#the vulgarity of the subject cannot be escaped

[21st-century-minutiae]

In the early twenty first century, 'cranking' and 'jerking' are euphemistically used to describe the act of sexually pleasuring oneself, in reference to the physical motion. The euphemisms have taken over the actual word, becoming almost as vulgar as the word they are substituting for.

Generally speaking, when using a specific noun or a different idiomatic expression (e.g. "Crank it to the max" or "Jerk your chain"), then it would be understood to mean something other than the euphemism, but in common parlance the verbs don't come up enough to counterbalance the euphemism.

masturbation is evil not for any puritan anti-fun reason but because it has permanently claimed so many verbs

[orphanheirs]

Oc Questionniare/Interview

I was tagged to do this by @borisyvain and @drchenquill! Thanks for including me! I'll have Tristan answer these...as with the other questionnaire I did, the responses may not be truthful, but they are the answers he'd give.

Are you named after anyone?

I am named after Sir Tristan, a knight of King Arthur's court. He died for love, slain by the lance of an enchantress whilst he was playing the harp. Quite romantic, really.

When was the last time you cried?

What sort of a question is that? If you must know, I haven't the slightest idea. I do not weep anymore, like some child. [Author's note: methinks thou dost protest too much...]

Do you have kids?

I..do not have..goats. Oh, you mean children? ...me? Do I have children? Me?

Do you use sarcasm a lot?

[sarcastically:] Oh no, that is a base vulgarity I could never indulge in, and by the by, to answer your last question properly, I have been very busy indeed producing children. I started seducing women with alarming speed aged five. In the seven years since I have produced quite the brood.

What’s the first thing you notice about people?

I suppose I notice a person's bearing, and their dress. One can determine much from merely observing these things. Most people are quite easy to take measure of, being largely dull and stupid.

What’s your eye colour?

Blue.

Scary movies or happy endings?

"Movies"? ..well, at any rate, happy endings are intolerably dull, do not you think? I much prefer it when something dreadful happens. Like an arrow through the heart, or poison taken by lovers, or dying of a broken heart, or dying of fright after seeing a phantom, or being thrown in a dungeon to rot for the rest of one's days, or being buried alive, or murdered by a band of highwaymen, or beheaded, or hanged after being falsely accused of a shameful crime, or being doomed by the fulfillment of a horrible omen, or falling through a trap door onto some rusted spikes, or jumping off a cliff onto sharp rocks below...

Any special talents?

Well, I am uncommonly accomplished in the art of sorcery: though I am a novice in the practice and have had no master to teach me black magic, I have managed to do what many adepts have failed at. Thus I cannot help but think myself a natural conjurer. I am also quite good at dancing.

Where were you born?

In my parents' house.

Do you have any pets?

No. I was not permi--no. Anyway, I am far too busy to look after some vexatious creature.

What sort of sports do you play?

Why should I concern myself with a trifling thing like sport? There are far more diverting amusements.

How tall are you?

Five foot.

What was your favorite subject in school?

I never went to a school. You see, my Mind and Intellect required a more refined course of education, supplied by masters who administered lessons to me at my parents' house. But I suppose my favorite subject was French. It is such a romantic language. And the study of the classics, I dare say, although I did much of my reading on my own, and was much improved by it. By industrious reading I instructed myself in magic, which led me to my present course in life!

What is your dream job?

You are funny. An occupation one takes up in one's dreams? ...I suppose I once had a dream in which I was the captain of a great sailing vessel on a desolate, stormy sea. The ship collided with dark cliffs and sank, but at the bottom of the sea was a society of underwater people who placed me in a glass castle, where I was imprisoned, but could look out. I was glad to be alive but rather bored. One day I asked somebody how long I had been prisoner there. They told me two hundred and fourteen years. I decided that was long enough and escaped to the surface, but once I did so all of time hit me at once and I turned into a pile of sand which was immediately washed away with the sea foam.

Hmmm I'll tag @ceph-the-ghost-writer, @hagscribes, and @words-after-midnight!

[stigmatamama]

did you see that fragrantica review of tom ford lost cherry that associated it with like dentists and medical fetishes that was probably going around the gerard fans earlier this week??? i need it but i CANNOT find it :/

I’m screaming? No I did not see that but I did just read the most insane review from user “Foldyrhands” where they mention stigmata (sick) and loving Lana del Rey as a tumblr Expat… putting the full review under the break because I’m crying lol. I’ll let you know if I see the dentist / medical review haha

There is something to be said for smelling like something you eat. Hélène Cixous writes in Stigmata: Escaping Texts that “...eating and being eaten belong to the terrible secret of love.” To be wanted, so completely and rapturously, that your beloved consumes you whole.

In fact, romantic cannibalism has sort of been having a moment lately. Between breakout dream-pop star Ethel Cain’s self-titled character, tragically consumed by the wretched man she adores, to memes about biting your boyfriend making the rounds on all corners of the internet — it seems worth investigating, in this particular cultural moment, why people (women, mostly) want to smell like food. There is much to be said on this subject, and much of it has already upset people. There are innocent fantasies of girlhood and unsexed affinities towards baked goods tied into what might be called the more sinister gourmand-industrial complex, and it is by no means my intention to disturb these wholesome scent preferences. That said, the ways in which sweet candy perfumes intersect with gendered politics of desirability and class are no clearer articulated than in Tom Ford’s 2018 viral cherry organza Lost Cherry.

I would love to hear an earnest argument for how a perfume quite literally named after a vulgar euphemism for a woman’s lapsed virginity is not related to misogyny. It is an obvious enough influence to have eventually become retroactively opaque in the pursuit of commodity fetish. Beauty products are made to make women more desirable to men – of course, they bear coded signs of that very desirability. I also don’t mean to suggest I am somehow above this fact of life. I use Too Faced's Better than Sex mascara because I want all-day lift, but I hear the ghost of Andrea Dworkin screaming at me in Yiddish the entire time. Suggestive beauty product naming accomplishes what the toy company Mattel cracking jokes about their profit-based value system in the Barbie movie accomplishes for Mattel profits tied to the sale of tickets for the very same movie: postmodernity is defined by critique of the product embedded into the product itself. It gives you something to think about, a connection to briefly make. Wielding the power of this sexy perfume is like the excitement of losing your virginity. But then you stop there. You don’t think about it any further. Zizek has been saying this for decades. Products no longer sell you a product, and they no longer even sell you just an idea. Products sell you an entire mindset, a politic, a worldview, and they do it in ways often in seemingly direct conflict with their values in order to earn your trust. Why would Victoria’s Secret, a lingerie company, suddenly become interested in a bare-faced simple beauty campaign. Why would Dove, a company producing deodorant and soap marketed to help people smell better, care about your self-esteem? Thankfully Tom Ford Fragrances does not try and pretend it is a feminist beauty product company – but many people who consume it still somehow mentally place it on the neck of an “empowered woman,” whatever that means in the scheme of advertising.

Tom Ford himself as a designer and businessman is hardly known for his demure marketing. At its best, the worldbuilding of Tom Ford as a house has stood for the provocative in service of understanding ourselves more honestly. Like the surprisingly modern character of Samantha from Sex and the City, you get the sense that they both are tired of not saying the quiet parts out loud. That sex is a force as constant as the sun, and even the most repressed souls yearn, desire, like all humans do: in inconvenient and obscene and incorrect ways. But quite frankly, there is a difference between revealing and challenging the coded interchanges of heterosexuality, and reproducing them wholesale. Where I think this vision falls apart is when it leaves the tight control of a single room of creatives, and more or less integrates wholly into the pre-existing market for beauty products. If Tom Ford fragrances can’t even clear an f-bomb past certain production circuits, I fear for its ability to make serious waves in the cultural politics of suggestive beauty naming, or whatever loose assembly of legacy platitudes people suggest Lost Cherry might serve to provoke. This is all to say, I have seen women do better for themselves — and I want more for us.

There are two important questions at play here. Firstly: is Lost Cherry a good perfume in its own right? And secondly, does what it represents for the culture surrounding perfume consumption bode well for the general state of creativity in fragrance? Luckily enough, the answer to both of these questions can be summarized in a single word: no.

Lost Cherry opens with a blast of bitter almonds. I’ve noticed a trend among many Tom Fords (including the equally popular masc counterpart Tobacco Vanille): the opening spray is very provocative, and the dry-down is extremely conventional. In the case of LC, the initial sour profile of the cherry note fused with the bitterness of almonds recalls cyanide, and in one case, the purported smell of decaying corpses. Into the drydown, however, the nutty profile becomes sweeter and the cherry becomes candied. There is very little evolution beyond the first fifteen minutes — once it settles, it does so for a couple of hours of diffusive aspartame fruit showboating, and then it is gone.

I can understand why people call this perfume addicting. Usually, the formula for creating this effect is the combination of something widely palatable with the traces of something extremely offensive at high doses. This was the secret to most perfume in the 20th century. Jasmine was entrancing — narcotic, even — because of the traces of urine-like indoles found within the composition. Rose became sensual with the addition of civet, the perineal gland secretion of a small mammal related to the common genet. Lost Cherry uses the rich, juicy profile of a cherry accord to hide notes of alcohol and decay on the wrists of impressionable young women.

This is not, inherently, my issue with the perfume. Rather, I find Lost Cherry does far too much to achieve far too little. The notes blend together, the careful deceits fall flat: there is a reason this perfume is perhaps the belle of the dupe economy. If its formula weren’t so generic, it wouldn’t be so easy and popular to duplicate. The second reason so few fans of this scent own a full bottle is, of course, the high price point. A 50ml bottle currently retails for $395. This brings me to my second concern: Tom Ford is not entirely responsible for the inflation of the luxury fashion markets at large, but its most popular offering does absolutely embody the particularly nefarious intersection between completely unreasonable status-based prices, products lacking in conceptual substance, and second-hand male voyeurism.

Of course, when you deal in products made and sold under the luxury market, oftentimes prices are less a reflection of the material costs of production and more a material representation of a brand’s prestige and identity. You aren’t paying for the perfume inside Lost Cherry’s bright red bottle, you’re paying for the bottle itself as an idea.

You’re paying for an individual enumeration of Tom Ford Beauty, now itself an individual enumeration of the loose collection of ideas festering within the digitized remains of a woman selling cleansing oil in mid-century New York City formerly known as The Estée Lauder Companies. I do not labor under expectations that Tom Ford will lower its prices. I do, however, wish we would stop doing their marketing for them. Lost Cherry as an idea is virtually inescapable on the internet: it is recommended, mood-boarded, and, as referenced before, most often-evangelized through the recommendation of fakes. It is the idea, and you, dear reader, can only ever reach for pale imitations. You wish you could smell like this, but of course, you shouldn’t. There are several far more sophisticated cherry-based perfumes made by independent and niche perfumers. There is nothing that Lost Cherry does that Strangers Parfumerie’s Cherry Amaretto (retailing for $ 90 USD) does not do better. And much of Lost Cherry’s allure — the seductive, red-lipped ingénue, essentially lied from an amalgamation of vamp Pinterest boards — is best enacted as a self-aware subverted performance and not a marketing strategy.

I love Lana del Rey as much as the next Tumblr-expat, but I also think what makes her music so electric is her self-aware vulnerability. She’s thinking and acting against her own best interests; she’s playing out self-destructive spirals, but fuck it, she loves him. You may think I’m asking too much of a cosmetic product, but the culture of self-described “empowerment” surrounding Lost Cherry and other fruity-sweet ultra-femme contemporaries does none of this. It is not performative, it merely performs. Something like Mugler’s Angel, widely considered the first gourmand perfume, was so glorious precisely because it was so vulgar and controversial. Some men drooled for it, but just as many loathed it. It was regarded as both chic and trashy, sexually ambiguous, alluring, and ostentatious. In my humble opinion, there are two ways to interrupt the very real modern cultural tradition of men wanting women to smell like food so they can better be consumed: either cut your dessert with something sophisticated and off-putting or dial the saccharine indulgence up to eleven. Part of me wants Lost Cherry to tone it down, and another wishes it would have gone all the way.

Where it presently stands, however, feels halfway between pruning oneself for male fantasy, and searching for something perfectly mediocre in your own right. My wish may be unreasonable, but I one day hope to see women justify spending entirely too much on sweet perfume for its own sake. Maybe this is how you feel about your decision to wear Lost Cherry, and that is perfectly fine. Wear it to your heart's content. I just hope that one day, we can decide on figureheads for the neo-gourmand fourth-wave feminist revolution that smell a little less like plastic on accident, and a little more like plastic on purpose.

[feliciagarrivan]

Female bodies as objects in art: Male versus Female gaze

Few subjects provoke such marked reactions from society as the imagery and politics surrounding women's bodies. From Instagram’s controversial policy to censure visual content containing or alluding to a woman’s breasts to government policies that restrict women's reproductive rights, censorship on women’s bodies remains rampant. The art world, though often disguised in a cloak of liberal progressive discourse, doesn’t escape this most unfair feature. We are far from equality, but contemporary female artists are surely making their voices and opinions heard on the topic!

Female bodies as objects of male desire 

Historically speaking, the female body has been consistently represented through the eyes of the “male gaze”. This concept, introduced by filmmaker Laura Mulvey in 1975, refers to the lense through which females are portrayed as objects of (heterosexual) male desire.

The problem with the male gaze is that it strips women of representation, or the ability to tell their own stories and present their own bodies in whichever way they see fit – thus rendering women prisoners of men’s expectations. The depiction of women by men also reinforces the “otherness” associated with females; the woman becomes “the other” that is defined only against man (much like blackness is defined against whiteness, in racial theory). The Guerrilla Girls have been pioneers in exposing these issues within the art world. Their most famous work, “Do Women Have To Be Naked To Get Into the Met. Museum?” (1989), challenged museums to rethink their collections and the artists they were representing. Pretty impressive, right?

The female body according to… females?! 

Before the Guerrilla Girls emerged, there were already some artists attempting to raise awareness around the use of the female body in art. Judy Chicago is one of those artists, most notably recognised for her very controversial feminist masterpiece “The Dinner Party” (1974). This massive art installation consists of a triangular table with 39 seats, each dedicated to an important woman from history. Each seat had a porcelain plate with beautiful motifs inspired by vulvar forms. This vaginal iconography led Chicago’s piece to be dismissed by some as pornographic, vulgar, and reductionist (that is, showing women only for their sexual role). 

To many, it felt contradictory that women who were so keen on advancing a feminist agenda and being seen for more than their body, were now making art that centered so heavily around it. However, what the first generation of feminist artists was actually doing was owning their right to rewrite the way in which their bodies had been represented for centuries. What was once oppressing was now liberating – if only shown through the perspective of one’s own.

It is quite shocking to be faced with the bare facts of our art history and understanding how the female was seen back then. Yet, we cannot delete history, but we surely can learn from it! The best we can do is make sure institutions are being transparent and, ultimately, giving an honest consideration to  these incredible female artists that are challenging our views on what it means to be a woman. Speaking of examples, have you seen the Guerrilla Girls new artwork, “The Male Graze”? You can read more about what we learned from their latest work here and here, you will find more information about their commission for Art Night 2021. Share your pictures and insights with the Artscapy community by adding an art update on our “Explore” feed.

This is a huge topic, right? So, why not share with us your favorite artistic representation of a female body (figurative or abstract), and tell us why you love it! Do you find it controversial? If so, in which sense?

Let us go first - we love Paula Rego’s perspective on the female body! The artist currently has a major exhibition at Tate Britain. Her expressive and detailed brushstrokes make the female figure look defiant. We also love how Rego creates a powerful narrative around the female body without seeking to sexualize it.

[kikun]

He is discovering this entire charade is a caveat. Vulgarity is slammed repetitively, seeking to mar or unnerve. It finds no stroke when Akihiko merely crosses his arms to ❛ save his energy ❜. It doesn't take a genius to identify that this little PEST is finding a certain amusement from this game of back and forth akin to a game of catch. Except the ball is pelted with a velocity intent on destroying. For all the points this charlatan has deposited, there is indubitable hypocrisy and their dual recognition comes in a simple, shared glance.

Some hand of divination seems to hoist a connection between the two. Whether it be psychic or the threads of fate stringing their paths adjoined, is lost to that which cannot be reached.

They are mirror images now, reflections that DRILL into each other. Attempting to alleviate their predicament with the premise that a crack—  a flaw could be the piece to this puzzle.

❝ It seems to me, ❞ He is articulate, pausing deliberately to elongate his phrases. As if it might RILE UP the freed marionette gripped by impatience and a hunger for knowledge, ❝ that you are distracting yourself. ❞ It is an internal debate that has spurred him before, brought to light before the physical. A manifestation of what he'd grappled with for centuries. His arm extends, shattering the lens to portray reality as it were; flawed. ❝ Naturally, you find ease when lashing out at an external subject. But these words. . . have a CLEAR recipient. ❞

The wind navigates through the two, finding it belongs to not one but two divine beings.

❝ And what I am, is not the addressee. ❞

Ambiguity stretches before a scoff escapes in Akihiko's failure to resist being impertinent. ❝ Take your time, I can still see the gears spinning in that rusted head of yours. ❞

❝  interesting  how  the  one  so  quick  to  criticize  offers  nothing  of  value  in  return!  ❞  his  words  ooze  venom  —  yet  the  vigor  with  which  he  spits  them  attests  to  some  sick,  twisted  DELIGHT.  oh,  this  situation  fills  ren  with  disgust  so  thick  he  fears  it's  only  a  matter  of  time  before  it  drips  from  his  eyes  like  loathsome  tears.  but  there  is  also  a  strange  thrill,  to  find  oneself  faced  with  a  receptacle  for  their  self-hatred  —  even  stranger  still,  when  it  decides  to  fight  back.  (  though  perhaps  it  could  also  be  ren  simply  enjoys  ARGUING ...  he  does.  )  ❝  why  don't  you  save  the  energy  you're  wasting  running  that  uninspired  little  mouth  and  try  to  think  of  something  USEFUL?  ❞ that  same  sickening  smile  only  widens  as  he  mockingly asks,  ❝  or  do  you  just  want  to  go  on  and  on  for  the  sake  of  hearing  your own VOICE?  between  the  two  of  us,  i  think  we  have  more  than  enough  of  that already.  ❞

... the  wanderer  knows  his  jabs  contain  some  measure  of  inherent  hypocrisy. in the moment,  he  simply  CHOOSES  not  to  care.

arms  cross;  the  mention  of  tests  is  at  least  a  sobering  enough  thought  to  stem  the  flow  of  cruel  enthusiasm.  in  its  place,  a  calm  settles  over  him  —  albeit  one  no  less  condescending  than  what  came  before.   ❝  i  think  you're  misunderstanding.  ❞   ren  replies slowly.  ❝  perhaps  the  sight  of  me  is  enough  to  shake  your  perception  of  reality,  but  i  am  not  so  easily  rattled.  i'm  no  cheap  fabrication.  ❞   truthfully,  he  isn't  sure  where  his  confidence  stems  from.  he  supposes  what  thoughts,  memories,  regrets  claw  at  the  confines  of  his  skull  are  simply  so  VISCERAL  and  UGLY  he  cannot  accept  them  as anything less than his own.

he  tilts  his  head,  that  familiar  look  of  scrutiny  etching  itself  upon  his  countenance.   ❝  the  question  was never  who  i  am  —  it's  what  YOU  are.  ❞

[earlgreydream]

torture.

| loki x reader | smut |

anon requested. loki and fem!reader where he GETS really into it during a rough session and you start crying cause it’s so good & being teased all day with a vibration spell

cw: torture, slight dubcon, slapping, edging, dacryphilia, d/s, degradation, biting, mentions of blood, possession 

dark Loki 🖤

“Stop that,” Loki hissed, stalking over to you like prey.

“Make me, master,” you taunted him.

Loki grabbed you by your hair, hauling you roughly to your feet. You shrieked, your hands going to his wrist as you tried to catch your balance.

“Am I going to have to whip the insolence out of you? Or is that what you want, you filthy little brat?” Loki snarled, his words hot against your face. You gasped as his teeth sank into your neck, leaving a mark that was soothed by his tongue and cold lips just seconds later.

You jumped at the sound of Loki cracking a whip beside you, black leather snapping the floor near your feet. Your soaked heat gave away your craving for Loki’s sharp discipline, wanting to be spanked.

And the god of mischief could see right through you.

He cracked the whip again, though nowhere near your body, only to watch you jump. He practically threw you onto the bed, releasing his grip on your hair. You bent to his unyielding strength, unable to fight the god off even if you wanted to.

“You think I’m going to give you what you desire? My dear, you cannot goad me into tanning your backside. If you’re going to act like such an insolent whore, I will punish you accordingly.”

Icy fear rippled through you, and your eyes widened. Loki’s sadistic laughter sent a chill down your spine, and you scrambled back toward the headboard, having a split second of distance between you. You’d never be able to escape the cunning god, and it was fruitless to even try. It only furthered his amusement, seeing you utterly helpless against his will. 

His magic was sharp and violent, surrounding you before you could even object.

“By the time I’m done with you, you will beg me for mercy,” the cold laughter left no room for argument, and a wave of terrorized regret settled in.

“Please-!”

“Pleading with your god won’t help you now.”

Green sparks flashed from his fingertips, and your hands were restrained above you. You shook your head, starting to kick before leather bound your feet to the bedposts, forcing your legs open. Your body was completely exposed to him, the sturdy leather limiting even your ability to struggle.

“Not so brave now?” Loki feigned pity for you. You shook your head before he sharply grasped your jaw. His grip was tight, feeling like he could break it with no effort.

“Address me properly!”

“No, master,” your voice was meek, confidence and mischief long gone.

He let go of your jaw, waving his fingers inches above your face. A leather band appeared around your neck, and he tugged at the steel ring, forcing your head up. Your body burned in embarrassment, ashamed of the way he handled you.

“I’ll have to show you just how easily I can dominate you.”

You didn’t need to apologize, the words were meaningless to him. Whether or not you were regretful now, he was going to make you sorry.

His hands roamed your body before pinching you sharply, wanting to hear you shriek. You would’ve writhed if your limbs weren’t completely restrained, and he smirked as he groped your tits with bruising force.

“My darling, I’m going to torture you, and there is nothing you can do but just lay there and take it,” his words made you whimper.

He licked a hot stripe up your neck before nipping sharply at the underside of your jaw. You opened your mouth to protest, but in an instant he was kneeling above you and fucking into your throat.

He fully knew what your intention was, but he was fast enough to not have to hear your begs. His arousal only heightened as you choked around him and struggled to breathe.

“Bite me, and I’ll leave your ass bleeding,” Loki threatened, though you’d never dare to even think about it. You tried to relax your jaw as you stopped resisting, letting him brutalize your throat.

He leaned forward and slapped your sex, sneering at the way your body jerked from the sharp pain. Your shriek echoed around him, only furthering the pleasure he was taking from you. He did it again, soaking up your screams of pain and startled arousal.

Loki shouted something vulgar in old Norse as he came down your throat, pulling out and covering your mouth with his hand, forcing you to swallow it all. You choked as he pinched your clit sharply, tears pricking at your eyes. You swallowed and heaved oxygen into your lungs as soon as he let go of you, blinking away the moisture in your eyes.

He laid beside you, admiring the bruises that had already started to paint your skin. His lips curved into a smirk, scaring you further than you thought possible.

He was being generous in letting you catch your breath, though you flinched as his fingers ran over your body.

“Don’t worry, my darling, I’ve got to go work and attend to my subjects in the throne room,” Loki spoke, his voice still entirely sinister. You looked at him hopefully, though he didn’t release you of your bonds.

He snapped his fingers and suddenly you felt a dull vibration pulsing inside of you, spreading through your pussy and swirling around your nerves. You screamed as it grew more intense, crying out at the stimulation.

“I’ll keep you right on the edge all day, and maybe if you’re lucky I’ll turn it off when I come back.” Loki sneered, delighting in your begs for mercy. He stood up, armor appearing under shimmering seidr.

“Have fun, darling.”

The golden doors of his chambers thundered shut behind him, leaving you chained up to the bed with invisible vibrations pulsing and buzzing deep inside your throbbing cunt.

Sobs wracked your body until your mind was completely melted from exhaustion and hours of prolonged stimulation. It was never enough to push you over, keeping you teetering on the razor-sharp edge. You were helpless on the bed, weak sobs shaking your chest. You supposed you should’ve been thankful you weren’t chained up and tortured in the throne room for the Asgardians to witness. Loki had done it before, and you certainly wouldn’t put it past him to do it again.

Loki loved to humiliate you and put you on display, but you decided that this was infinitely worse. His sick and twisted game had you utterly weak and your mind numb. You were forced to take what he gave you

Loki returned hours later, and you were far past any point of sanity. The sun had set, leaving you to suffer in the dark. You were overly sensitive and soaked, and the echo of his footsteps on the floor practically jarred you.

“Look at you,” he breathed, golden lights glowing and casting halos around you. He looked almost heavenly, if it wasn’t for the expression of cruel, starving, sadism.

And you were so far from angelic.

A ragged scream tore from your lungs as the torturous vibrations ceased. Loki smirked, jerking your head up by the collar around your neck, wanting you to look him in the eyes. 

“Beg me to fuck you,” he commanded, earning a dry sob in response. 

“Please, master, fuck me, I need you,” your words came out in stammered gasps, but Loki appreciated the valiant attempt to obey. 

“As you wish, my darling.” 

The cuffs around your ankles disappeared, and Loki bent your knees up to your chest, leaving your hands tied to the headboard. The god sank into you all at once, forcing your body to take him. You were so overwhelmed from stimulation and pleasure you started to sob again, fresh tears rolling down your face as Loki slammed into you with as much force as he could use without breaking you. 

“You look so pretty when you cry.” 

Loki leaned down and licked the tears off of your face, making you shudder and writhe under him. You screamed as he pounded into you at a deeper angle, rough violence bleeding white into your vision, sending you deeper into rapture. 

You gazed blindly at the god you served, the king of Asgard who adored you far more than your mortal mind could fathom. You were his, in body, mind, heart, and soul, fully submitted to his will and desires. 

“I want to feel you fall apart.”

The bottled frustration from hours of edging shattered, Loki tearing an orgasm from you for the millionth time. Everything exploded into raw pleasure.

Loki followed quickly, the sight of your powerful orgasm and the feeling of you pulsing and throbbing around him bringing him to meet you. 

When you settled back into reality, the bliss wearing off, Loki was kneeling beside you. The leather was gone from your body, and he was gently cleaning you up. He wiped your face tenderly, tilting your head up to gaze at him. 

“Hi, darling. You alright?” Loki asked, making sure he hadn’t destroyed you. 

“I think so,” you murmured, barely able to keep your eyes open. 

He hummed as he wrapped his green cloak around your aching body. You buried into the safety of his arms, searching for your saviour even in your sleep. 

“You’re mine. My perfect girl.”

[thinkingimages]

Joan Bennett in the film Secret Behind the Door

Sexuality and Space edited by Beatriz Colomina

Elizabeth Wilson

In the early 1990s the addition of “sexuality” seemed to take the vibrant debate on space into new territory. The very title of Sexuality and Space reflects this, and as Beatriz Colomina remarks in her brief introduction to the collection of articles it comprises, to insist on “sexuality” as a component of space can be, at one level, to insert feminist concerns into a masculine discourse—although it is dispiriting if sexuality is still perceived as women’s domain, somehow suggesting that anatomy still is destiny and/or that women are still equated with the bodily in a way that men are not. As Colomina makes clear, however, the volume, like the symposium at which the papers it contains were initially presented, aims to do more than simply “include women.” Nor does it aim simply to explore “how sexuality acts itself out in space,” although this would have been an interesting subject in its own right: how actually existing urban, architectural spaces are used intentionally or illicitly for sexual purposes. We could have had papers on the role of the “cottage” (public lavatory) in gay sex, on museums as pick-up grounds for intellectual singles, on the voyeurism of peep shows, and so on. But this would presumably have been too literal a project for the theorists gathered. Instead we are invited to treat architecture as a “system of representation” on a par with film and TV, and to ask how space is “already inscribed in the question of sexuality.” Gender is inscribed in space and space is never designed in a gender-neutral way.

Accordingly, the articles range across the visual arts in a fashion that at first glance seems not so much interdisciplinary as wildly eclectic—Atget photographs of Paris, Alberti’s writings, an Australian advertisement for real estate. The approaches taken by the authors are also widely divergent.

Jennifer Bloomer has missed an opportunity to explore the purported “effeminacy” of Louis Henri Sullivan’s architectural work. She raises the interesting issue of the assumed relationship between gender identity (and/or sexual orientation) and allegedly “feminine” architectural forms and decoration, but instead of developing this theme she flirts with it, creating a theoretical bricolage that fails to achieve intellectual coherence, her discussion of the function and symbolic importance of ornament not fully meshing with the problematic figure of Sullivan. A similar collagist approach is used by Catherine Ingraham, and I can see that it may be a kind of postmodern criticism; but while it permits the introduction of a variety of interesting, if only tenuously related, points and theories, it has a modish feel, especially when the usual theoretical suspects are rounded up for an airing, Lacan’s lavatory doors making repeat appearances. By contrast, Alessandra Ponte’s essay on the 18th-century antiquarian Richard Payne Knight is very focused (as is Molly Nesbit’s meditation on the absence of “la Parisienne” from Atget’s photographs of empty corners of his city), a piece of historiographical excavation revealing the phallocentrism of 18th-century theories of architecture.

Yet most of the articles, despite their apparent divergence of subject, are united by theoretical protocols as well as by the central concern of the book as a whole, which is not eroticism but gender, and not architecture but space in a variety of manifestations, many of them historical. The main uniting factor is psychoanalytic theory.

The material throughout is rich and detailed. Beatriz Colomina contributes an analysis of representations of house designs, particularly interiors, by Adolf Loos and Le Corbusier. She explores the way in which these houses are photographed, and some of the ideas informing them, drawing out the way in which these utopian, perfect rooms are—paradoxically—theatrical sets for dramas of domestic life. There is an implied contradiction between the architect’s dream of perfect space and the actually existing mess of daily life; but either way the woman is always positioned as hidden and within, object of the male gaze. Surprising similarities (or perhaps they are not so surprising) are revealed between these modernist architects and the Renaissance architect and philosopher Leon Battista Alberti. Mark Wigley shows how Alberti, both in his treatise on the family and in his architectural writings, describes the ideal house as a building that encloses, conceals, and ultimately fetishizes heterosexual intercourse; the separate rooms of husband and wife may be entered by a private intercommunicating door, so that other members of the household need never know when the partners engage in sexual relations. More generally the domestic interior becomes, in Alberti’s propositions, a prison house for women, although Wigley suggests that this architectural manifestation of patriarchy only fully came into its own with the 19th-century bourgeoisie.

Patricia White’s paper is concerned with the filmic representation of a house, “Hill House,” as explored in Robert Wise’s 1963 horror classic, The Haunting. As she points out, this film is truly terrifying, but achieves its effects without any special effects or any actual representation of anything horrific. White identifies the underlying horror as arising from the film’s exploration of lesbian sexuality, demonstrating convincingly how the film’s central character, Eleanor, played by Julie Harris, although destroyed by Hill House, whose “gaze” she cannot escape, yet manages to “exceed” the narrative, speaking finally in voice-over from beyond the grave. White’s deployment of psychoanalytic film theory seems particularly apt and nonreductive; she uses it to bring out the ambiguity of the film, in which lesbian desire is apparently defeated and yet remains disruptive, “exceeding the drive of cinema to closure.”

Patricia White inevitably refers in the course of her argument to Laura Mulvey’s well-known article “Visual Pleasure and Narrative Cinema.”1 I have never entirely understood why this article became so hugely influential, given its negative and pessimistic reading (especially from a feminist point of view) of cinematic pleasure. But perhaps that was the point: as this volume itself demonstrates, psychoanalytic theory (especially its Lacanian variant) has been the basis for a “criticism of suspicion,” by which I mean a criticism that not only deconstructs the way in which effects are achieved and exposes meanings that might otherwise be hidden from an “innocent” audience, but invests all aspects of any aesthetic work with doubt and dubiousness. The excavation of cultural products must always, it seems, uncover skeletons. In this regard, architecture and cinema are two forms of cultural production particularly vulnerable to what Martin Jay has termed a 20th-century “denigration of vision” that has supplanted its earlier (Enlightenment) celebration.2 Viewing and the gaze, the totalizing vision and the nobility of sight, have been comprehensively delegitimated as (white, Western) masculine methods of control and domination.

In Laura Mulvey’s original article there was no place for the female spectator to lay claim to the gaze other than by becoming masculinized. Mulvey has since sought to modify this view, while never renouncing the underlying assumptions on which it was based, and she contributes to the present volume a meditation that considers Pandora and her box (“the box can … stand as a representation of the enigma and threat generated by the concept of female sexuality in patriarchal culture”), the Hitchcock film Notorious, and the idea of female curiosity as a transgressive exploration of forbidden spaces. For her, psychoanalytic theory as used in feminist criticism is transgressive, for “curiosity describes the desire to know something that is concealed so strongly that it is experienced like a drive, leading to the transgression of a prohibition,” and feminist curiosity then constitutes an unmasking of the patriarchal structures of popular, or indeed any, culture.

Yet, as Victor Burgin argues in his essay on the photography of Helmut Newton, Mulvey’s original article has itself been fetishized; its influence has neither diminished nor evolved. Having made this statement, however, Burgin himself makes little further attempt to develop it, confining himself instead to an analysis of a Newton image, interesting enough, but much narrower in focus than his opening sentence had led this reader, at least, to expect. Burgin is rightly dismissive of the way in which psychoanalytic theory has been “sociologized” and collapsed into a vulgar-Marxist version of woman-as-commodity. He might feel that Lynn Spigel’s essay on television and the postwar American suburban home is too “sociological,” but this is one of the clearest articles in the collection, a model of structural simplicity and accessibility, in which the ambiguity between public and private, outside and inside, created by the plate glass doors and picture windows of the suburban home, is shown to be reproduced by the advent of television with its concomitant notions of the living room as theater and the TV space as a safe, sanitized public space introduced into the home. (Indeed, although television created fears of a new generation of what we now would call “couch potatoes,” the screen community of the sitcom often seemed preferable to the real-life communities of the new suburbs.)

With Elizabeth Grosz’s article on bodies and cities we return to a more euphoric postmodern take on the relationship between sexuality and space. Grosz moves the discussion beyond traditional metaphors of the “body politic” or the humanist idea that at one time people unproblematically built cities; instead she explores the way in which “the city is one of the crucial factors in the social production of (sexed) corporeal bodies: the built environment provides the context … for most contemporary … forms of the body.” But disappointingly she does not develop this idea, falling back instead on a familiar and arguably exaggerated vision of a cyborg future: “the city and body will interface with the computer, forming part of an information machine in which the body’s limbs and organs will become interchangeable parts with the computer.”

Meaghan Morris’s contribution, too dense and theoretically “over-egged” (i.e., incorporating too many ingredients) to summarize, rewards several readings, and is a serious attempt both at a critique of theories and at an analysis of two specific cultural events concerning property speculation in downtown Sydney. It is insightful and thought provoking; nevertheless it illustrates both the virtues and the flaws not just of the book as a whole, but of the general state of cultural studies. Simultaneously populist and obscure, such studies can become both incoherent and philistine (although the latter is certainly not an adjective I would apply to her essay or any of these contributions).

Indeed, this is a (probably rash) generalization, not a comment on any particular article in Sexuality and Space, but if I have seemed to single out some authors for negative criticism, it is less on account of their specific contributions than because they are the heirs of what for me are ambiguous, indeed dubious, tendencies in contemporary cultural criticism, in which the debunking of Marx and all Enlightenment thought is married (or at least engaged) to a fundamentally uncritical appropriation of Freud (or at least Lacan). I have gone terminally off Lacan since I discovered that, when Antonin Artaud was his patient during World War II, Lacan showed little interest in the deranged playwright3; an illegitimate ad hominem argument, I know—but the grip of his theory on academic critics has always been mysterious to me. Even worse is a practice, which I fear may have been on occasion my own, whereby a critic distances herself ironically or cynically from an assortment of postmodern theorists (Baudrillard, Deleuze and Guattari, even Derrida and Foucault) while simultaneously appropriating their thought, not infrequently in the form of spurious generalizations—a feature, Meaghan Morris suggests, of the work of Deleuze and Guattari themselves in relation to Freud. The whole is then likely to be couched in dauntingly arcane and grammatically tortuous language. Faced with this bricolage, I am totally with Edward Gibbon—who identified one aspect of the decline of the Roman Empire as the decadence of its later literary tradition, when, he complained, “a cloud of critics … darkened the face of learning, and the decline of genius was soon followed by the corruption of taste”4—and I cannot but feel that this kind of postmodern criticism is indeed an index of decay.

But I suppose that postmodernism in general and contemporary psychoanalysis in particular is the theory our epoch in history deserves. Psycho-analysis has certainly been reconstructed to fit; in contrast to the highly moralistic and adjustive Freudianism of the 1950s, which was in any case a therapeutic and sociological rather than a critical tool, we have today psychoanalysis as an ideologically empty vessel, a theory without consequences. A fractured body of thought pleasingly open to endless reinterpretations and deconstructions, a detheorized (or perhaps etherealized) theory, it holds up a (splintered, it is true) mirror to assist in the contemplation of ourselves, one which can be thrillingly seen as “transgressive” while remaining devoid of any calls to action or any social or moral imperatives. Truly a theory for our postpolitical times.

1. Laura Mulvey, “Visual Pleasure and Narrative Cinema,” Screen 16, no. 3 (Autumn 1975): 6–18.

2. Martin Jay, “In the Empire of the Gaze: Foucault and the Denigration of Vision in Twentieth Century French Thought,” in David Couzens Hoy, editor, Foucault: A Critical Reader (Oxford: Basil Blackwell, 1986), 178.

3. See Stephen Barber, Antonin Artaud: Blows and Bombs (London: Faber and Faber, 1993).

4. Edward Gibbon, The Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire (Harmondsworth: Penguin, 1985), 83.

Elizabeth Wilson is on the faculty of the School of Information and Communication Studies at the University of North London; her recent books include The Sphinx in the City and Chic Thrills: A Fashion Reader.

[hndcrm]

47 and Diana are in the safehouse in Berlin. As night falls 47, plagued by his newfound memories, can't sleep. He wanders through the house and discovers Diana snores and talkes in her sleep. What will he do about it?!😏

I have made this so much angstier than the prompt calls for im so sorry my brain only provides pain apparently

--

He was glad to have his memories back. There was no denying it. It was liberating to know the events of his life in order, to have them fade back into something understandable as opposed to the blank, cryptic void from before. Some were better than others, memories of his and subject 6’s friendship, of the rare times he’d been able to sneak away with his bunny before its untimely and cruel murder.

Despite this, the memories were overwhelmingly bad, and none quite as pervasive and frightening as the car bomb in 1989.

He was the one to trigger it. It was a mission like any other at the time, he hadn’t thought much of it. Simple. Two targets, Peter and Nancy Burnwood, their daughter considered acceptable collateral damage. In the end, there was no collateral damage and perhaps that’s the only comfort he takes from the memory, that he didn’t kill her, that he was lucky enough to have her alive today. It’s not comforting because he knows she will leave him as soon as she finds out. He can’t blame her. He’s the one responsible for her involvement in everything bad in their world. He killed her parents, changed her life forever, ruined it without a second thought at the time. He recalls with tears in his eyes how she was there, how she was present when he set it off, that this innocent child had to witness the violent death of her parents. He’s hurt Diana irreversibly and she will hate him forever if she finds out.

Even throughout his career with her, he often pondered morality and his own goodness. Diana became his conscience and urged in private that he wasn’t evil, promised him that he was worthy of kindness and love. He wasn’t sure even then how much he believed her. He trusted her, however, so he did not question the assertions.

He knows she was wrong now. She deserves to know the truth, but it would result in her disappearing from his life, and he’s sure he would die without her.

And now, he cannot sleep. He stares out of the window in the living room and watches the night sky, silently bets on how long it will be before he turns to alcohol for comfort.

There are soft snores coming from Diana’s bedroom. He gulps. The door is tilted open.

The scene before him is like some practical test of his character and self-control. He could come in and watch her sleep, just for a few moments. It wouldn’t disturb her and she would never know, and he could memorise the details of her face, add to his mental depiction of her before she leaves him, imagine what it could be like to hold her like this if they could ever be this intimate together. He could pretend to be one of the few lucky men who have been able to truly witness this, to be able to say they’ve had the pleasure of sleeping next to Diana Burnwood herself.

Or he could do the right thing and close the door, minding his own business as a professional work colleague should, though even that description is generous towards him after what he’s done. He is evil.

Diana says he is good, but he knows she’s wrong. If he were good he wouldn’t want to come in and see her right now.

It’s late and he cannot sleep, he thinks the guilt will swallow him whole if he does not distract himself. He deserves nothing to do with her, deserves to die by her hands a million times over and rot in the deepest circle of hell, but now, watching her silently while she sleeps does not seem so sinful in comparison to the pain he has caused her.

He pushes the door open enough to slide inside and tilts it closed.

The moonlight peeking from behind the curtain streaks across her ribs and reminds him of a bullet that he was responsible for. He feels sick. She deserves so much better.

She’s tangled in the sheets, hair flamed out around her face, and instantly there’s an urge to run his hands through it, to move it off her cheek and behind her ear.

She looks delicate. He knows better than to think so improperly of her, ‘delicate’ is an insult when she is a force to be reckoned with and could kill a man with her sharp-tongued nature alone, but there is no denying the more physical aspects of her beauty when she’s sprawled out so ravishingly. Her upper lip is carved down carefully, brows furrowed slightly, bosom caressed by her silk nightgown and her hands elegantly tangled in the sheets, like a scene from an ancient erotic painting, beauty that could only be appropriately captured by a lover.

She stirs then, and he holds his breath, terrified that he’s awoken her with his selfishness.

She hums something incomprehensible, and the thought that she might sleeptalk scares him. He should leave. Diana trusts him, she does not hide from him. If what she dreams of is something he already knows, there’s no use invading her privacy. If what she dreams of is something he is not aware of, then he should stay clueless, respect her choice to keep it from him and leave, pretending he was never here.

He decides to do the right thing. He pads towards the door.

He’s stopped in his tracks when he hears her moan his name. He can feel his face heating up. He’s evil for having ever come here in the first place. How can he disrespect her so cruelly?

Curiosity turns him around, as he tries to picture the shape her mouth might take when she moans his name, but there is little left to the imagination when she does it again, quieter, and the sight is somehow more erotic and vulgar than anything he’s ever seen, he feels his trousers tightening.

He knows she doesn’t really want him like this. Dreams don’t reflect reality. Perhaps she thought of him crudely once, and he was lucky enough to catch it, but it was a one-off because she must know she deserves better than him.

He’d be more than willing to play out her dreams in reality. He couldn’t, of course, bring himself to ever actually do it. Their shared intimacy exists purely as a fantasy in both of their imaginations.

He’s grateful for his trained stillness as he’s about to leave again, determined that he’s long crossed a line. He must go if he ever wants Diana to think of him neutrally, at least. If she wakes up to see him standing before her so improperly she’ll know of his vile nature before he reveals it.

As he’s something like a metre away from the door, he sees a frustrated Olivia rub her eyes and grumble ‘fucking Burnwood’, then she slams the door in front of him before he can escape and he panics as he’s stuck in a deeply compromising position. The door is too squeaky to risk opening again, but it’s too late, for when he turns around to look at Diana, she’s awake, rubbing her eyes and squinting in the dark. He prays she doesn’t see him.

“47? Is that you?” She calls out, and he freezes. He could still leave. She would know he was here, but it would save him the embarrassing conversation until the morning at least, or maybe, hopefully, she’d forget. “What are you doing here?” She sits up in bed, a strap of her nightgown falling down her arm. The usual excuses for trespassing won’t cut it. I got lost, he thinks sourly.

“I couldn’t sleep.” He starts. How much of the truth should he reveal? Lying to her feels wrong, he knows she knows him too well for it. “I heard you talking, I thought maybe something was wrong.”

“Oh.” Now she turns red. “Well, I’m quite alright.” She tucks her hair behind her ear. He nods dumbly.

“Good.”

“And 47,” she adds then. “What did you hear?” She does a good job of playing off her voice crack, but he can sense the fear in her voice - fear he is responsible for. Why wouldn’t she fear him when he disrespects her like this?

“It was nothing - I didn’t understand anything.” He lies. He must lie to make her feel better. He shouldn’t have come in in the first place. She plays with the strap of her nightgown. He wants to leave but she looks so worried. Guilt greets him again.

“You’ve been avoiding me lately.” She says finally, chest rising in the familiar pattern she uses to calm herself down. “Is everything alright?”

I yearn for you, he thinks. It’s true. The thought tastes disgusting on his tongue.

“The serum. The memories-” he begins, but the following words don’t come. He doesn’t know how to tell her the truth. He doesn’t want to. She furrows her brows together and looks sadly at him.

“Oh. I’m so sorry.” Diana gives him a lopsided smile. “If you want to talk about it-”

“No.” His voice sounds harsher than he intends. She cannot know.

He leaves. Another night is spent alone on the cold leather couch, thinking of her in the dark. Eventually, guilt takes over and he cannot bear to think of anything, so he opens a lager and drinks himself to sleep.

He wakes up to find himself covered by a blanket in the morning, and Diana sitting in an armchair next to him. He gulps.

“I’m sorry about last night,” she sighs. He shakes his head, mutters a protest, but the memories of his actions flooding back terrify him. He’s been awful.

He sits up. She hasn’t done anything wrong, and the shame painted across her face makes his insides twist with guilt. He doesn’t deserve to touch her, but all he can think of is comforting her, so he reaches out tentatively. Immediately she smiles at him and wraps her arms around him. It’s unfair how good it feels, how their bodies seem to fit so well together, and she’s innocently on his lap in his embrace, unaware of how many nights he’s spent fantasizing about this. He deserves none of it, he knows.

“I’m sorry, Diana.” He almost sulks into the warm skin revealed by her bateau neckline.

“Whatever for?” She whispers, and he aches again. He can’t tell her.

“I love you,” he whispers as the tears run down his cheeks and he wonders if she can feel them on her neck. It comes out instinctually, and he regrets it immediately. She doesn’t answer. He prays she won’t think anything of it. He’s pathetic. “I’m so sorry.”

They don’t speak of it again, and he spends every living second praying for her forgiveness, for when she eventually finds out.

When he knows she knows, it’s too late for him, and he’s glad she’s killed him. He spends his dying moments craning his neck up to ensure she’s his last dying image. He hopes Edwards will be kind to her.

[litafficionado]

Four Questions with Garielle Lutz:

I’m extremely beholden to Garielle who took the time to respond to my silly, garbled, childish, intrusive questions. You can purchase her latest book Worsted here and here, among many other sites.  --------- Q.  You've attributed the resuscitation of your literary career in quite considerable measure to your teacher and editor Gordon Lish. It seems like you guys are particularly close, even as you seem to have largely confined yourself to Pittsburgh(mostly driven by your erstwhile teaching career but also by your liking the city over time). How does it feel to hear someone like Gordon speak so highly of you, “I think there’s more truth in one sentence of my student [Lutz] than in all of [Philip] Roth. Lutz gives [herself] away. “The speaking subject gives herself away,” says Julia Kristeva. I thoroughly believe that. What you see in Lutz, [her] lavish gift, is [her] refusal to relax [her] determination to uncover and uncover. It is, by my lights, quite wonderful, quite terrific.[…]Lutz is entirely the real thing?” Does one feel vindicated? How do you navigate the waters of self-effacement and self-indulgence as a writer and as a person? A.  I haven’t had a literary career before or after studying with Gordon Lish.  I don’t think one finds one’s way to him in hopes of launching a career.  Anyone with vulgar ambition along those lines would have been shown the door pretty quick.  I would never presume to be close to Gordon or to feel that I am part of his life other than in my role as a student. He dwells in another realm entirely. I attended his classes and tried to grasp, to the best of my abilities, the things he was saying about how to get from one word to the next.  He also talked about how to free a word from the constricting range of its permissible behaviors, how to drain it of every sepsis of received meaning, until there is nothing left of the word but the skeleton of its former self, just the lank, gawky letters sticking out this way and that, and then how to fill the thing up again, to the point of overspilling, but this time with something that would never have been allowed to belong in there before, and then see whether the word, now close to bursting, can hold up and maybe have a new kind of say.  I’m always surprised and relieved whenever Gordon says anything approving about anything I write.  I think that for a lot of his students, his opinion is the only one that counts.  

Q.  You've said, "A typical day goes like this: noon, afternoon, evening, night, additional night, even more night, furtherest night, then bedtime, though I don’t have a bed or furniture of any kind.” Have you always been a lychnobite, sensing the overwhelming superabundance of life after the sunset or is it a relatively recent development facilitated by your retirement from teaching? Do you consider yourself in any way to be a minimalist? Does your room bear any resemblance with a sparsely lit opium den where all exchanges happen at the floor level?

A.  I think the pandemic has had a lot to do with it.  Lately I’ve been up until five, sometimes six.  But I’ve always found mornings the harshest and ugliest part of the day (maybe it’s just because of the place where I live, but I never open the blinds anyway).  There can be something awfully scolding about a sunrise the older you get  Evening seems to extend every form of leniency, and in the dead of night, expectations go way down, which is where they maybe ought to stay.  I do spend all of my time on the floor, but my apartment doesn’t bear any resemblance to an opium den.  It’s more like a crawlspace or the back of a  dollar-store stockroom.    

Q. Even with your reputation of being a page-hugger than a typical page-turner, how do you decide which books to read apart from your line of work? Do you try to keep it largely in the familiar territory, like exploring the oeuvre of a time-tested writer? How does one unshackle oneself from this constant niggling that one ought to read so many books? Here's Ben Marcus: “When I was in graduate school, there was this sort of cautionary adage going around by the poet Francis Ponge that we can only write what we’ve already read and one way to hear that is you’re just sort of doomed to kind of regurgitate everything you’ve read and so if you’re just reading all the popular books, the books everyone else is reading, in some sense you’re maybe unwittingly confining yourself to a particular literary practice that’s gonna look pretty familiar. I remember at the time thinking, okay well if that’s true, if I’m just fated to that, then I’m gonna read things that no one else is reading. I loved to just go to the library and pretty randomly grab books, because I think for a little while, and I’m kinda glad this passed, but I really just had this feeling that a writer just consumes language and just sort of spits it out. So it didn’t matter. Like it didn’t have to be a great novel for it to be worth-reading. And I still read very little fiction in the end compared to non-fiction, essays, works of philosophy, science. And the other sort of dirty secret is: I don’t finish a lot of books. I just don’t care enough. I only finish a book if I have to or if I really want to. And, often, I’ll stop reading a book three pages from the end. I think that as writers, we probably feel a lot of pressure about what kind of a reader to be, what kind of a writer to be in, and we feel this shame, like “I haven’t read DH Lawrence, I’m such an asshole.” You begin to feel like you’ve these deficiencies and you gotta make them up and you never will and a lot of it is just kinda tyrannical. Of course, obviously, we must be naturally motivated to read and read and read and read but I guess I just started to notice that…I got a lot of my ideas by just reading…e.g. a gardening book…like the weird way a sentence was structured.” Then there's Moyra Davey: “Woolf famously said of reading: “The only advice … is to take no advice, … follow your instincts, … use your reason.” A similar thought was voiced by her elder contemporary Oscar Wilde, who did not believe in recommending books, only in de-recommending them. Later, Jorge Luis Borges echoed the same sentiment by discouraging “systematic bibliographies” in favor of “adulterous” reading. More recently, Gregg Bordowitz has promoted “promiscuous” reading in which you impulsively allow an “imposter” book to overrule any reading trajectory you might have set for yourself, simply because, for instance, a friend tells you in conversation that he is reading it and is excited by it. This evokes for me that most potent kind of reading — reading as flirtation with or eavesdropping on someone you love or desire, someone who figures in your fantasy life.”“What to read?” is a recurring dilemma in my life. The question always conjures up an image: a woman at home, half-dressed, moving restlessly from room to room, picking up a book, reading a page or two and no sooner feeling her mind drift, telling herself, “You should be reading something else, you should be doing something else.” The image also has a mise-en-scène: overstuffed, disorderly shelves of dusty and yellowing books, many of them unread; books in piles around the bed or faced down on a table; work prints of photographs, also with a faint covering of dust, taped to the walls of the studio; a pile of bills; a sink full of dishes. She is trying to concentrate on the page in front of her but a distracting blip in her head travels from one desultory scene to the next, each one competing for her attention. It is not just a question of which book will absorb her, for there are plenty that will do that, but rather, which book, in a nearly cosmic sense, will choose her, redeem her. Often what is at stake, should she want to spell it out, is the idea that something is missing, as in: what is the crucial bit of urgently needed knowledge that will save her, at least for this day? She has the idea that if she can simply plug into the right book then all will be calm, still, and right with the world. […] Must reading be tied to productivity to be truly satisfying […] Or is it the opposite, that it can only really gratify if it is a total escape? What is it that gives us a sense of sustenance and completion? Are we on some level always striving to attain that blissful state of un-agendaed reading remembered from childhood? What does it mean to spend a good part of one’s life absorbed in books? Given that our time is limited, the problem of reading becomes one of exclusion. Why pick one book over the hundreds, perhaps thousands on our bookshelves, the further millions in libraries and stores? For in settling on any book we are implicitly saying no to countless others. This conflict is aptly conjured up by essayist Lynne Sharon Schwartz as she reflects on “the many books (the many acts) I cannot in all decency leave unread (undone) — or can I?”” What way out do you suggest? Do you deem it worthwhile to eschew any shred of obligation and be propelled in any direction naturally? Like you said you found grammar books and lexicons more engaging and enjoyable than the novels.

A.  I seem to remember that in some magazine or another, James Wolcott once said “Read at whim.”  That has always sounded like the best advice.  And I assume it means to feel free to ditch any book that disappoints.  Like Ben Marcus, I’ve had experiences of abandoning a book just a few pages from the end, but I often don’t make it that far in most things anymore.  I came from a long line of nonreaders, so I’ve never felt any guilt about passing up books or writers that so many people seem to talk about a lot, and I don’t expect other people to like what I like. Some books I’ll start about halfway in and then see whether I might want to work my way back to the beginning.  Others I’ll start at the very end and inch my way toward the front, one sentence at a time, and see how far I can go that way.  I seem to remember that in The Pleasure of the Text, Roland Barthes recommends “cruising” a text, and maybe something like that is what I’m doing at least some of the time, if I understand what he means.  And every now and then I’ll read  a book straightforwardly for an hour and afterward wonder whether the time might have been better spent staring off into space. Too many books these days seem ungiving.  It’s the ungivingness that disappoints the most.  A lot of contemporary fiction has the gleam and sparkle of a trend feature in a glossy magazine, and I can appreciate the craft and the savvy that go into something like that, but I am drawn more toward stories and books that demand being read slowly and closely, pulse by pulse, the kind of fiction where everything--what little might be left of an entire blighted life--can pivot on the peal of a single syllable. Q.  I'd like to ask you so many questions. But let this be the last one for matters of convenience. Also, in a capitalistic world, one's enshrouded with guilt for taking one's time without being remunerative in any way. Among the books and films that you recently encountered, which ones do you think deserve rereads/rewatches? A.  I used to feel like the woman you’ve described so movingly above, someone who questions her choice of books almost to the brink of despair.  At my age, though, I no longer have a program for reading, a syllabus or a checklist, and I’m okay with knowing there’s a lot I’ll never get around to.  I’m happy being a rereader of a few inexhaustible books and chancing upon occasional fresh treasure.  The one book that has shaken me the most in the longest time is Anna DeForest’s  A History of Present Illness, which will be out next August.  It’s a blisteringly truthful novel written with moral grace and unsettling brilliance and an awing mastery of language.  A couple of recent books I have read in manuscript, books that totally knocked me out with their originality and uncanny command of the word, are Greg Gerke’s In the Suavity of the Rock (a novel) and David Nutt’s Summertime in the Emergency Room (a short-story collection).  I haven’t watched many movies in the past few months, and the ones I watched aren’t ones I’ll probably be rewatching anytime soon.  

[legendoftheghost]

NSFW Headcanon: Jin Sakai 

A = Aftercare (What they’re like after sex) 

Jin believes practicing aftercare will naturally develop closer, more intimate bonds with his partner. After sex, he is particularly vulnerable; they’re naked, they have (hopefully) just had an orgasm, and one of the most intrinsic need for him is that need to ensure that positive state of mind continues. Everyone feels good when he knows his partner cares for him, and what better way to show it than tending to his partner when they both are in a vulnerable post-sex state of mind? Jin is especially susceptible to the post-coital blues, and even when he is seemingly highly independent, somewhat repressed and distanced with expressing emotions, I think this will be the perfect time for him to take a plunge and attempt to cuddle and engage in deeper conversations. 

B = Body part (Their favourite body part of theirs and also their partner’s) 

His entirety? Despite his fears of failure and flaws on his body, Jin Sakai is a man comfortable in his skin. From the crown of his head to the end of his toe, Jin Sakai has a body of a seasoned warrior; as a disciplined samurai, he had learned not only martial arts, but swordsmanship, horse riding, hunting, how to survive in the wilderness with bare essentials, and he literally has zero ounce of excessive fat on his body. 

He’s not the strongest, biggest warrior, a powerhouse who can dominate and overwhelm enemies with brute strength, but he’s compact, sculpted with enough muscle definition, and corded with lean strength that only comes from meticulous care. Younger Jin used to hate the scar that would continue to bleed and bruise due to excessive bullying, but now that he is the Ghost, he thinks it only gives him character. After all, scars build character. And out of suffering have emerged the strongest souls; the most massive characters are seared with scars, and Jin Sakai is a prime example of one. 

Jin isn’t very particular when it comes to his partner’s favorite body part, but if his partner has anything that contrasts Jin’s own, he would obsess over that and touch him/her over and over. It could be the sensuous curve of the woman’s narrow waistand widening hips, the budding swell of her breasts and slender neck, or another man’s expansive chest and strong arms and legs embracing and cradling him. 

C = Cum (Anything to do with cum basically… I’m a disgusting person) 

He doesn’t like the mess, and would prefer if he came inside his partner, but the one thing he finds it extremely appealing is coming on his partner’s stomach. 

D = Dirty Secret (Pretty self explanatory, a dirty secret of theirs) 

Jin loves talking about sex with partners, friends, whoever. To him, sex in essentiality is a fascinating subject that's different for each individual yet common to people all (in some way), and he finds it endlessly depressing that it's a taboo subject.everybody (for the most part) needs sex and wants to have sex, so Jin believes that people should be able to talk about it openly, and he will sass and awkwardly joke and humor with insinuations of sex in normal conversations. 

E = Experience (How experienced are they? Do they know what they’re doing?) 

He snuck into Clan Sakai and Shimura’s personal archive / library and would sneak in some erotic illustrations of the time in curiosity. Despite the general lack of experience and focusing on his strenuous trainings, he would have fulfilled some curiosity of sexual exploration through masturbation and through secretive excursions with Ryuzo. 

F = Favorite Position (This goes without saying. Will probably include a visual) 

His preferred positions are; The Victory position, Doggy Style, Shoulder Hold, Lifted Missionary, and Lotus

G = Goofy (Are they more serious in the moment, or are they humorous, etc) 

Appearing too serious is Jin Sakai’s greatest flaw; being too serious which is Jin’s principal trait doesn't seem like such a bad thing, but it could create some issues regarding sexual explorations. 

Social anxiety.

Perfectionism.

Social awkwardness.

Fight or Flight responses to most things (Can't laugh inconveniences off or smoothly escape conflicts because of over seriousness, which is likely to do the opposite, in other words escalate minor conflicts to big ones).

Overthinking and not living in the moment.

Not having fun due to exaggerated thinking about the consequences.

Jin may be a sassmaster and likes to throw in some dry humor in between, but that’s his coping mechanism to lesson and ease his insecurity and stress that stems from even the sexual act itself, but in the act, he’s deadpan serious. 

H = Hair (How well groomed are they, does the carpet match the drapes, etc.) 

Judging by the full thatch of his beard, I’d like to think that he’s pretty thick and ample down there as well, peppered with hair below his belly button, and a nice, sizable thatch of his pubic hair. 

I = Intimacy (How are they during the moment, romantic aspect…) 

Jin does crave intimacy during sex, and this is something which becomes very important to him. Jin is at his most vulnerable, candor, raw, and open, and if it’s not a casual sex only to fulfill the needs to get off than anything else, Jin still needs and wants to build some sort of friendship or connection beforehand. Their sexual performance is then more about action than it is about emotions and deeper layers of intimacy, and with more deeply-connected intimacy, he would rather focus on both the physical and mental connection, which could make it much difficult to come with him. Regardless, he is tender, and will attempt to initiate; especially stroking his partner’s back, the side of his/her face, raking through his/her hair, etc.  

 J = Jack Off (Masturbation headcanon) 

Jin likes the stop-squeeze technique, which is a form of ejaculatory control. It allows him to near the point of climax and then back off suddenly by holding the tip of the penis until the sensation subsides. He likes to do this multiple times to make his orgasm much more intense. While it could be a tedious or time-consuming practice, he likes that explosiveness and exquisite high he gets from it. 

K = Kink (One or more of their kinks) 

Shibari (kinbaku), aka rope sex: Contrasts are central to Shibari: intricate geometric patterns with the natural curves of the body, rough rope against soft skin and vulnerability side by side with strength. The practice can also lead to a trance-like experience for the tied partner and a rush of adrenalin for the artist, or rigger.

Erotic Asphyxiation (breath play): This type of sexual activity involves intentionally cutting off the air supply for you or your partner with choking, suffocating, and other acts. People who are into breath play say it can heighten sexual arousal and make orgasms more intense.

Dirty Talk: Jin can have a little trouble getting out of his own mind. However, in this case, it’s less about being able to connect to the body than it is a fear of letting go. A little dirty talk goes a long way in making him forget his fears and let loose.

L = Location (Favorite places to do the do) 

Taking in consideration of his fugitive life, it would be somewhere relatively hidden and private. Especially in nature; against the tree trunk, near the lake or an ocean when the weather accompanies Jin’s mood, and empty, abandoned houses. 

M = Motivation (What turns them on, gets them going) 

Jin is almost always turned on, and has higher than normal sex drive. He’s one of those who craves intimacy and wants to share himself with someone special, even though it doesn’t mean that he wouldn’t participate in any given opportunities when they are presented. It can feel like a chore and not really something he wants to waste their time or energy on if they cannot converse well to begin with. There must be underlying honesty and genuinity in order for Jin to at least partake in a casual sex. 

N = NO (Something they wouldn’t do, turn offs) 

Cockiness – specifically unwarranted arrogance accompanied by a smug attitude. Lack of a sense of humor – unless they’re the one dishing it out. Flaking – because flakes are some of the most unappealing individuals to build any type of relationship with.  Being goalless and content with life — having zero aspirations for the future. Liars – but not even about significant stuff. Just unnecessary lies, made up stories and exaggerations when a fib is pointless. Vulgar language finding its way into every, single, sentence spoken. Baseless cattiness, malicious comments and disdain toward others. Humiliation and degradation.  BDSM for BDSM’s sake without exploration, caution, and mutual respect. 

O = Oral (Preference in giving or receiving, skill, etc) 

He’s much more inclined to receive than give. While Jin lacks the scope of experiences, he is skilled with his tongue, very attentive, considerate, and careful to observe his partner’s reaction. Because he is a perfectionist, he will attempt his absolute best to pleasure his partner and send him/her over the edge. He expects the same when he’s on the receiving end. 

P = Pace (Are they fast and rough? Slow and sensual? etc.) 

The act in itself is viewed essentially as a series of steps to his and his partner’s mutual satisfaction. It entirely depends on their shared needs. As a dominant top, Jin is likely to be a very passionate lover, focused on the connection he gains from this experience. He does appreciate and sees how much closer sex can bring him to someone he loves, and would rather be patient waiting for the right person to share this with, because for him to reach this step, it would have taken a lot of trial and error. He definitely likes things to built up towards the climax, exploring different positions to find their needs satisfied. 

Q = Quickie (Their opinions on quickies rather than proper sex, how often, etc.) 

Jin actually prefers quickie, because it offers a much-needed opportunity to relieve stress, strengthen a relationship, and get off at a time when intimacy, connection, and, well, time, are luxuries (especially with him on the run). Prefers mutual masturbations, than penetrative sex. 

R = Risk (Are they game to experiment, do they take risks, etc.) 

Jin is likely to be a very passionate lover, focused on the connection he gains from this experience. He sees how much closer sex can bring him to someone he loves, and would rather be patient waiting for the right person to share this with. If he’s in a long-term relationship, he will be more than willing to experiment and take risks. It all depends on their shared interest, and Jin would be open to try everything at least once. 

S = Stamina (How many rounds can they go for, how long do they last…) 

From his strenuous training as not only as a samurai, but as the Ghost on the run, Jin has extremely high stamina and will be able to go on for more than a few rounds if his partner is up for it.

T = Toy (Do they own toys? Do they use them? On a partner or themselves?) 

Occasionally will use Geisha balls / beaded necklaces for added pleasure, mostly one another in reciprocated masturbations. 

U = Unfair (how much they like to tease) 

He isn’t very good at teasing, unless it’s with words. He is rather straightforward with his actions, because he doesn’t like to deceive with his affectionate, tender touches. 

V = Volume (How loud they are, what sounds they make) 

On the quiet side, and for most of the lovemaking, he will make soft, gentle moans that turn into animalistic grunt when he’s on the verge of orgasm. 

W = Wild Card (Get a random headcanon for the character of your choice) 

Perhaps one of the simplest, yet most potent sexual fantasies Jin has is just having his partner direct the sex script for the night. Whether it's a full-on dominant or simply a partner who knows what he or she wants and how to get it, he finds the thrill of a confident and sexual partner to be very appealing.

X = X-Ray (Let’s see what’s going on in those pants, picture or words) 

He is uncircumcised, his shaft is curved slightly upward, with veins that snake along the underside. His member is longer than average (around 13cm when erect) and has considerable girth (9 centimeters when erect). 

Y = Yearning (How high is their sex drive?) 

Jin has rather active sex drive. It’s not a particularly powerful sex drive, for he could always resort to, and might prefer his own imaginations. His inner minds are rather rich place, and he doesn’t always feel like outwardly expressing this side of himself.

Z = ZZZ (… how quickly they fall asleep afterwards)

All depends on Jin’s condition on that day; judging on the Ghost’s life (on the run, essentially a fugitive ronin), and a slew of traumas and PTSD trailing his back, Jin Sakai suffers from insomnia. While he has high stamina and could go for more than a couple of rounds when he’s in a particularly frisky mood, but one intense round could have him knocked out exhausted. He’s a kind of a guy that sneaks in sleep whenever and however it comes, so he would let himself fade away for an hour or two, before he’s coaxed to awake. 

[mangocheesecakeicecream]

In contemporary art, we encounter often brutal attempts to âreturn to the real', to remind the spectator (or reader) that he is perceiving a fiction, to awaken him from the sweet dream. This gesture has two main forms which, although opposed, amount to the same. In literature or cinema, there are (especially in postmodern texts) self-reflexive reminders that what we are watching is a mere fiction, like the actors on screen addressing directly us as spectators, thus ruining the illusion of the autonomous space of the narrative fiction, or the writer directly intervening into the narrative through ironic comments; in theatre, there are occasional brutal events which awaken us to the reality of the stage (like slaughtering a chicken on stage). Instead of conferring on these gestures a kind of Brechtian dignity, perceiving them as versions of extraneation, one should rather denounce them for what they are: the exact opposite of what they claim to be - escapes from the Real, desperate attempts to avoid the real of the illusion itself, the Real that emerges in the guise of an illusory spectacle.

What we confront here is the fundamental ambiguity of the notion of fantasy: while fantasy is the screen which protects us from the encounter with the Real, fantasy itself, at its most fundamental - what Freud called the "fundamental fantasy," which provides the most elementary coordinates of the subject's capacity to desire - cannot ever be subjectivized, and has to remain repressed in order to be operative. Recall Stanley Kubrick's Eyes Wide Shut, the apparently vulgar conclusion of the film, when, after Tom Cruise confesses his nightly adventure to Nicole Kidman and they are both confronted with the excess of their fantasizing, Kidman - upon ascertaining that now they are fully awakened, back into the day, and that, if not forever, at least for a long time, they will stay there, keeping the fantasy at bay - tells him that they must do something as soon as possible. "What?" he asks, and her answer is: "Fuck." End of the film, final credits. The nature of the passage a l'acte ("passage to the act") as the false exit, as the way to avoid confronting the horror of the fantasmatic netherworld, was never so abruptly stated in a film: far from providing them with a real life bodily satisfaction that would render superfluous empty fantasizing, the passage to the act is presented as a stopgap, as a desperate preventive measure aimed at keeping at bay the spectral netherworld of fantasies. It is as if her message is: let's fuck as soon as possible in order to stifle the thriving fantasies, before they overwhelm us again. Lacan's quip about awakening into reality as an escape from the real encountered in the dream holds more than anywhere apropos of the sexual act itself: we do not dream about fucking when we are not able to do it; we rather fuck in order to escape and stifle the excessive nature of the dream that would otherwise overwhelm us. For Lacan, the ultimate ethical task is that of the true awakening: not only from sleep, but from the spell of fantasy which controls us even more when we are awake.

zizek

[in-dire-need]

OK, I’M SICK- Badflower

OK, I’M SICK was released in 2019 as upcoming band Badflower’s first full-length album. Every single track on the album has gotten its due share of the spotlight as the album climbed the billboard charts. A band that was once the underdog of the rock scene became a renowned name almost overnight. Frontman Josh Katz ties personal experiences into emotional stories to create the perfect blend of heart wrenching and riveting.

Opening track “x ANA x” serves as the perfect introduction to the chaotic world of Badflower. Its extremely powerful, vulgar, and aggravated sound welcomes all the chaos that is to come. Frontman Josh Katz had spoken out about his growing issues on tour before the creation of this album: he would have panic attacks every night on stage and could hardly stand to look at himself when off stage. His anxiety grew to such a high level that he was prescribed Xanax to calm down. “x ANA x” is written as a love letter to the prescription drug, which Katz had now developed a dependency for. He tells ‘Ana’ that even though she saves him from his demons, he can’t breathe with her around. He craves the feeling of being himself again, but he craves her more. He explains the awful life he lives without her, then the instrumentals slow down as an auditory example of the effect Xanax has on a person. He begs her not to let him lose control over himself, so he keeps her around as he destroys himself.

"The Jester” waited almost an entire year after its initial release to bask in its well-earned fame, when a well-deserved music video and an acoustic adaptation were released. Josh expresses that he feels like a source of comedic entertainment for others, as if he is only there as a jester. Everyone is just fucking him over, letting him run in circles for their own amusement. 

The next track is an extremely emotional one and if you deal with sensitivity toward subjects involving depression and/or suicide, I suggest you skip past this paragraph. “Ghost” was first released as a single before being added to the set of the album. Badflower’s raw performance on The Late Night Show With James Corden is what attracted so many initial listeners to them. The lyrics depict the narrative of someone who has attempted suicide by self-harm multiple times, but has never succeeded. He thinks about how he is a constant let-down to his friends and a disappointment to his family. He wants to give in and try again, but he is worried that he will fail once more and that his pain will continue. At the same time, he wants someone to save him from this endless loop of self-destruction that he has caught himself in. He finally makes up his mind and attempts to kill himself once more. As the blood leaves his body and his vision goes dark he regrets not telling his family that he loves them and not leaving a letter. He admits that the thought of regretting what he did is so fucked up and, at the very end of the song, his last attempt succeeds in taking his life out of his hands. In another interview, Josh disclosed that the true inspiration behind the gut-wrenching, graphic track was fortunately not from a personal experience. He explained that during tour his mental health had severely deteriorated, as mentioned in “x ANA x,” and he was considering harming himself. Instead, he wrote “Ghost” to keep him from making that mistake for himself. Not only did this intent work for him, but possibly millions of people in the same situation. “Ghost” appears as a gruesome depiction of humanity’s lowest point, but actually serves as a beacon of hope for the many that are unfortunate enough to be living that reality.

Now that that emotional hashing is through, let’s progress through the rest of the album. The next wave of songs depicts individual stories of different people in extremely different situations. “We’re In Love” presents the conflict of a man struggling with his sexual identity as he begins having a sexual relationship with another man. He has never been with a man before and struggles with accepting who he is. “Promise Me” is a sweet-sounding track that expresses putting your all into a relationship just for it to be torn away from you as you and your partner grow older. This song was inspired by Katz’s fear of growing old and losing his loved ones.  At the end of the trifecta, “Daddy” tells the story of a girl who was sexually abused by her alcoholic father from a very young age. The trauma permanently scars her, so when her father is hospitalized at an old age she smothers him to death as payment for all the years he stole from her.

“24″ returns the focus back to Katz’s own personal experiences in a sedated and calmed intermission. He reminisces about when he was younger and had a life ahead of him. He had hopes, dreams, and passion. In the present, he struggles with depression, anxiety, and drug addiction. This calls back to the continuing theme of Katz feeling worthless, as he states that his friends should let him die because he is too afraid to be alive. The next track was featured as a single, on the band’s EP Temper, and on OK, I’M SICK. Whereas “x ANA x” compared a drug to a person, “Heroin” does just the opposite. The song was originally released in 2014, five years before its release on the album. It is tied with “Ghost” for what is the band’s most emotionally raw performance. Josh knows that the girl he is with is wrong for him and is toxic, but he finds himself addicted to her. She treats him horribly, but he constantly finds himself going back to her. He knows that in the long-term he will escape his addiction to her, but cannot find it in himself at the time. It has become somewhat of an anthem for people that have been trapped in toxic or abusive relationships and has inspired many to stand up when found in that situation.

The calm atmosphere created by the last two tracks is destroyed as the hardcore, violent, and extremely offensive song written about people that are so afraid of change that they bring an entire nation down. Though many think that “Die” is directly aimed at Donald J. Trump, Katz has stated that it is not. Many of the lyrics point toward that conclusion, since many of the people that the song is truly aimed at are grouped in with Trump supporters. Keeping with the violent political scene, “Murder Games” solidifies Katz’s vehement stance on veganism and the consumption of meat. “Girlfriend” serves as yet another action-packed, graphic, and vulgar piece of insight into the real world. To put it simply, a man goes onto an online dating service to find love and becomes obsessed with an attractive woman’s profiles to the point where he imagines cutting her open and tasting her blood.

“Wide Eyes” continues the stories of people in horrible situations, telling the story of an altar boy who was sexually abused by the priests in his Church. He hid what happened to him from his loved ones in fear of being named a liar and being alienated from the Church. During the breakdown, he finally gives in and comes out about how the priests treated him. He accepts that he has become the shame of the Church and has been twisted into the bad guy. The album ends in the exact opposite place to where it started. “Cry” is a soft ballad about emotional pain that utilizes the use of metaphors and imagery to describe the action without actually using the word ‘cry’. 

OK, I’M SICK has not only brought the band to an amazing place, but has brought Josh Katz to a better mental state. Thousands of fans worldwide have been affected by the words contained in this masterpiece, and have even been given the will to keep going. That being said, it is very clear that there are two continuing themes throughout the album: Josh’s personal struggles and the struggles of other people in these horrible situations. This album covers an extremely broad scale, ranging from suicide to internet stalking to sexual abuse. This not only raises awareness to these issues that plague the world, but serve as a message to all people personally dealing with them. By telling the stories of these people, Badflower has given real-world survivors a safe space to open up about their struggles and the memories that follow them. This atmosphere is what brings listeners to cherish this band because Badflower is more than just a band and OK, I’M SICK is more than just an album. Badflower is a home. A haven. Somewhere that, despite all the world’s troubles and grievances and sickness, you can feel safe. When most bands tell a story, that’s all it is. A story. By connecting to this vulnerable and powerless side of humanity, OK, I’M SICK crosses the line from story to message. It is a message telling you to keep going and to cherish the good that you have. It is a message telling you that the situation you are in now is under your control and that things will get better. Nothing is permanent, and that is both a good thing and a bad thing. So relax. Go enjoy yourself.

“Okay, I’m sick! Not the kind of sick that lands you in the doctor, Not the kind that makes you weak and then heals you stronger, It's the kind of sick that turns your legs into spaghetti. It’s the kind of sick that makes your blood burn and your bones heavy. The kind of sick that makes an atheist pray for Jesus. The kind of sickness that turns your power into weakness. And I'm sick of being sick for this whole fucking place to witness. And I'm living a sick life that most people call privileged. And they're kinda right, but I’m still sicker than I can cope with.”

[threeletterslife]

Cuss Out

→ summary: As a senior in an old, cockroach-infested school, you’d honestly rather die than take a zero period class at the asscrack of dawn. But there’s a quiet boy who sits next to you that keeps you from ditching. He’s kinda cute (although you’ve never really seen his face). Yikes. But as they say, actions speak louder than words, right? 

→ pairing/rating: jungkook x reader | PG-13

→ genre: this was supposed to be fluff until i realized how fucking funny this whole situation is so now the majority of it is crack | high school!au

→ warnings: profanity as always

→ wordcount: 2.3k

→ a/n: inspiration hit because i hate my physics class and guys this is like my FIRST crack fic on tumblr after having a depressing fic streak 🤭 i hope you laugh as much as i cackled when i wrote this shit 

Say you're on your deathbed. Your right leg is already crossing the thin line that divides life and the afterlife; you begin to feel your body succumb to death. But an angel appears. She sparkles, glimmers, and asks if you would like a second chance. You nod your head frantically. Anything to see another day, another sunrise. But the angel says there is a price to pay. She twirls her long, curly blonde hair with a perfectly manicured, dainty finger.

She leans in and you catch a whiff of Bath and Body Works' Beautiful Day perfume. It makes you feel uneasy. You don't trust that smell.

"If you want a second chance, my dear Y/N," she sings, her voice light and feathery. "Then you must retake AP Physics C."

I what???

Your daydream skids to a complete stop and you jerk awake, hands flying to steady yourself and eyes wide in confusion.

You look around your stupid zero period AP Physics C class to see if anyone had witnessed your embarrassing actions. But it looks like everyone else is half asleep—except those crazy kids who are actually taking notes. You breathe a sigh of relief before turning towards your uptight teacher, Mr. Chung. He's droning on about magnetism again, his posture annoyingly straight and voice fairly high-pitched—like he never went through puberty. Honestly, if you hear him say 'right-hand rule' one more time, you might just raise your own right hand and slap the shit out of the nearest person. And that person happens to deserve a good slapping, in your opinion.

She's the pesky girl in front of you that won't stop spritzing her stupid perfume in ten-minute intervals. You swear to the heavens you used to like the scent of Beautiful Day. But now, it makes you want to throw up.

Yes, AP Physics C is the epitome of a hellhole.

What's more, you don't know anyone in the class, which makes everything worse than it already is. You wouldn't be surprised if some kids in the period thought you were mute—rightfully, too, because you've never spoken a single word. Frankly, you don't feel the need to.

God, lecture days are the worst. Mr. Chung yaps on and on about a subject that frankly, you don't give two shits about. You're only taking this to fill up your schedule, anyway. Besides, the only unit you enjoy in physics (electric circuits) is over, which means everything else is tedious and stupid.

You don't know how you're going to survive another few months of this.

Then again, you suppose something does keep you coming to your zero period class every day. It's the only thing that actually keeps you from ditching.

There's this quiet boy that sits right next to you. As a fairly reclusive person yourself, you know shy people don't really catch people's attention. But he does.

Well, you barely even know what he looks like since he wears a cap covering his face or pulls a hood over his head every day. So you can safely say the boy doesn't interest you because of his good looks. He piques your interest because he is weirdly considerate.

You're a zero period class, which means when you come into the classroom, the stupid chairs are set on top of the stupid tables so the janitors can clean the stupid floor. It's such a fucking pain in the ass to have to haul your rather heavy chair back down at seven a.m. in the morning so you can sit on it for fifty-seven instructional minutes.

You've embarrassingly struggled over putting your chair back down for the first month of school. But after that first month, magically, your chair would be put down for you.

The boy who sits next to you would be the only one near your seating row. So you know it's his doing. But strangely enough, your seating row consists of four seats. He only puts down the chair for you and himself.

It's an awfully sweet gesture that doesn't go unnoticed.

And he's been doing that every day without fail since last year.

Honestly, it's your senior year and you wouldn't be too against ditching your zero period class, but he keeps you grounded. You need to come every day to see if he puts down your chair. It's the only interesting thing going on in your life, anyway. College decisions are out, you're completely stress-free and you're only coming to school so the office doesn't report you to your parents.

Come to think of it, you're not even sure what the boy's name is. Jeon... Junook? Joonuk? You've only heard his friends call him by his last name, so that's what you've been calling him in your head.

Jeon.

It sounds kinda dreamy.

Yikes. I cannot be possibly falling for a boy I haven't spoken a word to.

But even the way he makes sweater paws with his oversized hoodies is fucking adorable. And sometimes, his head droops a bit, which means he's dosing off again. See? You have that in common with him. Both of you can't stay awake during Mr. Chung's lecture.

You applaud anyone who can stay awake through Mr. Chung's monotonous lectures, actually. Okay, back on track, though.

You've been keeping your little crush on Jeon to yourself for months. You're sure your secret will stay with you when you graduate this stupid hellhole that they call a school. You can't wait to leave this cockroach-infested high school. Well, you'll miss your friends, a couple of teachers, of course. And you'll miss Jeon too... But other than that, you can't wait to leave.

The sound of Mr. Chung yelling at a fellow student makes your daydreaming come to a halt. You sigh. Every week, that man gives out at least one detention. You figured your best bet to not get one is to not talk at all. It's been working so far, too.

You look over at Jeon to see how he's faring. But his head is on his desk, his arms covering his face entirely.

Must've had a rough night.

You're contemplating whether to wake him or not. Mr. Chung might go on a serious rampage if he catches someone so blatantly ignoring his oh-so-important lecture. You're just about to muster up all your courage to speak your very first word to Jeon—and your first word in the class—when something scuttles beneath your feet.

You freeze.

Oh, fucking hell no.

It is what you think it is.

A big, fat, ugly, winged-ass roach.

It twitches its antennas almost sinisterly, and you scream silently, mouth open in shock. If it flies straight at you, it's game over. You're logging out of the group chat of life.

Ohmygod. Ohmygodohmygodohmygod.

Okay, if you're smart about this, you'll get out of it without a major heart attack. You slowly tug your feet up to your chest, hands shaking and eyes glued onto the disgusting insect.

Apparently, the cockroach does not like being called disgusting in your thoughts. It twitches its antennas again as if to give you a warning signal.

Bitch, you curse at it.

You regret doing that.

The fucking cockroach hears you. And the next thing you know, it's flying straight at you with what you assume is blind rage.

You have no time to think. You scream the first words that come to your brain, "FUCKING SHIT," before nearly falling out of your chair to escape the terror of the fugly cockroach.

The roach manifests itself on your backpack, probably smug about the terror he'd just caused you.

Meanwhile, the whole class is staring at you. You, the quiet, shy girl that some people didn't know existed.

And for the first time, you're able to get a clear look at Jeon's face. His hood had fallen off of his head from the force he had jerked awake when he had heard your vulgar cussing. He's beautiful. His slightly long, curly hair brushes against his wide, doe eyes, and he's staring you down with a shocked look on his face. Your lips part as you examine his features. Oh fuck. I didn't expect that to be under the caps and hoods. And the fact that he's intensely meeting your gaze... You flush, unable to take his blatant stare, you turn away to see your teacher shaking his head at you.

"Y/N. That was unacceptable behavior," Mr. Chung's stern voice yells at you from across the classroom. Your teacher looks a bit shocked at your outburst as everyone else in the room. "We do not... partake in such profanity."

Your eyes grow larger as you stutter, pointing at the cockroach on your backpack. "I-I! Mr. Chung—"

"Detention, Y/N. I'll see you after school."

"I—" you start, fists clenched and eyes watering up with frustration. "I'm sorry, but there was a—"

"WHAT THE FUCK?! THERE'S A BIG ASS FUCKING COCKROACH. HOLY SHIT!"

Your eyes bulge out as you see Jeon of all people yell at the top of his lungs. His voice is surprisingly soft even when he's using it to shriek vulgar profanities. He turns back to grin at you, knocking the breath out of your lungs. Before you can even react to his unthinkable gesture, Mr. Chung begins to yell:

"Jungkook! That is absolutely unacceptable. Profanity will not be tolerated in this classroom! Both of you! Detention after school!" Your teacher huffs. Jungkook. You perk up at the sound of Jeon's actual name, a stupid smile blossoming on your face. Bad timing, though. "What are you smiling about? You know what, both of you leave the class until you are able to behave yourselves."

Humiliation tinges your ears red as you hang your head low. God forbid you were being chided by your teacher like you were back in freshman year.

"There's a cockroach on her backpack, Mr. Chung," Jungkook protests, crossing his arms.

Warmth floods through your cheeks as Jungkook defends you.

"Did I ask?" Mr. Chung counters to your utmost disbelief. "Leave your backpacks and get out of class. We'll talk when the period ends."

Fuck.

Jungkook looks over at you, shrugging. He mouths, Oh, well, we tried. Let's go.

Wait, alone time with Jeon Jungkook outside of class? Maybe the cockroach was a sign of luck. Even so, you shudder as you look at the disgusting piece of shit sitting on your backpack. The ugliest luck on Earth, that is.

You maneuver your way around your bag, quickly following behind Jungkook as he struts out of class as if nothing had happened. You feel the eyes of all of your classmates on your back and you would be lying if you said you weren't sweating up a storm.

The moment you're out of the class and away from the windows and door of the room, Jungkook lets out a large sigh of relief.

"That was one hell of a cockroach," he laughs, his nose scrunching up cutely and bangs falling in front of his eyes.

"Y-Yeah," you manage to answer. "Sorry. I think I might've gotten you in trouble..."

Jungkook grins. "Pity. Guess I'll have to spend time with you in detention."

"Do you think Mr. Chung will kill us?"

The boy snorts, casually leaning against the wall and gives you a sideways glance, tilting his head curiously to look at you. "That man's all talk and no action. He hasn't put a student in detention in thirty years... Although he seems like he does every week. I think we'll be fine."

You nod, cheeks turning red as Jungkook stares you down.

"You know, I've been meaning to talk to you for a while," he confesses, smiling softly at you. "But I'm always drowsy zero period, so I didn't want to say something stupid. You really woke me up today. Thanks, honestly."

"O-Oh," you mumble, "yeah, um, no problem. Oh, and thanks for putting my chair down for me every day."

"No biggie," Jungkook grins. "Oh, and by the way, you free this weekend?"

"Uh, yeah," you say, nodding, heart beating as you realize what this is going to lead to.

"Good!" Jungkook exclaims. "I've always wanted to take you out sometime... Is this Saturday okay?"

You nod, too shell-shocked to speak. Turns out the shy boy isn't so shy at all. He'd been quiet because he was tired.

"Great!" he says, clasping his hands together.

The rest of the conversation flowing nicely. The two of you are really getting to know each other. And you find that your instincts had been very accurate—this boy is godsent.

When the bell rings to signalize the end of zero period, you're honestly a bit disappointed. For the first time, you wish your zero period dragged on longer.

"Well, it was so nice getting to you know," Jungkook says as he waves his phone. "I'll text you the details about our date later!" He begins to walk backward away from you, waving.

You watch him like you're entranced in a deep, magical spell.

"Y/N?" he calls when he's several feet away from you.

"Yeah?" you answer.

"You know, I didn't know you were such a cuss out!" he says, winking at you. "Would've never pinned you as the type!"

You giggle, shaking your head. "Speak for yourself!" you call back, making Jungkook grin wider. "And Jungkook?" God, his name sounds so right, rolling off your tongue.

"Yeah?"

"You forgot your backpack, silly. It's still in the classroom."

"Oh shit!"

masterlist

[foreverlogical]

The other day, my husband returned home from an errand. I heard the water running as he soaped and scrubbed his hands, and then a sigh of relief as he peeled his mask off his face. It surprised me, that sigh; it felt familiar, but not coming from him. I could tell exactly where it bubbled up from in his body, how it felt escaping his lips. "You know," I mused aloud, "this is probably the closest you'll ever get to feeling what it's like to take off an underwire bra at the end of a long day." He considered for a second. "You're probably right," he said.

I'm hardly the first to have made the comparison between face masks and bras. But there's a flippancy to many of the memes I've seen on the subject, and I don't think the comparison is flip at all. We're currently engulfed in a national culture war over personal comfort versus community good. And this debate has magnified a much deeper and more urgent question: In America, who really gets to be comfortable in day-to-day life?

There's no denying that masks — particularly homemade cloth ones — are not comfortable. Straps pull and chafe; cloth sticks to lips and makes it harder to draw full breaths; the condensation from breath fogs glasses. There's social discomfort, too, the difficulty of reading facial expressions and understanding speech. And underneath it all, there's the unease of knowing why we wear masks: the deadly virus lurking in our communities, and the knowledge that our lives will never be quite the same again.

For those of us playing in the sandbox of women's fashion, there's a baseline level of unease that comes unthinkingly, unquestioningly, with the territory. As a woman with breasts that are large enough to be considered vulgar if not visibly buttressed, I haven't set foot in public without wearing some form of bra since I was about 10 years old. In that time, I've been repeatedly blistered, bruised, and rubbed raw by my own undergarments. It's not just bras, either; I've developed skin allergies from wearing department-store jewelry, and my feet are covered with scars and scabs from where my shoes have drawn blood. Not to mention, I've absorbed a healthy dose of body-image insecurities packaged along with my clothes.

When I talk to my friends who wear feminine clothing, we swap similar stories. This stuff is part of the fabric of our daily lives, to be quietly borne as we go about our business. This is not to say that masculine clothing can't be uncomfortable, or that men can't be insecure about their bodies. But for those of us accustomed to the rules of women's fashion, enduring discomfort for the sake of propriety is nothing new.

I could stop here. It's easy to say, "If I can wear a bra, you can wear a mask." And there's a kernel of truth in that. Absorbing a certain level of physical and emotional discomfort for the sake of others is not only possible, but incredibly common.

But there are wrinkles in this line of thinking. For one thing, we must be rigorous in distinguishing "discomfort" from "hardship." For some people — including those with respiratory illnesses or sensory sensitivities — mask-wearing can pose a genuine risk to health and well-being. And though many people with hearing loss can wear masks just fine, they run into challenges communicating with others whose lips are obscured and voices are muffled. At the same time, Americans who would simply rather not wear masks have co-opted the language of disability and accommodation, insisting that their physical discomfort rises to the level of a legally-protected status. These things are not equivalent, and we cannot treat them as such.

We also can't stop at gender when thinking about masks and discomfort. After all, there are plenty of women as well as men refusing to wear masks. But there is another characteristic that these mask-rejecting scene-makers share: They are overwhelmingly white. And that's telling, because whiteness in America — like maleness, or being abled, or so many other flavors of privilege — confers a certain level of day-to-day ease, a carelessness that is as comfortable as old pajamas.

Here, again, privilege rears its sticky head. To be comfortable in America — to feel safe and at-ease in one's own skin, to have one's needs and desires amply met, to be able to avoid experiences that are distressing or unpleasant — is, in many ways, dependent on our place in an oppressive system. Not everyone is able to get comfortable in the same way. Our identities intersect and interact differently. But privilege is seductive, and we are comfort-seeking creatures.Thus far, 2020 has been all about stripping away the trappings of American comfort with shocking speed. That's genuinely frightening. For those of us accustomed to the comforts of privilege in its various forms, the question now is what to do with our wounded feelings of entitlement and complacency. When the daily ease we took for granted — like going out in public with bare faces — is now complicated and bitter, how do we move forward? Do we cling to semblances of a comfortable existence that no longer exists? Or do we learn to metabolize these new discomforts and move forward anyway?

Wearing masks in public is an exercise in physical discomfort, yes; but it's also about the emotional discomfort of feeling our cushioned foundations dissolving under our feet. When I find myself comparing masks to bras, I'm not just thinking of the lines left in my skin by cloth and elastic pulled taut. I'm thinking of how we practice the ability to absorb and digest discomfort in all its forms.

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The Light in Hidden Places Review

5/5 stars Recommended for people who like: history, WWII, survival stories, historical fiction, based-on-true-stories, Between Shades of Grey, Poland, Hidden in Silence I’ve known about the movie Hidden in Silence for years; it’s one of my favorite WWII films. So, when I was in the bookstore the other day and saw a title mentioning “hidden” and “true heroism during World War II,” familiarity prickled. And, of course, the very first line of the synopsis gave away that yes, this is in fact a book based on the same events in the movie and oh my god to say I was excited was an understatement. I may have done a little dance in the store. Fusia and Helena really do deserve more recognition with the general public for the things they did during Germany’s hold on Poland and I am so happy the book lived up to my expectations and did the story justice. This is definitely one of those books (like CNV, in my opinion) that deserves more than 5 stars because it’s well written and it’s so real, even though parts of it have been fictionalized. Even knowing how the story ended, I was on the edge of my seat the entire time. Definitely recommend the read, especially if you’re looking for something WWII related that’s outside of Germany, France, or Britain. Fusia narrates the whole story and save for the first several chapters, the whole thing is told in present tense. I very much enjoyed reading Fusia’s voice and feeling her pain and fear and joy on an intimate level. Despite being 15 when Germany takes Poland, Fusia doesn’t have an immature voice. There are times when you can see her youth, but it doesn’t come through as a child’s narrative, which I appreciate. What really does come through is just how much Stefania is willing to go to bat for other people, be it the Diamants, the sister she hasn’t seen in 2-3 years, or other Jews in the ghetto that she’s never met. Her whole stance is essentially, ‘if someone is going to take you down, I’ll take them down WITH US.’ It’s fantastic, she’s so scrappy. Her temper does sometimes backfire on her, but W O W does she also have an uncanny ability to come out alright. Helena, the younger sister, is also AMAZING. The movie really doesn’t do her justice at all. Even when she only has the bare basics of what’s going on, Helena is more than willing to help strangers and keep secrets. Like Fusia, Helena is more than willing to take risks in order to get messages to Max and the others when they’re in the ghetto, and she plays a huge role in keeping them hidden after they’re out. She is without a doubt one of my favorite characters in the whole novel. But also it’s…Helena has such strength and bravery, but it is just absolutely heartbreaking to think of her coming into the understanding of what’s happening and having to go through some of these things at such a young age. Max is also one of my favorite characters, though for different reasons. He’s absolutely hilarious, and while it might seem odd to have humor and light-heartedness in a book with such a heavy everything, Cameron manages to add it in such a way that it isn’t jarring or vulgar. Max also acts somewhat as a leader, planning out the escapes and food runs and helping to organize people once they’re out of the ghetto. But again, like Fusia and Helena, he’s multidimensional and we see him break down with stress or cry when he’s grieving, and we see him taking unnecessary risks because he’s bored and he’s angry, and each aspect makes him feel more real. I keep saying ‘feels real,’ but of course it was real. It did happen. Cameron says in her Author’s Note at the end that most of the book did happen, though she took some liberties with minor characters, emotions, and events Fusia and Max/Joe couldn’t or wouldn’t elaborate on. Even with the fictionalization, it is brutal and true and definitely takes a look at an oft-overlooked aspect of WWII and the Holocaust. Poland was why we got involved for god’s sake and yet I feel like it’s almost never touched upon in WWII and Holocaust books, fiction and non-fiction. I know I’ve already said this, but I cannot recommend this book enough. It’s amazing. I’ve read it twice already. I will say that I’ve read The Forgetting and didn’t really like Cameron’s style in that, and I’ve seen other reviewers mentioning the writing style in this book was an issue for them, but I honestly thought it was good for the subject matter and the length of time that had to be covered. I’ll also say I didn’t realize this and The Forgetting were by the same author until I finished reading it, so the style is definitely different from her previous books, for better or worse (I’m in the ‘better’ camp, but I might be biased).