I love libraries.
I'm browsing the WWI shelves (as you do) and notice a very old book about the war. I glance at the first pages that talk about how one day the war will be over and we'll look at this place and not see any signs of the battlefield.
Then it hits me. And I check the publishing date.
This book was printed before the war's end. Not written. Printed. The physical object was created in 1918, while the war in question was raging and the end was as yet uncertain.
Now I'm standing on the other side of the apocalypse, with this physical link to that era in my hands. I'm living proof that the war did end and life did go on and we can all look at the end of the world as a long-ago memory.
Reading old books is cool enough, connecting our minds and hearts through the ideas of people who lived long ago, but there's something extra profound about holding a copy of the book that comes from the time that it was written. It's a physical link between the past and the present connecting me to those long-ago people. A piece of the past come into the future that gives me the chance to almost take the hand of some long-ago reader, to hold something they could have held, connecting not just mentally but physically to their era, a moment of connection across more than a century.
Excuse me while I go weep.
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rich yandere x con artist/scammer reader (gender neutral)
cw: blackmailing, unhealthy relationship (on both sides, lol), implied stalking, etc.
you, a young, attractive person struggling with finances, have a clever way of getting by.
it was simple- you flirt and attract rich, lonely people. the dumber the better.
once you get your hooks into them, you move into their place as their significant other (letting you live in luxury apartments and mansions rent-free.) you ask for expensive gifts. you “borrow” small items from his house that you can sell, like watches or rings.
and, if they have not caught on to you at that point- you do your final trick- you cry and say you desperately need a lot of money, for one reason or the other. you say you need it for college tuition, or you say that your mother desperately needs surgery.
and then, once you get the money you’re looking for- you find one way or another to disappear from their life. make them think that you run off with someone else so they won’t want you back. you use a new fake name, each time- so they wouldn’t even know where to look for you even if they did.
you set your eyes on a new target and you initially think that he’ll be an easy con. even more so than usual. you set your sights on rich yandere, a nepo baby heir to the fortune of a successful company.
he’s very sheltered, very inexperienced. it seems that he’s never dated anyone before you. it's no surprise, then, that he falls for each of your lies so easily without any questions.
all that you have to do in return is kiss him, tell him you love him, and let him hold you. very simple for someone who’s used to that sort of thing and more with people you barely know.
he moves in with you very quickly- letting you live with him in a big, beautiful mansion far faster than even you expected.
when you try tell him your planned out sob story, he just shushes you, kisses you sweetly, and gives you whatever you want when you ask. there’s no need to stress, baby, he’s there for you.
after a while you start getting cocky, forgetting to apply your typical level of caution. you ask for far more money than usual with your scheme. and far more often.
surprisingly, rich yandere never seems to care at all. and never seems to notice when your stories don’t add up together.
actually, now that you think about it, he never even asked how you were doing in college even after he gave you all that money for “tuition” . . .
after a while, you start to think . . . it’s only a matter of time before he catches on, right? and then, you start to subtly drop hints, to make your ‘mysterious’ disappearance in his life make sense. you start to mention a man you know and seeming just a little too interested in him.
you quickly see a new side to him. he stops you in your tracks one day and grabs you by the shoulders using your real name. “does he treat you as well as i do (reader)?” he asks. “remember how much money i gave you? he could never do that for you.”
frightened at being caught in your lies, you calm him down in the meanwhile and plan to escape the house at night to make your disappearance.
to your surprise, however, you notice that he's installed new security cameras right outside your shared room some time ago . . . almost like he was expecting this exact turn of events.
and if you try to escape again, well . . . he's quick to remind you. "no one else would like it if they heard what you did to me. if i tell them what you did, things could be very bad for you, baby, considering how much money you took . . .”
but, of course . . . if you don't leave him, nobody else has to know. so you won't leave him, right?
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I’ve often wondered if Supernatural, especially the more bro-y early years, doesn’t constitute kind of a masculine equivalent to those old-school bodice-ripper novels, where the author obviously wasn’t able to and/or interested in deconstructing the virgin/whore stuff, but also wanted there to be lots of sexy bits. So you’d have these elaborate rape-adjacent fantasy set-pieces that were like, okay, Our Heroine and obviously You, Dear Reader are very good girls, but just like...IF you had no choice but to have rough sex with a pirate king...well, hypothetically, that would be...what? How would that go? Kind of exciting, maybe? Kind of like being given access to a part of you that you can’t fully admit you’d like to access?
Supernatural was very obviously always (at least in part) about the traumas of masculinity, its violence, its ruptured relationships, fathers who couldn’t take good care of their sons, sons who couldn’t live up to their fathers, brothers who would die for each other but would die before they’d say that out loud, the thrill of power and freedom and also the horror of having no one to turn to for help. And there was so much of that bodily vulnerability -- having your body invaded and violated, being driven to your knees, being forced to the point of blood and tears, it always seemed to me like there was a little edge of that same kind of fascination -- not literally about sex, but erotic in how tangled up it was with the idea of submission.
Our Heroes and obviously You, Dear Viewer are very strong men, but just like...IF you had no choice but to be exposed and dominated by powers stronger than you...hypothetically, that would be...what? How would that go? Kind of cathartic, maybe? Kind of like being free of something you can’t fully admit is a burden?
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