#your understanding of the world is not necessarily hard fact

[uncle-fruity]

I am begging everyone to learn how to shut the fuck up about things you don't understand.

[uncanny-tranny]

Hi! So i apologize preemptively if this seems like a silly or even nonsensical question, but im having a hard time getting into politics and more specifically finding more info regarding Anarchy.

It's been a subject I've been interested in for a while but never really branched out and looked further into bc everwhere I've looked, the info was always mushed into word vomit or it was someone giving their opinion regarding it.

Where could i learn more about it as a whole?

I haven't read anything from this site in a while, but I read a few essays from the Anarchist Library a while back. A few of those essays might be too opinionated, but that's kind of... the point of everything, if I'm honest (in addition to facts and statistics and whatnot). I'll recommend this site specifically because it is a bit more accessible for getting essays and also because you might find more specifics - I've read a few pieces years back on queer and trans anarchy, and found it helpful. Of course, some sources will be better than others, so exercise healthy questioning and interrogate whatever you do read.

Note that the hyperlink will take you to the front page of the Anarchist Library's website.

[itsswritten]

feels like home

Pairing: Azriel x fem reader

Word Count: 4.1K

Summary: The start of fairy readers journey and how she ended up in the Night Court. Essentially the start of the love story we all now love <3

Wings Universe - More from this world.

Autumn

Now you weren’t the arrogant kind — Fairies were always known to be humble. It’s why for the most part, your kind kept to your meadows, didn’t construct social hierarchy like Fae, and kept those mesmerising wings hidden.

However you were proud of your skills as a fairy. You were dutiful, talented, and worked incredibly hard. The youngest fairy to ever be enrolled on the fairy council. So the fact you were failing now, was quite a humbling awakening.

You blinked again, Elodie’s panicked voice blurring into the autumn breeze.

Your first stop on your travels was the Autumn Court. Visiting your cousin, who had offered refuge after your reluctant departure from Spring. Although you missed your home terribly, you were really trying to embrace this opportunity— the chance to explore a new court, spend quality time with family, and further your studies on the other seasons. Turning the dire situation you had to abandon into something positive.

However things were not going how you had expected. Apparently Autumn didn’t agree with you as well as Spring always had. 

“Y/N, there are snowdrops…in Autumn,” Elodie's concerned tone broke through. Your gaze hadn’t left the scene in front of you. Dewy snowdrops glistening under the cool autumn sun. 

You swallowed, your throat dry. “I’m aware.”

The snowdrops were your flowers. Beautiful but wrong. Your magic had manifested a spring flower in an Autumn court. Something that should never happen. 

It had been two months. Two months of no problems, and although the autumn shades didn’t necessarily suit you and the breeze didn’t sing as sweet as home, you had managed to settle in. 

You learnt how to get by. However the mess in front of you told you otherwise.

“What are you going to do?” Elodie pressed, her nervousness emitting beside you. You never got things wrong, you were always the one everyone else relied on– Mistakes were a rarity for you.

“Trying to figure that out,” your hands fisted the fabric of your dress at your sides. Your mind whirring as you tried to figure out a plan. The intricacies of your ability had always come so naturally to you in Spring, but grappling with a new season left you fumbling for a solution. 

“What. Are. Those?!” Your cousin's voice hitched in a tight tone, her voice hushing towards the end so as to not draw attention. She stalked over, her autumn-hued dress billowing behind her, hands were flailing towards you as she stormed in your direction.

With a spin you turned to her, stepping in front of the patch of snowdrops that had sprouted— as if she hadn’t already seen the little blooms that seemed to sway in the wind in mockery.

“I don’t understand…you were doing so well. I asked you to help bring the harvest along. You know, pumpkins, squash, apples. Not flowers!” Your cousin’s brows were drawn in tight, confusion and dismay in her tone. You could practically see her mind reeling as she took in the scene before her.

Instinctively your hands came up towards her, creating space, trying to calm the situation.

“I know. It’s just a small hiccup, I can reverse it. It’s fine,” you reassured quickly, not even allowing yourself to fester in the worry. 

You were the youngest fairy on the council you reminded yourself— a mentor to many of your friends and colleagues. This would not phase you.

Rolling your shoulders back, you looked at the taunting flowers straight on. Flexing your fingers as a drop of magic glowing like a little firefly, sunk slowly from your fingertips to the ground. Seeping into the deep earth that was covered in a blanket of burnt coloured leaves. 

A beat passed as the three of you held your breath. The forest seemed to hold it’s breath too, it’s mild wind coming to a silence.

Then, one of the buds quivered slightly, vibrating before it began to shrink and swirl back into the ground it had birthed from. A heavy sigh left your lips, shoulders dropping as Elodie gave you a slight smile. Chewing the inside of your cheek you gave her a knowing wink.

But that moment of relief quickly dissipated. Before your eyes more and more flowers began to spring before you. As though your magic had the opposite effect you had intended. 

Relishing in your victory too early served you your humiliation. Your cheeks turning hot as you watched the disaster unfold in front of you. It was rare for you to fluster, but you could feel the simmering of your pride burn deep within your gut at the sight of your mistake. Eyes wide as the white petals spread further beneath your feet.

This had never happened before.

Your fingers twitched beside your sides. Magic at your fingertips itching to resolve the mess, but your confidence had been knocked. You didn’t fully trust yourself or your ability, and that was a hard acknowledgment to make.

“Okay, you need to leave now.” With a light push, your cousin ushered you away from the disaster you had created.

“What? Wait! Just give me a moment to think. To fix this” You pressed back, your ego not allowing you to submit to this defeat.

“I don’t have time y/n. That Vanserra princling’s on his way, and if he’s anything like his father he will have your head. So leave. I will fix this."

Your expression must have spoken a thousand words, words of vulnerability and insecurity, because your cousin's expression softened for a moment. Bringing you to a quick embrace. 

“Your time in Autumn is up. Mistakes happen, and that’s okay. But it’s time to go.”

“But—“

She cut you off. “No but’s. You’ve both done amazing, but let’s not pretend. This isn’t the place for you, don’t think I hadn’t noticed.” Her expression was warm and understanding, as welcoming as the shades of fall. But despite how welcoming this season had been, it didn’t feel like home. 

“Go explore the land, go find somewhere that feels right y/n,” 

“What if…—” 

What if nowhere felt like home? What if you didn’t fit in anywhere else?

Elodie grabbed your hand with a tug then, someone had winnowed to the outskirts of the field. A figure with fiery hair and a tempered presence.

There was no time for what if’s. So you left. Left your cousin to face the flame, and left to find a new home…if that place even existed.

Winter

“Why are the bears awake?!” There was a scream across the forest that ran through the barren trees. You recognised the tone, one of your Winter mentors no doubt. The shriek so sharp that any remaining creature that slept must have surely been awoken.

“Oh no..” Elodie almost cried, her feet slipping in the snow beside you. You could almost hear her heart pounding in sync with yours.

The bear—the bear you had accidentally woken—groaned and yawned, its massive paws stirring the snow as it pawed at the air, confused and sluggish. Its hibernation had been broken, and it was far too early for it to be awake.

You had been at the Winter Court for only a short time, and already, things were falling apart. The sharp, biting cold of the court was one thing, but the coldness of its people? That had been harder to handle. Their bluntness, their stoic ways, had left you feeling like you were constantly on the edge of doing something wrong. And now… you had.

It seems Autumn was not the only season that didn’t agree with you. 

You blinked back your own tears, swallowing hard as you almost lost your own footing.

“Elodie, help me,” you commanded, snapping into action as you pushed against the bear’s thick fur, trying to guide it back to its den. The beast groaned again, but refused to budge, blinking its sleepy eyes at you.

The entirety of your weight was pushing against the giant bear that groaned against you, your heels digging in deep to act as an anchor in the cold white snow.

No matter how hard you tried, against your advice, the bear wanted to wake. 

“Go back to sleeeeeepp little beearrrr- hicc- pretty pleaseeee” Elodie sang desperately, her voice wobbling with panic.

“Elodie that is not the lullaby,” you hissed, your own frustration bubbling up.

“I know, I’m panicking. I’ve forgotten it, y/n. What is it?” She replied beside you, face squashed against the bear’s fur as she tried with all her might to push the bear back to its bed.

You blinked. You couldn’t remember the song either. 

You pressed harder, trying to remember the words yourself. Your breath was coming in ragged puffs, visible in the freezing air. Your wings, though hidden by magic, felt stiff from the cold, and your fingers ached from pushing against the giant furry animal.

By some stroke of luck after several attempts from Elodie to lull the bear back to sleep, the words of the forest lullaby found your tongue. Your magic flowed with the song, wrapping around the bear in a gentle embrace, lulling it back to sleep. Slowly, so slowly, it began to plod back toward its cave, its massive body sinking into it’s cosy bed deep within the cave.

“We did it,” Elodie breathed, her face as flushed and exhausted as you both slumped into the cold snow beneath you. The bears snoring filling the frosty air. “Maybe we got away with–” before Elodie could even finish her sentence, a shadow cast across you under the winter sun.

Your winter mentor, whose expression was as harsh as the court’s wind. Her cold, judging eyes swept over the scene, her lips pressed into a thin line as her long slender finger pointed towards the border.

Summer

It was everywhere.

Sand that is.

There was sand in your clothes, shoes, hair and even your pretty wings you always kept hidden— but that didn’t matter because that sticky Summer Court breeze would somehow ensure you were absolutely covered in it.

Blinking away yet again another gust of sand in your eye, you sat slouched under the shade of a canopy. 

You were on shell duty today, meaning you had been out in that blistering sun all day. You’d always enjoyed the heat you thought, but perhaps now you realised you enjoyed it in much smaller doses. 

That beacon in the sky felt especially relentless today. Your skin was burning to the touch, head heavy, dry throat and eyes stinging.

With a huff you watched as Elodie came and slumped down beside you. She went to nudge you gently with her shoulder, but you both gagged as your skin stuck and peeled away from one another with sweat. 

“I heard the Day court borders are open…” she muttered, glancing towards you, anticipating your reaction.

You didn’t like giving up. Call it Spring stubbornness, but it wasn’t in your nature.

After a moment you murmured back, “Is there sand in Day?”. You swallowed hard, eyes set ahead on the expansive blue ocean before you, the line where the water met the sky blurring in a haze.

“Not nearly as much as Summer,” Elodie replied in a beat.

You didn’t like giving up. But clearly Summer didn’t agree with you either.

“Let’s go.”

Day

Perhaps it was your series of bad luck that had now left you with an attitude of indifference but as you crouched behind the freshly preened hedge you wondered how quickly your impeccable reputation had crumbled on your travels.

You were now about to commit a crime.

Perhaps crime was a bit dramatic. But trespassing was still trespassing. Trespassing on the High Lords home too.

You had been here over a month now. The Day Court wasn’t unpleasant—far from it. The libraries were vast, the streets safe, and the people, though indulgent, were kind. Yet something within you stirred restlessly, a quiet unease that had only grown with time. You had given it weeks, trying to settle in, hoping the feeling of displacement would fade. But it hadn’t. Every corner of this sunlit paradise felt like it belonged to someone else.

It didn’t feel like home.

So your papers were arranged. Tomorrow, you'd travel to Dawn, hoping to find something there that felt more like yours.

But before you left, there was one thing you had to see. One thing that had tugged at your curiosity since the moment you'd arrived: the Pegasuses. Said to be the pride of the Day Court, magnificent creatures kept under Helion’s personal protection, far from the eyes of the public.

That was why you were here now, slipping through the shadows of Helion’s estate, your heart racing in your chest. The Pegasuses weren’t just for show, or figments of stories; they were alive, breathing, and you wanted—no, needed—to see them yourself. Call it that fairy instinct, but you weren’t leaving till you saw them with your own eyes.

Your path led you through twisting gardens, till you found yourself at the heart of Helion’s estate. You crouched quietly behind the foliage, praying to the mother you’d catch a glimpse of what you’d been searching for.

Your breath caught in your throat. 

There they were. 

An entire herd of them, grazing peacefully. The sunlight gleaming on their coats. A shimmering silver that resembled the glow of your own wings. The sight of them took your breath away. They were even more magnificent than you’d imagined.

So magnificent that just looking wasn’t enough.

With a swift quietness and feather light steps you moved from your hiding place towards the herd. 

If Elodie could see you now, you’d be sure to be scolded. You’d left her with the cute librarian in the city, told her to enjoy her last day. That you still had papers to sort– she didn’t need to be an accomplice in what you were committing. She didn’t need to know.

The Pegasuses flicked their ears, one of them lifting their head to look at you. You froze for a moment, the hairs on your arms rising, anticipating their reaction but as it blew a breath there was an ease that settled over you.

They didn’t shy away, as if they’d always known you were there. As if they had been waiting for you to pluck up the courage to meet them.

Marvellous creatures.

One of them stepped towards you, meeting your hand as it grazed across the plain on its face. Your gaze ran down its back to its wings that stretched out and then flanked back in.

“Well aren’t you beautiful..” You sighed with a smile, your fingers scratching the sweet spot behind its ear, its hoof tapping against the earth as if in agreement.

You’re not sure how time had passed, but it was distant laughter that blew in on a breeze that reminded you just how precarious your situation was.

“Come Rhys, come see my pride and joy…” A voice chimed across the garden.

You didn’t need to stick around to guess whose voice that belonged to, so with a gentle kiss against the velvety nose of the Pegasus you bid your farewell. Quick as a sprite, you slipped back into the shadows.

Just as you reached the edge of the estate, you glanced back over your shoulder. Offering a sweet smile to the Pegasuses you had met, hoping that despite Day not feeling like home your paths would cross with the magnificent creatures again.

It was Azriel who stood by the golden archway in the garden. Watching as Helion presented the treasures he boasted so often about– the beautiful Pegasuses that were now grazing in front of them.

“I would like one..for Feyre,” Azriel heard Rhys try to negotiate with Helion, their voices blending over the soft breeze and rustles from the animals. That he hadn’t even noticed his gaze had fallen elsewhere, all the way to the border of the estate he noticed a rustle in the leaves, a flicker of light perhaps, but there was a faintest scent of something on the wind—a hint of honey and peonies. 

He paused, tilting his head as if attuned to something that beckoned him, though he couldn’t quite place it, but maybe with time he would.

Dawn

Imbuing the sky sounded easy. Fun even– But as you glanced up at the Dawn sky that resembled something more like dusk you swallowed hard. 

The golden hues of the Dawn Court greeted you with a warmth that felt almost too soft. Here, everything shimmered with the glow of early morning—pastel skies, the gentle rustling of trees in the breeze, and the constant hum of quiet tranquillity. It should have felt peaceful. It should have felt right.

But instead, it felt fragile. Like a dream you couldn’t quite hold onto.

You had tried. When you first arrived, you thought maybe this would be the place. The Dawn Court was steeped in a quiet sort of magic—delicate, but powerful. It suited you in theory: a blend of intellect and beauty, the balance of light and creation. You had forced yourself to adapt, to fit into the patterns they laid before you, hoping this time, this Court, would finally feel like home.

But when tasked with the simple task of imbuing the sky, it had stirred something deeper, something darker, and the sky had responded.

You opened your eyes, gasping in horror as you watched the colours bleed across the horizon—not the pale blush of dawn, but the rich, burning tones of dusk. Deep oranges, purples, and indigos streaked across the sky like a wildfire, swallowing the soft morning light with every passing second.

The magic swirled around you like a storm, the sky thick with colour, draping over your skin like an ink-stained canvas. You tried to stop it, to pull it back, but it wouldn’t listen. The darker hues clung to you, soaking into your skin, wrapping around you like tendrils of shadow. 

From dawn to dusk and then to twilight.. 

It was beautiful in a way—if only it wasn’t so terribly wrong.

“Don’t.” You bit out through gritted teeth, stopping Elodie from saying anything. The deep purple hue of sky covered you. The shimmer iridescent resembled something of a paint, but it was almost too beautiful to even be compared to that.

You didn’t even wait for your Dawn mentors to scold you. Simply went to pack your things and leave. 

Lip quivering at another failed court, another failed attempt at finding home.

Night

The Night Court was the only place left. The last court you hadn’t yet tried, the last hope you had of finding where you truly belonged.

Which at this point you felt as though living amongst the thorns of Spring was a better option. You should never have left. Perhaps this was your punishment for abandoning your court, despite having no other option.

Your fingers tried to brush away the sky that was still infused to your skin, you looked ridiculous. As if you’d painted yourself in the night court's colours out of admiration. You were grateful the midnight hues concealed how embarrassed you looked.

The Night Court was a stark contrast to the sunlit lands you had just fled. Shadows danced among the trees, and a cool breeze whispered amongst the glistening stars.

It truly was beautiful.

But there was a looming weight with that realisation. Every court you'd experienced was beautiful– in its own unique way. So why would Night be any different? Why should you believe this would be the court where you truly belonged?

“Papers please,” A soft voice broke through, a female was reading through your documentation. Dorned in a dark robe, Illyarin soldiers flanking her sides.

She quirked a brow as she took in your appearance.

“It’s just sky…” Elodie butted in as if it was a normal occurrence– normal for one to be covered in the celestial shimmers of the sky. You swore you heard the High Fae mutter something under her breath, a small bite about meadow fairies that had the males beside her snicker. However after a quick assessment, she waved you both through. 

You had assumed this admission would feel like every other court, plain, dull, but the moment your feet stepped across the border there was a simmering in your chest. It was as if the Night Court itself was welcoming you, the ancient forest shifting its branches above to clear a path for the stars to twinkle down upon you. The gentle breeze carried the distant melodies of the city, wrapping around you like a soft embrace.

You dared to speak of what you were feeling, but one quick glance at your friend and you could see she felt it too. A twinkle sparkled in her eyes as she shared a smile with you, a silent exchange that spoke of hope and dreams. For the first time in what felt like ages, laughter bubbled between you, light and carefree. You clasped each other’s hands, giggling at the energy and magic you were feeling.

There was something about this place, something that felt so familiar–

So enamoured by your senses you hadn’t even been paying attention when you bumped into something solid.

“Oh! I’m so sorry!” you sputtered quickly, a breathless laugh escaping your lips before Elodie gasped, pulling you back into the crowd of newcomers.

“You just bumped into an Illyrian!” she whispered urgently, her wide eyes darting over her shoulder.

Your gaze followed, landing on the broad backs of two towering Illyrian males. One had long, dark hair, loosely tied back, his wings flexing slightly in the night breeze. The other, taller with shadows whispering around him, his presence somehow more commanding– more intriguing. Your eyes lingered on him the longest, an odd tug pulling at your chest.

“Oops…” you shrugged, voice bright with laughter as Elodie tugged you further into the crowd, your chuckles mingling with the hum of the night.

You hadn’t felt this carefree in so long, hadn’t felt this light. As the lights of Velaris approached and the noise of music filled your ears you had a feeling that perhaps this was all going to work out okay.

That perhaps you had found somewhere you belonged after all.

𓇢𓆸

Azriel felt the brush of something against his side and turned slightly, pulling him from his conversation with cassian. They had both been sent to do border control, and had watched an array of individuals enter the court. It was his job as Spymaster after all, whether it be from the shadows or to stand in example at the borders he would vet the newcomers.

The night had been slow, no disturbances, no conflicts– uneventful. Just how he liked it. Only people seeking a fresh start had crossed into Night. He took pride in knowing so many chose his home for that new beginning. He was listening to Cassian as he gushed something about Nesta, when a light nudge to his side had pulled him from conversation.

They stood in the centre of the track that ran from the forest to the city, the two males, a stoic divide, as people flowed around them like a river parting. Except one– you. 

You hadn’t moved around him.

Lightly, as though your thoughts had been tangled with the stars above, you had brushed against Azriel. His shadows hadn’t even warned him of your approach, and for a brief second, his breath caught at the softness of your touch. He turned, drawn to the quiet apology that lingered in the air, following the sound with his eyes.

And there you were.

You shimmered, wrapped in twilight, your skin glistening in the soft hues of the night sky as though the heavens themselves had adorned you. It was hard to distinguish where the night ended and you began, your form almost blending with the dark expanse around you.

But before he could speak, before he could even process what he was feeling, you disappeared into the crowd. A fleeting figure, gone in an instant, leaving him staring after you.

Azriel’s shadows hummed beside him, them too grappling with a need to know more.

He hadn’t caught your name, hadn’t had the chance to see your face clearly, but something about you had gripped him, held him in place. The faint scent of honey and peonies lingered in the air where you'd passed, stirring something deep within him.

Instead of words or answers, Azriel was left with a feeling—a pull. One he couldn't quite explain, but one he hoped to find an answer for.

a/n: Thank you for the wait...but here is the beginning of our favourite fairy and Azriel. I actually started writing this when I was visiting @writingcroissant in Edinburgh and we were sat in a little cafe till 10pm writing our little fics! It was so fun <3 (I'm still awaiting Crush...no pressure ;) ) I'm so glad it's finally finished. It was so hard to keep the stories this short, I feel like I could have easily explored more of fairy's travels in the courts (It wasn't all bad experiences I promise) lots of good memories too, so perhaps I will explore another time. But I hope you enjoyed the little connections to Azriel even though they still don't know each other yet tee hee

This is also dedicated to @searchingforbucky I'm pretty sure you said you were excited to read this/I said I would write something for you (If i have got it wrong, correct me) so here you are my lovely! Thank you for constant support.

Sorry to everyone that there isn't much Azriel and romance in this, Wings really has become a world of it's own at this point but I hope you enjoy it nonetheless!

Please please please let me know what you want from these two next <3 - lottie xxx

Forever tags: @sleepylunarwolf @daily-dose-of-sass @amberlynn98 @marscardigan @illyrianbitch @lilah-asteria

Wings tags: @minaethrym

[daylighteclipsed]

Your KH Enchanted posts are driving me INSANE! I've never thought about the connection before but like, Enchanted is literally about a cartoon character going to the real world and finding out that her designated "perfect" love interest wasn't actually the one for her despite the fact that he should be. And then cut to SORA WAKING UP IN QUADRATUM AND RIKU THERE LOOKING FOR HIM like... it's all coming together.

YES!!!! There are so many parallels. In Sora’s dreams, the way he and Riku wake up in this huge city at night with so many lights and signs and skyscrapers… it’s so much like Giselle pulling herself up into the center of Times Square. The area Sora’s in especially, Scramble Crossing, brings to mind Times Square.

Enchanted is about a fictional character becoming real. Giselle’s from a simple, “perfect,” fairytale world. She’s designed to be a stereotypical Disney princess, and she’s a trope more than a person until she ends up in the real world, where she’s quickly challenged by the real world’s imperfections and complexities, embodied especially in Robert and through her relationship with him.

I’ve talked before about how Kingdom Hearts features fictional characters waking up and coming to life, deviating from the script when they’re not really “supposed” to and becoming real. Like Giselle, Sora starts out as a pretty stereotypical trope — the hero — but over the course of his journey grows further away from that. He’s challenged and he changes, and a lot of that is embodied through his relationship with Riku, as Riku represents change and complexity, especially in the context of growing up.

There’s a lot of parallels in the dynamics between Giselle/Robert and Sora/Riku. They’re complementary opposites, and they learn from each other. Giselle inspires Robert to believe in the messages fairytales champion about kindness, the power of love, dreams coming true, and happy endings. Sora inspires Riku to follow his heart and open his heart to others. Robert helps Giselle understand that real life is not as simple as a fairytale. Riku helps Sora see and understand the nuances in their world and in each other.

Real people are complicated, but that’s not necessarily a bad thing. Giselle’s thrilled, for example, the first time she feels really, truly angry. Robert makes her feel things she’s never felt before, messy things that make her feel alive, that make it easier for her to understand him and grow closer to him. KH emphasizes that experiencing grief, sadness, anger, etc. allows us to connect with others deeper, whether we’re leaning on loved ones for support or trying to understand a stranger. Pain is a necessary part of having a heart, of being alive.

Also, these scenes are literally the same. Giselle and Sora even both smile in their sleep.

Giselle/Robert and Sora/Riku’s relationships develop significantly over the course of their stories. In comparison to Giselle/Edward and Sora/Kairi, which rely on trope expectations instead of character development/actual relationship building. Giselle hardly interacts with Edward. But he’s a prince, he resembles the man of her dreams, he saves her from falling, and she can finish his duet. Surely it’s true love! I’ve already compared sharing the paopu fruit with singing the duet. Kairi is also a princess. She saves Sora from falling to darkness in KH1. And it’s pretty and perfect and Disney, with him reappearing in her arms, gently pulling away, quietly thanking her with sparkles all around them. Just like how Edward catches Giselle right in his lap, perfectly in his arms, with the tree branches forming a heart behind them.

Compare that to later in DDD after Riku saves Sora from falling to darkness and Sora thanks him… and when Robert catches Giselle from falling off a billboard. It’s the same thing, but the moments are not pretty and perfect.

Giselle takes Robert to the hard ground, with a chorus of yelps and ouches as she nearly breaks his wrists. Riku is almost bowled over by Sora’s hug, and Sora holds him tightly, loudly exclaiming his relief, reluctant to let Riku go. But the lack of “Disney fairytale perfection,” I guess, in these scenes kind of makes them better, right? Robert is willing to get really hurt trying to catch Giselle. Sora is so happy to see Riku he can’t contain his emotions. Near the end of Enchanted, we see this again, except Giselle is the one catching Robert. And it’s still very clumsy and rough — he takes her down with him. It’s not perfect, but it’s real.

That’s the biggest difference between Giselle’s relationships with Edward and Robert, and Sora’s relationships with Kairi and Riku. In both surface dynamics and appearance, one is a pretty idea. A perfect, soft, simple fantasy that doesn’t exist, that can’t exist in reality beyond little boys and girls playing Prince and Princess. And the other is grounded in reality, with all the good and bad, the joy and heartbreak, laughter and tears, that entails. Being human is hard. But there is something magical about finding someone you can be human with.

Giselle mistakes Edward for the true love she’s been dreaming of. He’s got the blue eyes and the dark hair, and he catches her from falling. And it reminds me a lot of Sora mistaking Kairi for his light in the darkness in KH3.

It’s reasonable why Giselle and Sora would assume this… But Robert also catches Giselle from falling. He also has blue eyes and dark hair. Later, he dresses exactly like Giselle’s dream prince at the ball, and he even dances with her like in her dreams. In KH3, Riku sacrifices himself in an act of true love for Sora, and we see the light in the tunnel respond when Sora calls out Riku’s name. There’s a number of visual parallels from Sora’s dream and Dive to the Heart that indicate Riku is Sora’s light. While Giselle realizes the truth, it only seems to click for Sora a moment before he forgets. Giselle also gets a follow up parallel. Sora hasn’t yet.

Another little thing I want to point out — Giselle and Edward have a duet (that she stops singing), but Giselle and Robert have a waltz. They have the love song, and they dance to it. Sora and Riku don’t dance, but we see their hearts dancing to the song they create — a waltz version of Dearly Beloved.

Also Robert/Giselle still get the Disney singing element. It’s just not big and flashy like Giselle and Edward’s duet. Robert quietly sings a few words to her as they dance together… Sora and Riku still get the paopu fruit — it’s the keychain of Dearly Beloved (the Combined Keyblade) — but it’s not obvious like the cave drawing between Sora and Kairi is.

TLDR: I completely agree with you and I think, like Enchanted, KH intentionally plays with Disney tropes and audience expectations in order to subvert them. Like Giselle, Sora discovering his designated “perfect” love interest is not the one for him is part of his journey of awakening. It’s part of him becoming real, and growing up.

[utilitycaster]

The thing that gets me abt the framework of downfall and the way Ludinus(and some ppl in the tags who seemingly are trying really hard to roleplay Ludinus) read it is that they're like "look at how the gods meddled and laid low to destroy this bastion of human achievement, they had no right and should have let themselves be systematically exterminated/have the world burn instead" when. Setting aside the revelation that the gods who struck down Aeor made themselves mortal to do it-- as in, they were on the exact playing fields of humans when they made their move and it wasn't some huge peacocking of power against upstart humans to strike them out of the sky-- the Divergence is going to happen. We KNOW the Divergence is going to happen. The gods are going to create the divine gate and remove any chance that they can ever do something like this again. "Blaugh, look at them meddle and plot-" and? Whatever they do, we know that the sun will shine once more. Melora, as brutal as she is as the starved Asha, will plant a tree of hope in the most destroyed wastes of Wildemount. And they will ensure that the suffering they wrought in the calamity, in Aeor, can never ever repeat the same way they had done it. Which is a HELL of a lot more than can be said for Ludinus who is actively reviving every cycle he can

first off "some ppl in the tags who seemingly are trying really hard to roleplay Ludinus" took me OUT so thank you for that.

I just reblogged a post with a quote from Cooldown that I think is really relevant in understanding the whole story of the gods and how we got to this point but like, just to summarize (and debunk a few things, hopefully) from the beginning of the episode to the end re: the life of the gods:

Gods (possibly aspects of the Luxon?) crash-landed on Exandria BECAUSE of what is all but outright said to be Predathos.

As far as I can tell, no deals were made between the gods and the Titans. The only person who has said this from what I can tell is Asmodeus, who I would not consider a reliable source of truth. Or rather: one might have been made but there's no corroboration that I know of.

They created the people of Exandria and sealed away Predathos both prior to the Schism

The Schism occurred when the Titans decided to attack the people (which to be clear - the people had been there for long enough to build that weird ruin on Ruidus with a portal, like, I would love to know what prompted the fight of the Schism since it had pretty clearly been millennia of coexistence).

The Betrayers decided the move was to leave and start over, and the Primes felt that was a dereliction of duty to the people. That's what the quote is about - it's about the fact that Erathis's motivation for being a Prime Deity isn't "mortals are my blorbos!" it's "we have an obligation to our creations" and more generally that the Prime Deities are invested in their domains for the overall good of Exandria but not necessarily the specific good of Aeor. (Taliesin follows it up with (as Melora) "You'd have to tear me from this fucking planet" w/r/t the idea that you cannot, in fact, destroy your bad first draft simply because it would be more convenient to you.)

Betrayers get sealed, unsealed, events of EXU Calamity occur (notably: the titans are all dead. you can fight about whether this was just or right later but they're gone and killing other people won't bring them back; the titans are largely used as a pearl-clutching prop by people with no arguments that are perhaps actually relevant to the current situation), and perhaps 50 or 60 years into the conflict the gods call a truce re: Aeor's Obtenebrator and commit to decades of living as mortals (and therefore limiting themselves considerably)

And so here we are

And I think this really gets to the point. Because ultimately, the argument in favor of leaving Aeor be is "when someone points a gun at you, lay down and die" and the argument in favor of the Betrayers is "when someone tells you to abandon your (living) obligations for them, do so." The former is despairing and nihilistic and the latter selfish and, well, a betrayal.

There is something profoundly nihilistic about Ludinus, for all he talks about freeing people and a better world. He's destroyed a city of innocents. He's indoctrinated hundreds if not thousands of people and many of them have died in his service; he's the architect of an empire and many wars in its name and is actively working with a second one. He's been killing fey and he's even physically given himself over to the cause. There is no crime or sin people attribute to the gods that he has not done himself in measures beyond nearly every other mortal. Like, I really think he's at a point where he just is unwilling to "lose" even though he has a friendless life and a legacy of violence and has destabilized the entire world and the weave of magic itself. I think he has to believe there's something on this Occultus Thalamus for him because if there isn't, he, like the Prime Deities, probably can't just pick up and start over. All he has left is to give in to just letting the world burn in the hopes that at least he gets the satisfaction of what he hates burning with him.

Basically, sounds like a rough time to try to roleplay him in the tags.

Something else you (and others) bring up is that amid all the "history is written by the victors" the story of Aeor and of the gods has actually painted them as far harsher. The story doesn't say that they were first chased to Exandria unwillingly and did not come in conquest; the story, as this post notes, evokes vast divine might striking down a city from the heavens and not like, living in fragile mortal forms during one of the most dangerous times in history and arguing amongst each other over how they can save both themselves and Aeor and if that's even possible. Like, even if you see the gods as the victors of this story rather than simply the survivors, the "unedited" version of the story makes them far more sympathetic.

You also mention the Divine Gate and that's a really interesting thing to me because the existing status quo of Exandria is actually remarkably nascent if you think about it. The Founding had gods, titans, and mortals. Post Schism had the Prime deities and mortals (and it is worth noting this is when the people of Exandria became the most technologically advanced; you want to talk about the Titans and Betrayers, you need to cover that the price of the wonders of the Age of Arcanum was that they were not present). Calamity had all the gods and mortals again, and the current era is the first where the gods are behind the gate. It's kind of a compromise between all the things that have tried to destroy one another - Betrayers and Primes are separated but all are free within their realms and can indirectly contact mortals; technically, so can Predathos. None can directly be on Exandria. Is it ideal? No. It's a compromise, and the sealed can become unsealed (which, consistently, goes very badly) but it's the option that doesn't involve the total annihilation of anyone. Ludinus seeks, by setting off this horrible cycle again, to undo that fragile imperfect compromise with a goal of wholesale slaughter. He provides no option for the gods other than "die by my hand" when even some of the gods were desperately trying to find other options for Aeor as of a day prior to its destruction. He's simply wallowed in his trauma for centuries, becoming colder and more unfeeling and less empathetic and more arrogant than the gods he accuses of the same flaws.

[sitp-recs]

top 10 drarry fics by the sheer force of the feels they gave you? not necessarily good feels! things you remember primarily because they hit hard in some way.

obviously, i'd also love to hear exactly how/why they hit hard if you're up for sharing that!

Oh that’s such a wonderful ask, thank you! I’m sorry for the late reply, the 10 fics came easily bc whenever I see those titles I get immediately transported back to where I was and what I felt reading them for the first time. But putting into words what exactly makes them heartkick-y for me was a bit more challengeging. It’s usually a “when you feel it you know it” kind of thing (and quite literally too, as sometimes it manifests as an actual physical reaction!) but more often than not the fic just clicks for me and there’s no rationale behind it. As Clarice Lispector said: “I suppose that understanding myself is not a question of intelligence but of feeling. It either touches you, or it doesn't."

Anyhoo, I tried my best to keep this short and sweet but since I’ve written individual recs for almost all these fics, I thought I’d include them too :) thanks again, this was super fun! And I’d love to read about your picks as well 👀

An Emerald In The Sky by corvuscrowned | my rec

it doesn’t get more romantic than star-crossed lovers doomed by time travel!!!! (see also: my thoughts on The Eighth Tale by lettered). this is my brand of melancholy, something about the constant yearning, the beauty of stolen moments in liminal space, the unfairness of it all… ugh

Far From the Tree by aideomai | my rec

fft has altered my brain chemistry and ruined me forever with its tender devastation, I had such a visceral reaction to it - to the point of feeling dizzy and feverish. a simple time travel concept (this is my kryptonite istg) but the epic storytelling! the gratification! the bittersweet ending! rereading it would kill me but what a way to go

Forgive Those Who Trespass by Lomonaaeren

easily one of the most haunting and terrifying fics I’ve ever read, one jumpscare after the other but so creative and well-written I was too busy collecting my jaw from the floor to talk myself out of it lol

Little Compton Street by writcraft | my rec

as a queer woman, this one feels extremely personal and is very dear to my heart. I’ll never forget the emotions I felt learning about queer history and finding a sense of peace and belonging. lcs feels like coming home 🏳️‍🌈

Little Red Courgette by blamebrampton

this was my first bb fic and their sense of humor just blew my mind. I was so impressed by the smooth world building, by their wit and clever political commentary. I just couldn’t stop laughing. the dialogue is so good it makes me wanna weep, I can’t explain how much joy and comfort this fic gave me

Merlin Works in Mysterious Ways by lordhellebore

full disclosure: my reading experience was shaped by the fact that I didn’t realize the tagged disability would be major and permanent 🤡 by the time I noticed I was so emotionally invested I couldn’t stop. one of the most painful reads I’ve ever endured, worth it tho

Running on Air by eleventy7 | my rec

introspective fics are my jam and this one was just what I needed while working through some shit at a turning point in my life. so I guess it was more about finding the right fic at the right time, and I’m hit by mixed feelings of catharsis and nostalgia every time I revisit roa.

Still Life (orphaned) | my rec

my definition of a perfect shortfic. gorgeous prose, flawless execution, the “nothing is happening but everything is changing” vibes I live for, one of the best Harry pov I’ve ever read and an ending that always makes me gasp in awe. few authors can write complex emotions so effortlessly as seefin, absolute masterclass

Super Rich Kids by trishjames | my rec

criminally underrated, this story broke my heart but also gave me such a THRILL. I usually avoid substance abuse in fic but something about Draco’s spiral journey felt so raw it kept me at the edge of my seat. devastating but also a surprisingly funny and exciting thriller. the range!!!

The Long Fall by tackytiger | my rec

as someone who’s never been into kid fic and family dynamics, this was a punch on the solar plexus and rearranged my whole view about this trope. I was deeply moved by Harry’s longing for a family of his own and despite not having or wanting kids, this still felt really cathartic and changed me in a way I can’t quite explain.

[starryjkoo]

I've seen some people bringing up hickeygate for some reason so in the spirit of AYS?! release week, I’d like to talk about why I love hickeygate.

To begin with, I feel like a lot of people don’t understand that what makes hickeygate so funny isn’t even necessarily the hickey. Or rather, there’s too much focus on only the hickey when the whole thing is just hilarious and weird.

Like, apparently Jikook get drunk (alone) together and JK lifts Jimin bridal style, spins him around, and refuses to set him down even when Jimin gets super dizzy. And apparently Jimin’s drunken method of getting JK to set him down is to “bite” him on the neck in such a way that leaves a mark that looks exactly like a hickey. That’s weird! Every part of that is weird!

And what’s also kind of funny to me is that I think they told the story because imo in their eyes it really was all very innocent “see, we weren’t doing anything weird or wrong!” almost, defensive, if you will. Because technically, they weren’t doing anything inappropriate, they were just defending themselves/explaining the totally non-weird mark Jimin left on JKs neck. It wasn’t really a “hickey”, they have nothing to hide, they were just playing around, nothing untoward happened.

But I think it’s funny because imho it at the very least implies that Jikook have some weird-ass boundaries/behaviors, that they might be so deep into their strange dynamic, so used to and desensitized to it, that they don’t even recognize when they’re being weird af. Because, regardless, this situation is still ????

Most people don’t drunkenly spin their friends around bridal style and refuse to set them down and have hickeys bit (sucked??) onto their neck in response. I mean, maybe some do, but I definitely don’t think it’s the norm (and Jin’s & TH’s responses are hilarious). And certainly most people would realize that leaving what looks like a hickey on your friends neck is going to be perceived a certain way regardless of what story you tell or how it came about, and would maybe cover it up to save themselves the embarrassment if they were bothered by the implications. But clearly that’s not what happened. They were out and proud of that thing lol (well Jimin seemed a bit sheepish about what happened lol).

Anyways the whole thing is funny and very weird and says something about their dynamic and weird physical boundaries and what they might be like when they’re drunk and alone together (which seems like something they do/did a lot). We also now know they also have in depth discussions about singing to the point they get lost in their own little world even when they're with others which is cute too.

Anyways, I know I’m not crazy to point out that their dynamic is weird and their intimacy boundaries are weird and their dynamic can read a certain way because I’ll always point to one of my other very favorite Jikook moments — Rainy Day fight — particularly the way that the other members responded. Like, continuously cringing for no reason, shivering and yelling “ew”, calling it a drama, singing a kdrama song at them, smiling and laughing, which is all honestly hilarious, and unnecessary, and validating lol. Especially because it didn’t really deter Jikook, who were just telling that story as it was, with JK seemingly pretty serious and invested in making sure Jimin got the details right.

So yeah, that is just how they come off, even to their own group that already have loose boundaries - and I just love that about Jikook. Love their weird drunken shenanigans and their dramatic as hell couple like rain fights, and how soft and silly they are in general.

Also shout-out to the retelling of the Rainy Day story where they both separately took the blame because they're mature, considerate and sweet towards each other like that. Also the fact that it was something JK felt sorry for years down the line, even though clearly there were no hard feelings about it. I feel like they probably didn’t fight that often if a fight in which they immediately made up was on his mind like that lol. Also the fact that what upset JK so deeply was Jimin’s threat of not caring about him anymore.

Anyways, I hope we get to see some drunken shenanigans in AYS. They did cut out whatever tussle occurred on that mosquito net during ITS though, so idk what they’ll actually show in the end, but I’m here for it.

[yanderes-galore]

Romantic Nanami(JJK) concept?

I can try, sure! Hope you enjoy him :) I had trouble writing his character as I guess I didn't connect with him as much as others? But I still enjoy him.

Yandere! Kento Nanami Concept

Pairing: Romantic

Possible Trigger Warnings: Gender-Neutral Darling, Obsession, Overprotective/Possessive behavior, Manipulation, Stalking, Degrading behavior, Isolation, Childish punishment, Forced relationship.

Nanami doesn't seem like the type of person who easily gets attached to people.

He's learned that's a poor choice since he was young.

In fact, his youth was stolen from him due to his role as a sorcerer.

He's reserved and often not emotional/sentimental.

He's blunt and doesn't mince words.

So I imagine manipulation with him is the same, no flowery language or words to soften the blow.

He'd just be blunt and state you need him or something similar.

He'd be strict and serious, not expressing much weakness or emotion.

He's hard to read and can be an intimidating yandere.

Which would make Nanami another yandere who's unpredictable in this universe.

Except for him... it's because he rarely shows emotion or what he's thinking at all.

He's not necessarily possessive in my eyes... but he's certainly protective and I wouldn't doubt it if he was isolating too.

Nanami would believe all he does for you is for your own good.

So every person he scares off, every curse he gets rid of, every lock he places on your gilded cage by his side...

All to keep you safe... and hopefully happy.

He's quick to irritate which doesn't help with his strict behavior.

He seems like the type of yandere to scold his darling like a child, even when they're in a relationship.

You could be a sorcerer just like him... and he treats you like you'll die without him.

In a way, you can excuse this as him being scared to lose you like he's lost so many others.

But he still shouldn't do this... part of him knows that.

If you weren't a sorcerer then he tries his hardest to shield you from such a life.

If you were, it's like he wants you to quit.

Nanami would always watch you like a stern hawk.

As though you'll get hurt if he doesn't.

Sometimes he's sociable but often he prefers to just stay... reserved.

You are one of the only ones he really bothers to talk to that doesn't seem forced.

He's fond of you, really is, but is obviously not the most sentimental person.

Even as a partner he seems to act suffocating.

It's like a parent watching a child sometimes.

You can tell him off about this, complain he doesn't give you enough credit.

You can try to convince him you can take care of yourself.

But he just... refuses to believe it.

Nanami's affection is often silent.

Things like quiet (yet tight) hugs along with kisses.

While Nanami can be condescending, he's loving in his own way.

He seems like the type to want his spouse to be a house spouse.

Big house with security, you staying home all the time, it would soothe a lot of his stresses...

Plus, coming home to you would make him feel a lot better.

He likes the idea of a traditional life.

Maybe no kids, but you at home, and him coming to spoil you when he's home.

Would Nanami kidnap? Not really.

I feel it's a bit too out of character for him and his yandere type.

He's a yandere who lurks in the background of your life primarily before eventually confronting you.

He'd use manipulation but it's often taken as concern or orders.

For example, if he asks you to stay around him due to the Curse activity in the area, you'd most likely listen as you trust him.

Even more so when he becomes your boyfriend.

You may even understand his concern and not register it as toxic.

In a world where Curses exist around every corner, you understand when Nanami expresses concern.

Although, it can quickly start getting toxic when he removes your independence... "to keep you safe."

He does this by offering you to move into his home or convincing you to quit your job.

Would Nanami get jealous? He isn't very... open about it.

Like most emotions he tends to not show it.

It would be very subtle cues like clenching a fist or gripping a table.

He doesn't trust many around you but tolerates it.

Only because he knows you're his when you get home.

While he's mostly overprotective, a subtle feeling of possessiveness is hinted at in his actions.

Things like tight holds or rough kisses when you're alone show that in him.

Nanami doesn't entirely tolerate you fighting with him.

Arguments occur at times, especially when Nanami tries to coax you into giving up your independence.

He thinks you're being childish at times when in reality he's the one being paranoid.

Nanami may also punish you like a child, which just makes things more degrading.

Stupid things like, you sit in your room kinda thing (or spanking I guess).

Nanami no doubt means well... in his eyes.

But he takes it too far, unfortunately.

Would Nanami murder rivals? No.

He knows he's insane for being a Sorcerer (and keeping you in your shared home) but he draws the line at... petty murder.

The most he does is keep you at your shared home and away from people.

He feels that's where you're safest... and it reassures him you're his.

He shows his appreciation through affection... maybe even gifts.

He does seem like he'd buy you gifts, be that clothes or items he thinks you'll like.

Holding you close is comfort to him, his stresses melting easily in your presence.

His biggest issue is he's just overprotective... right?

It's not like he isolates you to keep you to himself, right?

He's... He's just concerned, right?

Giving you gifts and affection isn't to distract you, is it?

Nanami just wants you safe from potential danger because he cares...

He'd never isolate you for any other reason... right?

[theoldsports]

In an alternate universe where art wasn’t involved in such a toxic situation, what would college art be like as a boyfriend? I’d love to hear your thoughts!

I feel like he’d be open to just about anyone as long as they had a good personality and a good heart. It wouldn’t matter if they played tennis or not; he’d love them for them and hope they’d love him just the same. Idk just some thoughts 💭 😚

Art is the boy that has had a broken heart one too many times and too much shit talked about him for him to run around hurting someone directly on purpose. He is, as far as college athlete relationships go, an exceptional boyfriend.

Art’s major is also Physics. It’s Physics. No arguments.

His girl parties? He’ll show out if it doesn’t ruin his game/practice schedule that weekend. His girl hates parties? They’ll stay in.

As a matter of fact, Art’s probably gonna swing for a girl that’s not a tennis player, but kindly tennis-curious. He likes having someone to teach about the game. And to mutually learn about her world and interests.

He’s probably gonna pull a talker. Art is a talker when he’s with another talker, but he has a hard time with other more reserved folks day in and day out.

Once he starts talking though, Art’s going to keep talking.

The kid knows he has a difficult schedule, but he’s going to want to spend time with his girl. Just the walking between places, having lunch, going to Target, studying, catching a cigarette behind the athletics complex kind of time. Those are the best moments of his day.

Art is going to ask to move into an off-campus apartment with his girl way sooner than is rational. Dealing with thin walls, squeaky lofted beds and roommates doesn’t yield a healthy relationship necessarily.

He loves staying in bed all day with her. Just laying there and chatting.

Unfortunately, he’s a really early riser. Art was conditioned to be. On school days, he’s very oh, yeah, I go up at six, ran a mile and had some toast. You want coffee? There’s some on the counter. Like that’s a normal way to be.

His media comprehension for plots in movies isn’t high. Movie nights are kind of wait, I don’t get why it’s call Ocean’s Eleven. So Art gets a lot of that explained to him and he… likes having the little things explained to him like he’s stupid. It’s funny, because he’s so fucking smart that his girl always wondered if he was faking it for attention…

Art’s dreadful when he’s sick. He’s not gonna try and push through it. He’s going to lay there and be useless when he’s ill. He wants to be taken care of.

Fundamentally supportive. There is nothing Art will not do to help his girl. Nothing.

He’s helpful with STEM-based homework.

Hand-holder. Art likes leading his girl from place to place. Or maybe being led is more apt.

He’s a lost puppy. His biggest flaw is being too loyal. This could result in brash, clinginess. Not all too bad or traumatic.

Art is a realist. So when he fantasizes with his girl about the future, that is what he wants. This relationship isn’t a joke or some game of chase.

This relationship is the thing that gets him fired up. He will stop at nothing to keep it nice through the good and bad times.

(He also understands that not every time is a good time. He will stay through the shitty moments too)

Art is dreamy. He really, truly is.

[arcanarix]

Make That Double, Ch6 - Yan!SatoSugu X Fem!Reader [AO3]

Word Count: 7.5K

Warnings: non-con, blowjobs (with gojo), piv sex (protectd, with gojo), vibrators (with geto), overstim (with geto)

In spite of Geto’s adamant displeasure—a warning that feels like it’s been sewn with silken barbs—Gojo still returns for visits. He’s come here far too often, Geto has told you (and him), his voice a chilling undertone and thick with a hint of disdain, not necessarily toward Gojo himself. Not really.

And what can he possibly mean by this? You still are at a loss from his cryptic mumblings about some war between jujutsu sorcerers and humans, and the world of sorcery is an invisible force which exists just beyond the realm of your own understanding. Whatever it means, it shouldn’t concern you, and they both like to reiterate that fact to you on multiple occasions. These matters are well out of your scope, they both say, matters which are distant and incomprehensible to a mere human.

Yet you still can’t help but be curious.

Can they honestly blame you?

Gojo has returned to the temple at least three times this week, maybe more, slipping in between missions to join in on Geto’s shenanigans and his torment. The two certainly are a match made in Hell, the perfect power couple. Gojo always enters with that cheery, dark laugh and a touch laced too heavy with desire and much darker, sinister intent.

While he may be here for the thrill and doesn’t have that many strings attached to you, you fear the twisted pleasure that glows like lightning bugs in those sharp blue eyes of his. You suspect something running far deeper than some sick, twisted pleasure. He insists he just enjoys being around for Geto’s sake, but you doubt it.

A light gasp escapes your parted lips—an unintended slip of sound—as an arm snakes around your shoulders, slithering around them like a serpent, each finger that digs into your skin like a cold weight.

Ah, it’s just Tweedledum, drawing in close to you, his breath a teasing whisper against the nape of your neck that has chills dancing down your spine that sinks itself deep, settling like frost in your bones.

Your teeth clench, hiding behind the sweet mask you’ve worked so hard to build since you’ve been dragged here against your will. It feels like it can slip and fall at any moment like fragile porcelain.

“Hello there, Satoru,” you greet with your voice laden in that syrupy sweet warmth. God, do you long for the silence you used to just embrace back in your lonely days in your studio apartment between work and classes. Those moments of embracing that sweet solitude which, you have come to realize the longer you’re here, you have taken completely for granted. Now it’s a rarity to find time to yourself, solo moments slipping through your fingers like sand, much rarer like a jewel buried in the earth.

Silence is a gift you’re no longer permitted to own yourself, isn’t it? Neither is solitude.

It’s a foolish concept to consider humoring at this point.

He buries his face into your hair, inhaling deeply, sharply, letting the scent—faintly sweet, a faint note of fruit, a faint note of floral—consuming him like an addictive drug. “Missed you so much, Princess. Did you miss me?”

His words seep into the air, saccharine and venomous, laced with a dangerous edge, surrounding you like smoke from a dying candle made of black wax.

“Far, far too much, Satoru,” you reply, each word heavily enunciated and forced between your clenched teeth…the lie is cloying on your tongue. Betrayal. You feel betrayed by your own words.

Across the room, Geto observes you both, his gaze pressing onto your skin like scorching iron, silent yet all knowing. You know best not to test his patience, to toy with any chance he may disapprove of something. His very glance is a ball and chain tightening around your wrists, securing you in place.

You can’t say what you truly feel. You realize that.

Not now, at least. Not yet.

“I missed you far too much, Satoru,” you add just to fluff them up some more, laying it on so thick like buttercream slathered across a yellow cake. The words taste of poison rather than that sweet concoction, the poison sinking onto your tongue and contaminating your mouth with sweet, sweet lies that can only make them happy and pleased with you.

The bitterness of it all coils deep within your core, like a twisting knot of distaste, something you have come to wear well, the way an actress wears their character well. After all, you know how this all plays out—the lies all woven together with the threads which form their intricate web.

Every word you allow yourself to utter is just part of your plan—a way out, a possible fracture in their foundation.

A string of chuckles escapes Gojo’s glossed lips, low, soft, like the distant, ominous rumble of thunder. It’s far from comforting to you.

“You know,” he begins, his hand on your shoulder no sliding to your neck, fingers pressing into the delicate hollow just beneath your jaw, twisting you around to face his soft glowy eyes. “I’ve been thinking far too much about how good your mouth’s going to feel.”

His gaze dips to your lips, a dark twinkle sparking in his eyes. “Suguru said I could guide you, since you’re still new to this.”

Your entire body stiffens, muscles tensing under his vice grip. Of course he senses it—that little glimmer of resistance that ignites before you can suppress it, and he tuts at you softly, the mockery in his gaze sharpening as his lips curl into a petulant little pout.

“Come on, Princess,” he chortles, his voice dark, thick with derision, desire, and deeply condescending, as he guides you to kneel. Impatient hands move with surprising grace, as he unbuckles his belt, the click of metal against metal reverberating like the bell has tolled for you. You swallow hard on a lump that feels like a large chunk of coal, still possessing an air of defiance, but he only grins at you in something close to triumph. “Did you really think I could keep my hands off of you? I only did because Suguru told me I needed to go easy on you, and even he breaks his own rules like the damn hypocrite he is.”

“Satoru!” Geto’s voice cuts through, authoritative and cold. He’s now sprawled across the sofa, still maintaining a watchful eye, a faint frown creasing his face. A whole expression of displeasure etching his features like a master’s disapproving gaze. “Play nice, or I’ll have to restrain you.”

Gojo’s sharp blue eyes glowy with amusement, and he brushes a strand of hair from your face.

“I am being nice,” he quips, his voice laden with a feigned innocence as his hand wraps around himself.

“Actually nice, Satoru,” Geto reprimands, his voice a low warning that hums through the room like the whirring of a machine.

“Oh, Suguru, you’re killing me here. Fine.” There’s still that petulant edge to his voice but he still surrenders, his gaze fixed on you, smirking as he observes that little flicker of fear and defiance in your gorgeous eyes.

While they’re bickering, you can’t help cowering over the idea of that in your mouth. You have no idea how good you’ll be, and you know well enough to understand that no man likes to feel teeth during a blowjob and your teeth surely will scrape and you don’t want to think about what kind of consequences could follow.

“I…I don’t think it can fit,” you squeak, and you hear the sickening cackles from both men.

“We’ll accommodate,” Gojo drawls, groaning as he brushes his stiff tip across your lips. You flinch. Geto soon approaches you from behind, cooing at you while patting your cheek.

“Open up, little dove,” he commands, his voice softer than what you’re used to—almost laden with a bit of jealousy? “Don’t make Satoru wait.”

With that, he grips onto your hair tight, and whimpering you pry your mouth open as much as you can, inching the head of Gojo’s cock inside. The salty tang of the skin hits your tongue, and you don’t know what to make of it. It tastes almost…zingy, like the taste of a battery.

“Oh fuuuuck yeah,” Gojo groans, eager, desperate, his blue eyes seemingly emitting a soft glow in the barely there lighting of the dungeon. “That’s it, Princess. Fuck, your mouth feels better than I imagined.”

You can’t speak, obviously. Not when you have this fuck’s dick in your mouth. You’re impressed you don’t gag.

And Geto pushes your head further until you engulf nearly half of Gojo’s impressive length. You kind of doubt you’ll be good at this, but he doesn’t seem to mind.

And Gojo clearly isn’t as patient as Geto.

The click! and whir! of a phone camera hits your ears and of course, of course they’re going to take a bunch of humiliating pictures like before, just to rub your nose into the dirt. You hate them both so much.

“Come on, little dove, a little more and you’ve got it all,” Geto instructs as he watches you inch the rest of Gojo’s length into your mouth. You can control your gag reflexes, thank God. A part of you wishes you can rip his dick clean off with your teeth, but you know that won’t bode well.

Just smile and bear it, you tell yourself like a mantra. Just smile and bear it…

“Oh my God,” Gojo gasps, his mouth hanging open slightly. “How does your mouth feel tight like your pussy?”

Geto hums, and you feel him guide you to bob your head. “Someone’s enjoying themselves. What do we say, Satoru?”

“Fuck, Suguru. Thank you,” he groans, his eyes fluttering a bit. “Th-thank you. It feels so good.”

Geto grins at his lover, ignoring the jealousy twisting in his gut.

“Use your tongue, little dove,” Geto tells you while peering down, and you fearfully meet his eyes, as they darken with something like lust and envy. “Breathe through your nose.”

You don’t know how, but you try. Each time you’re guided down his cock you lap your tongue along his sensitive skin and Gojo seems to like that, groaning and moaning. Geto seems pleased with your efforts, but it’s not always easy to tell.

“Suguru…” he moans, his eyes half mast and his face flushed. “Can I fuck her mouth?”

Your eyes widen at that, no way are you ready for it, and catching onto your reluctance, Geto shakes his head.

“We have to ease her into this,” he reminds him sternly, speaking as if he doesn’t fuck you in wild positions when Gojo’s not around. “Almost there, Satoru?”

He whines in affirmation, his lower lip quivering a bit. Geto chuckles at the sight.

“Good,” he says, as he kneels to your level. “Finish him off, little dove. Remember to breathe through your nose. Help him come. You’re doing so good.”

“Please, I wanna come so bad,” he begs, and Geto coos at him. He helps you pick up the pace, but one of his hands moves to fiddle with his balls, squeezing and teasing them.

“Need more,” he whines, his hands clenching into fists at his sides. His dick twitches in your mouth and you know what that means. The squelching of your mouth with each guided bob of your head is fucking disgusting. Gojo’s a chorus of wimpy pathetic little moans until finally, you feel his arousal spill onto your tongue. Quite a heavy load, and you’re not surprised at your next command.

“Swallow,” Geto whispers darkly into your hair and you manage, grimacing as you do. You don’t enjoy the taste. Zingy. Salty. Awful.

Gojo’s dick slips out from your mouth, leaking and limp and spent. Geto peppers approving kisses all over your face, helping you to your feet.

“Good girl,” he murmurs, pulling you close. “Thank you for letting Satoru do that. I know that was your first time.”

Gojo’s eyes are still half-mast and a little hazy. His face is so red, sweat glistening on his forehead.

“It felt so good, Princess,” he praises, breathless. “You’ll get better with more practice, as with anything.”

Your jaw throbs, completely sore and you didn’t even get him fucking your throat like he wanted to. You can only imagine how much worse it’s going to get.

Your hand reaches up to massage your jaw, and Geto frowns, shooting a glare at Gojo.

“We should have held off,” he scolds, and Gojo’s eyes flash with worry. “You ought to be pleased she was willing to do that.”

“I-I’m sorry?” Gojo replies, casting a judgy look to Geto. “What’s got you all riled up?”

Geto studies Gojo for a moment before sighing.

“Nothing.” Geto returns his attention to you. “You did well, my dear.”

He moves in to kiss you, and the kiss feels soft, gentle. Like…

Like he’s worried about you?

This side of him catches you off-guard. When he pulls away, he cups your cheeks, gazing down at you with those violet eyes shining with something akin to affection.

How odd.

Gojo clears his throat, and Geto flits his gaze to him.

“Aren’t you forgetting something else, Suguru?” he asks, as his eyes land on you. Geto keeps a protective hold on your waist.

“I’m aware,” Geto sighs, and casting an apologetic (apologetic?!) look to you, he hands you to Gojo. “Play nice, Satoru. You can fuck her today, but I’m watching.”

“Duh,” Gojo scoffs with a roll of his eyes as he pulls you flush against him, and you gasp as eager hands yank off your robe. “I’ve been thinking about your pussy for ages.”

He hoists you up and carries you to the couch. At the very least they’re not chaining you, but it’s not like you have anywhere to run, anyway. Geto approaches the both of you, seating himself on the edge of the couch as Gojo pulls off your panties, tucking them into his pocket.

“Just another to add to my growing collection,” he purrs, and you don’t know how to react, your gut twisting in disgust. He runs his tongue between his lips as his head dips, his nose barely grazing the sensitive skin of your core.

“Fuck, what an adorable pussy,” he praises, licking a line between your folds, eliciting a whine out of you as you lean into Geto.

Geto silences your sounds with a kiss, shoving his tongue past your teeth and twirling his against yours. All the while Gojo’s digging his tongue into your pussy, making all kinds of lewd noises that makes you want to throw up in your mouth a little. Compared to Geto, he’s sloppier, less coordinated, but he’s softer in some ways. Each swipe of his tongue feels like little kitten licks while Geto prefers to absolutely devour every inch of you. Gojo seems to like to savor you, to tease you.

The foreplay feels more like torture.

Well, everything about this is torture, but you almost much rather they take what they want from you without much preamble. That feels far more merciful.

But these men aren’t known to be merciful.

Geto draws his tongue around your lips before pulling away, his eyes downcast.

“Watch him, little dove,” he murmurs, kissing your temple. “He looks so happy between your legs.”

“This would the best way to go,” Gojo growls in agreement, plunging his tongue into your hole, making your legs twitch and jerk. His hands rest on your thighs to keep you in place. “Let’s get you nice and wet enough to take my cock, baby. I know Suguru’s already fucked you plenty, but that doesn’t mean I don’t want to make sure you’re well taken care of, so just relax while I enjoy this perfect pussy.”

What a fucking shit show.

“Relax, my love,” Geto reassures you with a sultry purr. “He’s great with his mouth. Trust me.”

“Awww, look at you, fueling me while I feast on this pussy you get to fuck whenever you want,” Gojo remarks, twisting his tongue up your folds, making you keen. “God, you’re so fucking selfish, you know that? Getting to have something as perfect as this forever.”

“Bet you can still taste me in there,” Geto chuckles, and you wince.

Disgusting that they use you like this, to get each other off.

“I actually do kinda,” Gojo affirms, laving his tongue between your outer lips. “but you’re not overpowering her amazing taste. She tastes so fucking sweet; do you have any idea how lucky you are to get to have this whenever you fucking want?”

Gojo’s tongue lapping at your slick makes your body tremble. Even if he is sloppy, it feels so fucking good—

“—S-Satoru…!” you cry out, your orgasm splattering a bit onto his face, and when you peer up at him his face is glistening in not just sweat but your arousal, too.

He licks his lips, smirking, content with his work.

But far from satisfied.

“Good girl,” Gojo praises with a purr as he fiddles around his pockets for a condom. Ah. Geto’s very strict on the ‘no breeding’ bit, isn’t he? You really are the exception here. Just for kicks. Just for laughs.

Just a new pretty pet.

After he’s wrapped himself up, the tip of his cock brushes against your folds before catching at your hole. He doesn’t waste another second, pushing himself inside and groaning out through clenched teeth.

“Oh fuuuuuck yes,” he says, as his cock fills you to the brim. “Fuck, your pussy feels so good. Suguru’s been hogging you waaaay too much. But now it’s my turn.”

He bucks his hips, and you thrash in place, his size is comparable to Geto’s but at least he’s not as girthy. One hand grips the top of the couch while the other reaches for Geto, yanking him in for a heated kiss as he spears his cock into you with a deadly precision. So unlike how sloppy he is with his tongue.

“Satoru,” Geto mumbles against his lips before nipping them, hard enough to leave a mark on his lower lip. “What do we say?”

“Thank you, Suguru,” he pants as he picks up a harder rhythm. “Fuck, thank you, baby. So good. She feels so good.”

Gojo doesn’t last long compared to Geto, his whole body shaking as he comes, and he pulls out, tossing the used condom into the trash before slipping on another one.

Of fucking course it isn’t over.

“Sorry, Princess,” he doesn’t sound sorry in the slightest. “Suguru here promised me a few more rounds.”

A few?!

“After all,” he goes on, pushing his dick back in. “I’m not going to be back for a while. Gotta make it count, right? You understand, don’t you, Princess?”

“Satoru,” Geto says in a warning tone. “Be nice.”

“I’m nice enough,” he quips, “But I’m still wrecking this pussy.”

You know how this is going to end, so you bury your face into Geto’s lap, while these horrid men continue to take from you.

As Geto excuses himself a bit earlier to tend to some clients, Gojo remains behind with you while drawing a bath. The bathwater steams a bit, casting a fine mist into the air, curling around the edges of the tub like ghostly little wisps. Gojo watches you as he wraps a towel around his midsection.

“Obviously Suguru would be here longer if not for that stuff,” he murmurs, voice low and edged with a hint of resentment for some reason? “It’s just you and me now, Princess.”

He attempts a trace of affection in his gaze, yet there’s always something darker beneath them.

He settles beside you at the edge of the tub, reclinging with a sigh that seems almost a bit wistful. His hands grip the rim, trailing his fingers through the steam like a child would.

“Suguru’s driving me crazy,” he starts, tone laden in bitterness. “It’s always ‘you’ve gotta prioritize something beyond me, Satoru’ as if he’s not the most important man in the world to me.”

Your eyebrows quirk at that, fighting the urge to laugh at the absurdity of all of this. Well, truthfully this situation has gone far past the point of absurdity and you can’t even properly name how you feel anymore. Here, with the weight of his world and its demands spiraling into chaos all around him as if he’s not the solution to it all, Satoru Gojo is choosing to be vulnerable with you.

“That sounds hard really hard, Satoru,” you respond in a little purr for good measure, and even you surprise yourself by the softness of your tone. You tentatively reach out, resting a hand against his chest, feeling the slow, steady beat of his heart beneath your palm. He lets out a dreamy sigh as he leans into your touch, his posture loosening.

“He’s just worried about you, that’s all,” you offer some kind of comfort, voice barely above a whisper, and then he shifts, seeming uncomfortable at your observation. Like he’s being put on the spot or something.

“I know,” he replies almost too quickly, his gaze flickering elsewhere. His fingers tighten against the tub’s edge. “I just don’t like being the reason for it. I’m really, really trying here. Trying to understand why he did what he did and why he left it all behind, to fix the damage he’s caused.” His voice peters out, dipping into a low murmur, deep in sorrow. “But he won’t return to that part of himself… not with me.”

Your curiosity piques at more of the cryptic shit he’s been spewing, and feigning that innocence, you tilt your head as if merely a curious little girl in this tangled web of chaos. “Is this, um, about, what did you call it? Jujutsu sorcery?”

You find you wear your character well on your shoulders, the feigned naïveté coating your words like honey. Gojo’s gaze sharpens, glinting with something unreadable before they soften, and he actually chuckles at you. Not so much in a mocking way—more amusement at your attempt to understand him and the burdens he carries.

“God, you’re so fucking adorable,” he mumbles, reaching out to brush your cheek. “But yes, it’s just pretty complicated. We don’t exactly see eye to eye, but that doesn’t mean I don’t want what��s best for him. I always have, you know? I love him. He’s not just my lover, he’s my best friend, too.”

“I understand,” you reply, slipping into the bath, sighing as you embrace the warmth of the bath water. You gesture for him to join you, and, without hesitation, he slides into the water, pulling you close until you’re nestled against him.

“God, you’re so fucking perfect,” he whispers against your neck in a reverent tone, his liips brushing your skin with a feather light touch. “Suguru really couldn’t have picked anyone better.” He trails kisses along your jaw, his touch shockingly tender yet there’s still that underlying sense of possession. “You may not be able to tell, since he’s so closed off and guarded all the time. But you really did mellow him out. He really needs that, you know?”

You tilt your head up a little at that, peering up at him with a curiosity that isn’t feigned for once.

“Huh? What makes you say that?” you ask.

He sighs, running a slender finger along your collarbone, trailing down until it circles lazily around one of your nipples, drawing a sharp inhale from your lips.

“He’s always had trouble opening up,” he babbles, as a finger moves to twist one of your nipples beneath the water, making you hiss. “And he still does, don’t get me wrong. I mean, that’s part of the whole reason why there’s this big mess in our world that he kind of caused. He just won’t ask for help! He’s got this issue with being a little too righteous about his morals, whatever they are now. We carry a huge burden and he’s over here like he’s completely over it, and now I have to carry that burden alone which is really kind of pissing me off…”

Oh. He’s venting to you. And spilling more vulnerabilities? Now this is good… he just has to keep going. The bitterness in his tone is raw, indeed. There’s actually a glimpse of the man behind a mask he’s wearing for Geto too, apparently.

And you can use whatever vague shit he keeps spewing later.

“…I just want him to, you know, trust me a little more. I know I can be kinda dense sometimes hut can’t he just tell me how he really feels sometimes? You know?”

“That sounds like it’s lonely,” you reply, stroking his cheek with your thumb. “You just want to show him you do see and hear him, right?”

“Exactly!” Gojo exclaims, a flicker of relief softening his gaze. “I guess I’m just bad at expressing my feelings too…and we’re both too old to be dropping hints.”

You hum thoughtfully, resting your hand on his cheek and he presses a kiss to the palm of your hand. “So…what are you going to do?”

Another soft sigh leaves his lips.

“I don’t know,” he admits, holding you closer, the water sloshing a bit as he moves. “I just want him to talk to me. Actually talk to me. Things don’t feel the same anymore. I mean, they haven’t for a long time and…sorry, I guess I’m spewing all of this shit and you have virtually no context, right?”

You manage a little smile as a subtle sign of reassurance. “That’s okay. I guess you have no one to talk to about this, right?”

“Yeah, especially since I go to Suguru for everything,” he retorts, resting his forehead against yours, grinning a bit. “And it won’t be wise to go to Suguru about Suguru.”

A giggle escapes your lips, and his face lights up at the sound, his eyes softening even more.

“You’ve got a beautiful laugh,” he comments, his gaze twinkling with childlike wonder. “Let us hear it some more.”

If only this situation is worth being light and happy about.

You can’t believe it slips out, but…

“I would,” you say, your voice barely audible. “If I was happy here.”

“Is Suguru not taking care of you?” he accuses, frowning in disapproval. “I can have a nice, friendly chat with him you know.”

“He’s not nice like you,” you go on, the irony of your words absolutely laughable. Gojo, nice? The man is no better than Suguru in the slightest, but you suppose there is some softness in him somewhere. “He’s…scary. Really scary. And a lot.”

“He can be,” he agrees, kissing your cheek. “But he just cares a lot, you know? He cares a lot more than I ever did about a whole lot of stuff. He’s passionate. Just give him some time to show you that. He also just really needs someone to care for him too. Not just me.”

“Is that why…he chose me?” you ask, your voice soft, almost like there’s a hint of wistful longing that you don’t fully understand yourself. You feel nothing toward either of them. They have taken you away from everything and they don’t care.

“Yeah,” he says, “You’re nice. To have around, I mean. You’re kind. Attentive. He needs someone more like that. Someone who can steady him, in ways I never could before.”

“And you don’t think you’re like that?” The question leaves your lips before you can stop it, and his laughter rings through the air like wind chimes, but the sound is dark, hollow, more like a warning.

Gojo chuckles. You don’t like how it sounds. Off, like the rest of him. Off, like this entire situation because you definitely don’t belong here. You feel like you’re wedged into a world where you have no place, no room, but they bring you here because they want you to be here for their own amusement. It makes you so angry.

“Far from it,” he tells you as he keeps fondling your breasts, using them like they're stress balls while he babbles on and on and on. You wince but you don’t stop him. You know better than to try. “I’m a monster. More of a monster than he is.”

You absolutely agree with him, but likely not for the reasons he thinks.

For a myriad of reasons you don’t care to dig into, Geto has been showering you with more affection.

It begins, as these progressions often do, with the smaller gestures. Sometimes it’s just an umbrella held just a moment longer while he strolls with you through a rainy day. Or his voice lingers just a tad longer at the end of a seemingly ordinary question, as if he cares for your opinion on trivial matters. You have come to find that he now considers your presence first, insists on it with the twins backing him up. During outings with the little family, on one occasion, he buys you a Chanel jacket, its leather soft as butter against your skin, custom made to suit only you. A lot of these gestures feel almost comical, just another way to lull you into a sense of security in a role you never wanted to play.

Yet, while you don’t think much of it, he still continues, trying and trying to continue to peel back those layers of resistance but you just keep slapping them back on. You refuse to give into him. And yet… he keeps going. He doesn’t stop.

Whenever you crave an escape from the temple, he knows just where to take you and how to indulge your tastes without truly granting you the freedom you sorely craved. Whenever you yearn for a sense of newness or novelty, be it in a new café or bakery or in a public park, he whisks you there like a knight in shining armor without hesitation, as if he truly bends to your wishes.

It all feels like a mockery. A joke.

He gets more and more spontaneous. More and more romantic. Sometimes dinners are just between you and him while the twins are dining in another room with some of their servants. Those dinners complete with soft lighting from candles and an extravagant bouquet of roses he bought for you during one of your recent outings. You don’t realize they’re ‘forever’ roses, ‘everlong’ roses, and you know what that symbolizes in romance, but you’re not going to entertain those thoughts. That isn’t possible between the two of you, and you have a feeling he definitely knows it.

You understand his motives all too well, so well, that you refuse to yield to it. Every attempt at bending to your will is just another way to charm you into compliance, into obedience.

Sure, he wants you to be more obedient, more submissive, but nothing beyond that, right? Surely he can’t possibly expect you to fall for anything he does. Everything he does is always laced with a darker intention.

Still, Geto’s efforts do not falter. During moments where you insist you cannot follow through on his desires, he simply listens and relents rather than pushing you to comply. Even his restraint feels like a mockery.

Sometimes, in the slower moments, Geto likes to find other ways to appeal to you. Whatever that means to him. Whatever he thinks is ‘flattering’ to you. As long as it means he doesn’t have to touch you in intimate areas, then you’re not going to complain. You’re given some time to actually breathe.

You just hope this lasts. Even if you know he expects you to return his grand gestures of kindness, you won’t, because that’s just not who you are.

Tonight, as per tradition now, he draws you a bath, his hands steady as he pours oils into the water, cooing praises and sweet nothings to you, as if to comfort you.

As he sponges your skin, you hold yourself still, all too knowing of the true intentions hiding just beneath these seemingly kind, thoughtful gestures. You know the last thing he wishes to be is tender, yet tonight, this is the closest he has ever come to it, dangerously so. You almost find yourself being yanked into the illusion if only for a nanosecond. You have remembered, reminded yourself not to fall for any of these tricks, any of his deception.

Once you emerge from the bath, he treats you to yet another bountiful feast as per his tradition now, presenting you with an array of different cuisines that make your mouth water. He has been hospitable. Kind, like you have said, even more so since Gojo has been absent for the time being. He’s standing behind you as you scarf down some of the freshly seasoned veggies and tear off a leg from one of the rotisserie chickens to enjoy all to yourself.

Why not take advantage of this? After all, these moments aren’t too bad.

A slender finger brushes under your chin and lifts your head up to meet his violet gaze. Your heart drops to your stomach. What is that look in his eyes? Surely it can’t be…

“I might be moving too fast…” he starts. No fucking kidding! As if the forcing you into this weird shit isn’t already moving too fast?! Is he fucking SERIOUS right now? “But I’ve had time to sit with my feelings for a while, and I need to address something to you.”

You dare not to tear your gaze away from his, because you know that he would see that as an offense—something you can’t afford now or ever here. But he can’t be serious. This can’t be real. He can’t truly expect you to believe anything he ever says is true.

“I don’t expect you to return my feelings, but it’s true: I’ve come to feel some kind of affection for you. Perhaps the closest thing I can come to affection for someone I usually deem lesser than someone like me,” Geto starts in a low voice, there’s almost an edge to it as he speaks, twirling a strand of your hair as his gaze drifts elsewhere, lost in a daydream of sorts. He can’t be serious. He really, really can’t be serious—right? “I might even go as far as to say that you are the closest thing to a mother the girls will have, and I must thank you for being so cooperative and willing to bond with them. They do truly adore you. They’re right, after all. We do make an excellent pair.”

You have no idea whether you should laugh or cry; this is absolutely out of left field for you. This must be another one of his tricks. It must be!

You have come to that conclusion a long, long, loooong time ago, but he keeps filling in all the blanks for you. He’s absolutely bonkers. Insane. Must be thrown into an asylum if they can hold sorcerers. They must have something akin to Arkham Asylum in their world, right? If sorcerers are as powerful as they claim to be?

And cooperative? Oh god, of course you have to be cooperative! Do you have a choice? You either cooperate or you turn up dead somewhere in a ditch, and at this point, the latter sounds like the more merciful option, don’t you think?

“I…” you gulp. How do you react to this? How can you react to this? If you have a stronger backbone--which the longer you stay here, the more you realize you definitely aren’t as strong-willed as you initially believed—you would have told him what for, you would have spat in his face, you would have kicked, screamed, bitten, punched, anything else other than…

“I’m…I’m so glad you think so,” you opt to say in spite of your insides telling you to protest! To fight! To give him a taste of what it means to have everything taken away from you and hurled back out! Why are you just accepting it? Have you given up? No, you haven’t, you just don’t know what else to do right now. “I’m so glad I make you happy, darling.”

“You make me the happiest,” Geto drawls as he tugs on that stray strand of your hair a bit before his finger ghosts over your cheekbone. Your breath catches, and it’s never for a good reason. You know what to expect from here. You can’t remember the last time you had any true agency. “The happiest I’ve ever felt in years, little dove. I don’t think you understand how much you’ve come to matter to me.”

Why does your heart skip a beat from that? Why does it, when you know all he says are pretty lies? He knows how to make anyone feel on top of the world, a sweet talker; he has to be, with a title like his and the fact that he’s a cult leader should give off enough of those warning sirens and yet you still find yourself drawn to his false promises. Why? Why’s that? Is it because in spite of everything, you’re still a woman who desires connection and to be desired like anyone else?

Even if it’s from someone like Geto?

“It’s like I’ve just told you, I don’t expect you to return my affections. That’s ultimately not important,” he adds, “What is important is that you’re here now. And maybe you’ll come to feel something for me in time. I only hope you grow to like Satoru too.”

You wince at the mention of his name.

“Speaking of Satoru…” You know you should keep this to yourself, yet the question leaves your lips, completely uncontrolled. “He’s been feeling like you’ve been shutting him out. Why’s that?”

A shadow crosses Geto’s face and his expression hardens before softening a bit. His gaze drifts away as though your question has struck too close to the truth, like it truly just struck a chord with him.

You don’t like this at all. Have you crossed a line?

“What goes on between Satoru and me,” he murmurs, “is none of your concern, little dove.”

“Please, Suguru, darling,” you plea, gathering some courage, but trying to keep your voice soft, meek. “I just want to understand. Maybe I can—!”

His gaze snaps back to you, his eyes narrowing into slits as his lips twitch into a cold smile.

You freeze.

“No,” he growls, his voice low, dangerous. “Once you’re finished here, meet me in the bedroom.”

You make your way to the bedroom in silence once you finish dinner, the floorboards creaking beneath your feet. Chills dance down your spine as your hand finds the doorknob. Twisting it, you push the door open just enough to slip inside, shutting the door behind you.

There he is, lying in wait as he’s settled himself on the foot of the bed.

“Disrobe,” is all he tells you, at first. Hesitant hands still comply, and you stand before him fully exposed as he desires.

“Come to me. Kneel,” he continues, his eyes not leaving yours.

You obey, not daring to meet his eyes as they remain fixed on you while you sink down to your knees.

“Look up at me, Mamma,” he instructs, his tone soft but laden with an edge of darkness. With a bit of effort, you dare to raise your head, timid eyes meeting his piercing violet.

He sighs, “Why are you questioning about things that shouldn’t matter to you?”

“I…” you stammer, feeling your mouth dry and your throat tighten. “I just want to h-help.”

The laugh that escapes his lips is bitter, mocking, condescending like he always is.

“Do you?” he growls, tone sharp. You jump from shock. “I told you numerous times what happens between Satoru and me, stays between Satoru and me.”

He pinches the bridge of his nose as he rises from his seat on the bed, and gestures for you to take his place. You sink onto the bed, fearing the worst. You feel the dread twist in your heart.

“Lay on your back,” he says, and you don’t hesitate, sinking into the mattress immediately. You don’t protest when he pulls your panties off, flinging it aside. He pries your legs apart, hooking them to either corner of the bed with a tight rope. He does the same to your wrists to the headboard.

“Suguru, please, I…please, I didn’t mean any harm by what I asked, I just…”

“Be quiet,” he growls as he draws closer to your face, and as you peer up at him, your heart drops at the sight. You haven’t seen his face like that since the day he and Gojo took you.

He circles the bed until he’s looming over you. He seems beyond displeased and it’s terrifying you more than it should. Still, even after something like this, you plan to hold your ground. You aren’t going to let him discourage you.

“You shouldn’t have upset me like that, Mamma. Prying into business that isn’t yours. Taking advantage of Satoru’s vulnerability. That takes a lot out of him, you know. He prides himself on being the strongest person he knows,” he scoffs at that notion while tightening the knots to where your ankles and wrists have been secured onto the bed. “And that is something about him you can’t take lightly. I’m unhappy with you right now, and we can’t have that. I have to punish you.”

“Please…darling, I’m so sorry, I just…I just wanted to understand his side to things, and he opened up to me willingly and…” you beg, babbling on and on, attempting to struggle but when he glares at you, you cease immediately. What a sight. He’s so upset.

He shuffles through the side table drawer and finds a vibrator wand, and you feel dread coil in the pit of your stomach. You know what he’s going to do and it’s not going to be good, it’s not going to feel good at all.

“I told you it was nothing of your concern, Mamma,” he yells, making you cower, as he switches the vibrator wand on. Your legs begin to tremble before the device even reaches between your legs.

“Suguru…” you murmur, your eyes giving him a pleading look.

“Shush,” he snaps, resting the wand on your pussy, the high vibrations making you thrash about in your confines.

OhmyfuckingGod I can’t—

“Please! I can’t!” you gasp, the whirring of the vibrator in combination of the sloshing of your juices drive you absolutely mad. Yes, you have done this before on yourself but not like this. You understand your own limits. Geto doesn’t care about your limits. He cares about setting an example.

He coaxes one out of you in mere seconds, something you’re surprised is possible, but he doesn’t remove the vibrator from your pussy, instead angling it against your clit as a dangerous, nihilistic grin spreads across his face.

“I’ve been far too lenient with you,” he tsks, “I should have reminded you of why you’re here. You’re here for me. Not just for the girls. For me. That’s why Satoru’s okay with this. He shouldn’t be the one benefitting from your companionship.”

“I’m sorry,” the apology spills from your mouth like word vomit. “I’m sorry, I’m so sorry. I didn’t mean to overstep. I just…”

“Shush,” he snarls again, his tone sharper than even you’re used to as he massages the vibrator along your pussy folds, licking his lips as he observes how your slick builds up, sticky and gooey between his fingers when he dips them into your pussy. You thrash about in your confines and his frown deepens, his forehead wrinkling. “I’m not interested in your apologies.”

No fucking kidding.

He pushes the vibrator against your clit, and you keen, your next orgasm washing through you sharper and wetter than the first. It doesn’t stop at the second one. He doesn’t stop circling your clit, rubbing between your folds, the lewd squelching getting wetter and wetter with each pass of the vibrator.

He coaxes another. And another. You know better than to keep count.

“Suguru, please, it’s too much!” you plea again, trying to find a way to back away but you can’t, not with how tight those knots around your ankles are. You’re completely defenseless, just like he wants, and you hate it, you hate that you make him angry, you hate that you can’t fight back the way you wish you can. You hate being powerless, anyone does, but like this? In such a humiliating way? This isn’t fair. This just isn’t fucking fair and you’ve done nothing to deserve this except be adjacent to the wrong people and you can’t change this.

Finally, it all stops.

The sheets beneath you are soaked in your arousal, and Geto grins in amusement.

“You didn’t put up that much of a fight, Mamma. If you swear not to meddle into business that isn’t yours, we can stop for the rest of the evening. We were doing so well and I’d hate to spoil the mood with something like this.”

“I-I’m sorry,” you cough, your body still shaking, still oversensitive. “I-I won’t do it again. I’m s-so sorry.”

“Good, Mamma,” he says after a period of consideration. “I believe you.”

You almost sigh in relief. But then you hear the vibrator click back on again.

“But I have to just ensure that this doesn’t happen again.”

[johntayjinf]

very serene theme that's been stuck in my mind ever since i first heard it

yk, one thing i've slowly come to internalize is that, once you share your art with the world, it's no longer just yours; it's for everyone.

sounds a bit stupid because realistically speaking i still am responsible for arranging and/or writing the songs that i release... but i think people should be free to interpret art however they like, bad or not. you can obviously tell whether or not people interpret a piece of art in bad faith, but i don't think that stops the fact that people are allowed to think what they do.

there have been times where i've tried to change people's minds on why i make specific stylistic choices, but i really should acknowledge that people will interpret it based on their own knowledge and experiences. i feel like i should bring this up because sometimes people don't necessarily see the true intent i want to convey or deliver in a song or my other artistic works, and that's probably for the best. maybe there simply isn't a definitive answer as to what something would truly mean, especially for something so abstract.

people should be allowed to create their own meaning out of the feelings they get from something, though obviously it would be much more appreciated if subjects were handled with more nuance and maturity. people can find their own happiness in their own ways. it's a hard concept to fully grasp, but when you actually slow down and look around... you'll realize that, that minor form of self-expression is a very beautiful thing.

i wrote all that down because this song really just, reminded me about how a song as beautifully written as this one exists in our reality. i personally have never fully played through any pokemon game, so playing gold/ silver/ crystal is out of the question. gameplay just never clicked with me, sorry.

but the thing about this song... or , well, the heartgold/ soulsilver arrange of this song just reminded me of a lot of the beauty in life, despite my suffering.

it's hard for me to have a long-distance relationship, but i am just about as happy as my boyfriend is for us forming a meaningful bond together. his opinions may come off as wacky and kooky and he may be a bit absent-minded; but deep down, i know he really cares a lot about the things he talks about. i've told him many times how unbearable it was watching him squabble with other people about their own opinions, but i still love him regardless. there are times when we respectfully disagree on things so it isn't so grim as i've written it out to be.

i just wished that people would take video games as an art form much more seriously, and when i came to talk to him about it, he agrees with me but simply says he can't do a lot to help the situation; i very much understand that. sometimes we all just have different opinions on things and while that may warrant unwanted conflicts, that's entirely fine.

i like to imagine national park as like, a place that people regularly go to in this universe (no i do not know what part of the pokemon world this is). i like to believe that we'd see different kinds of people here, thus the arrangement reflecting that fact added up with the commentary. you'd never know what you'd learn from other people. the more i appreciate people's perspectives, maybe the more happier i am. like with my boyfriend.

[casscainmainly]

I think the recent Cass and Jason discussion is very interesting bc like, Jason or even steph in her first appearance take these actions of righteous, murderous (or near murderous) justice bc of the fact that not only have they've been abused, but they're also able to recognise that fact, and feel that despite everything, they didn't deserve to suffer like that (Jason with his murder, Steph with her childhood abuse)

Whereas Cass struggles for most of her series to recognise that she was abused and struggles to properly resent her abuser on the grounds that she didn't deserve it. She resents David for being a killer and making her love him, for making her a killer, but rarely for the actual abuse that came with her training. She eventually recognises it right before the end of pre-52 in batgirl 2008, but not after a long time, and she still tries to save David at the very end after contemplating letting him die.

she does grows to resent Bruce after some time, and confronts him, showing that she's slowly gaining higher expectations for how she should be treated after developing relationships outside the batfamily (coincidentally with Steph, someone who can relate over having a shitty dad, along with her love interests like Kon and Tai)- though Bruce, despite his multitudes of bad parenting moments never truly abuses cass like david did, so there's nuance, and after her fight with bruce, she still has trouble fully reckoning with her abuse (still calls david shooting her 'a game' in front of tim- she knows its wrong but still doesn't act upset about the fact it happened to her).

She kind of sees all the training she went through as a necessary evil in order to have the skills to be a hero- which is somewhat true, but I think it also contributes to her being unable to see herself, even partially, as a victim for large portions of her narrative.

She can understand abuse as something that molds you into a killer, she can't understand being abused and then choosing to be a killer bc of the righteous fury you have at what happened. In Cass' mind her abuse is synonymous with killing. That's the worst thing Cain ever did to her and the reason she ran away. She can't understand someone like Jason choosing it as a way to cope/deal with abuse.

I don't think this is necessarily a ground breaking thought but I think abuse is an interesting lense to look at both Jason and Cass' stories- pre52, Jason's story is about continuing a cycle of abuse. Criminals hurt him, he hurts criminals, and anyone who gets in his way of hurting the criminals, bc even tho he pursues justice, he also pursues retribution, which is hard to do justly. Between that and the whole zombie/living ghost thing, it's downright gothic. Whereas Cass' story is about breaking out of a cycle of abuse- nobody dies bc she let one person die and will never let it happen again. It's just an interesting way to view their differences I think. Good Cass and Jason posts recently!

I LOVE THIS!! I absolutely think abuse informs the way Jay and Cass see the world (and Steph - Steph, in many ways, is the median point between Jason and Cass).

It's the fundamental question that drives Jason and Cass apart. For Cass, her question is: how can I be the victim if I'm the villain? And for Jason, the question is more: how can I be the villain if I'm the victim?

I love this line: "Cass struggles for most of her series to recognise that she was abused and struggles to properly resent her abuser on the grounds that she didn't deserve it." This is doubly complicated by the genuine love David Cain had for her - that panel of them watching the stars kills me every time. This is another key difference between Jason and Cass' abuse (taking Jason's abuse to be his death) - Jason had no love for the Joker, but Cass did love David Cain.

It's why it's so easy for Jason to want to kill the Joker, and so hard for Cass to even be angry at her father. And your point here - "In Cass' mind her abuse is synonymous with killing" - is absolutely on point, because Jason's conception of abuse is the helplessness of being murdered. They are both acting in ways to prevent what abuse means in their minds: as Batgirl, Cass will never have to kill again, and as Red Hood, Jason will never have to be helpless in the face of murderers again.

Any rebuke of their moral codes feels like a denial of the abuse they suffered. It's why Cass can't allow others to kill, and why Jason can't accept Bruce's reasoning for not killing the Joker. It's why these versions of them could never get along. Argh there's been such good Cass and Jason commentary recently, they drive me insane!!!

[system-of-a-feather]

DID and Recovery

Honestly, I think something that I don't think I've seen talked about that I've only now really reflected upon and put into words myself, is just how much living DID - or at least DID with heavily elaborated parts and just a general complex / polyfragmented structure - is just how much of your life is Actually Just Internal and its not really something I've noticed until I've begun to operate in a fused manner and more grounded manner

Because growing up, I didn't really exist in the real world. I - in my many different parts and forms - occasionally existed in the real world, engaging in it like it's a job, a video game, a challenge, a maintence task, or what not. Even as a fused whole, I never really lived in this world. Every part of myself only "visited" and "checked in" whether they explicitly were aware that's what they were doing. I was just bouncing between 400 Visas and names. Living in this world never meant anything to me much more than either a place of pain, a place of work, a fun game, a challenge, a hobby, a task, etc.

My childhood was internal. Almost all of my parts, our childhood was internal. Our memories of our childhood relates to how it was internalized internally. Our traumatic memories of childhood relates to how it was recorded internally and the narrative we attributed to it. Our internal experience was more important than our external experience. Our family was not our family as much as our situational family that we existed around - our real family were the parts we were aware of during that time. Riku's siblings weren't their siblings. They were "our" siblings to which "our" didn't really exist. Lucille was Riku's adoptive sibling.

So much of our past and our history is so hard to understand if you try to talk about it in a manner that is grounded only to what was happening externally, because the experiences we had externally mean much much much less to us and how we were shaped than the internal experience. The external facts inform what was happening internally, but if I were to talk about my oldest sister's psychological abuse, it would mean a lot less than if I talked about the internal ramifications and depiction and understanding of it.

And so even now, as we've healed massively, we've really got at least 10 fully elaborated different versions and understandings of our lives. We've lived entirely different narratives and at the same time they are all me, but none of them were really here, in the real world, existing or caring about anything other than either our specific hobbies / interests and our "duties"

The past 8 years was all about us learning to really live and engage in our internal world more intentionally and mindfully and productively, learning one another and learning our overall history; the past 3-4 years has been largely us learning to figure out how to exist in a world we have never genuinely existed in. And I think our fiance played a large rule in helping us with the "culture shock" and keeping faith that we could one day kind of find our place in "this world" that doesn't feel like a fraudulent lie or a forced face.

I think its only been this past year or so since we've been in functional multiplicity, final fusion, and/or living as a fully fused multiple have we ever actually **LIVED** in this world.

And I find that it's kind of hard to explain my own life story to those that don't understand and/or can't fathom what it means to very much not live in "this world" but you know, that's okay. People don't necessarily need to fully understand it, because these days that depth of understanding isn't even really necessary. I think its just important that space is held, respected, and understood as I learn to navigate my life in the real present real world because honestly, I want to live here. I want to be here. I want to be present and exist in the world I HAVE to exist and learn to love it. I've spent most of my life visiting this world and doing maintenance so I could sustain my internal space, but honestly, I really would love to live in both. Find joy in both. Make the maintenance not "maintenance" but just part of living.

That's all just to say that living and existing in the world when your entire understanding of self and history is based on your internal world and experiences that you had in relation to that internal world that no one can really see or even properly fathom, it's all just an interesting, unique, and challenge experience that I don't see talked about much.

[magicwhiskers29]

“You don’t always have to be the Hero!”

“It doesn’t always need to be you!”

As I understand, this line has been thrown around a bit because, well, it’s just a really good line, for any situation it can fit for. It’s impactful, the voice work on the original is really good, and it summarises a lot of LMK season 5’s core themes really well! Heck, it probably summarises a lot of themes really well, but I think there’s something interesting to be found in the fact that it’s Macaque saying it, originally.

Let’s roll back a second to Shadow Play, s2e7, because I think that can really recontextualise it.

“The Hero and the Warrior were like the sun and moon, their light a protective glow, shining upon the world.”

“Together, there was nothing that could stop the two of them, in either the Celestial Realms, or on Earth.”

“As time went on, the Hero gained power beyond comprehension.”

“As his light grew, so too did his shadow, and soon, the Warrior was cast in that shadow.”

“In the darkness, the Warrior was forgotten by the Hero.”

…okay, so I’m pretty sure a good half of the fanbase already has this monologue memorised, but I digress. Because the loaded meaning behind the words “Hero” and “Warrior” are never forgotten by the show. If we cut ahead to Embrace Your Destiny, the s3 special, we get a direct reference to these titles in a practical setting.

“I’m not a Hero, bud.”

“Then be a Warrior!”

This is the moment which really kickstarts Macaque’s turn to start working with the Monkie Kids. He doesn’t work against them again, after this point! (As of season 5) MK tells him that to do good things, and save the world, he doesn’t have to be the Hero in limelight – he can be the Warrior, doing good from the shadows. And for as much as Macaque does take quite a prominent role in the fight after this, literally taking on Wukong 1v1, it’s still MK who ends up with the glory, in the end.

Macaque needed to hear this because he does these antagonistic things out of self-preservation, yes, but also out of a spite which he knows isn’t especially heroic. And because he doesn’t want to be the guy who leaves stuff behind. But after this, he doesn’t act as an antagonist again, and he does stuff which he really doesn’t want to do, like confronting his past with Wukong in the scroll, in the season 4 special! What MK says sticks with him.

And to get it out of the way, not every time the word “Hero” is used in the show is necessarily a reference to the Hero and Warrior. For instance, when Mei yells at a possessed Wukong and LBD in the season 3 special, she says “Because that’s the hard part of being a hero!”, but I don’t think she’s talking about the implications of limelight, or Wukong and Macaque’s story. I mean, she never even saw the play in Shadow Play, so she likely doesn’t even know the deeper meaning behind that word...

A lot of these other moments can carry interesting implications when examined through that lens (E.G. how Mei fits into the Hero-Warrior dynamic, or the nature of LBD’s “Save your hero speech, child” from the end of season 3) but I think those would better be left for a different analysis.

These two lines from season 5, at the beginning of this post, have a direct connection to the Hero-Warrior stuff though, because they're from the character who invented that metaphor, to the only other character who understands it. It’s like a coded message, I suppose.

Throughout a lot of Macaque’s screen time, especially in the earlier seasons, he preaches about self-preservation, specifically under the advice of “look out for number one”. He believes that people like him, and later MK, need to be the ones to look out for themselves, because otherwise, no one will. This is expanded upon to seem a little more heroic and noble in later seasons, to be similar to a sentiment that Wukong expresses about choosing your own destiny, and forging your own path. The core of the advice is still centred on trusting yourself, and prioritising your own beliefs, but it’s no longer about something that could be perceived as selfish, and more a tool to use for good.

Macaque is shown to want MK to look out for himself less selflessly. His advice in season 4 is this choosing your own destiny stuff, but it also mirrors the end of season 5 really well. He tells MK that the two choices of fighting Azure, or not fighting Azure don’t have to be the only choices. If MK goes to fight Azure as is, he will lose, and there is a good chance that he will die. Like, obviously Macaque doesn’t want the whole universe that he lives in to be destroyed, but he’s also not yet fighting for it, at this point. He does want MK to do what is most likely to save everyone, but the reason he pulled MK aside was to appeal to him to take care of himself.

Season 5 already mirrors and is a true continuation of season 4 in a lot of ways, with the main threat once again being the sky cracks that symbolise the end of the world due to the death of the Jade Emperor, but it’s thematically that we can really see that. Macaque even literally brings up that MK is misconstruing his advice from the previous season in the line right before the ones I’m supposed (haha, we're getting there) to be analysing.

Once again, MK has two choices, functionally: save the world at the cost of himself, or do nothing. Once again, Macaque is advocating for MK to make a third choice, one where the world can be saved without MK likely dying in the process, but MK had taken the whole “choose your own destiny thing” to be choosing the choice that only he can. Macaque’s biggest argument to this are these two lines. That MK doesn’t need to be the Hero, this time, or any time.

The Hero exists a public figure that people can rely on. He represents absolute power, as well as recklessness. In Macaque’s story, the Hero gains power, and then leaves his friend behind, so he’s strong, but doesn’t stop to think about consequences. Now, obviously Macaque is very biased in his story, because we know Wukong very clearly does still care about Macaque, but to what the story represents between MK and Macaque, that’s not necessarily important.

Macaque is just telling MK that he doesn’t need to be someone who’s the public picture of heroism. He has all of this power, but it’s his choice how to use it. Sometimes, it’s okay to take a backseat and be a Warrior, someone who can look out for themself, and who doesn’t always have to do everything themself. Once, the Hero and the Warrior were ultimate power together. The fact that the Hero became that by himself suggests that he still does the job he once did – he just doesn’t need to have anyone help him with it.

The Hero is supposed to be presented as a selfish figure, but that can also flip around to be someone who’s selfless, so selfless that they try to carry the weight of a good mission on their shoulders alone. The Hero’s sin was abandoning the Warrior, not unspeakable evil or something. And… Isn’t that sort of what MK is doing here? He’s trying to an act so selfless that it really could only be called heroic, but to the friends he’s leaving behind to make a sacrifice that’s really a not-so-subtly-disguised suicide allegory, it’s selfish. He abandons them all to fulfil his supposed destiny, but they don’t need him to sacrifice himself – they want to find another way with him.

If you want to look at it that way, MK is playing out the story again. Seems fitting, when later in the same episode, Wukong, the original Hero, tries to take his place and make the same sacrifice.

Macaque’s statement to MK is so loaded because of his history as the original Warrior, and what being a hero really means to him, and across the show with MK’s actions as a whole. He doesn’t need to always be the Hero – sometimes it’s okay to just be a Warrior. And it doesn’t always need to be him – just like the original Hero, there are people who would want to help him, if he just doesn’t leave them behind.

[paper-starz]

WELCOME HOME THEORY 2: The Theory Strikes Back

Good evening, gentlemen, gentleladies, and gentlethems,

Or Good night

Or even good morning,

Whenever you are, I humbly come to you all with another theory.

This time, its our favorite morally questionable sentient house, Home!

So strap in, buckle up, cause I have STUFF TO SAY.

THIS WILL BE VERY LONG AND IT WILL CONTAIN SPOILERS FOR THE UPDATE!!

Alright, so to begin, what the HECK is going on with Home?

They are one of the most mysterious characters in Welcome Home, we don't know much if not anything at all. And what we do know... wellllll......

Yeah definitely not menacing at all.....

The only thing that we do know of Home is well… ^ This and the fact that it and Wally are sentient.

Ok, let’s backtrack. HOMES SENTIENT???

Yep! While it was implied in the first update that it was aware of us, this handy-dandy audio clip confirms that Home (like Wally) is aware of “You” (Whoever this “You” person may be. Either literally us or the Question Answerer).

Now, what exactly Home is saying is still up for debate. Some say that it’s “Help Me” while others say it’s “Hello”. (It’s incredibly hard to know what’s exactly dots and dashes with Homes banging) but one thing is for sure, Home is communicating with us.

“AHHHH HOW SCARY! THE CREEPY DEMON HOUSE IS GONNA KILL US” D:

And that’s where you’re wrong, dear viewer. While Home is clearly morally dubious and incredibly suspicious, like Wally, I don’t think it’s necessarily evil.

Take for instance this link right here. It’s an honestly cute lil audio of Wally singing to Home. But while that is adorable, it’s the ending that I really wanna focus on.

Wally: …Do you like it? Home: *Creaks* (it’s Morse code again! Spells out IDO) Wally: Thats good… I think…

Ok why did I bring this old little clip up? Oh ya know… no reason… OTHER THAN THE FACT THAT WALLY CAN’T UNDERSTAND HOME ANYMORE!!!

Ok, I know whatcha thinkin’ “Why not anymore?”

Take a listen at another audio clip, this time it’s a secret one!!

The clip is about Barnaby and Home having a conversation with one another! But if you listen real closely… Home is not speaking in Morse code! It’s their own lil Home language, still consisting of creaks and bangs… yet Barnaby doesn’t seem to have any trouble understanding Home.

So how come Wally can’t understand Home and yet Barnaby can?

It’s because Wally’s sentient now. He’s getting more real. More human. Cartoon logic does not apply to Wally anymore! To us, Home is speaking in gibberish! Since it’s gibberish to us, then it’s gibberish to Wally!

And Home knows that, so it does the next best thing and tries using another language to hopefully communicate better. Now that I’m listening to the first audio clip again (so-below), it makes sense why Home is “speaking” slowly. It’s not used to communicating that way. It’s hard to tell their dots from their dashes, their bangs from their creaks, and it’s pauses are sometimes too long and too short at the same time! In a weird way, Home kinda has an accent when speaking in Morse code.

It’s kinda sweet just how hard Home is trying to communicate with Wally and us. Makes ya forget that Home has a weird portal and a flesh heart inside of them.

“WAIT WHAT?!?” (<- That’s you)

Yeah, remember when I said the more sentient something gets the more “real” they get?

Yeah, it’s also been happening with Home too. Go on any doodle audio file, and you can hear assumably Home’s heart beating away. You can hear it very clearly in this audio right here! I doubt the Playfellow Workshop made Home with a literal BEATING heart, but hey, Home is where the heart is I guess…

And now, the portal thing.

“Since when did Welcome Home ever had a portal??”

Oh since the very beginning actually!

First updated “portal” picture

Many people (including yours truly) theorized that this swirly spiral was a portal to the real world. It seems that we have more evidence to support this theory too!

First updated portal (shown left) and second updated portal (shown right)

Hey…. Wait a second…. Is it just me or it the portal getting…. Bigger?

The first update it was small, even the black goo wasn’t as bad… on the second picture, the spiral is INCREDIBLY large, and now the goo is coating the trees.

Well, isn’t that ominous.

"But wait. If Home has a portal... where is this portal even going?"

Both portals have the same black goo surrounding it, the same white eye in the center and the same swirl.

It's going to the Restoration team. And look at where the portal is placed. It's on the ceiling. "As above"

and the one in Welcome Home is "So below"

So perhaps the portal in Home is on the floor... This CANNOT be a coincidence I swear!!

With weird goo covering everything. And like, thats not all!

If you compare the items that the Restoration team uploaded onto the site in the first update and on the second update, you'll notice that the items have grown significantly larger.

At first, it was just envelopes with paper crammed inside of it. As if the person was trying to cram in as much information as possible. It isn't neat.

About us page: All of the paper materials tucked away inside the envelopes we have received are usually crammed together and covered in paint and ink.

Now, in the second update, the items have grown larger.

These items are much larger than mail, and I believe it also has something to do with how much bigger the portal has gotten.

Pretty soon, we might have full-grown puppets jumping in. But now that begs the question... Why is Home doing this?

Well, I think it's because Home really wants to help Wally.

As you inspect the website, there's a bunch of evidence that Wally is growing increasingly desperate for some other kind of sentient connection. It's been growing so much that it starts to get worrying...

Let's go back to the conversation between Home and Barnaby, notice anything weird? Not really? Well, I noticed that every bug audio file was in the perspective of Wally. Here, Wally is just staring at his half-finished painting, even Barnaby comments on this and finds it odd that Wally stopped painting.

It looks to me that Wally was dissociating. There, but not really there. He's been disconnected from reality because it feels unreal to him.

And Home sees that. As soon as the conversation turns to Wally, Home goes dead silent. When Wally still does not respond, Home releases a series of quick creaks and bangs to try and get Wally's attention. It doesn't work. Once Barnaby says Wally's name, it snaps him out of his dissociative state.

And Home is worried about Wally.

It gives a whole new look to the infamous "so-below" image.

Home isn't looking at Wally, it's looking straight at us. Eyes shaking as Wally seems like he's begging. Home doesn't look malicious here, Home looks like it's begging us to do something to calm Wally down because it physically can't anymore.

Home and Wally don't have a lot, if not any facial expressions at all. And shaky eyes in cartoons are a good indicator that someone is scared.

And if Home (in this link) is saying "Help Me", then no wonder! Heck, even the freaking disk is shaking!

Home is reaching out to us for help because it can't comfort Wally anymore and I don't know about you but that is SAD.

Two puppets that recently gained sentience can't even get the comfort out of each other because they can't communicate anymore :(

So, all Home can do is wait and watch Wally.

And if help won't come to you, well, having a handy-dandy portal is very helpful!

You can go to the help instead.

[ladyluscinia]

What Exactly Did David Jenkins Say?

Look, I'm still staunchly of the opinion that Word of God statements and creator interviews are overvalued in fandom, especially when they get pulled out mostly as gotchas without then continuing to analyze whether or not the show canon is successful at getting across that same message. Death of the Author is good, actually, and we should remember that. But they are worth looking at in the context of evaluating intent vs execution, and for future speculation - just, like, please with less of the whole mile high pedestal idolizing and backlash cycles.

But if overvalued "Word of God" is annoying, then overvalued "supposed creator statements that have gone through three rounds of telephone and any given blogger has only heard about a quarter of them, which they'll use confidently anyway" is worse. So, since I'd already looked up interviews for various reasons...

Here is a fairly comprehensive list of interviews David Jenkins has given and statements he's made during them, presented without commentary (save curating which statements get highlighted). All provided with links. I definitely missed some, so if you have any that you want to add, please do - though if you could trim off any commentary and save it for tags / your own post with a link that would be cool.

Also, again, just because he said it doesn't make it incontrovertible canon that only a blind person wouldn't understand. Some of these even arguably contradict each other. The creator's intent doesn't always translate to what the show is doing, nor do you even have to think it was a good idea.

(Listed in chronological order from oldest to newest - post contains spoilers below the cut)

Pre-S1

Gizmodo - Feb 22, 2022 - with Cheryl Eddy (io9) - Link

Why this story - Really, it was the enigma of Stede that drew him in. "I think actual pirate stuff is fine, but it's not necessarily my cup of tea. And I think Taika [Waititi] felt similarly. But hearing about this guy and reading about him and seeing that, you know, he left his family, then he met Blackbeard, they hit it off, and we don't know any of the details in between. So filling those blanks in, and having a very human story, and then being able to do it with the pirate genre, that was like, 'Oh, this would be cool.'"

Post 1x01 - 1x03

Polygon - March 5, 2022 - with Tasha Robinson - Link

David Jenkins, Taika Waititi, and Rhys Darby interview

About Stede running off to sea - "Stede thought he could outrun his baggage, and you can't outrun your baggage."

About S1 - "I don't think there was enough improv on set! We had an insane schedule, with a huge amount of plot. We were budgeted and designed as a one-hour show, but with a half-hour production schedule, which means we really had to chase these episodes to get them shot. And then there are certain emotional beats that we really needed. So trying to find places to find the fun was hard."

Mashable - Mar 5, 2022 - with Belen Edwards - Link

About the show concept - "It was Jenkins' wife who first told him about Stede's adventures; she thought it would make a good TV show."

On casting Rhys Darby - "Stede did a terrible thing to his family. If you cast it wrong, he's a very hard character to get behind," Jenkins said. "Very quickly, the only person I thought of for this was Rhys [Darby]. He has this childlike quality that's endearing."

About the story - "Seeing them discover a need for each other that neither anticipated and charting how that relationship goes is the meat of the story." + "If you're on this ship, you're running from something, and you're running to something that you can't be on land"

Mentions of matelotage - "In fact, one of Jenkins's favorite pirate facts that he learned while working on Our Flag Means Death was the term matelotage, which was a civil union between same-sex pirates. "The more you look at it," he explained, "the more you write to the fact that this is a queer-positive world.""

Discussing piracy careers - "Something else that astounded Jenkins about pirates was "just how fast it all moved — their lives were quite short," he said. "Your career [in piracy] wasn't very long.""

Post 1x09 - 1x10

Decider - Mar 24, 2022 - with Kayla Cobb - Link

David Jenkins, Taika Waititi, and Rhys Darby interview

Pitch for the show - "That was in the pitch," series creator David Jenkins told Decider. "That was the reason, to make them fall in love with each other."

About the romance - "The main thing to me was to side-step coming out," Jenkins continued. "I just want a romance. I want a Titanic romance between these two people. We don't have to do the coming out story and then the non-binary story for Jim [Vico Ortiz]."

About S2 and the show - "The show is the relationship," Jenkins said. "So, we end in a place where there is this breakup. What happens after a breakup between these two people who, one’s realized he's in love and the other one is hurt in a way that he's never been hurt before? What does that do to each of them in an action, pirate world with them trying to find each other again? So again, I really love those rom-com beats."

Collider - Mar 24, 2022 - with Carly Lane - Link

On making it a romcom - "It's the only reason to make the show. If you didn't do that, it would just be weird. I mean, you're using the rom-com beats. You're using these like they're together. And it's funny because so we're so habituated to be like bromance, bromance, bromance, and it's such a simple move to put them together."

Discusses focusing on romance - "I guess I really... I get kind of bored. How much pirate can you do? They're going to rob stuff. They're going to steal ships. There's only so many pirate stories you can do. So if you're going to do a workplace story, I mean, you're essentially having this... You'd have this same amount of relationships in Grey's Anatomy in the ER. So it's standard. It's the most standard. We're making a soap opera on a pirate ship, and to use those soap opera beats... I like it, and I like the flavor in a comedy when you have something that's played genuinely up against very ridiculous things."

Discusses history and kissing scene

Discusses importance of going home to Mary - "Yeah, that was the problem for me in the story. I knew that I wanted to have the end where he goes home, because you need to give Mary her day in court. I just wanted to know from Mary's perspective what happened and then to see that, yeah, they're friends."

Is Lucius dead? - "You got to wait."

EW.com - Mar 25, 2022 - with Devan Coggan - Link

David Jenkins, Taika Waititi, and Rhys Darby interview

Pitch for the show - "To me, [Stede and Blackbeard's relationship] is the reason to make the show," Jenkins explains. "When Taika and I were first talking about it, he was like, 'Oh yeah, that's the show.' I first started reading about Stede and how he befriended Blackbeard and we don't know why. Very quickly, it was like, 'Oh, it's a romance.'"

Polygon - Mar 25, 2022 - with Tasha Robinson - Link

Discusses 3-season intent - "I think three seasons is good. I think we could do it in three."

Discusses acts within S1 - "To me, when you see him get stabbed, and the blood runs through his fingers, it’s like 'Oh, no, the clown got stabbed! And not comedy-stabbed, he got stabbed stabbed!' That to me is cool. And then having Blackbeard find him as the end of what would be the first act of our story felt good to me."

Discusses kiss scene filming and the national moment around gay rights

What to focus on a rewatch - "I think Con O'Neill does such a great job. He's such a complex character, and it's such a tortured relationship. And that's a love story too, between him and Blackbeard. It's a very dysfunctional story, but it's fun to watch. Watch that maybe, on a rewatch, looking where their relationship ultimately goes."

TV Insider - Mar 25, 2022 - with Meaghan Darwish - Link

Discusses show pitch - "When I was pitching [the show] to people, I'd be like, 'Okay, so it's about Stede and Blackbeard, and then they hit it off and then they fall in love.' And then people are like, 'Okay, cool,' Jenkins shares. "And then they really fall in love, and become intimately involved."

Discusses historical inspiration

Discusses S2 direction - "But when [Stede] goes to find [Blackbeard], he's gone and his crew's been abandoned. And so watching them try to negotiate that, that's a good rom-com beat," he adds.

The Verge - Apr 15, 2022 - with Charles Pulliam-Moore - Link

Discusses being surprised by queerbaiting legacy - "...part of me knew that, yes, Stede and Ed's romance was going to be real. But one part of me felt like, 'We're going to do this story, and they're going to kiss, and maybe that's not even going to be that big a deal. Maybe it'll just be a blip.'"

Discusses writing romance - "I'd never written a romance before this one, but I think with Ed and Stede, the question's always 'what's the need for each other?'"

Discusses falling in love and Stede's accidental seduction - "It made sense to have that love be almost like a teenage version of falling in love — one with all these intense and conflicting feelings. They're middle-aged, but Stede's young. Ed's young. Emotionally, they're like 16, and they've both got a lot to learn."

Discusses Con O'Neill as Izzy - "He plays an exhausted quality that's really lovely because this character could just be generically evil, and the way Con plays, it is like, he's credible. I believe that he can do some damage if he wanted to. My favorite thing I've seen about the show is somebody saying that Con's playing the only human with a bunch of Muppets. It does feel like that a bit where he's like Charles Grodin in The Great Muppet Caper."

On Izzy being in love with Blackbeard - "I think Izzy's deeply in love with Blackbeard, and it's a very dysfunctional kind of love, and he's like the jilted spouse who's losing his man to fucking Stede Bonnet, and he can't believe this is happening."

Discusses masculinity and piracy as an escape from that

Discusses diversity and trauma based stories - "And the consensus in that very diverse room was that we wanted to show that isn't just wallowing in trauma. We don't have to do a coming out scene or focusing on the trauma of it — not to say that those stories aren’t valid."

Gizmodo - Jun 20, 2022 - with Linda Codega (io9) - Link

Musing on fandom response to the show - "I'm wondering if the fact that because the queerness of this show isn't gaslighting the audience, and isn't a function of wanting to do something, but not being able to produce the results because of network standards. I think we just happened to be in this lucky spot where the show is actually queer… and I do think that people are responding to that."

Comparing fanfiction to writing - "And Con O'Neill's audition was one of those things I would go back to. I would watch that and be like… Oh, right, that's the show. And in a way, you're writing fanfiction for a certain actor and character because you want them to do something, and you're like–" at this point, it must be said, Jenkins let out a maniacal little giggle. He’s just as thrilled to show off Con O'Neill's ability to seem both deeply exhausted and menacing as the rest of the fandom. "And you [as the writer] you're like… And then Izzy does this now."

EW.com - Dec 13, 2022 - with Devan Coggan - Link

Discusses The Chain sequence - "I had initially wanted that end sequence to be like the FBI raid in a mob movie, where the feds come in, and they've got boxes of stuff, and everyone's running, and someone makes a dash for it," Jenkins explains. "So, it's like a mob movie or FBI raid story, and then it's also a story of Stede's lover coming back."

Pre-S2

Collider - Oct 2, 2023 - with Carly Lane - Link

Discusses fan reaction to S1 - "I thought that they'd kiss, and people would be like, 'Oh, cool, cool!' I kind of thought people would know a little bit more [about] where we were going, but then in hindsight, no, people have been hurt and burned on so many other shows and then made to feel silly."

Discusses starting S2 dark - "One of these characters is very, very damaged and has never made himself vulnerable in this way before, and I don't think [he] would react very well to having his heart broken in this way. I don't think it would be cute, and I don't think it would be funny. I think it would be scary as hell to watch a very damaged guy that we've established in Ed, who killed his dad and thinks he's not capable of being loved, deal with rejection and see that Stede really hurt him."

Discusses adding more female characters

Discusses S2 needle drops including "This Woman's Work"

Discusses 3-season arc

Post 2x01 - 2x03

Mashable - Oct 5, 2023 - with Belen Edwards - Link

Discusses fandom response to S1

About the canon gay relationship - "To watch the explosion of enthusiasm around [the kiss] was disorienting, almost," Jenkins said. "I thought people would react to it, but I didn't think the reaction would be that big. And then it was moving, because I didn't realize that this audience felt so unserved in general, as far as storylines go."

Insider - Oct 5, 2023 - with Ayomikun Adekaiyero - Link

Tease on leaning into the Stede / Ed / Izzy love triangle - "I think Izzy, in a certain way, got the worst deal in the first season," the showrunner tells Insider. "He gets jilted and then he still is in spurned spouse territory at the beginning of the second season."

Discusses Izzy's arc - "What is that relationship about? And I think by the end of the season it kind of becomes a little unexpected of who they are to each other and what they mean to each other," he teases

Discusses addition of Zheng - "He likens Zheng's way of pirating to a successful tech startup, compared with the garage sale vibe Stede had going on the Revenge."

Discusses introducing Hornigold - "I thought Hornigold was the most obvious because he was the person who made Blackbeard what he is. And Blackbeard has a father complex, so it's natural that he's going to bring his former captain back," the show creator said. "It's a struggle with him because he and dad figures don't historically do well."

Discusses importance of the mermaid scene

Inverse - Oct 5, 2023 - with Hoai-Tran Bui - Link

Reveals he didn't commit to the romance until shooting 1x06 - "Jenkins always intended his pirate comedy to end with a romance, but he'd envisioned it as an unrequited love. "It was going to be about Stede learning what love is, and Ed making himself vulnerable and getting burned," Jenkins says of his original pitch. But Darby and Waititi's choices in the scene, which they played without diffusing the tenderness with a joke, made him wonder if they could take the show in a new direction."

Discusses mermaid Stede idea from S1 - "We talked about Stede as a mermaid very early on in the writers' room," Jenkins says. "At some point, yeah, I want to see Rhys Darby as a merman." + "They wanted us to come up with a Season 2 pitch during Season 1. And that was one of the ideas we hit on, and I can't quite remember how we got there, but it was us asking, what is a pirate world? Are there mermaids? Is there magic in this show? With pirate stuff, I don’t know that I want there to be magic, but there was a way where it was something really beautiful about a mer-person, and I like the idea that their coming together would have a mythic size to it."

Discusses historical divergence

Discusses matelotage and pirates as weird outsiders

TV Guide - Oct 5, 2023 - with Allison Piccuro - Link

About the shipping culture - "It's the meat of the show, so it's great to have people bought into the central romance. If it were a bromance that we were trying to make look like a romance, that would suck."

Discusses playlists he makes

Discusses opening dream sequence - "I just like that it started with something badass. Stede, Blackbeard, and Izzy are on an arc together. Whether they're in stories together or not, their ultimate arc is together. I think, by the end of this season, the last episode, that first scene will be gratifying. I won't say why, but their fates are tied together."

Discusses Kraken arc - "But I think the thing that's good about this show is that it can go to really sweet comedy land, but I want there to be, like, if someone loses a body part, for instance, they lose a body part. To do justice to the fact that this guy is a killer and a monster, and dealing with heartache that he doesn't know how to deal with, I think you really need to go there."

Discusses Izzy in S2 - "I mean, he's jilted. He had a partnership with Blackbeard, and he knows he can't live up to this person that Blackbeard fell in love with... Who is that guy? What are his hobbies? What does it look like when he's not totally subsumed with his boss's love affair with somebody, and heartbroken?"

On S2 reunion - "The second season is them being a little bit more mature... It's the thing where you're in your 20s or 30s and you're like, "Well, should we move in together?" They have to make up some time because neither of them have been in a functional relationship before."

About genre of pirate stories - "...is a show about multiple relationships. That's what I want to see when I see this show. I don't want to see a bunch of pirate things that I've seen in other things, I'll just go watch another thing if I want to see that. That's not really my thing. I like the genre, but it's a very hard genre to budge. I want to see relationships in a pirate world."

Discusses the A Star is Born aspect of seeking fame / retiring

Mashable - Oct 7, 2023 - with Belen Edwards - Link

About the mermaid scene - "You need something expressive for when they come back together," Jenkins said. "Their reunion moment has to feel big and mythical. This is not a world where mermaids actually exist, but their love for each other has that size that you can get [a mermaid] in there somewhere."

About Kate Bush - "I love Kate Bush, and I love that song, and I know Taika loves that song," Jenkins explained of the choice. "So I wanted to find a place for that song somewhere in the second season."

Polygon - Oct 9, 2023 - with Tasha Robinson & more - Link

Compares S2 and "Golden Age of Piracy" stuff to Westerns, lists 5 he was thinking of - "Every Western that’s good is that story," Jenkins says. "'This way of life we made is coming to an end. It can't last. It's a blip in time. We created this thing because we need it to exist. We're outlaws, and we need a culture that suits us, but it's running out of time.'"

Gizmodo - Oct 9, 2023 - with Linda Codega (io9) - Link

Short tease on leaning into the love triangle

About Stede, Edward, and Izzy - "I think the three of them are on an arc together that's pretty inseparable," Jenkins said in an interview with io9. "And to watch Izzy try to process what's happened [in season one]… to watch him kind of grow and figure out what's his own story, if he can separate himself from this kind of toxic relationship, is interesting to me and I think gives him a lot of room for growth."

Post 2x04 - 2x05

IndieWire - Oct 12, 2023 - with Sarah Shachat - Link

Discusses directing and show creation

"The limitations of the show also naturally push it back towards moments with the ensemble and plot problems that it would frankly be irresponsible to tackle if you had a giant budget and a fully working ship-of-the-line to sail and then blow to bits. "That's the fun of the show to us, I think. If you open this up and you're like, unlimited budget, that would be terrible because I think you can get seduced," Jenkins said. "[It could be like,] 'Oh man, it's all leading up to a climatic battle on the sea.' And those things are great. But that’s not this show.""

"The nice thing about that, though, is you get to be the lo-fi show that’s like, 'Hey, we’re making The Muppets.'"

PopSugar - Oct 12, 2023 - with Victoria Edel - Link

About S2 Stede - "I like the idea that he learns and grows and he doesn't just stay a bumbling captain. He might be ridiculous, but he is getting better at it."

Discusses genre challenges - "How do you have a show that's a romance show but it's also a workplace show and they're criminals?"

Discusses Edward's redemption - "But Blackbeard still has to come back and apologize and be part of the community again, and give his little press conference. It was fun for us to look at that in the context of piracy, where they all do terrible things to each other. But even by their standards, what Blackbeard did was a bit much."

Discusses Izzy in S2 - "When Izzy shoots Blackbeard and they all mutiny on him, that's Izzy breaking up with Blackbeard. And they're both having their own journey in the wake of it, and Izzy's having his own redemption arc. He's trying to figure out, "Who am I if I'm not Blackbeard's first mate? Who am I outside of this relationship?"" + "If Stede's Spongebob, he's Squidward. I don't know what that makes Blackbeard. But there's a real pathos to Squidward."

Discusses trauma-based narratives - "As a diverse room in terms of sexuality, socio-economic background, and race, we thought, "Wouldn't it be nice to have a non-trauma-based story for these characters who don't get that historically?""

Variety - Oct 13, 2023 - with Hunter Ingram - Link

Discusses three act structure and making Stede work for a relationship - "The way I like to look at a season is in threes. The end of the first act is when they find each other, and this is the beginning of the second act. They've found each other, but they are pissed. Stede thought it was going to be [Kate Bush's] “This Woman's Work,” but, in reality, it is this headbutt –– literally."

Discusses the central romance - "It was always part of the pitch... that is the reason to make the show. The pirate genre is fun, but I wasn’t dying to make a pirate show. Taika wasn’t dying to make a pirate show. But the thing that was interesting to me was that Stede finds love, and he finds it with Blackbeard."

Discusses 2x04 plot - "This episode is based on a very, very thumbnail sketch of "Who's Afraid of Virginia Woolf?." Anne and Mary are Martha and George, and they are Elizabeth Taylor and Richard Burton."

Discusses adding historical pirates

Discusses Buttons exit - "I just love the idea of him turning into a bird: I love the idea of Buttons somehow being the one character that is able to figure that out."

Discusses Izzy and the crew's trauma plot - "We liked the idea that there is something about trauma and getting past that trauma, even on a pirate ship. They have been through two very different ways of living and they have to get used to each other again. But it's also a family that was separated, and becoming one family again is painful."

Discusses bringing characters back - "We could bring Calico Jack back, who, if you remember, was hit by a cannonball last season. Anyone who is that fun to play with and wants to keep playing, you always find a way to bring them back."

Polygon - Oct 14, 2023 - with Tasha Robinson - Link

Discusses 3-season arc and how keeping them apart with some plot device was never in the cards - "at the end of the first season, they're 14-year-olds, emotionally. In this season, it's more like they’re in their late 20s."

Discussing New Zealand production and ensemble cast writing - "It's pretty organic, because as we're going through and tracking everybody's journey for the season, we're watching the thing that holds us together — what stage of Stede and Blackbeard's relationship are we in? Because the overarching arc is, are these guys going to learn how to settle into a relationship?"

"The second season is more overtly about romance, and more a relationship story."

Energizing aspect of fan reaction

S3 is about "love is work"

Gizmodo - Oct 16, 2023 - with Linda Codega (io9) - Link

About the story - "I want to see them become a functional couple or fail to become a functional couple," Jenkins said. "Those are the most interesting parts of the show."

Discusses fandom engagement - "...ultimately the writers are also "the fans in the room." He goes on to say that, "We're fans of the world. We're writing fanfic about our own characters, our own worlds… It's paid fanfic, but it's fanfic." He gives another example: "If you're writing a season of Succession, you're writing fanfic Succession. You're just getting paid to do it. We, as writers–" it's clear that he's not just talking about the writers in the writers room, "become fans of the world and we all have things we want to see these characters do. What we do is not that different."

Discusses the A Star is Born aspect of seeking fame / retiring

Discusses Zheng Yi Sao

Villains of the series - There are a lot of new villains this season, but, Jenkins says, ultimately, "the antagonist on this show is normalcy… These pirates have a way of life that they're not finding in normal life. They've found a way to live and support each other and be there for each other. And that's always threatened by these larger, tyrannical forces that want to shut them down."

Post 2x06 - 2x07

Mashable - Oct 19, 2023 - with Belen Edwards - Link

Discussing drag performance in 2x06

"It is nice to see with Izzy's arc, where he finally breaks through whatever he's been doing to himself. He lets himself have that moment, which I just love. It resonates for Izzy, and I think it resonates for Con. Just personally, it made me feel good to see how it turned out."

Consequence - Oct 19, 2023 - with Liz Shannon Miller - Link

Discusses intent for romance - "...telling a love story in a serialized medium like television has its perils, largely because it's tough to know how much you can draw out any unresolved tension. "I think we take it episode by episode and we try to not piss people off in taking too long and doing double beats and triple beats," Jenkins says. "You can only do Will They or Won’t They for so long. Then you have to deepen it.""

Discusses pirate setting - "The emphasis on relationships also fits into the show's high-seas setting, which Jenkins finds similar to post-apocalyptic narratives. "It is a little bit like you're doing Mad Max, except there's relationships," he says. "Stuff's shitty, so you gotta try to find some joy. Of course, people are going to have a need for each other in these extreme circumstances, and I like the idea of these characters finding some level of a healthy relationship in these extreme circumstances.""

Discusses Jim x Archie

Discusses 3-season arc

Polygon - Oct 21, 2023 - with Tasha Robinson - Link

Discussing gender and power dynamics in Jackie x Swede / Zheng x Oluwande / Blackbeard x Stede + A Star is Born aspect

Jim not being jealous of Oluwande - "I think that relationship was always seen in the room as a friend relationship that got romantic."

About adding a villain - "I think a lot of the internal forces in Our Flag are the villains." + "I think this is a story about the age of piracy coming to an end. This way of life is coming to an end. And every Western that's good is that story: This way of life we made is coming to an end, and it can't last. […] I think every story about outlaws is about trying to preserve a way of life against normative forces that are kind of fascistic."

Historical accuracy - "The balance of the show is 90% ignoring history, and then 10%, bring it in, whenever we're like, Ah, gotta move the story forward! Remember, the English are out there, and they're really bad!"

Post 2x08

AV Club - Oct 26, 2023 - with Saloni Gajjar - Link

Killing Izzy was always the plan - "We wanted to show the depth of that character. Izzy is one of my favorites. He's like middle management who is in a sort of love triangle [in season one]."

Discusses how they really wanted the happy ending for S2 - "I think with season one's end, it was a gamble to leave it the way it was. Everybody stomached through it. Now if it turned out they didn't want us to make more, I just didn't want to have another story where the same-sex love story ends in tragedy, unrequited love, or if one or both of them are being punished."

Discusses S2 progressing the 3-season romance - "They’re a couple who is like in their late twenties right now as opposed to being teens at the end of season one." + "It was an interesting tension of, which one gives up their dream? A lot of times in relationships questions can come up, like who is going to give up on their dream to take care of the kids? Obviously, no one wants to, but someone ends up giving up more than they want to at some point. What's wonderful about a mature romance, and what I'd want to see more of in season three, is Ed and Stede making these tough decisions." + progressing past the getting together point

Discusses parallels, Republic of Pirates, and Zheng Yi Sao

Short bit about fan response

Collider - Oct 26, 2023 - with Carly Lane - Link

Discusses Ed leaving fishing - "I like that he had a little prima donna moment where he thought he could go and be a simple man, and then it's revealed that he really isn't a simple man; he's a complicated, fussy, moody guy. No, he's not gonna be able to catch fish for a living. For him to be told that, "At your heart, you're a pirate. You have to go back and do it," he doesn't want that to be true, but it was true."

Discusses Izzy's speech to Ricky - "I wanted to give Izzy a proper eulogy for himself. He gives a eulogy for himself, but it felt true writing it."

Discusses Izzy's death scene - "In a way, it's very much for Ed, that speech. The "we were Blackbeard" is claiming that he is also Blackbeard, that Blackbeard is not just Ed’s creation, and I like that for him, too, because he's worked so hard for that — and then just to say, "You can give it up." There can never be a Blackbeard again as far as Izzy's concerned because he's dying, and they did that together."

Discusses Republic of Pirates / music parallels from premier to finale

Discusses finale wedding - "We knew we wanted a matelotage in the season, which is the real term they had for marrying crew members. And yeah, they've always been in relief to Stede and Ed, and they're a little bit ahead of Stede and Ed in how much they can talk about things. So to have a bunch of family things in the season, like a funeral and a wedding, and have the parents kind of watch the kids sail away, felt right, and all of those things seem to work well together and build on each other."

Discusses retirement ending - "That will-they-or-won't-they is interesting to a point, but the real meat of it is always like, "Can they make the relationship, and can they do better than Anne and Mary?""

"Frenchie's in charge of the Revenge" + teases Stede struggling to give it up

EW.com - Oct 26, 2023 - with Devan Coggan - Link

Discusses Izzy's death and telling Con - "It feels like the logical end of Izzy's arc. It's heartbreaking to me because he's my favorite." + "I told him in the middle of shooting because I didn't want him to find out at the table read, obviously. I also didn't want it to leak. He was lovely about it."

Discusses Izzy's final arc - "You know, I didn't expect him to become kind of a father figure to Ed. I think we hit on that while we were breaking the [final] episode. He's in such a weird position: He's like a jilted lover, and then he's a middle manager who has to work for a terrible boss. He gets thrown away, and then he comes back. He really develops, and he becomes a part of this family. I think the biggest surprise was the extent that he was a mentor to Ed. They were both Blackbeard. They both made Blackbeard happen."

Discusses the happy ending intent - "With this season starting so dark, I kind of wanted to reward them for the work that they've done and the character growth that they've had. I wanted to leave them in a place where they're really going to try and make this work. I don't think it's going to be easy for them, necessarily. They're both still immature."

Discusses the wedding - "We knew we wanted a matelotage in the second season, and pretty quickly we landed on Lucius and Black Pete. It seems like they were ready for that. We made up a ceremony and everything, where they call each other mateys, and it was just fun to make our own version of a pirate wedding ceremony."

Discusses potential S3 and Frenchie's Revenge - "But it felt like a good place to end the second season. It felt like a contrast to the first season. If it turns out we don't make any more, I'm comfortable with that being a resting place."

Variety - Oct 26, 2023 - with Hunter Ingram - Link

S3 endpoint - "I love things in threes," he says. "That first act, second act, third act structure is so satisfying when it is done well, and you don't overstay your welcome. I think this world of the show is a big world, and if the third season is successful, we could go on in a different way. But I think for the story of Stede and Ed, that is a three-season story."

Discusses the draw of a "Golden Age" and it's ending

Talks about father figure Izzy and wanting a real sense of loss - "There is a nice parallel to have Ed treat him so badly at the beginning of the season and then come all the way around to where Izzy is this sort of father figure he doesn’t want to lose — because Ed usually kills his father figures."

Gizmodo - Oct 26, 2023 - with Linda Codega (io9) - Link

Teasing future Izzy - "Jenkins looked slightly sad himself, saying that "Ghosts exist in this world." I told him not to make promises he couldn't keep."

"Jenkins said that he doesn't see Izzy as a pure antagonist in season one because on some level… Izzy was right in his hesitations about Stede."

Discussing Con O'Neill & Rhys Darby acting

Jenkins confirms the season was always 8 episodes due to budget cuts

About S2 finale vs S3 - "The first season ends on such a downer, so it made sense to end the second season in a kinder spot." + "I think there's plenty of story left for season three, but I think that it was important to end this as if it was the end of the show, and on upbeat note and avoid the kind of "kill your gays" trope. I don't want to see Stede and Ed punished for giving it a go. I want to see them really say, 'yeah, we’re going to we're going to try to have a relationship'."

Teases S3 revenge against Ricky and going to the Americas

Vanity Fair - Oct 26, 2023 - with Sarah Catherall - Link

About the ending - "It's bittersweet. There's death and there's the rebirth of Stede and Blackbeard's relationship; there's a funeral, there's a wedding, and the idea that this family is going to keep fighting even as they lose members. And then it's about belonging to something." + "A lot of times, with this narrative of characters, same-sex relationships end on a dour, downbeat note, where one of them dies and it's unrequited or it's unrealized; something horrible happens and they're punished in a way. So it was important to leave it open and a lot more show to go, but also leave it in a place where it's happy."

Discusses Izzy as a mentor / father figure - "We felt like Izzy's story had reached its conclusion, where we put him through enough. And then there was the realization that he is kind of a mentor to Blackbeard and that he is kind of a father figure to Blackbeard." + "And it's also a pirate show, so he's got to die."

Discusses filming challenges - "It's a big show; it's basically a one-hour show that we're doing on a half-hour budget."

Discusses adding Zheng Yi Sao

Is the show a queer romance? - "For this show, it's important to me just to write a really bold-bodied romantic show that happens to be between two characters of the same sex. I think that the story beats don't matter, because if you've been in love and you've been hurt and you met someone you love—hopefully we all know what those feelings are."

Blackbeard's arc in S2 - "...the second season is about Blackbeard's midlife crisis. And then when they both have their midlife crises, they can open a B&B together." + "I don't think Stede and Blackbeard are ready to be married. They're emotionally saying: 'Let's give this a go.'"

Discusses historical piracy as "counterculture" that's been straightwashed and whitewashed

Did he feel responsibility to the fan community? - "As opposed to responsibility, it feels more like relief—that people feel seen and they feel good about it and they liked what we did. And so it feels like, Okay, somebody's out there and wants the show. The makeup of the writers room looks a lot like the makeup of the fan base. So as long as we're true to our stories in the writers room, I think we just feel excited that there's somebody waiting on the other end to enjoy it."

Paste Magazine - Oct 26, 2023 - with Tara Bennett - Link

Discusses whether fandom expectations felt weighty - "I think particularly for this season, that "bury your gays" thing… I didn't want to end on a downbeat for Ed and Stede. We did that in the first season. I like that there's a lot of different flavors. It's even a little melancholy because the Republic of Pirates got blown up. But there's still more good things."

Discusses production and plotting - "I wanted to start at the Republic of Pirates this season and end at the Republic of Pirates. And I knew I wanted the Republic of Pirates to be destroyed, ultimately. Within that, we are making a one-hour show on a half hour budget, on a half hour schedule."

Discusses planning the ending - "In terms of ending this season, it all felt right just in talking through it when we were in the room. It felt pretty intuitive. When you get to the third act of the story, things kind of settle in. There's gonna be a funeral. We always knew we wanted a wedding at the end of the second season. And I knew that I wanted Stede and Ed to start an inn together. So once you have those beats, it's kind of locked in."

Discusses Izzy's arc - "It's kind of a strange arc in that I knew we were going to put him through all these things, and I knew he would ultimately die. But I think him becoming a father figure to Ed in the last episode didn't really dawn on us until we were breaking the last episode. Asking what would this man say to Ed at the end because they've been together through everything? He went from a troubled and downtrodden employee to a jilted lover to a discarded employee, to someone that is just trying to find his footing again—no pun intended—to actually becoming this guy's parental figure on some level. And he's one person who kind of raised Ed right, because Blackbeard usually kills his parental figures. So, it felt right and it felt like that's how the mentor dies. The mentor in a story usually dies in the second act and then our hero has to go on and try to do it without them. It felt like the right journey for Izzy and a gratifying one for Con."

On leaving open for S3 - "I don't think it was a very hard thing to do. I think it was more that I felt a responsibility to leave Ed and Stede in a good place, at least for now. It's not gonna go well. They're not going to run a business well. Ed's too much of a talker. Stede can't focus. It's gonna be challenging."

Vulture - Oct 28, 2023 - with Sophie Brookover - Link

Discussing Izzy as a "father figure" and his S2 send-off being a priority

Meaning of piracy - "...what our pirates stand for is a life of belonging to something larger than they are in the face of a crushing, slightly fascist normalcy."

Re: Con O'Neill & Izzy's death - "I had to tell him about halfway through the season"

Third season about the work of a relationship between still damaged main characters

Discusses middles as about change and transitions, and wanting characters to change instead of reset, have them experience permanent consequences

About the final scene - "...Ed and Stede as the parents kind of watching the kids take the ship. Frenchie's the captain now..."

Objective of the crew - "...have had terrible things happen to them at the hands of colonial forces, so they want some payback. Party, plunder, and payback — the three P's."

Metro Weekly - Nov 1, 2023 - with Randy Shulman - Link

Discusses historical premise of S1 and easing into the romance

Discusses S2 genre - "In the second season, it was great because we know it's a romance and we can lead with that. It's a workplace show essentially. I wanted it to be more in the vein of early episodes of Grey's Anatomy or something where there are all these relationships on those shows. That's what you’re following — relationships and friendships that are taking place in a hospital, procedural. That's Grey's Anatomy. This is less procedural for the pirate stuff — and you need the pirate stuff."

Discusses not being into pirates - "But I'm like you. I'm not a big pirate person. In general, it's a big creaky genre that's hard to budge" + "Pirates of the Caribbean, those movies are great. That's not necessarily what I hunger to see, but in that genre, it's great. You're not going to beat that, especially on something that's lower budget. We've seen a lot of this stuff, so it's fun to take it then and don't do any of that stuff."

Discusses adapting historical piracy - "You don't want to see them punch down. You don't want to see them do terrible things to people who don't deserve it, which is not what they really did. So, in the show's world, I think piracy is like a stand-in for something. I think it's a stand-in for being an iconoclast and an outsider and queer in some ways and just different." + "Yeah, I mean, the British are there to be Stormtroopers, or Nazis in an Indiana Jones movie. I mean, they're in there to die essentially."

Discusses diversity staffing

Discusses performative masculinity

Discusses Izzy's death, happy endings, and openness to S3