identities and loyalties of everyone around him has been key to the series so far, and the line "Hark! how the heavenly anthem drowns/All music but its own" reads as a crystallisation of that theme. For Corona, who grew up only knowing John as the real, original deal, there probably isn't the need for that additional confirmation - if she started reading through old Earth media and literature, she would read this and it would jump out at her as a song that reads like it's about the Kindly Prince, the King Across the River, etc etc.

I couldn't help wondering a) why she picked it and b)what the hell her new BoE pals thought of her picking a song with such House vibes, and I think the answer to the second is easy - this isn't a song about John. It's easy to think that biblical/religious references in tlt are for the sake of building the narrative, contributing to characterisation, and sprinkling in foreshadowing, but in-universe this is still a real song, and it's about God not Jod. To BoE she's saying "look, I know who my former god stole all his imagery from" - it's a rejection of her old allegiance. For Corona, though, I think it might go a bit deeper. I don't think there's any chance she grew up unexposed to heresy as a naive believer with Ianthe trying to obtain godhood on the other side of the bed; to her this can't represent some recent conversion. I honestly think it might just be "Corona=Crown", as simple as that, her clinging to as much of her past identity as possible while still fooling BoE (and Judith!) into thinking she's wholly with them, for her protection and for Judith's sake too. Assuming a false identity to survive is, after all, the story of her whole life.

On Gideon... well, you aren't going to get many songs about Jesus as a martyr without getting Gideon vibes, but in particular "Who every grief hath known/That wrings the human breast" makes this song look deliberately chosen to correspond to the saddest girl in the whole entire world, Kiriona Gaia. Do I have a fun interesting take on what this means? No, but if Gideon ends up becoming a new god in Alecto no one will be surprised.

[blorbocedes]

Blorbie could we get your take on why Lewis refuses to say Max's name? It seems strangely personal for Lewis to do that to someone who is not Nico

I'm not super up to date on my 3344 lore but from what I understand, they're not for the same reason. when he doesn't say Nico's name it's more, haha who? nah I don't rmbr

while with Max -- current world champion he's competing against -- it's more obvious and deliberate, you can't get away with feigning not knowing him, so not saying his name is a more conscious choice

the crashes in 2021 that led to the media storm of mutual murder attempts of 51Gs vs decapitation without halo, the title fight got really toxic egged on by a media that wants "rivalry" as narrative. and then Abu Dhabi happened which to Lewis was a traumatic event and he does believe it was stolen from him.

no doubt nelson piquet's racism played a factor too, like yeah this dude's family (lbr max will marry his fascist mommy gf) is racist to you obv you're not gonna want to be buddy buddy with the guy, so that likely added to it and I don't blame lewis for it

but Lewis has been avoiding Max's name even before that, or in the Dutch (?) interview where every driver was asked about Max -- as a person and a driver, Lewis was the only one who refused to answer, and I think he just doesn't think Max is a deserving driver of the title. When he calls Max a dangerous driver, or praise Charles for his move at Copse who did the same thing as Macks -- he still sees him as this upstart teenager who drove recklessly and got rewarded for it

Lewis has also just never been able to be friendly with someone when they're beating him, whether that's implying RBR Seb was all Adrian Newey, posting Jensons telemetry on twitter to imply the team is favouring him, [Nico], even now as George beats him you cannot make me believe he cares about George compared to like, Charles or Yuki. I do believe if merc had come out with a rocketship this year and Max was fighting for 5th, Lewis would suddenly have been the gracious world champion and "mend the bridges" of the media pushed toxicity or whatever.

my take is. I'm fine with it. it's a sport you don't have to love your competitor. and if Lewis doesn't wanna acknowledge Max that's fine too, he's still got his titles (lewis with significantly more)

max has called lewis the GOAT very recently, and it doesn't take anything from him to acknowledge Lewis is one of the greatest drivers of the sport. whatever "he who shall not be named" lewis is on, it is one sided. i will say lewis noting what max was doing on turn 9 and then immediately getting white and black flagged for track limits himself was the funniest comedic timing of all time 😭 girl lets focus on getting on podium first

[after-witch]

A Simple Cup of Tea [Yandere Scaramouche x Reader]

Title: A Simple Cup of Tea [Yandere Scaramouche x Reader]

Synopsis: You have to be prepared and poised and perfect. But it’s hard to be all those things, even with the looming threat of your husband sitting next to you, when you’ve got a secret hidden underneath your clothes...

Word Count: 1875

Notes: yandere, forced marriage, abuse, bondage, NSFW 

Poised.

You must be poised. Every movement, every gesture, must embody a quiet grace. Your face must be pleasant, without seeming garishly joyous. Your voice must be soft, melodic, clear; yet loud enough to be heard without being required to repeat yourself. 

You must know how to keep a conversation going smoothly, like water in a stream, yet understand when to keep silent. You must know all of these things and so much more, and act on them at all times in the proper degree; all in order to avoid embarrass yourself and more importantly, embarrassing your husband.

In other words, you must be perfect.

And you try--you have to try, because what other choice does Scaramouche leave you?--but it’s difficult. You were never born for this stifled life he’s pushed you into, for a life spent mostly within the walls of his home or at most, behind the high, impenetrable walls of the courtyard.

A life draped in rich clothing, overseeing fine details of the estate that make your head spin. How many bags of this or that must be ordered per week? When should the bedding in that room be washed? What is the appropriate amount of money to put in a servant’s purse when sending them to the market? Questions you never imagined yourself asking yourself, which now fill your day with a gilded tedium.

There’s a deceptive leisure lurking underneath everything here. True, you no longer have to travel far and wide, selling your family’s wares from heavy baskets carried on your back; you no longer have to search the edges of the forest for edible plants to toss into boiling broth on days when you could not afford meat. You never want for food (unless he takes your dinner away as punishment) and any comfort you could need is within reach, so long as you’re behaving.

But you are on edge, always. Preparing yourself for another pitfall that might open up beneath your feet, and always looking for ways to improve yourself. Or at least ways to avoid earning your husband’s sharp disapproval. Regardless of your efforts, you have been on the wrong end of a harsh insult, a slap, a pinch, a cane, more times than you care to count.

Be prepared, be poised, be perfect. It’s the mantra you repeat to yourself every morning.

The mantra you repeated to yourself this particular morning, in preparation for a meeting he insisted you attend. A meeting which apparently required your finely-tuned skills in pleasing conversation and your much-practiced ability to “pour a passable cup of tea.”

Anyone else might assume it was meant to be an insult, but your time with Scaramouche has led to you to understand that the slightest praise towards you, while minuscule to others, was something you were meant to fall on your knees and thank him for. Sometimes literally, depending on his mood.

Why he wanted you to pour tea for some delegates from Fontaine, and what their increasing presence in the area really meant, you didn’t know. But it wasn’t your place to ask him, and the memory of recent stinging pain on your backside keeps you from feeling even remotely tempted to broach the subject.

So here you are. Dressed elegantly, but not garishly, as is proper for his wife. With a tea pot in your hand and perfectly arranged cups and the ghost of a pleasing smile on your face. Charming words drip from your lips, pleasantries, pleasantries, pleasantries--the type of words Scaramouche loathes yet drums into you all the same.

Prepared, poised, perfect.

Except for the slight tremble of your hands.

Except for the uncomfortable hitch in your breath as you speak.

Except for the fact that there are ropes tied snugly around your breasts, wrapping around your chest and criss-crossing between your breasts with an uncomfortable pressure, all hidden underneath the outfit he’d chosen for you that afternoon.

You’d balked, first--then begged. Begged not to be humiliated like this. What if someone sees? What will people say? You’d even tried to appeal to his pride, suggesting that if you couldn’t fully concentrate on your duties, well, how would that reflect on him?

All that earned you was a glint of a smirk and a tug as he knotted the rope encircling your breasts, making it even tighter than before. His final threat at your continued pleading--”I can always make you go out in nothing but the ropes”--finally shut you up.

And so, here you are. Face hot with shame and something more, silently pleading that your clothing won’t somehow shift and reveal the secret underneath. Despite the layers covering you, you still feel naked, exposed. As if the people indulging in polite conversation can see right through you, see the way your breasts are framed by the itchy ropes. See the way your body is responding to such a total humiliation. 

It’s not just the chafing rope that bothers you. It’s the pressure itself. It feels… no, you don’t want to think about how it feels.

Instead, you hone your focus in on the task at hand. Pouring the tea, a nice subtle blend made with Violetgrass flowers. A previous round of guests from Fontaine had enjoyed it so well that Scaramouche had you tell the teashop to start stocking up for future visits.

You wish you could hide the way your hand trembles ever so slightly as you pour the last cup of tea for a woman whose name you regrettably can’t remember. You normally repeat their names over and over in your head, lest you forget and endure Scaramouche’s sharp tongue (if not his cane) later on; but your predicament made it impossible to keep track of new information.

You might be able to enjoy the tea, enjoy the facsimile of polite conversation weaving its way around the table, if only you weren’t so distracted by the tightness, the chafing, the undeniable fact that--oh Archons above, that all of this was making your nipples humiliatingly hard underneath your clothing.

“Do you agree, wife?”

All eyes glance at you. Whatever Scaramouche just said had clearly be addressed to you, only you were too distracted to notice.

In the moments that you’re left half-gaping, mentally groping to somehow pull his previous words out from the ether, his hand snakes around your waist. You feel his fingers on the outside of the soft fabric, searching until they find their intended target--the knot--and tugging hard to tighten it further.

You gasp, your body lurching upward and forward at the sudden sensation of your breasts being squeezed, and the tea pot you’re still holding drops to the table. Time seems to slow to a thick crawl, and you can see the pot is not cracked, but tipped over, hot tea spilling onto the table underneath with abandon.

The sight of the dark brown stain spreading, trickling underneath saucers and cups, leaves you helpless until you force your shaking hands to grab the pot and set it back up on the table.

“I, I--” you start to stutter something. An apology? An explanation? But the constricting ropes and the dawning realization that you have just committed an extensive social faux pas--in front of guests, no less--leaves you helplessly unable to speak.

The guests, for their part, look suitably uncomfortable. The woman whose name you can’t remember is holding onto her cup, saving it from being intercepted by the trickling tea. You don’t know whether their looks are because of your embarrassing display or because they know your husband’s reputation, and feel pity for you. Perhaps a bit of both.

Scaramouche’s voice cuts through the tension, though it does nothing to lessen it.

“I apologize for my wife’s clumsiness,” he says. “I should have realized that she wasn’t up to the apparently complex task of serving tea.” His voice is dripping with condescension, making more heat rise to your cheeks.

Humiliation does not begin to describe what you feel as he gently--public appearances, you think--takes your arm and stands, bringing you with him.

“Perhaps you are ill.” He looks you up and down, faux-concern written all over his face. But you know what he’s really thinking about, as his eyes linger on your chest for a fraction longer than they should.

You swallow hard, and do your best to nod. It doesn’t take any effort to look ashamed at what’s transpired.

“I--I have been feeling unwell,” you say, making sure to project loud enough for the audience he’s curated for you. “I may be too tired.”

He shakes his head, as if he can’t believe your silliness. A silly, silly wife--that’s what you are. Never mind that it’s all his fault. Never mind that he chose to do this to you, and chose to do it in front of guests. 

A small, bitter part of you resents the guests for being there at all, resents the fact that they probably know you’re an unwilling ornament to the Harbringer’s obsession but do nothing about it.

But what good does resenting them do, when it won’t change your fate?

He takes your hand and gives it a pat, each touch patronizing to the core.

“Apologize to our guests and go rest. And send someone more capable to clean up your mess.”

You have to apologize for the fact that you spilled tea due to his decision to engage in some perverse bondage in a public fashion. You have to apologize for the fact that he deliberately made you do it, too, knowing how you might react when he pulled the rope.

It’s horrible and humiliating and unfair. 

But you do it anyway.

Turning towards the guests, gaze downcast with shame, you force out an apology; keeping your voice soft and melodic and clear, as expected.

Then you retreat as calmly as possible, feeling everyone’s gaze--but especially his--on your back as you leave. You catch the eye of the nearest servant as you make your way back to the bedroom, laying out the quickest version of events and not relishing the look of anxiety that crosses their features at the thought of dealing with Scaramouche after such an apparent social travesty.

But you only have enough energy to consider your own anxieties, so you continue on without thinking more about them.

Walking only seems to make the feeling of constriction worse, and you bite down on your lip as your sensitive nipples begin rubbing against the fabric with every step. It feels good, it feels bad--whatever it is, it’s all too much, and you want nothing more to cut off the ropes and hide until the morning.

Not that you have the courage to risk such an endeavor.

You don’t feel any calmer by the time you reach your shared bedroom, but at least your humiliation is a private one, now. And you can rest, at least until he’s finished for the evening. For a moment, you simply stand still, bringing your arm across your chest and pressing to provide some pressure, some relief, to your sensitive breasts. 

There’s an undeniable twist in your stomach when your arms brush against your nipples, and you hate it, and you love it, and you feel just as sick and perverse as he is when you slide a hand inside your clothing and give one aching nipple a pinch. You rub your legs together and ah, there it is--the pleasurable tingling and beginnings of wetness, and well, why not give yourself some pleasure, you think; why not give yourself something good and pleasant before he comes in and ruins everything with whatever sick punishment he’s concocting? 

It’s not until you make to curl up on the large bed, eager to relive the tension building inside you, that you see the scroll wrapped up on the pillow. With a sense of justifiable dread building in your stomach, you sit, and unfurl it. 

The words are written in Scaramouche’s familiar handwriting:

“Take off your clothes. Lay down and spread your legs on the bed until I return. Don’t touch yourself. I will know if you haven’t followed my instructions.”

Bastard, you think. As if your humiliation today wasn’t strong enough. Your hands go to undue the fastenings keeping your clothes together, and the first hints of bare skin leave you with anticipatory goosebumps. How long would you be expected to be on the bed, presenting yourself for his apparent pleasure? 

Bastard, bastard, bastard.

But--well. At least he didn’t tell you to bend over the caning stool again.

[thestarrynightslover]

How to Say I Love You

Pairing: Jay Halstead x Reader

Word count: 2,582

Warnings: Smut implied.

Summary:  One day, Jay takes it upon himself to be an extra-cute boyfriend. The reason? It takes (y/n) a while to find out.

Disclaimer: I don’t own any of the One Chicago shows, or its characters, also not associated with it in any way or know anyone involved with it.

A/N: Posting super late because the day was hard. So, just some more Jay fluff to brighten our days. Hope you like it!

(y/n) = (your name) (y/l/n) = (your last name) (y/n/n) = (your nickname)

| masterlist |

As soon as you woke up, you felt light kisses being pressed to all of your very exposed skin, and an inevitable smile came to your lips.

“Good morning, princess.” Jay whispered in your ear with a husky voice.

“Good morning for you too, baby.” You answered him while bringing his face closer to yours. On that movement, before you could kiss him, you caught a glance of your bedside clock. “Oh my God, Jay! Look at the time! I thought we’d agreed to get as much sleep as we could after last night!” You quickly reprehended him. “Or have you forgotten that both of us still have to go to work today?” You asked, trying to sound annoyed at him when the most you managed to do was breathe out was a moan, as he nibbed your earlobe.

“Oh, I know how much you like sleeping, babygirl. But I know that there are a few things you’d give up your sleep for.” He stated in a very sexy tone.

“And what exactly makes you think that you’re one of those things?” You teased your boyfriend, hoping he’d respond to it like you thought he would.

“Ah, just a little something,” he teased back while slowly putting his hand between your legs, not even bothering to lift the hem of the shirt you were wearing, “like this.”

“Oh, Jay…” And, just like that, you were completely fine with waking up early.

                                                          ---

Throughout the day, you just couldn’t keep the smile off your face, as your boyfriend took it upon himself to be the cutest person in the world. Why? You had no idea. All you knew was that he'd gotten the day off but, since you couldn't the same, he'd decided to go to work nonetheless.

His romantics for no apparent reason started with a bouquet of your favorite flowers and a note that read:

“Will you be my lunch date today? *blinking face*

P.S.: 12:00 - 13:00 is all I have. Sorry, doll :(

Meet me at our spot?

⎼ Your bae.”

He used bae. If he wasn’t so cute, and if you didn’t love him so much, you would have cringed at the choice, and he knew it. Ah, that man...

A few hours after that, you went to meet Jay for lunch at your spot ⎼ which was one of the benches along the Riverwalk, where you’d first met ⎼, absolutely decided on calling him out for being so mushy. But, as you walked closer towards him, you could see that your boyfriend was holding a picnic basket in one hand, and a bottle of champagne in the other, and, as corny as that was, you couldn’t help but grin. 

“Drinking on duty now, detective?” You asked, raising your eyebrow at him.

“Nope. This one’s without alcohol. And, trust me, you’ll like it.” He told you, a sweet smile on his lips.

“Hum, maybe... But I wouldn’t really mind if it was bad either.” You half-whispered at Jay.

“Oh no?” He asked you with a smirk this time.

“No. The company makes up for anything else.” You said while moving to kiss him.

“Geez, babe, you're such a dork!" He said, making fun of you after the kiss was over.

"Really? That's what you're going with?" You, the dork? Big joke.

"What else can I say if it's the truth?" Jay asked you through his lashes, an innocent expression in-face.

"Look who's talking!" You said while rolling your eyes.

Not long after that, he put an end to your little banter. Saying that he didn't wanna spend another second of the few moments the two of you had until the evening arguing was an understatement. You agreed, even though you knew that both of you secretly enjoyed the bickerings as well as you did everything else.

Later, on that same day, when you were about to leave work, you decided to call your boyfriend.

"Hey, babe." He answered, on the fourth ring, voice letting on some tiredness.

"Hey there, handsome! I'm already leaving work, think I’mma go swim a little. Unless… There's a chance you're getting off a little earlier yourself?" You tried your luck, thinking about making him relax a little before you two left for dinner.

"Uh… Sorry, babe, I don't think I'll be able to." A deep sigh. Something was wrong.

"Jay. Is everything okay?" Another sigh. Shit.

"It's nothing for you to worry about, baby. Just a pain-in-the-ass case we can't seem to solve. When all I wanted to do was be home with you." He confessed.

"Huh. Now, tell me, who's the dork?" You heard his muffled laugh over the phone.

"I am. You know it. I know it. Everyone who knows us knows it." At that, you were the one who giggled. "And, believe me, I bear the title with pride." More laughing, from both of you this time.

"Okay, then… So, um, is there anything I can do? Maybe we cancel that dinner reservation?"

"No! No, not at all! You just… Go do your swimming and don't worry about me, okay?" Jay sounded a bit weird this time, but you brushed it off, thinking that it was just the stress of the day.

"Okay…" You replied, still unconvinced. 

"Alright, I gotta go now. Love you."

"Okay, bye. Love you too. Be safe!"

"Always, baby." With that, he hung up quickly, which he never did ⎼ always dragging the conversations for as long as he could. But, once again, you decided to do what your boyfriend told you to and not worry about it.

It was already a bit into the evening and you were stretching your body to leave the swimming pool, when you saw him. Jay. So you got out and walked over to him.

"Fancy meeting you here, miss (y/l/n)." He greeted innocently.

"Well, this is a surprise. Yet another one. On the same day." You said, just to let him know that his weird behaviors weren't going by unnoticed.

"Ah, you know what they say… Gotta keep the relationship interesting!" Ha, ha. He was up to something. So you just gave him a suspicious look. To which he answered with a huge smile, saying: "What?"

"Nothing. Nothing besides the fact that you're up to something. What is it?"

"Oh. My. God." Jay said emphatically, faking offense. "I'm offended. You think that poorly of me?"

"What do you mean?" You asked him, a bit confused this time.

"You really think that I can't just try and brighten my princess's day?" He said, walking closer to you this time.

"Well, I guess that I wouldn't object to that, but what I'm saying is tha-" Before you could finish your sentence, he was pulling you towards him, pressing your bodies on a tight embrace and kissing you passionately. 

"Oh no, Jay, you should let me go! I'm all wet!" You squeal out as Jay keeps holding you up in the air against his firm abdomen.

"I don't mind." He told you with a shrug of shoulders. "I'm used to having you like this." He, then, whispers in your ear and you can feel his smirk, as he kisses your neck.

"Jay!" You hissed in fake disapproval. "We're in public! You can't be saying these things to me in public!"

"Sorry, baby. But you know that I just can't help myself around you." He tells you, deliberately taking his time. At that, you just throw back your head in laughter. "Besides, it doesn't seem to me like you're feeling all that bothered with my actions…"

"But I am!" You said assertively. But then you remembered your conversation from earlier and asked him, in a softer tone: "Hey, um, how did the case go? Are you still feeling up for the dinner thing?" As soon as the words left your mouth, you watched Jay shift his entire demeanor.

"Yeah! We're definitely still going! And, as I told you before, the case was just a pain in the ass, nothing more." He sounded nervous. Weird. Like he was hiding something.

"Jay…"

"Let's just go, okay? Cause we still need to get ready for dinner. I already put your stuff in the duffel bag. My car's right outside." Jay told you quickly, like he didn't wanna give you time to make any conclusions.

"Okay, then…"

                                                           ---

“C’mon, (y/n/n)! We’re running late!” You heard your boyfriend shouting for you to come out of your shared bedroom.

“Hey! Don’t you dare to rush me! Not when you’re the reason I’m running late in the first place!” You sharply answered, stepping out into the living room whilst putting your earring on. “Besides, that place we’re going is just too fancy. I need to look perfect.” You added more calmly, only now realizing how Jay was staring at you. “What? Is something wrong?”

“Wha- wrong? No! No!” He quickly assured you and closed the distance between the two of you. “You already look perfect. Every single day.”

“What? Jay, I’m serious!” You pouted, giving him an annoyed glare.

“I am too! You look gorgeous, baby.” He told you with that glorious smile of his. “And, really, there’s just no place on the planet that could make you look any less gorgeous.”

“Okay, now you’re just trying to get me to hurry up!” You accused, hitting him with considerable strength in the chest.

“Ouch! That hurt! And, yes, I am trying to hurry you up! Because we have a reservation!” He yelled at you in response. If it was any other time, you would’ve argued with him, of course. But even you had to admit he was right, you were on the clock.

“Okay, okay! I’m just gonna grab my purse and we’ll go!” You shouted back, already from the bedroom.

After that, the two of you managed to leave your apartment and get to the restaurant on time, due to Jay promising the cab driver a doubled pay if he went faster.

As soon as you arrived, though, you saw it was worth it. You still had no clue of what got in your boyfriend’s head to take you out on this kind of date for no apparent reason like that, especially after everything else he’d already done, but you obviously weren’t about to complain either.

 The maître walked both of you two to a table on the upper floor of the establishment, it had an amazing view of the city and it was a pretty reserved space. So, right after you'd placed your orders and been left alone, you half-squealed at Jay:

"Oh. My. God." Your smile was wide and your eyes were shining. "This place is incredible, babe!" He looked at you with devotion, clearly amused by your reaction.

"I know right? I'm really glad we got to come here." He stated, his whole behavior letting you know that he was just as impressed.

And, like that, the evening flew by and you caught yourself stifling yawn after yawn.

"Baby, you’re not too desperate to go home, are you? Because there's still one thing I wanna show you." Your boyfriend said, pulling you by your hand to get up. Then, he guided you to that part where you'd been able to view most Chicago, earlier in the night.

"Wow," you said, leaning against the balcony to see the details, "this really is great, babe." When you’d walked past this part you wondered about why they hadn't put any tables there, only a small couch, but now you knew. They didn't want to make that space ⎼ that landscape ⎼ prisoner of one couple, or one family, that would most likely stay there the entire night.

"It is." He agreed with you.

"You know, I hadn't brought it up yet, because I thought that you'd eventually tell me on your own, but you've been acting a little weird the whole day. This morning in bed, the flowers, then the picnic lunch, picking me up at swimming, and now this… You didn't sound too good on that call either, and I gotta admit that when you said we were going out for a fancy dinner, I didn't think it'd be here, where it's practically impossible to get a reservation. So, just… Talk to me, Jay."

"(y/n/n)... Would you even believe me if I told you that that's what I've been preparing to do the whole day?" He asked you with a shy smile.

"Will you be mad at me if I say no?" You asked, a bit apprehensively. He just laughed.

"Nah, not really." He told you jokingly. "But I have." He said, more serious this time. “Baby, you’re the best thing that ever happened to me.” He started telling you.

“Jay-” You whispered nervously, sort of anticipating what was about to happen.

“No, just- just please let me finish. I need you to understand how important you are to me, princess. Hell, I know that words aren’t really my strongest suit, but you deserve to know that you’re my light, my lifeline, my happiness… You’re my everything, (y/n/n). My entire world. And, because of you, now I think that it is actually okay to dream, to hope for a better future, for a future. That’s why I wanna ask you, tonight, to be my future, just like you already are my present.” At that moment you couldn’t keep the tears off of your face anymore, and you would’ve jumped him right then if he hadn’t gotten down on one knee. “Will you marry me, (y/n) (y/l/n)?” He asked you with a timid smile and teary eyes of his own. As you took in the man you loved, kneeled before you, holding an open box with the diamond ring you’d recognized as being his mother’s, you just stood there crying, not managing to say anything. “B- baby? Please say something.” Jay spoke again, letting out a nervous choked laugh. So you forced yourself to answer him.

“Oh m- my God, yes!!” You squealed out.

“Yes?!?” He repeated what you said, still on the ground.

“Of course, yes!!!” You confirmed, pulling him up to kiss you. While at it, your boyfriend, now fiancé, almost dropped the small velvet box he was holding.

“Okay,” he started, chuckling, after the two of you parted a little, “let me put this thing on your finger before you back down!”

“Ha, ha. As if I was going to! You’re only in a hurry because you’re scared you’ll drop your mom’s ring.” You bickered a little, letting him know that you recognized the jewelry, to which he responded with a bright smile, saying:

“It’s your ring now, princess. And, trust me, she’d love you almost as much as I do if she were still here.” He told you, shining eyes meeting yours, as he slipped the stunning piece in your finger.

“Jay.” You breathed out as the tears resurfaced in your eyes. “It is so beautiful…” You told him looking down at the ring you had in-hand. “And… You really mean that?”

“100%, princess. If I’m being honest, there are a lot of times when you actually remind me of her…” He said, tearing up a little.

“Awww, babe...” You said throwing your arms around him again.

And that’s how you two stayed. Just holding each other, under a very starry night in Chicago. More than ready to start walking down that new road together.