#whooo metaphors

[trashcanfromgallifrey]

I’m sorry but they held hands in these pics

[rel124c41]

MX. SINISTER. alternative # 16 / sinister! invincible

You can no longer be Mark's friend. You can no longer be Mark's lover. You can no longer be on the same planet as him without feeling sick to your stomach. Not after what you witnessed, burnt deep into your retinas.

In the end though? It all boils to what you are denying, forcing yourself to turn a blind eye to, then to what you cannot forgive and forget, forcing yourself to acknowledge. You simply picked the wrong things to ignore and wrong things to address.

tags: stalking, breaking up & ‘making up’, blood and violence, animal death, implied/referenced somnophilia, nudity, & physical abuse

word count: 10,665

Despite how many times the two of you have said goodbye, he is still not leaving. You have managed, wrestling with him metaphorically and once a literal shove that did as much as dust hitting concrete, to corral him to the threshold of your parents’ home. Still inside, door ajar behind him, he crouches and continues planting kisses on your ragdoll cat who leans into each one like a plant turning towards sun.

“And you’ll miss me when I’m gone, wooon’t you? Yes, you will! You’re gonna miss your daddy.”

If your eyes could roll any further, you would be staring at your brain. Instead, the view you are confined to is the one you’ve been imprisoned to passively watch for the last honest-to-God ten minutes. Like a prisoner in your own home.

Some distance between the two of you is what you need. Not relationship distance, not the distance between his and your house on intersecting neighborhood blocks, not even the mere distance found from where he crouches languidly and you stand firm. The distance you are talking about is an outstretching length, as far as him on Mars and you on Earth. Enough space to soon forget the color of his eyes or the sound of his voice. 

Coffee eyes flicker up to scrutinize. Between each long forehead kiss or enthusiastic rub, Mark has been making sure you know he knows you are standing there and waiting for him to leave. Sailing past cat ears, his vision sinks its teeth into you before his eyes shut, cooing, “Whooo’s my good boy!”, as Dexter purrs under the affection of his second parent.

It honestly surprises you that Mark is capable of this. Unsure as to why he showered the ragdoll in such ardent embraces, all these smooches and scratches are outliers to his overall attitude. Kindness is rare for Mark to pass out; the only receivers are Dexter and, sometimes, you.

Finally, after so much deliberation, he stands up. Putting his thumbs into his pockets, Mark sways once on the balls of his feet playfully as Dexter rolls with his tummy exposed up. He ignores how Dexter claws on his gray trousers in a plea for him to stay and never leave. Almost all of his pants are scared by those feline hooks. Gone instantly is the high-pitched baby talk and his playful demeanor like it had never been there to begin with.

He says as monotone as a dead ocean, “If you come running for my help, I won’t answer.”

The airy affront caught in your throat twists and molds itself into, “Is that as Invincible or is that as my boyfriend?”

His facial features change. It is like watching a low timelapse of a fruit going bad and attracting flies. Pale lips peel, revealing those thicker than human canines and molars that metamorphosis into an award winning smile. “I guess you’re just going to have to find out.”

Exhausted and weak from the previous back and forth, you simply exhale out your frustration and say, firm and pushing, “Bye Mark.”

No matter how you slice or dice it, Mark has always had an air of superiority — that cocky male confidence that keeps his chin up steadily — about him when things are going his way; it is written in the very skeleton of his being. What makes you simultaneously nervous and disgusted is that he still has that smug assertiveness, lingering after the breakup. It has not waned once and it only seems to preen under you bidding him a harsh goodbye.

“See you around,” he affirms to you.

When the ajar door finally closes behind Mark, the first thing that happens is your eyelids droop, fast. You are tired like you have never been; you are sure you are going to sleep like a rock.

That breakup drained so much energy from you. Even the mere epidermis on you feels heavy like a coat’s layers. Such a proof of human stamina, Mark light on his feet as he walked out the door and you now trudging to collapse in your bed. Just minutes ago, you stood in here, yelling and stomping, exerting yourself down to the last reserve, and he stood still, took it all without really contributing any energy, seeing your anger as pointless. Like a chalk outline crime scene, this bedroom is forever stained by the memory.

At least neither of your parents were home to hear it. One works the graveyard shift from 7pm to 6am and the other is always staying at their second lover’s, no divorce or even breakup-esque argument finalized. You couldn’t be like that, staying despite the awfulness, ignoring things.

You loved Mark, but it didn’t feel right.

‘...’ you stew in silence.

Great, now you’re getting sappy. 

The feeling plants itself inside you as you tuck yourself into bed, Dexter curling up at your stomach. Introspection’s a fucking bitch. Being stuck in your head is the last thing you want right now, falling into a labyrinth of excuses and heartbreak. So, you try to alleviate that by pulling out your phone, screensaver of Mark flashing, only for it to lead you right to your photo gallery. 

That planted feeling starts to grow little cacti pricks as you scroll through each photo – him with a baby Dexter crawling up his sleeve like a spider, him waiting with an umbrella at the end of a street corner for you to catch up, him preparing for a yard sale of his childhood comic figurines, him shirtless on the beach and flashing one of his infrequent smiles that rivals the entire galaxy in your eyes – and it turns into a poisonous organism when you finally reach the very top of your gallery, back when you got this phone at sixteen. 

You scrolled so far that you have come across the origin of your love story. Well, it is certainly not the very start; the start is before either of you had a phone, bike ride on the street leading you to find a boy on the other street rolling a baseball over antholes like a bulldozer. This picture is from after the first date.

Eyelids grow heavier, your limp wrist holds the picture slightly parallel with your vision. It is a shot of you walking up the cobblestone path to your house’s front door. Back to the camera, completely unaware that it was taken, this is the only evidence of your first date besides memory. It is the kind of photo taken by freelance photographer who might have been paid to follow someone, but —

“I wanted to make sure you got home safe.”

You look up from his phone that you had stolen, utterly famished to know what he kept in his photo gallery now that you have crossed into intimate boundaries. Such a considerate answer makes you pause, your previous question answered. 

“But I live a street away,” your laugh is strained.

Mark looks up from his homework, Dexter sitting on his spine and leaving white furs on his black button-up, his hair horns free of gel after a shower, and says quietly, “That doesn’t mean I don’t want you safe.”

What an interesting introspection to stumble back upon sleepily in the aftermath of him turning out to be Invincible and the words he departed on today as you two officially stepped out of your relationship. How safe are you even with him? Especially after… but before you can remember the reason for the breakup, hand flaccidly releasing your phone on the charging pad, you are falling into sleep with a simple blink.

The first date you and Mark went on, you had lobster. 

Really pulling out the metaphorical red-carpet, Mark grinned that toothy leer as you stumbled through earrings and outfits and overall preparing for your first date at sixteen to be at an impossibly fancy seafood restaurant – that requires reservations in advance. How he was so confident you would be free, you’ll always be at a loss. 

Vomiting words and more words, you drilled through a one-sided conversation most of the night, helplessly wondering why you were invited here if Mark didn’t seem interested or entertained enough to talk about to you. Your stomach was empty of colloquial bile by the time the lobsters arrived, bright red and steaming. In the same instance where you reached for the pliers, Mark moved your plate over to his side. You stared, surprised. 

“I’m going to show you a trick,” he says, friendly enough that you sit back to listen. He picks up the body of your lobster, twisting off the tail from the body, doing the same with the claws. “You don’t need pliers for this part. If you find the correct seam, you can break it like a cracker.”

He digs his thumbnails into the top of the claw. Along the seam of the curling pincher, smaller claw dangling below, his thumbs give one forceful push in. The exoskeleton comes off like a mere accessory, breaking along the curve and opening like a clam shell.

“Here,” smug satisfaction and teasing, “you try it.” He hands over the second claw of your lobster.

Dubiously, you eye the pincher once it is in your hand. Flipping it over, you put your thumbs where you saw Mark’s thumbs go. Hard and resilient, the exoskeleton gives no show of damage as you drive down your thumbs. You wrestle with it for one embarrassing minute. 

Is this some kind of humiliation ritual? Feeling like a fool but not stopping, you try to break traffic-light red armor with your feeble hands in such a fancy restaurant with such fancy waiters and such fancy decor. Skin burns under makeup. The only part that seems to be retaining injury is your nails which ache with each dig and push. It’s not impossible though, because Mark did it; you try harder. The smooth nail palate of your right thumb breaks under the pressure, chipping off rose gold paint and leaving a jagged edge. 

Mark laughs boyishly, unable to keep it in. Before you can even access the sound, he is stealing the claw from you and breaking it down the middle with the ease of a regular person snapping an apple in halves. “There’s a finesse to it.”

He starts talking more after that, like that display had put him in a good mood. Despite it, you enjoy his company – after all, there was a second date, a third, even a fourth. Underneath the scent of vanilla and whatever soft jazz the restaurant had playing on a live stage, you two dipped cleaned lobster meat into butter and found yourself falling into something that didn’t have any identity, even when you two put up weak labels like boyfriend and girlfriend.

Now, you are having a dream that you are a lobster.

You have had many strange dreams in the past. Stuff that you have woken up from that doesn’t have a relevance or makes sense is natural to a stressed or bored mind. There have been dreams where you were nailed to a pool’s plastic lining, green water and leaves floating on the surface all you could see, and there have been dreams where you were in a volatile panic, heaving and close to vomiting, due to not being able to find garlic chips in your pantry. Dreams seldom make sense. All you can do is accept the current reality, tell yourself to breathe water and guide yourself to the next shelf. Right now, you are, without a doubt, a lobster.

It isn’t such a bad life to be imprisoned in this lobster purgatory. You are almost passive in all aspects of living as you have already boiled and plated. There’s not much to do except accept the abuse sure to come. A lobster is made to be eaten.

Which is why you stretch out your spine in bed, shirt riding up and blanket riding down, as two hands eclipse around your figure, twisting in opposite directions and segmenting you into two parts, the body and the tail, feeling in your asleep own figure like a rock has settled in your stomach. Like peeling a tougher version of an orange, the shell on your tail is broken down the middle and stripped off to reveal meat. A tickle runs up your spine. Tail meat, vibrant white and rose, is dipped in a cup of hot water. In a circular spot, you feel a dull ache on the side of your inner thigh, deep, as if being consumed.

Warmth is not hard to find in this dream. As more of your exoskeleton is removed, appendages slowly sink one by one into that murking water, shaken and jostled to clean them thoroughly. Even when you shift, limp-limbed in bed, and a sock falls off or a sleeve rides up, there is still heat nearby. Dreams that are stranger are the warmest too.

Claws are broken from knuckles, snapped like twigs. With a petite, invading hook that scrapes, the slim piece of meat in your tinier pinchers is slowly wrenched out. Arms limp and bent like an abused Barbie in the waking world, your pinkie gives a tiny twitch at the sensation. Warmth dulls that restlessness and your pinkie falls still. 

But, the most harrowing part is the unknown hand on your throat. With lobster anatomy, your brain is in your throat. A brain consists and categorizes all measures of living, manufacturing the dreams that you experience. The pressure is suffocating. You are being choked out of breath and choked out of thought simultaneously. 

If you are ever going to die, it is going to be done by this hand.

So much of yourself is floating away from you, essential oxygen and rationale out of reach. There is still the warmth that coats you like a temperature-crafted exoskeleton. Even when your shorts bunch up with each toss and turn and even when your blanket is maneuvered around by twitchy motions, that sensation never wanes; it would stay with you permanently even if you did try to kick it out like a bad dog. 

Red and hot, your consciousness burns like the cherry pit center of the Earth. 

You wake up with the sun, body temperature high. No longer a lobster. 

Stretching out all your knots, you reach for your phone at your bedside to see what time it is. Your fingers miss it by inches and only when you heave a sigh of aggravation do you feel it, the rawness of your throat. Like all the water and oxygen was fucked out.

The bathroom mirror reflection confirms its existence concretely. 

Standing in loose workout shorts and a band tee, you access what you speculated upon, never imagining it could be as bad as this. 

In your turbulent experience with dating, you have experienced a hickey here and there. Left like leopard spots, Mark always enjoyed planting those reminders of himself on your neck, even if they only came from second base rather than a home run. Those were easy to cover up; you even helped Mark with some of his. There is not enough concealer in the world to make this one disappear.

There is a handprint on your neck. Not just simply five fingers, the palm too. Cauterized into your skin through mere pressure alone, the rough, prickly red shape of four fingers on the left side of your neck, cupping palm directly over your thyroid bone, and one thumb on the right side of your neck is a heavy stain. When you go to match prints, because obviously you would assume this is a self inflicted wound, the size is wider and thicker than the limits of your hand. 

Dominant hand holding your throat, your eyelids go up in slow understanding. You really couldn’t say it was your first thought because why would you ever jump to such conclusions. Someone else had their hand around your throat.

‘Of course, they did. Do you even see how huge it is? How deep it is? I couldn’t remake this if I tried,’ you think to yourself, but denial is such a thick clog in the brain that you keep rotating and maneuvering your hand to try and make it fit the bruise’s shape.

Eventually, you drop your hand on the sink, stickiness from old toothpaste gluing them together. Paralyzed, you keep staring at the discolored skin as if expecting it to be a trick of the light. Attempts to recall your dream are fruitless; you have been awake so long that it is hopeless that the fabricated reality has floated away like a bubble caught in the wind. All you have left as a reminder is the hickey-handprint of — you shudder in realization — a stranger.

Spiraling, it takes a while for you to realize that is not the only pain. All your attention has been focused so intently on your throat that it doesn’t dawn on you until much later you have another sight of injury on your body.

You touch between your legs; that too feels like a bruise.

Try as you might, and sincerely you do, you cannot cover the handprint completely. It is like attempting to cover up a tattoo that has been inked into your skin. The majority of it is covered, concealer caked on like frosting, but even just the slightest motion makes it noticeable if someone looks close enough.

Which is exactly what Amber does, suddenly gasping in her dorm bed when you turned your neck in response to the buzz of your phone, screen lighting up with Mark’s face and a text message bubble. 

The text is forgotten as she asks horrified, “Oh my God, what happened? Who did that to you?”

You really should change your screensaver, you think. Needing something to do with anxious hands, you adjust the collar of your jean jacket, spring far too warm to wear a turtleneck but you tried to suck it by bringing a jacket as coverage. It almost gives you a few seconds to plan a response which is still a lackluster, “oh um, things got too wild last night. It’s really nothing. I didn’t notice till —”

“Mark did that.” 

Uh-oh, the vitriol in her voice is enough to make you want to change your made-up answer. You’re still toying with the denial that you might have done this to yourself, developed epileptic seizures or some movement disorder overnight, a health-related explanation that might make more sense to you. In the moment, it was the only thing you could think of. The breakup is not known in your circle of friends and Mark didn’t show up to Upstate today.

It was definitely the wrong thing to say because now Amber Bennet, number one hater of your ex-boyfriend (boyfriend in her perspective), looks like she wants to track him down and fight, which would end very badly for her.

“It’s alright – It’s alright, we talked it over and it’s total water under the bridge. Forgive and forget, you know? I wouldn’t just let this happen unless it was consensual of course,” as soon as the words are out, you want them back in.

“Forgive and forget, Jesus; how many times are you just going to forgive and forget? With how many dates he’s skipped out on, how many times you’ve been made the blame for his problems, how long are going to keep forgiving when he gives you the cold shoulder for –”

“Amber, please,” you plea, grabbing her arm to stop her gesturing. All day, you have been stumbling along like a zombie, exhausted still from the one-sided screaming match. “I know and it’s been getting better. We’re figuring stuff out.”

It feels so weird, saying the direct opposite of what happens in the last twenty four hours. You two haven’t been ‘figuring stuff out’; you refused to bend your morals and values to fit within his own and broke up. It would probably overjoy Amber to hear the truth about last night, but with this new, unknown development, your nineteen years of life has no guide for what to do in this situation. 

Mark would not do this. You know intimately what he is capable of, but he would not deliberately harm you. Not unless something pushed him beyond his limits.

After so much back and forth, the subject is finally dropped – forgiven and forgotten. By the time you are walking home from Amber’s dorm, violet and rose gold lighting up the twilight skies, you surmise it would have been better to simply skip classes today. Unintentionally dragging your feet, a supernatural bloodlet has emptied you of any vigor. Weary eyes find the darkening sky. 

Mark used to fly you through that very kaleidoscope of warm and cool colors – orange and blue light bleeding into the same clouds for a half an hour – and return both of you from Upstate University to your joint neighborhood blocks. Now, here you are walking an hour journey that you used to travel in a quarter of that time. There are so many quotidian parts of your life that you are going to have to get used to being different, now that Mark is gone. Maybe he really has gone to Mars like you were hoping yesterday, the distance between the two of you now planetary. 

He’s been stuck in your head all day though; there is no withdrawal of him there. You knew he never wanted to go to Upstate, human education a pointless endeavor for a superpowered alien, conceding only for your sake. Still, you cannot help wondering where he has gone. Free from a romantic relationship, the Earth is his oyster.

‘What did I limit him from,’ you think, then immediately try to dismiss such a volatile rabbithole. 

To ignore that Mark might have never loved you at all and was staying just to sate boredom, you pull out your phone with the intent to see what that text message from earlier was. Having to steer Amber off the bruise and resume essay workshopping, you forgot to check it again after that. It’s an unknown number, notification reading 1 Image, printed over the screensaver of Mark, which you click on.

Your phone almost ends up cracked on the pavement.

Fumbling with it in shaky hands, you squint at the image to make sure you’re seeing it right. 

It is a slightly aerial shot, taken from the height of someone at least moderately tall or planted on a ceiling. This vantage point allows the photograph to encompass your body and mattress fully, no details cut off. In the sent image, you lie under covers, lips parted in deep sleep and oblivious to your picture being taken. 

Like a rollercoaster cresting the other side of a hump, your heart races down to your feet and splats on the cobblestone pavement. 

Trying to smother out panic, you click the off button, feeling like you have ants tiptoeing down and up your veins. As soon as your phone is off, you click it back on and unlock it – a hundred percent positive that you saw wrong. Your sleeping face stares back at you. 

Panicked even more, you click the off button and shove your cell into your jean jacket pocket, immediately wrapping your dominant hand around your bookbag strap. As long as your hands are occupied, you can ignore it. It’s probably nothing, just like the handprint, just like …

Your ears pick it up languidly. Someone is walking behind you, maybe a yard or so back. Crunching gravel underfoot gives them away crystal clear. How you had not noticed it before; at such a late time, no one walks these sidewalks besides you now that you have dumped your personal air travel ride.

Now, you walk on an obscuring path, lack of light starting to make the edges of stone, pavement, and grass blend together in similar colors, clueless about when this person started walking behind you but certain that they are too close for comfort unless they plan to overpass you. Testing, you slow your gait. They slow theirs. ‘Fuck.’

How could you possibly not have noticed someone following behind so closely? It is as if they have suddenly appeared out of thin air. Were you purposefully ignoring the sounds of footsteps until the photo of you in bed resurrected your anxiety?

‘This sucks,’ your blood seethes, footsteps returning to a normal pace. You survey the front yard gardens and parked cars you are walking by just to take your mind off all this spiraling disaster.

A thought peeks through the tornado of inner discord and enters without any foreword. Those mimicking, identical footsteps are steadfast, following. Your brain absentmindedly plants the seed of walking straight to Mark’s house, a very small detour from your place, and see how quickly this creeper becomes harmless in comparison to a vexed Invincible. 

It hits you quite quickly, yesterday’s reminder of how he wouldn’t save you ever again. Teeth grit. 

In your jacket, your phone buzzes once. Curses play around on your tongue, groaning or mumbling in your twitching mouth. More than anything, you wish Mark was here right beside you and not however far away he has gone. Head down, you keep walking even when your legs feel like flimsy jelly.

All you have for self-defense is the pepper spray at the bottom of your bag, but if the stranger wrestles the bag out of your hands before you reach it, it's nothing more than a fancy nicknack. The kubotan on your house keys ring is in your jean jacket pocket; your phone –buzzing once more to let you know two minutes have passed since you received a notification – is in your other jean jacket pocket, available to dial 911.

Like colors trying to retain their vibrance in a cup of mixed paints, the last shreds of rose gold and violet are starting to turn ebony with the approaching night sky. There are only five more blocks you need to tread down, taking memorized turns at each specific stop sign. It is too early to book it, too much distance left between yourself and safety.

Then, a breath is blown on your neck. Goosebumps rise like dough on the patch of skin. Thoughtlessly, you have pivoted and grip your kubotan tight by your thigh. 

No one is standing behind you. 

The entire block is empty, deserted. The sight of peopleless sidewalks and a stretching, carless road does not quell you; if anything, you feel as if all your arteries are pinched by invasive lobster claws, causing your heart to skip a vital beat. Paranoia is really starting to seep in. That breath was no trick of the wind.

‘Put your head down and head home,’ you order yourself, electing to not acknowledge that there was obviously a person behind you a second ago. Picking up pace but refusing to sprint, you take the right around the stop sign, moving from Pendergast Road to Logan Ave.

These were the streets Mark and you used to ride your bikes on. Teaching him the ropes of bicycling because neither of his parents would spare effort, you two raced each other on these same sidewalks, Mark attempting to knock you into the grass or a post and you attempting to knock him off balance by hitting his back wheel with your front one. Two little devils always scraping with one another, always at each other’s throat in mutual romping, until a time it was taken too far and —

The retreating bumper of the car that mangled the front of your bicycle and almost tore your head from your shoulder shrinks and shrinks as the driver speeds off. Palms dripping with blood, all you do is stare in stunned understanding.

Your stupor does not last before you turn, head whipping, in the direction of Mark. Who, steady upon his parked bicycle, is laughing like a pleased hyena. “What an adrenaline rush, huh!” he exclaims through his cheerful giggles. 

Reasonably, you should be furious at him for endangering you then basking in your fright. That day, you should’ve taken your bike home and refused to see the weird kid down the block again. However, you didn’t. Bleeding and bruised, you sat and listened. Never before had he laughed in your presence. You took time soaking in the sound, his mirth wilting down your annoyance until it was water under the bridge. 

The incident had not made a difference in your friendship. You told him, “I’ll get you next time,” as he disinfected your palms. The next time involved you driving Mark off his bike, straight into a mailbox, leaving him with a shiner the size of a tennis ball. 

These streets are full of such good memories; now, you are tainting them by swiftly walking as that pair of footsteps seemingly appear out of thin air and start to follow you again.

Everything you have been trying to keep at equilibrium is starting to gain speed. One by one, your body accelerates: sneakers squeaking as you ascend from speed-walking, jogging, to sprinting; a once steady heart rate rising in beats per minutes, pumping blood faster to your limbs; inhales and exhales growing taut, intervals between them shortening as you gasp for breathing, running for your life suddenly because the person behind you is running at you.

Not expecting the almost instantaneous shift, your brain is adrenaline-empty, the kind of death of rational thoughts that animals experience. You swing yourself into Hillcrest Street, gravel kicking up at your heels, and run. An obscured rock almost trips you but you upright and continue, arms pumping and eyes circular with fear, bolting towards safety. 

Whatever is behind you is gaining and gaining fast.

Kubotan already in hand, you jostle the ring of keys in your palm and find, without looking, your house key. If you miss the lock, you are certain that you are done. ‘Fucking Christ,’ you can feel their acrid breath closing in, readying to ensnare you. No matter your speed it feels like they are already on top of you.

Hyperventilating, you crash straight into your front door, stabbing the key in the first try. You can almost taste them resting upon you, yards having close to mere centimeters. They are in your fucking skin. They have already found a way in your house. The door unlocks in your unsteady hand and you push it inward mindlessly, the start of tears beginning to bubble up.

Then, a hurricane rips through the atmosphere, forceful air pushing you inside on your hands and knees and slamming your door against the side of your house. Scrambling, you turn to make a grab for the doorknob, only to pause, hair messy and eyes wild. There is no one standing at the front entrance threshold. No one was behind you.

Wheezes rattle your bones. On the ground, you sit confused, terrified, suspicious, and in denial — a deadly combination. In front of you? A quotidian, calm neighborhood with sleeping houses, enshrouded in darkness but void of any boogeymen. Rapid, your chest goes up, down, up, down, up, down, up, down, up, down.

Once you gather your bearings, locking the door and pulling down all the shades, you will realize your phone has fallen out of your jean jacket.

It was airborne from the spontaneous hurricane, landing inside by the front threshold.

Mark’s eyes are hidden behind the notification: new message, unknown number, 1 Image attached.

It is a picture of you, back towards the camera, walking down the same sidewalks you always walk on your way home.

Like all bruises do, it fades. Decreasing in size, fingerprints losing length, the loss of distinctive features makes the blur of a palm indistinguishable from just a simple bruise. Day by day, it takes less Sephora concealer to hide. It becomes possible to ignore and file in the back of your head, forgotten.

You fall into normalcy. Glued to your computer, you finish your essays and you study for your final exams. Instead of walking on those familiar childhood streets, you take a bus to shorten your commute, even if it is a slight hit to your sparse savings; you will replenish with a summer job.

Despite this, you cannot completely shed off the feeling of something closing in. Skin has become a network of ant tunnels, a honeycomb route system for bees, a swiss cheese structure creeping and crawling with termites. You itch persistently with the sensation of stalking eyes. But even the worst itches do not need to be scratched, it is only a simple trail of mind over matter. The sight of glowing white scleras and blown pupils peeking through a crack in horizontal blinds can be ignored and seen as a mere trick of light, if only one tries hard enough. 

When you arrive home for your last final, you go from room to room in a practiced routine to draw all the timber blinds down. Tonight, like every night since the breakup, you are alone. On the stove, in celebration of a finished semester, you pop popcorn while rifling through pantries for alcohol. 

You’ve been lonely without Mark, a kind of loneliness you were not privy to before. The lack of his presence feels like a phantom limb. The two of you shared solitude, no siblings and shitty parents combo truly a lifeline between you both.

As the cork to the wine bottle pops off, you stare into the black-red liquid, trying to think about anything else but him.

‘...’ you stew and fail.

The day before Mark’s eighteenth birthday was the first time you drank, was probably the first time for Mark too. You have never known Mark to be an openly expressive person; all of his emotions are tablespoon measures of a normal person. Thus, his exhilarated anticipation for his eighteenth was such a surprise – that wide grin, endless comments about his Dad’s ‘gift’, his teasing touches, like a cat knowing tomorrow he would get the cream.

When he found your parents’ case of Smirnoff Ice, a single glance between the two of you sealed the deal. Bottlenecks grasped in erratic hands, you two spent the entire night in an empty house dancing like it was your last day on Earth, TV playing funky new wave music from the 80s and washing the living room in colors of electric blue and cherry red. His hips twitched and jerked along to the beat and your shoulders bounced and jerked along to the rhythm, both of your heads nodding along and swaying hair, utterly lost in bliss and alcohol. 

His mood did a 180 the next day, leaving you sober. Not once did Mark smile through the entire day, face like stone even while receiving Dexter’s kitten licks, as if a promise ensured to be fulfilled was broken. 

Now, you stand here about to pour yourself a drink, tampering the only experience you have had with alcohol by making the second drink of your life so utterly depressing, a half ass celebration that you are spending alone. 

The bottle finds your lips easily. 

Your cat has largely been an indoor cat most of his life. He finds comfort in the familiar couch cushion and familiar silk pillow, too pampered for the hardened life of outside. 

When your parents bought this house many years ago with a freshly eight month old you on their hip, upgrading from their condo, they never had a keen foresight for the unpredictability of the world, such as things like their marriage growing stale as old bread or to ever own a family pet. At least not until Omni-Man, known exclusively to your parents as Nolan Grayson the author, found a kitten on a classic save-people-from-a-burning-building day with no family to go back to. You fell in love instantly with the white bundle of fur and they all elected you as the prime caretaker. The only concern became the pet door on the backyard door, which would have been thought to be largely used by an adventurous kitten, only for Dexter to turn out to be very domesticated. You are pretty sure Dexter is not even aware of the pet door’s existence. 

The only reason that Dexter acknowledges it now is because there is a hand sticking out of it, a petite pile of brown cat treats in the palm. What causes him to go near it — ears and head perking up in recognition — is the voice on the other side.

“Dexteeer,” it croons, sweet and soft, the pet door almost appears as a sentient being with the hand being a hungry tongue, “Dexter, come here boy. Come to daddy. Dexteeer.”

It’s been a while since he has heard the voice, but the ragdoll knows who it is instinctively. It is the male bi-pedal creature who feeds him and gives him sweet pets. The scent of his cologne and that charcoal undertone of his natural skin is even more enticing than the smell of treats. Dexter hops off the couch armrest, padding over.

“That’s a good boy. Closer, Dexter.”

Dexter knocks his nose sweetly against the hand’s knuckles, rubbing up against the pet door’s tongue taste-buds. His secondary master has finally returned from exile. Lovingly, the ragdoll cat runs his tongue over the male’s wrist, ignoring the treats in favor of his presence. He is close enough now.

Like a frog tongue sucking up a fly, the hand swiftly encloses around Dexter’s head and pulls him into the mouth.

With one arm secure around the popcorn bowl and your separate hand gripping the neck of the wine bottle, you make your way into the living room. The moping around the kitchen ended when the smell of burnt popcorn filled the room. You decided to turn off your phone, knowing for certain that no one would call or text. The only company you can really rely on is Dexter’s, who you call out for in sing-songy curiosity.

He is a pretty obedient kitten, so the longer he goes without bounding in the room, knocking affectionately at your ankles, the more concerned you become. “Dexter, honey, come here.” You shake the bowl of popcorn, hoping to entice. 

Only setting the bowl on the coffee table when it proves fruitless, oddly unsettled. 

It is only when you hear a knock upon it do you remember the pet door. 

You jump out your skin, wine still in hand, eyes gone circular. Guests are not part of your lifestyle; no one at your college knows your address and why the fuck would they ever think to use the back door? ‘Mark,’ you think, because he is your constant companion despite everything.

Looking at the knob, you think you could forgive and forget if Mark is on the other side. So utterly famished for that familiar company, you think if he came back with the answer to your original question that you could bury the shovel and truly start again. You miss him like an amputee misses a limb.

Company that you know well is on the other side of the door, just not Mark. You stare at Dexter’s body, neck snapped in a full 180 degree, miniscule blood staining the porch. Your mouth twitches: into a half-smile of disbelief, into an empty gag that stirs your alcohol heavy stomach, into a grimace of remorse and grief, then finally into one long, aching scream. 

The bottle rolls heavy on the ground, soaking Dexter’s fur in ruby. 

Your brain melts like one glutinous, red candle. 

If there was ever a straw that broke the camel’s back, the death of your cat shatters your body into fragments. 

One of your parents comes home in the dusk from their lover’s or the graveyard shift; so out of it, you could not remember who you conversed with, only recalling the feeling of their icy knuckles pressing to your forehead to check your temperature, petting your hair afterwards. With a face of dried tears and melting hot skin, you manage to get halfway through the explanation about Dexter’s mutilated body on the back porch before your eyes roll up into your skull, grief suffocating. When you wake up on the couch, sweating gallons, it is twilight and the house is once again empty. The only sign of you living with another person is the little cup of 20mL, violet nighttime Tylenol on the coffee table.

Swaddled in a cape-esque blanket, you stumble over to the back door with a grape-flavored moustache, tongue heavy in your mouth. Deliberately, you open the door. The only remaining evidence of Dexter is the patch of darker wood compared to the rest of the porch.

Something must’ve come in the night, dragging him off to enjoy a meal despite not doing so when he was a fresh kill.

At a tortoise pace, you trudge to your room. You plant yourself on the mattress; a tree that can never be uprooted and a boulder that can never be rolled, you transform into this immovable object and fuse into the bed, staying in the exact position you fell into. Heat engulfs you, blood alit. 

Time moves simultaneously as slow as molasses with minutes moving as fast as seconds. Fever ablaze in your immune system, you have no recollection of the days anymore. Puddles of sweat mark your restless nightly turning, tattooing new positions into the duvet. The only slight semblance of knowing that time is actively moving are the cups of children's Tylenol by your bedside, water always refilled when you open your eyes, apple or orange slices on a plate, a note — that doesn’t look to be written by either of your parents’ hands — telling you when it is safe to take your medicine, all left on your bedside table. You are grateful now for never throwing out your digital clock.

The textured ceiling is your solace. Body too cumbersome, you do not reach for a remote or cellphone, not like you could focus long enough to locate them. You survey each swaying paint texture, finding patterns then losing the patterns in the next hour, rinse and repeat until finally your warm eyelids drop close into sleep.

The reason you ended things with Mark was because of a bank robbery.

Really seemed insignificant in the grand scheme of things. For a couple of years, you have known about Mark’s powers and his job, recognized that behind the yellow cowl and bug-eyed, ebony lens that that was your boyfriend and childhood playmate. His superhero endeavors are no longer off-putting, just a part of Mark Grayson.

Besides a few bystanders’ live streams and a helicopter’s vague footage, a lot of the battles go undocumented and swept under the hyperbole rug until the next cataclysmic event ruins another city. 

You cannot remember much of the bank robbery; most of it has been latently repressed, panicked brain putting it under lock and key in the vault — the place where all the stuff you do not want to remember goes. What bled out through the cracks was enough, vivid enough, detailed enough. Just a mere snapshot of it floating up from the Davy Jones locker of your subconscious causes you to be overwhelmed with grief and terror, planting you right back in that moment. 

He was like a vexed wasp.

Moving so swiftly that you almost thought you and the other hostages were being saved by Red Rush. Landing hits in quick succession but nothing that would keep them down for long. Playing with the two super-villains as if coordinating his movements for a bigger predator. Reveling in this the sensation of fire and blood underneath his fists.

The wreckage only stills for a tense moment when Mark cups his hands on his side of the man, whose body is rolling and living lava, and crushes it. Rivulets of fiery blood collapse and grow the sizes of sizzling magma pools at their feet. 

You do not hear the words that his mouth forms, but you close enough to catch the sight of his lips wobbling with a restrained grin, his face washed warm and bright with the sunrise yellow light flickering from the lava.

Like a rubberband, he snaps towards the other robber, face determined and emotionless. The robber — less anthropomorphic than his partner, wearing civilian clothes even with that odd, bubblegum pink, pulsing thing strapped to his chest, but with human features under a wool watch cap — barely has a moment to adjust before his wrist is cuffed. His arm comes off as easily as a doll’s, used as a katana to slice through his body twice in a X-shape, breaking the device above his ribcage, shredding flesh until only bone was left.

The blood splatter had hit you. As you lean closer to the fight, separating from the cowering huddles of people, you manage to stumble out from behind a desk, coming in direct crossfire of the violence. Painted diagonal across your face, the warmth of it sinks in your pores.

He is shaking, barely able to obstruct his mirth. “(Name),” he breathes, curiously looking to see which hostage was emerging first. Under lashes pricked with sanguine, your wide eyes soak it all in and commit it to memory. 

“Your heart is beating out your chest,” Mark smiles, one of those rare smiles.

The heat lingers on your face. Instead of being freckled with blood, waking skin is wet with sweat. 

As time passes with each dose of medicine, refilled Tylenol being the only way you have been able to keep track of hours, your core temperature has decreased significantly for the past three 20mL shots. A lingering dizziness still shrouds you yet with a dimmed intensity. Disoriented from sleep, you lean over pillows to check if your parents have set up another charcuterie board to ward off illness. 

Instead of any refills or new slices of fruit, your eyes take in the sight of Mark’s broad shoulders and that long yellow cape. Held in his glove is one of the three framed photographs you keep on your dresser.

Instead of asking why he is in your room, acknowledging his unusual presence so you can get straight to the root of the problem, you inquire softly, coming out of sleep, “Why are you in your suit?”

Still holding and analyzing the framed picture, Mark soliloquies aloud, “I thought you would have told me. Not right away, of course, you had to process what happened, but I was certain that I would get a text message or call eventually. Kept my ringtone on this entire week, waiting. I exercised the patience of a saint and didn’t even get rewarded for it.”

His mask is on; it obscures his facial emotes slightly. Mark places the frame back into its spot, the taut scowl on his face visible but his creased brows indistinguishable. He moves his head just slightly, a minor adjustment so his chin is a little bit over his right shoulder; even without knowing where his eyes are pointed towards, you can tell it is you he is hunting. Your own eyelids drop close.

“Why didn’t you tell me Dexter was dead,” Mark asks you. 

So irrevocably ill with grief, a tiny moan escapes your lips and seeps into the plush of your pillow. It hurts your stomach to simply recall your cat’s name, much less his passing. Since no answer is given besides an absent-minded back and forth shake of your head, your ex-boyfriend continues on.

“When my Dad rescued that stupid thing, I couldn’t wrap my head around everyone’s fascination with it. Couldn’t understand why you of all people looked at it and decided it was worth your time and effort. Where was the benefit of its existence,” the rhetorical spins off his tongue. He sits himself on the mattress edge by your shoulders. “Then, I started to sympathize with you. Because Dexter was a pet. And, sometimes, we care too deeply for our pets.” 

Gingerly, he rests his spandex-clad hand over your temple, starting to brush and pet your hair. It is twisted with neglect and shining with grease but each stroke of his is impeccably delicate.

Head pounding like a gong, feeling all the white blood cells squirm and pulse in your blood, you manage to mumble through the thudding assault, “Why are you Invincible?” You meant to ask ‘why are you dressed in your Invincible outfit’; it came out wrong, his touch lulling you to sleep.

The side of Mark’s mouth twitches into one of those scarce half-smiles. Even when you are being difficult, he gets so much enjoyment out of your presence; the place you occupy in his world is irrevocable, a cater on the face of the moon or a star vital to a constellation, permanent.

“Come take a bath and I’ll tell you,” Invincible bargains, canines agleam. 

Even while fatigued, you still succumb to his prods and pokes, only slightly groaning low when he helps you out of bed. Mark plants kisses under your neck and works his way up to your chin to corral you into lifting your own head, autonomy slow to wake up. 

“Maaarrrkkk,” you sob, pained, when he turns on the bathroom’s lights. He shushes you gently, orchestrating a barrage of kisses to fight away drowsiness. His hands swoop and dip, aiding in the removal of each article of clothing. Calloused fingers press and rub circles on areas that he instinctively knows ache, easing you into the waking world. His touch is laced with the breed of affection he showed the night before his eighteenth birthday.

Anticipation is brewing in those coffee eyes, you realize, watching speckles of amber and hazel burn an electrifying gold under the light.

The palpable sense of excitement radiating off him makes you want to slow everything down, bare toes stumbling on linoleum in an attempt to stop as he starts to guide you to the miraculously already filled bathtub. ‘Did he already prepare this,’ you think, thoughts occupied with the soapy water, too narrow-minded to see the bigger picture, the bigger preparation. 

A toe goes in then a leg follows. Once you are fully seated in the tub, you have officially crossed over the bridge, shedding off the soporific clog of grief and emerging into the clarity and alertness of thinking consciousness. It is both the perfect and worst time to absorb Mark’s musings. 

“You know, I couldn’t decide whether you should live or die at first. After your little tantrum, I was in this volatile and tortured headspace, tearing myself apart with what ifs and hypotheticals. I threw around the thought of your death for hours, rehearsing it, nailing down the practice. Got so deep inside my head, I popped out the other side. I went looking for clarity.”

As he’s been talking, the Viltrumite has been dragging his gloved index through the buttery water, cutting the floating bubbles in half and rotating around in lazy figure eights, like a brightly colored fish bait. That dominant hand pulls back from the water; he cements it over your sweaty throat. “I found it,” Mark states. The spandex of his glove wrinkles as he gingerly gives your neck one squeeze. “Realized just seconds after that I didn’t want you dead.”

Inside your trachea, there is a tiny marble of carbon dioxide paused, a held breath that you do not know when it would be appropriate to release it. When Mark finally drops his hold, you start to heave violently like he held your head underwater when the ring of water is only at your belly button.

“Mark.”

“Let me wash your hair.” Ignoring your words as you were once doing to him, Mark stands.

It pleases him to have all your attention on him again. You watch him like a frightened prey watches their predator approach, measuring each muscle’s twitch as he removes his elbow length gloves, flinching at the snap of the opening shampoo bottle. Your own muscles turn to stone when he maneuvers behind you, out of sight. Hands lathered with shampoo touch the top of your canium. “Your heart is beating out your chest.”

“Don’t touch me,” you snap, twisting out of his reach. 

“C’mon, don’t be like that. I’m being honest with you for once.”

A tiny flare in your chest speeds up your heart. “You need to get the fuck out of my house.” Distance is what you crave.

Before you can even attempt to leave the tub, hands are back in your hair, twisting in suds and an iron hold. His strength whiplashes you; you are yanked back so violently that you fear he might try tearing your scalp completely off. Never before has he utilized his superhuman strength on you. 

It settles that you two are completely different legions, on completely different planets in a different type of physical way.

Still, your brow pinches. Upside down, Mark’s face hovers over yours, analyzing each hint of aversion and disgust etched in your demeanor, a kind of presence that is absent from his mother or his father. Eye contact electrifying his body. Sure, his sinister modus operandi unsettles you, but at least you acknowledge it, don’t turn away when he is acting out. He used to act out all the time as a kid and never got a fucking response. 

“Christ, (Name), don’t look at me like that!” He scolds with a laugh, but all he wants is for you to keep looking at him like that. “It’s me, Mark! – the guy you’ve known since we were eight! You can’t just turn around and pretend it was nothing. Talking to me like a goddamn stranger is going to get us nowhere. So, just stop.”

“I don’t know you anymore.”

“That’s fine – we can get reacquainted.” 

According to his father’s teachings, he has thousands of years to live. Which is why he is so deliberate with his hands, watching each leisurely touch ripple through you and birth a shudder. He has all the time in the world. According to his father’s teaching too, he was conceived to only conquer. 

Mark still remembers the day on top of Mount Everest’s peak. His decade old lungs familiarizing themselves with air that should have been too thin to breath and his decade old skin prickling with goosebumps but resisting against encroaching frostbite, powers awakened. His father had strategically taken him to a place where the ears and eyes of Cecil Stedman did not exist. As Nolan explained the truth of Viltrum, the white skies and snowy mountain tops stretched out before Mark became things he would soon inherit. Words like the ‘empire’s glory’ did not interest him; the idea of ‘improving civilization’ bored; in a very Lion King-esque moment — a movie he watched with his mom before she started looking at him he was a bug wearing her son’s skin, then all together completely ignoring him — where he soon realized he was to have everything in the palm of his hand.

And, here, his hands rest. Lathering shampoo in greasy hair, they caress gently, scratching his nails behind your ears and stroking it down the length of your hair. The scent of coconut wafting in the air, the sight of your ablaze scowl, the taste of acknowledgment in the air — he is thriving underneath it.

“Should we revisit conversations about my dear old Ma and Pa? What about reopening the can of worms that is me being Invincible?” You do not question him about either or so, “How about that fight we had a month ago, where you were just itching to know one thing: why.”

Despite how your heart is beating out of your chest, there is a desensitization in your body against Mark’s prodding. Minor childhood abuse disguised as horseplay left you with a thicker skin, thick enough to implore steadily, “Alright, Mark, tell me. Why were you smiling when you killed them?”

Mirth is a rarity for Mark. It has never come easily to him to display his contentment, some of his facial muscles withered with underuse. To you, it was never a strange element, rather just a fact of his character. Mark Grayson did not hand out smiles easily; it left with you a sense of pride as a child then a sense of love as an emerging adult when you managed to get him smiling. 

Now, that ear to ear grin is something laced — a candy with a razor inside, a pina colada spiked with a date rape drug, happiness with sadism underneath. Maybe, his euphoria has always been from that.

“I was smiling because … I was saving people.”

“Please,” your tone is flat, even in such a terrifying situation.

Ah, you really are annoyed with him.

His grin grows and he explains, “Because I was testing my strength, seeing what works and what doesn’t. You ask around, all heroes know they need to be stronger than the foes they face. Develop a sense of identity in the hierarchy. Climb the ladder of the food chain. I’m an adult now, so I have to start carving a place in the world for myself, (Name), you know?

“The reason I was smiling,” his coffee eyes haze, dizzy with the fantastic memory of it all, “is because it’s all becoming so easy — I’m getting stronger.”

Like a scar in the hippocampus, some movie scenes will stick with a person. Most films do not linger with Mark, easily thrown out from his memory, but there has been one that stuck with him since childhood. That simple death in the Lion King, a fall from such a great height known as the top of the food chain, a scene in which a king was betrayed by his own blood and tossed into a herd of stampeding wildebeest,  — dethroned. It has been his favorite since six. 

“To be stronger? But, you’re already … oh, Mark.”

Of course, you would come to a semi-correct conclusion. You know him better than anyone else does or will. Mark cannot wrap his head around why that bank robbery display set you off, made you adverse to him, when so many other facets of himself you have fallen in love with. This is not a setback however, simply an opportunity to bridge the gap of miscommunication.

Still, the pity in your voice makes him pull his hands away, soap thick. Mark grabs the nearby bathroom pitcher that is kept in line with the bottle, fills it, and dumps it over your head. You are left spluttering, coughing up water that was not graciously poured, as he gathers his thoughts, enjoying the sound.

“Mark, you ass!” Then, suddenly, you are standing. Water at shin height, you snap around quickly at him like a dog annoyed at being poked. Your glare, looking down upon him with a creased nose and curled lip, is like a sweet suck to his dick.

“That bitch,” Debbie, he means; he only calls one woman a bitch, “is always scared of me. Walks around on eggshell and the slight hint of discontentment in that house causes her to drink herself dumb. I despise cowardice. So, don’t you dare retreat behind your fear; if your eyes so much as glaze over with terror, I’ll pop them out as easily as cherries.”

The fists at your side travel up to cover your breasts out of sight and cross your arms in vitriol of his words. You know that you are certainly not his equal but you refuse to be his playmate anymore. “I want you out of my house right now. I don’t care what you do anymore. I’m not part of your life.”

Mark disagrees. Mark could not imagine a sweeter bonding exercise in your relationship. The two of you will grow from this; when couples fight against one another, the resounding effect is that their connection will dive deeper, interlinking them. 

“You’ll always be,” he contends, still lounging on the tub’s edge.

“Out.”

When it becomes clear that he will not move, you turn to step out of the tub. This breakup has already happened once; well-versed in how this battle is going to go, you know when to retreat and when to attack. This verbal sparring is not where it needs to happen. You lift a toe out of water to relocate to the threshold of the house’s front door before an arm around your waist stops you.

The spandex of his Invincible outfit is cold against the dorsal side of you, but it is combated by the fiery touch of his dominant hand enclosing around a breast and his chin resting on a shoulder. His exhale is acid across your skin, breathing out, “Why do you never notice it, that I could do worse but I never do? Why can’t you for once appreciate it?”

Staying silent is the wrong yet only move you have left to play, the sole weapon. Experienced, you know how deeply Mark despises being ignored. Which is why he slides his caress down from your breast, slick with cold water and shampoo, and sits his fingers at your belly button. Your stomach curls like a pillbug. 

Spine straightening, you stare down at his fingers like they are the crawling legs of a black widow. Death is a touch away, poison is a bite away. Abdominal muscles rippling uneasy, you soak in each light rub and light step of his wandering fingertips. Like a pianist stabbing a dark melody into keys, he walks those venomous fingers down to the mound of your vagina, the callous touch a threat.

If you are going to die by any hand, it is going to be this one.

“You know what it is like, don’t you?” His voice startles you in a stupor. “That loneliness that is so deep in us that it’s our skeleton, our blood. But, still you extend your hand to those who suffer, to those who know what it really feels like, to those who’ve had a taste, like that means something. And oh, so sick am I. And maybe I don’t have a choice, and maybe that is all I have. Maybe this is a cry for help.”

Defiant, you stay silent, throat under lock and key. 

Mark wraps you up in a hug from behind, moaning low at the twitch of fear that unconsciously ripples throughout you. His hand is gone from that sensitive spot. Relocated upon the churning surface of your neck, tracking each swallow and each inhale, he rests it there without any pressure.

“Talk,” he orders. 

You do not yield. 

He chokes you, void of any seductive sentimental, like he really does want you dead. Drops of soapy water leaps around your kicking feet. He lifts you, still embracing you from behind while cutting off your air supply, nuzzling his cheek into your shoulder, mask rubbing. “C’mon, say something. Talk to me.”

Your mouth is open, oxygen and rationale gone, unable to say a word.

He sets you down after thirty dark seconds. Your vision blurs, unable to tell ceramic from tile from water, falling to your knees on white nothingness. Shoulders pulse with each deep inhale you take. Subconsciously, ignoring the fact that he was just choking you seconds ago, you lean into Mark’s steady touch as he rubs your back.

“You sought me out. You asked to play. You do not get to back out because of one mistake.”

You refuse to look at him, sucking in desperate oxygen, twitching like a cat trying to puke up a hairball. 

Invincible nails down the clincher. “You’re going to be at the front row of it all. No matter how you try to not look, I’ll make sure you do, witnessing my candor, picking and choosing what you want to acknowledge but knowing, deep, deep fucking down, it’s all the truth.”

[jiangwanyinscatmom]

I have a translation question for you! 

In Chapter 3 of the official translation, Meng Mo says the following: 

“With time, your power could overturn and sweep away the entirety of the three realms, and the heavens and earth within—and it would all be simple!” 

The way I interpret this quote in English, “the entirety of the three realms” and “the heavens and the earth within” are separate things. 

While we don’t have all the PIDW details, the three ‘realms’ that Bingge successfully unites certainly seem to be the mortal realm, the demon realm and the cultivation world. (I’m under the impression the word translated as ‘realm’ is 界 or ‘jie’, which can also mean a kingdom or group, not just literal dimension. As such the cultivation world, which considers itself separate from mortal governance, could still count as a ‘realm’ despite not having its own separate dimension.) 

If the three realms are as I mentioned, then naturally the heavens and ‘the earth within’ (presumably the underworld) would be separate things. 

As I don't actually know Chinese characters, my interpretations here could be totally wrong though! That’s why I’d like you to weigh in, if you’re willing to do so. 

听他语气转冷,梦魔有���火光:“修魔有什么 不好?若你能修魔,你身上那一层东西,将于你的 修为有大大裨益,一日千里!凌驾万人之上,绝非 空谈,假以时日,纵横三界翻天覆地所向披靡,绝 不在话下!”

Hearing his voice turn cold, Meng Mo's anger flared, "What's wrong with learning demonic cultivation? If you can cultivate demonically, that thing in your body will greatly benefit your cultivation base, you will be able to grow by leaps and bounds! Overcoming ten thousand people, these aren't empty words! In time, you can cleave and bend the three realms unhindered so the heavens and earth will be turned upside down, everything will be at your feet!

Chapter 18 (SVSSS web serialization)

Okay okay... so... the sevenseas kind of compacted two, technically three I guess, different idioms here,

纵横三界, zòng héng sān jiè, to warp and weft (literally like the weaving techniques), crisscross and move unhindered (which comes from The School of Diplomacy for war tactics and strategies during the Warring States period)

翻天覆地, fān tiān fù dì: to turn the heavens and earth upside down (idiom) to cause total confusion

所向披靡,suǒ xiàng pī mǐ: sweep everything before ones self, be unstoppable,invincible

So WHOOO lots of background and a LOT of flowery language from Meng Mo to convince Luo Binghe to be "one of the cool kids".

Essentially he is saying, Luo Binghe has the potential to change the world up to the point of (metaphorical) heavenly upheaval. He is leaving it to the mortal type of obstacles Luo Binghe faces, right now with humans, immortal cultivators and demonic beings, as he is choosing to stick to uhhh... I got a lack of a better term here, but appealing to that Chūnibyō rhetoric.

[hellfiresky]

Climbing down from my own mistakes

Inspired by @orangez3st’s self-indulgent self-insert ficlets! Ngl writing this was therapeutic LOL.

Characters: Sev, Scorch, and somehow Rex.

Based on a true story. Please judge me.

I swear to every living force listening - I knew the second I walked into the living room that it was over for me.

Sev refused to lift his head from where he was cleaning his airsoft gears on the kitchen table, but he felt that something was off with me. He sniffed the air like a fucking dog, and tilted his head sideways. “You smell like you just did something institutionally bad,” he casually said “And magnesium carbonate. Pathetic combination.”

I froze. Backpack half-off one shoulder, on its way to drop to the floor. Still a little sweaty. Still high off the climb. Still thinking maybe if I ran fast enough to my room, I could escape the inevitable interrogation.

“Who was it?” Rex’s voice dropped in next. What the hell was he even doing in my shared flat with Sev?

“No one. Nothing. I went climbing—”

I barely got the words out before another cheery voice chimed in. “With who?” Scorch. Of course. Because it wasn’t enough to have Rex and Sev - eerily in the same room - I had to walk into the nightmare joint rotation, the worst most nonsensical possible peanut gallery on Earth. And I don’t even smoke, but if I did, this would’ve been the moment I started.

“Whooo was it, climbstagram124?”

I contemplated lying, and every bad lie I ever told to these three and how badly it ended rushed over me.

“…remember that filmmaker guy I kind of dated two years ago?” I finally relented.

There was a thud as Sev dropped his pair of combat boots, stood up, and pointed at me as if I was a village thief ready to receive my communal punishment. “Youuuuu….” He hissed. “climbed with your ex boyfriend,” Sev repeated. He looked like he couldn’t believe the words even as he said them.

“He’s not my ex,” I rolled my eyes.

“He’s not your future either,” Rex said dryly.

Scorch let out a mocking laugh and braced himself against the doorframe.

“Climbing?!” he crowed. “Bro, that’s basically a date!”

With my hands thrown up high, I stomped straight to the fridge to find dignity somewhere behind a jug of orange juice. “I regularly climb! I climbed with you last week, Scorch!” I snapped, yanking the bottle open and chugging it. “Are we dating? No, right? Exactly! So it was the same!”

I slammed the bottle down on the counter, bits of orange juice sloshing out onto the dirty countertop that Sev was supposed to be cleaning earlier this noon.

On the sofa, Rex crossed his arms. “You climbed with your ex-situationship,” he rubbed his temples. “That’s like…meeting up with a swan that used to peck you. ‘Nooo, it’s different now, he only pecks a little bit,’ deadass.”

Okay, that was fucking offensive. But also… a solid metaphor for… let’s call him Kix. But not that sweetheart Kix, okay - maybe Kicks.

But then the gears in my brain finally caught up. “Hold up. What are you even doing here, Rex? You don’t hang out with Sev and Scorch. Different social groups and all. You’re like…LinkedIn, and they’re like 4chan,”

“AYE!” Scorch smacked the back of my head lightly.

Rex shrugged, completely unbothered. “Sev needed help moving a couch.”

“Sev needed help? And invited you instead of Fixer and Boss?”

“Boss is busy,” Sev muttered as he moved on to turn on the tv, abandoning his dirty airsoft gear to boot up the newly updated Call of Duty game. “Being a boss.”

“And Fixer?”

“Fixer’s got one of his girls coming over,” Sev cringed.

Before I could say anything, Scorch launched himself like a missile onto the red couch beside Sev’s gaming chair. I guess that solved the mystery of what couch needed moving. Rex had, somehow, actually told the truth for once. Miracles happened every day to that bad liar.

“And then,” Rex continued, pointing at a mysterious platter on the coffee table, “Scorch roped me into staying by announcing he was gonna attempt a ‘culinary experiment.’ Which, I now realise, was just code for dipping pizza-shaped gummies into actual melted cheese.”

There was a pregnant silence whilst everyone refused to look at the disaster Scorch had left cooling on the coffee table.

“I call it—” Scorch lifted the monstrosity like a trophy, “Gummiza! Or Pizmi. We’ll workshop that!”

I stared at him. Then at Rex. Then back at Sev, who was too busy choosing Ghost’s new costume as if it was some kind of dress-up game to intervene.

“You fed Rex that,” I gagged.

“No one forced him,” Scorch shrugged. “He volunteered as tribute!”

Rex shook his head. It was almost like his spirit had left his body after he swallowed that god-awful so-called food product left on the table. Honestly, the fact that he was still standing after that probably counted as eighth wonder of the world.

I dragged my hands down my face. Maybe climbing with Kicks wasn’t even the biggest mistake I made today. Maybe it was coming home.

[hero-israel]

Something I need to just vent: I'm half Jewish and half something US leftists have no trouble understanding as oppressed. I feel like I'm being torn in two. First there are the people from my non-Jewish half, which is, yeah, really fucking antisemitic. There's the garden-variety "fucking kikes deserved it" shit, but I am also fucking drowning in "well obvs we stand w/ the Palestinians" version that went to college, skimmed Fanon, and thinks every struggle is exactly the same. And they all want to pretend the rampant anitsemitism they were all raised with doesn't feed into it, but of course it does. These big name Twitter users of my bg pretty it up with blah blah decolonization isn't a metaphor, but they will never say the whole truth, which is that they visit home and break bread with parents who just say Jews are Satanic pieces of shit with their whole chest. Then there's my fucking idiot white friends who parrot it all. They don't know what's being carefully hidden from them, and if someone showed them, they'd bend over backwards to insist it was somehow totally justified. They know who the Good Guys are, and obviously it's not those loud, greedy, cruel Christ-kil-oh oooooops, I mean Israelis!!! And they're just rushing to like and retweet what the idiots from my other half have to say. They don't question why their pet issue isn't, say, Hawaiian independence, which they might have some weight in as Americans. They don't wonder why they don't give as much of a shit about tribal sovereignty. Hating Jews -- oops, Israelis! -- just feels somehow so much more satisfying and righteous, and whooo could possssibly say why? Definitely not those vicious settler colonialist Jews who just see Jew-hatred everywhere for SOME crazy made-up reasons. And I'm just here, alone. I don't want to act like my non-Jewish half has it easy; it doesn't. But on the left, at least there's like .... the *etiquette* of people pretending to support us, to sit down and listen, to acknowledge they probably have biases. But Jews....everyone just fucking hates us. All my life, I've felt the pressure from gentile people on the left (which is dominant where I'm from in MA) to only care about my gentile half, to only identify with it. I resist it every day, but it's so. hard. A secret I can only whisper here: Both my sides struggle. But I'm only ever truly afraid for my life as a Jewish person. That's the one that feels like it could get me killed. That's the one that I feel tempted to hide. I wear my chai, but sometimes, when I'm on the T and someone seems like they're staring, I panic and want to hide it. Maybe I'm wrong. But I know there's a significant chance I'm not. Especially when they're clearly from my other half, I know exactly what the fuck they're thinking. And I have nowhere to say it, except a stranger's askbox. Am Yisrael chai, motherfuckers.

I very much hope you stay safe, and am sorry you feel so unsupported by your friends.

I know what that is like. None of my actual goyische friends have said anything hostile, but most of them haven't said anything at all. I know it sounds minor but the days and days of posts of Mr. Rogers saying to look for the helpers, or Gandalf saying nobody wants to live through these times, the usual rounds of virtuous signals, are unmissably absent. And the friends-of-friends are pure violent garbage, which makes me wonder if my friends would have hated and rejected me as a Jew if they'd met me for the first time now and not when we were kids. Have had MULTIPLE friends-of-friends declare that the Israeli civilians weren't civilians, they were colonizers who can't be civilians and who all deserved it ("it" to include rape and infanticide). Every last one of those friends-of-friends are white Americans.

Please keep wearing the chai.

[zukkaoru]

okay ttpd post-first listen through thoughts:

wasn't expecting much from the p.ost m.alone feature bc i didn't like his feature on dial drunk but i was actually pleasantly surprised by fortnight

miss swift ma'am can you stop writing good songs and giving them the most cringe titles you can think of. thanks

^ why is a lyric that goes as hard as "i'll tell you something about my good name / it's mine alone to disgrace" stuck in a song titled but daddy i love him this is an outrage

uhmmm mbobhft + s.ouheki hear me out HEAR ME OUT---

(cause i knew too much, there was danger in the heat of my touch / he saw forever so he smashed it up) (i felt more when we played pretend........)

florence and the machine!!!! whooo!!!!!

the religious metaphor/imagery in guilty as sin?,, thank u for the food

would you guys crucify me if i said so high school + k.unichuu..,

i hate it here is so mecore

overall a lot of the songs do sound very similar to one another but i can accept that bc at least it's not midnights again. the only song i really viscerally didn't like was ttpd. also not the biggest fan of imgonnagetyouback bc it sounds like get him back! in a different genre and less fun to sing along to. there were some lyrics in the other songs that made me go ???? why would you write that. but there were also a lot of good lyrics that i need to use as fic titles right now. uhmm lots of s.kk possibilities also but that's bc they're just so. gestures vaguely. i did listen to the first half of the album at 2am though so i don't actually remember it very well and i just finished listening to the second half five minutes ago so it's too fresh in my mind for good thoughtful commentary. i will probably have more thoughts later and also give it a week so i can loop it (because of the Curse) and then i might decide i actually hate all of it. we'll see. it'll be a fun surprise for everyone involved

[please-picturemeintheweeds]

You were right with the alcoholism maybe being a topic

I don’t think I ever spoke about that specifically, but I do think it’s related to the way she has talked about love as an addiction, and there’s so much meat in that metaphor to unpack on these two albums whooo boy

[allthemusic]

Week ending: 15th January

It's 1964! The Cold War is getting colder by the minute, the Vietnam War is really getting going, the Civil Rights Acts passes in the US and in the UK, we get Harold Wilson, all while Beatlemania reaches its peak - but interestingly enough, we're actually starting out with two completely new artists, this year.

The Hippy Hippy Shake - The Swinging Blue Jeans (peaked at Number 2)

This sure is a wild way to start the year. The Swinging Blue Jeans - cool band name, by the way - are as exuberant and boisterous as they come, launching into this song with an emphatic for goodness sake / I got the hippy hippy shakes! By which, I assume, they just mean they want to dance, hence all the lines about how you shake it to the left / You shake it to the right / You do the hippy shake shake with all of your might. All of which means that yes, despite a title that might get you thinking of hippies, the late 60s counterculture movement, this is basically just a song about dancing.

This feels kind of straightforward, a throwback to all the 50s rock and roll songs that were just about the joys of movement - gone are the romantic lyrics, the lines playing around with various first and second-person pronouns, the various ways of making a song to say "I love you", in favour of something that feels much more like, say, Shake Rattle and Roll or Rip It Up or Let's Dance, songs that were just about how good it is to go out dancing. Even musically, you've got a bunch of very rock and roll chords patterns underpinning it all, and a solid rocker of a guitar solo at the two-thirds mark - possibly unsurprising, given that it's a cover of a 1959 American rock and roll number by somebody called Chan Romero, so not a Merseybeat original at all.

How did the Swinging Blue Jeans, yet another band from Liverpool, end up cover it, then? Well, as seems to be the case quite a lot at the moment, the Beatles are ultimately to blame, having picked the song up as part of their informal gig repertoire, playing it in clubs early on in their caraeer. They also recorded a version at the BBC, which was never released, but has since seen release as a bootleg version. So it was a song that would have been known in Merseybeat circles, and that saw quite a few covers in the UK, off the back of that - the Swinging Blue Jeans did a version, but so did the Welsh band, Pat Harris and the Blackjacks. All of these update the sound, a bit, playing it on the typical Merseybeat instruments, and adding a layer of raucous regionally-accented vocals, a few whooo or oooh ad libs and screeches, some rather American yeahs, and a beat that keeps it all ticking along apace. But at the end of the day, this still feels like a rock and roll number to me, at heart.

(I'm also pleased to see that the Swinging Blue Jeans did sometimes - though not all of the time - perform actually in matching blue jeans. Which is a fun shtick!)

Swinging on a Star - Big Dee Irwin (7)

And then, following the Blue Jeans, we get a song that I know is a bit of a pop standard. Swinging on a Star, sometimes known as Would You Like to Swing on a Star, was originally introduced by Bing Crosby, in the film Going My Way, all about a priest arriving in a new parish and settling in and founding a choir. How this song, exactly, fitted into that narrative, I'm not entirely sure - I can make a few assumptions from the lyrics, but I'm really not sure. It's quite daft, either way.

Would you like to swing on a star, the narrator begins, carry moonbeams home in a jar / And be better off that you are / Or would you rather be a mule? Weird choice, already, and a completely unexpected way to end the line. But there's a metaphorical level going on, the narrator explains, adding that a mule is an animal with long funny ears / He kicks up at anything he hears / His back is brawny but his brain is weak / He's just plain stupid with a stubborn streak. Yikes, not very flattering, right? And even worse, if you hate to go to school / You may grow up to be a mule. Which makes me think this is maybe a song that's meant to be sung for a young person who doesn't want to go to school, contrasting the good things that come from education and behaving ("swinging on a star") vs. truancy and dropping out ("you're basically a stubborn ass"). And things don't stop there, you can also be a dirty, ill-mannered pig. And if you don't care a feather or a fig / You may grow up to be a pig.

All of this is enjoyably silly, and possibly relevant to the story of Bing's priest forming a choir out of disaffected schoolboys. Unfortunately, it doesn't go particularly far to explain what Big Dee Irwin, an R&B singer is singing it, now - it hardly feels like the sort of relatable, universally-applicable stuff that you'd expect to become a pop standard. Dee sings it well, and the whole thing's been updated with some guitar, and what actually sounds a bit like a harpsichord or spinnet, plus some horns, some backing vocals - it sounds great! But I just don't know why this song, of any, was picked.

The only suggestion I can think of is just that somebody saw the potential for a comedy duet and ran with it. Because, if I haven't already mentioned, this song, despite being credited solely to Dee, is actually a joint effort, with Little Eva providing a sort of colour commentary throughout, razzing on Dee and playing the part of the stroppy schoolgirl, the sarky critic and the impressionable audience for Dee's life lessons, all rolled into one. The mule is stubborn and kicks - just like you, Dee - and if you hate to go to school - which I do - you too might become a mule - I don't wanna grow up and be a mule. The pig's messy - look who's talkin' - and if you don't care - that's the truth - you might become a pig - not if I can help it, baby!

This is theoretically quite charming, and I do generally think that a lot of songs would benefit from a built-in peanut gallery. Except something about the way she goes back and forth just makes Eva sound kind of dumb, here. I get that she's trying to frame herself as this cool, rebellious teenager. But she just sounds silly and a bit sulky, the way this frames her - the joke definitely feels like it's on her more than Dee, in a way that verges on mean-spirited, and is also just not that funny - certainly not enough to justify lines like the lame little one moonbeam, two moonbeam one. I like the harmonies Eva contributes, towards the end. But other than that, she's really not improving the song, not for me. Still should have credited her, but I do think Dee could have carried this fine by himself.

It's been a little while since we had a proper duet. Huh. They weren't ever super common, but I feel like there were more of them back in the early and mid-1950s. But when was the last time we properly got a man and a woman duetting? I don't know if I can remember, and that would probably give Swinging on a Star a boost here, if I wasn't so annoyed at the nothing that they gave Little Eva. She's got a fabulous voice, but is poorly used, here. Which in turn means the blue-jeaned rowdy-boys take it, with their high-paced, dance-themed rock and roll throwback.

Favourite song of the bunch: The Hippy Hippy Shake

[after-nine-at-the-oasis]

AAAAAHHHHHHH CLAIRE :OOO :DDD!!!

What O.O???

Oh phew

But nahh 💀-

NOOOO WHAT

WHAT THE FRICK.

AUGH THEY FOUND OUT O.O

AND OH GOSH ONE EPISODE LEFT AFTER THIS 😭😭 Y'ALL I'M NOT OKAY :'(((

UHH OHHHHH

YEAH THAT'S WHAT I SAID!!

Okay maybe just like get her into rehab or something o.o

Don't just kick her out on the street xd

Oh gosh that's gonna be wild 😭

Well, that's the last of my last thoughts, so now it's time for the. . .

REVIEW

I loved this episode!! I thought it was great :D. The drama was killing me a bit, but it always does xd. And. Yk. The ethical violations. XD but seriously it was a wild episode (as honestly always) but good :D.

Okay these will be short because this whole review section is being written the day of the next episode lol. I doubt I'll be home in time but I'm gonna get this out of the way anyway!

Lim and Jordan! Didn't see either of them much I believe but they slayed :). Glad Lim apologized to Glassman in the sense of they're getting better at that but girly was right 😭. Anyway, they slayed :). I love them 🥰.

Dom and Charlie! They are :D. They both did really well (Dom is going through it xd) and I love Charlie's story about/connection with her dad :')). Also her claps for Shaun's metaphor usage :'DD xD 🥰. She's an icon <33. Anyway, I love them :D.

Jared! He also slayed :D. Again, don't remember much that he did, but I'll try and come back later after I re look at some bits. I love him ❤️.

Jerome! Didn't see him but I hope he's doing okay <33. As always, I love him :')) ❤️❤️❤️🥰.

Park and Morgan! Y'allll the awkwardness xdd. I'm glad Park realized in the end that she was trying, though, and that's enough that he can make an effort :'). A good compromise <3. If you want romance though my guy you gotta put it in there yourself mostly I think lol. Anyway AAAHHHHHHH THEY'RE ENGAGED :DDDD 🥳🥳🥳🥳🎂🎂🎊🎉!!! WHOOO my lovelies :'DDD 🥰🥰🥰❤️. I'm so happy for them <3. That proposal was great too, iconic, perfect for them :'). I love them so much <3.

Shaun and Lea! I'm glad they worked it out because it was stressing meee 😭😭🥺❤️. I do see both sides of it though. I'm glad Lea eventually gave her permission, but I don't think she was being unreasonable at all. I just think that this has a lot to do with Shaun's trauma and ultimately she was afraid of judgement and change, so if she was willing to, I'm happy for them <3. I don't think a diagnosis at that age would be too helpful (just treat your kid to their needs at that age for that kind of thing, something not life threatening), but if it makes Shaun feel better then I'm for it <3. Although I wonder if they are going through with it xD. Also those flashbacks 😭😭🥺💔❤️. Killed me <3. The last one was so sweet though :')) 😭🥺🥰🥰 <3. Anyway, I love them so much :'DD.

Glassman! Bro. Bro is stressing me out 😭😭😭 xdd. I'm glad she's getting help and has a place to stay and a connection but sir xd. The laws you are breaking my guy 😭😭. And now it's gone from ethical concerns to literal illegal activity 💀. Like sir xdd. I love the emotional depth we're getting with it though. It's a really good storyline for him (having the opportunity to do what he didn't/couldn't for Maddie) but I don't know if it'll end well :(. Even not from a legal standpoint xd. Anyway, I just hope they're both okay 😭🥺💔❤️. Still, after all this, I love him xd <3.

Overall, I really enjoyed this episode! It was a bit stressful but when isn't it xD. But yeah, there were a lot of fun moments and a good amount of stuff gkt resolved, which I'm grateful for :D. Still gotta have that one cliffhanger with Glassman though xd. Anyway, everyone did great this episode, and the cases were great :D. Cool as always :)! And everyone was also really innovative with it <3.

So yeah! I loved this episode, I thought it was great. I'm glad everybody's doing at least okay. I'm a bit scared for the next one, but excited! This has been my review of. . .

The Good Doctor, Season 7, Episode 8:

It was amazing! I'm worried about how things are gonna turn out, but I'm super excited for next episode. I'll be back here next week for my review of. . .

The Good Doctor, Season 7, Episode 9:

See you next week!

[sleuth2k7]

i’ve just started reading jean aitchinson’s seeds of speech and she includes a metaphor that reminded me of deduction, specifically going from observations to deductions:

“‘Science is built up with facts, as a house is with stones. But a collection of facts is no more a science than a heap of stones is a house,’ said the French scientist Jules Poincare. In house building, it’s essential to have an overall plan, and not just heap up stones randomly. Similarly, in research, it’s important to have a theory, a framework into which to place the pieces. If they do not fit, then the old theory has to be abandoned, and a new one proposed. But how can the stones be structured, when it’s unclear what kind of building is under construction?

Sometimes, an intermediate stage is needed, before a full plan is possible. An architect starts by asking basic simple questions, such as: ‘What is the building for?’ An answer such as: ‘To provide shelter from the weather’ leads to other questions, such as ‘What kind of weather, hot or cold?”, “How many people must it shelter?”, and so on.”

two things with this:

1. the theory thing, the framework: you can’t just collect observations and then toss them together however you want, since their meaning isn’t up to your personal creative interpretation - that’s why knowledge bases, logic, etc. are important - you have to not only collect the stones but also have the knowledge of how to put them together, or else you just have a pile of stones

2. the asking questions in my mind is the same as looking at the context - you can observe someone carrying around a heavy coat, but you aren’t going to have any idea what that means unless you ask: (1) what are heavy coats for? and (2) where is this person right now? (context).

[lokis-meme-monsters]

“You’re such a Nord” is such an underutilized and unappreciated insult nowadays. Closeminded jackass at the checkout? Nord Xenophobic douchebag at the bar? Nord Prejudicial cockwaffle shouting random nonsense? Noooooooord - Jor

[knowlesian]

I can't believe how much "izzy is a beard" sums up in terms of who izzy is to ed. that and your takes on why ed chose izzy exactly FOR his lack of emotional intelligence or desire for friendly closeness are going to be rolling around in my head for ages now

HERE HAVE MORE TO ROLL and watch as this is borderline incoherent/i just end up repeating this when i finish my longer piece, but i have been puzzling over this for ages and trying to figure out how exactly i would guess the lines shook out back in the day.

i think about ed's pre-canon life and choices a lot in terms of "what's the utility", because this team was really good at crafting realistic emotional journeys and people amidst all the outsized and/or ridiculous plot and aesthetics.

the boiled down way to express it would be... metaphorically, ed has always had that red silk close to his chest, but he's only just now beginning to to pull it out and look at it; he can't admit he wants to wear it openly.

it feels safe to say this started faaaairly recently, and it's been going on long enough for izzy to start getting fed up because ed isn't acting like the walls up, mask on version of ed izzy knows and expects to see. who knows the actual length of time and when exactly ed first started to show the cracks in the facade: i legit won't even bother with a guess.

(because look: i just feel like timelines on this show are p much jeremy bearimy, baby. i have stopped trying to guess how long ed and izzy have known each other, when fang joined up, etc etc etc. these characters are all ages at once; maybe izzy has been on ed's ship for five years and fang for five hundred, who could really say. maybe this is ALL occurring in the dot above the i.)

i would definitely say izzy is able to observe the empirical behavioral changes that come from ed getting tired of keeping up the act, but because he can't read ed that's what he labels 'erratic behavior'. erratic means unexpected or unpredictable and out of character, not depressed, and maybe my hottest izzy take is i don't think izzy knows ed is depressed.

(i swear this is leading to actually talking about the old days! at some point!)

and obviously the usual caveat applies that whooo fuckin' knows if i'm reading it right, but i don't think it's a mistake we never see izzy witness ed break down in s1. he's up on deck during the fuckery, he leads lucius to the fort but we don't see him interact with ed during the fort era. by the time izzy interacts with ed again that we see, ed's singing his song on the deck and cleaning up the cabin.

i don't think it's necessarily as cut and dry as 'izzy has no idea ed ever gets upset (not angry)', but when ed says he might try dying because why not!, izzy is baffled. that doesn't speak to me of izzy knowing the depth of ed's pain, or seeing how close he is to legit just saying fuck it and letting all his spinning plates crash because he's tired of maintaining them all and he's not getting much from the effort anymore, where parts of the life used to thrill him.

so izzy can tell something is not right because like... duh, but he's just not good at reading people and ed is very good at obfuscation.

whiiiiiich finally gets me to the old days.

the ed of those days built the kind of toxic ship culture where you cut off toes for a laugh as regularly as you go on benders. (sidenote because i am always lowkey wanting to stress this, the "for a laugh" toe context in e9: very important for analyzing the toe scene, imo. without canon establishing that the blackbeard izzy wants ed to be is a man who cuts off toes for a laugh/that ed knows he doesn't want to be that man anymore, that scene plays out very differently so they definitely included it for a reason. i'm with stede when i say uhhhhh that's a shitty joke! but when you factor in that setup and context, it's pretty clear izzy is legit thrilled because ed did what izzy said he should do. whether or not he knows deep down this is bad for both of them or would have preferred another method: up for grabs. either way the toe was a return to form, and in their old world it was done as a fun little prank and not as a punishment. that's just canon, personal feelings on if that is cool and okay aside.)

back on subject, beyond the 'they shit everywhere' parts ed instituted the pet rule because "the love of a pet makes a man weak". grammatically speaking, that means a lack of that love— a lack of softness, even— makes a man strong.

so: ed's ship culture was set up to stamp out softness, and make men strong. make himself strong. keep those red handkerchiefs hidden, boys, keep your hearts locked away and perform the kind of violence that means evvvvvvverybody understands you are the realest sort of man: a man who cannot be fucked with, or ELSE.

and helLO, mindset izzy hands can fuck with.

so there's point one in izzy's favor for ed. he's already on that train, he's going to go SO HARD enforcing this shit without ed even needing to step in.

there's the other practical aspects: he's a good fighter, he's a good enough sailor to keep up with the standard expected from ed's crew.

i would argue the bulk of 'why izzy' is more emotional, though. ed doesn't want to be alone, izzy won't leave him alone; ed asked for loyalty above all else, and when izzy promised he'd give it he meant that. his loyalty is... you know, the kind of loyalty that leads him to run crying to the navy when ed forces him to play by the rules of a game izzy thought were fair when he also thought they were tilted in his favor, but hey. sliding scale, and ed of the old days was not exactly seeking healthy relationships and good communication.

he's also not seeking to be seen and understood as his full authentic self; he is in fact actively cultivating a persona and lifestyle that is all about hiding in plain sight and making sure nobody questions if he's lowkey full of shit and feels like he's a bad person who doesn't deserve nice things.

selecting a first mate who can see right through him is counter to that goal. enter, izzy hands.

izzy can't read ed, but ed can read izzy and he knows his whole blackbeard shtick is already exactly what izzy wants.

given that izzy tends to see what he wants to see in general (it took this man two solid weeks to begin to wonder if ed just had a crush, and even then his conclusion was 'ohhh, stede is magic and he broke ed's brain' because that's a thing? somehow? jesus christ, izzy. your issues, they are fuckin legion) that means ed would have to know izzy's natural tendencies would combine with a desire to keep serving under a legend and help paper over any slips ed might make in maintaining the facade 24/7.

and alongside all that, as hard as it is for a viewer who looks at izzy and goes '...fuckin what IS THERE to like, though' to imagine, ed clearly got to experience the very best parts of izzy over the years, and subsequently valued them. (...whatever those are.) i very much doubt ed would have kept izzy around if his cluelessness and rabid loyalty and ability to stab were all he had to offer, because you can find all that in a package that isn't otherwise giving you nothing.

that's not to say izzy was once a shining paragon of any sort, since the ed of old was a no pets, no moonlight, no heart to hearts in that moonlight kind of guy— he wasn't looking for somebody like stede back then, because his fear of being known overwhelmed his desire to be known, and (preconceived notions and miscommunications and all) stede is the kind of guy who can't do anything but look at ed and see him for who he is.

it is saying that i think ed saw the best parts of izzy, weighed them against his worst parts, considered all the practical reasons he worked, and it added up to: this is a person i understand but who will never see past what i want him to see, who is even more obsessed with upkeeping my legend than i am and who will never, ever leave me.

aaaaand back in the day, that was what ed wanted; now, it's what's driving them right the fuck on into the rocks.

which is fuckin' tragic on both sides and some very deft writing.

[apenitentialprayer]

E4#

Whooo Eucharist metaphor!

[serialkillerinthemaking]

below the cut is my insanely long analysis of sa and its metaphors its bad but i did in an hour with a headache so it is what it is

analyzing sa even though it's been said so much it's redundant I just need a place to collect it all ya know

note: none of this is chronological to the story and its probably just going to be the song lyrics

there are many run-on sentences and grammar problems sorry. I'm writing this off the idea that everyone has a decent understanding of sa and its plot.

obviously, mama who bore is about Wendla’s mom not telling her about sex. mwbmr is the same thing except it shows none of the girl's mom tells them about sex.

all that's known starts with the boys robotically repeating Virgil's Aeneid before Melchior breaks out and starts singing. He explains that science and facts are pushed aside in favor of religion and his parents wanting him to fall in line and not question what is taught. that's the general theme of the song. he is determined not to become part of the hivemind and question what is taught. he wants to find and see and experience more than what they know of and are teaching in terms of the world and he himself.

He mentions the stars and them being sort of all-knowing. stars are brought up again in those you've known sort of being a metaphor for society and the children of his generation and the ones to come. In those youve known, he vows to read Moritz and Wendla's dreams to the stars because they are dead and can really communicate with him and therefore rely on him to spread the word of their thoughts and ideas and stories. this being a cautionary tale, those stories must be told.

he mentions the repression of free thought. children are naturally curious of the world around them but as they grow up the adults push them not to be and only to accept what we know now. he doesn't want to lose this and stop eternally searching for more. this is sort of put into the term "purple summer". meaning the story, the cause, the prevention, and the tragic beauty of the story. we'll come back to the meaning of purple summer itself.

he says one day all will know generally meaning what is happening beneath the surface and societies refusal to talk about it and explore it. in purple summer this comes back more concrete. instead of one day, more like a distant hope, he says all shall know. they will know now, soon, not one day in the distant future. In the end, his journey is complete and it goes from one day all will know to all shall know. 

tbol and my junk are pretty straight forward you guys don't need me for those.

touch me is basically about the yearning for sex and to know what is. there are some metaphors but they are pretty self-contained within the song itself and don't really have enough grasp on them to go too deep. either that or they're really not actually that deep lol.

woyb is basically about Melchior and Wendla wanting to be with each other and trying to resist the temptation because of oppression

The dark I know well is about the rape and sexual assault of Martha and Ilse at the hands of her father and artist friends, respectively. Again the song uses one central self-contained metaphor that is never brought up again in the context of the show and is pretty easy to understand. 

and then there were none has frau Gabor intermittently reading a letter she wrote in response to Moritz asking for money to escape. Moritz jumps in and sings his thoughts as he reads the letter and basically watches his last hope fall through. he feels she tries to sugarcoat the point of the letter. he is mad for saying things in an attempt to make him feel better and to try her best to help, such as writing a letter to his parents. she tells him she still cares for him but can't help him. he feels he has no other option left after failing his tests. you all know the plot you don't need me to explain it.

mirror blue night Melchior is horny blah blah blah I hate this song moving on

I believe while they disobey the church and its a church song irony yeah

(it's so late I'm sorry)

don't do sadness blue wind ohoho lets goooo

Moritz wishes to be a butterfly, no longer having to deal with life, and happily flying. he says he doesn't do sadness because he just can't handle it anymore. the failing the test hurt him and frau Gabor refusing to help was the straw that broke the camel's back. he can't take it anymore. Ilse comes in and sees he's sad. it's cold and dark outside symbolizing his current mood so she sings about the happiness of spring and summer to cheer him up. fall and winter are analogies for sadness and pessimism, spring and summer are happiness and optimism, hence spring awakening, the happiness coming back after the sad times. purple summer also references that but that's for later. she talks about when they were kids happily playing in the sun. wind, a cold sad month thing always comes back but it always goes away. happiness will always come and sadness will always go just like the seasons. Moritz is only living in fall and autumn, not seeing the spring and summer ahead. Ilse gets through her life through optimism relying on the blue wind never taking when it creeps up and always going away once again. and then it just kinda repeats you get the rest.

left behind. he never got to grow up and be an adult and its his parent's (mostly his dad's) fault. metaphor once again fully in the song not really brought up again.

you guys got the rest (more than sufficient critical conjecture on woybr) until WHISPERING whooo

she hears the ghosts because throughout she alive and dead. sort of. everyone is sad. she describes her family's grief at her funeral. the preacher uses her as a cautionary tale and warns others of her fate. they say she did bad things and this how she ended up. such a shame, such a sin. she feels powerless, like she didn't have a voice and only could do what was told of her. she didn't know any better despite her best efforts. she mentions summer longing in the wind. happiness being swept up by sadness was pretty much her whole "relationship" with Melchior.

👏those👏you've👏known

there is so much I'm just gonna analyze it line by line (i consider this the pinnacle of metaphors in theatre considering the buildup)

MORITZ

Those you’ve known

And lost, still walk behind you

All alone

They linger till they find you

self explanatory pretty much

Without them

The world grows dark around you

And nothing is the same until you know that they have found you

Melchior's world has crumbled, he feels like it never going to be the same without them, but he found them.

WENDLA

Those you’ve pained

May carry that still with them

All the same

They whisper: “All forgiven.”

He hurt her, and she's still hurting but she forgives him because there is love in heaven, all will be forgiven.

Still your heart says

The shadows bring the starlight

And everything you’ve ever been is still there in the dark night

everything she was was left behind, but she still finds it here.

WENDLA

When the northern wind blows

The sorrows your heart holds

There are those who still know –

They’re still home

We’re still home

he's still hurting, they're still there.

MORITZ (Sung In Counterpart)

Though you know

You’ve left them far behind

You walk on by yourself, and not with them –

Still you know

They will fill your heart and mind

When they say there’s a way through this

he's living and must continue without them but they are still there in his heart.

MELCHIOR, MORITZ AND WENDLA

Those you’ve known

And lost, still walk behind you

All alone

Their song still seems to find you

They call you

As if you knew their longing –

They whistle through the lonely wind, the long blue shadows falling

they are still there! 

MELCHIOR

All alone

But still I hear their yearning

Through the dark, the moon, alone there, burning

The stars too

They tell of spring returning –

And summer with another wind that no one yet has known

The stars are back! they are all knowing and tell of the sadness passing, the happiness returning, with something new.

(MORITZ and WENDLA Join with Counterparts)

They call me –

Through all things –

Night’s falling

But somehow I go on

You watch me

Just watch me –

I’m calling

From longing

a call back to all thats known

WENDLA (Sung in Counterpart)

When the northern wind blows

The sorrows your heart’s known –

I believe…

she still believes in forgiveness.

MORITZ (Sung in Counterpart)

Still you known

There’s so much more to find –

Another dream, another love you’ll hold

he doesn't have to be stuck on them and they are giving him permission to move on and find happiness again.

Still you know

To trust your own true mind

On your way – you are not alone

There are those who still know

a call back to all that's known, 

MELCHIOR (Sung Alone)

Now they’ll walk on my arm through the distant night

And I won’t let them stray from my heart

Through the wind, through the dark, through the winter light

I will read all their dreams to the stars

i dissected this line back in all thats known but STARS! they back

I'll walk now with them

I’ll call on their names

I’ll see their thoughts are known

they know now! all will know he knows and know they know! their story will be told!

WENDLA

Not gone –

Not gone –

they are still there!

MELCHIOR

They walk with my heart –

And I'll never let them go

they are still there!

I’ll never let them go

I’ll never let them go

You watch me

Just watch me

I’m calling

I’m calling –

And one day all will know

ALL👏WILL👏KNOW👏

P U R P L E  S U M M E R

purple has historically represented freedom, the kids now have freedom and summer here means happiness. so now they have both. purple summer is just yeah knowledge and freedom of oppression and the hivemind because this Germany 1890 bad (its a john Mulaney reference I'm so sorry im losing my mind)

And all shall know the wonder

I will sing the song of purple summer

All thats known, all will know all shall know. They will know because we will tell them.

And still, I wait

The swallow brings

A song of what's to follow -

The glory of the spring

The happiness! The knowledge! The freedom! Its coming! It waking it up! SPRING IS AWAKENING! ahhhhhhhhhh

[hellyeahheroes]

Okay so I’m not gonna lie, I cannot muster myself to give a crap about latest issue of Fantastic Four, which had Dan Slott retcon it so that not only is Franklin Richards a mutant but never was a mutant, he jsut used his powers to make himself register as a mutant to feel special. Like, as far as retcons go this one is bad and poorly done, it is a writing with subteltly of a jackhammer for no good reason. Buuuuut.... in order for me to be offended about it I would have to care about Mutants as Minority Metaphor (which I will be for brevity call MMM from now on). 

If we assume mutants are metaphor for minority then whooo boy, imagine telling a kid that just started exploring himself as a part of a miunority group he doesn’t fit it ans is just “pretending” for some abritrary reason. That would be a dick move on pair with bi, pan, trans and ace exclusionism from LGBTQ spaces and communities. Which would be on pair with Xavier’s assholery. So if any of you buys into MMM then you have a good reason to be offended.

I don’t. Fuck MMM. Mutants are waay too white and straight with too much focus on white and straight characters at the expense of their actual minority members and recently is waay to fashy to play this card. Times when we needed this metaphor are long gone, we do not need a bunch of white cishets to stand for actual minorities, we can have the characters from actual minority groups. I am especially not going to be taking this shit when X-Line is heald by a writer whose previous works include “Avengers are fascists and that’s good” and “Antisemitism is right: the comic book” 

I am also not gonna be like “Slott is breaking his toys because he doesn’t want to share with better writers”. First of all, X-Men need to stop trying to steal characters from other teams and their fandom need to get over their entitlement for any character who is a mutant or even a character who is popular (Kamala Khan). X-Men and X-Fandom just want to get praises without having to put in the work. And I’m not gonna pick a side between a writer who throws a tantrum whenever he has to share with others and isn’t dictating the terms and a guy whose appriopriate description is somewhere between “Grant Morrison without heart and humanity” and a “cryptofascist”. I wish neither of them were fucking up these books and characters.

I can, however, say I find Slott’s attitude really stupid. It is not different from all these writers who feel the need to drago Superman down because they cannot think of problems that cannot be solved by punching them away. Or drag all heroes down because they’re obsessed over street level jerks like Batman, Wolverine or Punisher and cannot think of a way to write a story that isn’t about these characters and a kind of threats they deal with and lose their minds when they realize someone like Flash or Doctor Strange can solve such threat easily. Or bend over backwards to make a story that should be about high-power heroes be about street level one (Metal) no matter how contrived it looks like. 

I am tired of this desperate need for “realism” that drags more fantastic characters down and limits the king of stories mainstream comics can tell within superhero genre. If you don’t want to write the character, do not write them. Have Franklin go on a cosmic journey to learn more about his powers and let a writer who wants to engage with this type of character work with him. Don’t go trying to fit a round peg into a square hole.

-Admin

[spindlephysalia]

okay actually fuck you all a rant about mahan.

Alfred Mahan is a dude who wrote about naval warfare and basically had it figured as "you want to control seas lanes, so ideally you mass all your ships, toss them into the enemy in a big decisive battle and then control the sea lanes without an enemy to fuck with you."

This suffers from the counterplay of "I'm not going to play with you" where a weaker enemy battle fleet refuses to fuck with you so you have to keep enough force concentrated to beat them down and can't do all the shit you want. As a result of this a lot of naval campaigns boil down to games of chicken where one side fucks around and tries to bait the other side into fighting them.

This makes it generally unfortunate if you're going to run the standard "globalised economy but planets instead of countries" setup science fiction loves. Having two clusters of trading islands at war with each other means the war basically tips towards whoever can force the other side to avoid battle. You can start fucking with their trade, disrupt their economy and snowball towards victory.

But we're assuming that the only way to cross the sea of stars is by boat. Allow me to present to you: wormholes. Because wormholes are often introduced as being ancillary to Space Boats you'll usually see them free-floating in space but like...you can build them on a planet. You can run a rail line from one planet to the next. This changes our metaphor from two island-clusters to two landmasses separated by a stretch of water.

(it also makes the metaphor mix poorly with topography. Like, everywhere's coastal but with different oceans? it turns out breaking spacetime for fun and profit is messy on the brain.)

BUT that gives you the fun of breaking mahan a little! The more you have to spread ships out the less mahanian things become, and having a contiguous landmass where points on its surface correspond to entirely different planets lets you do that especially in low-ship-count settings! And on top of that imagine the fun you can do with stretched-thin navies dealing with ground defences!

All of this adds up to create a situation where engagements are smaller and more frequent, so there's more space for small teams of named characters to tip the scales! whooo

the only thing I hate more than worldbuilding is not worldbuilding