#typical vivisection discussion
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grimdarling69 · 8 hours ago
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Can I ask for part 9 of deaged dan and ellie please?🥹
Tbh I've been rereading it a lot and I'm excited to read what the batfam and jl reactions while going to where Damian and Dick is. I knowww that it's going to be a crazy ride especially with youngblood(is it really Youngblood? Or not?)
A large toxic blob incased the window on the door. Swirling and jumping individual blob ghosts. They cooed excitedly and pushed against the locked door in vain.
"I'm coming! I'm coming!" He finally reached the door and opened it in a practiced manner of hiding behind and ducking. The swarm of blobs rushed past him into the den.
"Calm yourselves one at a time." Damian spoke to them as he walked hesitantly-not fearfully, Damian-back into the room. They swarmed around his head and chittered in a weirdly familiar language. He couldn't understand the language, but he recognized it? He was gaining ecto if he could recognize ghost dialect. He couldn't let Damian know he'd blame himself if he thought he put him in danger by letting him stay in the Realms. He couldn't leave him alone and was scared while he went through this. Damian needed him just as much as he needed him.
"You must have made a mistake. There's absolutely no way she would betray me. She's-this can't be happening." He muttered the last part and pushed through the blobs around him. He went to the table. Frostbite dropped files yesterday as something to do while the storm passes. He hadn't realized the weather would follow them to death. Apparently, in some 'biomes' in the Realms, it has weather but not the same it's all different. All at different times and patterns. The weather couldn't hurt ghosts, but it could hurt buildings and structures. Their cabin, luckily, was on the side of the island that the storm didn't reach, so they were told to stay put. He had gotten frostbite to give them paperwork so that he could convince Damian to do that instead of attempting to injure himself or the cores. It kind of worked he only had to chase him a few times.
"What's happening, Damian? What did they say?" He questioned, keeping in an eye in the weirdly calm swarm landing on the couch next to him. He captured his sons hands so he couldn't pull his hair out like he tended to do now. Damian face was covered in worry, fear, and maybe some regret.
"A group of heroes, including some of the founders of the Justice League and Constantine, are being transported by Pandora and Youngblood." He winced and glanced outside the window like he could see their ship.
"Bruce?" "And Todd, Drake, Brown, and Thomas."
"Shit. Well, we just have to explain to them what you told me, and they'll back off. Jason will be more than happy to knock Bruce into his senses if he doesn't. "
"I don't want them to know about this, about me-or them..."
"Damian, come on, they'd have had to at least know about the babies eventually. When you came home even-if you came to...live with me." Damian glanced around nervously, never meeting his eyes. Oh my god.
"But you never planned on returning, did you? You were going to let us think you committed suicide without any sign at all. Right? That was your plan to-to make us think we lost you!" He was yelling, and a distant voice told him he needed to calm down, but he really couldn't care less right now.
"I- didn't mean to make you think -" Damian was tearing up. He thinks absently that he's seen damian cry more these past few months than the past four years he's known him.
"I was going to follow you!" Damian seemed like he wanted to say something, but he needed to get his point across. He took a deep breath.
"When I got to the bridge, I was-in hysterics. I couldn't help but imagine you in the-the water. Hurt scared in pain, knocked around in the water-er. I thought you could have cracked your head open or just anything, and I had to-to save you! I just thought if i could follow you over that bridge...i could save you. " it was hard to see through the bluryness, but damian was the only thing he needed to see anyway.
"You would have been killed too..."
"I know."
"So why...?"
"Because you matter more to me than anything. You are my son, and you are Bruce's son, and you are Talias son."
"I-..."
"Let me finish. If Bruce didn't want you, you would have never been in the manor. It is impossible to make Bruce do something he truly doesn't want to do. You are a member of this crazy ass family because we want you. Bruce wants you. I want you. So don't push us away, please. "
"I just-i never doubted you!" It's always been bruce.
"Or any of the others, it's only Bruce, why?" He's afraid of his reaction most of all, like he knows something about him Dick doesn't.
"I told you about Jack Fenton, right? Well, before he sacrificed himself, he was cutting me open. As I screamed and cried and begged him to stop. That i was alive that I was his son didn't matter. What did matter was vlad. Jazz-you maybe called him begged him to save you. He told them-my mom all about ghosts about himself, and that stopped him. He said sorry to vlad instead of sorry to the son lying open and organs strewn across the room on the table. It was you who rushed forward and helped me. You who was always on my side so I can never doubt you but Bruce...I've had my share of father's and they haven't always been the best."
"He tries-"
"Sometimes trying isn't enough. But I trust you so...I'll give him a chance. I want to live with you but maybe we'll visit him."
"That's all I'm asking, baby bat." Maybe everything will be fine. Damian will see that Bruce isn't Jack, and everything will be fine. He goes to put his hand comfortingly on his shoulder but damian bypasses him and grabs him tight around the waist, burying his head into dicks clothes. Gripping him so tightly it hurts but he doesn't complain much too happy just hold his son. He grips him as tightly as he dares and rests his head on Damian.
"Richard."
"What, dami?" He turned his cheek from where he placed it on damians head so he could hear better.
"I think the babies are coming..." he pulls away suddenly to look at him, and sure enough, his stomach is glowing so bright his shirt is see-through. Damians face is pulled into an expression of wonder and fear. Shit shit shit. They'd thought we would have more time.
"I'll get frostbite. Just sit down." He helps him to the couch, and after making sure he knows to control his breathing, he runs out of the cabin to Frostbites. Luckily, he wasn't actually in human labor, but it was still extremely painful because of the fact that damian isn't a full ghost. Typically, it was more like a budding reproduction that plants do. A ghost and a ghostling go intangible and divide from each other. Frostbite believes damian will be strong enough for that to happen if they use ecto-dejecto+. Something he modified from the Fentons. He is extremely worried about this, as you could guess. He trusts Frostbite. He's like a large frosty and very intelligent retriever, but he's worried about the side effects of after rather than the immediate. They have no other idea it's this or nothing. Frostbite had said if the kids couldn't get out on their own, he would have to... cut them out. Ecto-dejecto+ it is!
"Frostbite! Frostbite!" He slammed into the large door and banged on it. It was probably unlocked like always, but this was faster. "Is it time?" He hears the resounding yell at foot from the door, and he flips backward so he doesn't get knocked out again.
"Yes! Obviously!" He turns back around and runs back to the cabin. He ignores frostbites yelling about getting his tools.
By the time he gets back, damian isn't on the couch anymore.
"Damian! Damian, where are you?" He's searching wildly around the room throwing things around. It had only taken him 6 minutes to get here and back. Please don't him have...have...
"In here!" Damian! From his old bedroom? Frostbite and him had been working in changing it into a temporary nursery just in case. Had Damian already...?
"Damian..?" He pushed open the door slowly.
"Shh, look!" Damian was smiling freely for the first time in a while. Completely free of the pain from just a few minutes ago. He was holding a baby, and another rested in a blue banket on the bed pushed against the wall, eyes darting around. Damian held another in a pink blanket in his arms, standing in the center. The baby's face was red, and tears steamed down its cheeks, but it wasn't actively crying.
"She just stopped crying. Here Ellie meet your..." he trailed off handing the baby over to him waiting for him to decide what he wanted to be called. They hadn't talked about it...
He couldn't help but tear up seeing the little baby. It didn't look like a newborn but maybe a month or 2 old. Still very young but bypassing the actual infant stage.
"Aren't they beautiful...What do you want to be called?" Damian picked up Dante and rocked him around the baby stared into space. The baby smiled so definitely more than a month. From the books he read it took about 6 or so weeks to smile actually smile instead of just gas.
"I don't know. Didn't think that far ahead." He took the corner of the blanket and gently wiped away the drying tears on her face.
"Im here! Great one! Princess!" Frostbite took forever seriously. And he was ignoring the title everyone insisted on using for him. They had offered to change it to Prince, but then it just felt too real? When he's called princess, it's funnier, less real, and like a joke, not like he's a literal prince of the literal fabric of the universe.
He pushed open the door and signaled to Frostbite standing in the broken doorway with his finger on his lips a classic be quiet sign he's sure ghosts would understand.
"Oh, well, I suppose we were worrying for nothing." Frostbite said once he finally got over the surprise. He was leaning over his shoulder or entire body technically from how large he was to peer at the baby girl. It was quite comical when he reached out a finger seemingly mesmerized at Ellies tiny little hand barely wrapped around half the finger when she grabbed it.
"Oh, I just love younglings. It has been centuries since I've seen such young neverborns. Though I believe it is just their human half influencing their age." The giant yeti seemed perfectly content to be trapped by the small hand.
"Do you think they'll ever gain their memories back?" Damian was sitting in the hand-carved rocking chair with ice and star designs all over it. He still held Dante in his arms. The baby simply watched its surroundings.
"I don't believe so but their cores personality should be similar and they might have a sense of deja vu sometimes but the amount of damage to their cores...I don't believe they will ever fully gain anything back." The yeti provided his much needed wisdom. "This is a new opportunity for them and you would be wise not to waste it, great one."
"I know, I won't its just i will miss them." Damian stared into his sons eyes not looking up at them.
"I know it is of no reconciliation, but...I will as well." Frostbite gently unraveled his claw from the baby and gathered his supplies. Leaving behind the ecto-dejecos without a word.
"You never answered me earlier about what you want to be called..." Damian said absent mindly in tone but completely focused on him.
"I did not realize it was such a big deal to you." Dick did. If he took up the uncle mantle, it would solidify the fact they were only brothers, but if he took up the grandfather title, Bruce and Alfred would be left out. He knew what he wanted, but bruce...its not he thinks Bruce will be furious or something at him it's more the quiet disappointment or regret he's worried about. Bruce was easy to anger but hard to disappoint, and every time he saw that look on his face...Bruce could also be a very jealous man.
"I thought about it what they'll call you guys. Alfred will be pops or grandpa. Bruce can have gramps. And you...can be papa..?" He can recognize the hopeful phrasing in his voice.
"I..thought Papa was for dads..." it's not a question really more like a dazed statement, but damian treats it like it is anyway.
"Not in the Midwest where I first came from. I used to call my grandparents, gama and Papa, when I was younger in that life. Before they died, we would drive for hours every holiday or on long weekends to see them." It was weird to hear him reminiscence about another life. Ellie gurgled, and he glanced down at the wiggly baby. Her fingers were in her mouths, and her eyes were locked with him. For the first time, he feels himself really look at her like a haze was lifted from his eyes. She had a tuft of dark brown hair almost black, her eyes were a startling unrecognizable hazel, her skin was slightly tan but barely like it was only just beginning to change. She had curious eyes and wild extremities like she wanted to get up and touch everything. She had a tiny brown mole beside her nose on her cheek-right in a crevice-a little above her mouth.
"It must have been nice."
"Yeah, it was." It wasn't an awkward silence but a quiet one just holding the babies he glanced over at Damian and saw Dante was asleep. Ellie was just about to fall asleep. Sh kept closing and opening her eyes at weird times.
He locked eyes with Damian and motioned toward the cribs. They were pushed against the wall between a dresser it was obvious the room wasn't even half finished.
The large bed shoved out the way, the pushed out of the way rocking chair and cribs the only sign of a nursery. The various other pieces of furniture were mismatched and aged.
He rocked Ellie, hoping to get her tired enough. He spied Damian, setting Dante down slowly in his crib. He made his way over to the cribs as well, just as Damian was reswaddling Dante. If his age assessment was correct, they'd stop that soon, but for now. Dante stayed fast asleep. He set Ellie down and attempted to fix her swaddling. He hoped he wouldn't fully wake her by messing with it. Luckily, she seemed to get the memo and fell asleep quickly. They turned back toward eachother he let out a relieved sigh and watched as Damian said goodnight to the babies and left the room looking back every step. He took one final glance at them and closed the door softly.
"What are we going to use for a baby moniter? Could Tucker have something we could use?" How would they even connect it? Tucker had said they had once tried internet in the realms but it would just explode randomly.
"No need. We're bonded, I feel their emotions." Ghost bonds at it again.
"Really? What are they feeling?" He needed to know if they liked him of course.
Damian hummed and answered thoughtfully " Loved, happy, content."
"Good."
"There is a...meeting soon between the leaders. It's an annual diplomatic meeting to discuss mostly trade and news. Tucker will be announcing the children as heirs to the Realms and..." Damian trailed off but it was obvious what he was going to say. Me.
"I thought you would be discussing the future when your older...?"
"We will discuss if i succeed him as he succeeded me once before. Tucker has done great work as king, and he enjoys it more than I do. The ancients will disagree they didn't like the fact I named him and sam as my heirs in the first place. The way to calm them is to act like I will succeed until we find a better plan."
"Right. Sam... Do you think she is also back in our world? Tucker became a ghost, but he told me that both you and Sam disappeared around the same time. What if she was reincarnated as well?" Damian listened intently but didn't speak just thinking. Damian didn't seem to have thought about it before and was now trying to think of he knew her.
"I already thought of that, and I already found her-him him, actually." Tucker walked through the door unburdened by it. He was dressed casually with a faded yellow sweater and a patched beanie on his head. You would never expect him to be a king. He still looked like young, not high school, but college for sure.
"Him? Who? Did you contact them?" Dick scoured his brain trying to think of anyone matching Sams personality.
"You already know him actually. He's on his way now." Tucker continued motioning toward the nursery door.
"Be quiet. They're sleeping, but how did you contact them?" Damian whispered loudly. Tucker peeked into the bedroom.
"So cute! I might just start up my babysitting gig up again. You're first on the list, of course, best friend privileges!" Tucker gleefully spoke, voice lower but excited.
"Absolutely not! Do you remember what happened at your last babysitting gig?" Damian pulled the door shut softly in a joking but final manor. Tucker scoffed and indignantly argued, "That wasn't even my fault! It was my mom's! She's the one who baked them!"
"Your mom baked babies...?" They both turned and looked at him confused before breaking out into hysteric laughter. A laughter so contagious he could barely stand up right.
"She didn't actually bake any kids, right?" He finally asked once he caught his breath, sparking another violent outburst of laughter.
----------
BOOM
"YES! DO IT AGAIN! DO IT AGAIN!" Green Lantern yelled out at Captain Yungblood, who stood at a cannon throwing cannonballs at floating puple rocks. When it hit them, fireworks sparked and went everywhere in a mixture of purple, green, and white. Flash senior looked around nervously, trying to stop then both before the big bat heard and yelled at them.
He kinda felt bad for the guy. Jason so deserves a cigarette for empathy. He scrouges around his jacket and pockets empty handed he searches around the floor, growing increasingly agitated. He knows he just had them, Jason just shared with John just a few minutes ago! He looked around accusingly. One of the brats must have stolen it. Green reared it's head begging him to teach the thief a lesson.
He latches his eyes on Tim just as he throws them into the sky to get blown to bits by the idiots. They don't even notice the extra fuel.
"Asshole!" Green clouded his vision as he stomped over to him and picked him up by his suit straps.
"It was for your own good!" He felt the green roar and rage behind his eyes. He could barely see past it, and weird purple haze around them made things even worse.
"Fuck you! And your do goody pretentious attitude!" He threw him at the ships cabin hitting the wood and shaking the whole ship. He felt eyes on him but he didn't care, Red Robin unleashed the bostaff and knocked his legs out form under him in one motion
"Red Hood! Stand down." Batman called from the top of the cabin shadows dampen the greens as his cape billows around him after he jumped down.
"Don't you dare tell me what to do!" He turned the green on his father, throwing a punch Batman barely managed to dodge.
"Jason -" Bruce grabbed his arms and wrapped himself around him, locking him in. He struggles wildly he's vaguely aware of Steph and Duke picking Tim up from the floor. Tim limps away, glaring at the other heros, they scattered into the corners of the ship, suddenly desperate to not be on the deck. God, what's wrong with him... he'd promised he'd never hurt his family again...this was a mistake he should have stayed behind in Gotham. Jason stopped fighting and let go, forcing his dad to follow him to the floor.
"Rough one, aren't you?" Pandora asks the tall alien looking amazon leers over them both. He wasn't a child, but his face reddens at the blatant condescension and scolding.
"We apologize if we interrupted anything." Bruce answers instead, saving him the embarrassment. "Not at all. It's good you're finally getting help here then."
"I'm afraid I don't follow?" Will any of these stupid fucking spirits just have a straight answer for just one question.
"Your liminalty? I can sense the ectoplasm on you it feels...like unsealed wine..." Pandora wrinkled her face as if she was imagining it. "Liminality?" He couldn't help but question out loud. "Ectoplasm? It's the...green goo, right?" Could the...pits actually just be ectoplasm? Wouldn't Constantine have, like, i don't know, exercised them??
Pandora groaned at his rambling and shook her head as if she couldn't believe what she was hearing. "You should meet the chief. He'll fix you." With that sentence repeated in the same ever grave tone the giant warrior left. He turned to bruce, but he was only met with his stone cold thoughts he left without meeting his eyes, and Jason couldn't help but remember how many times he's heard 'i can fix you.' It made him nauseous. Before he could realise it he was standing on the open deck with only the purple and green smog surrounding him God fucking dammit.
A/n really sorry for how long it took to get this out i know most of the posts on this story are taking forever and I'm sorry about that I'm not discontinuing the story but I've had some major writers block lately and I've been trying to cure it by writing other stories but I've just been hating how all them turned out lately. I've been trying to write some captain marvel golden age i just feel like I'm missing parts of Billy and I just hate it so if anyone has some tips for writing him particularly please share otherwise hope yall enjoyed this part snd happy holidays to everyone!!
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pin-k-ink · 7 months ago
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spring loaded // kita shinsuke
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tw ⇢ kita is a student council member, sexual tension, grinding, making out, cunnilingus, hate sex, rough sex, biting, marking, name calling, manhandling, unprotected sex, overstimulation, semi public sex
wc ⇢ 6.2k
a/n: i’ve no idea how a student council works because we don’t have that here. so i just write whatever i felt like was correct
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The weighted silence in the student council room felt charged enough to combust as Kita Shinsuke's piercing gaze bored into you from across the table, daring you to meet his stare.
You refused to be the one to blink first, keeping your features carefully composed despite the electric tingle thrumming beneath your skin whenever he settled that hooded, assessing look upon you. From the stark furrow of Kita's brow to the austere line of his mouth, his whole countenance radiated an intensity verging on confrontational.
Which was utterly baffling, considering the inanity of your current debate. You'd been going back and forth for what felt like hours over something as mundane as finalizing the budgetary allocation for the school's various clubs and sports teams. A topic that should have remained impersonal and clinical in discussion.
Yet with Kita as your opposition, even the most trivial administrative matters seemed to transform into a battle of wits and wills heavily laden with unspoken undercurrents. As if he took perverse delight in needling you over irrelevant minutiae just to study the sparks of agitation he could ignite behind your eyes.
"That figures simply cannot be accurate," Kita's crisp baritone sliced through the weighty quiet with surgical precision. "Clearly there's been an errant calculation made in funding distribution that skews the proportions unfairly."
You had to resist the urge to grit your teeth at his oh-so-casual insinuation of oversight on your part. Forcing yourself to meet that turbulent stare brimming with challenge, you enunciated clearly.
"I can assure you the numbers are triple-verified, Kita-san. Down to the last decimal point, as is protocol." You refused to rise to his barefaced provocation this time. "Unless you have a specific line item you'd like me to revisit?"
The muscle feathered along Kita's jawline told you he registered the thinly veiled rebuke in your composed tome. One corner of his perpetually downturned mouth seemed to twitch infinitesimally before he replied.
"Very well. If you insist the figures are beyond reproach, I'll simply defer to your...expertise on financial matters."
The way his gaze streaked overtly down the length of your body accompanied that final word before slowly ascending back to lock with yours. There was no mistaking the heated emphasis underlying the otherwise innocuous statement, or the undercurrent abruptly simmering in the space between you.
You forgot to breathe for a suspended heartbeat, mesmerized in a way you couldn't quite define by the heated intensity simmering behind Kita's pewter stare. Then the moment passed as he shifted imperceptibly, leaving you off-kilter and strangely...flushed with wayward energy.
"That said," Kita continued in a tone that could have stripped varnish, "based on my own analysis of the numbers, our volleyball program still seems to have been shortchanged on projected equipment and travel expenses for the upcoming semester."
Before you could even formulate a rebuttal, his palm slapped a sheaf of documents down atop the budget report with decisive force.
"I took the liberty of revising a few line items, reallocating whatever frivolous overages I could identify." Those gunmetal irises sliced into you with blistering emphasis. "You're welcome to review them and advocate for restoration of any expenditures you feel are indispensable, of course."
You opened your mouth to berate him for his typical high-handedness, but Kita simply leveled you with that hawkish, vivisecting look that somehow rendered you temporarily inert. Like a small prey creature having its innards laid open with scientific detachment for study.
"However..." He went on without awaiting dismissal. "I trust these revised projections will meet with the esteemed student council's approval, as they represent the most logical path forward for apportioning our resources effectively."
With a pointed dip of his chin, Kita slid the stack of modified documents across the table's glossy surface until they landed perfectly parallel before your frantically spiraling thoughts. For one hazy, dizzying instant, you caught another glimpse of that banked mercurial spark searing behind his pale stare.
And despite yourself, despite the countless similar petty needlings that prefaced this latest encounter...you felt a delirious slither of unfurling heat low in your abdomen at whatever unspoken challenge burned behind Kita's inscrutable countenance this time.
No matter how often you and Kita clashed over trivial administrative matters, the tension between you two always simmered with thrilling undercurrents you couldn't quite define. What should have been dry, impersonal discussions somehow transmuted into thick, electrically-charged atmospheres anytime he settled that piercing stare upon you.
Like the day you were compiling materials for the upcoming assembly in one of the empty classrooms after hours. So absorbed in cross-checking your notes that you didn't realize you weren't alone until Kita's crisp baritone sliced through the weighted quiet.
"Burning the midnight oil again, I see."
You startled slightly at his unexpected presence before forcing nonchalance. "Kita-san. I could say the same about you lurking around at this hour."
Rather than rising to your barbed tone, Kita simply shrugged one lean shoulder as he prowled further into the room. "Merely ensuring preparations are continuing on schedule, as is my duty."
There was something about the way he said that last part - husking it out in his low register while holding your stare hostage. As if the words themselves were laden with undercurrents his placid expression didn't betray. You had to tear your eyes away before your mind wandered in unprofessional directions.
"Yes, well..." You cleared your throat in a bid for steadiness. "I can assure you I have everything perfectly under control on this end."
"Do you?" Kita didn't miss a beat, tone taking on a weighted edge that raised delicious little chill-trails across your nape. Then he was suddenly looming over you, solid chest bisecting your space as one lean arm extended to tap the sheaf of agenda notes before you. "Then you'll want to revisit the agenda sequence here..."
You forgot to breathe for a suspended beat at the overwhelming closeness of Kita's body, the clean, earthy tang of his cologne fogging your senses in delirious waves. Heat prickled outwards as his proximity allowed you to take in all the subtleties of his physicality - lean musculature carved in elegant planes, hair perfectly coiffed, slender throat exposed by his open collar.
Swallowing hard, you dragged your traitorous focus to where his index finger rested, tamping down an errant shiver as you registered the feather-soft rasp of his knuckles grazing your forearm.
"No issues, Kita-san," you grated, silently willing your vocal cords not to betray the maelstrom of sensation spooling through you in waves. "That sequence of events is set exactly how I intended based on scheduled timing between segments."
A pause, thick and elecrically weighted. Then Kita leaned fractionally closer, face angling in your periphery until you could feel the humid torrent of his even breaths ghosting across your nape in tandem with the graze of his large palm settling over your knuckles.
"Perhaps..." He murmured at last, graveled timbre pitched to detonate in molten entreaty against your nerve-endings. "Perhaps you should take a breath and reexamine with fresh eyes, hmm? It's not good to rush and mess up all the hard work you've done so far..."
With exquisite slowness and purpose, Kita's fingertips began mapping delicious paths across the bare inward curve of your wrist where your sleeves ended. Following the thrumming path of your racing pulse with merciless precision as your entire body detonated into high-alert at his proximity.
"Something...to consider, President." He punctuated the softly murmured suggestion with the barest graze of teeth scoring along the fragile cup of your inner wrist, just below your leaping heartbeat.
You inhaled a sharp breath despite willing your lungs to remain steady, abruptly enveloped in the intoxicating maelstrom of Kita Shinsuke's body surrounding yours. His solid torso pressed against your back as he leaned over you was suddenly the only coherent point of gravity remaining in your short-circuiting consciousness.
Just as abruptly as the torturous intimacy commenced, Kita extracted himself from your personal space with that same maddeningly unhurried grace. Leaving you sagging dizzily over the table strewn with notes, head spinning from the disorienting whiplash as ambient reality slammed back into focus.
"Well then, I'll leave you to your...preparations," Kita remarked as he slid out of striking range once more. That calm, unruffled mien firmly back in place, not a single ripple marring the austere lines of his impassive features beyond the gleam of challenge burning in his pale stare.
Head buzzing with white-noise static, you somehow found the wherewithal to nod in numb acknowledgment as he made his exit. Though not before Kita tossed one last quietly insinuative murmur over the taut line of his shoulder:
"Do let me know if you require my...intimate counsel on any other agenda items before the assembly, President."
No matter how innocuous the setting or agenda item up for discussion, Kita always seemed to find a way to needle you until the atmosphere thickened with unresolved tension. You lost count of how many meetings devolved from productive dialogue into protracted staring contests - his pale, piercing gaze clashing against your own in silent challenge.
Until the slightest tonal emphasis or loaded innuendo from Kita's deceptively mild countenance had your senses catalyzing into high-alert without any overt physical provocation required. Your circadian rhythms seemed to attune themselves around whatever frequency he gave off until resentment and longing blurred into an inextricable dissonance.
It all came combustibly to a head during one marathon student council session debating adjustments for the upcoming cultural festival. What should have been a straightforward agenda swiftly derailed into yet another nitpicking exercise under Kita's scrutiny.
"This proposed stage layout is wildly impractical," he intoned without preamble, slicing through the tranquil murmurs around the table. "The sightlines from these audience positions will be unacceptably compromised."
You bristled at the derision loaded into his statement despite the bland delivery, hackles raising. "The sightlines have been carefully calculated and approved by school administration, Kita-san. I assure you, the layout is optimized for attendee visibility."
Kita's jaw tightened infinitesimally, the only betraying tic before he spoke again around the weighted pause. "Then I must object to the administration's mathematical competencies, President. Any observer would be hard-pressed to enjoy performances from these points."
Heat began sparking treacherously low in your belly despite willing every hormone into submission. The way his gaze needled yours made you feel like a science project splayed on the examination table for detached scrutiny.
"As I said, visibility has been confirmed as adequate," you attempted to dismiss his objection with an air of unruffled composure. "Perhaps if you reviewed the fully annotated schematics instead of cherry-picking sparse details, you wouldn't be so hasty with misguided critiques."
Around the oblong table, assorted club representatives and administrators shifted uncomfortably at the open animosity thickening the atmosphere. But Kita either didn't register or refused to yield the pointed intensity ratcheting up between you.
"Trust me, I've reviewed every last ludicrous detail in your 'meticulous' planning packet," he rejoined without missing a beat. Then those pale, turbulent irises streaked down your frame before ascending in a carnal sweep that ignited your senses into a molten feedback loop.
"If you'll recall, I made numerous notations regarding suggested corrections within those materials, none of which seemed to have been implemented based on this..." His fingertips trailed along the sheaf of documents arrayed before him with pointed nonchalance before tapping the stage layout critique. "...latest set of notes."
You sucked in a sharp inhale at the lingering heat imparted by his deliberately provocative regard. Determined not to shrivel beneath the scorching weight of it, you willed your features into an expression of cool disregard rather than flustered capitulation.
Rapping your knuckles once against the tabletop in a measured rebuke, you refused to so much as blink as your rebuttal emerged in clipped precision: "While I appreciate your...passion for optimization, Kita-san, I won't have you hijacking productive council discussions just to indulge your own pet nitpicks over work that's already been comprehensively reviewed and approved."
The resulting silence bordered on obscene, both of your expressions chiseled into neutral masks even as the electricity between your unyielding stares threatened to buckle the foundations. Kita broke first - but only to dip his chin in a subtle nod, one corner of his mouth twitching upwards into what could almost be interpreted as smirk.
"Of course..." He practically purred the acquiescence, sending depravity licking along your nerve endings despite his tone remaining decidedly mild. Then that pale, vivisecting gaze darkened with banked promise as Kita maintained weighty emphasis.
"Though whether or not you ultimately implement my impassioned adjustments, it seems prudent I continue voicing any...intimate observations pertaining to your procedural proposals. For the sake of meticulous oversight, naturally."
Your nails dug into the soft leather of your chair's armrests beneath the table, thighs clenching against a delirious spiral of dark yearning at the naked intimacy he somehow managed to bleed into an otherwise innocuous statement.
"Naturally," you echoed in a strained rasp, silently willing your feet to remain anchored despite every instinct suddenly screaming to flee the magnetic pull of Kita's influence before it dragged you into uncharted depths below.
His slow, weighted blink of faux-innocence told you he'd registered your restraint fraying audibly in that one tremulous utterance. As the council reconvened around you, Kita remained locked in blatantly pointed contemplation as if determining where best to slip the razor's edge of his next precision strike.
The pointed sparring between you and Kita rapidly escalated beyond mere loaded words and heated stares into something far more overtly provocative. As if some vital tether had snapped, rendering you both powerless against the raging undercurrents of tension steadily cresting between you.
Take the afternoon you'd stopped by the gymnasium to confirm details for an upcoming pep rally, only to find the cavernous space already occupied. Kita and his teammates were in the midst of grueling reception drills, sweat-slicked bodies moving in rhythmic unison across the hardwood.
You faltered in the entrance, instantly transfixed despite your best attempts at nonchalance. There was something almost hypnotic about watching the flexing, rippling muscles shifting beneath strapped compression gear as the athletes launched themselves around the court. But it was Kita's lithe, almost feral form that catalyzed a delirious storm of heated prickles streaking through you in waves.
The captain barked out a crisp order, sending his underlings scattering into new formations as he prowled the sidelines with that patented intensity. You couldn't tear your rapt attention away from the mesmerizing, almost predatory grace of his movements as those lean muscles bunched and released beneath his sleeveless jersey.
Kita halted mid-prowl as another powerful spike collided squarely with his reception. Absorbing the force with seemingly effortless poise, he pivoted towards you at the last second - eyes immediately snagging your dumbstruck gaze from across the vaulted space in a heated collision.
The world seemed to condense down to that single point of smoldering contact as Kita remained frozen for a suspended beat, chest heaving with exertion. You could almost taste the heady tang of his sweat saturating the charged atmosphere, jumpstarting your senses into riotous overdrive despite the distance between you.
Then Kita's tongue swept out in one unhurried sweep to moisten his lower lip and you were utterly, viscerally transfixed. Every molecule abruptly attuned to the elegant stretch of corded tendons, the hypnotic sheen of perspiration gilding his form, the predatory arch of those slanted eyes boring into you until the entire tableau felt like a brand searing itself into your unreliable psyche.
You couldn't even force your gaze elsewhere, overwhelmed by the phantom imprint of Kita's hooded stare streaking over your body in one scorching, proprietary sweep. Until the low, measured cadences of his gruff voice sawed through the maelstrom spiraling your senses into overload.
"Something I can...assist you with, President?"
Ambient noise came crashing back in technicolor cataclysm as Kita's question seemed to reverberate through the very marrow of your bones. His teammates had frozen mid-drill, staring between the two of you with comically transparent bewilderment as the tensions went unacknowledged but dauntingly tangible.
Your tongue felt leaden, mouth as dry and viscous as cotton wadding despite your efforts to recover some fragment of composure beneath the weight of that blazing scrutiny. Kita prowled closer, unhurried and predatory - until you swore you could feel the scorching heat radiating off the bunched musculature left glistening and exposed by his jersey's open collar.
"My, my..." He practically purred in that resonant timbre edged with dark sin. "So captivated already, and I'm only just getting warmed up for you..."
This time when that hooded, canine stare tracked down the length of your body, Kita didn't even attempt to mask his unhurried debauch. You stood rooted to the varnished floorboards, a live-wire of sensation burrowing treacherously outward as moist lips curved in the faintest suggestion of a leer.
"Well then, President..." That molten timbre caressed the honorific like one would relish a profanity falling sinfully free. "Allow me to put on a proper display showcasing my...skills and talents. Just for your viewing pleasure, hmm?"
With that husked promise dangling between you like a garrotte tightening around your every scattered impulse to flee, Kita spun away to rejoin the practice. But not before searing you one last weighted look - one that brazenly insinuated the deliberate narrative awaiting further exploration between your dually-bared forms.
Just like that, you were instantly, irretrievably captivated. Despite the spectacle unfolding before you, behind your raptured stare the only thought taking screaming root now was:
What else could this elemental feral creature so blithely take from you if given the chance...and would you let him?
It became increasingly difficult to maintain any veneer of professionalism whenever you and Kita occupied the same space. What should have been productive meetings or cordial planning sessions rapidly devolved into charged battlefields of heated looks and weighted innuendo.
As if some tenuous tether had finally snapped, rendering you both powerless against the rising tide of heated tensions crackling in the air whenever your eyes met. No matter how benign the topic up for discussion, that delirious, molten attraction always threatened to overwhelm and swallow you whole without preamble.
That day you'd called an emergency student council session to address concerns over the cultural festival's opening ceremonies running too long. What began as a pragmatic conversation about trimming excessive performances rapidly derailed the instant Kita strode through the door with that peerless intensity radiating off him in waves.
"--which is why I recommend we cut at least three acts from the lineup to stay on schedule," you addressed the assembly without preamble, determined to project an air of unruffled authority.
Unfortunately, Kita chose that precise moment to settle into the seat directly across from you, slouching indolently as pale eyes slammed into yours with the visceral impact of a bullet train's collision. You faltered infinitesimally despite yourself, briefly rendered inert beneath the naked weight of his stare before rallying onward.
"Unless...there are any other suggestions to streamline things?" You arched one brow in the vaguest of challenges.
A protracted beat passed, electrically charged and vibrating. Then Kita allowed his tongue to sweep out and trace the plump contours of his lower lip before replying in that endlessly unraveling rasp.
"As a matter of fact...I do have a few impassioned 'suggestions' for maximizing efficiency and impact, President."
The husked emphasis he placed on your honorific this time went straight to your core, igniting fissures of heat that threatened to unravel your composure completely. Deliberately tamping down the delirious spiral of yearning, you responded in as bland a tone as you could muster.
"I'm listening, Kita-san. Though perhaps we could table the distracting commentary for now and stay on task?"
Rather than looking chastised, Kita's lips seemed to twitch upwards in the barest hint of smirk even as a muscle ticked along his carved jawline. Then he leaned casually back, slouching further in pointed rebuke as he allowed that penetrating stare to streak down your form with unhurried debauch.
"Why so eager to rush through the opening acts, I wonder?" He all but purred, midnight regard devouring your deepening flush with clear relish. "Shouldn't we savor such a deliciously long...build-up before reaching the climactic main events?"
All around the conference table, the other council members shifted uncomfortably at the naked innuendo dripping through Kita's mild timbre. You opened your mouth, fully intending to deliver some withering rejoinder about his inappropriate lack of professionalism.
But that's when Kita allowed one defined forearm to snake up and brace his broad palm at the nape of his neck in a deceptively casual stretch. The motion drew every eye helplessly down towards the ruddy hollows of his collarbones now visible beneath his askew shirt placket, the tendons shifting beneath gilded flesh like sentient sculpture.
Despite yourself, your pupils blew wide in a hapless gutterball of physiological arousal, drinking in every tantalizing glimpse of lean muscle and glistening skin on offer. Completely missing the knowing curve quirking Kita's mouth as your attention grew transfixed in that breathless vacuum of gravity.
When the husky vibrations of his next drawling inquiry sliced through the weighted quiet at last, you actually startled as if electrified. "...isn't that right, President?"
You blinked dazedly, realizing belatedly that you'd been so thoroughly enraptured by the sensual display of Kita's sprawl that the entire conversational thread was now lost to temporaryvapors. Heat crept up the column of your throat as you fumbled for some semblance of steadiness beneath the weight of all those judging stares.
"I—um, that is..." You rallied at last, squaring your shoulders in a valiant show of composure despite the molten fires still blazing outwards through your veins. "As I was saying, some events will simply need omitting from the lineup in the name of time constraints. That's the most efficient strategy here, if we want the full cultural experience scheduled."
Forcing your attention away from the mesmerizing sprawl of Kita's form, you stared down several of the more vocal dissenters until their murmurings hushed obediently to the proclaimed assessment. Only once the matter appeared settled did you risk flicking your eyes back to where your tormentor lounged in studied insouciance.
Kita's full lips were curved in a quietly indolent smile now, one that somehow both scorched and soothed the hyperaware nerve-endings screaming for attention all over your body. His unblinking stare remained locked in rapturous communion through each weighted inhale, weighty enough to resurrect lingering prickles.
The atmosphere was already crackling with unresolved tensions by the time you and Kita arrived at your latest battle of wits and wills. What started as a mundane review of upcoming school pride initiatives rapidly spun out into familiar territory - with Kita nitpicking your every proposal like a dog worrying a bone.
"This budget allocation is transparently overblown," he snapped without preamble, pale eyes flashing. "I refuse to allow such blatant financial waste just to satiate the committee's delusions of grandeur."
You recoiled slightly at the bluntness, teeth gritting together. "Those funds were already approved by administration based on last year's successful promotional spend--"
"Last year's figures mean nothing if they were hemorrhaging money to begin with!" Kita's deep timbre emerged scorched and gravelly. "We cannot justify that level of surplus, end of discussion."
The menacingly calm way he shut down your objection sparked fresh tendrils of heated frustration snaking outwards through your veins. Your pulse kicked up several furious notches as Kita's piercing stare remained locked and loaded, awaiting either silent capitulation or your next attempted counterstrike like a wolf scenting weakness.
Shoving away from the table with enough force to rattle its contents, you shot to your feet with fists clenched in wordless defiance. For a suspended beat, Kita simply watched you through narrowed lids, coiled tension rolling off his larger frame in waves.
Then he moved.
With a feline's predatory grace, Kita pushed out of his chair and stalked around the table's circumference towards where you stood rooted between mounting wrath and some darker, more visceral yearning. In your heightened state, the liquid prowl of each measured step seemed to fill the tiny room, sudden claustrophobia setting your heart thundering.
Kita halted less than a foot away, near enough for you to feel the heated displacement of air around his solid frame like invisible wings. To scent the cedar-and-bergamot bouquet of his subtle cologne seeping into your scattered awareness until every shallow inhale felt drugged and rapturous. His eyes never left yours - twin laser sights of smoldering challenge.
"You'd do well to remember who holds jurisdiction over fiscal matters relating to our operations," he intoned at last, the words dropping like lead weights into the bristling quiet between you. "Arrogance like yours never fails to meet...humbling correction eventually."
Some unraveled tether finally snapped deep inside at Kita's ominous inflection. You surged upwards onto the balls of your feet until you were almost nose-to-nose, hands bunching in the placket of his shirt to yank his face closer in irresistible conflagration.
Kita went utterly statue-still for a suspended heartbeat, surprise rippling across those austere features before darkening into something more viscerally intent. You opened your mouth to deliver some scathing invective you couldn't even properly envision at the moment--
But the abrupt forward cant of Kita's hips robbed you of air and thought alike. Broad palms settled on your biceps with scorching possession, fingers digging in as he backed you up against the wall's solid plane without warning. Only inches separated you, carnal heat and musky cedar-spice atmospheres merging into delirium that catalyzed your lungs into overdrive.
Between one breath and the next, your bodies aligned in an inescapable vise of muscle and silk and banked wildfire. One of Kita's thighs settled between yours in brazen, unhurried possession, forcing your knees wider in shameless entreaty as his torso effectively pinned you from breastbone to navel. The slightest rock of his hips allowed the undeniable brand of his cock to nestle against your innermost apex in a slow, suggestive grind that whited out your higher reasoning entirely.
"Nnhh..."
The broken, needy noise slipped out before you could stop it. You flushed scalding, shame and yearning burgeoning in equal measure until you could no longer meet the smoldering tumult of Kita's regard from such excruciatingly intimate proximity. His exhalations feathered across your cheek in humid, dizzying waves.
Then suddenly Kita surged forward, mouth a scorching brand searing against your own in a devouring, open-mouthed crush of sin and scorching conquest. His iron grip around your biceps eliminated any notion of retreat or capitulation as he systematically began mapping the velvet cosms of your mouth with broad, indolent sweeps of his tongue.
Your hitching whimper was swallowed whole as you arched into the ruthlessness of his possession, hips grinding in helpless entreaty against his thigh's insistent cradle. Heat radiated off Kita's frame in searing thermals, cradling you deeper into his suffocating orbit until everything outside ceased coherent existence.
Just when the roaring in your ears threatened to peak into full-bodied oblivion, something tore with a decisive snap, accompanied by the clatter of ricocheting buttons. Suddenly cool air rushed in where heated flesh had fused mere moments before, allowing your eyes to slam wide in panicked realization--
Kita had practically torn the blouse from your torso, pinning you with arms wrenched overhead and chest heaving in undisguised debauch.
The sudden tearing sound seemed to detonate the last vestige of higher reasoning between you in that endless suspended moment. One second you were pinned beneath the scorching brand of Kita's mouth claiming yours in molten possession, the next cool air rushed in as buttons scattered across the room's tiles with percussive finality.
You shuddered violently as Kita wrenched himself back just far enough to fully drink in the sight of you disheveled and flushed, chest heaving above the lacy bra you wore. His stare streaked down the newly bared expanses of skin in one unhurried, carnal sweep - pupils blown wide enough to drown entire constellations.
Rather than feeling shamed or flustered beneath that devouring scrutiny, you arched shamelessly into his appraisal. Every nerve ending screamed for more of the searing friction from Kita's rigid frame as he pinned you against the wall with his unyielding weight, solid ridge nestled indelicately against your core.
The rasping groan he released then seemed to reverberate straight through your bones, a vibration echoing from some ancient, elemental depth. Kita's palms mapped up the trembling terrain of your flanks in searing brands, fingertips trailing delirious contrails until he cradled the soft weight of you entirely in his calloused grasp.
"So unbelievably eager..." His growl emerged gravel-rough and undone in a way that sent molten shudders ricocheting through you. "Utterly shameless in your hunger, aren't you?"
You managed the barest slivers of a nod, mouth falling open in soundless entreaty as Kita's thumbs ghosted beneath the exposed swells caught in his possessive cups. His tongue dragged out in one slow sweep to moisten those pillowed lips, gaze locked on your own in a silent clash of wills.
Then his hips rolled in one heated, languorous grind that had your eyes nearly rolling back in pure rapture. The sinuous flex of Kita's torso pinned you utterly immobile as he sealed your mouths together again in delirious communion - all searing velvet and scorching possession and liquid sin etching itself into each of your marrow.
Coherent thought fled entirely as his uniquely masculine musk surrounded you in heady, drugging waves. Every shallow inhalation drew Kita's smoldering essence deeper into your psyche until not even memories beyond this cathedral of satiated need remained recognizable.
You keened softly into the merciless sweep of his tongue mapping every velvet alcove in reverent exploration. Savored the delicious sting of teeth grazing oversensitized skin as he plundered down the elegant column of your throat with possessive fervor. Writhed and arched into each arrhythmic roll of his hips grinding yours back into the solidity of the wall over and over again--
Until the world itself seemed to bleed away into ashen vapor, leaving only the exquisite crucible of your tangled forms bound in an endless rapturous spiral of searing caresses and shattering gasps and carnal desperation spiraling ever inwards towards that infinite event horizon of oblivion.
Kita's husky drawl seemed to echo somewhere in the vicinity of the crown of your skull, distant and dreamlike and yet so impossibly present. A languid stroke along the underside of one breast, the teasing graze of canines across a straining tendon, a sinfully hot mouth trailing liquid fire between your trembling thighs.
"Such a mess you've made already, President..." His dark murmur reverberated through your entire being in a wave of liquid heat. "Such a needy little slut, aren't you? I can taste how desperate you are for me..."
Then the molten, velvet contours of his tongue plunged between the soaked folds of your pussy, stroking along the sensitive nerve-clusters in a single, unhurried sweep that had you convulsing against his restraining grasp. Your vision whited out at the seams as the heady, decadent taste of him flooded your senses.
A broken sob tore free as he licked into you again, then again, laving every last inch of your dripping slit with unhurried reverence. That sinful tongue delved impossibly deeper each time, spearing into your aching core until every muscle in your body quivered and clenched.
Kita hummed his satisfaction against the tender flesh, a vibrato that ricocheted through your synapses and ignited the frayed ends of your control in an instant. Then the suction started, lips and teeth and tongue devouring you in relentless, wet suction until the world was spinning and imploding and melting into nothing but pure sensation.
You keened wordlessly, thighs trembling and hips bucking wildly against his iron grip as Kita's dexterous fingers began pistoning inside you in tandem. The added stretch and friction of three calloused digits stroking along your most intimate walls had the pleasure spiking higher, higher, impossibly higher still.
"Fuck, so perfect..." He breathed reverently, the words feathering against your throbbing clit as Kita nosed against it with the most exquisite pressure. "Cum for me, right fucking now."
The orgasm ripped through you without warning.
Searing, shattering ecstasy erupted along your spine and outwards in a blinding wave that drowned every last coherent thought in its path. You cried out hoarsely, thrashing against Kita's grip in a frenzy as he worked you through each convulsive spasm.
Then his lips were sealing over your clit once more, tongue swirling and suckling and coaxing every last ounce of your climax into overflowing, molten bliss until the edges of reality frayed and unraveled entirely.
When the world gradually resolved back into some semblance of clarity, it was to the sensation of Kita's hard length grinding insistently between the slick seam of your thighs. The blunt, velvet-wrapped tip nudged against your swollen entrance in teasing promise, sending fresh ripples of sensation careening through your already overstimulated form.
You moaned wantonly, grinding against him in delirious entreaty - desperate for Kita to bury his cock inside you and fuck you until the universe itself shattered apart into glittering stardust. He hissed at the contact, hands gripping your hips with bruising force as the crown teased just barely inside, spreading your lips obscenely.
Then he slammed home, sheathing himself completely inside your clenching, aching walls with a single brutal thrust that had you both groaning aloud. Kita's mouth captured yours in a bruising kiss, the combined flavors of your climax and his intoxicating musk flooding your tongue and drowning you in pure rapture.
Every powerful stroke into your quivering pussy seemed to strike straight against the molten center of you, each thrust bottoming out and stretching you impossibly wide. It was the most exquisite, carnal torture - having your writhing form pinned and helpless while Kita's relentless assault pounded you into the wall.
You moaned, the sounds muffled against his hungry mouth, every nerve-ending igniting as his cock pistoned deeper and harder and faster. It was too much, not enough, more than you could possibly contain and yet you wanted it all - wanted him to split you apart on the thick, pulsating length spearing you open.
"Fuck, if I’d known what a cockslut you'd be for me..." Kita growled against your throat, the words muffled as his lips trailed up and down the exposed flesh in heated caress. "How sweetly you'd spread those gorgeous thighs and take everything I give you..."
One of his broad palms splayed across the front of your lower stomach, pushing against the swollen, stretched bulge of his cock pounding deep within you. You cried out at the added pressure, thrashing uncontrollably as another orgasm crested closer, closer, just beyond the reach of his iron grasp.
"Such a perfect, tight little cunt...squeezing my cock like you can't get enough..." His ragged timbre resonated through you in a sonic vibration, teeth sinking into the juncture of your throat and shoulder. "You fucking love this, don't you? Getting fucked hard and rough, like the slut you are..."
Your nails dug into his shoulders, scrabbling for purchase against the sweat-slicked, shifting planes of his musculature as you fought to meet each powerful stroke. Each brutal snap of Kita's hips threatened to unravel the foundations of the very universe, obliterating everything beyond the scorching friction between your bodies and the delirious, molten heat mounting in your core.
He panted raggedly against the delicate shell of your ear, the hot exhalations fanning across your temple and cheeks. Then his rhythm faltered, hips jerking wildly, a guttural curse spilling from Kita's parted lips as he drove impossibly deeper.
The world erupted in pure, molten euphoria.
A raw, feral cry wrenched free from somewhere deep inside you. Your back arched, the heels of your shoes digging into the firm curve of his ass as your entire form strained into his final, ruthless strokes.
"That's it, fuck..." He growled, hips stuttering as he ground impossibly deeper, a hot torrent of cum spilling into the clenching clutch of your cunt. "I can feel you milking me so fucking tight...taking every last drop like the good little slut you are..."
His words echoed distantly in your ears, the syllables blurring and blending together until they were nothing but a melodious refrain of filthy praise. Kita's cock continued to pulse deep inside, filling you impossibly full and igniting a whole new series of electrically charged sparks skittering across your raw nerve endings.
By the time the roaring in your ears abated, it was to the sensation of his mouth trailing along the delicate curve of your jawline in featherlight caress. Kita's broad palms smoothed down the length of your thighs, easing the strained muscles until they quivered anew.
All of a sudden, he was slamming you down onto the table's surface, the edge colliding with the back of your thighs and forcing you to brace your palms flat against the varnished wood. Kita loomed above, a predatory gleam flashing in his darkening irises as he leaned in to capture your lips in another searing, open-mouthed kiss.
"We're far from finished here, President..." That resonant purr echoed down to your very bones, sending fresh prickles erupting across your sensitized flesh. "Now that I've got you properly broken in , it's time we explore the rest of those delicious, depraved fantasies dancing behind those pretty eyes."
Then he was spreading your thighs wider, angling his hips to surge deep into the drenched, aching folds of your cunt once more.
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inthemaelstrom · 7 months ago
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ART ISN'T SUPPOSED TO MAKE YOU COMFORTABLE
By Jen Silverman (NY Times)
(Mx. Silverman is a playwright and the author, most recently, of the novel “There’s Going to Be Trouble.”)
When I was in college, I came across “The Sea and Poison,” a 1950s novel by Shusaku Endo. It tells the story of a doctor in postwar Japan who, as an intern years earlier, participated in a vivisection experiment on an American prisoner. Endo’s lens on the story is not the easiest one, ethically speaking; he doesn’t dwell on the suffering of the victim. Instead, he chooses to explore a more unsettling element: the humanity of the perpetrators.
When I say “humanity” I mean their confusion, self-justifications and willingness to lie to themselves. Atrocity doesn’t just come out of evil, Endo was saying, it emerges from self-interest, timidity, apathy and the desire for status. His novel showed me how, in the right crucible of social pressures, I, too, might delude myself into making a choice from which an atrocity results. Perhaps this is why the book has haunted me for nearly two decades, such that I’ve read it multiple times.
I was reminded of that novel at 2 o’clock in the morning recently as I scrolled through a social media account dedicated to collecting angry reader reviews. My attention was caught by someone named Nathan, whose take on “Paradise Lost” was: “Milton was a fascist turd.” But it was another reader, Ryan, who reeled me in with his response to John Updike’s “Rabbit, Run”: “This book made me oppose free speech.” From there, I hit the bank of “Lolita” reviews: Readers were appalled, frustrated, infuriated. What a disgusting man! How could Vladimir Nabokov have been permitted to write this book? Who let authors write such immoral, perverse characters anyway?
I was cackling as I scrolled but soon a realization struck me. Here on my screen was the distillation of a peculiar American illness: namely, that we have a profound and dangerous inclination to confuse art with moral instruction, and vice versa.
As someone who was born in the States but partially raised in a series of other countries, I’ve always found the sheer uncompromising force of American morality to be mesmerizing and terrifying. Despite our plurality of influences and beliefs, our national character seems inescapably informed by an Old Testament relationship to the notions of good and evil. This powerful construct infuses everything from our advertising campaigns to our political ones — and has now filtered into, and shifted, the function of our artistic works.
Maybe it’s because our political discourse swings between deranged and abhorrent on a daily basis and we would like to combat our feelings of powerlessness by insisting on moral simplicity in the stories we tell and receive. Or maybe it’s because many of the transgressions that flew under the radar in previous generations — acts of misogyny, racism and homophobia; abuses of power both macro and micro — are now being called out directly. We’re so intoxicated by openly naming these ills that we have begun operating under the misconception that to acknowledge each other’s complexity, in our communities as well as in our art, is to condone each other’s cruelties.
When I work with younger writers, I am frequently amazed by how quickly peer feedback sessions turn into a process of identifying which characters did or said insensitive things. Sometimes the writers rush to defend the character, but often they apologize shamefacedly for their own blind spot, and the discussion swerves into how to fix the morals of the piece. The suggestion that the values of a character can be neither the values of the writer nor the entire point of the piece seems more and more surprising — and apt to trigger discomfort.
While I typically share the progressive political views of my students, I’m troubled by their concern for righteousness over complexity. They do not want to be seen representing any values they do not personally hold. The result is that, in a moment in which our world has never felt so fast-changing and bewildering, our stories are getting simpler, less nuanced and less able to engage with the realities through which we’re living.
I can’t blame younger writers for believing that it is their job to convey a strenuously correct public morality. This same expectation filters into all the modes in which I work: novels, theater, TV and film. The demands of Internet Nathan and Internet Ryan — and the anxieties of my mentees — are not so different from those of the industry gatekeepers who work in the no-man’s land between art and money and whose job it is to strip stories of anything that could be ethically murky.
I have worked in TV writers’ rooms where “likability notes” came from on high as soon as a complex character was on the page — particularly when the character was female. Concern about her likability was most often a concern about her morals: Could she be perceived as promiscuous? Selfish? Aggressive? Was she a bad girlfriend or a bad wife? How quickly could she be rehabilitated into a model citizen for the viewers?
TV is not alone in this. A director I’m working with recently pitched our screenplay to a studio. When the executives passed, they told our team it was because the characters were too morally ambiguous and they’d been tasked with seeking material wherein the lesson was clear, so as not to unsettle their customer base. What they did not say, but did not need to, is that in the absence of adequate federal arts funding, American art is tied to the marketplace. Money is tight, and many corporations do not want to pay for stories that viewers might object to if they can buy something that plays blandly in the background of our lives.
But what art offers us is crucial precisely because it is not a bland backdrop or a platform for simple directives. Our books, plays, films and TV shows can do the most for us when they don’t serve as moral instruction manuals but allow us to glimpse our own hidden capacities, the slippery social contracts inside which we function, and the contradictions we all contain.
We need more narratives that tell us the truth about how complex our world is. We need stories that help us name and accept paradoxes, not ones that erase or ignore them. After all, our experience of living in communities with one another is often much more fluid and changeable than it is rigidly black and white. We have the audiences that we cultivate, and the more we cultivate audiences who believe that the job of art is to instruct instead of investigate, to judge instead of question, to seek easy clarity instead of holding multiple uncertainties, the more we will find ourselves inside a culture defined by rigidity, knee-jerk judgments and incuriosity. In our hair-trigger world of condemnation, division and isolation, art — not moralizing — has never been more crucial.
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mothmanssweetsucculentass · 6 months ago
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Bloody Painter Headcanons
Did y’all miss these? Idc if this seems like a weird direction to go from my past two HC lists, I’ve always loved Helen as a character and I just went and read up on all the compiled lore DeluCat made of him years ago, and I got some HCs fresh in my mind!
I used THIS YouTube video from DeluCat herself as my main source, assume anything I don’t list/discuss here is filled in by anything here. I’m actually really impressed that she did so much research on different serial killers, psych ward operations, and violent crimes to make Helen as realistic as possible.
Expect canon typical horror/mature topics being discussed from this point forward, nothing is censored beyond this point!!!!
Roughly about 25, give or take a few years
STRICTLY he/him, will react violently if anyone calls him different pronouns, especially feminine ones
Despite this, he’s definitely not cis (it’s actually canon that he’s agender! Friendly reminder that pronouns =/= gender)
Like bro you were literally raised to have a gender crisis. Everyone point and laugh at the egg
Jeff used she/her for him once as a joke and he still has deep scars from what Helen decided to do to him
Like I shit you not, Helen took a sizable chunk of skin out of Jeff’s back, and only stopped because Eyeless Jack physically had to hold him back until Jeff left his line of sight
You wouldn’t even expect such violent outbursts from this guy considering how normally calm he is
Barely talks at all tbh
Like, he’ll interact politely with most of the residents of the mansion and isn’t turned off by conversation, but don’t expect him to hold a full conversation if he deems you boring or unimportant
Which tbh he probably will, he’s not super big on friendships considering how his last one went
Mostly prefers to keep to himself and is often in the more run down/abandoned wings of the manor
Has a naturally more feminine looking face (long eyelashes, smaller nose, etc) and does nothing to try and fix/hide it
Has converted one of the dilapidated rooms into an “art” studio
And by art. Heh. Let’s just say. Corpses
No actually he really just has an entire room dedicated to some of the most fucked up art a person is capable of making
Sculptures made out of bones and flesh, jars filled with coagulated blood submerging his taxidermy projects, eyeball jewelry, teeth jewelry, paint made from pummeled organs and flesh, brandings and etchings on stretched human skin, plushies made of human hair, he’s got it all
He also makes more “normal” art, which in reality is just more traditional mediums that still depict his usual obsessions with violence
Has gotten used to the scent of rot and decay like pretty much every resident has, but is one of the few who enjoys it
Is very selfish, self centered, and has an ego larger than Texas
Him and Ben have a somewhat transactional relationship; Helen films all the depraved torture and crafting he enacts and shares it with Ben, and Ben prints out news articles of Helen’s crimes for Helen to make art with, or just look at to admire his handiwork
ZERO empathy. His morals heavily align with the BEN AI, and even somewhat Slenderman’s
Hates animals. Not cause he’s scared of them or anything, but because he finds their existence useless
…unless he’s using it for fucked up taxidermy
LOVES torture the same way Eyelss Jack loves vivisections
One of his favorite things to do is rip a person’s fingernails out one by one, and then severing the hand and using the bleeding nail beds as the world’s most fucked up large paintbrush
Besides art, he loves to read. Kind of a given considering he’s basically the quiet kid
Loves depraved horror novels and serial killer memoirs/autobiographies
Can speak fluent Chinese, and often shit talks other pastas to their faces without them even knowing
Kagekao learned Chinese just so the two could gossip
Similar to EJ, has a more “buff” physique and has been seen breaking bones effortlessly. When you’ve been murdering steadily for over a decade at this point you kinda just learn where the weak/break points are in the human body
Can improvise anything into a weapon
Actually he really loves killing people with unconventional murder weapons. Scenes are often found with things like metal straws lodged in a victim’s sternum, or the top of a bowling pin shoved down a victim’s throat so far their jaw broke and the victim subsequently choked on their own blood from their shattered teeth
He’s gotten so good at this that the other pastas will literally make a game out of it and challenge him to use an outlandish item as a weapon the next time he kills
“Okay okay how about a bong” “are you being serious right now” “just answer the question art boy” “twice, actually. Though technically I think one of them was a really weird ceramic frog instead. That, or a pcp pipe.” “Awesome”
Hates removing his mask around anyone he’s not acquainted with
Gets reeeaaalll fuckin quiet too
Has gotten so good at being stealthy he doesn’t even alert or startle people like Eyeless Jack does
Surprisingly enough he actually gets enough sleep compared to most of the other residents of the manor
He’s also able to get comfortable and sleep practically anywhere, in the weirdest positions too. Is often found passed out in his studio sitting up, or laying on the floor covered in metal torture tools and bones
Despite his lack of empathy, his blood boils and he seethes if anyone dares to mess with Sally
The first day he stumbled across the manor and introduced himself by what the media called him, Sally gave him a drawing of himself, and he vowed on the spot to look out for the little snot
Is already a naturally patient person, and is incredibly patient and gentle when explaining how to do specific art things to Sally
Jokingly “agrees” with Sally about not liking doctors whenever she’s around eyeless Jack (though in his case he hates psych doctors vastly more than physical ailment doctors)
Back to the patience thing: will stalk a victim for months to toy with them. He has an eternity to do this to people with his newfound abilities granted to him by slenderman, why rush?
Helen 🤝 BEN/Ben = malewhore mansplain manipulate
Will say anything to get what he wants
Thinks in a very transactional and technical way. If you don’t do or offer something to benefit him first, he doesn’t even see you as a person
Is friends/close with: Sally, Eyeless Jack, BEN/Ben, Jason, Ann, and KageKao
Has a tolerable relationship with/is very neutral about: Masky, Hoody, Jane, Liu, Puppeteer, LJ, and Slenderman
Doesn’t get along with/HATES: clockwork, Nina, and Jeff
Him and Jason often collaborate together on pieces involving still living people
Him and Ann have a mutual distaste for doctors/hospital settings, and can often be found stitching up their wounds (or sometimes in Helen’s case a piece involving human flesh) together
Ace, heavily questioning if he’s aro too
He finds Ann aesthetically pleasing to look at, but his thoughts don’t go any further than that. Often uses her as figure practice (with her consent)
Is mainly fascinated by the fact she’s a walking sentient corpse
Tried cannibalism once, wasn’t a fan
Tried going to both Eyeless Jack and Ann once during a dysphoria-spurred panic attack and begged for bottom surgery
“But why tho” “I’m ace. I don’t need it. Don’t women who never want to get pregnant get rid of their uteruses anyways?” “Well, yes, but-“ “so help me god get this thing off my body”
Obviously one of the few times he actually doesn’t appear calm and put together to people. Tries his damn hardest to hide these panic attacks unless around Eyeless Jack or Ann. Would be mortified if Ben, Sally, or any of the loud judgmental pastas saw him in this state
Gives a lot of his full corpse art pieces a physical sex swap
You’re dead but hey free top surgery and you get to be fucked up art
Honestly doesn’t give a shit about symbolism, makes art of whatever he wants/feels like and makes it pretty clear there’s no hidden meaning
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lenbryant · 7 months ago
Text
(Times) Art Isn’t Supposed to Make You Comfortable
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By Jen Silverman
Mx. Silverman is a playwright and the author, most recently, of the novel “There’s Going to Be Trouble.”
When I was in college, I came across “The Sea and Poison,” a 1950s novel by Shusaku Endo. It tells the story of a doctor in postwar Japan who, as an intern years earlier, participated in a vivisection experiment on an American prisoner. Endo’s lens on the story is not the easiest one, ethically speaking; he doesn’t dwell on the suffering of the victim. Instead, he chooses to explore a more unsettling element: the humanity of the perpetrators.
When I say “humanity” I mean their confusion, self-justifications and willingness to lie to themselves. Atrocity doesn’t just come out of evil, Endo was saying, it emerges from self-interest, timidity, apathy and the desire for status. His novel showed me how, in the right crucible of social pressures, I, too, might delude myself into making a choice from which an atrocity results. Perhaps this is why the book has haunted me for nearly two decades, such that I’ve read it multiple times.
I was reminded of that novel at 2 o’clock in the morning recently as I scrolled through a social media account dedicated to collecting angry reader reviews. My attention was caught by someone named Nathan, whose take on “Paradise Lost” was: “Milton was a fascist turd.” But it was another reader, Ryan, who reeled me in with his response to John Updike’s “Rabbit, Run”: “This book made me oppose free speech.” From there, I hit the bank of “Lolita” reviews: Readers were appalled, frustrated, infuriated. What a disgusting man! How could Vladimir Nabokov have been permitted to write this book? Who let authors write such immoral, perverse characters anyway?
I was cackling as I scrolled but soon a realization struck me. Here on my screen was the distillation of a peculiar American illness: namely, that we have a profound and dangerous inclination to confuse art with moral instruction, and vice versa.
As someone who was born in the States but partially raised in a series of other countries, I’ve always found the sheer uncompromising force of American morality to be mesmerizing and terrifying. Despite our plurality of influences and beliefs, our national character seems inescapably informed by an Old Testament relationship to the notions of good and evil. This powerful construct infuses everything from our advertising campaigns to our political ones — and has now filtered into, and shifted, the function of our artistic works.
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Maybe it’s because our political discourse swings between deranged and abhorrent on a daily basis and we would like to combat our feelings of powerlessness by insisting on moral simplicity in the stories we tell and receive. Or maybe it’s because many of the transgressions that flew under the radar in previous generations — acts of misogyny, racism and homophobia; abuses of power both macro and micro — are now being called out directly. We’re so intoxicated by openly naming these ills that we have begun operating under the misconception that to acknowledge each other’s complexity, in our communities as well as in our art, is to condone each other’s cruelties.
When I work with younger writers, I am frequently amazed by how quickly peer feedback sessions turn into a process of identifying which characters did or said insensitive things. Sometimes the writers rush to defend the character, but often they apologize shamefacedly for their own blind spot, and the discussion swerves into how to fix the morals of the piece. The suggestion that the values of a character can be neither the values of the writer nor the entire point of the piece seems more and more surprising — and apt to trigger discomfort.
While I typically share the progressive political views of my students, I’m troubled by their concern for righteousness over complexity. They do not want to be seen representing any values they do not personally hold. The result is that, in a moment in which our world has never felt so fast-changing and bewildering, our stories are getting simpler, less nuanced and less able to engage with the realities through which we’re living.
I can’t blame younger writers for believing that it is their job to convey a strenuously correct public morality. This same expectation filters into all the modes in which I work: novels, theater, TV and film. The demands of Internet Nathan and Internet Ryan — and the anxieties of my mentees — are not so different from those of the industry gatekeepers who work in the no-man’s land between art and money and whose job it is to strip stories of anything that could be ethically murky.
I have worked in TV writers’ rooms where “likability notes” came from on high as soon as a complex character was on the page — particularly when the character was female. Concern about her likability was most often a concern about her morals: Could she be perceived as promiscuous? Selfish? Aggressive? Was she a bad girlfriend or a bad wife? How quickly could she be rehabilitated into a model citizen for the viewers?
TV is not alone in this. A director I’m working with recently pitched our screenplay to a studio. When the executives passed, they told our team it was because the characters were too morally ambiguous and they’d been tasked with seeking material wherein the lesson was clear, so as not to unsettle their customer base. What they did not say, but did not need to, is that in the absence of adequate federal arts funding, American art is tied to the marketplace. Money is tight, and many corporations do not want to pay for stories that viewers might object to if they can buy something that plays blandly in the background of our lives.
But what art offers us is crucial precisely because it is not a bland backdrop or a platform for simple directives. Our books, plays, films and TV shows can do the most for us when they don’t serve as moral instruction manuals but allow us to glimpse our own hidden capacities, the slippery social contracts inside which we function, and the contradictions we all contain.
We need more narratives that tell us the truth about how complex our world is. We need stories that help us name and accept paradoxes, not ones that erase or ignore them. After all, our experience of living in communities with one another is often much more fluid and changeable than it is rigidly black and white. We have the audiences that we cultivate, and the more we cultivate audiences who believe that the job of art is to instruct instead of investigate, to judge instead of question, to seek easy clarity instead of holding multiple uncertainties, the more we will find ourselves inside a culture defined by rigidity, knee-jerk judgments and incuriosity. In our hair-trigger world of condemnation, division and isolation, art — not moralizing — has never been more crucial.
0 notes
grotto-esque · 7 months ago
Text
Art Isn’t Supposed to Make You Comfortable
By Jen Silverman
When I was in college, I came across “The Sea and Poison,” a 1950s novel by Shusaku Endo. It tells the story of a doctor in postwar Japan who, as an intern years earlier, participated in a vivisection experiment on an American prisoner. Endo’s lens on the story is not the easiest one, ethically speaking; he doesn’t dwell on the suffering of the victim. Instead, he chooses to explore a more unsettling element: the humanity of the perpetrators.
When I say “humanity” I mean their confusion, self-justifications and willingness to lie to themselves. Atrocity doesn’t just come out of evil, Endo was saying, it emerges from self-interest, timidity, apathy and the desire for status. His novel showed me how, in the right crucible of social pressures, I, too, might delude myself into making a choice from which an atrocity results. Perhaps this is why the book has haunted me for nearly two decades, such that I’ve read it multiple times.
I was reminded of that novel at 2 o’clock in the morning recently as I scrolled through a social media account dedicated to collecting angry reader reviews. My attention was caught by someone named Nathan, whose take on “Paradise Lost” was: “Milton was a fascist turd.” But it was another reader, Ryan, who reeled me in with his response to John Updike’s “Rabbit, Run”: “This book made me oppose free speech.” From there, I hit the bank of “Lolita” reviews: Readers were appalled, frustrated, infuriated. What a disgusting man! How could Vladimir Nabokov have been permitted to write this book? Who let authors write such immoral, perverse characters anyway?
I was cackling as I scrolled but soon a realization struck me. Here on my screen was the distillation of a peculiar American illness: namely, that we have a profound and dangerous inclination to confuse art with moral instruction, and vice versa.
As someone who was born in the States but partially raised in a series of other countries, I’ve always found the sheer uncompromising force of American morality to be mesmerizing and terrifying. Despite our plurality of influences and beliefs, our national character seems inescapably informed by an Old Testament relationship to the notions of good and evil. This powerful construct infuses everything from our advertising campaigns to our political ones — and has now filtered into, and shifted, the function of our artistic works.
Maybe it’s because our political discourse swings between deranged and abhorrent on a daily basis and we would like to combat our feelings of powerlessness by insisting on moral simplicity in the stories we tell and receive. Or maybe it’s because many of the transgressions that flew under the radar in previous generations — acts of misogyny, racism and homophobia; abuses of power both macro and micro — are now being called out directly. We’re so intoxicated by openly naming these ills that we have begun operating under the misconception that to acknowledge each other’s complexity, in our communities as well as in our art, is to condone each other’s cruelties.
When I work with younger writers, I am frequently amazed by how quickly peer feedback sessions turn into a process of identifying which characters did or said insensitive things. Sometimes the writers rush to defend the character, but often they apologize shamefacedly for their own blind spot, and the discussion swerves into how to fix the morals of the piece. The suggestion that the values of a character can be neither the values of the writer nor the entire point of the piece seems more and more surprising — and apt to trigger discomfort.
While I typically share the progressive political views of my students, I’m troubled by their concern for righteousness over complexity. They do not want to be seen representing any values they do not personally hold. The result is that, in a moment in which our world has never felt so fast-changing and bewildering, our stories are getting simpler, less nuanced and less able to engage with the realities through which we’re living.
I can’t blame younger writers for believing that it is their job to convey a strenuously correct public morality. This same expectation filters into all the modes in which I work: novels, theater, TV and film. The demands of Internet Nathan and Internet Ryan — and the anxieties of my mentees — are not so different from those of the industry gatekeepers who work in the no-man’s land between art and money and whose job it is to strip stories of anything that could be ethically murky.
I have worked in TV writers’ rooms where “likability notes” came from on high as soon as a complex character was on the page — particularly when the character was female. Concern about her likability was most often a concern about her morals: Could she be perceived as promiscuous? Selfish? Aggressive? Was she a bad girlfriend or a bad wife? How quickly could she be rehabilitated into a model citizen for the viewers?
TV is not alone in this. A director I’m working with recently pitched our screenplay to a studio. When the executives passed, they told our team it was because the characters were too morally ambiguous and they’d been tasked with seeking material wherein the lesson was clear, so as not to unsettle their customer base. What they did not say, but did not need to, is that in the absence of adequate federal arts funding, American art is tied to the marketplace. Money is tight, and many corporations do not want to pay for stories that viewers might object to if they can buy something that plays blandly in the background of our lives.
But what art offers us is crucial precisely because it is not a bland backdrop or a platform for simple directives. Our books, plays, films and TV shows can do the most for us when they don’t serve as moral instruction manuals but allow us to glimpse our own hidden capacities, the slippery social contracts inside which we function, and the contradictions we all contain.
We need more narratives that tell us the truth about how complex our world is. We need stories that help us name and accept paradoxes, not ones that erase or ignore them. After all, our experience of living in communities with one another is often much more fluid and changeable than it is rigidly black and white. We have the audiences that we cultivate, and the more we cultivate audiences who believe that the job of art is to instruct instead of investigate, to judge instead of question, to seek easy clarity instead of holding multiple uncertainties, the more we will find ourselves inside a culture defined by rigidity, knee-jerk judgments and incuriosity. In our hair-trigger world of condemnation, division and isolation, art — not moralizing — has never been more crucial.
source
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doyouknowthisbook-poll · 7 months ago
Text
FINAL RESULT: The majority of voters haven’t read this book before and didn’t like the excerpt posted. 😔
The Island of Doctor Moreau is an 1896 science fiction novel by English author H. G. Wells. From Wikipedia: “The text of the novel is the narration of Edward Prendick, a shipwrecked man rescued by a passing boat. He is left on the island home of Doctor Moreau, a mad scientist who creates human-like hybrid beings from animals via vivisection, ie. surgery conducted for experimental purposes on a living organism, typically animals with a central nervous system, to view living internal structure. The novel deals with a number of themes, including pain and cruelty, moral responsibility, human identity, human interference with nature, and the effects of trauma.
At the time of the novel's publication in 1896, there was growing discussion in Europe of the possibility of the degeneration of the human race. At the turn of the 19th century, medicine was undergoing a transformation. The emergence of hospitals and the development of more advanced medical tools such as the stethoscope are but a few of the changes in the medical field. There was also an increased recognition that medical practices needed to be improved, as many of the current therapeutics were based on unproven, traditional theories that may or may not have helped the patient recover. The demand for more effective treatment shifted emphasis to research with the goal of understanding disease mechanisms and anatomy. This shift had a few effects, one of which was the rise in patient experimentation, leading to some moral questions about what was acceptable in clinical trials and what was not. An easy solution to the moral problem was to use animals in vivisection experiments, so as not to endanger human patients. This, however, had its own set of moral obstacles, leading to the anti-vivisection movement. Increasing opposition to animal vivisection led to formation of groups like the National Anti-Vivisection Society in 1875, and the British Union for the Abolition of Vivisection in 1898. The Island of Dr. Moreau reflects the ethical, philosophical, and scientific concerns and controversies raised by these themes and the ideas of Darwinian evolution which were so disrupting to social norms in the late 1800s. In his preface to The Works of H.G. Wells, Volume 2, The Atlantic Edition (1924), Wells explains that The Island of Dr. Moreau was also inspired by the trial of Oscar Wilde. Wells wrote: ‘The Island of Doctor Moreau was written in 1895, and it was begun while "The Wonderful Visit" was still in hand. It is a theological grotesque, and the influence of Swift is very apparent in it. There was a scandalous trial about that time, the graceless and pitiful downfall of a man of genius, and this story was the response of an imaginative mind to the reminder that humanity is but animal rough-hewn to a reasonable shape and in perpetual internal conflict between instinct and injunction. This story embodies this ideal, but apart from this embodiment it has no allegorical quality. It is written just to give the utmost possible vividness to that conception of men as hewn and confused and tormented beasts. When the reader comes to read the writings upon history in this collection, he will find the same idea of man as a re-shaped animal no longer in flaming caricature, but as a weighed and settled conviction.’
The Island of Doctor Moreau is a classic work of early science fiction and remains one of Wells's best-known books. The novel is the earliest depiction of the science fiction motif ‘uplift’ in which a more advanced race intervenes in the evolution of an animal species to bring the latter to a higher level of intelligence. It has been adapted to film and other media on many occasions.”
Do you know which book this is from?
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Please reblog the polls, but KEEP IT SPOILER-FREE to make people read the excerpt with an open mind 💖📚 Title and author will be revealed after the poll's conclusion.
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devilsskettle · 3 years ago
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oh man i have a Lot of thoughts about the autopsy of jane doe, both positive and critical For Sure, i'd be SO excited to see your analysis of it! definitely keeping an eye out for that 👀
thanks! i'm working on something article-like to talk about the film and i don't know what i want to do with it yet lol but if i don't post it on here i'll definitely link it. it's mainly a discussion of gender in possession/occult films in the same way that carol clover describes in men, women, and chainsaws - that there are dual plot lines in occult films, usually gendered masculine and feminine respectively, where the "main" feminine plot (the actual possession) is actually a way to explore the "real" masculine plot (the emotional conflict of the "man in crisis" protagonist). typically the man in crisis is too masculine, or "closed" emotionally, where the woman is too "open," which is why she acts as the vehicle for the supernatural occurrence as well as the core emotions of the film. the man has to learn how to become more open (though if he becomes too open, like father karras in the exorcist, he has to die by the end - he has to find a happy medium, where he doesn't actually transgress gender expectations too much. clover calls this state the "new masculine," and we might apply the term "toxic masculinity" to the "closed" emotional state). part of the "opening up" feature of the story is that it allows men to be highly emotionally expressive in situations where they otherwise might not be allowed to, which is cathartic for the assumed primary audience of these films (young men). another feature of the genre is white science vs black magic (once you exhaust the scientific "rational" explanations, you have to accept that something magic is happening). the autopsy of jane doe does this even more than the films she discusses when she published the book in 1992 (the exorcist, poltergeist, christine, etc) because the supernaturally influenced young woman who becomes this kind of vehicle is more of an object than a character. she doesn't have a single line of dialogue or even blink for the entire runtime of the movie. the camerawork often pans to her as if to show her reactions to the events of the movie, which seems kind of pointless because it's the same reaction the whole time (none) but it allows the viewer to project anything they want onto her - from personal suffering to cunning and spite. 
compare again to the exorcist: is the story actually about regan mcneil? no. but do we care about her? sure (clover says no, but i think we at least feel for her situation lol). and do we get an idea of what she's like as a person? yes. even though her pain and her body are used narratively as a framework for karras' emotional/religious crisis, we at least see her as a person. both she and her mother are expendable to the "real" plot but they're very active in their roles in the "main" plot - our "jane doe" isn't afforded even that level of agency or identity. so. is that inherently sexist? well, no - if there were other women in the film who were part of the "real" plot, i would say that the presence of women with agency and identity demonstrate enough regard for the personhood of women to make the gender of the subject of the autopsy irrelevant. but there are none. of the three important women in the film, we have 1) an almost corpse, 2) an absent (dead) mother, and 3) a one dimensional girlfriend who is killed off for a man's character development/cathartic expression of emotions. all three are just platforms for the men in crisis of this narrative. 
and, to my surprise, much of the reception to the film is to embrace it as a feminist story because the witch is misconstrued as a badass, powerful, Strong Female Character girl boss type for getting revenge on the men who wronged her, with absolutely no consideration given to what the movie actually ends up saying about women. and the director has said that he embraces this interpretation, but never intended it. so like. of course you're going to embrace the interpretation that gives you critical acclaim and the moral high ground. but it's so fucking clear that it was never his intention to say anything about feminism, or women in general, or gender at all. so i find it very frustrating that people read the film that way because it's just. objectively wrong.
there's also things i want to say about this idea that clover talks about in a different chapter of the book when she discusses the country/city divide in a lot of horror (especially rape-revenge films) in which the writer intends the audience to identify with the city characters and be against the country characters (think of, like, house of 1000 corpses - there's pretty explicit socioeconomic regional tension between the evil country residents and the travelers from the city) but first, they have to address the real harm that the City (as a whole) has inflicted upon the Country (usually in the forms of environmental and economic destruction) so in order to justify the antagonization the country people are characterized by, their "retaliation" for these wrongs has to be so extreme and misdirected that we identify with the city people by default (if country men feel victimized by the City and react by attacking a city woman who isn't complicit in the crimes of the City in any of the violent, heinous ways horror movies employ, of course we won't sympathize with them). why am i bringing this up? well, clover says this idea is actually borrowed from the western genre, where native americans are the Villains even as white settlers commit genocide - so they characterize them as extremely savage and violent in order to justify violence against them (in fiction and in real life). the idea is to address the suffering of the Other and delegitimize it through extreme negative characterization (often, with both the people from the country and native americans, through negative stereotyping as well as their actions). so i think that shows how this idea is transferred between different genres and whatever group of people the writers want the viewers to be against, and in this movie it’s happening on the axis of gender instead of race, region, or class. obviously the victims of the salem witch trials suffered extreme injustice and physical violence (especially in the film as victim of the ritual the body clearly underwent) BUT by retaliating for the wrongs done to her, apparently (according to the main characters) at random, she's characterized as monstrous and dangerous and spiteful. her revenge is unjustified because it’s not targeted at the people who actually committed violence against her. they say that the ritual created the very thing it was trying to destroy - i.e. an evil witch. she becomes the thing we're supposed to be afraid of, not someone we’re supposed to sympathize with. she’s othered by this framework, not supported by it, so even if she’s afforded some power through her posthumous magical abilities, we the viewer are not supposed to root for her. if the viewer does sympathize with her, it’s in spite of the writing, not because of it. the main characters who we are intended to identify with feel only shallow sympathy for her, if any - even when they realize they’ve been cutting open a living person, they express shock and revulsion, but not regret. in fact, they go back and scalp her and take out her brain. after realizing that she’s alive! we’re intended to see this as an acceptable retaliation against the witch, not an act of extreme cruelty or at the very least a stupid idea lol. 
(also - i hate how much of a buzzword salem is in movies like this lol, nothing about her injuries or the story they “read” on her is even remotely similar to what happened in salem, except for the time period. i know they don’t explicitly say oh yeah, she was definitely from salem, but her injuries really aren’t characteristic of american executions of witches at all so i wish they hadn’t muddied the water by trying to point to an actual historical event. especially since i think the connotation of “witch” and the victims of witch trials has taken on a modern projection of feminism that doesn’t really make sense under any scrutiny. anyway)
not to mention the ending: what was the writer intending the audience to get from the ending? that the cycle of violence continues, and the witch’s revenge will move on and repeat the same violence in the next place, wherever she ends up. we’re supposed to feel bad for whoever her next victims will be. but what about her? i think the movie figures her maybe as triumphant, but she’s going to keep being passed around from morgue to morgue, and she’s going to be vivisected again and again, with no way to communicate her pain or her story. the framework of the story doesn’t allow for this ending to be tragic for her, though - clearly the tragedy lies with the father and son, finally having opened up to one another, unfortunately too late, and dying early, unjust deaths at the hands of this unknowable malignant entity. it doesn’t do justice to her (or the girlfriend, who seems to be nothing but collateral damage in all of this - in the ending sequence, when the police finds the carnage, it only shows them finding the bodies of the men. the girlfriend is as irrelevant to the conclusion as she is to the rest of the plot). 
but does this mean the autopsy of jane doe is a “bad” movie? i guess it depends on your perspective. ultimately, it’s one of those questions that i find myself asking when faced with certain kinds of stories that inevitably crop up often in our media: how much can we excuse a story for upholding regressive social norms (even unintentionally) before we have to discount the whole work? i don’t think the autopsy of jane doe warrants complete rejection for being “problematic” but i think the critical acclaim based on the idea that it’s a feminist film should be rejected. i still consider it a very interesting concept with strong acting and a lot of visual appeal, and it’s a very good piece of atmospheric horror. it’s does get a bit boring at certain points, but the core of the film is solid. it’s also not trying to be sexist, arguably it’s not overtly sexist at all, it’s just very very androcentric at the expense of its female characters, and i’m genuinely shocked that anyone would call it feminist. so sure, let’s not throw the baby out with the bath water, but let’s also be critical about how it’s using women as the stage for men’s emotional conflict 
also re: my description of this little project as “a film isn’t feminist just because there’s a woman’s name in the title” - i actually don’t want to skim over the fact that “jane doe” isn’t a real name. of the three women in the film, only one has a real name; the other two are referred to by names given to them by men. i’ll conclude on this note because i want to emphasize the lack of even very basic ways of recognizing individual identity afforded to women in this film. so yeah! the end! thanks for your consideration if you read this far! 
#the autopsy of jane doe#men women and chainsaws#horror#also to be clear i'm not saying that the exorcist is somehow more feminist because. it's not. i'm just using it as a frame of reference#you'd think a film from 2016 would escape the ways gender is constructed in one from 1973 but that's not really the case#i actually rewatched the end of the movie to make sure that what i said about the girlfriend's body not being found at the end was accurate#and yeah! it is! the intended audience-identified character shifts to the sheriff who - that's right! - is also a man#the camerawork is: shot of the dead son / shot of the sheriff looking sad / shot of the dead father / shot of the sheriff looking sad /#shot of jane doe / shot of the sheriff looking upset angry and suspicious#which is how we're supposed to feel about the conclusion for each character#the girlfriend is notably absent in this sequence#anyway! this is less about me condemning this movie as sexist and more about looking at how women in occult horror#continue to be relegated to secondary plot lines at best or to set dressing for the primary plot line at worst#and what that says about identification of viewers with certain characters and why writers have written the story that way#i think the reception of the film as Feminist might actually point to a shift in identification - but to still be able to enjoy the movie#while identifying with a female character you need to change the narrative that's actually presented to you#hence the rampant impulse to misinterpret the intention of the filmmakers#we do want it to be feminist! the audience doesn't identify with the 'default' anymore automatically#i think that's actually a pretty positive development at least in viewership - if only filmmakers would catch up lol#oh and i only very briefly touched on this here but the white science vs black magic theme is pretty clearly reflected in this film also
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jewishmarkbryant · 3 years ago
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Bad Things Happen Bingo Submission: Vivisection
Fandom: Jar of Rebuke
Rating: M
Content Warnings: canon-typical dehumanization, unethical and non-consensual experimentation and surgical procedure (including vivisection and non-graphic touching of/removal of internal organs), blood, no anesthetic, violence, reference to eye trauma, discussion and portrayal of death
Summary:
You used to pity them. You used to be curious about them, used to be eager to learn how they worked and lived and loved. Your friends — their names do not fit in your mouth now that you’re trapped in this human form — they told you that you were a fool to get so close.
Humans, they said, were dangerous, but you didn’t understand.
One wrong step and humans bleed. One wrong fall and they die. They are fragile and breakable and their lives are so fucking small.
You wanted to protect them.
They want to dissect you.
The doctors are precise when they cut into the entity known as H-57. The entity does not bother fighting back.
A fic about vivisection, death, and what it means to be human.
Link
Notes: Casper Oliver, if you see this, I am so sorry for what I’ve done to Jared, but in my defense… you acted the line about precision so well, and as far as I can tell, it wasn’t not about vivisection……
@badthingshappenbingo
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straight-to-the-pain · 5 years ago
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Once again, I was asked for 17, 22, 28 and 37 by anon but I wanted to put a read more and it wouldn’t let me, so I have to post it like this instead. Hope that’s okay. 
17) When was the last time you got butterflies/experienced good whump? What was it?
I think that’s gotta be either @untilthepainstarts​‘s last post where Lev was forced to identify knives, because those descriptions of pain and the really creepy knife whumper really did it for me, or @pythagoreanwhump​‘s post where Anastasia threatens to vivisect a whumpee because we had discussed it before but seeing it written out like that was,, incredibly whumperfly inducing. She is absolutely terrifying and I love her.
22) When did you realize you were into whump?
Honestly, I’ve liked it for as long as I can remember, always looking at books about spies and war and medieval torture when I was a kid, but I only really figured out that it was probably not typical to have such warm feelings about reading descriptions of pain and violence when I was around 15? I had just never questioned it before then, but that’s when I started to feel guilty about it and it took me a while to accept that it was okay to like this sort of stuff. And yeah, then I started lurking in the whump community, and a couple years later started this blog so here we are!
37) Images or sounds?
Hmm... I actually think I might have to pick sounds, which might be a surprising answer, but I’m pretty good at imagining the visuals of whump (hence I like reading whump more than watching it), but whumpy sounds are so much harder to imagine, and it’s rare that they’re done well in media. Hence, I am way more excited about finding some good sound bites than I am about most whumpy images.
Putting 28 under a cut because it’s nsfw and I’d like to discuss it further. 
28) How do you feel about noncon/dubcon?
Hmm, it really depends for me, but I do occasionally enjoy it. It works better for me if there’s like,, other violence and torture going on as well, and the noncon isn’t the centrepiece, and also if it’s less about the sex itself and more about power and humiliation (because honestly, I’m not very interested in sex in any context, and this is no exception). Also, I do like that really niche flavour of dubcon where it’s torture but then both of them kinda get a little too into it and things get a little spicy, but like, the whumpee obviously can’t properly consent but they also can’t help but enjoy it despite themself... but that’s just me.
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braindamageforbeginners · 6 years ago
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Male Fragility and Male Pattern Baldness
14 months, two weeks, one day post-dx
This week, in addition to The Donald, the big news has been... Gillette shaving products. You might know this company for the various shaving-based products they make, or the catchy slogan, “The best a man can get.” Which sounds a little weird and unintentionally homoerotic, but I dislike bleeding when shaving, and, for travel purposes, they have the market for disposable razors.
In the wake of Brett Kavanaugh being confirmed and Cadet Bonespurs still not being called for using the word “pussy” on a live mic (okay, so, even if we want to accept the idea that men talk to each other in the locker room - we don’t, it is the most uncomfortable and awkward environment imaginable - you don’t repeat it in polite company, and YOU DO NOT REPEAT IT IN A TAPED INTERVIEW), it has come to light that America has a problem with massive, throbbing male egos that go unchecked until they inevitably screw up and alienate so many of their victims that Americans vote in loads of sensible, moderate people (previously known as “women,” but that was also when we voted based on gender and class lines instead of a person’s public record). Gillette then changed its slogan to “The best a man can be,” which, I have to admit, is almost as good as “The Most Interesting Man in the World” for aspirational marketing aimed at men. The goal of all this was, presumably, to start a discussion on toxic masculinity and gender roles. Now, I may have some misgivings about this conversation being helmed and instigated by a company with a definite financial and cultural stake in the (patriarchal) status quo, but it’s still a talk we need to have in society. My reaction of vague misgivings and semi-apathy was nothing, however, compared to white men on the Internet. They used all caps to rain impotent fury down upon this perceived slight, that, maybe, we should have a discussion about how framing masculinity only as it brutalizes and disenfranchises others isn’t such a good idea. As someone who’s had his country club privileges revoked but still gets passing privilege, I’d think it’s a discussion worth having, especially if you’re under the rather idiotic impression that your good health and luck will last forever. Now, even though I still stand by the idea that Rousseau was right, and that most of us are mostly-good; at the same time, when you’re forced into a position of vulnerability, people you thought you knew well can reveal themselves to be utter assholes. Yes, pain, torture, and crippling may reveal my inner nature to some extent, but how you treat me in this period is a much more revealing test of your character, dear reader. So, I’m fully prepared to discuss this whole “how you treat the least among you” idea, with the acknowledgment that, as the least among you (sort of), I am fully in favor of toppling the patriarchy and rebuilding it with something less creepy and predatory.
Then I got Rogaine. Full disclosure, Mother Dearest actually got it for me, because I still wear my hair in a rather severe mohawk to cover up the weird, radioactive/thin patches that were scalded off by the nuclear fire (undergoing cancer treatments is like puberty - you change pretty dramatically, physically, and you’re left looking almost, but not quite, like you used to, which is disconcerting to see in a mirror). Normally, the word “regrowth” is not a good one for a brain cancer patient, but, since everything else in my life has been completely upended and vivisected, I figured, “Why not?” In a weird way, even though I’m not in a position I’d wish upon someone I despised (well..), I don’t feel terribly emasculated. After all, how many rounds of chemo and radiation have you gone through? I know I can take a severe beating and get up afterward; even if that beating comes in the form of neurosurgery, radiation, and chemo (I realize my framing of that in terms of violence is probably typical of the problem, but we’re working our way toward other, more humorous topics).
If ever there was a physical embodiment of the sort of mindset that would fee attacked by Gillette’s rather flaccid suggestion we sort of talk about problems with traditional masculinity; it’s Rogaine. First of all, it comes with all these warning labels on it - I am not making this up - saying things like “Not intended for women” or “Not for use by women” (that last one is verbatim). It doesn’t actually go full-blown Alex Jones manthrocyte (or whatever male virility cure he’s hocking this week), nor do the words “male jelly” or “He-Man Woman Haters Club” appear on the box, but it’s amazingly close. What’s especially delightful - to me, anyway - is that a female friend of the family (who has issues with hair stress-related hair loss) is the one who recommended it. However, I am trying to be somewhat more sensible about what I put in myself these days, so I did some quick Internet research (that’s enough to make me an expert on the subject, I figure), and it’s a vasodilator - it’ll open your blood vessels (I still haven’t pieced together how that leads to increased hair growth, but I’m willing to take some things on faith). Apparently, you’re not supposed to take it orally. Which opened up a whole new set of questions, like, 1. What was the study where they found out someone was dumb enough to drink hair tonic? and, 2. If you do drink it, is that some sort of suicide warning? Bearing in mind that this is just the packaging - which, again, I get it’s targeting insecure middle-aged men and/or those of use who want our youthful appearance back while we’re still actually youthful; both of which are vulnerable to suggestion and hesitancy, and maybe they’d turn back at the thought that maybe someone would think less of them for using feminine hygiene products (supposedly, army medics have used tampons to seal wounds in combat, so even the most-feminine of feminine hygiene products is helpful to all genders under the right circumstance), let’s go on to what’s inside the box. Which is a series of bland-looking bottles that are perfect for not indicating someone is insecure about baldness. And an applicator. Let’s hold for a moment. In most medical products - even the CBD/THC oils I take (orally, but maybe I should try them on my hair) the “applicator” is either a glorified eye-dropper or more-glorified Q-tip (side-note: you don’t see Q-tips exclusively marketed to women, even though their most  common use is as a mascara applicator)(this is true; you’ve probably been sticking them in the wrong orifice for years). Not so with Rogaine. This comes with - depending on how you look at it - either a miniature turkey baster (perfect for basting Cornish hens), or a Cyclopean eye-dropper. In other words, there’s virtually no way you could screw up where you stick this thing and apply it nasally (again, I’m sure it’s been tried, and they rewrote the warnings and repackaged it). It is, in short, not only catered to male insecurity, it’s designed to completely idiot-proof (I guess they got that one right, most intelligent people wouldn’t be fooled into thinking that fancy, medically-worded hair tonic works)(normally, neither would I, but the woman who recommended it is smarter than me, so I’m willing to try it). It’s the perfect product for Homer J. Simpson.
After drizzling this stuff onto your radioactive-seared flesh, you’ll notice a slight tingling sensation. Either that or just the sensation of something liquid-y runnning over your scalp, I have a lot of scars, so it’s hard to tell. Then... nothing. Admittedly, I’ve only been using it for a few days, Apparently, you have to use it for a month or two before seeing results, at which point you’re either supposed to discontinue use, or, for the truly brave, drink it. Again, I just went 12 months straight with chemo, it’s not like something as minor as not seeing results will be a major deterrent.
For those of you wondering how I do it - go the full 12 rounds of chemo, radiation, and surgery, knowing I will eventually have to repeat it, and eventually lose - that’s how. You have to be able to look at every miniscule step on the path (and not much further ahead) and chuckle at how extraordinarily weird and fucked up it all is. And realize you want to be around to chuckle at the next weird, fucked up moment, even if you have weird, striated baldness on one side.
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talldarkandroguesome · 3 years ago
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16th of Second Seed, Morndas
As predicted the invitation from Mother was not of a purely social nature. It was not to spend time with me and her grandson. It was not to see how I was faring with all the new changes in my life. It was not even to give me a protective warning about what the Council was planning to do with me. The Three forbid she simply wish to spend time with her own son.
No. This was a meeting to discuss my failures. Continued failures, even. To remind me that this time, in addition to ruining my own life, I was doing so for my son as well. That I was even getting in the way of her political objectives because my actions reflected on her and were losing her propositions votes now.
She explained how all the good faith that I had garnered with my being well behaved was now lost and the Councilmer more suspicious of me than ever because they are assuming that I only was obedient so that I could later pull off this stunt. Not even sure what stunt she thinks I pulled.
I think traitors suffer fewer accusations than Mother hefted upon me throughout the night.
Do I accept my negligence regarding Sildras’ prospects and education, certainly. Those are valid criticisms. I lost him the initial weeks of his education and it was a rare opportunity that allowed him the ability to have the extra lessons. And Shad Astula took very personally my withholding my son from the start of his school year. They thought it a statement of my confidence in their abilities as a result of my own childhood experience and the arguments I have had with them of late.
Perhaps if they did not simply decide that a child who could not learn magicka in the traditional method was without worth, then they would not be made to bear so much shame.
Mother tells me that the rumors that I had gone to visit the Psijics had reached their ears and so they were particularly nervous about what my having Sildras visit them before returning him to Shad Astula might mean.
I think that more than anything else, Mother is unsure of what I am doing. The Council as well.
That I would disappear only to have been found to be spending time with the Psijics makes them nervous. The Order typically is involved with major catastrophes or dire situations on Nirn. If they had asked to see me, what may be coming that the Council should know of? They suspect I am keeping information from them.
They are not entirely wrong. Yet I am offended that they think that I would not warn them if something dire were predicted to befall Morrowind. Or even just Deshaan. They believe me to have no loyalty! If so, then what have I been giving them the past two centuries?! Why was it that I have taken poison, spell, and blade into my body so many times to achieve their goals? Why would I have put myself in the position of the Thalmor’s torments for days if I did not do it out of the love I bear my people and this land? Did I complain that it was one of the House’s other agents being sloppy that got me put through those living nightmares and got that agent and another killed?
No.
No, I took it as my duty. I endured them vivisecting me and raping me and then right as I was about to die, heal everything back up again. I felt them turn my veins to ice. I felt them fill my ears with fire. They held blades above me and bade me stay still as they shocked nerves, just to see my muscles jerk and cut me.
I went through all of it. I did not give away any secrets of the House. I did not implicate them in anything. I listened as the other agents were tortured to death, heard them going through the same or worse than me.
But I kept going and did not let myself give in. Why? Because I fetching believed in our House!
I persevered and managed to escape. Managed to get home. All of it for the simple fact that I wanted to do well by the House.
And what was my reward for all the pain and suffering?
Dismissal from the service. Loss of the one thing I was considered to have worth in. Another reminder that I was considered a failure of a mer.
I have twice worked to thwart the world-ending schemes of Daedric Princes and yet the Council seems to believe that I am simply a liability. Their bloody assumptions are so infuriating.
I must calm myself. I have the meeting at Shad Astula to prepare for and I will be no good in this state.
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animalrights101 · 7 years ago
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It is not simply food practices of “other” cultures that come under greater legal inspection and regulation (Valverde 2008). Other non-Western activities that are perceived as “exotic” and undesirable are also held to a higher level of scrutiny. Of the fraction of animal-based practices banned today under anticruelty laws, most are associated with a minority community (Elder et al. 1998). As the legal definition of “cruelty” typically turns on the idea of “unnecessary suffering,” only those practices the law views as “unnecessary” will be criminalized.   The very few practices targeted as “cruel” under anticruelty statutes, such as cock-fighting and dog-fighting, are often associated with marginalized cultural and racialized communities, whereas mainstream institutional practices (factory farming, vivisection, circuses, and so on) are rarely labeled as “cruel.” Indeed, majoritarian cultures today use cultural practices involving animals to help calibrate “civilization status” (Elder et al. 1998). Mainstream multicultural discourses thus label minority cultures as “backward/barbaric” in their sensibilities toward animals much the same way they classify minority cultures as behind Western ones based on their perceived treatment of women (Deckha 2004). This, of course, is not to suggest that these minority practices are ethically acceptable, but to note the racialized and postcolonial dimensions of these discourses.
Decka, Maneesha. 2012. "Toward a Postcolonial, Posthumanist Feminist Theory: Centralizing Race and Culture in Feminist Work on Nonhuman Animals." Hypatia 27 (3): 527-545. Discusses how marginalized communities are often targeted for 'unnecessary cruelty'. 
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spectrumscribe · 8 years ago
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Invisible breaks, unspoken bruises.
@hotmilkytea​ for the idea, since i got it from your critical.
(this ended up being less comfort more hurt than I intended. whoops.)
Post Tokka vs the World: 
Seeing your friend nearly be vivisected leaves a mark, and nearly being vivisected definitely leaves a mark. Other things leave marks too, and Donnie is the only who seems to see that.
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Donnie didn’t know why it was always him, but it was. Things like this always happened to him.
“Get out of my room,” Donnie said, glaring at both his brother and Casey, who were touching things that they shouldn’t and they knew it. “And hands off my encyclopaedias.”
Mikey and Casey both stopped touching the carefully organized volumes, which were arranged according to both date and language.
“What, no love for you bros?” Mikey asked in a sickly sweet voice, flopping onto Donnie’s bed. The bed that Donnie, for once, wanted to be in.
“No.” Donnie replied. “Get out.”
He was in no mood for this. He’d had a very long night of breaking into military buildings, avoiding being shot by said military, flying a type of space ship he was out of practice using, and almost being incinerated by a giant cosmic tortoise. He was very, very tired, and wanted to just shut down for a while, and not think about how he and his brothers likely destroyed whatever peace treaty the Utrom and the American Military had built. Or about how the world was probably still freaking out, seeing as there had been giant kaiju falling out of the sky, or about how his family had outed themselves to the military, who were only vaguely trustworthy at the best of times, and definitely trigger happy every other time, and how they’d very likely evoked their ire for the destruction they’d caused and painted bright, obvious targets right onto their own shells-
Donnie shut off that train of thought, and internally sighed.
Another night, another disaster. Another ordinary Friday outing, for them at least.
Donnie just really, really wanted to sleep. He’d deal with bumping up their defenses next evening.
Trouble was, he needed people out of his room first.
“We could have a movie marathon though,” Casey suggested, also flopping down beside Mikey. “You have, like-” He gestured at the collection of Planet Earth DVD’s Donnie had on his shelf. “-at least ten hours’ worth. Or something.”
“Eleven, actually,” Donnie corrected, mind automatically adding up the collective episodes’ time worth. He shook his head, and refocused. “But that doesn’t matter. You’re both getting out of my room, and I am going to sleep, for once, and neither of you are going to bother me while I do.”
“Aw, please, Dee?” Mikey asked.
“For real, the night’s still young!” Casey added.
“No, it is not,” Donnie said irritably, because he could see the early hour digits displayed on his alarm clock, and-
Wait, why were his brother and Casey so adamant on staying anyways? Or willing to put up with watching Planet Earth, instead of some blockbuster monster movie?
Donnie took a better look at his brother and his friend, looking past his first reactions of annoyance.
For starters, they both had significant bruising on various patches of skin. But that was normal, for their group at least. Everyone got bruises after a mission. Though, usually, Casey didn’t seem quite so wide eyed afterwards, and typically wore his bruises with pride. Now, though, he seemed to be hunching a bit on himself. Shoulders curled in a defensive set, a very out of character thing for his posture, post a successful mission.
And Mikey. Mikey had symmetrical bruising on either side of him. He’d brushed Donnie off earlier, much like Casey had, when they’d been doing physical checks on everyone. Called it no big deal. Though it didn’t seem like ‘no big deal’, seeing Mikey had a slightly- and pun not intended- shell-shocked quality to him. His knees were bouncing with energy he usually would have spent in battle, and he had a mildly desperate look to his expression, much as he was trying to hide with a charming smile.
Donnie closed his eyes, and pinched the space between his eyes. He sighed. “Okay. What is this really about? Neither of you like Planet Earth, or hanging around me when I watch it. Or like spending much time with me in general.”
“Does a guy need a reason to hang with one of his buds?” Casey asked, and now that Donnie was listening for it, he heard the false bravado in the human’s voice.
Donnie dropped his hand, and crossed his arms. He stared at them both, watching the cracks continue to appear in their expressions.
“Please?” Mikey asked, his forced cheer taking a further dive. “Can we stay just for a bit?”
A small part of Donnie, a very tired and rather sharp part of himself, wanted to say no. The rest of him however, was far too squishy and family oriented for him to even consider refusing. Not after that kind of emotional attack.
He looked at the two people sitting on his bed, and examined their bruises again. They hadn’t told him specifically what they were from, or how they’d gotten ones that matched. Casey’s might have been hidden now, but Donnie had seen them when he was changing out of his gear. Likely, the bruises they both had were what’d driven them to force their way into Donnie’s private space.
Donnie probably should have pushed harder for answers earlier. No time like the present to remedy that.
“Only if you explain why you want to stay so badly,” Donnie conceded, going over to his desk and pulling out his swivel chair to sit. Mikey and Casey exchanged glances, and Donnie watched them squirm. Interesting.
“Well, you see…” Mikey started, then trailing off as he glanced to the side and grimaced. “There was this thing, and then some guys, and…”
“Mike was gonna get vivisected,” Casey blurted, only for Mikey to elbow him and hiss for Casey to let him explain things.
Donnie’s eyes widened.
Well then. That explained some things.
“For real?” Donnie questioned. Because if that had been what really happened, and why they seemed so unsettled… Donnie could relate to those feelings.
Mikey shrugged, eyes aimed at his still bouncing knees. “Yeah. Sort of, I guess. They, uh, caught us like right away after you guys left, and then strapped us down and everything. Like right out of a movie, tables and lights and doctor guys- whole shebang.”
“They were gonna do it right beside me,” Casey said, looking a tinge queasy. “It was fucking sick, and not in a good way.”
Donnie took a moment to be very, very grateful that his brother was sitting across from him right then, and not in pieces in some government laboratory. Old nightmares of meeting a similar fate, and the memory of his unfortunate experience with a situation nearly the exact same, welled up in Donnie’s mind, and he understood. Understood why Mikey was so desperate to not be alone, and why Casey was hanging around long after he could have gone home to his human family.
Donnie, in the spare moments he did sleep these days, sometimes saw images that sounded like what Mikey had described. Reoccurring nightmares from childhood and onwards, surfacing again because of what Don Vizioso had attempted to do to him just a few weeks ago.
And to add to that experience, still having the crystal incident fresh in his mind, and his subconscious dreams, Donnie knew all too well that waking events could bring terrible images when one slept.
His brother and friend were watching him, waiting for Donnie’s response.
“I’m glad you’re both alright,” Donnie said truthfully. And he was, oh he very much was. He was also adding this to the pile of critiques he had for Leo’s ‘plans’ in battle. They’d nearly lost Mikey, and they hadn’t even known. “But why didn’t you tell us this earlier? That- that could have been really bad.”
‘Bad’ was a tame word. Disastrous, crushing, the tragedy that finally broke them all- take your pick. It could have been all those things.
They were both squirming again, in each their own manner. Casey’s fingers were tapping rapid pace on the comforter, and Mikey’s lip was being chewed into oblivion.
“We. Um.” Mikey, never short of words, seemed to struggle finding the right ones. “We thought they were gonna laugh at us for getting caught so easily.”
They.
Who were the ‘they’? Donnie didn’t even have to guess.
He repressed a sigh about their two other brothers, and pushed away the familiar pangs of frustration regarding them. It was really getting tiring, dealing with their condescending remarks towards Donnie and Mikey; mostly about their martial arts abilities. Casey was rarely a victim, but obviously, he was wary enough of mocking that he’d kept mum with Mikey.
Or maybe Mikey had asked him to keep things quiet, and he’d obliged. Donnie didn’t know which, and wasn’t planning on asking. That was between them. “And you came to me specifically, and told me about all this, because…?”
More squirming, and Mikey answered again after a beat of thought.
“I thought you’d be less…” He grimaced. “Mean? I guess?”
Casey mumbled an agreement, and Donnie felt very, very tired.
Why was nothing in their family straight forwards anymore? Mikey apparently couldn’t trust their older brothers not to mock him for almost dying, and Casey didn’t see Raph as a fit confident for nearly witnessing a friend’s slow death right before his eyes.
Donnie added another thing to his very, very long list of items to discuss with his brothers, one day. Also to the list of ‘things our father isn’t trusted with’, seeing as Mikey hadn’t even brought up the idea of talking to Splinter.
Donnie just wanted to sleep.
It didn’t look like he’d get to.
“How long, exactly, did you want to stay in my room?” Donnie asked wearily, feeling much older than he wanted to. From the awkward grimaces Casey and Mikey made, Donnie figured just a few hours wouldn’t be enough. He sighed. “Fine. All day it is. Someone go get the spare mattress, I’m not letting you two get my sheets dirty.”
He huffed at the thankful smile Mikey gave him, and at the half hidden gratitude on Casey’s face.
What a mess they all were, really.
A few minutes later, after rearranging his bedroom and letting Mikey haul out all their spare bed accessories, there was a twin sized mattress on the floor, decked with more pillows and blankets than they could ever use.
It made for a comfy pile, though. Supportive of both Casey’s back and Mikey’s shell alike. Donnie took the liberty of helping himself to the supply of soft items, and stacked up his own sleeping space. Once they were all arranged, Mikey closest to Donnie’s bed and Casey on the far side, Donnie turned on the old flat-screen TV he’d mounted to his wall a few years ago. At least in his room, he was able to afford luxuries that wouldn’t get broken by wayward destruction from his brothers.
He’d loaded Planet Earth’s first disc into the player, and turned the volume down as it started playing. Maybe it wasn’t the most interesting thing to his guests, but neither of them argued as the smooth British narrator started speaking.
Donnie’s earlier exhaustion remained, but now he couldn’t sleep. Not with images of Mikey being chopped into pieces flashing across his mind. And he hadn’t even known that nearly happened. Mikey could have been long past help, drained of blood and ready to be packaged up for further examinations, by the time Donnie knew. If not for Casey, and Bishop, as they’d told him, Donnie could have been short a brother tonight.
The thought terrified him much deeper than his own brush with vivisection had. Donnie wondered vaguely if Mondo had felt as strongly about the situation as he had. The gecko wasn’t nearly as old as the rest of them, in age and experience both, and that had likely been his first time experiencing danger of that type. And Donnie still hadn’t found time to call the Mutanimals for a check up on the younger mutant.
He added that to another one of his many lists. Something he needed to do, likely the moment he woke next evening. If he woke at all, seeing as sleep wasn’t going to come easy.
The fifth episode started to play on screen, and Donnie shifted his eyes to his brother and friend on the floor. Casey had wrapped himself around a number of pillows, bandana off for the day and hair tangled up as he’d buried himself into the pile. He’d texted his family before finally passing out, and didn’t seem like he was going anywhere for a good while.
Mikey on the other hand, had his brow furrowed, and was tensed up head to toe. No sound was escaping him, but Donnie saw the slightest twitch to his hands. Even in sleep, ninjutsu and survival training ran deep. Make no sounds, have your weapon at the ready. Always, no matter what.
Mikey’s hands spasmed, and he tightly gripped the blanket closest to him. From the way he was curled around his center, Donnie guessed what was haunting his dreams at the moment. It wasn’t hard, seeing as he’d had similar dreams many times before.
Donnie leaned over the edge of his mattress, and reached out to run a hand across Mikey’s skull. He minded the dark bruise on the back of Mikey’s cranium, and tried not to think of Mikey trashing in restraints, desperate to get away.
Or, think about the other bruise, right beside Mikey’s eye. That one wasn’t from the restraints. That had been from Raph, and inflicted right in front of Donnie. And he’d done nothing to stop it, as usual. And then he’d left Mikey right afterwards, both him and Casey abandoned to face a whole building’s worth of security all on their own.
And no one had even stopped to wonder about them again until after Tokka had left. Just a phone call after everything was said and done, from Donnie, because Leo and Raph hadn’t even made a move to check on their missing teammates. And Mikey had answered brightly and replied that they were fine, totally fine!
Donnie was sure Raph hadn’t apologized for hitting Mikey, and Leo hadn’t apologized for stationing them somewhere he should have known they’d get caught. And Donnie hadn’t pushed them to.
Donnie brushed the edge of Mikey’s black eye, and added another few regrets to his lists.
There were a lot of things Donnie should have done tonight. A lot of things he was putting on his lists to remind himself not to do them again.
Mikey’s hands spasmed again, a grimace crossing his expression and Donnie stopped touching the tender spot by his eye.
“Shhh, Mikey,” Donnie whispered, moving his hand up and rubbing a circle on Mikey’s temple. “You’re at home, you’re not there. Go back to sleep.”
It took another few minutes, during which Mikey’s eyes opened blearily and sightlessly, before closing again, and Donnie’s brother finally stopped tensing himself for a fight. His breathing evened out, and he stopped curling so tightly on himself.
Donnie lifted his hand away, and looked again at his brother. The bruises were starting to fade on the edges already, but it would be a while before the sickly discoloration disappeared completely. It would sit there, plain on Mikey’s exposed scales, and remind Donnie how very close he’d come to losing someone in his family. Again.
And, remind him of how there were cracks in their relationships. Cracks that had been widening with time and strain, that hadn’t been attended to at all. No apology for their creation, and no closure to the events that caused them.
A sudden noise caught Donnie attention, and he moved his eyes to the other person beside his brother. Casey made an angry, muffled sound in his sleep, and his legs thrashed for a brief moment. Then he settled again, turning deeper into the pillows he was clutching.
Donnie waited to see if Casey would do anything else, but a soft snore signified it wasn’t likely. With the two of his guests settled again, Donnie moved back onto his bed properly, and lay against the pillows he’d accumulated.
The sounds of British narration, and of distant wildlife ecosystems, filled the gaps left by Mikey and Casey’s gentle inhalations. Donnie tried to use the steady flow of both sounds to lull himself into sleep. Even though a weight had settled in his chest, and made the prospect of rest feel very unlikely.
He could think deeper on the horrors of tonight, of the last years, and of the future, come the next evening. He’d do his best to not think at all for a while, and sleep for however long he could. He’d sleep lightly though, listening for further distress from his guests.
He’d forgotten to watch out for them once already, failed to be there when they needed him, and he wouldn’t do that again.
Donnie closed his eyes, and did his best to sleep, even with his lingering thoughts weighing on his mind.
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