#this would actually be the most effective method of psychological torture to use on him

[elcucurucho]

“the federation is going to imprison BBH” “BBH is going to get brainwashed by the federation” the federation is going to send BBH to a second, smaller island where streaming is illegal to take a vacation from his vacation. they’re gonna give him a fruity drink with one of those little umbrellas in it and make him listen to jimmy buffett songs on loop

[goldenbloodytears]

I think it’s really funny how Danny is obviously a storyteller, but then his enjoyment of movies is basically forgotten about in his lore. It’s hard to tell if this is just a leftover nod to Scream, after-all “what’s your favourite scary movie?” is iconic—even if there’s absolutely zero evidence to support Danny using a similar method of phone-based psychological torture during his actual kills.

But his love for cinema must be intertwined with his usage of photography I would think. And this is what I think would be the most interesting aspect in his storytelling, personally. Initial photographs he takes while stalking are likely to be very basic, there’s some element of composition but it will be hampered by the fact you are dealing with unknowing subjects—it becomes a project of dealing in abstracts. Finding perfection in imperfection.

However, the final photo of his victim will be different. He has, in theory, enough time to stage a shot exactly how he wants it to be. He has the power to rewrite the story to his liking if he feels like something did not go the way he wanted it to by visual staging of the body and effects.

The Ghostface mori is a very quick event, but this to me is more an instance of game design over lore. He probably does take quick photos for certain kills, ones which may not be planned but are still meaningful—like the cop in Philly, or the entire situation of the trials in game… but I don’t think quick photos are the essence of his photography.

He’s too obsessive.

Bringing this back to movies, I think his photos borrow a lot from film language—there’s a lot of overlap here when it comes to staging shots which can be used, the main difference being film utilizes movement whereas photography is technically still-frame.

He probably loves a good Dutch angle, ya know? Horror staple.

Anyways, my end thought is that I think it’s really interesting to consider that Danny probably would not enjoy Scream—any of them. The meta commentary and satire would be lost on him, it would offend him.

[bestjeanistmonster]

What kind of stuff did Nicky go through to become Sonic/such a drastically different person? And how long did it take for him to embrace Sonic as his new identity?

I don’t have the specifics of the torture, brainwashing and conditioning he went through with Eggman nailed down unfortunately, mostly cuz the methods aren’t really as interesting to me as the emotional and psychological progression of how it happens but safe to say it was painful, intense, and even Sonic doesn’t remember much of the experience

On psychological level Eggman had been manipulating and slowly brainwashing Nicky from the moment they met, so more accurately he was being brainwashed for a year + 6 months before fully embracing who he was as Sonic and he did so by encouraging an obsession and attachment to him so great that Nicky would lose sight of who he actually was and become whatever Eggamn wanted him to be

Nicky’s internship was the perfect opportunity to get the obsession ball rolling and have him associate him with positive emotions, to have the kid open up to him, to make him think that he had a connection to him that no one else had and then get him hooked on it by isolating himself from his friends by filling his head with little doubts so Eggman would be his main confidant and adding some hatred for society as a whole to make it even more effective

Then after kidnapping Nicky, Eggman used all he learnt of the kid to manipulate him, to further confirm his doubts and insecurities and make him look like he was the only one who saw past those flaws, the only one he had, the only one who still cared all of that, who saw his potential to be something greater mixed with good old-fashioned drugs and torture to really fuck with his head and some very confusing mixed signals of gentleness so he would associate him not just with pain

The result was a mixed bag at first, Nicky was responding to it but for the most part he was very resistant, some hope still there that people were looking for him, that they’d find him, take him away from here.

But then that hope was crushed three months when he watched the live footage of his funeral proceedings and it sunk in that no one was coming. That he was alone.

Well… not alone… he had the doctor with him

From there Sonic became more attached to him, more willing to do bad things for him, more willing to do anything for him

The obsession basically spiralled out of control and here we are

[stuffymcstuffsworld]

March Madness

*warning mature content don't attempt any such actions in reality*

You really had to hand it to Ivan Pavlov and his theory on critical conditioning. Who knew that it could work on a demon so well? You stared down at your victim, a well-known smile making its way across your face.

March Marbas was a professional when it came to teaching torture. He could also stomach it very well, considering you sometimes had to receive hands-on experience to understand how much a body could endure. Waterboarding, electric shock, psychological torture. It's really a by the book process.

What March-san never accounted for, however, was for you to use human methods. Admittedly slower, yet effective. Oh, sure, you could have chosen any old method. But well... this one was more likely to affect a demon well known with physical torment. And looking at the results in front of you at the crying demon you knew it had.

They say the way to a man's heart is through his stomach. The same could be said for breaking a man's spirit. Well, in this case, a demon. See, you knew that he would be on guard from you for a bit, but that's okay. Your plan didn't associate you with being seen as the main culprit until the end.

The key to Pavlov's theory when applying it to torture wasn't actually much. In fact, it was even easier with the help of Opera. Just following 3 simple steps.

Step one ensures the victim becomes accustomed to whatever you are implementing into their daily routine. In this case, Opera serving snacks to their fellow staff members.

Step two is to experiment with withdrawal signs to observe when the subject becomes most desperate. One merely has to repeat these two steps a few times before landing on step three.

Step three is the easiest. Full stop. Leaving not a trace to be found anywhere. And watch as the beast becomes ravenous. Course one might wonder why this would occur. He has other food, breakfast, lunch, and dinner. So why be so caught up about a snack?

Well, you grinned at the begging demon who pleaded and clung to one of your legs desperately. It was never really about the snack. It was always about the constant secret ingredient layered in. Addiction. That's the real secret.

Pavlov's theory uses simple tactics that can lead to one being conditioned enough to believe they can't live without something. Once they associate what conditions must be met to receive the desired item, it makes it harder for them to believe that there are other ways to obtain it.

Of course, using an addictive helps to hurry the process along. You never did tell Opera what was in the small bottle you gave them, and they never once asked. It's a secret that only you knew as you held up a similar bottle the smell coming from it had March drooling excessively.

Silly demon. He's sadly mistaken if he thinks you'll give him more. This is punishment, not pleasure. Reaching out, you grasped him by the hair and tugged harshly. The plain demon hissed in discomfort as you had grabbed rather close to his horns.

You opened the bottle with a flick and watched as March-san egarly opened his mouth wide tongue sticking out. You glanced at Opera, who nodded to you at the ready. Just as you made it look like you were going to poor it out on the floor, Opera shoved a rather disgusting item down the professor's throat. Irumas home made cooking. (Don't judge for getting rid of something toxic)

You kept your eyes on both of them as you drained the bottle's contents down your own throat instead, not thinking as you swallowed. You watched as the kneeling demon continuously gagged but seemed to regain his senses. He stared up at you in shock.

"So how did it feel sensei? Did you get a small idea of how maddening human torture could be? Stuck inside your own head howling while your body acted on it own. Crawling at my feet and begging for more, are you remembering how dangerous torture can be now?"

The realization crossing his features was so satisfying. The way he ran like you had sent firey Hellhounds after him pleased you greatly. Torture came from more than just pain. You had already reminded them of that.

But you couldn't help but ponder if you should remind that cocky bastard of more forms. After all, he hurt your poor Jazzy with a smile on his face. Remedial lessons might be in order.

Opera nervously watches from beside you. Waiting for any symptoms from drinking such a large quantity at once. You smiled at them, a peaceful look finally settling in. "Opera, you might want to go shopping today." You noticed their tail twitch erratically.

Handing them the empty bottle, you started giggling. "Because we're out of strawberry syrup silly." You watched their body slump with relief that you hadn't consumed anything dangerous before they bowed and quickly left the room.

Leaving you alone with your thoughts. Mental theory is great and all, but seeing it in person and how it can drastically change someone? It made you shudder once you knew you were alone. It seemed you were becoming more demonic by the day as you acted more upon your impulses.

Rolling up your sleeve, you examined a small cut on your arm. It is barely visible now but has been well taken care of by all the magical ointments you had on hand. No one could ever know.

Thank devi Opera never caught on, but maybe that's because you had mixed it with strawberry syrup and warned Opera not to taste the contents. Rolling back down your sleeve, you stood up and made your way into the hall. As if nothing happened.

[crumbleclub]

clone au notes so far

Experiment stuff:

Medical abuse!! So much medical abuse. Gets experimented on constantly

Easily tires, constantly in pain, but essentially immortal due to remnant experiments.

Physically speaking, seems to have general strength limits for the most part, even though William basically gives him physical therapy. Maybe constant mild muscle wasting?

His cells replace themselves more quickly than average, but not to a "perfect" degree. He can be killed by physical injuries, but his wound healing is about twice as fast.

Unidentified digestive problems, feels sick and tired immediately after eating but seems to get nutrients from food just fine (the remnant is trying to fix the organic material he's eating lmao). Less noticable with super processed foods

There's probably a whole hospitalish room somewhere in the Afton house for experimenting on him. They even have an x ray machine for spinal injections

Probably has a port for easy iv access

Ankle bracing, custom made by William. Holds his feet at a right angle for walking if his ankles get too fatigued to do so, but has a hinge to allow him to force them down if needed

Raised by William w pretty typical human growth but may have been lab grown as a fetus?? Unless William hired a surrogate???? If the former there's probably some kind of chamber mimicking necessary conditions or whatever hidden away somewhere

Thinks William is younger than he is (William has done SOME remnant experimentation on himself, but not as much as he wants bc clones have unwanted side effects). Clone thinks William is middle aged, but he's in his 70s. This means clone is probably born sometime between 1995-2005

Fifth cloning attempt, sixth clone (one embryo split)

Day to day:

Lives in Utah. Does not know what a mormon is (William finds every religion boring and honestly just. Doesn't discuss any of them lmao)

Has seen some tv, mostly limited to things William likes/thinks would be beneficial

Super codependent w William obviously. Like parentified and infantilized alternating wildly based on William's mood/rules

William starts to feel threatened the older clone gets bc he could lose in a fight, but simultaneously he wants clone to know how to be violent. In the end tends to settle for taking him "hunting" using methods that amount to animal torture, but only with prey smaller than himself

Taught to do most basic tasks needed to live, but William does a lot for him when he wants more dependence (avoids letting him have sharps when cooking or shaving so does a lot of that for him, will just randomly get moody and decide clone is either on his own for the day or is having nearly everything done for him). Like there are days William disappears and there are days he insists on brushing his pretty capable teenager's teeth for him

Sometimes builds toys and things for fun. Likes to reverse engineer toys and also break things in weird ways

Media intake managed by William, not allowed online. Has a computer with no internet William puts things on for him to do, is sometimes given downloaded material William approves upon request (articles, games, etc)

William tries VERY HARD to isolate him so he thinks his life is normal

Starts to get suspicious about his isolation in his teens, but has to be very quiet about it to avoid physical harm

Personality:

Morbidly curious, just like William. However, he's not quite sadistic the way William is

Gets frustrated with how overbearing William is, but his loneliness makes him tolerate it

SO lonely. Wants attention SO bad, but taught not to seek it out directly. Will try to get others' attention the way a cat does (causing trouble, being nearby, staring)

Very very curious about the human brain, but more physically than psychologically. Like he would want to try removing random chunks of brains just to see what happens in theory, but he'd probably have an ethical crisis instead if the opportunity actually arose

Has not been taught a lot of moral types of things (don't hurt others etc) but he does associate the idea of violence towards humans with himself being in pain bc. William. So he doesn't revel in it the way William does

That being said his method of choice in a fight is blunt force trauma, and the curiosity would be full force if he ever killed. He would want to see when they stopped moving, how their expressions changed, etc

Little knowledge of physical boundaries. Will just grab people trying to be affectionate without knowing whether they're ok with it

Probably has no idea you're not supposed to change in front of people

Has been coached on how to talk to people outside of the home but has never ever had visitors and wouldn't think twice abt them seeing all the weird experiment shit they have

Things he knows:

Mostly proficient in core subjects to at least elementary level

Postsecondary knowledge in math, especially in finances

Postsecondary knowledge of engineering, especially relevant knowledge to animatronics and robotics

High school reading level, taught more about analyzing factual information from nonfiction and understanding others from memoirs than he was intructed much on fiction past elementary

Basic world history knowledge (probably early middle schoolish) but only what William thought was relevant (he knows about the world wars and can point to some countries on a map, can point to Utah on a US map, knows abt like. The industrial revolution and other various periods of time. Inventions and stuff yk)

A decent amount about the US legal system, most notably warrants and attorney rights

A handful of foreign languages

How to mix cocktails

Basic hygiene tasks

Human anatomy, including what autopsies look like and the basics of how they are done

Theoretical ways to take down a person, but William only taught him ways he was confident he could counter

Things he doesn't:

How to drive

Local geography; cannot get around Hurricane independently

Lots of social rules. He knows the things William thought to tell him– how to introduce himself politely, how to answer the phone, table manners, how to behave respectfully towards a parent by his standards– but not the things learned from experience, like how to deescalate an arguement, personal boundaries, how conversations work with anyone other than William. Would probably talk about William's favorite topics when trying to be polite bc he thinks that's what everyone likes

The rules to most sports

Anything abt most games people play with peers as kids. He has never played hide and seek or tag or anything

He has never pet a dog or cat. He has seen them on the street before, though

How to swim

How to ride a bike

How to jump rope

How to read music

[n1kolaiz]

The Six Realms

Okay, so I was pretty close to giving up on writing analyses but I'm back LMFAO plus I see we're close to 100 followers and I just want to thank you guys for being so very supportive <3

Alright, I'm not sure if anyone's ever written about this, but if an analysis like this exists, please do let me know because I'm kind of curious as to what other people think about this, too!

Remember that time Fukuchi spoke about bringing "about the five signs of an angel's death"?

I read a little bit more about it, and as a minor content warning: this analysis will focus on a few religious aspects (Buddhism + Hinduism). So if I get any of the facts wrong, firstly: I do not mean any disrespect to either religion, and secondly: please do correct me if I interpret anything in the wrong way.

Spoilers for BSD chapter 90 onwards + BEAST!AU under the cut!

So I'll start by talking about the Decay of Angels. As we all know, the members include Fyodor Dostoyevsky, Nikolai Gogol, Sigma, and Bram Stoker, and their leader, Fukuchi Ochi. After Fyodor's arrest, the Decay of Angels came into light with Nikolai murdering four government officials in a week. These murders symbolise the Buddhist cycle of existence, or otherwise known as samsara: the cycle of life, death, and rebirth.

"We are the Decay of Angels—hiding here as terrorists, a 'murder association', five people who will announce the demise of the celestial world."

Nikolai Gogol, chapter 57

Samsara is described to be a concept beyond human understanding. According to Hinduism, samsara is the physical world where every being has its soul trapped into a physical vessel. The Hindus believe that everything has a soul, and due to a soul's attachment to desire, it is forced into a deathless cycle of being born, dying, and reincarnating into a different body. In Buddhism, the ultimate way to break free from this cycle is by obtaining nirvana.

Nirvana is a Sanskrit word for the goal of the Buddhist path: enlightenment or awakening. In Pali, the language of some of the earliest Buddhist texts, the word is nibbana; in both languages it means "extinction" (like a lamp or flame) or "cessation." It refers to the extinction of greed, ill will, and delusion in the mind, the three poisons that perpetuate suffering. Nirvana is what the Buddha achieved on the night of his enlightenment: he became completely free from the three poisons. Everything he taught for the rest of his life was aimed at helping others to arrive at that same freedom.

- TRICYCLE'S definition of nirvana

As Fukuchi mentions in the panel above, there are six different realms of existence. These realms represent every possible state of existence, but one cannot live in a specific realm forever. Depending on whether or not one's past actions were morally good or bad, an individual is born into one of these realms. Basically, the controlling factor of which realm a person is born into is dependent on their respective karma. The realms are separated into two categories: the hellish ones and the heavenly ones.

The Deva Realm: where beings are rewarded for the good deeds they have done. This realm is void of anything unpleasant. It is basically paradise— empty of unfulfilled desires, any form of suffering, and fears of every kind. Religious individuals, however, do not seek to be born into this realm since its attitude is more or less carefree.

The Asura Realm: where demigods are admitted. Asuras are driven by greed and envy, and may come in conflict with human beings since they are quite similar. They are powerful beings, but quarrel with each other quite a bit, making this realm quite undesirable to be reborn into.

The Animal Realm: where beings are given the form of an animal (you probably guessed that lol). Individuals here don't actually have good karma to take pride in, but rather, they are born into this realm to work off their bad karma (by being slaughtered, hunted, or forced to work, etc). Being born into this realm forces one to atone for their past sins by living out their life as an animal.

The Hell Realm: where one is punished for their evil actions. The most merciless of realms, where one pays for their transgressions through pure suffering, methods of which include: dismemberment, starvation, and psychological/physical torture. However, once a person's term is fulfilled in this realm, they are presumably promised to be reborn into a higher state.

The Preta Realm: similar to the hell realm, in which beings pay for their past sins (specifically: greed and stinginess) by having to survive through hunger and thirst. This realm is also known as the 'ghost realm,' because some pretas are psychologically tortured by being forced to live in places their past selves have lived in. They are invisible to human beings living at that time, which pushes them to face the depths of despair and loneliness. Your typical horror movie, really.

The Human Realm: the only realm where one's actions determine their future. The status (social ranking, physical wellbeing, and so on) of a human being in this realm is determined by their past actions, but due to the fact that a person has their own conscience to differentiate good morals from bad, the actions they commit in this realm have the power to determine which realm they are sent to next.

Okay, so now that I've got that out of the way, let's shift our focus to the Book. Very little is known about the Book, but the basic fundamentals of how it works is that whatever is written in the book will come into existence only if its contents follow the rules of karma. In addition to that, only a few sentences can be written into a single page of the Book, and it must follow the current narrative of the story.

If I'm not wrong, the first time the Book was mentioned was by Fitzgerald, who wanted it to resurrect his deceased daughter in hopes of restoring his wife's mental health. The next time the Book is brought up is when Fyodor's intentions to possess it are divulged; his goal was to decimate the global population of ability-users. And now, the current arc has the Book as its central focus, with a single page in Fukuchi's possession.

[ BEAST!AU spoilers ]

The Book acts as the central point of multiverses, with each character's lives differing from universe to universe.

Dazai committing suicide in this alternate universe stands in sharp contrast with how he decided to start up a new life in the main universe.

Oda staying alive to act as a mentor to Akutagawa in the ADA differs from how Oda uses his death to prompt Dazai to "be on the side that saves people."

And of course, the way Atsushi and Akutagawa have their positions switched in the two universes depicts how different their lives would be if they were given the chance to be mentored by different people— these are just a few examples of how the Book houses an endless amount of possibilities.

[ end of BEAST!AU spoilers ]

Hypothetically speaking, this kind of reminds me of the differing realms I mentioned before, where suffering is promised in some realms, and better things are granted in the rest, depending on one's karma, or the deeds they've done in their past lives. In this scenario, perhaps one's past life can be understood as one's current life in a different universe. That's just a personal opinion though. Take it as you will.

side note: Keep in mind that the person who is more or less impervious to the Book's effect is Dazai, with his nullification ability. I wouldn't want to propose any theories in this aspect (I don't believe I'm fully fact-checked ;_;), but I could use Dazai as a raw example of how your choices affect your future. If Dazai had decided to stay in the Port Mafia after Oda's death, or if he even decided to go through with his suicidal fixations, life would've been different for him in the root universe (obviously, ryley) I mean, you could basically understand that from how he ended up in the BEAST au, but imagine if he really did slip up in his decision-making in any of the universes.

Many analysts have proposed that he went MIA (early in his life) from the main universe for a while to figure out how the BEAST universe worked, whilst having the Book to his advantage. Perhaps his actions were guided? I'm not saying he's all-knowing, but he's sure as hell smart. I'm not sure if Kafka was trying to highlight the concept of karma when it comes to Dazai, but if he is, then I suppose you could say that Dazai is pretty much unaffected by the rules of karma, existing as the centerpiece of all the multiverses. No Longer Human is the namesake of his ability, but the book talks about disqualification from societal norms and generally, the world. I was talking about it with a friend, and they reminded me that Yozo (the main protagonist) was pretty strong in his views against society. Like he didn't speak out of total defeat, he spoke out of defense. If there was anything Dazai actually lost to, it was his guilt— "Living itself is a source of sin."

Then again, that's my personal interpretation since everyone has their unique perspective of his writings. In terms of the actual adaptation, you could translate the word 'disqualification' to 'insusceptibilty' when if it came to the Book's effects on Dazai? This side note is becoming really long lmao anyways I'll link a few theories which afflicted me with brainrot down below.

Another thing before I wrap up, the name 'Decay of Angels' stemmed from Yukio Mishima's book entitled 'The Decay of An Angel.' This is the final novel to the author's tetralogy: 'The Sea of Fertility.' The main protagonist, Honda, meets a person he believes to be a reincarnation of his friend, Kiyoaki, who takes the form of a young teenage boy named Tōru. The last novel of this series enhances Mishima's dominant themes of the series as a whole:

the decay of courtly tradition in Japan

the essence and value of Buddhist philosophy and aesthetics

Mishima’s apocalyptic vision of the modern era

Again, this could be referred to what Fukuchi goes on to say:

Some people view the concept of samsara optimistically, justifying it by saying that perhaps each individual is given a second (third, fourth, fifth, who knows) chance to refine their actions in order to be birthed into a better realm, with their karma being the independent variable.

On the other hand, other people, specifically the Hindus, view the cycle of existence as some sort of plague. To them, the flow of life and being forced to endure the suffering of mere existence in any form was somewhat frowned down upon. Some Hindus viewed samsara as a trap. Besides, having one's soul being limited to a physical body for the rest of eternity was not very appealing, especially since where they ended up at depended on the karmic value their past actions surmounted.

Even so, particular types of Buddhists don't seek nirvana, but instead, like the Hindus, they make an effort to be good people of society, building up their good deeds to increase the likelihood of being reborn into one of the better realms.

As mentioned before, the Deva Realm was the home of angels, the most carefree, gratified beings to exist. Fukuchi describes these angels as the people who don't get their hands dirty, the people who act as the puppeteers of society: politicians.

In terms of parallels, angels were the most fortunate and powerful, but they didn't have anyone ruling over them. A lack of supervision would lead to the abuse of power, which is what I believe Fukuchi was referring to. Deeming himself the Decay of Angels, he sought to prove himself as the 'sign of death that falls on the nation's greed.'

A few fun facts (okay, not really) about Yukio Mishima: he committed seppuku (ritual suicide by disembowelment) on the day he held a speech to voice out his unpopular political beliefs to the public. Mishima deeply treasured traditions and opposed the modern mindset the nation was advancing forward to adapt eventually. In his last book, The Decay of an Angel, he spoke about the five signs which complete the death of an angel:

Here are the five greater signs: the once-immaculate robes are soiled, the flowers in the flowery crown fade and fall, sweat pours from the armpits, a fetid stench envelops the body, the angel is no longer happy in its proper place.

The Decay of an Angel, p.53

The reviews about this series I've read so far describe Mishima's works to be quite complex; his writings demanded a lot of time to deconstruct and understand. They were highly symbolic, and he was pretty obsessed with death and the 'spiritual barrenness of the modern world.' I think you could attach a few strings from here to the mindsets of the DOA members. Of course, this parallel is completely abstract, but I'll go on rambling anyway:

He should have armed them with the foreknowledge that would keep them from flinging themselves after their destinies, take away their wings, keep them from soaring, make them march in step with the crowd. The world does not approve of flying. Wings are dangerous weapons. They invite self-destruction before they can be used. If he had brought Isao to terms with the fools, then he could have pretended that he knew nothing of wings.

The Decay of an Angel, p.113

I suppose you could resonate Nikolai with that excerpt. As much as Fukuchi takes the lead in this whole murder association, I'd like to believe that each member of the DOA plays an equally interesting part in whatever movement they're trying to execute. Fyodor feels it is his god-sent purpose to cleanse the world of its sins, his motto being, "Let the hand of God guide you." Sigma doesn't know where he belongs, since his origination comes from a page in the Book, and is fueled by the desperation to find a reason to live. Bram holds one of the most powerful abilities which is counted to be one of the "Top Ten Calamities to Destroy the World."

What I mean to say is that the DOA members are incredibly powerful, and they're not your ordinary antagonists (or I'm just biased). It's not just overthrowing authorities, mass genocide, and world domination— you could say that each individual is trying to utilize their purposes to their fullest expenditures, and the way they're trying to assert their plan into action is a little more passive-aggressive (framing the Agency, having a convo with a suicidal dude in jail, etc). They're the gray area between evil and good. As they framed the good guys for their own crimes, they're trying to conquer the bad guys for exploiting the innocent as they please.

This post would definitely age well if all hell breaks loose in the current arc (as if it didn't) and Kafka doesn't give us a happy ending.

That's all I have to say for now I guess! Thank you for reading, and once again, if anyone else something they wanna share, feel free to do so <3

sources (tryna follow Q's example ^_^) :

the six realms

samsara

the decay of angels

beast!au

the book

the sea of fertility

yukio mishima

theory: dazai’s emotional/mental state in beast!au

q’s theory: dazai being the protector of the book

theory: beast!dazai and the book

[theamberwizard]

i’ve been thinking about black widow and the red room recently, as one does, and i’ve got a lot of thoughts about the effects of the red room on widows who’ve escaped. couple things, just before i begin: i would recommend having watched black widow before this because there are implied (?) spoilers, i use way too fancy language while i write and i don’t have an editor cause this is mainly to catch her off guard, so, uh, whoops sorry

trigger warnings: TW: child abuse TW: restricted eating/starving yourself TW: dehumanization TW: death of a child

so yeah, enjoy my list of 10 personal headcanons about how the red room fucks you up on all the levels.

1) black widows cannot sleep in. like, they wake up at 5:00 am every day. it’s not a physical thing, at least not as far as they know, because they can negate that by just going to bed two hours or less before 5:00 am just from their lack of sleep. if, however, they go to sleep at a fairly normal hour they will, like clockwork, wake up at 5:00. this stems from them doing it every single day of their life since they got indoctrinated in the red room. if they didn’t wake up at 5:00 am ready for more training or missions, for any reason, they would be tortured. sometimes physically, sometimes mentally. eventually, all the widows would get that message. they still can’t shake it. because of that, natasha will often refuse to go to sleep at a normal hour, trying to force her body into submission, trying to rid herself of the painful memories that accompanied sleep and waking up afterwards. only clint knows why, because each day in that vent, natasha would snap up at 4:00 am. she had to explain to him that she just wasn’t accustomed to budapest time, and that actually, it was 5:00 am in russia.

2) for months after escaping the red room, widows practically cannot eat. in the red room, they were fed mushy messes of meals, filled with only the necessary nutrients that they absolutely had to have to survive. most widows can only get down one meal, maybe even a snack if they push it, until they throw it all up. they have to slowly eat slightly more each day for weeks until they can get down a normal intake of food. even then, it’s hard to push that, and every widow relapses into throwing up in those early stages. however, this isn’t normally a problem for most widows until a couple weeks into their life with freedom. that’s about the time that they make an acquaintance, who will eventually pluck up the courage to ask them why every time said friend will eat near the widow, the widow will lean over and whisper: “careful, that’s your whole ration today and i don’t want to do extra training.”

3) each “class” of widows had an extra mentor teacher in their early red room years. this was an older widow, someone who’d been falling behind in her recent missions, and with a look that the red room deemed “motherly”. their sole purpose was to be the person each widow got attached too, the parental figure. they were nice, they were helpful, they taught many different basic techniques. then, one day, the red room would have another older widow, (one already introduced to the children as the metaphorical “bad cop” of this scenario) come in and inform the mentor that she had failed her latest mission and proceed to, in front of thirty eleven year-olds, shoot the mentor. the mentor widow would not die that day- the red room refused to waste such a weapon- but the class of up incoming widows would be informed that she had. the official purpose of this exercise was to demonstrate to both the trainees and the trainer the consequences of failing a mission. the unofficial purpose? that would be the last psychological effects the mentor’s “death” would have upon the class, making them learn what happened to attachments in the red room. the day natasha’s class experienced this was the day she cut off all contact with her sister. the day yelena experiences this is the day she first another widow- because yelena killed that mentor with her own bare hands before the informant ever finished the announcement.

4) towards the start of the red room’s history, there were several attacks on the red room. the first ever attack was from a local police station who had been getting complaints of loud wailing, and, upon further investigation, realized what they were dealing with. they brought several other police and militia groups from nearby towns. the immediate action that was taken was to throw the littlest girls they had at the attackers. it stopped the police in their tracks, obviously, because you really don’t expect to come across thirty little girls while searching through a building of highly trained assassins. the red room then sent their fully trained widows and killed everyone. including the girls. the red room then found that footage from their cameras (because of fucking course they have cameras) and then showed it to the next batch of widows, just to show them how disposable they were.

5) yelena and natasha almost caused a whole fucking mutiny within the red room just because of their names. in the red room, you see, widows do not get names. they instead are bestowed with numbers, and even those are a twisted class ranking. they all wore little name tags with the numbers on them until came natasha and yelena came in. yelena, having just seen her mother get shot, complied almost immediately and was addressed as number 42. on the other side of that coin you have natasha, who had already been in the red room and remembered every gruesome detail, and went “fuck you my name is natalia.” upon hearing of this (word gets around fast in the red room. every girl must know they are being listened to at all times, and no secrets can be kept from the red room,) yelena too announced her name to the class.

6) this was met with blanching from every child in that class, because how on earth can you be called by a word? no, they thought, we are numbers, we are weapons, we are not people and we cannot have our own words, for we are not worthy. but secretly, internally, they wished for a name. slowly, they began piecing syllables together until they formed a coherent name, and for the first time in the red room’s long history, they didn’t have weapons. not anymore. they have two full classes of human little girls. the red room officials heard of this, obviously, and took to the only method they had now. violence. the classes were rid of the named girls, yet natasha and yelena were kept alive. they were kept alive to be ostracized, to be the girl the others pointed at and said “she’s the reason all my friends died.” they were kept alive so they could watch the carnage they had unwittingly caused just by saying their own names. and the worst part? well, the worst part was when the teachers accounted for those kills, and made them top of the class. yelena will never forget the day the teachers stood her and her sister up in front of all the widows-in-traning and told them what a good job they had done, how those tactics were sure to help them graduate. i mean, you’re practically a shoo-in if they rest of your class was killed by your school.

7) the red room could never fully stop the names, and so they decided to make a system, and the names would be the highest reward. they told the young, impressionable girls that while maybe outsiders such as natasha and yelena got names at birth, you had to earn them here. if you are to become a spy, you will take on the name of you very first official alias. if, instead, you become an assassin, you will take on the name of your very first official kill. of course, in reality, the widows couldn’t actually address each other with their new earned names, and instead used “team leader” or other such titles. but it became a small comfort for them, thinking of themselves in third person, with their very own names. in some small part they weren’t fully weapons anymore, no, they were people again. natasha took on the name natalia, because in her mind that life in ohio had been her first mission, even if she hadn’t known it. yelena took on yelena as well, but in her mind that little girl in ohio who was sitting in the backseat, caring only about which song they played, that girl had to have been yelena’s first true kill.

8) the names system worked well in the red room, but when you escaped it caused some serious problems. most would have to announce themselves to the russian government, saying they had been flying under the radar their whole life and never became registered. then, they’d give a non-russian name, and their whole ruse would fall apart. unfortunately, this was the least of their problems, because many a widow would someday meet a relative of their very first kill, and when they introduced themselves as the person they had killed all those years ago, the families and friends would often figure them out.

9) one of the biggest parts of the red room’s brainwashing was their little catchphrases they used. ironically, a lot of them were eerily close to boy scout mottos- “be prepared,” an iconic scout motto, versus “there is no safety, only preparedness,” the most frequently used phrase within the red room. when widows then escaped, the most small phrase could set them off. some unknowing widows even adopted little boys in their new lives, who often became boy scouts. the ensuing misery is something you can imagine yourself.

10) after clint helped natasha to escape, she immediately died her hair blond.  clint asked why, of course, and she didn’t tell him. (what, you thought i’d have another cute clintasha moment? never.) this was partly because she hadn’t admitted it to herself, though, because natasha couldn’t remember her sister without remembering all the suffering that came with her.

11) when the widows were smaller, more susceptible to the conditioning, the red room would stage infiltrations. older widows, ones who were closer to retirement, would come in in different uniforms, sometimes the uniforms of UN officers or local police, sometimes different organizations, all different types. the most recent uniforms made yelena sick looking at them, because each time the older widows would pretend to be the avengers there would also be one pretending to be her sister. each time she saw the fake natasha she wanted to break that widow’s neck because that’s not how my sister tilts her head, you’re doing it all wrong. you should be doing it like this, you shouldn’t be doing it at all, i should be doing this, i know my sister. each time those exact thoughts went into her head, and each time all she really wanted was for her sister to be there, for natasha to do her little head tilt upon seeing yelena and take her hand and say “you’re safe now, i promise,” and for natasha to be telling the truth. the only problem was that deep down inside herself yelena knew that this could never actually happen while yelena was still in the red room, because while yelena was still in the red room she knew that she would look at natasha telling her she was safe and tell her in return that there was no safety, only preparedness, and then murder her sister in cold blood.

[scripttorture]

One of the central characters in a fantasy story I'm writing has torture as part of her backstory. She was captured by an evil race, and one individual in particular put her through a "training" regime designed to turn her into a useful/trustworthy slave. Specifically the goals of the training were:

- destroy her sense of self / agency

- overwrite her ingrained response of healing herself when injured (she has magical healing powers)

- an affectionate or worshipful disposition towards her captors

- immediate obedience to any command

I feel like both physical and psychological torture / mental conditioning are probably appropriate, though I'm leaning away from including sexual abuse. I honestly don't know much about torture at all and the only things that come to mind as producing a result similar to what I'm looking for are the Game of Thrones torture sequence and the use of obdience collars in the Codex Alera book series. The latter is very interesting to me because it is a magical device that inflicts pain in reaction to disobedience but also inflicts pleasure to reward obedience.

I guess I'm just wondering if you have any advice for what kinds of methods would be good to include in a process designed to produce obedience, rather than torture for its own sake or to extract information, as well as if there are any common pitfalls I should try to avoid in writing about such a thing.

The training itself won't be in the book, but I need to be familiar with it for backstory purposes because later in the story this character encounters her torturer again, and is subjected to some further abuse before she finally overcomes her fear and kills him.

Alright well I’m going to be straight up with you: the scenario you’ve presented is a very common torture apologist trope. It’s incredibly unrealistic. And it’s unrealistic in ways that support torture by claiming it can be ‘useful’.

 Which probably means that you’re new to the blog and haven’t heard me give this talk before. That’s OK, we all learn sometime and it’s not my intention to shame you for the fact you’re not as obsessed with this stuff as I am or couldn’t afford to shell out for the books.

 Torture does not produce obedience. The best evidence we have right now suggests it encourages active resistance.

 If you got a lot of your inspiration from Game of Thrones then frankly I’m not surprised you came up with apologia. The torture in that series is incredibly badly handled. And a big part of the point of running this blog is that most people are getting their information on torture from shows like that. Which happens because the research is inaccessible and hasn’t been popularised the way fictional tropes (sometimes fictional tropes literally started by torturers) have been popularised.

 The important thing is what you choose to do now.

 I’m going to break down the problems here and make some suggestions for what you could do instead.

 Firstly: there is no torture or abuse that will guarantee obedience. Pain does not make people meek or compliant or willing to follow commands.

 Torture survivors are not broken.

 They are not ‘controlled’ by their torturers and the suggestion that they are is used in the real world to bar real survivors from treatment. It is also used to bar them from entering safe countries and to argue that they shouldn’t be allowed visas or passports.

 The best statistics we have for any sort of compliance under torture come from analysis of historical French data where torture was used to try and force confessions (something we know torture can sometimes do).

 The ‘success’ rate averaged at 10%. Under torture 90% of people will not comply long enough to sign their name.

 Secondly: torture does not and can not ‘make’ a victim feel ‘worshipful’ towards their torturer. The suggestion is kind of like asking if someone can tap dance immediately after removing the bones from their legs.

 Torturers have no control over a victim’s emotions. They have no control over their symptoms. They have no control over their beliefs.

 And there is no such thing as a torture that can change someone’s mind in a way torturers can control.

 Once again, this fictional trope is used by politicians and the media to justify marginalising real torture survivors.

 I have read hundreds, possibly thousands, of accounts from torture survivors. I’ve read historic and modern accounts. I’ve read accounts from all sort of people from all over the globe. I have never seen a survivor say anything positive about their torturers. I have never seen anything close to toleration.

 A lot of survivors are blisteringly angry at their torturers. A lot of them feel overwhelming levels of spite and some report literally putting themselves at risk of death in order to spite their torturers. And yes, a lot of them are afraid too. None of these emotions are mutually exclusive.

 Affection is impossible. We are not wired that way.

 Thirdly: I understand that ‘evil races’ are a long standing fantasy trope but it would be remiss of me if I didn’t mention the racism inherent in that idea. That some people are ‘born bad’.

 I’d strongly suggest you look up the Black, Indian and First Nations people that I know are on this site critiquing these kinds of fantasy tropes. Because they will be able to explain it better then I can.

 Fourthly: the term ‘psychological torture’ is a pretty common dog whistle for torture apologia.

 Most of the time tortures that people dub ‘psychological’ are things with real, physical effects that lead to lasting injury and death. They just don’t tend to leave obvious external scars. I use Rejali’s term ‘clean torture’ for these techniques. Researchers distinguish them from scarring tortures because they are harder to detect and prove in court.

 The majority of survivors today will have experienced clean torture. They will have no obvious physical scars. But they will still be disabled. They’re ‘just’ less likely to see any form of justice for it.

 Fifthly: torture is a terrible training method because it decreases a person’s ability to learn.

 Torture causes memory problems. It also often causes lasting physical injuries that make performing basic tasks more difficult. And it causes a lot of serious psychological problems which make performing basic tasks more difficult.

 A trained person who was never tortured will always out perform someone whose training involved torture.

 I probably sound quite angry here.

 I write fantasy and I also write about torture a lot. But I can’t imagine that it’s just flavour for a fantasy world or some artefact of the past. Torture is a real, present threat in the country that I grew up in. If I was to return now I could, literally, be tortured and executed.

 If you want to include torture in your world, in your story then you are committing to telling someone else’s story. You are representing an incredibly marginalised group of people and you are presenting that representation to a third group, one that has never had contact with real torture survivors.

 Are you comfortable with the idea of telling your peers that survivors are still controlled by ‘the enemy’? That they’re passive? That they don’t have the capacity to make their own decisions?

 Are you comfortable knowing that the popularity of this message keeps millions of genocide survivors in refugee camps, blocked from citizenship, aid and safety?

 I understand feeling attached to a story and a character. And I understand that this information is hard to find. Hell I’m probably going to end up with the only English copy of one of the pivotal textbooks because I’m shelling out to get it translated.

 You say you want to write a torture survivor. With respect I don’t think you know what a torture survivor looks like.

 I think the most helpful, and kindest, thing I can do here is describe what torture does to people. Because I can’t tell you whether that’s something you want to write. I could try and rebuild this scenario for you (and if you decide you’re interested in that after reading all of this and all the links then I suggest looking through the blog tags for ICURE, torture as training, Black Widow and Overwatch.) But I think you need to decide whether you actually want to write a torture survivor first.

 Here’s a post on the most common torture apologia tropes.

 Here’s the post on the types of memory problems torture commonly causes. I strongly recommend picking at least one.

 Remember that this would never go away. Improvement and recovery in torture survivors means learning to live with symptoms. The symptoms themselves are permanent.

 It’s a hundred different alarms set up on their phone to try and make up for the forgetfulness that makes them miss appointments. It’s the little bottle of perfume in their pocket to bring themselves back to reality when they get intrusive memories at work.

 Here’s a post on the other common symptoms.

 You want something in the range of 3-5 of those, though more are likely if your character is held for years. Each of them should be severe. Every single symptom should have a large, negative, impact on the character’s daily life.

 Do you know anyone with chronic pain? It warps their world. Work can become impossible. Basic household tasks like getting dressed, cooking, cleaning the dishes are done through gritted teeth or not at all. Hobbies and ‘fun’ activities dwindle as they struggle to find a way to do them that doesn’t hurt. Interaction with other people, even loved ones, can easily become barbed.

 Because the pain makes everything more difficult. It means everything takes more energy, more effort. Which means that things fall by the wayside, whether that’s by a pile of mouldering dishes in the sink or snapping at a child. It means tears and the social judgement that follows them. It means the world narrowing as it gets harder to go out.

 Do you see what I mean? Every part of life.

 That’s an example for one symptom. You need to work out at least four. Then figure out how they interact. Then figure out what the character can do to make her life better.

 With chronic pain that can mean painkillers but it’s always more then that. It’s re-learning how to do things; how to put on trousers without aggravating the bad knee, how to sew with one hand. It means learning to cut down on what they do and it means learning a new sort of flexibility; accepting that there are days when the pain is too much.

 It can mean having the same conversation about disability over and over again. With family, with friends, with colleagues. ‘I can’t do that.’ ‘I can do that sometimes but not always.’ ‘That will hurt me.’ ‘I can’t use that chair.’ ‘I can’t get my arms that high above my shoulders.’ ‘I need help with this.’

 And that sometimes means learning a kind of patience that is really barely held back rage. Or perhaps I’m projecting a little with this last one.

 If you’ve never met a torture survivor, if you’ve never looked at a survivor’s work, then all this is difficult. You’re trying to imagine something from first principals with nothing to fall back on.

 So let’s bring some survivors into the discussion here. Some reality.

 Who’s listened to Fela? How about Bobi Wine?

 Fela Kuti was the father of modern Afro beats music. He was tortured multiple times and during one attack, which destroyed his home, his mother was murdered by the military. When he got out of jail Fela marched her funeral procession past the biggest barracks in Nigeria’s biggest city. He wrote two songs about this attack and he doubled down on his opposition to the military government.

 Fela’s music started causing riots.

 You can read what I have to say about him here. You can listen to his music on youtube.

 Here’s an interview with Bobi Wine, which was conducted shortly after he was tortured in Uganda. He talked about how he was determined to go back and continue fighting. Which he did. He even ran against the president.

 I’ve also got a short piece on Searle who was a cartoonist captured by the Japanese during World War 2. His drawings of what happened in To the Kwai and Back are worth seeing. Especially if you want to write atrocities on this scale. They will show you the scale and how to focus on the small, human elements despite that overwhelming scale.

 Alleg’s The Question is pretty much a must, it’s one of the most thorough accounts from the Franco-Algerian war.

 Monroe’s A Darkling Plain is also a must, it’s a series of interviews with survivors of various different conflicts and atrocities. Some are torture survivors. Some are not. It is essential reading because it shows the variety in survivors as well as giving a sense of their lives beyond the symptoms.

 Finally Amnesty International has literally hundreds of interviews and studies available for free online.

 The most important decision for any story with regards to torture is whether it should be there at all.

 So much of this topic is intimidating and so much of it is difficult to write. Not just in the ‘oh this is horribly effecting’ sense but in the ‘I have twelve things to juggle in this simple scene’ sense.

 Ask yourself what torture adds to this character and this story. What does this backstory actually give this character?

 Because if the point is to have her vulnerable and then ultimately triumphing violently over her attackers I don’t think you want a torture scenario. You could get the same thing from a bad guy trying to drug her and having the kidnapping fail when she fights him off, clumsy but effective nonetheless.

 And she could still come out of something like that traumatised.

 Right now I really don’t see this adding anything but torture apologia to your story.

 Handling torture well in a story means accepting that it can’t be the same story without it. It means watching the characters and narrative warp under the weight of it. It means lasting effects, for all the characters and for the world itself.

 I believe you are capable of writing that if you want to, pet. But this ain’t it.

Edit: I’m having trouble seeing the beginning of the answer here. Can anyone let me know if there are formatting issues again please? The first word in the htmal is ‘Alright’ but what I’m seeing on tumblr starts 8 paragraphs in.

Available on Wordpress.

Disclaimer

[itmighthavebeenintentional]

Shadows And Pills - 1

Summary: Some people come away from the Battle of New York with scars and broken bones. Some come away with nightmares and years of therapy ahead of them. Some don’t come away at all. Alexa comes away with a shadow.

18+ ONLY, MINORS DO NOT PROCEED

Warnings: RAPE, Torture, Abuse, Self Harm, Negative Images of Psychological Services/Mental Health Professionals, Hallucinations, Stalking, Supernatural Horror, Prescription Drug Use and Eventual Abuse, Mental Illness, PTSD, Flashbacks of Violence, Flashbacks of Tragedy, Starving Oneself, Isolation, Physical and Mental Exhaustion, Denial, Self Neglect, Gaslighting, Mental Spiraling, Mental and Emotional Abuse

18+ ONLY, MINORS DO NOT PROCEED

Author’s Note: This is not a happy story in any sense, at any point. I could only write this at my lowest places, emotionally and mentally speaking, and I had a hard time coming back from it. This is dark, and it does not at any point get lighter. I relied heavily on my own experiences with mental struggles and took a few pieces here and there from my own experiences with mental health professionals. MY EXPERIENCES ARE MY OWN AND ARE NOT TYPICAL, NOT EVEN FOR ME. If you need mental help of any kind, please DO NOT HESITATE TO REACH OUT TO GET IT. This story was an exercise in mental exorcism, in a sense.

For all the Loki lovers out there, I do not shine him anything like a good or redeeming light here. He is evil incarnate, more or less. I love Loki, I love good Loki and redeemed Loki and misunderstood Loki and just about every incarnation thereof. I needed a villain, and he fit the story.

Above all, please be kind. This was one of the most difficult things I’ve ever written, and it took me years to work up the courage to post it. If you have any questions, please feel free to message me or send me an ask.

Thank you to @thoughtslikeaminefield and @glassjacket . I would not have made it through this story and would honestly not be here today with the two of you. I will never be able to tell you how much you mean to me.

18+ ONLY, MINORS DO NOT PROCEED

Word Count: 1 - 3785; 2 - 3513; 3 - 1068

In Case You Missed It: ItMightHaveBeenIntentional’s Masterlist

...

Shadows and Pills

1

Some people come away from the Battle of New York with scars and broken bones. Some come away with nightmares and years of therapy ahead of them. Some don’t come away at all.

Alexa comes away with a shadow.

In the weeks following the disaster, the public equally lauds and decries the Avengers, but while their opinions are divided over the heroes, the villain is universally denounced as nothing short of Satan himself, and the city throws an actual celebration the day Thor takes Loki back to Asgard to face the justice of their people.

Alexa, having not turned on her television since the day she got home from the hospital, ignores the boisterous celebrants and goes about her shopping, earbuds firmly in place, frown lines now permanently etched between her eyes and around her pinched lips.

“Routine will help you through some of the worst days,” her therapist tells her during one session. “Something familiar and safe to retreat to when the flashbacks are the worst. Just give it a try,” he adds at her disbelieving grimace.

And so she sets a routine.

Morning Routine: wake up. Ignore alarm, lie in bed an extra thirty minutes or so. Shower. Pretend to eat breakfast. Take meds (this one she never skips or shirks). Find something to wear. Stare at it for another ten minutes. Eventually get dressed. Contemplate keys for another fifteen minutes. Leave the goddamned apartment already.

Her routine has varying results, although she does admit to her therapist that life is marginally more bearable with the routine than without.

“It’s nice to have something to look forward to for the next day.”

Her therapist can’t quite hide his grimace at her flat, deadened tone, but she’s not being sarcastic or rude. She finds that going to bed at night is a trifle easier when she knows what’s going to happen the next day.

“So, who are we up to today?” the doctor asks, switching the subject with awkward abruptness. It’s been six weeks since Hell came to New York, and during their twice-weekly meetings, her therapist suggests going through each of the people she saw die in front of her that day, to get closure...or say goodbye...or something.

Sometimes Alexa wonders whether he just wants to hear the details for his own perverse pleasure.

“Brenda.”

Alexa robotically begins to list the personal details she knows...knew...about her floor manager. Unlike the mail room intern she discussed at their last meeting, the list for Brenda goes on for a while. She’s worked with Brenda since she started at the company, learning most of what she knows about her current job from the woman.

Brenda was kind, sharply intelligent, and mothering to everyone under her supervision, and yet she did it in a way that didn’t make anyone uncomfortable. She balanced work and a family long and well enough to both receive regular promotions within the company and also, very recently, become a new grandmother.

The backs of Alexa’s eyes sting as she remembers the photo Brenda showed her not twenty minutes before part of the building collapsed on top of half the department. Her jaw locks as the scene plays before her eyes again, the explosions and shrieks of metal drowning out the shrieks of the people only five feet away.

She closes her eyes, but there’s no pause button to freeze the scene, no power button to shut the images off as she turns in her memory and runs, making it to the stairwell and slamming the door open, turning back and screaming for Brenda, straining her eyes through the smoke and dust and mountains of falling debris. Brenda is running, reaching for Alexa even though she seems miles away, and then one of the file cabinets is thrown over, propelled faster and harder than should be possible, and...and���

And then Brenda isn’t running anymore. Her outstretched hand, the only part of her that wasn't crushed by office furniture, spasms against the ruined carpet, as if it thinks it’s reached its destination and is grasping at its savior.

Alexa’s hand tingles, and her fingers lock into her palm, nails fitting easily into the little grooves she dug there weeks ago. No blood, she only dug that deep once, but the furrows remain as permanently etched there as the frown lines on her face.

Alexa struggles to take in a labored breath as her therapist watches her with the appropriate amount of professional, clinical sympathy and detachment.

“Do your counting,” he reminds her.

How could she forget? She counts to three once, letting a breath out at the end. She repeats the process twice more, ignoring her therapist’s brief flash of annoyance at her departure from his “system.” But, for once, he doesn’t ask her why she has to deviate from the standard one-to-ten method and just lets her do the goddamned counting in peace.

Small blessings.

“Have you had any flashbacks since our last session?”

She stares at him, letting her gaze rest heavy and disbelieving as she turns his question over. She’s been averaging about five flashbacks a day, triggered by everything from accidentally brushing a stranger on the sidewalk (Jim knocking past her to get down the stairs just as the door on the stairwell behind her explodes inward; more shrieking, then falling, then dark) to lifting a carton of cold milk from the shelf at the grocery (that impossibly cold hand grasping hers, pulling her up from the rubble, bringing her face to face with...something...something in the...shadows, it was so dark there, and…).

“Yeah. I’ve had some flashbacks since our last session.”

“What sort of coping strategies did you use?”

He’s not even meeting her eyes now, just getting notes down on that damned pad. The scratching of his pen grates into her bones, and Alexa grits her teeth as she glares.

One, two, three.

Breathe.

One, two, three.

Breathe.

One, two, three.

Breathe.

She slowly recites the list of strategies he suggested during a previous session, none of which have proven particularly effective at lessening the frequency of the episodes, but most of which she grudgingly admits provide some slight relief afterwards and allow her to refocus her mind on the present rather than dwelling in the memory.

“And the shadows?”

How can he get this wrong every time when he’s taking all those fucking notes?

“Still just the one.”

“Has it manifested in any other way? Asked you to do anything? Do you feel different in any way when you notice it?”

There’s a distasteful eagerness to his words that always turns Alexa’s stomach, and she has to physically bite into her tongue to keep from asking what kind of bonus he gets for each symptom she shows of different mental illnesses.

“It’s just there sometimes. I..” She hesitates, feeling vaguely nauseated from his questions, but she has to be honest, right? Because, ultimately, it’s his job to help her, and she’s never going to get through this by hiding symptoms. He can’t help fix her if he doesn’t know what’s broken, and he did suggest the routine, so, okay, he gets a pass for this one.

“I still mostly only see it before I’m falling asleep. I’ve started seeing it in the late afternoon, as well, not often, but sometimes. Always in shadows that are already there. It doesn’t talk or anything, doesn’t really have any face or form except for vaguely person-shaped, but it...it watches me. And it’s...denser than it was last week. More...it’s thicker than it was, like when you see wispy clouds kind of...gather and turn into storm clouds?”

He nods, his pen whizzing over the legal pad he records their session notes on. “So, you feel threatened by the shadow? Like it’s storm clouds gathering to...what? It feels menacing?”

But, like most of the questions Alexa fences in this office, this one isn’t easily answered.

“It feels like it’s watching me, waiting for something. I don’t know what. I don’t...I don’t know if it’s menacing, exactly. Like, it feels potentially dangerous, but I can’t tell if it’s for me. I don’t know. It’s just...darker and more there this week, but it doesn’t do anything, and I don’t feel different, and it doesn’t speak to me. I. Don’t. Hear. Voices.”

She clips off each word at the end of her rant separately and precisely, repeating her counting in her head, and she forces her breathing to even out. The doctor is just doing his job, he’s just trying to help, he’s supposed to ask these questions, it’s how he helps-

“Hmm. I’ll have to consider that between now and our next meeting. In the meantime, go ahead and move up to the next dosage step with your meds, keep it on the escalating schedule we set.”

You set, she thinks mutinously for a moment before internally shaking her head. She nods, biting her tongue once more. She’s going to have a permanent indentation there as well, at this rate.

“Any side effects? Itching, swelling, difficulty breathing? Any unreasonable lethargy or detachment?”

“I mean...I don’t really have anything to attach to at this point, so…”

He frowns at her again, and she wonders if he’s going to crank up her dosage two notches instead of one.

“Are you having what you feel are typical emotional responses to everyday stimuli? Have you laughed or smiled at anything yet? How long has it been since you emotionally felt anything besides the frustration and panic?”

And, somehow, this question is difficult, too. She struggles through, trying to find a balance between honesty and not making herself look like a complete failure who can't function in life. She doesn’t help her case when she admits she hasn’t followed many of his suggestions beyond establishing a routine.

“Not even exercising?” he asks, his disappointment palpable.

When she silently shakes her head, her lips pinched tight against his disapproval, he shakes his head with a sigh that sings of ultimate betrayal. Instead of berating her as usual, the doctor frowns and looks down at his notes, considering them silently. He clicks his tongue against his teeth for a moment before switching over to end-session mode, robotically delivering his closing remarks, his typical reminders to keep her meds on a strict schedule at the exact time every day, to avoid all alcohol and unprescribed drugs, to keep her diet as clean and unprocessed as possible, and to get plenty of exercise. Even this last bit is delivered with a sharply clinical detachment, as if she has driven him to the brink of her own psychoses by stubbornly refusing to accept his help.

There is a short, silent moment between them where they refuse to look at each other, the doctor perusing his notes once more while Alexa examines the wrinkles creased into her jeans from lack of folding. The doctor flips pages over in his legal pad and slaps the cover shut sharply, breaking the standoff with one last, dismissive comment.

“Routine, Alexa. Stick to the routine. If it’s what brings you comfort, if that's the one thing you’re taking away from these sessions that actually helps, then stick with it. I’ll see you Thursday afternoon.”

….

Her afternoons vary, according to her therapy schedule. Her sessions take roughly an hour and a half, so that’s one block of time she doesn’t have to try and fill. On the days she isn’t having her skull cracked open, she can sometimes force herself to work on the files her company sends her way. Grunt work, brainless stuff that any first-year intern could do, but it keeps her on the payroll and covered by health insurance until the doctor clears her to return to the office.

Not that there’s an office to return to yet.

Grocery shopping for food she’ll pretend to eat later, making excuses to stay out of the apartment a little longer each day, watching the shadows of the buildings grow darker and longer until the sunlight disappears from the streets.

And the other shadow, the darkest of all, thick and solid against the brick and stone, pacing her, keeping track as she wanders through the broken city blocks. Sometimes she walks a little faster, pretends to not notice the black spot. Sometimes she pretends it’s keeping her company. With the most conversation she’s had in weeks taking place in her therapy sessions, she occasionally finds the imaginary company of her shadow stalker to be more pleasant than menacing.

Occasionally.

Eventually, though, she and her chimerical companion head back to the silent, encroaching walls of her apartment to begin the night routine.

…

Night Routine: laundry. Pretend to eat dinner. Shower. Finish laundry. Clean already clean kitchen. Another shower (on the bad days, the ash and debris won’t wash off). Rearrange already arranged closet. Braid hair. Take meds, do not skip, no matter how much they screw up her sleep, because they help. They do. Settle into bed. Stare at the wall. Adjust pillows. Re-settle. Stare at the shadow. Start to drift off, slide into a flashback, scream back to full consciousness. Watch the shadow. Doze. Awaken from a fucked up nightmare she can only partially remember. Repeat ad nauseum.

Really, if Alexa could just skip the nights and go straight into morning, that’d be great. Mornings are tedious but tolerable. Afternoons are blurry and tense, especially therapy days, but nights…

Nights just won't shut down.

The drugs are partially responsible, the doctor has told her multiple times. The medicine can either make sleeping more difficult, or it can act like a sedative, dragging and holding her down. Honestly, she’s getting kind of mixed results. It’s difficult to stay awake, easy to slip under, but then she can’t stay asleep for very long, jerking back to consciousness in something close to full panic, unable to figure out if it’s the drugs or the dreams that’s pushing her to the edge.

Because the fucked up dreams...well, that’s all on her and her broken brain. She stopped bringing up the dreams in therapy after the first couple of weeks of sessions. The doctor seemed hell bent on steering Alexa towards the possibility that she was experiencing waking hallucinations, but there’s no way she could possibly be awake for all this shit. Maybe some of the flashbacks, but not…

Not…

Her brain isn’t that broken.

No. No, she can tell from the way she jerks to consciousness afterwards, she knows she’s asleep. Yeah, she’s unstable and has flashbacks, but she’s not delusional. They’re dreams.

Every night.

About…

Something.

Okay, sometimes she can remember. Sometimes the meds dull her down so much she forgets what day it is, but sometimes she can hold on to a detail or two. Cold, slender fingers, impossibly strong. A flash of bright blue that sends nausea racing through her entire body (who knew your toes could feel nauseated?) or a glimpse of bottle green that, conversely, thrills her to her soul. A smooth, velvet voice that penetrates every layer of her being, down to the deepest recesses. Darkness descending...a sense of dreadful awe…

And sometimes she can remember every unhinged detail with a terrifying clarity that she will never even consider mentioning to the therapist. Not if she likes her jacket sleeves to fit properly.

There’s honesty, and then there’s idiocy.

The shadow is larger tonight. Taller, a little broader, definitely denser. She would say looming, even, but it’s not quite that large.

Not quite.

She stares at it openly, no longer trying to avoid acknowledging its presence. What's the point? The doctor knows about it, and it’s not like she’s talking to it. She’s not that far gone yet. And she hasn't lied to the doctor, either. The shadow does watch her, like it’s waiting, gathering. Convalescing. But it hasn't ever talked to her.

She does not hear voices.

She yawns and rolls her shoulders, left then right, sliding a little lower in bed, searching for a cooler place between the sheets. Movement catches her eye, and she looks up as the shadow shifts, leaning left then right, and seems to…

Grow?

No, it’s never moved before. She’s pretty sure she’s never seen it move, but now it pulses and raises up, stretching-

No. No. Sourceless shadows don’t move. They don’t grow, they don’t shift, they don’t-

The shadow stretches upwards abruptly, definitely looming now, and Alexa hits the wall behind the bed, scrambling backwards in a blind panic as she realizes the shadow isn’t growing.

It’s coming closer.

Her breathing speeds up, but her limbs are heavy and dull with narcotic stupor. The foot of her bed darkens as the shadow creeps even closer, and she opens her mouth to protest, to scream, to say something, but her tongue is numb and stupid with the acrid, coppery tang of fear and pharmaceuticals, and she hates, hates this kind of dream where she can’t speak, can't move and she can barely breathe, and...and…

The shadow reaches out, stretches over her foot and slides up her calf in a clammy, viscous caress that tightens on her knee and pulls her several inches down the bed as her throat closes.

Do not shrink from Me. It is not your fear I crave, but your adoration. Come to Me, allow yourself to move past the fear and embrace what I wish to grant you.

Horror, deep and instinctual, floods her veins. Alexa feels the voice more than hears it, and it awakens an ancient fear that finally, though futilely, awakens her drugged limbs. She claws at her sheets uselessly as the shadow moves over her, a freezing oil slick that oozes against her skin as if her blankets and clothes weren’t even there, sending shivers to the very marrow of her bones as her gorge rises, and she chokes on the bile that singes the back of her throat. She can’t fight, can’t move against this intangible force, but neither will her terror let her sink past the fear to blissful unawareness.

Give over. Let go of your stubborn fear that tethers you to this useless reality. Allow Me entrance, and I will grant you the relief you seek. Release your grip on the world that cares nothing for you, and I shall bestow upon you the peace you so desperately crave.

Her skin raises in gooseflesh everywhere the shadow crosses, and her stomach turns as it squeezes its way up her torso, her chest, her throat, slipping over her lips in a sick parody of a lover’s caress. She opens her mouth - to scream, to breathe, to do something - and the shadow plunges inwards, invading her mouth, her throat, coating her inside and out with a thick, glutinous sensation that leaves her mouth hanging obscenely open, tongue thrashing, while her mind screams useless denials.

Submit to Me what you see I can easily take, give Me My due. Give over, drown in Me, and I will save you from this miserable existence.

And she is drowning, the air pressed from her lungs as a dark heaviness settles solidly over her. Her arms are forced over her head, and she is strung out on her twisted sheets, writhing under the weight of the shadow as it presses over every surface, against every entrance. No matter how she strains, her legs are gradually forced apart. The darkness’s lack of speed is affected, some barely functioning bit of her brain whispers to her; it could take her as swiftly as it cares to and is only moving slowly because it wants her to suffer, wants to taste her anguish. She has no chance against the shadow, she can’t even touch it, really she could just save herself the anxiety and fear and just-

NO.

She twists as hard as she can, but the shadow simply moves with her, flows over her, waits until she takes another breath, and then surges between her thighs, driving her torso off the bed with the force of its thrust. Every cell in her body locks, not in pain, but in complete revulsion. And then again, and again, cruel in the thoroughness of its violation, covering and saturating every crevice of her being, coating and tainting everything it touches.

Wrong, can't...stop, stop, stop, wrong, can’t...God, please…

You cannot rely on yourself, on your own mind for proper guidance. Let Me protect you. Let Me save you from yourself.

How long...minutes...hours...years...just stop, please…please-

The alarm clock shrieks right in her goddamned ear, and she can breathe and move and scream and goddammit, she fucking hates those dreams that send her careening onto the floor, scrambling for cover when she can’t even remember what she's running from.

Her morning routine is already in shambles. There’s no ignoring the alarm clock today. A morning shower maybe, to wash off the sticky aftermath of night sweats, definitely, but no lying about, staring at the walls in a sleep-daze. Definitely washing the sheets tonight, too.

She surveys what she can see of her bed from her crumpled position on the floor in front of the closet and sighs. Must’ve been a hell of a nightmare to tear up the covers that badly. She thinks for a moment of trying a little harder to remember, to recall some piece of the dream, but then her stomach flips over, and she summarily rejects that idea in favor of caffeination and medication.

She allows herself another few minutes on the floor, waiting until her respiratory and heart rates return to a less alarming pace before climbing to her quivering knees. The shadow darkens the far corner of the room, as innocuous as always. Though she doesn’t know why, she can’t help an involuntary flinch when she first sees it. It’s not normally present in the morning, at least, she doesn’t think so...well, she can't remember the shadow being so dark in the mornings, at least. But...

She clears her throat against the thickness that seems to coat it suddenly, and readjusts her plan to include a glass of water before she starts in on the coffee. She realizes after another long moment of staring that her hands are trembling along with her legs. Her jaw clenches, and she knows she’s being ridiculous. It’s a damned shadow. It just sits there. It’s a minor manifestation of a mild psychosis secondary to major psychological trauma. It’s just a damned dark spot; it doesn’t change, doesn't want her to do anything, and it definitely doesn’t fucking talk to her.

She. Does. Not. Hear. Voices.

…

Up Now: 2

[riding-with-the-wild-hunt]

Day 1 of Fëanorian Week: Maedhros and Medicine

Hello, my lovelies! I hope you are all having the most amazing Monday. Anyways, it's my first Fëanorian Week as an active creator in the Silm fandom (cue confetti and balloons), and I'm trying my best to participate in (hopefully) every day! Wish me luck, friends!

Anyways, I thought I'd start out with some Maedhros-themed meta. I chose to work with the prompts "torture," and "adjustment/coping." Many thanks to @feanorianweek for all their hard work on this. You all are awesome!!

(TW for discussion of: torture, medical procedures, severe injuries, general body stuff)

Disclaimer: I'm not a doctor or a nurse and I haven't extensively studied medicine. I'm just into speculative biology and speculative medicine (pretty much speculative anything, tbh), and I wanted to write about this. I invite all you wonderful medical professionals out there to add on if you care to. Just be kind, please, okay? :)

Now, on to the meta!

Most everyone knows about Maedhros' capture by Morgoth. There's a lot of writing on the subject, and on the subsequent topic of his recovery (the ever-so-lovely @outofangband has many resources on both of these things if you want to check their work out).

Maedhros is tortured for approximately 30 years before Fingon rescues him. Think about that for a minute. 30 years. To put that in perspective, that's more than double my entire lifetime. It's slightly under half of my father's.

I'm going to guess that the amount of time Maedhros spent hanging on Thangorodrim is much longer than the amount he spent in Angband itself, simply because he's more useful as a visible trophy/symbol than hidden away in a cell somewhere. This is definitely speculation, but for the purposes of this, I'm going to say he spent 8-12 years in Angband and 18-22 years on Thangorodrim.

Now, we know that Morgoth is an, er, less-than-courteous host. Maedhros probably would've been beaten, starved, burned, experimented on, assaulted, maimed, poisoned, and otherwise harmed in all sorts of ways before he ever gets on Thangorodrim.

And then there's the matter of those 18-22 years he spent hanging from a mountain, suffering respiratory damage from the polluted air and the hanging, starvation, thirst, extreme damage to his bones, muscles, and tendons, hypothermia, potential animal attacks or parasites, infection of previous wounds, sleep deprivation, and, well, you can imagine the rest.

(And this doesn't even include the psychological consequences. We'll get to that later.)

But anyways. He gets rescued. What then? I highly doubt that any elf had actually returned from Angband before, so....do the doctors know how to handle Maedhros' injuries? They've probably seen missing limbs, broken bones, stab/slash wounds, etc. from battle, but what about a partially collapsed/stretched diaphragm (yes, this happens if you are hanging from your hands/arms for a long period of time), or extreme blunt force trauma, or internal bleeding, or repeatedly opened and probably gangrenous wounds, to name a few?

Unless there's a REALLY dark side to the Valar that we don't know about, elven medical professionals wouldn't have had to deal with these things in Valinor, and probably not even on the Helcaraxë. Which leads me to believe that most, if not all, of the healing techniques used on Maedhros were experimental, purely theoretical, or the highly respected Fëanorian method of"guess we'll wing it."

This means that Maedhros probably never healed right in a lot of places. Even if elves have different physiognomy than humans, his immune system and his capability for recovery were both probably compromised from extreme strain. Chances are, Maedhros wouldn't have been able to walk for years after his return. He would've had to relearn a lot more than just how to write and fight with the other hand. And even if he managed to get close to how he'd been before, he would never have been the same physically, and he would've been constantly pushing through fluctuating levels of pain. For the rest of his life. For thousands of years.

Oh, and he probably would've needed to relearn how to talk to a degree. During the mountain years, he probably would've created a whole new vocabulary of words for things that weren't connected to his former linguistic knowledge. At the beginning of his recovery, it's possible that most of his speech would've sounded like babble to everyone else, even if it made perfect sense to him.

And then there's the psychological and neurological effects! PTSD, severe anxiety, suicidal ideation, chronic depression, selective mutism, extreme dissociation, eating disorders, hallucinations, paranoia, phantom pains, no/low self-worth, memory loss--these are just a few things that can come out of having been tortured.

All of this leaves me with a lot of questions: did elves have physical therapy? Did they understand nerve damage? Would their surgical techniques have been helpful to Maedhros? Were they aware of the extent of his injuries? How good were their painkillers and antibiotics? Did they even have those? Were new procedures developed because of Maedhros? Did he, as king and after, advocate for better medical understanding of torture survivors, or write about his experiences to help others? Did he spend time with recovering elves? Did he have to hide his pain because ableist views were widespread? Did he use mobility aids? Did he have nonverbal episodes? Did he always have lingering respiratory/lung problems? Was he really sensitive to light (hint hint: ask me about my eye headcanons)? Did he ever forget who people around him were, or become disoriented and afraid?

Whatever the answers here may be (and there are many, many possible theories) my conclusion remains the same: it was an absolute miracle that Maedhros survived--and not only survived, but continued on to be a ruler, an accomplished diplomat, an incredible soldier, a caretaker, an ambassador, and so much more, all while persevering against physical and emotional pain and probably facing ableism.

And probably most people never even realized just how strong he was.

Anyways, I hope you enjoyed this big honker of a piece and/or learned something. I'm glad I got to write about this, because Maedhros matters a lot to me. Like, a lot a lot.

May the Valar smile on the rest of Fëanorian Week! I look forward to appreciating all of your wonderful creations and commentary. 😘

[moiraineswife]

Jasnah Meta - The Importance of Context

AKA: PLEASE stop saying that Jasnah is pro-genocide when she is. Not. At all. In any way. Shape or form. Whatsoever. 

TL;DR: Nowhere, at any point, in four ginormous books of text, does Jasnah ever say ‘you know what’s great? Genocide.’ She never even implies. It she never even actually, seriously, suggests it. Please stop saying she does as though it’s canon I lose 12 years of my life every time it’s mentioned. 

AND NOW FOR THE LONG VERSION BECAUSE Y’ALL KNOW I CAN’T LEAVE IT AT THAT!!!!! 

PLEASE NOTE! THERE WILL BE SOME MINOR RHYTHM OF WAR SPOILERS IN HERE. PLEASE AVERT YOUR EYEBALLS IF THIS IS A DISTRESSING CONCEPT TO YOU.

So first things first, let us discuss The Scene Itself: 

“Yes. The answer is obvious. We need to find the Heralds.”

Kaladin nodded in agreement.

“Then,” Jasnah added, “we need to kill them.”

“What?” Kaladin demanded. “Woman, are you insane?”

“The Stormfather laid it out,” Jasnah said, unperturbed. “The Heralds made a pact. When they died, their souls traveled to Damnation and trapped the spirits of the Voidbringers, preventing them from returning.”

“Yeah. Then the Heralds were tortured until they broke.”

“The Stormfather said their pact was weakened, but did not say it was destroyed,” Jasnah said. “I suggest that we at least see if one of them is willing to return to Damnation. Perhaps they can still prevent the spirits of the enemy from being reborn. It’s either that, or we completely exterminate the parshmen so that the enemy has no hosts.” She met Kaladin’s eyes. “In the face of such an atrocity, I would consider the sacrifice of one or more Heralds to be a small price.”

“Storms!” Kaladin said, standing up straight. “Have you no sympathy?”

“I have plenty, bridgeman. Fortunately, I temper it with logic. Perhaps you should consider acquiring some at a future date.”

So the only time Jasnah actually brings up this concept it’s to, hyperbolically, point out that asking the Heralds to return to Braize and trap the Fused may not be the worst idea.

She’s not actually suggesting this as a valid or legitimate tactic. It’s to contrast the plan Kaladin just called her ‘insane’ for suggesting (I bet that’s gonna hurt a million times more than it already does in 900 years when we get Jasnah’s book and backstory but hey. Back on topic) and point out that, in the face of the apocalypse, this is the kind of level they have to think on. 

I’ve already talked about the nuances of this scene at length here, so I’ll just do a quick summary: Jasnah is not as composed about any of this internally as she makes out to be - even what she suggests with the Heralds. 

When we see her alone with Ivory, reading Taln’s repeated mantra, Ivory notes that she’s troubled. The words (and where he was/how he was being treated when they were recorded) is enough to trigger a twenty year old flashback in her. 

This scene is one of the clearest moments (along with the Kharbranth thug scene, I suspect) where Jasnah’s outward projection of her internal feelings and thoughts least matches up with reality.

In spite of the inflammatory remark that sparks this all off,  she doesn’t want to assassinate any Heralds. She quite clearly says she wants to “see if one of them is WILLING to return to Damnation.” She wants to have a conversation with them, understand the Oathpact, and see if any of them would consent to buying them some time. She is not suggesting they knife one of the Heralds in a back alley. That’s Moash’s job.

This is supported by what she does in canon. Jasnah is actually the one who recognises Taln and Ash and, somehow, manages to persuade them to join her at Urithiru and help. She treats them with nothing but dignity and respect in her scenes with them in Rhythm of War, and tries to find out more about the Oathpact and their options - as she said she wanted to do.

But since Jasnah is a Kholin, which means the ‘D’ in her DNA stands for DRAMA, she doesn’t say that, instead she says: “let us find the Heralds and kill them.” (I love her so much y’all. Ahem. Anyway).

But there’s method to this madness, too. Please click the ‘keep reading’ button to discover why! (have to turn my own posts into clickbait bc they’re so long I have to put in a cut to spare ur dashboards). 

Jasnah likes to push people. She likes to force them to think, and consider all angles of a problem, and come to terms with their own thoughts and opinions. This is one of the things that frustrates Shallan about Jasnah in TWOK: 

Shallan caught a victorious glimmer in her eye. She wasn’t necessarily advocating ideas because she believed them; she just wanted to push Shallan. It was infuriating. How was Shallan to know what Jasnah really thought if she adopted conflicting points of view like this?

-TWOK 36

Jasnah doesn’t want to brutally murder the Heralds and force them to return to their maddening idea of hell. But in phrasing it as she does, she can get an insight into Kaladin. Despite the fact we know him very well at this point, this is, this is the first time Jasnah has interacted with him on-screen, and only the second time she’s met him ever. 

“That Windrunner. What do you think of him, Shallan? I find him much as I imagined his order, but I have only met him once. It has all come so quickly. After years of struggling in the shadows, everything coming to light—and despite my years of study—I understand so very little.”

Oathbringer, 33

Jasnah in that scene is deliberately being as exaggerated, ruthless, cold, and harsh as she can get away with. She’s trying to push Kaladin. She wants to bait responses from him, to get an idea of what kind of man he is, and what he stands for. She focuses entirely on him on that scene, and the reactions we as readers get see that as well. 

“If you wish, Captain,” Jasnah snapped, “I can get you some mink kits to cuddle while the adults plan. None of us want to talk about this, but that does not make it any less inevitable.”

“I’d love that,” Kaladin responded. “In turn, I’ll get you some eels to cuddle. You’ll feel right at home.”

Jasnah, curiously, smiled.

 Jasnah likes to be pushed as well. She likes to have people push back with her, and stand up for themselves, assert themselves, make their arguments. She all but encourages Dalinar to publicly do so in RoW. 

Socially, in spite of Kaladin’s rank or status as a Windrunner, it’s probably 100% Not Acceptable to ask an Alethi princess if she wants a basket full of eels to cuddle because she is one, effectively. But Jasnah’s unphased - and even pleased - by Kal’s response. She likes that she’s seeing this from him, that he’s unguarded, and passionate, and more than willing to go toe-to-toe with her, which few people are.

Also, because I foresee potential problems in this meta that I would like to nip in the bud right now, I don’t think that Jasnah is doing this to play with people? That’s not really in her nature or who she is. There’s a purpose to everything she does, and there’s a purpose to her doing this, too.

With Shallan it was to encourage her to think for herself and form her own thoughts and opinions. Just before in that scene, Shallan asked why Jasnah couldn’t just tell her what to think and what was the right philosophy to have in life. Jasnah replied it was something she had to discover for herself - and that’s how she approaches all of their studies. 

Jasnah never teaches Shallan what to think, or even what happened, despite that being the meat of her study. Instead, she teaches Shallan how to think, how to study, how to learn, how to critically reason, and how to form and argue her own thoughts and conclusions. 

With Kal, I think it’s a quick and brutal way of quickly getting to grips with a new, very important, element in what’s going on in her world. Remember, too, that one of Jasnah’s most obvious aims, aside from protecting the world, is protecting her family. And Kaladin is very close to everyone that she loves and holds most dear, while she knows nothing about him. 

However, something else that’s important to note, which, for me anyway, RoW all but confirmed: Jasnah has low cognitive empathy.

She’d come to realize, early in her youth, that she didn’t approach relationships the same way everyone else seemed to. Her partners in the past had always complained that she was too cold, so academic. That had frustrated her. How was she to learn what others felt if she couldn’t ask them?

Chapter 99 really was an absolute fucking gift, I mean really. Asexuality AND low empathy, all in one go. What a delight.

This little snippet can be read as her being asexual, potentially, but I actually think it reads more heavily and obviously about her being neurodivergent? And specially low cognitive empathy. Brandon says that, to him, Jasnah is not autistic spectrum, but you just keep giving me more evidence to say she is buddy!! Anyway. Diagnostic debates aside. 

I would guess some of y’all don’t know what the heck I mean by ‘cognitive empathy’ (I didn’t before I researched all of this a couple of years ago). 

There are two types of empathy, in strict psychology terms (and then there’s the colloquial way we use it to just mean ‘a good person with feelings’ which drives me BANANAS but that’s a rant for another day): 

Affective empathy - which basically means ‘this person around me is happy/sad/excited, I am also now feeling that way. Because emotion is infectious like a cold! How thrilling’. 

Cognitive empathy - is the ability a person has to pick up on/know what others are feeling without having to be told. Using tone/body language/facial expression etc etc. It’s something I, and a lot of other autistic people, are bad at. 

So is Jasnah! 

Her previous partners disliked her probably verbally vibe checking them every other week to find out where they were at. Jasnah was frustrated because how the heck else is she meant to know wtf?? What an absolute mood this woman is. Anyway. 

This revelation/confirmation makes a LOT of Jasnah scenes make a lot more sense. Including: chapter 64, and her insistence, to the point of it almost being illogical, that she fight without her Surgebinding to try and get as clear a picutre of what her soldiers are facing as she can. Jasnah starts off that chapter by saying she’s never actually been in a war before, and states throughout that she wasn’t prepared for what it was actually like. 

Her low empathy means that, without a personal context/experience to relate to and draw emotional experience from, she struggles to understand exactly what her troops are going through. 

Obviously she knows that ‘war is bad, battles are scary and not fun’. But she has no way of emotionally relating/truly understanding what they’re feeling. This is one of the reasons I think it’s so important to her, despite Ivory’s chiding, to do it that way so that she can understand. 

Similar thing is happening here with Kaladin. Jasnah struggles to instinctively Get Vibes from people, so she goes about things in a very scholarly way. 

She does research and makes notes (see: her little folio on the highprinces (which, by the way, misses out on several important aspects of them Shallan picks up on pretty quickly by the power of Intuition), she asks questions - and she sets up scenarios that push people into blatant emotion so she can observe and get an idea of what makes them tick. 

TL;DR TAKE TWO: Jasnah does not want to murder all of the Singers. Jasnah never says she wants to. Jasnah only uses it as a ‘see, asking the Heralds to go back to Damnation isn’t actually that bad now is it?’ hyperbolic counterpoint after Kaladin asked her if she was insane. Jasnah is not actually what she pretends to be in that scene. She is but a hapless gay who cannot detect emotions so she has to conduct her Vibe Checks differently from other people. She is highly valid in every way and i stan her.

[secret-diary-of-an-fa]

Grisly, Grim and a Fucking Delight: Feedback Review

TRIGGER WARNING: Torture, rape, daytime radio DJs. Don’t blame me, that’s just what’s in the movie.

Wow. Wow and a half. Wow and a half between two slices of thick white whoa. What a fucking movie. I’d say something like ‘they don’t make ‘em like that any more’, but they clearly do, because Feedback only came out a few years ago. I am astonished that I didn’t hear about it until tonight. You see, I was looking for an epic, slow-burn thriller to watch with my girlfriend and glamorous assistant, and I came across this little British movie about a radio talk-show host getting trapped in his studio when a bunch of masked psychos invade the premises. “Neat!” I thought upon reading the synopsis and watching the advert. “It’s Diehard but without schlubby, sarcastic Brits instead of overblown yanks.” As it turns out, I was wrong. Feedback is not an enjoyable but ultimately inconsequential gas pocket of a movie: it’s actually one of the most tense, conceptually horrifying and incendiary pieces of cinema- nay, Cinema with a capital C- that I’ve ever had the good fortune to witness. The more I think about it, the more impressed and enamoured I become. Unfortunately, in order to explain why, I’m going to have to spoil the whole freaking thing. For those of you who actually watch movies based on my recommendations (which would be, maybe, like two of you?) I’ll give you a nice non-spoilery recommendation right now: the acting is on-point, the plot is serpentine but not in a pretentious way, every prop and narrative element is used to maximum effect, the atmosphere gets tenser and tenser without ever letting you catch your breath and it’s exactly as long as it needs to be: there’s nothing missing and not an ounce of spare meat on it. It’s a lean, nasty predator of a movie and, if you let it, it will pin you down and rip out your jugular. I’ve only ever described one other movie as ‘transcendent’- a little psychological horror called The Perfection. Well, Feedback gets that exact same sticker but for completely different reasons. If you’re going to watch it- and you should- stop reading this review right now and go do it. It’s amazing.

And now for the spoilers. Consider this more of an analysis than a review. You see, the film reveals early on that the masked psychos invading the studio aren’t just randos with a political or philosophical axe to grind. They have beef with the radio host (whose name is Jarvis, incidentally. You don’t see enough Jarvises, either in real life or in movies. It’s a fun name and grossly underused, but I digress). You see, they think Jarvis’s friend raped a woman, killed another woman and beat the shit out of her boyfriend… and they think Jarvis knows all about it and may even have been involved. They force Jarvis to extract a confession from his friend early on and then kill him live on air, meaning that the rest of the film is devoted to a battle of wills between them and Jarvis as they try to force him to admit complicity, again live on air. Along the way, it’s also revealed that they aren’t just crusaders: they’re survivors of the incident and relatives thereof. Now, from the moment all these pieces were in place, I watched with an expectation of being disappointed. You see, I thought I knew what I was watching: Jarvis is visually and linguistically coded as am older slightly privileged but spiky elitist, so in most movies made after 2010 he’d automatically have been the bad guy (fuck me but do ageing white movie directors love to pretend they’re ‘woke’), while the people attacking him are visually and linguistically coded as youngish (except in one case) and victims, meaning that, in most movies, they would automatically be the good guys (hey, everyone loves an underdog, right?). I assumed I was watching one of those films. You know the ones I mean. One of those oh-so-clever ones that gets you to connect with and root for a character then reveals that he’s a shit-bag and punishes him and- by extension- you the viewer for taking his side. That was clever once, but I’ve now seen it on at least eight separate occasions, and it’s become trite. It’s particularly irksome because the victim-coded characters always get a free pass for their own shenanigans: they can murder, torture, brutalise and dehumanise but it’s always okay because something bad once happened to them. Frankly, I thought that’s what I was in for. Luckily. I was super wrong. That’s like regular wrong, only sexier and with sharper graphics.

You see, Feedback is way too smart to go for a black-and-white good-victims-versus-evil-central-character narrative. Instead, it’s a film about dehumanisation… or is it? You’ll see what I mean. In order to force Jarvis to admit complicity, his assailants don’t just fuck with him and his friend: they straight-up murder an innocent bystander and threaten to murder someone close to the protagonist. They hurt and do terrible things to Jarvis and the people around him, using torture methods that would make fucking ISIS throw up its hands and go ‘steady on, bruv’. They have a version of events that they’re convinced of but have only one unreliable character’s word for and Jarvis has a version of events that they refuse, point-blank, to believe. Jarvis’s story does begin to alter, but it’s never really apparent if he’s actually done something or if he’s just saying he has in order to keep the people around him (and himself) alive. Meanwhile, the ringleader of the little troop trying to extract a confession from Jarvis might be victim, but it also becomes apparent that she’s an unhinged psychopath intent on spilling as much blood as possible for her own personal sense of satisfaction and has as much interest in justice as a black hole has in the history of the stars it swallows up. Hooray! Some fucking moral ambiguity in a movie! I thought the entire industry had just forgotten how to fucking do that!

Much to my delight, Feedback doesn’t stop there. Merely by forcing the audience to make up their own minds about what they think happened and who’s actions are most justified, Feedback is already introducing a level of sophistication alien to modern cinema. But then it goes one step further by also subverting narrative expectations. You see, in a bleak, introspective, what-monsters-are-we-all flick like this, you expect the antagonists’ plan to succeed: you expect the last shot to be of the protagonist broken by the moral blankness of his reality, sitting in the wreckage of his life, unsure of whether he deserves what has happened to him or not. And that would have been a perfectly acceptable way to end this movie. But it doesn’t end like that. Because Jarvis is that rarest of things: a competent and determined dude. He’s not a superhuman. He doesn’t have special training. The flick doesn’t turn into an action movie or anything ridiculous. Jarvis just refuses to accept the bullshit happening to him and systematically works through every possible strategy to extricate himself without caving and admitting culpability that he doesn’t feel. He tries reasoned negotiation. He tries subduing one of the assailants temporarily and using them as a bargaining chip (the minimum necessary force approach), he tries escape and, finally, when all else fails, he uses a combination of psychology, surprise and familiarity with his environment to fight back with lethal force. It’s a considered, intelligent approach and, because his assailants aren’t organised terrorists just ordinary people who may (or may not) have a legit grievance with him, it succeeds and- to cut a long story short- he kills all of them in incredibly satisfying ways. There’s a bit involving a smug, I-can-be-as-evil-as-I-like-because-I’m-a-victim character getting skewered with a pair of scissors that instantly outranks anything in the Saw or Friday the 13th franchises as one of my all-time favourite movie kills (outright all-time favourite still goes to that bit in John Wick 3 with the really creative use of a library book, but that’s off topic).

During the climatic scenes of the movie, Jarvis screams his confession, but- as I said- it might only be a tool to distract his attackers and gain the upper hand while preserving the lives of the people he cares about. Equally, though, it might not. There’s a coldness to the character at the end of the film that wasn’t there at the beginning. Has he just been changed by the trauma of recent events, or are we seeing the facade drop away to reveal the true face of ruthless monster? And here lies the film’s final genius: not only doesn’t it answer this question (ambiguity for the win!) it also seems to suggest that the answer might not matter. Jarvis didn’t prevail because he was innocent- though he might be. His attackers didn’t fail because they became as bad as the thing they sought to fight (though they did). Victory and defeat aren’t defined by moral superiority. The film doesn’t assign winners and loser based on ethical or philosophical standpoint. Jarvis wins because he knows what the fuck he’s doing and his attackers are a bunch of overemotional quarter-wits with a half-baked plan that they can’t even stick to because they get too worked up. Survival, Feedback reminds us, has everything to do with being good at things, and fuck all to do with just being good. At every turn, the film tries to convince us that it has a moral point to make. Characters talk endlessly about truth and lies, justice and injustice… but in the end, it’s all smoke and mirrors. The film doesn’t have a central moral thesis (or, if it does, it’s a profoundly nihilistic one). Its real subjects are survival and will. It’s a study of what happens when two packets of brutal, remorseless determination meet eachother coming in opposite directions. It’s a dissection of the self-preservation instinct and its only real moral is ‘don’t fuck with a smart, grimly determined guy on his home turf if all you have to bring to the table is a short fuse and a big hammer’. Maybe that shouldn’t be refreshing, but in a cinematic landscape where every movie is determined to plant its flag on one side or the other of the political or ethical spectrum, it really fucking is. The fact that it gets you to think about ethical issues and who you believe on route elevates it, but the core of the film- the thing that makes it solid- is that refreshing element of nihilism. Breathe it in, folks: we don’t get many movies like this very often.

[daily-dose-of-imagines]

Hitmen AU! | Head Canons | 19+ [Haikyuu!!]

KΛЯΛƧЦПӨ [PART i] [PART ii] [PART iii]

Here’s the second part to the head canons for Karasuno~~~ Once the main head canons and ideas for all of Karasuno are out I’ll start dropping more random little one-shots hehe

Again! Feel free to ask questions or request anything from this AU! (Once again, specify so that I know~!)

» » Admin Ko

»»————-　♔　————-««  

N̷i̷s̷h̷i̷n̷o̷y̷a̷ ̷Y̷u̷

Where to even begin with this boi 

He’s definitely one of the more chaotic members of the group that’s for sure

Always testing out new skills and tricks he’s learned from those around him 

and god forbid the internet 

There have been one too many times where one of his veteran members or even the rookies walk in on him doing something rather peculiar which has him more or less flustered and embarrassed

Out of all of the members, he’s one of the most rambunctious 

Always happily chatting away on any topic without a care in the world

Usually ends up in mock spars with Tanaka with Ennoshita reluctantly being the scorekeeper and 3rd man in just in case one of the two happens to go a little too far with getting a win

He seems to be the most normal at first, but when he began talking about various torture methods and the effectiveness of each with horrifying accuracy and knowledge says otherwise

He’s the inventor of the group, always testing his new discoveries in torture and information gathering 

is the “bad” cop when the victim they’ve captured hasn’t broken from Tsukkishima’s relentless psychological torture

“ALRIGHT~! IT’S FINALLY MY TURN~!” 

Giddy and impatient, the shortest member of Karasuno surged forward with surprising silence as his sepia eyes practically glowed with unhinged insanity.

The victim began sweating profusely as the taller of the pair merely sighed at his senior before backing off. The blond refused to get caught up in another one of his senior’s hi jinks.

“Oh? Focusing on something other than me? You’re quite brave! I like that! That means we’re gonna have a nice long conversation!” 

A wicked grin spread along the energetic male’s face as the victim finally noticed the oddly shaped object in his hand.

“Oh this? I wanted to try out this new peeler...” 

The shiver that ran down the victim’s spine was one long overdue as the sudden pressure he felt from the man before him came barreling down in waves. His previous giddy attitude now replaced by utter silence as his umber eyes bore deeply into his soul.

Appearance wise, Noya has by far, the most tattoos out of the other members. Each one gained after successfully learning a new skill

he may be the shortest in their group, but he is one of the strongest 

normally, his hair would be in it’s signature slicked up state, but with how often he’s training and testing new skills it’s usually stuck in a half gel half bed head state

With his s/o he’s overly energetic and practically smitten

it’s a running joke that before he met his s/o he and Tanaka would be at Kiyoko’s heels trying to woo her

of course that all came to an abrupt end when he met his s/o

Despite being a busy bee, Noya tries his best to make time for them whenever he’s not assigned on info gathering assignments

He usually likes to koala cling to them when they’re in the vicinity

and has tried on many occasions to convince them to just live with them at their establishment

R̴y̴u̴n̴o̴s̴u̴k̴e̴ ̴T̴a̴n̴a̴k̴a̴

Another one of the chaotic members of the group 

loves to be called senpai by the rookies (Noya loves being called senpai too sksk)

one of the main chasers of the group

is also the designated driver when on larger group missions because of his, well, chaotic driving

In a sense, he’s kind of the delivery boy? Lol 

He once tried to be a part of the interrogation team but it was concluded that Noya and Tanaka together ended with the victims dead sooner than anticipated

Is the chaser, a.k.a. any assignments that think they can run away with Tanaka on their tail has another thing coming

Despite being loud and chaotic, is sometimes forgotten as he is the last resort for when targets manage to escape

“Oh ho ho~! Finally something to do besides watching Hinata get his ass handed to him!” An small ‘Hey!’ coming from the background as the male stood at the entrance of their base. Motorcycle helmet in hand as a sinister and wicked grin graced his features.

“Any sorta restrictions boss?” A glance over his shoulder at the figure leaning against the staircase pillar. The figure in question merely gave him a blank stare as Tanaka couldn’t help but chuckle. 

“No traces. Gotcha. Since I don’t have any restrictions....I’ll be filing my report late~.” 

With that, the excited male made his way out and onto his bike. A quick rev of the engine and a wave to the rookies the Chaser set out to catch his prey.

Like Noya, Tanaka is a ripped boi and covered in not only battle scars but tattoos of his accomplishments against hard enemies

He has a shaved head, with some tattoos on his scalp 

Hinata thought it was the coolest shit ever and wanted one too but Sugawara stopped him from shaving his own head

Likes the delinquent school look so tries to stick as close to it as he can

With his s/o he’s surprisingly gentle

treats them like royalty and grovels at their feet 

He spends most of the day with them unless the rookies really fuck up sksksk

loves having his hand in their back pocket or hooked around one of their belt loops

C̷h̷i̷k̷a̷r̷a̷ ̷E̷n̷n̷o̷s̷h̷i̷t̷a̷

plz help this boi 

is the unspoken boss for the second batch of recruitments

has to deal with Tanaka’s and Noya’s bullshit constantly

He’s part of the defense team in not only the technical side, but physical side if need be

is a whizz with the cyber end when customers purchase their services

is the one who runs the assignments by Daichi first before assigning and handing them out to the members

the rookies rely on him heavily and the recruitment gang during his time dote and love to try and help or... annoy the hell out of him (read, Tanaka and Noya)

“So this is the assignment for the week. If we’re successful it’ll be $50,000.” Stern, yet soft spoken the male handed the younger a manila envelope.

“You’ve trained hard for this. So we expect little to no fuck ups----” He began before a loud and the beginnings of a headache began to form as the younger male began to slowly back away. Promising to fulfill the assignment with no issues before scurrying off as shouts began in the common room.

“DAMN NOYA YOU REALLY IMPROVED THAT FROM LAST TIME!” 

“DON’T UNDERESTIMATE MY SHEER WILLPOWER RYU!! HAHAHA!”

“TANAKA! NISHINOYA! WHAT THE HELL DID I SAY ABOUT TESTING IN THE FUCKING COMMON ROOMS?!” 

Is lean like Sugawara

and like the rest of the members of Karasuno, he has at least one tattoo on his body

soft fluffy bed hair 25/8 because baby deals with all the bullshit that is rookies and tananoya antics

has dark circles, not super intense but can be seen close up

is fairly normal with his s/o

though he doesn’t get to see them as often

anytime he gets with his s/o is coddle time

he pulls out all the romantic shit in one sitting or it’ll be all the sexy shit in one sitting it’s never really one or the other

loves to lay his head on s/o’s lap

H̴i̴s̴a̴s̴h̴i̴ ̴K̴i̴n̴o̴s̴h̴i̴t̴a̴

one of the few quiet members of their squad

was actually very reluctant on joining the team initially, but persevered through and stuck with them

is one of the other inventors 

is more of the practical one and keeps noya from doing anything too out of hand

doesn’t mean he doesn’t start shit on his own though sksksk

likes to spar with Ennoshita (since he won’t have to worry about a surprise rolling thunder a.k.a rolling and shooting a powerful taser from yours truly)

“Kinoshita-san!” Pausing his work, the male in questioned glanced to the lab entryway as he cocked his head to the side at the sight of the rambunctious deviant duo before him.

“...Yes?” He asked hesitantly, already feeling a gnawing feeling in his gut that whatever was about to be asked was going to end up with him in the following situations

Wreaking havoc and being scolded by Ennoshita

Wreaking havoc and being scolded by Daichi

Wreaking havoc and being scolded by both Ennoshita and Daichi 

None of which sounded appealing to him as he mentally prepared himself to reject whatever demands the pair wanted. Though of course that didn’t come to pass as the scream of, “ROLLINGU....THUND....AAAAARRRR!!!!!!” echoed throughout the base as a thud resounded and the base. At this point, it was to no one’s surprise that Ennoshita was already on his way to give Nishinoya an earful as the two demons blinked slowly before backing away.

“N-Never mind!” 

Ah yes, the power of being able to deter chaotic activities. Kinoshita wished he had that ability as he resumed his work.

Despite being the second shortest, no one really messes with Kinoshita

His build is in between Ennoshita and Nishinoya 

again, like the rest he has a couple of tattoos

usually has a pair of goggles sitting atop his head as he doesn’t really leave the laboratory 

he wants to redeem himself for attempting to leave initially

with his s/o he can seem emotionally distant

but that’s mainly because he’s either sleep-deprived or distracted

Loves to just lay in bed with s/o whenever he has a free day

 K̴a̴z̴u̴h̴i̴t̴o̴ ̴N̴a̴r̴i̴t̴a̴

The friendliest member 

The rookies felt comfortable to talk to him upon first meeting him and is a reliable rock when need be

does a lot of work in the behind the scenes such as shadowing targets and helping with any sort of basic chores at the base

he’s a scouter for new areas of establishment or even a quick interrogation area in a pinch 

sometimes gets mistaken for Tanaka but doesn’t really mind

has the friendly carefree vibe that turns hella terrifying when it needs to be

“Narita, can you find us a place to interrogate these shit stains?” Looking up from his place by the car, the male in question nodded as he took a brief once over the entire area. Considering the situation and the amount of victims they had, it would be wise for a wide spaced area with a place to easily dispose of the bodies along with coming up with a reasonable excuse in case someone came along to ask questions.

“...hm...” Softly humming, he walked over to the desolate area, skimming it briefly before taking note of the cloaked figure. Raising a brow, he moved towards the figure to find that it was the last of the target’s help. Lightly laughing he couldn’t help but smile.

“Sorry! Didn’t mean to scare ya there but...you’re really not good at hide and seek are you?”

The friendly smile on his face twisting to that of horror as the male beckoned his teammates over after giving the all clear.

Like Tanaka, Narita has a shaved head but chooses not to have any tattoos on his scalp

instead, his tattoos range from his arms and back to his torso

he’s lean, similarly built to Tanaka if not only slightly smaller

is immensely loving to his s/o 

if he can he would try to be with them as much as he can to ensure his own humanity hasn’t gone away

[armorsleevedsinglehit]

💭 tajima

it was only a matter of time before we ended up delving into some heavy topics on this Very Serious Naruto Character Roleplay Blog, but this is going to be one of those times. and although i won’t go into excruciating detail on emotional and physical abuse, it’ll be in here, so be forewarned. 

we know very little about tajima. we see him exactly once, and he has...two or three lines during his single scene? therefore, most of this meta is complete conjecture, stuff i’ve gathered about tajima from other characters’ behaviors, worldviews, dialogue. and one more thing before i get into it: i’ve seen a bit of discussion about whether or not some of madara and hashirama’s fathers’ actions should be considered “abuse” or not. looking at the fathers’ actions in the context of the times is important, because the way they acted was simply How You Treated Your Children at that point in history, and from what hashirama says as he relates his story to sasuke, we can assume that there simply wasn’t a TERM for abuse back then. but hashirama (and madara too, since he was on hashirama’s wavelength the whole time) KNEW that the adults’ behavior was wrong, and unfair, and exploitative. basically, if nothing else, tajima was the product of his times, and back then, times were...bad.

anyway, i can somewhat understand the few tajima stans i’ve seen on here because we never actually see him get physically violent against madara (and i understand the need to give madara a good parental figure), but i promise tajima is NOT that person. if you think about him for more than 2 seconds he is in fact horrifying. he has no qualms about bringing izuna into a life-or-death battle against butsuma and tobirama, knowing how much izuna means to madara. and you can see him give a little laugh after madara finally, FINALLY awakens his sharingan at the end of the confrontation at the river, as if he’s been waiting for this moment for a very long time.

from this we can infer several things. first, he wants madara to awaken his sharingan, no matter the cost—physical, psychological, you name it.  but then this brings us to the broader question: why does tajima want madara to awaken his sharingan in the first place? because it would be shameful to his line if he doesn’t? because he wants madara’s sharingan for himself? of course we’ll never know; madara never talks about his father, and he’s barely in the main story at all. but you need only to look at madara as a kid to see the psychological effect that tajima had on him: WHY does he feel so responsible for his brothers? WHY does he feel like he’s failed them even though he’s like 13 years old and in no place to be a protector?

i think, in tajima’s eyes, madara and izuna were projects. madara was raised to believe that izuna was the more important one; the final iteration, if you will, the perfected vessel. which brings me to my main tajima headcanon.

tajima came to power through a coup. his line wasn't directly related to the former uchiha heads, but he still came from a long line of very powerful shinobi. his line was like the secret weapon of the uchiha clan, of sorts. they weren't in charge, per se, but THEY were the people everybody feared above all others. butsuma (who came from a very long line of royal blood) doesn't want to acknowledge him as an equal even though they're equally skilled in combat, because tajima wasn't born into leadership. this only deepens his negative opinion of the uchiha because in his eyes, this mighty clan is now being led by some common peon, of all people; they're obviously inferior to the senju if they could allow that to happen. and this goes on to color butsuma’s opinion of tajima’s sons, too; he’s willing to acknowledge madara’s strength, but at the end of the day he’s still the son of a commoner.

and so madara as tajima's heir has to doubly prove his legitimacy and ability to lead, because he's the first of tajima’s line to naturally (put a pin in this) succeed the former leader. this also explains why izuna was so “valuable” to tajima, because (building off of kishi’s shaky timeline) izuna was born the farthest into tajima’s reign, and therefore the most legitimate of his five sons. 

at the point that madara and izuna were growing up, the uchiha clan had figured out that the sharingan is awakened through trauma. which, of course, can be induced by others. tajima tried many times to force madara’s sharingan to awaken, through genjutsu, psycholgical torture, physical violence, a wide variety of methods. i believe tajima was planning on at least one of his remaining sons dying so that he could take whoever’s sharingan was left afterwards (maybe he was going blind? or maybe he just wanted more power?), but he KNEW madara was the stronger of the two (at least physically; madara was the brawler and izuna was more into genjutsu) so it became more and more about forcing madara to awaken his sharingan as time went on—especially after izuna awakened his, because tajima still wasn’t satisfied. (izuna was still vicious, and fierce, but tajima wanted even more, which would eventually lead to his downfall.) 

at the end of the day i think tajima was worried about maintaining his somewhat precarious position within the clan; above everything else he didn’t want to give up his leadership. and he therefore felt that he needed to exhibit tyrannical strength in order to remain in power, at the cost of his sons and his humanity. he was just a violent bully with an insatiable thirst for power, and at some point he pushed too far and it cost him his life.

[qqueenofhades]

How did 9/11 affect the American psyche? I’ve heard people say that 9/11 is when America went insane, but I was born into the post-9/11 America, so it’s a bit hard for me to wrap my head around.

Oh man. You kids are asking the easy questions tonight, I see.

I’m not even sure I can adequately describe the effect that 9/11 had on the American psyche and the ways in which the entire world would be massively, almost unimaginably different if it had never happened, but here goes.

Basically, in the almost exactly ten-year period between the final collapse of the Soviet Union in 1991 and the terror attacks in 2001, life for Americans was pretty damn good. They had won the Cold War, the economy was doing great, everybody was feeling rich and optimistic and like there was nothing but blue skies ahead. (Side note, I wonder if this resurgence of ‘90s nostalgia has to do with the fact that that’s the last time that we collectively felt safe.) The Columbine school shootings happened in 1999, back when that was completely still a shocking thing that nobody would expect, and not a semi-regular feature of the news every few months. I was 11 years old. Littleton was about an hour from where we lived at the time. I spent the whole morning crying about it and insisted on organizing a memorial service for the victims. The 2000 presidential election was bitterly contested between Bush and Gore, coming down to a handful of votes in Florida and the Supreme Court decision. Man, you also have to wonder how all of recent American history would have gone differently if Bush had lost.

Then…. 9/11. I was 13. It was an ordinary, sunny Tuesday, my dad came upstairs with a funny look on his face, and said that apparently the World Trade Center had been attacked. We didn’t have cable TV, so we didn’t watch any of it live, but I don’t remember that we discussed anything else for the whole day. We were at home, which was far away from the East Coast or where any of it was happening, so I don’t have any dramatic memories of seeing people freaking out or anything like that. At dinner that night, THAT NIGHT, my mom said that Osama bin Laden had probably done it. I repeat: everyone knew on the same night that it had happened that Osama was almost definitely responsible. You may note that Osama bin Laden was a Saudi national, all the hijackers were Saudi, and al-Qaeda was an organization with deep Saudi roots. (Remember the part where America attacked… Afghanistan? Yep. Seems legit. Then again, they weren’t the biggest oil producers in the region and a major US ally.)

It is impossible to overstate the shock that this caused. This had never happened. Even through both world wars and the long, dangerous 20th century and the turbulence and tension of the Cold War, there had never been an attack like this on mainland American soil. (And on that note, America got into World War II, despite all the heroic mythology about freeing the world from tyranny, because of the attack on Pearl Harbor, which in 1941 was an American territory. There were plenty of Nazi sympathizers among the establishment and government, and as soon as the war was over, America brought plenty of Nazis, including Wernher von Braun, to work in the space program. To say nothing of our problems with Nazis NOW. So yes.) The psychological effects were literally devastating for both Americans and many other people. Not to downplay the obvious horror of what happened on 9/11 and the people who were killed, but it turned America into a siege state. Everyone was terrified, and yet now we had a War on Terror, helpfully called a “crusade” by President Bush before European allies forced him to walk it back. His approval ratings hit 90%+ in the days after 9/11, and support to bomb Afghanistan – again, not in any way directly connected to this, aside from the fact that it was where Osama bin Laden had been active, and when the US government had armed him and fellow mujahadeen in the 1980s to fight against the Soviets, who had invaded in 1979, making it a Cold War proxy battlefield, and anyway – was MONUMENTAL. The whole public was behind this. International sympathy for America was incredible. Everyone was on our side and willing to say that we had been wronged. It didn’t really matter that Afghanistan was not really connected to this. Someone needed to suffer for this outrage. And boy, did they suffer.

Then came March 2003, and the infamous declaration that we were now going to invade Iraq, because Saddam Hussein (supported by the US in the 1980s Iran-Iraq War, in retaliation for Iran overthrowing their puppet shah in 1979, after CIA and MI6 staged a coup to remove Iran’s democratically elected prime minister in 1953 to protect their access to oil) apparently had weapons of mass destruction and was about to use them to kill more Americans. Everyone knew at the time that this was pretty much bullshit. But boy, did the Bush administration go hard to work selling it to us. The Department of Homeland Security was founded in 2002, after the attacks. The Patriot Act and other intrusive new surveillance methods and measures were quickly authorized. Americans became watched, spied on, mistrusted, and suspected of wrongdoing in ways never really tried on a large scale before. Any dissent was framed as taking the side of the terrorists; couldn’t you see that we needed all this to be safe? The state of national emergency that was declared after 9/11 was never actually revoked; we are all still living in it 19 years later. The culture of hyper-militarism, all these huge flags at sporting events and the visibility of these “Salute to Service” months and this aggressive fasciso-patriotism all grew up directly from the seeds of 9/11 and the sense of unforgivable affront to America, which could do what it wanted anywhere else in the world but could never forgive anyone for inflicting it in return.

It’s a mark of how badly all that public sympathy was mismanaged that by the time 2003 rolled around, the international community (except for Great Britain and Bush’s loyal compadre, Tony Blair) was… to say the least, skeptical of this Iraq adventure. It was pretty clearly a pretext to resume the Gulf War from Bush Senior’s tenure, unrelated to any actual justification or revenge for 9/11, and demonstrated the fact that far from resting on our laurels and feeling safe after winning the Cold War, America was now locked in mortal combat with an enemy that could be everywhere at any time. Nobody should feel safe, because the terrorists were out there. Despite the condemnation, Bush got re-elected in 2004, in part by painting his opponent, John Kerry, as someone who just couldn’t be trusted on national security. In short, Kerry, a Vietnam veteran, was “Swift Boated,” though he also did run a pretty wooden and uninspiring campaign. I just missed being old enough to vote in this election, though my parents and older sister all voted for Kerry, and Bush’s failings were a frequent subject of discussion in our house. He was getting more and more unpopular, was a figure of national ridicule, and yet this never actually discredited the whole War on Terror and the apparatus that sustained it. There were reports of war crimes, including Abu Ghraib, committed by the American forces. The indiscriminate torture and murder of detainees at Guantanamo Bay in Cuba was also an object of national concern, but allowed to keep happening. Less than 5 years after 9/11, and all this sympathy for America, America had… well, lost its mind.

So… yes. There’s an entire generation now that is too young to remember 9/11 and thinks that America has always been this way, but it is, again, completely impossible to overstate how 9/11 turned this sense of comfortable complacency and national prosperity upside down. Everything was now justified in the name of freedom, and any disloyalty was suspect. Our “The Greatest!!” state had to be repeated and reissued and emphasized at every point. Many innocent Americans died on 9/11, sure. But the way that it was turned into the worst violation that any country had suffered anywhere, led to the death of thousands of Afghans, Iraqis, American servicepeople, Muslims, and everyone else involved in the wars and the system that was built to sustain them, and turned America into this paranoid, brutal, out-of-control war-machine juggernaut is, it can be well argued, its worst and most lasting tragedy.

[two-are-the-trees]

31 Days of Poe Day 5: “The Pit and the Pendulum”

While Poe is a master of terror and creates all sorts of frightening, morbid scenarios to shock our senses, none of his stories reach pure, primal, unrelenting levels of fear quite like “The Pit and the Pendulum.” This is one of Poe’s most graphically and physically horrifying stories, haunting readers with tortuous traps that are seemingly straight out of a Saw movie.

The tale follows a man who has just been arrested for an unknown crime by the Spanish Inquisition. He is thrown into a completely pitch-black dungeon and left to await his execution. The narrator is thrown into agonizing suspension as he wanders his cell, wondering what horrible method of torture will be used to carry out his sentence, as he has heard stories of terrible fates at the hands of the Inquisition. As he explores in the darkness, however, the narrator begins to notice strange things about the prison in which he is held and he must keep on his toes in order to avoid the various traps that his captors arrange for him. At each turn, his chance for survival looks bleaker and bleaker, and yet some internal urge pushes him to see how long he can escape his inevitable death.

Poe’s vividly descriptive language in this tale creates an atmosphere of the utmost squalor and desperation. The sensory details told through the narrator are meant to shock readers at whiplash speeds, inspiring feelings of disgust, hopelessness, confusion, and horror. The narrator describes walls that are slimy and cold, the oppressive claustrophobia of complete darkness, hairy rats crawling in his face, the pain of hunger and thirst, ghastly smells of decay, and the heart-stopping chill of terror that comes in intense waves. This imagery evokes an intense sympathetic response, more than most of Poe’s other works. Readers are thrust directly into the action, bonded to the narrative by our shared experiences of bodily sensation. The tale is also steeped in death as the assured presence of doom in one form or another hovers over every scene.

“The Pit and the Pendulum” is primarily a story of fear. It is fear that punishes the prisoners for their crimes and it is fear that inspires the narrator to attempt to escape every execution attempt thrown at him. The narrator experiences many different forms of fear; fear of closed spaces, fear of disease, fear of starvation or dehydration, fear of solitude, fear of bodily harm, and even some unnamed fears that seem to haunt the innermost recesses of his soul. While most of Poe’s tales use fear to some degree, this story is an absolute exploration of its most primal forms. Whether psychological, physical, or spiritual, Poe seeks to understand how fear affects us and what extremes we will go to because of it.

Would I recommend “The Pit and the Pendulum?” Absolutely, BUT only if you think you can handle it. This story DOES contain some graphic descriptions by Poe’s standards and many hard-to-read fears are explored in detail. However, this has become one of Poe’s most iconic works for a reason. It’s a genuinely thrilling story and the language is amazingly effective. Like, “The Fall of the House of Usher,” I would also definitely recommend the animated version of this tale in the Extraordinary Tales anthology (which is narrated by one of the masters of horror himself, Guillermo Del Toro.)

For more analysis (which contains spoilers!!!) please read below the cut!

As I mentioned above, fear is one of the primary themes of the narrative. The narrator shows an array of different responses to fear and describes its many different forms. He exhibits the strongest reactions to the titular pit and pendulum, and it is these two specific moments, as he faces two different, horrible deaths, that seem the most significant. I like to think that these two methods of execution represent a duality that divides all fears; one is a fear of the known, and one is a fear of the unknown.

The pendulum, which represents a fear of the known, inspires fear primarily because the narrator is allowed to see its journey downward, nearer and nearer to his vulnerable body. He is strapped to a table, facing upwards, so he cannot turn away from the fate that is set for him. He is able to track the pendulum’s movements; study how the mechanism lowers the blade inch by inch, maddening him with each swipe. Poe describes the spine-chilling sound of the screeching metal as it swings, reflecting the heightened senses of the panicking narrator. Because the blade is made to descend slowly, the narrator is given ample time to reflect on his death. He imagines how the blade will feel as it cuts away at his clothing, and then the top layer of flesh, and then deeper into his tissue until it reaches his heart. It’s gruesome imagery, and this grisly train of thought leads the narrator through several stages of pure fear, from unbearable desperation to bleak resignation. The terror of the pendulum is that it forces the victim to grapple with the certainty of death. The narrator knows exactly how he will die, how painful and slow it will be, and this knowledge will only add to the agony of his final minutes.

The pit, on the other hand, represents the fear of the unknown as the depths of the pit and the horrors that lie within haunt the narrator throughout the story. The narrator’s first experience with the pit is when he almost falls directly into it in his pitch-black cell. He narrowly avoids walking straight into his doom as he trips and falls just at the edge of the pit, enough for his head to hang over the side. Immediately, he is repulsed. He describes a horrible, musty, decaying smell coming from deep within and when he drops some debris into the hole and listens to see when it lands, he discovers that the pit runs dizzyingly deep. As much as he tries to infer about the pit with the limited sensory information that he has, he cannot truly know what fate may have awaited him. He gets a brief glimpse into the pit before he is subjected to the pendulum, but it is still unclear in what horrible way he would ultimately die if he were to fall into the depths. This type of fear, the fear of the unknown, is especially potent for the narrator as, after he escapes the pendulum, he is forced nearer and nearer to the pit by contracting walls, and his thoughts race in horror as he regards the pit as the most horrible death of all. This reflects our human, primal fear of things unknown; things like the darkness of night or of deep, dense forests. Any number of horrors could be lurking in obscured places.

Poe brilliantly captures the feeling of fear within the story, however, there is another element that complicates the narrative and sets it apart from many of Poe’s other works; the presence of hope. Yes, as bleak and disturbing as “The Pit and the Pendulum” can be sometimes, remember that it is essentially a story of survival. Even in the most despairing of situations, the narrator cannot fight his desire to stay alive and the hope that, somehow, he may live to see another day. He doesn’t simply lie and wait for death. He seeks out the dimensions of his cell and he eats the food that he is given eagerly, even as he is strapped to the table waiting for the pendulum to bisect him. He formulates a plan to break free of his bonds and escape the pendulum, even though he knows another death will await him soon. He even tries to resist the burning hot, contracting walls that push him toward the pit. Something deep inside him retains the spark of hope that allows him to escape doom. Ultimately, it is this hope that pays off in the end as the narrator is actually rescued from his horrible fate at the very last moment. Yes, this is a Poe story with a happy ending! “The Pit and the Pendulum,” bizarrely, is both a story about the human relationship with fear and about the willpower of the human spirit. It connects us with our primal roots and provides a very interesting and, dare I say, universal look into the human experience.

So, what did y’all think? What really makes the pit the most horrible form of death? What do you make of Poe’s “happy” ending? Are the pit and the pendulum representative of something else? If you want to share your thoughts, please comment on this post or send me an ask! You can also use the tag #31daysofpoe to write your own response post!