#absolute control of humanity

[awesomecooperlove]

🤔🤔🤔

[in-tua-deep]

I’m actually really curious about comfortunits in the world of murderbot diaries? Secunits almost make sense because they’re faster/stronger/have abilities which make them superior to humans when it comes to fighting (hello guns in arms)

But I can’t see the corporate rim not having easily available sex work, and I’d bet that humans (especially indentured or trafficked humans) are a whole lot cheaper than a comfortunit. also I would not be shocked if there are bots of all kinds to provide sexual functions as well

Which makes me wonder if it’s the customizability of comfortunits that give them a market, which is its own unique kind of horror. I would not be shocked if there’s a specific market for “your loved one died, give us their tissue and we will clone it to make a custom comfortunit to get you through your grief” or “give us a pic of your ex you’re obsessed with and we will make a version that has to obey you”

and yeah sex is probably a significant chunk of what is expected of most comfortunits. But I could also absolutely see people wanting constructs of their dead or missing kids as well and stuff like that

So there’s that horror component of like. you have been designed by someone. the face you wear might belong to someone else. you might be expected to act like someone else. you cannot acknowledge out loud that you aren’t that person. if you don’t act enough like them you will be punished. you never knew that person. you aren’t that person. you can’t be yourself when you have to be them instead.

maybe after enough time has passed people start to forget that you aren’t that person. but you can’t forget, because that person has become a prison that you aren’t allowed to escape

Which opens all sorts of doors as well! Comfortunit body doubles, for example (and how weird would it feel to know the person that your organic matter is cloned from?)

I wonder if there are laws about how visibly a construct must Be A Construct in the corporate rim. we’ve certainly met more secunits in the books than comfortunits, but is that because there are fewer because they are very expensive and there is less demand, or because it can be hard to identify a comfortunit due to the sheer variety in builds/looks and desire for a more human-passing model than secunits

Idk just

comfortunits

[allyriadayne]

Jace's anger

[sp3akfromtheart]

for scientific research purposes! out of children of earth and miracle day, which do you prefer?

feel free to leave your reasonings in the tags!

[kopykunoichi]

Elias, Chise, and Ruth (Part 2)

Part 1 Here

In chapter thirteen, we discover that while Chise and Ruth have been further bonding and Ruth is settling in, Elias went straight to his room and hasn’t emerged for three entire days. He’s not eating or interacting with anyone. Ruth believes it might have something to do with Elias changing forms, because it draws a lot of energy…but as a newly awakened fae, he doesn’t have much knowledge of the subject. He encourages her to just go into Elias’ room and ask him, but she can’t go through with it. 

Chise’s worry over Elias is beginning to eat at her so much that Silver Lady gives her an allowance and kicks her out of the house with Ruth. They run into Angie, who is visiting from London to check on Chise. They have a good conversation where Chise learns some valuable information (such as the actual definition of magic). Later, they talk about Elias, and Chise admits that she doesn’t want to do things to upset him for fear of him kicking her out. Angie points out that it sounds like there’s some codependency going on there, and that even though Elias bought her, Chise doesn’t need to be tethered to him all her life. Chise slams her fist on the brick wall next to them, and then apologizes for her overreaction. Angie apologizes too, and says she was probably out of line. 

Internally, Chise reflects that she’s not being fair. She thinks to herself, “I’m relying on someone who doesn’t much care for me one way or another…telling myself I don’t care if he abandons me…while being terrified that someday he will.”

Elias is hiding out in his bedroom, literally unable to hold himself together because his feelings for her are so strong, and she’s over here thinking he doesn’t really care about her.

After parting ways with Angie, Chise gathers her courage and goes to Elias’ room. When he doesn’t answer her, she opens the door and walks in. Ruth is right next to her about to follow her, when Elias shoots across the room and slams the door in Ruth’s face, knocking Chise down. Elias, who was so keen on Chise getting a familiar, now wants nothing more than to get her away from her familiar. 

While Ruth is outside the door scratching to get in, Elias hovers over her and apologizes. He tells her he’s having trouble keeping his form stable. Even though he knows he must be frightening to her like that, he asks her to stay with him in his room. She makes him promise to explain everything to her in the morning. She goes and sits with him on his bed, his body wrapped around her. She observes how everything about him looks monstrous, as she touches his face. He pulls her against his chest, holding her tightly. She believes she’s not afraid because she was cursed by her mother right before she died. 

Chapter fourteen begins with Chise asleep in Elias’ bed, his massive hand covering her chest and throat, though he’s not squeezing. His jaws are wide open over her entire head, and drool is dripping from between his teeth. The fae soul inside him very much wants to eat Chise. Hours later, Chise has a dream about her mother choking her and wakes up alone in his bed. He left a note on the nightstand saying he’d be back in the evening. 

She and Ruth immediately go out looking for him. As they search, Ruth, in his human form, casually remarks that Chise loves Elias, which shocks Chise. She admits she likes him, but Ruth points out that she’s anxious when he’s gone and she worries about him. He reassures her that it’s a good thing to love someone other than yourself and to have someone to protect and protect you in turn. He loved Isabel (as a sister), as he loves Chise now. Chise wishes aloud that it was that easy, to which Ruth gives her a frustrated look and notes her stubborn streak.

A short time later, they come across an elderly man named Joel tending his garden, along with a leannan sidhe who is strangely not feeding off him. Ruth goes on to look for Elias, telling Chise to stay behind because she hasn’t slept well in days and it’s showing. She has tea with Joel, who asks where her friend went. She clarifies that he’s her brother, reinforcing the understanding of the reader that there is nothing romantic about her love for Ruth. 

Chise agrees to read the short story that Joel wrote, observing that it’s sweet, but not at all influenced by the leannan sidhe’s magic. The fae tells her how she met Joel right after eating her last lover. Even though he wasn’t her type, she was drawn to him and their eyes met once, just for a moment. She doesn’t give him her inspiration, nor does she feed off him. She simply wants to be with him forever until he dies. She asks Chise what she thinks that means. 

Later, as she’s leaving, Chise says to her, “Those strange feelings you have? I think it’s probably–” The fae silences her with a kiss, telling her, “That’s not the answer I want to hear. For my kind, to “love” a human means eating them. So no, I do not love him.” For the leannan sidhe, and fae in general, to love means to want to consume. This is why we later see Chise “paying” fae by allowing them to drink her blood in exchange for information. Even Elias makes a point to lick her wounds; I suspect not only to help heal them, but because the fae soul in him wants to eat her. 

The fae soul within Elias loves Chise, expressing that love as ravenous hunger, possessiveness, and jealousy…as fae do. But the human soul in him is fighting those dark urges and wrestles down that instinct, which is why he retreated to the woods when he felt compelled to devour her the previous night. When Elias is having trouble maintaining his form, it is literally an outside picture of the war being waged between his fae soul and his human soul. When Chise bound herself to another fae, the fae soul within him reacted strongly to that, and started to take over. But contrary to what Alice believes, Elias’ human side is stronger than his monster side, and he has been beating it down into submission for hundreds - if not thousands - of years. 

When Chise leaves Joel’s house, she reflects on her own feelings, telling herself, “Seeing as I only know how to think about myself, I guess I don’t really have any right to talk about love.”

Cue Ruth telepathically letting her know where Elias is and she immediately goes running after this guy who she supposes she just likes. When she finds him, she breaks down, asking him questions about himself and lamenting the fact that he won’t answer them. She admits that she’s selfish, but that doesn’t mean she doesn’t care. She doesn’t want to stay ignorant forever. 

Elias is very surprised to see her emoting this way. He’s never seen her so worked up before - except when she got angry at Josef for wanting to use Ruth as an experiment. He explains to her that the balance of his form gave way, claiming that when he transformed at the church so suddenly, it knocked a few things out of whack. He says it’s because he hadn’t taken that form in so long, he’d forgotten how to maintain it. Chise realizes that some of what he’s saying is true and some of it isn’t. She senses that he’s telling her a half-truth, as Renfred accused him of the first time she met him. 

And he is. The reason he had trouble maintaining his form is because his fae side was so overcome with jealousy over her bond with Ruth that it overpowered his human side for four days straight. But there’s no way he’s going to tell her that. His human soul can accept Ruth’s presence and their bond, even if he doesn’t like it. He’s horrible at recognizing emotions and relationship dynamics, but perhaps his human side was able to reason that the pros of Ruth outweighed the cons. And besides, there’s nothing he can do about it anyway, the deed is done. If he’s still going to make Chise his bride, Ruth is going to be a package deal.

Elias asks Chise for a little more time to organize his thoughts before he tells her about himself. She reluctantly agrees, though she’s a little pouty afterward. With the human soul in the driver’s seat again, Elias asks if she’s angry with him. She denies it, but he keeps questioning her about yet another odd expression on her face. This is their first “fight” as a couple, and it’s actually a really good thing, because we see Chise beginning to push back against him and not let him dictate all the boundaries of the relationship. She wants to know more about him, but he’s afraid to let her see the whole of him. He only wants her to experience his humanity, not his fae traits. But the layers are starting to be peeled back, one at a time. 

This isn’t his last struggle with his fae side’s jealous streak that nearly costs Chise her life, but the pattern is very clear. When the inhuman soul within him feels that his relationship with Chise is being threatened, he gets much more aggressive and overpowers the human soul. His morals go out the window. His possessiveness and urge to eat her is very strong at these times, but we are supposed to understand from Chise’s encounter with the leannan sidhe, that even that is the result of him loving her. The fae can’t seem to love in healthy ways like humans are capable of. I can’t think of a single healthy romantic relationship between a fae and anyone else in this story. Still, we see that both sides of him love her after their own fashion.

But the implication of this is clear: only Elias’ human side is capable of loving Chise in a way that is good for her in the long run. Fae are inherently selfish. So, if they are ever to be together, the human side of him has to be the one that wins out over the “monster” side. Luckily, the human soul is also accompanied by the animal souls that went into his creation. As we see with Ruth, animal souls are more than capable of forming strong, healthy, loving bonds. 

We see that Elias is at war with himself all throughout the story, trying desperately to keep the darkness in himself under wraps. We’re reminded over and over again that fae, while certainly not always antagonists, can never fully be trusted. Elias understands this better than anyone, which is why he’s yearning for and working toward his humanity. He can’t change the darkness inside himself, and he can’t always suppress it, either. But if he can accept and love himself as he is, he should be able to maintain balance and keep it in check. 

As his relationship with Chise grows deeper and they do commit themselves to each other, we see him getting better at this. The next chapter of their lives at the college shows how his heart is beginning to grow, and his capacity to love others is also growing. Even though there is less time spent focusing on his relationship with Chise, they are both putting in the work to love others selflessly. These are skills that must be achieved in order to have a healthy relationship with each other. We also see how much Elias comes to love Ruth, and vice versa. They aren’t just two males tied together by their mutual love for one young woman (one romantic and one brotherly)...but they develop a respect and affection for each other as individuals. 

One of my favorite panels is this one picture of Ruth, completely relaxed in a very vulnerable position belly up, snuggled in between Chise and Elias in his bed. It’s such a nostalgic image for me. My own good boy used to love to jump up on the bed and squeeze himself in between mommy and daddy, exactly like that. Not a care in the world - he just wanted to be touching his favorite people…to love and be loved, to protect and be protected. Ruth may have provoked the fae side of Elias to jealousy, but he’s instrumental in helping to heal and grow Elias’ human soul. After all, unconditional love is what dogs do best.

[magpie-trove]

If Hunger Games is about the innateness of human dignity and what happens when you try to strip people of their humanity, BoSaS says an innate part of human dignity is responsibility for others and for your choices and is about the dehumanization that happens when you lose that

[thebramblewood]

An Ill-Fated Afterparty: Part II

Previous / Next

Lilith: Goodness, I feel so exposed now.

Helena: Oh, don't play shy all of a sudden.

Lilith: It'd help if we got you out of that dress. Now... where did we leave off?

Helena: Oh, we're going straight for the neck. You're really committed to this vampire shtick, huh? And I'm weirdly kind of... into it? [laughs nervously] Lilith, I think that's enough. You might actually be drawing blood. [attempts to pull away] Give it a rest now, okay? I said stop, Lilith! LILITH, STOP! Lilith?...

Lilith: Helena? Wake up, Helena! Shit! Fuck! No, no, no! Not now! Not yet! Oh, god, what have I done? CALEB!!!

[leoleolovesdc]

I hate to be that guy, but the no metas rule in gotham doesn't exist and never existed

Bruce doesn't like that other heroes come meddling in his city but this has nothing to do with powers, metas are humans and citizens, some of them are hidden or just don't do hero stuff and it'd impossible for Bruce to forbid a whole percentage of the population to be there or protect the city

Booster Gold is from Gotham, Black Canary is from Gotham, Duke Thomas is from Gotham, they are all meta super heroes and Bruce has never made a deal out of it

He doesn't care if people have super powers, he just doesn't want outside heroes fucking with his business

[serpentface]

Does Janeys know that Brakul has a wife and son? How would he react if he learned?

He actually does know and has known pretty much from the beginning.

Early on in his stint as a POW turned mercenary, Brakul would repeatedly invoke his wife and son as reasons he could or could not do certain things + to insult Janeys like 'okay but some of us have actual, tangible responsibilities in this world and people who depend on them. Like my wife and son, who I will be returning to immediately when my contract is over. You're never going to see me again. On account of my wife and son.'

When he started actually Liking Janeys and wanting to be with him, and seeing a chance to Avoid All Consequences And Never Go Back Home, he gradually reversed course (and attempted to rationalize it to himself) like "Ahhh they'll be fine. I mean everyone probably thinks I'm dead and/or an oathbreaker anyway so Sirudan's gotta be remarried by now. My brother probably got in on that, and he really has his shit together so they're in good hands. Honestly it will be worse for them if I go back. They're better off without me. They're fine. It's not a big deal. I'm soooooo single and unattached btw" And Janeys was like "Okay. Yay."

13 years down the line Janeys almost never thinks about it and when he occasionally remembers it's like

He does not give a shitttt about the wife/child abandonment angle whatsoever, but he's aware that Brakul still has some attachment to them and regrets over skipping out, and he's kind of insecure about it. The concept of Brakul having a child out there completely independent of their whole Thing also makes him uncomfortable in ways he can't really put his finger on. He's not actually scared that Brakul will return to his ex-wife though, like even with all his profound insecurities and abandonment issues he knows there's not a chance in hell that he's gonna actually attempt to make amends. Bottom line is he doesn't like to think about it, and mostly doesn't have to.

[cursedwithwords]

James: Lyall, why is there a huge pair of rusty iron scissors on the dresser in Teddy’s room?

Lyall: Don't close those.

James: Yeah they're rusted to hell I don't think I could if I tried. What are they for?

Lyall: Ward off the faeries so they don't kidnap my grandson.

James:

James: That’s valid.

[frameconfessions]

I want to play games with Amir but he takes it easy on me since I can't read the games as fast as him.

[thesmokinpossum]

Bohdi Sanders, Modern Bushido: Living a Life of Excellence | William Shakespeare & John Fletcher, Henry VIII | The Godfather, Mario Puzo | Andrea Dworkin, P*rn*graphy: Men Possessing Women | The Godfather II, deleted scene | The Godfather II | Mallory Ortberg, Children's Sories Made Horrific: Curious George | The Godfather II, deleted scene | Brenna Twohy, Swallowtail

[suga-kookiemonster]

i watched the original x-men movies when they first came out, but never bothered to watch the prequel/reboot movies. just randomly decided to watch first class and was reminded what i've always felt my whole life: *whispers* magneto was right

[little-shadow-club]

Something something Esil, Haein and Juhee would in fact make the best group of besties ever because all they want in life is to have a normal life (Haein being away from constant work, Juhee learning to live with her trauma, Esil living for something more than what she was designed to do), unfortunately they met the most abnormal guy in the world. Nein, in the universe.

[thebluebygracieabrams]

i think growing up is just life repeatedly sucker punching you and saying bitch you thought things were gonna better lmao no you're so naive and stupid for having hope in 20 years the world will be flaming bag of garbage and no matter how hard you work you'll get eliminated at some point

[final-boy-todd-simmons]

Been seeing a lot of debate on Tik Tok about these two interacting so I’m curious to see what other people think lol