#whatever your personal failings and transgressions

[valtsv]

writing VAL pov for this character study/"what if the power of friendship was REALISTIC and NUANCED and CANNOT SAVE YOU (but is still a nice thing to have)" fic is fun because nobody in tsv really understands what mental illness is from a clinical perspective or has made that much progress in the field of psychiatry. they're barely on "you can get shellshock from being a combat veteran" stages of understanding the impacts of trauma (personal and societal) on the human mind. so everyone including VAL herself just thinks she's the bearer of the curse while readers will recognise the symptoms of cPTSD with schizoaffective comorbidity.

[heich0e]

i know in my heart that things are very rarely ever as idyllically simple as "forgive and forget" but i do genuinely wish that i was better at the forgetting part

[jabberwondia]

【the next step】 【part 2】 RIDDLE x READER, NSFW

Part 1 is here.

The proverbial "next time".

Riddle Rosehearts x Female Reader, 18+. Fluff, sexual intimacy (explicit), consensual.

Worrying about failing a test, botching that one high note at the recital, or stammering throughout the graduation speech are all examples of performance anxiety. The thought of failing and the looming overshadow it casts on the far-off dream of success – to a lot of people, it can be paralyzing. To counter it, you dwell on all the possibilities before that something can even come to pass, methodically going through worst-case scenarios in your head; at the time, they all seem more like prophecies.

Contrary to what his occasionally fiery mood swings might suggest, Riddle Rosehearts was a fairly confident and composed person, and never suffered from nerves before a test, recital or speech. The roots of his self-assurance were practice, diligence and rules. No test would ever be scary if you had revised hard enough, no note unreachable if practiced frequently enough, and no speech impossible if rehearsed enough. Rules provided a frame which allowed little flexibility, which meant more provable, safe results.

This, however, was different. There was no way to prepare for it. Any guides on the subject would generally say, ‘Let it flow’, and honestly that’s what he believed he had done -or at least tried to do- last time, when you were catching your breath, spread on top of his lap. He had purposefully, repeatedly, attempted to forget all about it – but every time his phone buzzed with one of your messages, he was sorely reminded of everything he did, and specially of what he didn’t do.

‘Would it be so bad if it were... planned?’ he pondered. But it’s not like those words would ever leave his mouth, and he truly did care about you, so he was not about to insult your integrity by suggesting something as unrefined as “Hey baby, let’s get it on”.

Sigh. It hardly seemed like the topic you could trust friends with, either. “What should I do?” he wanted to ask, but the fear of getting humiliated in return was too real. Or at least, it was inside Riddle’s head, as however certain he could be in social situations, one of his most recurring nightmares included screwing up an easy spell, getting laughed at, then yelled at by his mother, and, finally, falling through the void (in that order).

“Next time,” he had told Floyd. Why did he do that? Whatever the hell did that mean? Not unlike enlisting New Year resolutions and telling everyone you started working out – in a way, the contract behind your words binds you to turn them into action. Riddle really wish he hadn’t, and to be fair, Floyd hadn’t even asked about it since – but the thought alone was eating away at him.

Alone in his room, he had, at long last, drafted up the end-all, be-all of text-based conversation.

Riddle Rosehearts: “Hello! 🌹 What are you doing for the break? I’ll pass on going home this time, I think. We can expect an exceptionally hot summer this year, and I’m worried about the hedgehogs.”

And then, greatly contingent on your answer, but – hopefully – the next sentence would be:

“If you’re free sometime, would you like to stay the night?”

‘Stay the night’ was a much more suitable euphemism for what he wanted to say. It was short, and sweet, and left the possibility of nothing happening, which was important. The main problem with it is that it broke quite a few rules, but most notoriously: the rules that stated students from other schools were not allowed inside the dorms past curfew, and that non-alumni needed a special permission to enter in the first place. Well, uh, and also the fact that he was trying to bring a girl to sleepover to an all-boys school. After one law had been violated, the rest of transgressions just seemed like silly, collateral damage. This is why he was a stickler for codes and regulations – being unyielding did, in fact, protect the system from falling apart all at once.

The hedgehog excuse also worked well, and even his mother had believed it and granted him permission to stay all summer on campus.

The first text is an easy one to send. If, for any reason, Riddle feels like he needs to call the whole thing off, he can just invite you to a Tea Party, or suggest a date in the park. The break begins next weekend, and it’s a perfect time because the school will be mostly empty and free of prying eyes. And if you are too busy to catch up, spending a quiet summer caring for the hedgehogs doesn’t sound too bad either.

Y/N: “oh hey! 😊 poor darlings🦔 it’s good they have a very kind caretaker💓 yeah, I read somewhere we were reaching record temperatures. thankfully it’s not so bad inside our dorm. i’ll go home, but only from the second week onwards”

Which leaves a week in between to... to...

Riddle opens up his drafts once again. All he has to do is copy, paste and hope for the best. But as he’s proof-reading, it occurs to him that maybe “sleepover” is better than “stay the night” – which one sounds more casual? Ugh, his hands are starting to feel icy cold and unresponsive. The weight on his chest is getting bigger.

Y/N: “we should meet up before I leave! 😊 i can help take care of the hedgehogs if you need a hand?"

Oh my Queen. A second, continuous text from you was not in the original plan. So now what? Well, he could still brave through and –ahem– suggest his suggestion. Hell, if he was so paralyzed at a text, there’s no way he could actually sleep with you, even if you did come over.

Riddle does not want you to help take care of the hedgehogs. Or rather, that is so trivial right now, that he wishes you could forget about it, and words to be undone.

Riddle Rosehearts: “I couldn’t possibly ask that! Hedgehogs are nocturnal, so you’d have to come in pretty late.”

Riddle is quick to type and send, but then gasps when he realizes the meaning. It can be taken two ways: either that he wants you to come in late, ergo, wants to get in your pants and is cowardly suggesting it; or he does not want you anywhere near the dorm at night, which, eh, kind of resets all the progress made in this conversation.

Y/N: “oh, right 😊 the school has rules against that, lol”

It’s getting more and more impossible to recover from this, like a rowing boat trying to maneuver through a river of chocolate fudge.

The draft that is waiting in his copy clipboard now makes no sense. “If you’re free sometime, would you like to stay the night?” is no longer applicable to this flow of the conversation. But he needs to find a way around it, or else it’s back to square one.

Riddle takes a very, very deep breath. Face red, fingers trembling, he manages to write:

Riddle Rosehearts: “Actually, don’t worry about the hedgehogs. It takes time to build trust with them anyways. But on that note, would you like to stay over sometime? Feel free to say no.”

That last part sounds incredibly weak and lacking in courage. He erases it and types it again a couple of times until deciding in favor of leaving it as-is – the fact that you don’t feel pressured is, after all, of utmost importance to him.

And yeah, “stay over” sounds better than sleeping or staying the night, so let’s stick to that.

When the message pops on your side of the screen, your sight paces back and forth at least twenty times, doubting the verity of your own eyes or reading comprehension. After last time, and how nonchalantly it had ended, you thought for sure that Riddle had been distancing himself from you, and that you had crossed a boundary that was hard to backtrack from. That is exactly why, truth be told, you were relieved when he initiated casual conversation as if nothing had happened. The struggle was mixing all these pure, affectionate, innocent emotions he made you feel with the raw Eros of whatever last study session was, and it had left you more confused than ever.

But hey, you tell yourself. Nothing needs to happen. I can just sleep. We can cuddle, and that’s it.

It seems you are taking all too long to answer, because his chat box pops up again.

Riddle Rosehearts: “I want to see you.”

Riddle was really good in situations reigned by protocol. He was the best social dancer you’d ever seen, and the way he’d guided you while waltzing through an interscholastic dance had been dreamlike. He’d open doors for you and escort you to your school gates; he was always eager to send over a study guide or offer some academic advice. But “I want to see you” and “I miss you” were words rarely uttered.

Filled with a newfound courage, you text back:

Y/N: “i'd love to! is friday ok? 😊”

Getting into Heartslabyul is always a challenge. You’d need to either come over during the daytime and then purposefully miss curfew, or you’d have to find a way to sneak in just before the gates are closed for the night. As a housewarden from a rival school, your face is somewhat known within the Night Raven College students, and while it’s not exactly a secret that you’re dating the Heartslabyul sovereign, you’d rather if people did not know you were planning on staying the night, for the Seven’s sakes!

If this were an eventful holiday, like Halloween celebrations or a friendly Spelldrive tournament, inter-school visits were more easily forgivable. There were plenty of ways to score a guest pass and walk around freely. But an outsider going around the dorm at night, on a normal school day? Now, that is just fishy.

You devised a plan of which the success depended on how fast Riddle could find you and then rush to his room. And you know he hated running in the hallways.

Your Signature Spell, “Drink Me”, as tongue-in-cheek as it sounded, allowed you to change an object or person in size for a very small period of time. Theoretically, if this was used on yourself and your clothes, you could become hedgehog-sized in seconds. And then, all would Riddle need to do is transport you in his shirt pocket. Simple enough, right?

As you head through the motions of the plan, you realize how utterly embarrassing it is. First, you would need to decide on a set of coordinates where Riddle would find your miniaturized self. He needs to pick you up, basically engulfing you with both hands. You are then to fit inside his pocket, and this meant that his heartbeat would sound like thunderstorms in the summer sky (a by-product of you being so small). And because you’d turn back in 5 minutes, he needs to rush to his room and take you out of the pocket, lest you grow back to normal and rip his prized uniform shirt apart.

There could be some repercussions. Usually, your Signature Spell required of a catalyst – you would use homemade soda for the shrinking spell and cookies for the enlarging spell – so as to keep the side effects at bay, and make the desired transformation last longer (a maximum of an hour). Very rarely you’d cast them directly from your pen to the object in question, unless you wanted or needed consequences to be more immediate and short-lived. In this case, staying small for a whole hour was not exactly the most enticing of options, and gorging on enlarging cookies while the effects of the fizzy shrinking drink hadn’t yet subsided always resulted in nausea, an upset stomach and a fever (you know – you’ve tried before). So, the only viable option was cast and run: a plan problematic in and of itself, but the only chance you had to access the property unnoticed. Ah, if only Chen’ya could teach you how to disappear at will.

When you suggested all of this over the phone, Riddle was flabbergasted. It was hard to tell which is more mortifying – carrying you around like a portable magic pen, or having you enter the dorm life-size and risk a student seeing you enter his room at night.

Eventually, after much persuasion, he had agreed to meet you at the outskirts of the Heartslabyul forest, which was exactly five minutes away from his quarters.

It’s the first meeting since the, uh, lap-sitting incident, and you are both quite self-conscious still. You wave and smile at his approaching figure, but he hurriedly hushes, “Quick! Before anyone sees you.”

Pointing a shaky pen to your chest, you take a deep breath. “Here goes. Drink Me!”

If the feeling could be compared to anything, you’d say it kind of reminds you of a balloon deflating – air gushing out, spiraling as it swirls until it reaches the floor. A kaleidoscope in which the senses become filled all at once, as the world around you is so big, and you’re now so small. The only good part is that, because your height and weight also decrease in proportion, having a parasol ready allows you to float tenderly for the last couple of inches, and the fall is never too abrupt.

Riddle is now... huge. I mean, wow there, Y/N, witty observation. But he really is, and even the act of him crouching to get closer to you shakes the whole ground like an earthquake. He stares at you, two fingers pressed on his lips, pondering if he should lift you up by the collar... but no, no, that’s too ungracious.

So, he offers the palm of his hand. You know that even if you talked at this size, your tiny micro lungs are not enough to produce enough sound to reach him properly, so you keep quiet and climb up his thumb.

When Riddle brings you up to the height of his pocket, it’s like that one Twisneyland attraction that you rode together once, the scary one with the elevator which you had hated with every fiber of your heart as you held on to your boyfriend’s arm screaming – and he wasn’t too keen on thrill rides, either, but had tried to put on a brave face for your sake.

“Are you alright?” he beckons, in a normal tone for him, but it’s like a cacophony ripping apart at your miniature eardrums. You put your hands over your ears. “—sorry! So sorry,” he reduces his voice to a whisper.

Plopping yourself into the pocket, you fall all the way in, roughly reaching the middle while standing straight. You are way smaller than hedgehog size at this point, comparable to a miniature doll of only a few centimeters high. “Hang in there,” he says.

By the sudden swaying, like a seism about to tear the face of the Earth, you assume that Riddle has set course for his room. The countdown starts.

As luck would have it, everyone and their mother is out to get the Headwarden today. He gets stopped at least thrice, mostly about silly stuff such as the shipment for flamingo food or the rundown for the next unbirthday party. It’s impressive how many students are still in the dorm, really –don’t these people have anything else better to do?– their voices are so loud you can barely make out the conversations, instead just catching the keywords. You have both hands pressed against your ears, eyes closed, trying to avoid sensory overload. At least this goes to show there is no way you could have gotten into Heartslabyul unnoticed if you were your proper size.

After many unwanted interruptions, time was running out for the both of you. The de-transformation would start coming in little bursts, where you’d feel your body a little bigger each time. The transpired, stuffy white fabric of that pocket was sure starting to feel a little tight, and now you could almost peek over the hem on your tiptoes.

“Riddle!” is your hurried plead, but he’s going as fast as humanly possible, as fast as anyone can go while still avoiding attention.

When he’s at the doorstep, it feels the seams won’t hold any longer. To the best of your ability, you lift yourself using your arms, trying to squeeze up and out. He fumbles with the key, breath visibly agitated, until he remembers he can just use magic, and can finally, triumphantly, open the door and slam it shut.

“Y/N!” he beckons, in a panic, looking for you to jump on his palm again so he can plop you onto the ground.

“No time! Throw me on the bed!” you squeak, unsure of how much of your speech is currently intelligible. Riddle catches the gist of it, and grabs you by the first thing he can pinch, which is the hem of your skirt, as you’re now dangling outside his pocket, barely not small enough to fit back in.

And next thing you know, he is flinging you like a Spelldrive disk towards his bed; with a loud “poof”, you transform mid-air and land headfirst, full size, cartwheeling on his mattress. Your skirt is flung open, you’ve lost both shoes somewhere along the way, you’re all tangled in on yourself, but at least you are finally safe, and neither Riddle’s shirt nor reputation have been ruined.

Adjusting your sitting position, you first make sure all parts have grown back to size. After all, it’s not unheard of for the effect to last longer on some objects or body parts than others. A quick check assures you that you’re back to normal – all over, that is. You turn to Riddle, who is watching you from the edge of the bed, hand over his mouth, his expression between bemusement and bewilderment.

A stifled laugh that you can’t seem to contain breaks the silence, and it’s like springing open a can of worms, because the redhead giggles a little, too, and then the whole situation becomes too funny to hold it in. Soon he’s laughing tears out of his eyes, unable to speak in full sentences.

“You — you really became pocket size. Right here! You were right here!” He gasps for air between chuckles, pointing at his chest pocket. “I can’t believe... really can’t... ahaha!”

“Hehe, that was some adventure,” you agree. And it’s not like you’re not laughing yourself, but your turn to your boyfriend, and the sight of him fills your chest with a strange warmth, so much that it quiets your laughter. You’d rarely ever seen such a playful, childlike expression; he keeps cry-laughing uncontrollably, wiping his eyes and clutching at his stomach; a hint of relaxation in his ever-so-stiff posture.

His giggle fit starts settling down, and then it dawns on you.

“Oh, no, we need to go through this exact same process tomorrow!” you say, pinching the bridge of your nose.

Tomorrow. He liked the sound of that. It made the fact that you’re staying over more official.

“We’ll think of something by then,” he states.

The rush to close the door and prop you out of the pocket as fast as possible meant that the room was still dim. Because you had landed on his bed, there you were sitting upright in its dead center; suddenly feeling a rush of pink on your cheeks, as the whole Drink Me situation had acted as a deterrent to the actual elephant in the room: the fact that you were here to sleep over and that you had both been so nervous up until that point.

Riddle’s bleary eyes flicker in the twilight, still a soft smile on his lips.

“That was nice,” you grin. “It’d been a while since I last saw you laugh.”

“Oh, come now. Am I really that serious all the time?”

You struggle to find the words. “It’s like... like you’re always worried about something. Not that I blame you—"

“Huh,” he retorts before you can continue. “Well, even I can find something that tickles my funny bone, every now and then.”

He’s now frowning and pouting and just... standing there, as if still hesitant to join you in bed. After all, Riddle was quick to notice that you had made no effort to stand up, and now is wondering what the next step is. It’s not like he had planned any activities for you to do that night – maybe watching a movie on your phones? ...playing card games? Or just go straight to sleep? In the end, he could decide on none and the Day Of came to happen before he could devise a plan, something he dreaded from the bottom of his heart. His whole life was set in rules, set in stone tablets, and now he had to somehow improvise.

“I’m not worried,” he says, pensive, then adds: “Not when I’m with you, at least.”

“Liar,” you accuse him, to which he looks rather offended, albeit playfully so. “By now, you’re probably thinking, ‘What’s comes next?’ — well, aren’t you?”

His expression gives him away immediately. For such a well-postured, well-mannered person, Riddle tends to be a bit transparent. “H-how did you –”

“—it’s because I’m thinking the same thing, too,” you admit. “This is hard, isn’t it?”

It’s not a question. In no unclear terms, last time you’d met had been the very first instance of feeling each other’s bodies, and along came the realization that you are dating and it’s perfectly okay for you to do so. And now you’re subconsciously running your fingers through his velvety red, quilted duvet; and Riddle is still paralyzed a few steps away from the bed. You are not the boldest person out there; and he seems to be bold for anything except for this.

“Agreed,” he muses. Again, he’s like on the outside looking in – it’s that anxious feeling that never goes away, back to the little boy and the cakes he’d never eat.

“This is so awkward to say out loud,” you muster up some courage. “But I’ll try.”

“—yes?”

“I don’t care what we do today. I get to be with you, and that’s enough.”

...oh. Riddle can feel his heart doing a summersault. Being filled to the brim with love like this is something he is not accustomed to. It’s like he’s back to your warm embrace and the rhythmic breathing of your clothed chest, like digging his fingers in your back again, and feeling you return the squeeze. Every single waking moment, and hell, even while sleeping, he goes back to that evening. But he struggles to return your words, hesitant and meditative, staring at the floor.

“Riddle?”

“—yes?”

“Are you okay?”

He’s not. He’s fed up with himself. Scared of this new situation to which he doesn’t have a manual for. Terrified of underperforming and disheartening you.

“Of course,” he lies through his teeth. You are still fully clothed, so all he can see are your knees and calves, from where the skirt of your uniform ends and the socks begin. It’s not remotely erotic at all, yet he’s burning all over. You notice his eyes traveling up and down, trying to take the sight of you in.

You can’t be sure, but deep inside, you intuited that if you both feel the same, then he wants it as much as you do. But then again, pressuring your boyfriend is something you would never, ever venture to do – like a hedgehog himself, he was always quick to spike up to prevent you from poking at his vulnerability. He’d get angry or annoyed or sulky, only to quickly apologize later. So, you are not brave enough to ask, but the least you can do is initiate the scene – like the character that utters the first lines in a play, setting the mood and the proceeds in motion.

Hands, your own, travel to the elastic on your socks, as you slide them off slowly, one by one. Your feet get adjusted to the soft duvet, now feeling it on your bare skin, and you can’t help but notice how utterly cold your toes are – might be from the air conditioning, might be from the nerves. Riddle gasps audibly and clutches at his chest.

You look up at him, as he’s still standing immobilized in his spot. Fine. You’ll venture one more step past the proverbial line of his defenses, then.

Not unlike his, your school uniform consists of a white shirt with a tie or ribbon, at the student’s free choice of whichever. The ribbon on your neck is striped light blue and white, with a small coat of arms applique that depicts a teacup floating in a bottle full of tears. With a quick tug, you undo it, then the first button of your collar, all while keeping eye contact with your boyfriend – it feels like the sound of your own heartbeat is going to deafen you at this point.

Riddle takes a step in your direction, fully flushed, although you can barely tell through the room submerged in the summer dusk. But he stops just by the edge of the bed, frozen again. His is quite the big mattress, and he will need to crawl to you if he wants to reach you. Close, yet so far.

You press your lips together, at the attempt to regain some moisture: your mouth feels dry and trembling all over. Even so, you use the last bit of courage to undo one more button – completely innocuous, as this barely only reveals your collarbone.

“Stop,” he beckons, scaring you for a second. Seeming so desperate, filled with regret. “Don’t.”

“Oh.” Maybe it had been too much? You dread having pushed the Heartslabyul warden too far. “I’m sorry—”

“—no.” He takes a deep breath. “I mean, let me do it.”

Riddle climbs into the bed, knee first. His hand is reaching for your face, slate grey eyes full of adoration, and in turn, you unbalance him by pulling at both his arms, so he stumbles on top of you. Bumping heads at the fall, now faces only an inch away.

“Riddle—”

“—shh. Quit staring.”

But you’re not really, as your eyelids are drooping over, lost in the moment. It doesn’t matter, though. It’s so like him to want to have the last word.

As usual, it’s a peck on the lips, albeit a bit longer and hungrier; he then kisses your cheek, and now the question is what comes next and how the familiar pattern will be broken. To your surprise, you feel two nibbles on your neck, just below your jaw at first and then close to your throat. One leg has snuck in between yours, pressing slightly, the weight of his bony hips digging into your thigh.

He’s always fixing other students’ uniforms, so maybe that’s where it comes from, but he has unexpected skill in unbuttoning your shirt all the way through. But he’s taking it slow and steady, because every single new flash of skin is just killing him on the inside, building up fire within.

Pushing up with one arm, he uses the other to take your hand and give it a kiss, then a tug as he prods you to turn around, softly undressing one sleeve, and reaching for the clasp of your brassiere. Is this too sudden? He’s filled with worry, but push comes to shove, and his instincts urge him to keep going. He needs both hands to do this, causing him to promptly level forward, his mouth caressing your naked shoulder plates. And with one quick snap, you’re out of your bra, though it still lingers lazily on top of your breasts, as you adjust on your back once more.

Riddle realizes – he can almost peek – y-you’re half-naked, writhing beneath him, and –

“—hey,” you call softly, smiling with a tint of self-consciousness as you reach a hand for his cheek. “C-can I...?”

Can I take your clothes off, too? – is what you mean to say, but the words can’t seem to leave your mouth. Curses. Leaving the question unasked, you tug at his striped necktie, and his fingers follow yours, together undoing his shirt buttons all the way to his waist. He’s using a white, paper-thin t-shirt underneath, so you can make the shape of his nipples through it. More lightly clothed than ever, the sudden rush of shame gets the best out of you, and your gut reaction is to pull him into a full embrace, arms clasped around his neck.

Riddle stops for a moment, melting into your hold. You cannot see eye to eye right now, but you can clearly hear each other’s heartbeat. After a moment of hesitation, he kisses you again. It’s sloppy and uncharacteristic of him, but he wants to eat you whole and has no way of hiding it. Uncertain, his hand travels down your neck, feeling your collarbone, and hovering for a few instants where your bra is – unbound, it is no more than a decoration on top of your chest, and he pushes it aside.

“Ah,” he exclaims, almost unwillingly. Your breasts are oscillating up and down with your breathing, your lips are swollen and dyed a madder red, and you just look so beautiful.

“Now you quit staring,” you snap back.

“Hah,” he laughs raspingly. “Who do you think you’re talking to? You’ve got some nerve.”

You smile so wide your cheeks hurt, glad that he’s finally back to his normal self, setting aside all the anxiety and worry. Well, mostly. Of course, some worries are still in the way, but they continue melting as the heat rises – it’s impossible not to give into the moment and fondle your breasts. You let out a little yelp.

“Ah – does it hurt?” he frowns, worried, unable to gauge your reaction. Sure, he made a point to read a few erotic novels in an attempt to prepare for what should be expected for this situation –ugh, perish the thought of anyone finding those hidden at the bottom of his drawer– but truth be told, he still had no idea how rough or how gentle he should be.

“No,” you assured. “It feels good.”

“Show me where.”

At his request, you guide his hand with yours, back to your chest; and strengthen your grip, instructing him to squeeze ever so slightly. His leg, or rather, his knee presses against you, separating your legs further apart, sending a wave of electricity throughout your body. The goddamned skirt is still in the way, but you can’t muster up enough lucidity to concentrate and remove it, moaning and twitching below him.

Riddle must have read your mind, because he shifts his hands to the zipper on your skirt instead, and his mouth starts moving down and away from your neck. Your first reflex –completely involuntary, mind you– is to cross your arms and cover up your breasts, as if it made any difference at this point. His eyes move up to yours, worried again.

“Do you want me to stop?”

“No!” –well, now you’re making less sense than the Queen’s Twinkle Twinkle Little Bat poem– “It’s just... ah...”

He understands. Neither of you want it to end, and yet moving forward is just as scary. Before this, when you first started dating, he used to be able to listen to his inside voice when he kissed you. Or rather, he was forced to listen to it, by his own brain – like a switch you can’t turn off, he’d count the number of kisses and always follow the same pattern. His head was constantly yapping at him, keeping track of time so as to not be late for the 5 PM tea, or telling him to compulsively fix your uniform. But since he had climbed on top of you ten minutes earlier, he has not heard his inner voice, not even once. He could not keep count of how many kisses and nibbles he’d placed all over your collarbone, shoulders, inner elbows and wrists; softly motioning you to let go and uncross your arms. And the sheer fact of losing control was terrifying, yet it felt so good.

That being said, when faced with your bare chest, and the zipper on your skirt lowered but still not removed, Riddle feels a flash of clarity and stops dead on his tracks. There she is, the girl he loves, half-dressed, gorgeous, breasts perking up, but there is one thing that doesn’t quite feel right.

“Come here.” He props you up, helping you sit. He moves the hair off your face and pats your head. “I’ll– I’ll take off the rest of my clothes, too.”

It’s not as embarrassing if it’s the two of you, is his reasoning. And it was important for him that this wasn’t one-sided.

“—you wha– you will?” Not at your brightest nor most eloquent, you’re taken aback by his sudden assertiveness, again crossing your arms in front of your chest. He’s halfway through the zipper of his black school pants when he stops to look at you, face fully flushed.

“Don’t make me repeat myself,” he mumbles guiltily, his delivery harshly contrasting with his words. “You know I hate that.” Feigning authority and playful anger, part of him is trying to be a tease, yet still unsure how.

A giggle escapes your lips. “Shame you’re not wearing the dorm uniform today.”

“—ah.” He notices in that same moment. Had he been so nervous he completely mixed up his clothes today? As the last layers were coming off and he was sitting there in his underwear, he realized it didn’t matter.

“Wait, what is it about the dorm uniform?”

“Heh. Just – the heels,” you blurt out. “They’re kind of... –ah, I’m not gonna say it.”

The idle talk is not important. All you can focus on is how his porcelain skin contrasts with the crimson quilting, and he’s blushing head to toe, like a white rose poorly stained with red paint. Actually, you meant to say the heels turned you on (come on, admit it, just a little?), but halfway through the sentence you noticed you could not be any more aroused, and then he fell on top of you again, and your head emptied completely of thoughts. His hand now presses between your legs, and you wonder where your skirt went – it had been on you just a second before, right?

“Riddle,” you gasp, knowing the fabric of your underwear is betraying you and giving away how wet you are. You have no doubt he can feel it too. And he wishes you wouldn’t call his name, not like that – do you have any idea what you’re doing to him? His fingers are caressing you softly, and it truly feels like you might burst even though you’re just getting started. His face is close to yours, jaw shivering in a cold sweat, even though it feels like there must be a hundred degrees in the darkness of the room. And while he’s helping your orgasm build up, thumb toying with you gently, he can’t help but wonder if your skin feels just as good to the direct touch as it feels through your panties, and how is it that even the parts of you he never knew are all so perfect. It seems slightly unfair, he muses, that you could be this flawless without even trying – but then you wince a little, possibly lost in pleasure, and Riddle starts worrying again.

“Are you okay?” his words feel moist close to your ear.

“Hm-mm.”

“Relax your arms.”

And the second you do, he moves back down again, slobbering kisses all over your neck and chest. While seemingly rawer and more animal than ever, he’s still attentively measuring your reactions, and finds you gasp the loudest when he sucks on your breasts. So, he teases them for a while, circling slowly with his tongue, then softly and toothlessly pinching the stiff center with his lips; he repeats from left breast to right, slowly, deliberately, back and forth, with a sort of rhythmic cadence. Focus, Riddle reminds himself, as his own erection is throbbing painfully. But he’s determined to devote to you first and foremost.

“May I–”

“Yes. Please,” you beg, not even sure what you are agreeing to, but realizing it might as well not matter anymore.

Struggling to open your eyes, you force yourself into keeping alert just so you can take in the view of your raggedly breathing boyfriend, peeking up from the curves between your breasts, hand on the inside of your underwear and soaking his slender fingers inside, applying even pressure. He is amused at the sight of how effortlessly they go in and out, assisted by your moisture, so much so that he forgets about your breasts for a moment. Your voice brings his attention back, however.

“I – I can’t...”

“It’s okay. Don’t hold it in”, he reassures, but maybe he is also talking to himself, as Riddle is always the type to exceed in self-restraint. You are melting, becoming undone with a touch of his hand and he cannot get enough of how it feels – to hear you panting and moaning, to know he will soon be able to press inside you and fill you with his length. It’s an unfamiliar, weird, wonderful thing – not quite like he had imagined, but perfect all the same. Your chest is responsive to his every kiss, and now his fingers have gotten faster and heavier. He can feel you close and is living for it.

“Riddle, I –”

“You’re so beautiful,” he gasps breathily, finally able to be honest with himself. “Don’t hold back. It’s all right.”

“Riddle. Riddle? I’m – I ––”

“––Y/N,” he chuckles, and his touch becomes even more merciless. Your hard nipples cannot possibly take any more kisses. “You’re so adorable.”

It’s not like you need any more stimulation, but as he says this, his mouth is full of one breast and hand cupping the other, and you can clearly see it all, from his heavy-lidded slate grey eyes to his dark red eyelashes, all focused on you as he’s making your sex squeak with wet sounds, pushing down just underneath your navel as his fingers throb and sting inside you.

“Please. Don’t stop.”

He won’t. He’s not the type to tease you like that. Your toes are curling in a frenzy as your legs swing inevitably open, and pretty soon you’re incoherently giving into the thrusting of his hand, and his lips have not left your breasts for one second.

You can’t hold it in. You would have if you could have – the sensation was just too amazing, and you were trying to grasp at straws –literally, if by straws you mean sinking your nails into his shoulders– trying to prolong your orgasm to no avail. You are coming all over, spasming and stirring and gasping his name, and Riddle is a bit scared at first – did he – did he do that? – but it seems you are content, and you settle down huffing beneath him. He takes out his fingers, but his hand stays put, pushing on you softly, as you are still whimpering with the aftershocks that come and go after the peak.

Riddle knows what is supposed to come after that, but the thought alone makes his stomach do cartwheels. Now, how to initiate? He doesn’t have time to think, as you grab him by the wrist, taking his hand out of your underwear and giving it a tug, motioning him to come closer. In your current clouded state, it’s hard of you to completely gain enough strength to pin him down as you originally had wanted to, so you settle to have him sit beside you as you roll over so that your upper body meets his crotch.

“Y/N?” he yelps, suddenly self-aware of how flush his length is against the fabric of his boxers, throbbing to come out, and your face is now caressing it softly with only one layer to separate you.

“Ah. Sorry. Too fast?”

He shakes his head.

“No. Actually,” he pushes his underwear down. “Please. Can you –”

He needn’t ask. The sensation of him in your mouth compelled such novelty – it was weird to get used to, but at the same time felt like the natural next step to take. Tip reddened and throbbing, teased by your lips as your hands would steady his thighs. Funny how something so intense – suckling at him, gasping for jagged breaths, as the bitter taste of his precum numbs your other senses – would come apparent to you so matter-of-factly, unrehearsed yet perfectly calculated. Riddle stifles moans until he can’t anymore, pouring from his lips, buckling into you with hand tangled in your hair, pulling you closer.

He’s no longer thinking straight, and that’s fine. If he were, he’d still be stuck in the preparation phase, staring mindlessly at the welt of your socks, unable to move. But since he’s no longer counting the kisses he’s given you tonight, he’ll make a point of also not counting how many times he’ll thrust into you, as he topples you over when the wetness of your mouth just won’t quite scratch that itch, and hurriedly reaches over the counter for a condom. It’s not like the guilt is completely done, but this – this is everything right now, and as you are huffing and puffing away below him, eager to receive him, he understands that a bit of chaos is needed every once in a while.

A lot of first times are awkward. This might be no exception. But he enters you with such ease, you wonder how this new feeling can be so recognizable, as the pressure builds between your legs and his hipbones dig into you once again, and he restrains your hands with his, raising your arms, soft eyes filled with lust.

“So tight...” Riddle whispers, but it’s more like sounds are escaping him, uncontrolled, “Y/N... y-you’re...”

His speech is barely intelligible, though you can sometimes make out words – ‘beautiful’, ‘good’, ‘wet’ – and a few poorly-pronounced phrases like “does it hurt?” –– it doesn’t, and as you’re pinned beneath him with a clear view into his quivering rosy lips and half-lidded gaze, you know he’s getting closer as he gets harder. He‘s trying to get his mouth full of your taste as if it were forbidden – like it all boiled down to this one evening, and this chance was all he had. And if it were for him, he would have made it last forever – but his body is not so used to this kind of endurance, so after a few minutes Riddle finally gives in, collapsing into your shoulder, quietly whimpering your name, in a moment of weakness that is greater than he’d like to admit. Riding his orgasm, fingers entwined with yours and digging at your knuckles in a tight grip, his voice is unlike you’ve ever heard it before, and you understand its over once he quiets down.

The silence lasts for a few moments. Or, more appropriately put, a slight wave of sheepish embarrassment, as he’s promptly rolled over to your left and you’re both lying face up and wheezing up a storm as if you’d just ran some kind of marathon. But then Riddle slightly tugs at your hand.

“Everything alright?”

“I think so. You?”

“It’s been... quite the novelty,” he says flatly, but then smiles a little at his choice of words. “Do couples do this all the time? ...it seems exhausting.”

“So that’s it? That was your quota for a whole lifetime? Fine then.”

“––No!” he hastily turns sharp on his side, facing you, only to find that you’re unable to hold your laughter. “–Oh. Not funny, Y/N.”

“Sorry! Sorry.”

“– I would very much like it if we did it again. Uh... tomorrow, or – or some other time.”

You smile. “I would like that, too.”

“Should we settle on a schedule?”

“––what? No!” but a sudden tinge of guilt overcomes you, as you quickly realize he might need it. “U–uh, I mean, if – if that makes it easier for you–––”

“––just kidding,” a soft smirk escapes him, like a stifled giggle that says ‘gotcha’.

“Oh, look at you cracking jokes now,” you accuse him with a pout. “That’s a first.”

“Guess that makes two firsts in one day.”

As you both let out a complicit giggle, reaching out for the sheets and then for each other’s hands, no longer worried about the next one step or million steps to come, you find yourselves drifting off to sleep in a loose embrace.

[antigonick]

just stumbled into one of your snippets and i'm OBSESSED with your writing style. it is so fluid and punchy and such a delight to read. if you ever feel like answering, how does your writing process works? what are your inspirations, style and tone-wise? and what themes do you enjoy exploring the most?

have a lovely day! 💌

Oh, that's... WELL. That's! The best compliment you could have sent me, thank you so much, I don't know what to say.. I'm actually trying to write a... I'm gonna call it a novel when it's just a mess of fragments right now, but—yeah. Fluid and punchy is exactly what I strive to achieve with the character's voice so this is so nice to hear. WHATEVER. THANK YOU.

Anyway! My writing process is really... steeped in rhythm, I guess? It starts with character writing, which leads me to character voice, which leads me to finding the right "mind" tempo, and from it cascades the headspace I need to write. In that, in the idea of perspective and voice influencing the story first, I'm indebted to Faulkner, to Marlon James, to Woolf's The Waves, to Shirley Jackson—to the perspectivism twists of horror and gothic writing as a general rule. Rereading her, I think Emily Brontë has shaped my metaphorical network very early on, and my handling of violence, especially in dialogue—though more recently, Tamsyn Muir made me tick about dialogue too. Malin Rydén is one of my utmost inspirations, not a little because the main character of my story was first created for his story, but also because he was my gateway into harder, grittier speculative fiction and digital literature, which both inspire me now for the story I'm trying to shape—horror out of the gothic castle and into the terrible anticipation of what comes next, with more politics, with ghosts and body horror twisted to technology. In terms of pure form, I'm extremely impacted by poetry—E. E. Cummings, Alice Oswald, Emily Dickinson—those who deconstruct syntax to wrangle it into breath. He didn't influence me because I discovered him too late, but I feel a kinship to some of the early stylistic experimentations of Frank Bidart too. Hanif Abdurraqib, whose first name I gave to one of my main characters too because his voice is incredible: it moves. Charles Olson's Projective Verse gestures at what I feel when I write, you know? "ONE PERCEPTION MUST IMMEDIATELY AND DIRECTLY LEAD TO A FURTHER PERCEPTION (…). Always one perception must must must MOVE, INSTANTER, ON ANOTHER! (…)" and then "Breath allows all the speech-force of language back in." Even silence can be your story-weapon.

I'm interested in... blowing apart labels, dichotomies, I think, making them harder to grapple with—right and wrong, love and hate, personal and universal; transgressions, fluidity; how language fails, how language betrays; the way human connection can both fuck you and raise you up, in its constant failure and constant trying, in the violence of intimacy, in the tension between hardness and vulnerability—more than anything, I'm interested in the way individual desires clash with collective needs or personal ideals, in the lies and justifications you can find for yourself, in what it means for you when you come to dismantle them (or refuse to). I love palimpsest, stories retold again and again, and/or I love difficult, ugly settings, speculative and dystopia topics, I want the story to be political in itself, even when it's not politicking; and I LOVE mindfucks: using our terribly faulty, terribly subjective perception / perspective / memory / dreams / FEARS / intellect to tell a story that is both fascinating because it's unique, and trapped by it. Can't escape yourself. What are you gonna do with yourself (against yourself, for yourself) now?

Formally, I try to use that in writing: trapping the reader in one voice that swallows them really, ideally that jostles them a little, that blurs the boundary between them and the character: extreme immersion. I like to try and convey emotion / impression and even action as it is experienced, rather than explaining it clearly. In that phenomenology has influenced me, I guess? Deleuze, Guattari, Merleau-Ponty, and poetry again, I guess. Archibald McLeish says "a poem should not mean / but be...", and that's what I try to do with the character I choose, and then I let them be, and they drive both the story and the writing that should echo it—form and content cycling each other like mirrors.

Goddamnit, that got so long. Anyway. THANK YOU for being interested, I'm really touched.

[fullmetal-scar-simping]

I really think father and hohenheim should have been the same character? I mean, father is such a bland villain. Maybe I just haven't looked enough but I haven't seen even the most hardcore bh fans talk about him? It's all just about how ed punched god or whatever. No one's actually interested in the guy himself. I can think of several ways them being the same person would make it a lot more interesting, at least to me. I mean, first of all ed and al having to fight their own shitty father is some delicious angst. Second I really like the mad scientist type character and that's what hoho would be in that scenario. Third I think it would be fun to analyse the "sins" he took out of himself if he was a human to begin with. Ohh and come to think of it, it would go really well with Ed's whole "alchemists are the closest things to God yadda yadda" speech in the beginning wouldn't it? Honestly I can't think of any reason why they had to be different people at all...Ah, except how can I forget. Arakawa's writing this. Of course they have to be two different people. One who actually did all the wrong things and the loving father and husband who's going around trying to make everything right(nevermind that he left Trisha to care for their 4-5 yos all alone with no support. Nuh uh he's perfect) If she held the fact that the two can in fact be the same person it might just explode her world. I'm rolling my eyes.

Father and Hohenheim as the same character? Who is a mad scientist? Who as a result reimburses Ed's pompous "Alchemists are the closest things to god"? Blends aspects of being an unforgivable monster with having loved his family? I've got your guy!

🎉Hohenheim of Light!🎉

Oh sure, he's not the final big bad that the Elric bros have to fight, and sure he's more of a retired villain who's mildly penitent for his centuries of bloodshed, rather than continuing to enact widespread destruction. But we do get to see the results of all his transgressions against humanity and his own first son too! So, 🎉 ta-da! 🎉

To actually address your ask:

Besides what 03 had already done, for awhile I actually thought Father WAS Hohenheim in Brotherhood.

To clarify: I avoided the online fandom from 2009 onward in order to prevent getting spoiled for the (at the time) new fma adaptation. I kept putting off watching it for well over a decade (lol), and for no other reason then a combo of 1) not being in the mood for more fma, and 2) when I was, I would immediately run right back to fma 03 without fail, and then be so thoroughly satisfied with revisiting a long time fave that I just. Would put off watching Broho for another time.

Still, being online in any capacity meant that every once in awhile I was unavoidably being exposed to the odd screenshot, text post, and fanart. No big deal, nothing really spoiled anything heavily enough for me to know the full story, and I could easily scroll away before making sense out of anything.

But I did one day stumble into a screenshot of Father glowering in his underground throne. And here I thought "Oh shit! Hohenheim is actually in full villain mode this time around?! We're going to actually explore the mass annihilation he commits for philosopher stones and how his sons will have to contend with their own father. This will surely dig even deeper into Ed and Al's heel turn against the military, and what alchemy means as a method of power and control. Man, this is gonna fuck!"

lol

lmao even

So to my now endless disappointment I finally watched Brotherhood this last spring. And although I surprisingly liked* this affable, bumbling, rather tragic version of Hohenheim (which stumps me, given my initial assumption for Brotherhood AND being a long time Hohenheim of Light enjoyer) (I still like Hoho of Light more tho), Father was such a fucking let down on every front.

*Don't get me wrong, I'm not claiming Von Hohenheim didn't do wrong against Trisha and his kids. As much as he had to build the anti-circle around Amestris, it doesn't erase the fact that Trisha had to shoulder the full burden of raising their kids, and child Ed's sense of abandonment and outrage against him is highly warranted.

Even keeping Father as a homunculus that duplicates Hohenheim's appearance, he still could have been an interesting character and villain. But every step of the way he was just the obvious big bad mostly relegated to the background, stored away except for a few key encounters and flashbacks. He was paper thin, an easy excuse for why the core ills of Amestris are all his exclusive fault, and conveniently the canon has an in-baked reason for why he has the personality and stage presence of cardboard. Woo. hoo.

God the lore and function of homunculi blows in mangahood. At the very least make me actually feel like they are parts of this once former-cyclops in a bottle! And still make Father an actually compelling character! In fact the other homunculi could have potentially been an effective vehicle for that, but noooooo-

Honestly, I agree. It would have been so much more affecting for Hohenheim and Father to be one, singular character. Of course much of his backstory would have to change, but that's not a loss in my hater's opinion. The implications for the Elrics, for their paradigms to be entirely torn asunder and have to be rebuilt in order to survive and make sense out of their position in Amestris, it would have been juicy.

You're right, I have seen next to no deeper interest or investment into Father as a character and as a narrative device from hardcore fans either. I'm sure it does exist, given Brotherhood's immense popularity, but damn if we can be forgiven for getting the impression that most fans just don't give a rat's unseasoned ass. I see more posts and fanart for Von Hohenheim than I do Father lol

Mangahood simply can't have (or actually address) any truly murky topics, or depict messy and complex characterization, if it doesn't ultimately shine the brightest, most admirable, most absolving light on our protags as possible. So why would Von Hohenheim have anything to do with Father besides having been his victim?

We remain starved by the emaciated, sorry excuse for 'pathos' that is Father's whole deal. What a shame.

[transmutationisms]

pleaaase share any and all thoughts you might have on as i lay dying by william faulkner if you're willing, i'd appreciate your analysis on any topic dealing with it. I recently had to read it for class and kept thinking "tumblr user transmutationisms would probably find this very interesting" and when I search your blog i see its one of your fav novels! personally am interested with the treatment of darl and what is considered "sane" vs. "insane" as well as addie and how her death is handled.

yeah this book made me so insane when i first encountered it lmao. i was always surprised by people who read it and thought that darl had genuinely or intrinsically 'gone insane' or even that he was in some kind of decline throughout the book. i thought what faulkner was doing with him was very different.

i'd posit there are basically 2 main mechanisms by which darl comes to be regarded as insane. one is the construal of criminal action as prima facie pathological. in darl's case it's specifically criminal action against his mother's body (so, the violation of a blood tie that is so important it has guided the entire novel) and ofc the barn burning has a more general sort of antisocial effect as well. so, the designation of insanity follows not because darl's action shows some kind of intrinsic breakdown or loss of lucidity, but because it puts him outside the bounds of accepted familial and social behaviours. so, in that sense there's a very straightforward connection between the social mores, the criminal code based on them, and the invocation of insanity to preserve the dichotomy between 'sane' and 'criminal', ofc with the asylum then appearing as another arm of the carceral / criminal apparatus.

in addition, though, faulkner's work is generally marked by an interest in the sort of social breakdown and decline that articulates along family lines. which is to say: although i wouldn't attribute to him the same degree of evolutionary-hereditarian degeneracy theory as, like, zola, there is certainly a repeated interest throughout faulkner's work in the family as a site of inherited social and economic decline. i don't think the point here is to write anse as insane, per se, or as passing on a discrete malady to darl, but parentage matters (cf. jewel's illegitimacy) and in the same way that anse is antisocial, illogical, and frequently illegible to the surrounding characters, darl by the end of the book has come to occupy a similar socially marginal position. darl is ofc punished more violently for his transgression; anse's chapters convey pretty clearly his outsider position and complete inability to make sense of the world on linguistic-logical terms, but darl escalates this when he burns the barn because he's breaking a rule that has more external social ramifications than, say, anse's biblical exegesis about snakes and trees and whatever.

broadly and kind of annoyingly you could say the novel is investigating the relationship between consciousness and language, or at least feeling and language. the words are "a shape to fill a lack", vardaman's fish chapter sort of sums up the failings therein, &c. so, anse and darl are interesting to counterpose in this respect because the disconnect between their inner worlds and linguistic abilities are very different. darl is the most linguistically adept narrator in the book, yet by the end he's committed an act so illegible to the state and to his community that he's declared insane for it. anse, on the other hand, is motivated by what is in certain ways a very clear and simple moral code (he is driven primarily throughout the novel by the desire to bury addie and then take care of his own material needs re: teeth and a new wife), but he's not really able to communicate this directly in narration, which makes his chapters some of my favs to re-read. with anse the stream-of-consciousness is continually hinting at and around what he's trying to convey; with darl there are certainly things he's capable of expressing clearly and directly in language, and so the effect (for me) is to surprise you when it's revealed that darl, too, is on a kind of margin of social logic.

[amysubmits]

My gf wants to be punished by me. She really perks up when I give her an admonishing look, or talk sternly to her. She seems to find my authority and discipline hot.

I do enjoy the idea of punishing her, but more as a sadist. Like, I want to make her suffer — but not because she did anything wrong, but simply because I can. To me, it shows her submission and the power she eagerly gives me, and I find that incredibly hot.

The problem is, I don’t really feel comfortable punishing her for specific transgressions. I think it’s because I don’t feel comfortable with giving her rules. She’s an incredibly capable person who doesn’t need rules enforced in order to function well; she’s up at dawn, punctual, studious, etc. Whereas, I’m actually the one who struggles with things like being on time, being clean, eating regularly… So punishing her for minor transgressions like being late, or sleeping in, or whatever, feels incredibly hypocritical! (Also, it would be so rare. And usually she has good reasons, too, bc she doesn’t fuck up by accident.) I just don’t see how I could ever have the right to expect her to endure a punishment, when she is so good and I am not.

I am also extremely cautious about introducing punishment for more serious things like if she actually “failed” me or hurt me in some way. (Eg. Say she forgot our anniversary, or started an argument and felt bad about that, or was rude / disrespectful to me.) These are more serious issues than a broken arbitrary rule (eg. “Address me by a title” or “Kneel when you enter the room” etc.). In that case, it’s a complex issue; I’d want to press pause, discuss and understand — not jump into kinky sex / punishment stuff. Not to mention, these issues are shared issues; it’s rare that it’s one person’s fault, so it feels weird to me to punish only one person. (And I don’t want punishment for myself; it would probably feel really triggering.)

Plus, she already feels horrible! She is incredibly perfectionistic, and especially in major transgressions, her internal narrative is more like, “I fucked up and failed you.” It feels needless to dwell on it — I want her to be able to make mistakes and know that she’s safe; that “I’m sorry” is enough; to not beat herself up about it. I worry that punishing would draw extra attention to the issue, and make her feel even worse / like it really IS all her fault.

Finally, I guess there is a distinction between punishment and “punishment,” and a lot of this consideration goes out the window if she’s only after the fun, hot kind. That’s worth discussing with her. But even in the fun “punishment” scene, I don’t really know what to punish her for, because we don’t have rules and she’s so good that she doesn’t really need them. I don’t even know what rules she would have, or how to come up with them! (The internet only recommends punishments, but I’ve found relatively little about how to make rules, both serious and fun ones, or the logic behind what is healthy or not.) Btw we’re not in a 24/7 dynamic or anything, we just do bedroom stuff.

Sorry for the long ask; I tried to edit it down but I have so many questions and need help. Thank you!

Hello :)

It sounds like you're pretty solid in your understanding of what you are and aren't comfortable with. It doesn't sound like punishing her for 'serious' infractions, big or small, is something you're open to. And that's totally valid. It sounds like you aren't certain if she's specifically after the serious type or the sexy kind. If she was after the serious kind, she may not like your boundaries, but it sounds like you know what yours are. If you haven't already, I'd explain this all to her similar to how you explained it to me, so that she has a full understanding of where you are coming from. And then whether or not she had initially intended for them to be 'serious' or not, I think these types of interests always link back to our sexuality in some way or another, even if it's kind of indirect. So, I'd wonder if you could find ways within "play" or "scenes" that could let her get to see you be pseudo-stern with her, and that could let you engage your sadistic side. To avoid risking her actually feeling guilty, maybe the 'rules' or 'infractions' would have to be things that are outside of her normal behavior. For example, if you use Sir during scenes and would worry that creating a rule of 'you must always end statements to me with yes sir or no sir during scenes' might make her actually feel guilty if she forgets - then maybe make up rules that are just things that could not possibly be accidental or guilt related, and would just exist as an invitation to play. As a doofy example, you make a ruler that is "No calling me Mr/Ms/Mrs. Babboon" which she has never called you and never (normally) would, so then if she does call you that, it's a really clear invitation to "punish" her. Of course, this is just if this type of play would be within both of your boundaries, but it kinda sounded to me like it probably would be. Perhaps you guys can brainstorm other ways to play with the kinks you have while avoiding those boundaries you have and also avoiding her guilt/perfectionism triggers.

Good luck to you guys. :)

[miraculousweb]

If Gabriel was, while not a good person, was a good father, partner and friend AU

The Wish Aftermath

Gabriel Agreste, the last will and testament/the last letter (or something):

"I leave my trusted friend, partner and confident , Nathalie, with whom I've asked too much already, my butterfly brooch. To my son, Adrian I leave his mother's peacock brooch, know that I am so proud of you. To my dearest wife, Emilie,I return to you the tome I've had within my possession, and I give you my sincerest apologies and regret for the mess I've no doubt left behind. I'm sorry that you have to find out this way, that I've done too many unspeakable things that I can't even begin to list them, I regret that I'll never get the chance to tell you in person or express how sorry I am for all of this. All I can offer you is perhaps hollow excuses and explanations. Duusu, though they owe me nothing, has agreed to pass on my follies and my failings, for you to judge and decide if or how you wish to remember me by.

I regret, so so many things, I am regret that I never got the chance to say goodbye to you my wife, my love, my heart and soul, then or now. I regret that I am not brave enough to face my precious child, my son, my light, before my final moments. I cannot even begin to ask for either of your forgiveness, for these transgressions against you and against those whose lives I've hurt, for the tarnished legacy I leave behind, and all the broken pieces I've left behind for you to pick up in my stead. As the end grows closer I am both terrified and relieved, I know I have no right to make any last requests of anyone but I beg of you, please don't blame Natalie, she did everything she could to mitigate my actions. Do not condemn her for my mistakes. I am sorrowful and guilty for all the pain and suffering I've caused and I alone take the full responsibility for it, she is not responsible for my wrongdoings.

I leave you with these final words, and though I know they are not enough, I know I must press forward still, and write them.

Emilie, I've missed you, with all my heart, mind and soul, and I love you, more than I could ever love myself, more than enough to trade my life for yours in a heartbeat. Please live your life, and take care of Adrien for me, won't you?

Adrien, my darling boy, my only son and child, in the darkest of times, you have been the brightest light that shines, never lose sight of that strength within. I never said it enough, I never told you, not in so many words, just how much I love you and how proud I am of you. Be there for your mother, but don't forget to take care of yourself too. I know I've always demanded too much of you, so consider this my blessing to make your own demands from life and live it to the fullest in whatever way is best for you. It's your turn to decide what life you want to live.

Nathalie, my oldest and dearest friend, thank you. Thank you for everything. I'm sorry for leaving you behind, for putting you through all this, and abandoning you to pick up the pieces in my stead. I wish you nothing but the best, and I want you to know that no matter what anyone says, you are family. I will forever be grateful to you. Goodbye old friend

I love each of you, may you be able to rest easy from here on out without me

Sincerely

Husband, Father, and Friend

Gabriel Agreste "

[hippielittlemetalhead]

Intro To The Supernatural: Supernatural 101

Part 2 of my Sterek fic on AO3. There's a fair bit of canon twisting mostly just making it all add up and make sense and leaning into the "Stiles is scary smart and resourceful and some sort of magic to the point The Wild Hunt and the Nogistune saw him as the one to take out to make their job easier" plus some other bits that are just for my amusement. Always open to questions and comments and headcanons.

Still not be doing a tag list for the crossposted works but I'll keep y'all updated on that if it changes.

It had been such an uneventful couple of weeks (barring that failed attempt at a meeting Stiles had dragged him to with Argent and Deaton). Ever since Deaton had informed Stiles of his Spark the boy had thrown himself headfirst into researching just what the hell that meant but that didn't keep him from turning the rest of Beacon Hill's supernatural world on its head. After they had handled Jackson's whole Kanima issue and taken out Gerard, Stiles had sat Chris, Deaton and even Uncle Peter down in the middle of the pack's den (a great spacious loft that was almost as derelict as the subway station) for a long overdue crash course on the supernatural world and adjacent topics for the recently initiated. Including the Sheriff.

Stiles had burst in through the loft's sliding door as his betas were getting settled -as far from Allison as they could without offending Scott- with his father in tow and sat him down with a huff before moving to stand behind Derek's left shoulder. He had stiffened as Stiles took his place, leveling a glare at his father and the rest of the pack all the while. He had barely been able to suppress the shudder as the pups started to fall into line, Scott and Allison untangled themselves from each other (much to Chris' relief) and the Sheriff seemed to deflate at whatever he saw in his son's face. Peter barked out a laugh and he felt Stiles' ire shift towards his uncle for a moment.

"Care to share with the class there, creeperwolf?"

"Oh nothing of note, Spark. Nothing at all." He sees Lydia perk up at the mention of Stiles' own touch of Other.

"Whatever," The boy grumbles out and Derek can feel when he steps forward before he places a hand on his shoulder, his grip light but grounding and more appreciated than he thought it would have ever been.

He can see the way the Sheriff tenses at his son's lingering touch on the older man's shoulder. The older man he had personally arrested under suspicion of murder. "Stiles-"

"Alright, so welcome to the first meeting of Intro to The Supernatural." He doesn't need to be watching the boy to know he's avoiding looking at his father who does not look happy at being talked over. "We're gonna do some introductions for the uninitiated or just those of ya who haven't been payin' attention. So uh, I expect a few of you to take notes here cause there will be a test at the end. Okay then, for this class your professors here are: Chris Argent, Hunter of the Argent clan and currently regent and representative of the local branch until our own Aly comes of age for her grand destiny and claims her place as Matriarch. Next we have Dr. Deaton, Beacon Hill's local vet and Emissary to the late Alpha Talia Hale, 15th of her line to stand as Alpha to the Beacon Territory Pack. Former Emissary Deaton is a practicing druid and has been recognized by most supernatural forces to be an acceptable placeholder until the Hale pack is back up to snuff. After that ya got Peter Hale, Left-Hand to the late Alpha Talia Hale and blood kin to Alpha Derek Hale. Due to certain circumstances Peter's current place in the Hale Pack is undetermined and will be discussed once those who are due a say are brought up to date on his transgressions against Kin and Pack and Territory and what this means in the supernatural world and furry politics." He takes a deep breath and the hand on Derek's shoulder tightens. The Sheriff's eyes that have been trained on each man as Stiles introduced them are now resting on him, flicking over his tense form and the hand on his shoulder up to the boy still standing in a position of importance and power even if he doesn't know it. But this is Stiles so he probably knows exactly what he's doing. "And here we have Alpha Derek Hale, son of the late Talia Hale and 17th of his line to stand as Alpha to the Beacon Territory Pack. Though young for his station Alpha Hale has proven his worth as a provider and defender to those in his care and has earned his Claim to the title of Alpha and the traditional territory of the Hale Pack."

He expects Stiles to move away after that. To give his shoulder one last grounding, reaffirming, squeeze then move off to sit with his dad or pull back to stand vigil in his unwitting place of honour. But he doesn't. The younger man's hand seems to rest heavier on his shoulder like it's all that's holding him up as he squeezes almost painfully. Stiles' scent turns that ash and sour of nerves and anxiety and frustration that he had almost gotten out of the damned couch the boy usually spread himself out on when he had taken over the loft researching whatever the star of that week's horror show was. It shifts and Derek feels his hackles raise and can see the way his betas all react, sitting up and staring at the boy with curious eyes and invasive noses. Stiles takes a deep breath and shifts to stand a little closer to Derek, close enough to share body heat, close enough for both their scents to get a little mixed up.

"I'm not really gonna be one of your teachers but uh-" Another deep breath and the hand is gone and he moves to stand in front of Derek. A solid wall of 147 pounds of pale skin and fragile bone and sarcasm wrapped in the scent of earth and storms, fire and blood and Other. "My name is- ho boy- My name is uh, is Miecyslaw Stilinski, Beacon Hills' resident Spark and member of the Hale Pack. I stand as Emissary, Second and uh- and Left-Hand to Alpha Hale until a time as he chooses someone worthy of each role. You can still just call me Stiles for now."

Not so unwitting after all then.

Derek knows he's staring. Knows that the Sheriff is looking between the two of them with something edging on rage and resignation and confused desperation. He knows that the betas are confused by all of the formal language and titles and are just waiting for Stiles' permission to let the floodgates open on all of their questions. Lydia is watching the entire room with that cold calculation that makes him think she might be perfect for Emissary or Left Hand but next to her Jackson is glaring at Stiles like the boy's very existence offends him.

"Wait," Allison has pulled herself from using Scott as a body pillow and is leaning forward, her attention focused on Stiles where he still stands firm between the rest of the room and Derek. "That's not possible. You're not allowed to be Emissary and Second and- and his fucking Left-Hand Stiles. Do you even know what the left-Hand is?!"

"Allison-" Chris sighs like just the thought of the impending argument exhausts him.

Stiles laughs. It's a sharp bark of sour humour that cuts Chris off and makes the rest of the room shift uneasily. "You think I went into this blind Aly? You think I didn't do my fucking research? I know exactly what every role I have claimed entails and I will do my damned best to fulfill every single duty until the rest of you are ready to step the fuck up and start making this half-assed attempt at a pack something that will make everything out there think twice before they set so much as a foot on Hale Land."

"Stiles," When did he stand up? When did he move close enough to lay a hand on the boy's shoulder and try to pull him back into his space? "Come on-"

The boy whirls back to look at him and there's something burning in his eyes that makes Derek dry swallow. "No, Derek. There is too much crap out there that we are not anywhere equipped to handle and I refuse to stand back and let them twiddle their thumbs while the rest of you pull your heads out of your asses. So the four of you are going to walk everyone in this room through the basics of what it means to be in a werewolf pack or allied with one. What the roles are and what is expected of them as betas. You are going to tell my dad about just what the hell has been going on these past few months so I can be sure he's not going out there to fight some big bad half-cocked and blind. Deaton is going to help Lydia figure out what the fuck she is that the bite didn't kill her and didn't take and you Argent-" Now his fury was trained on the tired looking man, "You are going to explain your family's long and fucked up history and morals to your daughter and the kids she almost helped kill and to my father and to every wolf in this room so they have an idea of just what the hell they are dealing with. Deaton, I expect full answers that actually make sense and Peter-" He's breathing hard now, hard and fast and Derek can hear the worrying speed of his heartbeat. "Just try not to screw us over and I might not find a way to send you back to wherever Lydia dragged you from."

Peter laughs between an exhausted looking Argent and Deaton who reeked of fear and nerves despite his usual stoic expression. He smiles at Stiles and it's all teeth. "Oh I knew I should have bit you when I had the chance. You are a formidable human, but you would have been a glorious wolf."

[necirusalka]

here are my Real, Actual final thoughts on JS and if i keep talking about it i want to be whacked with a newspaper. at this point i know people are always going to willfully misinterpret critique of JS as being in bad faith and this is mostly me indulging myself before i blacklist everything related to the quest because i'm tired of thinking about it and i know everyone else is tired of seeing my stream of consciousness about it

i'm not opposed to jade wanting to have a child and i'm not even opposed to her story being one about her sacrificing herself for her baby. i still think the Dead Wife trope is insanely old and tired, but warframes sacrificing themselves has been a trend for a long time, so whatever. but JS completely failed in every way to meaningfully center jade's thoughts and feelings on the matter at all, so the sacrifice falls completely flat

we dont know anything about jade pre-warframing. we dont even hear from the quest itself that she used to be an executioner (i guess this is a voiceline in the ascension mission which is like... ok fair i guess, at least the information is communicated in SOME form). we dont know why she wanted a child, just that she Did. but even then we mostly just know that she wanted one (even after being warframed, i mean) because... male characters who would never have even spoken to her say so. and because at the very end of the quest, when she is actively DYING, she chooses not to "fight" her baby draining her life force... and even then, it's framed as though jade is a passive bystander here; that her vitality being drained is just a Thing that is Happening TO her that she may or may not even have the power to do anything about, and not something she's making a conscious, empowered decision to do. so i do not think this is proof that DE's writers cared about her agency or expected the audience to.

it's a huge shame, because there were so many opportunities here for DE to make her an active, enthusiastic participant in her story, and the writers missed every one. the stalker's view is prioritized at every turn and he's the one we're supposed to sympathize with, not the person who is DYING because he's too proud to find her help. even jade's few speaking lines are just... her asserting sorren's role in the story as Father and Protector. "you'll take care of us, always, won't you?"

jade killed people for the orokin as a 9 to 5 and would be keenly aware of what petty transgressions would get you tried and killed or WORSE under the orokin, and i find it hard to believe she genuinely thought sorren could protect them, but i guess digging the hole for stalker's guilt to take root was the priority over jade's insight and characterization. no reflection of her personality beyond being hopelessly loyal to and faithful in sorren, no way to extrapolate her motives. just "well sorren you're a Dad now so you have to protect your Wife and Child." like... ok.

post-warframing, being permanently pregnant was seemingly the orokins' punishment for her transgression of daring to get pregnant against their rules. i don't think jade was ever intended to actually give birth, given basic frame physiology + the baby bump being a permanent ornamental fixture on her body. maybe that was the big catch for her -- if she was ever mortally wounded, instead of reviving herself like other frames can, she would have to choose between saving herself or saving her child. that's the only reasonable explanation i can think of for why DE decided she HAD to die (other than for stalker's character development, obviously, but i'm trying to be generous). why not run with that? why not lean into the idea of jade truly just deciding it's her time and making the choice to grant her child the opportunity to live? why does it have to be a matter of stalker's gross, prideful negligence FORCING her into this situation? and why does this negligence go completely unpunished? why is stalker the one we're supposed to be siding with here?

this takes me to my OTHER major issue with the quest which is the Rock Band Birth scene and the implications of stalker roping a teenager into, uh, literally having contractions on jade's behalf as she's dying. i don't honestly think stalker KNEW that jade could give birth at all, and i don't think he even cared if she could. i think he really just wanted the tenno to save jade (i'm hoping that's what he wanted, because the alternative reading was that he really did just knowingly and willingly coerce them into giving birth for her, which is disgusting for obvious reasons). which is like... if jade's will truly was to give up her life for their child's, then stalker choosing not to respect that also goes completely unmentioned and unpunished because, again, jade's opinion was a complete afterthought here.

if you want to give jade some actual say in her fate AND avoid the absolutely horrific and bizarre implications of a teenager being strongarmed into Contractions Rhythm Heaven, but keep the same ultimate outcome of jade sacrificing herself for her child... just remove the last chunk of that scene altogether. KEEP the tenno transferring into jade's body at stalker's behest. have them make some comment about how they feel a second life force within jade, and that that's where she's choosing to reroute all of her remaining power. there's nothing the tenno can really do for her at this point except help her sustain that second life force with their inexplicable Magic Tenno Healing Powers. then instead of a tonally dissonant minigame, just have the operator transfer out of jade's body and say that they've done all they can do, that the second life force is stable now but jade herself has decided it's her time. she still dies but instead of disintegrating into naught but a fine mist, the glass dome cracks and her Magical Energy pours out and... forms a baby, i guess. or, i don't know, literally anything other than what we got lmfao

everyone in this quest could have been treated SO much better, we could have gotten SO much more out of it and DE just took the laziest possible "woman says nothing and dies for single dad man pain" route when i KNOW they can do better... jade never really got to amount to anything beyond an immobile body for stalker to have Character Development over. for fuck's sake, sevagoth had more agency in finding his own dead body than this. digital extremes made the decision to make a quest centered on something as personally, socially, and unfortunately politically laden as pregnancy and childbirth, and they couldn't even grant the pregnant character the dignity of having a personality outside of the male protagonist who mistreats her, because it just wasn't important to them. i don't think criticism here is remotely undeserved. we should be holding writers to a higher standard than this

[daisyachain]

I saw a critique somewhere once that I really liked of the popular conception of Paradise Lost-type Lucifer as a real paragon. The Christian idea of the relationships between god/humanity/sin is poisonous in that Original Sin means humans deserve to suffer. This means that then the existence of the god is what condemns humans to suffering—there is no sin if there is no perfect being. The god’s all-perfect nature is what leads it to choose to bring down such worldly suffering on humanity, which it deems to be wrong by nature. This for also lends itself to white supremacy and patriarchy, where the perfect god is cast as a man of whatever dominant ethnically European group. Having a perfect god creates a theoretical moral hierarchy, that hierarchy is co-opted by the real actual hierarchies that exist, oppressed groups are framed as ontologically bad.

Therefore, conceptualizing Lucifer as a wronged paragon is not the transgressive move that people see it as. Rather than truly undercutting the oppressive god, it just raises up an equally unfair/hierarchical/white male supremacist figure (after all, when is Lucifer shown as anything but a blond guy?) as a rival to the oppressive god. The trickster Satan of sex, drugs, and goats’ hooves is a more effective folk Christian figure to adopt to undercut the oppressive god. Lucifer represents a challenge to the god as an equally powerful, perfect, judgmental being establishing a rival hierarchy. The Satan-devil-figure represents letting it hang. Satan is a way around the rules of the oppressive god, he is the ability to ignore all hierarchies and hack the system. Magic does exist, it just goes against the divine order. The post-Paradise Lost Lucifer seeks to replace the oppressive god, the Satan figure seeks to make him irrelevant.

That’s an analysis I like and agree with. After all, when is Lucifer portrayed as anything but a blond guy? However, the one thing that is compelling about the pop culture mythos of Lucifer is that it represents some kind of failed effort as the basis of suffering. The figure of Lucifer started a rebellion and was cast out, as opposed to the exogenous Satan who just hangs around tempting. Lucifer has been taken to be the idea of ‘what if someone tried to help humanity, and was punished?’

The Christian mythos’ main sticking point is, again, original sin. Every misfortune is blamed on humanity. Anyone with eyes can see that the people who suffer most in their lives do not do anything to deserve it. It’s impossible to reconcile, and the Christian way of doing so is to just say that life doesn’t matter in the long run. In the year 1400, it’s easier to believe that your cousin got the black plague because he’d screwed your brother’s wife behind his back. In later years, it gets much harder.

So, as much as it has played into white male supremacist ideas of ‘I’m right and I define right and laws like the age of consent are oppressive’, Lucifer has a far more powerful appeal as a story to explain the wrongs in the world. There are so many things going badly, how could the god not be responsible? How could nobody have noticed this was bad? The answer that the pop culture idea of Lucifer presents is: someone noticed, someone tried to help, and the person who tried to help suffered or was corrupted. It’s comforting to think that there was at least some resistance on moral grounds to the tyranny of the god. It’s easier to understand divine entities getting corrupted in a long war than to understand them as corrupt from the start. Me, I like the idea that a divine being trying to do good will be struck down. It resonates with the nature of the world as it shows itself. Rather than the good god which triumphs and the devil which tempts, it’s much easier to imagine the evil god who whacks the mole and the good devil which tries (and fails) to overthrow it.

[indecentpause]

Hi! Happy WBW! This week I've been thinking a lot about religion so... What is considered sacrilegious in your world? Is it common to encounter such a thing or is it punishable (or maybe both)? How do religious institutions react?

This is a really interesting question! The only thing I have with made up religion is The Princess and the Pirate so we'll do that, even though I haven't worked on it in a while.

There are multiple... sects, I guess, and denominations, of the same religion, amongst the five countries. Like, people worship different Gods within the same pantheon, or follow or believe things under the same umbrella but understand them in different ways.

A lot of people think religion is antiquated and doesn't really serve them anymore, other than, like, where the world came from or why certain things are as they are. Some people believe the myths are true but the Gods aren't really around anymore, some think they're more like metaphors. Magic and science and tech all exist side by side, but magic is so hard and takes so long to learn that a lot of people don't even realize it's actually still real.

ANYWAY to your question: it's both dependent on the sect and the location. For example, in Selan, mice are considered sacred, especially mice that are solid black or solid white, and if you hurt or kill a mouse you're just asking for heavenly wrath to fall down on you. So even people who aren't part of that denomination tend to leave mice alone, even though to them it's more of a cultural thing.

There are very few things that are specifically taboo because of religion, they are more things that are cultural with religious explanation, if that makes sense? Like. Killing for example: it's bad because religion says 'hey, don't do that' but it's also bad because now a person is dead. And that's more of a legal thing than a religious thing.

Religious institutions are generally pretty chill about most things, unless it brings harm to others. Some groups extend this to animals so those people are often vegetarian. The ways people who do eat meat treat the animals are also very important. Like, if it's found the animal the meat is from was kept poorly or hurt badly while alive, or killed painfully, there will be a lot of anger. That's not exactly sacrilegious though? It is considered a moral failing if your city/town/etc has starving or homeless people, though. That's not exactly something a religious institution can punish a leader for, but they can definitely throw a shit fit until it's fixed.

Religious institutions have no legal power in the sense that they can't try or punish people for transgression. But they can shun the hell out of you if they think what you did was bad enough. But for the most part people are pretty relaxed about it in a 'whatever you do in your own home is your own business' way. It's pretty lax in most places. There are extremists, but they're not the norm.

So.... I guess there aren't really many things that are sacrilegious, exactly (and I'm working on figuring out what they are), but things that are considered morally and socially acceptable and unacceptable. And transgressions would more be punished by exclusion from their neighbors rather than a religious group!

thank you so much for your question! :D

[tloubraininfection]

SPOILERS for both games and everything TLOU!

For the longest time I thought I had it all figured out. It seemed so clear to me that:

1.Joel`s choice was utterly selfish. I understood it, I shared his view and most likely would`ve done the same, but it still felt like a transgression against Ellie.

2.Ellie wanted to be the cure even if it meant she had to die and that chance was stolen from her by the person she loved the most.

Simple, right? Sure, but also mostly wrong.

After a conversation with brilliant @ellieswlliams about the same subject all my views started to shake. And I was unable to let it go, it was bugging me so much. To the point I had to review my opinions about these subjects, because they no longer felt genuine. I’ve explored the subject of selflessness in my other note, but I really wanted to talk about Ellie and her choice. Because it seemed the most difficult thing her me to wrap my head around.

Because I still believe Ellie wanted to be the cure and it`s more than likely that she knew she`ll have to sacrifice her life and she was more than willing to do that. What I failed to examine though was why. Maybe that’s what she wanted, but why was it what she wanted? I got so stuck on the lie and the stealing away her agency and the betrayal I missed the bigger problem.

If she`s ready to sacrifice herself why not let her? What if it makes her happy? What if she wants it to be her life’s purpose? Why was I so adamant that she ought to have that choice? When it`s not really even a choice? How is it a decision if you are making it under pressure? Internal and external, under pressure from your own survivors guilt and the pressure from other people telling you it’s on you to save the whole world? And on top of that you are just a 14-year-old who barely had any time or opportunity to live for yourself. Sure, she`s robbed of that agency and that choice by both Joel and the Fireflies, but was she even supposed to have that agency in the first place? She`s a kid, the responsibility should fall on her parents!

Well, yeah, there are no parents, Ellie is an orphan who grew up in the system. The first parent figure she`s met that seems to care was Marlene and it quickly turned out she cared mostly because of her bitemark and everything that entailed, it had nothing to do with Ellie. But Joel was different, he was the first adult to care for her, to laugh at her jokes, to treat her like a kid and nothing more than a kid. Making sure she`s fed, warm and safe, but also really paying attention to her, finding comics for her, teaching her important life skills, listening to her and doing his best to preserve whatever innocence she had left. And later on the first parent figure to really love her.

I think Ellie`s motivations for wanting to be the cure come mostly from guilt. Not only the initial survivors guilt from the time she got bit, but also from everything she had to do to survive their journey. But I believe there is one more thing and it`s love. Of course she wants to save the world and all the people, but most of all she wants to save the world for Joel. Ellie really wants to save Joel back, after everything he’s done for her. I think it goes down to the fact that she loves as fiercely as he does. She wantes to lay her own life down, because she couldn’t imagine any other way to show that she loves and cares. Saving the world was about dying, not living. It`s understandable that under such conditions she feels she`s failed and all the guilt is back with vengeance.

The thing is she`s actually succeeded. Well, the world is probably doomed, but that was no fault of Ellie, but she managed to save Joel, because there is more than one way to save someone and she saved his soul, his humanity, his personhood. I wish she understood that, I wish it was something that was explored in the II part of the game.  The fact that “saving the world” can mean different things. Sometimes it`s giving a kid a future and sometimes it`s giving an old man a second chance at love and parenting. And that your great purpose in life can be being a goofy child, it can be all about you.

It`s yet another thing I was able to understand thanks to @ellieswlliams and she wrote it better than I could, so I`ll redirect you to her post:

I think it`s beautiful and I wish so much the second game was about that, about Ellie learning that living for a cause is not worse than dying for it. And that a cause can be your life, however small and insignificant. It can be all about living, learning, exploring, loving. We spend so much time in the second game violently killing, but so little time actually living. Why can’t Ellie`s immunity be just for her?

Lastly, is the world willing to sacrifice a child for its own survival even worth saving? Who are they even saving this world for? There is a brilliant story by Ursula K. Le Guin “The Ones Who Walk Away from Omelas” (I`m going to spoil the whole thing, so please skip this part or better yet just read it, it`s short and fantastic!). It’s a story about the utopian city of Omelas, place of endless happiness. The only catch is all that happiness is only possible because somewhere underneath the city there is a child hidden away and forced to live in perpetual suffering for the good of Omelas. Once citizens are old enough the secret is revealed to them and most of them, even though initially shocked and appalled, accept it, but there are also those who can`t. Marlene sees the injustice of Ellie`s sacrifice and she accepts it as a necessary evil, Joel on the other hand walks away carrying the child in his arms. The world will have to manage on its own.

Le Guin story ends with: "The place they go towards is a place even less imaginable to most of us than the city of happiness. I cannot describe it at all. It is possible it does not exist. But they seem to know where they are going, the ones who walk away from Omelas."

Thank you @ellieswlliams for rocking that boat and for teaching me a very important lesson!

[the-awful-falafel]

Love reading your analyses on Rick and Morty, but I have very little context as I've never watched the show before. I've been very busy since it aired back in 2013 trying to get rid of a terrible cockroach infestation. I'm wondering what your opinion on Prime Rick is? In relevance to him also being Morty's grandpa.

I feel like I have no opinion on Rick Prime at this point, honestly.

He's... there. He exists as a distant antagonist we can root for our Rick to hunt down to complete his revenge quest, his proverbial white whale that he's pinned all his trauma resolution on. This plot thread does have the potential to be lowkey hilarious if it's revealed Prime and C-137 were friends or dating or whatever (which, as an aside, would be such an asshole move on our Rick's part) but, just based on what we have canonically, I've got nothing.

Even the potentially interesting aspect of Rick Prime being our Morty's "real" grandfather feels like a nothing detail to me, considering our Morty has never met or known him at all so there's literally no connection whatsoever. Our Morty's already been so fucked up by experiences with our Rick that trying to introduce a newer, worse Rick into his history almost feels like a distraction, in an annoying and tone-deaf "hey, cheer up, it could be worse! just appreciate the family you have :)))" sort of way.

It's also that I don't think Rick Prime is introducing a particularly novel paradigm shift or new dynamic to the story? Compared to Evil Morty, who presented a complete inversion and deconstruction of the R&M relationship just by existing, Rick Prime is basically just "our Rick, but worse, more OP, and ACTUALLY gives no shits". My most cynical interpretation is that Rick Prime mainly exists to make Rick C-137 look better in comparison by externalizing his character flaws + self-loathing conflict, plus to exonerate him of past transgressions by making Prime the real Rick behind the abandonment of Beth / failing marriage with Diane, but I've been feeling that since the full tragic backstory was revealed, anyway, so I digress.

In general I just think Rick Prime is sort of... boring, and needs fleshing out. I don't get the sense that he's plotting anything major, I just get the impression he's a petty dick who spent half his life fucking with Rick C-137 (almost analogous to our Rick fucking with the devil in that one season 1 episode) and that the threat he poses is exclusively tied to their cat-and-mouse game, while Morty is just an accessory dragged into it with no personal investment and would be much better off ignoring the conflict entirely. Sorry if my thoughts are a bit incoherent, lol.

[phoenixkaptain]

Worst part of modernity is the idea that I should want my beloved chaotic characters to stop winning.

No!! >:( I want Bugs Bunny to win!!! I want Puck to be utterly unflappable and a dick who only answers to one (1) person!!! I want Hermes to be a massive asshole who steals people’s cattle just because it’s said to be impossible!!!

I don’t want chaos incarnate characters to start being “more relatable” or whatever! They already are relatable! They’re relatable in to our most base parts, the parts of us that some of us wish didn’t exist! Watching Bugs and Puck fuck around with people appeals to that part within us that impulsively wants to push people when they’re standing somewhere they shouldn’t. Hermes is a messenger god, yes, but he is as far from serious as it is possible to be and is actually a great representation of how we should view the Greek Gods, as they were presented, just in general (since they got angry at the slightest provocation and were petty and yet found the most joy in fucking with each other because, at their core, every single Greek God was just a toddler).

Bugs is the type of character who I don’t want to see face punishment. He was written in a way that his fucking with people was charming because, for the most part, these people wronged him in some way. Bugs was less an asshole and more a representation of the idea of Karma, “what goes around comes around,” the idea that your bad deeds will come back to bite you. Bugs is the very embodiment of karma, and I don’t want to see him fail or face consequence or punishment because that defeats the whole purpose, he’s a chaotic, unstoppable force.

Puck is just… a fairy. He’s a fae. He’s supposed to be kind of an asshole, because the fae in English, Irish, Scottish, etc mythology were just kind of assholes. Puck is a dick who fucks up fucking with people, yes, but my enjoyment is found in the fact that the only person who can punish him is the Fairy King. It’s immensely funny to me. I don’t want Puck to be punished by anyone else, I just want him to pout and sulk and be forced to apologize and solve problems because the Fairy King is tired of his bullshit, I love it.

Hermes is generally represented pretty fairly in modern media as the type of person who pulls pranks and ties people’s shoelaces together, but modern media seems to believe I want to watch the consequences of his actions. I do not. Hermes appears with a letter, ties your shoelaces together, and vanishes. He’s too fast to catch. He’s harder to catch than a fish coated in soap and butter. He’s harder to catch than Luke Skywalker-

Basically, my enjoyment of chaotic characters is not based in seeing them be punished for their transgressions. Even if it was, I would like it to be one character solely who holds the leash, because it adds the comedic effect of having the Fairy King realize that the guy he sent to mess with the Fairy Queen perhaps went too far, which means that everything is Puck’s fault, not the Fairy King’s, would the Fairy King do that? Does he seem the type? (Yes) Puck is an exception, not a rule, and it’s because he is just a conduit through which the chaos energy of the Fairy King operates, which is immensely funny because, honestly, the only character who wins in a Midsummer Night’s Dream is the Fairy King, who is absolutely the cause of every single problem and everything that went astray went that way directly because of him, but he never gets punished and, in fact, would like to say that everything is Puck’s fault.

Which is, I would say, the funniest part of the entire story.

Which is, I say, the exact behaviour I want to see in chaotic characters. I don’t want them to be punished. I want them to somehow succeed despite everything and I want them to have the last laugh. This only really applies to the truly Chaotic Neutral characters, who would fuck with someone for the sin of leaving gum on the underside of a table. But it applies, and I don’t wish to see these characters change. I don’t think the idea of a force of chaos being chaotic is archaic or outdated and I don’t think these characters need to be “updated” for a modern audience, and I honestly despise the way people try to take recognizable characters, drain them of the traits that made them so fun in the first place, but try to milk us for all we own over them anyway because we foolish mortals hold the slender hope that, if we support the character, maybe one day they’ll act the way they should.

Updating characters for the modern era is not a bad idea or an impossible one. The Addams Family practically begs to be updated for a modern audience, just because it represented the opposite of a perfect nuclear household, despite outwardly appearing to be perfectly in line with the archaic and sexist standards of the time, and it shows that the people who are having the most fun are the ones who don’t listen to what they’re “supposed” to do, but instead listen to what they would like to do and are happier because of it.

But it’s a case-by-case basis and some characters and their actions are timeless. Stop trying to change the way these characters act. You can make new interpretations without removing the heart, you can create stories without changing the moral of the characters, and I would even go so far as to say you should put these characters in modern media, but I beg and plead for you to not destroy them.

[idylls-of-the-divine-romance]

Honestly, the solution is to just use the correct word: heterodoxy. Not everything is heresy, for literal God's sake.

Heresy has to do with theology, heterodoxy with philosophy.

Theology, as called theosophy, is thought about God and the world based on reason, Scripture, and mystical insight. This is what separates Christianity from Jainism. Two separate religions. We literally worship different gods.

Heresy is a religious theology and/or doctrine destructive of the truth of God and his mission to the world. This is the difference between Christianity and Mormonism/Gnosticism/Adoptionism etc. Also, while I'm at it, saying something like "God hates [insert group or person]" is heresy. I love that bishop (i think) that said it's blasphemous, but he's wrong. Believing that God hates any person is not blasphemous, it is heretical for any Christian (this does not apply to Jews or Muslims; love yall, go in peace).

Doctrine is a third thing: the authoritative body of teachings, and principles accepted by a body of believers. Catholics and Protestants, for example, have different doctrines but the same theology. Same God. Same religion. So NO catholics/protestants, protestants/catholics are not heretics. You worship the same God. Deal with it.

Then you have

Philosophy is the general beliefs, concepts, attitudes, opinions, intellectual methods, and leadership of a school of thought. This is like Arminianism vs Calvinism. Sadly, no Calvinism is not heresy. They technically have the same theology as other Christians, their philosophy is just really sucky (no offense).

Heterodoxy is religious philosophy that differs from prevailing opinions and beliefs but is distinctly not heretical. So for example this would be something like Universalism or believing in Conditional Immortality (as opposed to natural immortality).

Then on the lower side of the spectrum you have something like

Tradition is the information, beliefs, and customs of a group handed down from one generation to the next. So like Anglican vs Methodist. Similar philosophy, different traditions (which is why i don't yet know which i prefer).

Preference: personal liking or interest. I have a preference against the pastor at my church because i can't stand his preaching (pray for me yall T-T)

For some final words people use wrong:

Sin: to hate or be indifferent. Let me explain: Sin comes from a word meaning "to miss the mark" or iow, to fail at a purpose. Humans were made in the image of God, God is Love, humans are made in the image of love. It is the purpose of the human to love and to create life and beauty and goodness (in whatever way God calls you to. Parenting, science, art, activism, medecine, poetry, architecture, wtv). Thus, if to sin is to fail at the purpose and the purpose of the human is to love, to sin is to fail at loving - hatred and/or indifference. This is also why homosexuality is not a sin. But if you hate gay/trans/etc people, you are in sin.

Transgression: to betray or rebell. You steal from some rando, that's sin. You steal from your brother, that's transgression. Also, for the divorce/abuse issue: transgression is listed as a reason for divorce. This means adultery, obviously. To commit adultery is to betray the person you're supposed to love. It also includes abuse. To abuse your beloved, child, friend, etc is an act of transgression against them and God.

Iniquity: wickedness, crookedness. God made something one way, you perverted it into another way. I don't feel like i need to explain this one; it's pretty on the nose. One way this is used a lot tho, is the oppression of the weak. God says we are to love the poor and the immigrant and the widow and the orphan. To oppress those groups is to pervert God's law, AND it is to make his name less holy because he attached his name to us. This is why sin, transgression, and iniquity are big deals because they chase people away from God and turn God into this monster. See: the crusades and the inquisition and the transatlantic slave trade and the war on gay people and -

Anyway. I am well aware that words don't mean things, but rather people mean things by words. But also words freaking mean things!!!

sometimes…. religious theology that’s “““heresy”““….. is better