#And that's only increased by the fact that though I largely speak English in a very neutral accent

[linguistics-and-such]

1st Person Pronouns in Pocket Monsters Special

I thought it would be fun to have a look at what 1st person pronouns the Pokèdex Holders use in the Pokèmon manga, Pocket Monsters Special (known as Pokèmon Adventures in English).

Note: In Japanese, there are a ton of different 1st person pronouns people can use, and Japanese media often makes copious use of them. In a lot of shounen and shoujo manga/anime casts, you'll often get a large variety of 1st person pronouns in use by different characters to help flesh out their personality traits.

Note: I am not a native Japanese speaker, and I only have a conversational level in Japanese, as opposed to a fluent level. As such, please don't take anything I say as gospel.

* Red (レッド) ^ Fighter (戦う者): ore (オレ)

* Green Orchid (オーキド・グリーン) ^ Trainer (育てる者): ore (オレ)

* Blue (ブルー) ^ Evolver (化える者): atashi (アタシ)

* Yellow de Tokiwa Grove (イエロー・デ・トキワグローブ) ^ Healer (癒やす者): boku (ボク)

* Gold (ゴールド) ^ Hatcher (孵す者): ore (オレ)

* Silver (シルバー) ^ Exchanger (換える者): ore (オレ)

* Crystal "Crys" (クリスタル 「クリス」) ^ Catcher (捕える者): watashi (わたし)

* Ruby (ルビー) ^ Charmer (魅せる者): boku (ボク)

* Sapphire Odamaki (オダマキ・サファイア) ^ Conqueror (究める者): atashi (あたし)

* Emerald "Rald" (エメラルド「ラルド」) ^ Calmer (鎮める者): ore (オレ)

* Diamond "Dia" (ダイヤモンド 「ダイヤ」) ^ Empathizer (感じる者): oira (オイラ)

* Pearl (パール) ^ Determiner (志す者): ore (オレ)

* Platinum Berlitz (プラチナ・ベルリッツ) ^ Understander (知る者): watashi (私)

* Black (ブラック) ^ Dreamer (夢みる者): ore (オレ)

* White (ホワイト) ^ Dreamer (夢みる者): atashi (アタシ)

* Lack-Two (ラクツ) ^ Arrester (逮捕る者): boku (ボク)

* Whi-Two (ファイツ) ^ Liberator (解放す者): atashi (あたし)

* X (X) ^ Loner (籠る者): ore (オレ)

* Y na Gabena (Y・ナ・ガーベナ) ^ Flyer (翔ぶ者): atashi (アタシ)

* Sun (サン) ^ Saver (貯める者): orecchi (オレっち)

* Moon (ムーン) ^ Mixer (調合る者): watashi (わたし)

* Sword Tsurugi (剣創人) ^ ???: boku (ボク)

* Shieldmiria Tate (盾シルドミリア) ^ ???: atashi (あたし)

Here's a rough outline of what all these pronouns indicate:

* watashi (私): 私 watashi is one of the more formal ways to refer to oneself in the 1st person. The fact that it's written in kanji and not in hiragana or katakana increases the politeness. When it's used by women, it can be perceived as casual as well, but it's usually only used by men in formal situations.

* watashi (わたし): わたし watashi is slightly less formal than 私 watashi, due to the fact that わたし watashi is written in hiragana. It's a safe way for a woman to refer to herself in both formal and casual situations. It can be used by men in formal settings, but it comes off as somewhat stiff if men use it in casual settings. When spelled in katakana (ワタシ), it can perceived as quite rough.

* atashi (あたし): あたし atashi is a less formal, more feminine version of わたし watashi. It has a "girly" and "cutesy" tone to it. The fact that it's spelled in hiragana makes it a pretty neutral 1st person pronoun for girls.

* atashi (アタシ): アタシ atashi is a rougher version of あたし atashi , due to it being spelled in katakana. It's one of the most informal 1st person pronouns a girl can use, though it still has the same "girly" and "cutesy" tone to it as its hiragana counterpart.

* boku (ボク): ボク boku is usually used by boys but can be used by girls, particularly tomboys. When spelled in kanji (僕) or hiragana (ぼく), it can be a formal way for boys to speak, but when spelled in katakana (ボク), and when used by girls, it's pretty informal.

* ore (オレ): オレ ore is a very rough, "boyish" way to refer to oneself in the 1st person. It's rarely used by girls. It can occasionally be spelled in kanji (俺) or hiragana (おれ), but the katakana spelling (オレ) is usually preferred, because it helps emphasise the roughness of the pronoun.

* orecchi (オレっち): オレっち orecchi is a slightly less rough version of オレ ore. In this case, its first half, オレ ore, is spelled in katakana, while its second half, っち  cchi, is spelled in hiragana. This pronoun is usually used by boys who want to appear tough but not quite as tough as boys who use オレ ore.

* oira (オイラ): オイラ oira is similar to オレ ore and オレっち orecchi, but it has a more "friendly" and "country bumpkin" feel to it. It's usually used by boys who want to appear tough but don't want to use オレ ore. One could consider オイラ oira to be a cross "between" ボク boku and オレ ore: more gentle than オレ ore, but more rough than ボク boku.

And, just for fun, here's a list of the many other kinds of 1st person pronouns that I've come across in various Japanese media:

* watakushi (私): 私 watakushi is one of the most polite ways of referring to oneself in the 1st person. It can be used by anyone in formal settings. It's almost always spelled in kanji (私) and rarely in hiragana (わたくし) or katakana (ワタクシ).

* atakushi (あたくし)/atakushi (アタクシ): あたくし atakushi is probably between わたし watashi and あたし atashi in terms of formality. It's often used in fiction by princess-like characters or high-born ladies. It can have a somewhat superior and "snooty" tone to it.

* atai (あたい)/atai (アタイ): あたい atai is a very rough corruption of あたし atashi, usually used by girls. It can almost be thought of as the feminine equivalent of オレ ore, as both are usually only used by people who want to sound tough or aggressive. It's usually written in katakana (アタイ).

* watasha (わたしゃ)/watasha (ワタシャ): わたしゃ watasha is a bit of a "country bumpkin" version of わたし watashi. It's gender-neutral but is usually used by girls. It can be perceived as semantically plural due to the しゃ sha, which is used to make some formal pronouns plural, like 我が waga becoming 我が社 waga-sha. It can carry a single meaning notionally, however.

* atasha (あたしゃ)/watasha (アタシャ): あたしゃ atasha is the feminine equivalent to わたしゃ watasha. Like わたしゃ watasha, あたしゃ atasha has a bit of a "country bumpkin" feel to it. Also like わたしゃ watasha, あたしゃ atasha can carry a plural meaning due to its しゃ sha, though it can still be used in a singular context as well.

* wate (わて)/wate (ワテ): わて wate is a somewhat dated Kansai dialect pronoun. It's informal and gender-neutral, and can still be seen in some, usually older, forms of Japanese media.

* ate (あて)/ate (アテ): あて ate is the feminine equivalent of わて wate. Like わて wate, it's an informal Kansei dialect pronoun, and also like わて wate, あて ate somewhat dated. It shows up in some forms of Japanese media, particularly older ones.

* wai (わい)/wai (ワイ): わい wai is another Kansai dialect pronoun, possibly a severely corrupted form of わたし watashi. It's informal and usually used by boys. Amusingly, it's also a homophone of the Japanese word for yay or yippee, ワイ wai.

* ware (我): 我 ware is a very formal 1st person pronoun that is almost "literary-style" and is usually used in writing. It can be made plural by adding 々 ware.

* waga (我が): 我が waga is an extremely formal, gender-neutral pronoun that literally means my. It can be made plural by adding 社 -sha.

* ore-sama (オレ様): オレ様 ore-sama is usually only used sarcastically or by fictional characters who are extremely arrogant. It can be accurately translated as my esteemed self. It's almost exclusively used by boys.

* jibun (自分): 自分 jibun is a neutral, semi-formal pronoun that can be used by anyone. It's also the reflexive (-self/-selves) form of all pronouns in Japanese. This is actually a very good choice for a 1st person pronoun if you're non-binary and don't want to gender yourself.

* uchi (内): 内 uchi literally means house. It has two uses. Firstly, it can be used as a gender-neutral, somewhat formal way of referring to oneself and members of one's own's group, as in our family, our class, etc. Secondly, 内 uchi is used in western dialects, particularly the Kansai dialect, usually by girls, to indicate a "girly" and "cutesy" tone. In the second case, it's usually written in hiragana (うち) or katakana (ウチ).

* ora (おら)/ora (オラ): おら ora is a corruption of オイラ oira. Like オイラ oira, it has a bit of a "country bumpkin" tone to it and is usually used by boys. It's considered rougher than オイラ oira. It's usually written in katakana (オラ).

* me (me)/mii (ミー): me, or ミー mii, is from the oblique case of the 1st person pronoun in English, me, though it's used for all cases when applied in Japanese. It's often used by, usually male, characters in Japanese media who are meant to be from America or some other English-speaking country. It's quite rough and informal.

That's all for now. Thanks for reading. :)

Note: If you enjoyed this post, you might also enjoy my post on gender-neutral 3rd person pronouns in Japanese.

[nevermindrussia]

Good = big = ...

After some break today is one more "word of the day"s. As in "Red = beautiful", it's about one curious words with an unusual meanings set.

This is the добрый [dobryi] adjective.

Remember of добрый молодец in the post mentioned above? It was translated as "a handsome lad". Though the basic modern meaning of добрый is "kind, good, nice, gentle". For ex., добрый волшебник [dobryi volshebnik] - "a good wizard", будьте так добры [bud'te tak dobry] - "would you be so kind".

So is добрый молодец just "a good young male person"? Maybe yes. But this is definitely not that "good" which is "kind, nice and gentle". In old Russia, as in other countries in medieval and pre-medieval age, a man or a lad was not welcome to be all peaceful and gentle. So the "good" here is more likely "good in all respects, which are appreciated". And what was a lad appreciated for? Strength of course. Wit and intellect, maybe. And of course (especially speaking ot the "красна девица - добрый молодец" pair, representing a nice good-looking couple), handsomeness. So all of this together may give us some definition of добрый in this idiom.

But that's not all!

There are lot of other idioms, containing this word, and the meanings of it are sometimes surprising.

For example,

добрая половина [dobraya polovina] - "a bigger part"

Literally, it is "a good half". What's "good" about it? The fact it's big. And we may refer here to добрый молодец again to see the important factor of strength. Big = strong, that's clear. And strong = good. So we speak of добрый even when not meaning some material object if large size. And maybe not meaning any good at all!

Добрая половина студентов прогуляла лекцию - "Most of students skipped the lecture".

В этой фирме добрая половина руководства - идиоты - "This company has a management consisting of idiots for more than a half".

By the way, why half, not just part? A half is a half, 1/2, it cannot be bigger or smaller than other half.

But here we have a nuance. This idiom means exactly that bigger part, which is close to a half. About 55 or 60%, for example. And, even more otfen - some part, of which we don't know, is it bigger and if yes, then for what percentage, but suppose it is for some. As in above: nobody did a calculation of how much idiots sits in a company's management; but according to management decisions we make an assumption there are idiots (and not idiots also, but idiots are more in the number).

Also, the word describing something big, but not good, is

раздобреть [razdobret'] - "to become big"

In old Russia, where large body was considered an indicator of health and beauty not for men only, but also for ladies (for ex., we politely say полный [polnyi] instead of толстый [tolstyi] - "fat", and this word also have a meaning "full, complete") it meant, of course, "getting good". But today it's just an ironical description of getting fat.

Как ты раздобрел-то на домашних харчах! - "You've become so big while consuming homemade food!"

But enough of it. Let's speak in conclusion of something really good. that would be one of meanings of добро [dobro] - a noun what добрый adjective is descending from.

Добра наживать [dobra nazhivat'] - "to increase wealth"

That's a popular phrase for finishing Russian fairytales, speaking of the main characters having a happy wedding and starting a peaceful wealthy life: И стали они жить-поживать и добра наживать.

Here добро (literally "good") means some material property, which was a main part of old Russian's wealth: not money basically, but pottery and utencils, decorations, clothes, food supplies, cattle, and so on. It has much in common to English "goods". Except in English goods is mostly something for sale, but Russian добро is some personal belongings, which could be inherited or earned/collected by a person or a family.

Earning/collecting is the meaning of наживать (perfect нажить [nazhit']). This verb descends from жить [zhit'] - "to live", and i think it's a kinda beautiful meaning - "to get something not by a chance or an extreme achievement, but in process of calm living, of everyday labour and keeping your household growing".

Be wealthy, beautiful and strong! See you later in my Russian culture/language blog!

[paullicino]

Ten Years

Taken from my Patreon.

Ten years is a long time. It’s long enough for many things to change, but also long enough for everything to remain the same.

I remember ten years ago as if it were yesterday, as if it passed by in the blink of an eye, with light and shadow, textures and taste all as familiar as ever.

A morning after. Shocked faces. A phone call. Events barely believable, yet all too real.

Ten years ago, my then partner and I were living in a top floor flat off Tottenham High Road. It was sweltering in the summer and the downstairs neighbours played dance music at four in the morning. But the views out the back bedroom window were of valleys of rooftops, sprouting television aerials and summited in the winter by the briefest dustings of snow.

The sun was for the front of the flat. The moon shone into our bedroom.

I remember that sunlight in the afternoon, sparkling through the shifting foliage of the tall trees outside. And I remember summer most of all. August.

We had a tap. A faucet. A great, overwrought thing that our landlady was obsessed with. It was the best tap ever, she said. It was large, curved and heavy, the pharaonic headdress worn atop a newly-fitted kitchen of which she was so proud. Wasn’t it exciting that we had such a good tap?

We just wanted our bed repaired. Our home wasn’t finished when we moved in and we slept on the sofa for weeks. When the mighty tap was finally installed, it was too heavy for its fitting. It teetered. Along with poorly-mounted cupboard doors with handles that prevented other cupboards from opening, its practicality was an afterthought.

The walk up Tottenham High Road took me to the only two locations I ever really visited, the supermarket and the job centre. The supermarket provided us with affordable food (though I’d watched the price of many staples almost double over five years) and the job centre provided me, an unemployed person, the money with which to buy that food.

The job centre, which was now extra special and had been rebranded Job Centre Plus, did not provide anyone the means with which they could get a job. It spent almost all of its time providing people with unemployment benefits. Most of the thousands of Tottenham residents who poured through its doors would’ve taken a job if they could’ve found one, but the listings at the centre itself were usually out of date, irrelevant or in some other way misfiled. Most employers don’t want to list their vacancies at the Job Centre Plus because they don’t want to employ the kind of people who go there.

Out of the Job Centre Plus and the supermarket, which one do you think burned that August?

I have written before about my strongest memory of the Job Centre Plus, but here it is again. It was of an old foreign woman and her daughter trying to speak to a clerk. The old woman didn’t speak English, so her daughter was attempting to explain that the woman was looking for work and thus registering as unemployed to gain unemployment benefit. The clerk was trying to explain that the woman was too old to work and should also be on disability benefit. The daughter was trying to explain that they had tried to navigate those systems and that they were obtuse and broken. Her mother just needed money. To live.

(Ten years before, in the summer of 2001, I’d first looked at the cost of moving out. I looked at rents around my Hampshire town, at the cost of housing and at the wages I needed to earn. England was expensive, I decided. It sure cost a lot just to live.)

Everyone was trying to explain everything. The job centre mostly wanted to give people their money and get rid of them, because there were many more lined up behind.

My strongest memory of the supermarket was of the man outside with no legs. He sat there panhandling in his wheelchair almost every day of the year. Britain had just launched its latest Astute-class nuclear submarine, each of which costs over one and a half billion pounds, but it was still a country where a man with no legs had to beg outside a shop.

I thought about that man long after I left Tottenham. I think about him here, now, ten years on.

My partner went abroad to see family and I spent some of the summer restarting my career as a freelance writer. I was fortunate with the connections and opportunities that I had, none of which would ever be found at a job centre, and I spent a lot of my time writing either to find work or simply for practice. I was writing on the night my street burned.

It began before dusk and I came home to find enormous police vehicles parked outside, the sort that are mobile command headquarters. Chains of armoured riot vans surged north. I heard there’d been a protest outside the police station and that a car or two had been burned. I checked the news occasionally. It didn’t have much to add.

Police vans kept coming, though all other traffic had stopped. The roads were closed, blocked by the police, and the latest news told me that petrol bombs had been thrown and a bus set alight. The reports were sparse.

The police in England are really good at responding to riots. They turn up in great swathes, on horses, in vans, or on foot and armed with batons and shields. They have all kinds of exciting equipment to help them. A year before, they’d kettled schoolchildren protesting the huge increase in university tuition fees, surrounding and slowly crushing hundreds of them in Trafalgar Square and on Westminster Bridge. Footage emerged of them beating the shit out of kids or dragging people out of wheelchairs. Here they were now in Tottenham, ready for more.

I kept trying to find news. The police had cordoned off most of the High Road, which meant the journalists that were arriving had no ability to find what was happening inside the riot. Distant footage of fires was the best most of them could provide. As I remember it now, the BBC had one van inside of the police cordon and couldn’t broadcast out because its dish had been damaged. I also have memories of a single journalist, almost in the thick of a mob, asking rioters to give them a moment to explain why they were protesting, or wondering why on earth they might want to block a BBC camera crew who were trying to film them.

What an inane question.

I found the news I wanted. I found it via Twitter and social media. And it was terrifying.

Broadcast news had described a riot not unlike any other. But the still relatively new sphere of social media was overflowing with witness statements, photographs and the kind of low-quality video that phones captured back then. People across Tottenham were panicking as they described growing crowds on the High Road burning not only vehicles, but also shops and businesses. They were breaking into commercial properties. They were looting. They were starting more fires. This had begun half a mile away from my home and it was spreading outward. The post office burned. Landmark businesses burned. Local shops burned and, with them, the flats and homes located above.

The updates kept coming and it’s almost impossible for me now to try to describe to you not only the sheer volume of panic and distress that waterfalled down my feed, but also the sense of utter hopelessness that came with it. People beyond the High Road described not just the violence spilling into their streets, the fights and the hundreds of looters, the fires and the damage, but also how there was no one who could stop this. No emergency services responded. Their phones went unanswered or the lines were jammed.

I read update after update that echoed the same, basic fact, something which I still struggle to comprehend even now, something I’d describe as barely believable: No help was coming.

But the social media updates kept coming. Looters were turning up with empty vans and loading them up with everything they could take. Buildings were being destroyed. A whole estate was being evacuated.

The news provided by the BBC and its peers remained limp and languid, so I spent all night reading these updates, discovering more nearby shops were being gutted, or how the retail park near me was looted to the point of emptiness, and I watched as even my own view out the window became broiling crowds of countless restless and angry people. I remember one man walking off into the darkness with brand new flatscreen televisions under each arm, the police vans now long gone. The night was regularly punctuated by shouts, screams, thumps and sometimes what might have been explosions. The sirens were always distant. The helicopters came and went.

I don’t know where the police cordon had gone. It felt almost as if they had given up and let Tottenham run rampant.

The sun came up and from that back bedroom window I saw smoke rising. I hadn’t slept. The news was full of irrelevant speculation and so, at five-thirty, I put on my shoes and walked the High Road. What I saw was barely believable. Sometimes I met the stunned gazes of other people doing the same, sometimes I avoided any eye contact. I have kept a diary for a long time now and this is what I recorded (slightly edited):

“This morning at about 5:30, as the sun rose, I tried to wander through Tottenham to take some pictures. It became one of the scariest walks I've ever taken.

The atmosphere was tense and unpleasant. Columns of smoke snaked upwards and the High Road and several other streets were blocked off or packed with police vehicles, many more of which were endlessly arriving, some from as far away as Kent.

The nearby retail park was littered with debris and many of its shopfronts were smashed. Groups of people, perhaps gangs, loitered everywhere. While some areas were busy with police officers, others were neglected and patrolled by hostile looking young men.

I didn't end up taking many pictures. I kept moving. Depending upon where you walk, Tottenham looks like a cross between a blitz bomb site and the mess after a chaotic festival.

Something still feels very different. Tottenham has hardly been rosy at the best of times, but today the sunshine can't seem to dispel a strange chill in the air. I myself can't stop thinking of all the homes that burned last night. It might not be immediately obvious to many people, but above a great deal of those shops set ablaze were flats, often family homes for very poor people. Many of those who had little now have less.”

A day after those first riots hit Tottenham, they went nationwide. London wasn’t done and, for a week, many major cities in England played host to their own riots. Tottenham was totally locked down, but it was far too late. The disorder had moved elsewhere.

I remember telling a colleague I worked with that I wouldn’t be finishing something that weekend. He laughed at the news and imagined it would all blow over. He was from a much wealthier background.

Then, everyone started trying to explain everything.

The BBC caught up with events the way a great-grandparent catches up with technology, fumbling and frowning. Goodness me, they said, in their middle class, broadcast-trained voices, and they joined in with the three broad lines of discussion that emerged. One asked how this could happen, one asked why this had happened, and one was about how this would never happen again, because the law would be firmer than ever, the punishments and prosecutions authoritative and absolute. The police were ready for more. They were going to get water cannons. I imagine those work particularly well on kids and wheelchairs.

There was a lot of talk about punishment, including from the Prime Minister, who decided to stop being on holiday in Tuscany only after England’s third night of rioting. I wonder if he had imagined it would all blow over.

Sometimes there was talk involving the people of Tottenham themselves, but it was more likely to be talk about them. A lot of people in Tottenham are Black and have families that trace back to the very first Windrush immigrants of the late 1940s. One Black Labour MP said it was important to talk about their experiences in London, their economic situation and their history of treatment by the police. After all, the spark that had set these riots alight was a protest outside the police headquarters, subsequent to the suspicious shooting of Mark Duggan, a Black man, something that called to mind a similarly suspicious death of a Black woman that also precipitated Tottenham’s 1985 riots.

For some people, the discussion became about how Black people had started the riots and been the chief participants. This wasn’t reflected in anything I saw either on social media or with my own eyes, in person, on the night. But nobody was stopping to ask me what I thought or what I saw.

Not long after that first riot, my partner called me to check I was okay and to ask if those barely believable things she’d seen on the news were really as bad as they seemed. They were. I rode the bus up the High Road on my way to Wood Green, then later to Walthamstow, both of which offered me temporary job centres that took the overspill from ours, thoroughly gutted by fire and then looted of all of its copper piping. The bus crept past burned-out shops and homes. I don’t know where those people have gone.

Later that year, my partner and I discovered that our income was low enough that we were eligible for housing benefit. It took us so long to try to apply for it that we moved home before any progress was made. When I found enough work to support myself, I visited the job centre to sign off, as we called it, to close my file. I asked a woman at reception what I needed to do. “Nothing,” she said, as the line behind me wound down several stories of stairs and out into the grey autumn street. “Just stop coming. Stop coming.”

Winter came and things rustled in the walls. There was a long, tall hedge along the High Road and I would look out the window to see men using it as a urinal. I only had to live in Tottenham for around a year and a half and I have good memories from that flat, but I also remember a stifling and sad place to live, from which I was lucky to move on. Tottenham was never my home and I never had to stay there, but I certainly feel that I came to get a sense of the place.

After moving out, our ex-landlady complained that we hadn’t left the oven as clean as she would’ve liked. She hiked the rent 9% while we were staying there. She never fixed anything that broke and provided excuses instead of solutions.

I found more work. I taught games and narrative for a semester at a small institution in East London. One of the things I asked my students to consider was the stories and the experiences of people who weren’t like them. I asked them to share how often they had been stopped and randomly searched by airport security. “Not just at the airport,” one student reminded me. “On the tube. On the street.”

My life continued to improve in many ways, but I still remembered the man in the wheelchair. The BBC and many other media outlets continued to talk about poverty and race, but not always to poor people or to people who weren’t white. In 2014 I wrote On Poverty and one of the most surprising responses I repeatedly received from people was “I had no idea that it was like this.” A friend of mine tried to apply for support for chronic health problems and documented her many struggles, including being required to explain exactly how many times a week she suffered from migraines (“You said it was two or three times a week. Well, is it two, or is it three?”). The news regularly reported growing homelessness, rising use of food banks and the inevitable deaths of people who weren’t just failed by broken systems, apathy and a lack of understanding, but also simply too poor to be alive.

I feel like some of the people I knew didn’t like how I kept returning to these topics. I feel, even more, that they didn’t at all understand. I remember some of these people waiving off the Brexit referendum as it approached, certain the country wouldn’t vote to amputate itself from the European Union. I don’t think they understood and I don’t think they’d seen the unhappy England that I had, both as a child and as an adult. I think they’d only seen, and been, very comfortable people.

I think these people would call themselves open-minded, progressive and keen to make the world better. I’m sure they could explain those views. At length.

If I think of those people now, I’m quite sure they are all still very comfortable, ten years on. I also think there is still a good chance that man is sat in that wheelchair outside of that supermarket, though he could also be dead by now, again simply too poor to be alive. No longer able to watch the sun sparkle through tall trees, see roofs dusted with snow or catch the moon peeping through his bedroom window.

Such things aren’t for poor people. We still get frustrated when we give them benefits or find out they own mobile phones.

---

Ten years on, Tottenham is almost a dream, a memory where the details have faded and the edges have softened. I have moved countries, had the privilege of travelling through work, enjoyed many different creative opportunities and benefited from free healthcare that has addressed difficult, long-term health issues. I have rationed my life according to a tight budget, but I’ve never had to face the overwhelming, unending hardships of others that I’ve shared neighbourhoods and postcodes with. I cannot ignore these people because they have so often been one street away, visiting the same shop or riding the same train. They are not an abstraction, they are right there, ready to tell us all about their lives.

Ten years on, Tottenham has one of the UK’s fastest-growing rates of unemployment, the latest statistic in the region’s long history of joblessness and poverty. Many of its residents, like poor people across the country, live paycheck to paycheck, at risk of financial ruin should they experience a single upheaval. Ten years on, the most reliable predictor of success and financial stability in the UK (as in many developed countries) is now considered to be the circumstances of your birth. The idea of social mobility is more irrelevant than ever, with much of your destiny decided before you are even born. Ten years on, almost a quarter of the population of the UK lives in poverty.

Ten years on, continued austerity, government apathy and cuts to social services has meant that, yes, ten years really is enough time for everything to stay the same. Without change, the problems people face become generational, systemic. Some people tell me that the 1980s were like this for certain families, regions, populations. I didn’t know. We were doing okay. Perhaps I didn’t get it, didn’t notice it, didn’t want to think about it.

Ten years on, Mark Duggan’s family filed a civil claim against the Metropolitan Police and were awarded an undisclosed sum, after his death was officially ruled a lawful killing in 2014. Lawyers for the Duggan claim commissioned this in-depth report on the shooting, which illustrated many problems with the official police version of events.

Ten years on, the UK government is trying to curtain the right to protest. It commissioned a review that concluded that the country has no systemic racism. It wants to limit the powers of the Electoral Commission and has considered conflating the concepts of whistleblowing and leaking with spying, meaning those who leak information could be treated as criminals. It is increasingly intent on punishing those who might express dissatisfaction.

And ten years on, as we all know, wages have not risen to match the rising costs of rent, food, utilities or transport. It sure costs a lot just to live.

Finally, in 2018, the UN Special Rapporteur on Poverty and Human Rights visited the United Kingdom and did speak with many of its poor. The resulting exhaustive and damning report concluded that “statistics alone cannot capture the full picture of poverty in the United Kingdom” and that “much of the glue that has held British society together since the Second World War has been deliberately removed and replaced with a harsh and uncaring ethos.” It described harsh, ill-conceived and out-of-touch support systems devised and doubled down on by a government that not only failed to understand poverty, but that couldn’t even measure it accurately. It also predicted that these things would only get worse, and without any consideration of the effect of extraordinary events, such as a global pandemic.

The government described the report as “barely believable.”

I don’t think any help is coming.

---

There’s a question that sometimes bounces around social media and it asks people this: “What radicalised you?” As if there was some moment that changed a person’s political beliefs and rearranged their perspective on the world.

Here’s the thing. I feel like my perspective is from the floor, skewed and sore after I fell between two stools, always unable to find an identity amongst wider British culture. I grew up too comfortable, too spoiled and too well-spoken to call myself working class, but I was easily alienated by schoolfriends with multiple bathrooms and university-educated parents. My interests and my sentiments aren’t supposed to be working class, but many of my life experiences and even philosophies are. I know what it’s like to memorise Shakespeare and to explain themes in Romantic-era art, as much as I know what it’s like to fight government systems that are ostensibly supposed to help, to be unable to afford your own home, to walk into a supermarket and look at staple foods you still can’t afford. You think about Descartes and then you think about which dinner provides the cheapest way to keep your body alive.

When I was a kid I remember going to friend’s houses where they were too poor to clean the carpet, or seeing them lose a parent to lung cancer, or the time someone showed me a gun hidden in their brother’s car. As an adult I wrote to my politicians to ask them what they were doing about poverty, about education, about the cost of living. I went to protests and signed petitions and supported charities both practically and financially. I suppose I was trying to articulate some of the skills I’d learned from in some situations to articulate the experiences I’d had in others. Surely you have to do something.

I both resent and appreciate aspects of both classes and I imagine I’ll never work out who I am or what I’m supposed to call myself. But I do know there are vastly different worlds and vastly different experiences within British culture and that many continue to be overlooked even when in plain sight. And it’s what I find most frustrating.

If there was one thing I learned, if not one thing that radicalised me, it wasn’t simply that poverty never goes away, it’s that it always needs to be explained. There are always, always people who don’t get it, who don’t notice it, who don’t want to think about it or who will puzzle over it from a distance as if it were some transient mirage they can never hope to touch. Those in power will continue to make decisions about poverty that they do not experience, in spite of the fact that making financially comfortable people the authority on money is like making able-bodied people the authority on wheelchair access, like making men the authority on women’s bodies, like making white people the authority on racism.

And so, ten years on, here I am again, writing about Tottenham, about class, about poverty and about ignorance, and only from a slightly different angle. I will write about these things more, not least because I’ve already started another work on these themes, but mostly because I will always need to. I don’t imagine that, during my lifetime, the explaining will ever stop. I don’t imagine that our societies will give up on punishing people for being poor in a world where it is so often simply too expensive to be alive. And I don’t imagine I will have any more patience for people who imagine it will all blow over.

I refuse to let you middle-class your way out of this.

I don’t have any solutions to these enormous and complex problems. I don’t have exhaustive lists of who exactly to blame or where precisely everything has gone wrong. But here’s what I believe: If we don’t talk about poverty, and if we don’t listen to those caught inside of it, it will never go away, and there will be infinitely more Tottenhams.

[acertaincritic]

Anyway, I still have not actually sat down to watch “Shadow & Bone”, but here are some more thoughts about the MC’s racebending, since I got some comments and I want to clarify things.

TL;DR First off, nothing that’s done with S&B would be a problem if there were more Russian mainstream series.

That’s my big point of contention, honestly. You’re appropriating a culture that’s ~90% white for your fantasy world. That 90% is made up of ethnic Russians, but also Ukrainians, Tatars, and a number of other ethnicities. Still, ethnic Russians are a majority at 70% of the country’s population.

(If you’re thinking, whaa, it’s racist for a country to be 90% white.... You’re racist. Not every place is a big immigration destination, for starters, nor does it have to be. Not every place is the US. Lots of countries are racially, though not necessarily ethnically, homogenous. Just take a cursory glance at Asia and Africa.)

Now, “Shadow and Bone” is the only Big Mainstream Thing with Russian influence. Sure, it’s inaccurate. You can tell the author can’t speak Russian, has done very little actual research before writing her first book, all that. But it’s still very clearly meant to be Russia-inspired.

There are perhaps other books you can find if you scratch the bottom of the barrel, some actually written with proper care and research. But they aren’t the one cultural event that is now talked about on Twitter. They aren’t the one that was no.1 on Netflix in every place in the world and will likely remain so for some time still. They aren’t mainstream.

See, Americans are pretty good at exporting their own culture at the cost of the local writers and entertainment industries. If someone is going to buy, say, one book a month, they enter the bookstore and ~85% of books on the SFF shelves are translated from English.... How many local authors will they support vs the American/British ones? And then the American/British authors get to live off their writing, often thanks to multiple foreign sales, all the while the local authors will be extremely lucky if their books are translated to like, one single foreign language. It limits the opportunities for the local writers, and limits their ability to write full-time. You think it’s hard to do in the US? Hah, try doing it in literally any other country than maybe China.

(On that note, China has a robust entertainment complex, partly because they are so large, and partly because they specifically limit the number of foreign movies being translated and showed in local cinemas. Which means, if you feel American movies lack Chinese rep... There’s thousands of movies and dramas with only Chinese people in them right next to you.)

I wonder if an American can actually wrap their mind around this fact. Like, imagine you go into a bookstore and majority of books are translated from Chinese. Or from Russian. Or from another, foreign culture. You don’t even know how lucky you are and how American-centric your industry is, all the while effectively colonizing all the smaller industries around the way Amazon is undermining local bookstores.

You don’t see the privilege you have.

And that 85% I brought up? It’s actually a big improvement thanks to the local movements and increased awareness, at least in my country. Even just five years ago when I went into a bookstore to buy a new SFF book for my brother’s birthday, all but one book series were translated from English. And that one book series was sth he already read.

So now we have this one - a single one - Russia-inspired fantasy story. Even if it’s imperfect, it is clearly coded Russian. There are Russian clothes, Russian names (even if often misused due to lack of research), words borrowed from Russian. And it’s the only Russian-coded story that people who are not inherently interested in Russian culture are going to pick up.

And you look at it... and you decide you know what? This story based on the culture that’s 90% white, it’s *not diverse enough*. To us, Americans, who see themselves in nearly every mainstream movie and mainstream book, it doesn’t seem tasteful that so many white people are in it!

And you take not just any character, but the protagonist, the MC, the Chosen One, the hero, and you racebend her. Not just her, but her Love Interest, too. The other charas, like the antagonists or the less-than-ideally-moral side characters? Sure, they can stay white, coded as Russian. But the main role and her love interest, nah, we’re going to racebend them. And what’s worse? You couldn’t just stop there and be happy. You had to go a step further and put US-specific racism in it.

By not only racebending the MC but also making her continuously face US-typical racism, you’re effectively alienating her from her home culture. You’re saying “This person isn’t entirely Ravkian (read: Russian)”. You’re making the hero not only someone who doesn’t look like the majority of Russians, but is also very specifically separated from her culture by racism which you, Americans, imposed on the source material.

You just can’t stand for one mainstream series to not be about you for a change, can you?

In doing so, you made a fantasy movie about Wakanda with a white protagonist and a white love interest. It’s only because of your American lens that you don’t see it.

Like yeah, I read the casting a while ago. I didn’t bat an eye back then. Sure, racebending of the MC is tendentious, but I was happy to accept it. After all, Russian-Chinese people surely exist.

It’s specifically the casting COMBINED with the alienation of the racebent protagonist from the culture the books are inspired by, via artificial inclusion of US-specific racism, that’s the problem here.

Keep the actor, throw away the slurs. Or keep one slur to show that sure, racists exist everywhere, but throw away the other dozen. Make the protagonist actually connected with the culture she’s the Chosen One for, make her feel like she belongs in the country she’s going to save.

If you think I’m racist for asking for this much... The block button is up there.

[adifferenttime]

Honest Hearts: A Rough Rewrite

Hey! I’ve been working on an Honest Hearts rewrite-type-thing for a bit and figured I’d solicit feedback/assemble a post to store some of these ideas.

A detailed explanation of the premise is under the cut, but I’ve made this as a more interesting reintroduction to major locations, along with the characters who live there. I also have some lore consisting of letters, scripture, and holotapes that’s still in the early stages, along with a complete companion wheel for Salt-Upon-Wounds (he’ll follow you around for a little if you decide to help him out). Endings are now finished as well. I’m not planning on expanding this into a full mod, but I’m assembling everything in Twine so I can utilize branching dialogue and mimic skill checks.

I want to keep adding to and editing this because I’m having fun with it, so if you have any input, let me know!

Essentially, the story proceeds as written up until the point where Daniel sends you to either kill the White Legs or destroy their war totems. You quickly realize that their camp is deserted, at which point Salt-Upon-Wounds ambushes you, convo-locks you, and tells you that there’s an entirely different side to things here that you might not have considered.

Factions

The Mormons have established a theocracy in the Utah called Deseret, with New Jerusalem - what was once Salt Lake City - as its capital. Large numbers of them survived the initial apocalypse due to their pre-War focus on strong community ties and disaster prepping; over time, they have returned to the model of self-sufficient agrarianism that characterized the historical Mormon state of Deseret that existed in Utah in the 1800s. Their President, who wields supreme executive power, is also their Prophet. The Mormons believe he communes directly with God, but there’s some discontent in New Jerusalem over his hands-off approach to foreign policy and unwillingness to assemble a standing army. The Elders of the Priesthood are pushing him to allow for some kind of formal military to oppose what they see as revived versions of their ancestral enemies: America, Rome, and the “Lamanites” (this is what Mormons call Indigenous Americans; the “Lamanite” idea has historically been used as a justification for racism, and I’m reflecting that here because it’d be kind of heinous not to). In more than a few respects, Deseret serves as a mirror to the Legion and an exploration of the other side of the coin re: the tactics utilized by colonial empires to present themselves as legitimate while still claiming territory and steamrolling the opposition.

The White Legs are now more explicitly Shoshone, and I’m relying most heavily on the Timpanagos Band for names and historical inspiration (apparently the question of whether they’re Ute or Shoshone is pretty controversial, but I’m sticking with what the Timpanagos have said about it until someone corrects me). After migrating south in the wake of the Great War, the White Legs eventually settled in Ogden, about a day north of New Jerusalem. Initial interactions with the Mormons were friendly, but as New Jerusalem grew and its need for farmland and resources increased, tensions rose before culminating in open violence in around ‘76 or ‘77. Deseret’s party line is that the White Legs conducted a “raid” on one of their settlements and had to be driven away from Ogden; the White Legs claim the violence was not a raid, but a revenge killing after a Mormon killed a young man and was found not guilty by Mormon legal authorities (this is a theocracy, so “legal authorities” here can be understood as indistinct from “the church”). The Mormons established a new settlement on the ruins of Ogden, which they called New Canaan, and the White Legs fled to Salt Lake, where they have been dwindling in number ever since. Salt-Upon-Wounds’ plan to seek entry to the Legion is a last-ditch attempt to save his people from eradication when their neighbors and the land itself seems intent on killing them (not that that makes all the war crimes ok, which is a sentiment you’ll be able to express to his face if you engage him in conversation).

The Dead Horses are a pastoral society from out of Dead Horse Point, and are split almost down the middle along political lines. The more conservative, religious side opposes intervention in Zion. Graham desecrates the corpses of his enemies as an intimidation tactic, and because the Dead Horses’ religion is so eschatological and heavily focused on properly cleaning, preparing, and interring the dead, a big chunk of the religious leadership opposes him on that basis - they think his tactics are ungodly. They’re also worried that any Dead Horses who die in Zion and are interred there will be severed from their connection to Dead Horse Point and doomed to a separate, lonely afterlife. The younger, more progressive elements of the tribe are less traditionalist, sometimes less religious, and overall not as concerned about Graham’s treatment of the dead because of the potential benefit they might be able to derive from him. Follows-Chalk is their de facto leader, and while the Dead Horses don’t formally allocate political power, he’s among the most influential people in the informal tribal leadership. Most of the Dead Horses who’ve come to Zion have done so either because they support Follows-Chalk politically, or for practical reasons - namely, Graham’s access to a dizzying number of guns and his willingness to give them to anyone who’ll fight for him.

The Sorrows are now a terrace-farming agrarian society instead of hunter-gatherers (Zion has a lot of agricultural potential, and there’s already a few farming plots in the Sorrows camp you see in-game, so it’s not a huge departure from the canon). I’m keeping their Mexican heritage, but I’d like to give them some Ainu influences as well - partially for selfish reasons, but also because bears are extremely important to our culture and theology, which gels well with the elements of Sorrows culture and religion that appear in the canon. I’d like to keep the Survivalist because I like him, but I want to expand on their faith. One of the ways I’m doing that is by deciding they can still read English, even though they no longer speak it; it’s basically their equivalent of liturgical Latin. They’re also rigidly matriarchal and in contrast to the Dead Horses (who eschew formal political hierarchies) or the White Legs (who elect a chief who serves until he dies, is deposed, or voluntarily abdicates), leadership positions are allocated through matrilineal primogeniture; Waking Cloud inherited her position from her mother. Religious leadership, likewise, is only available to women. You’ll be able to talk to Waking Cloud about some of the ways this framework is incompatible with the Mormon perspective, and can appeal to her desire to retain power.

Characters

Canon Characters

Joshua Graham and Daniel are largely unaltered except through the addition of lore that gives insight into their cultures, motives, and pasts.

All three tribal leaders (Follows-Chalk, Waking Cloud, and Salt-Upon-Wounds) are either given new backstories, a different set of motives, or different approaches to one another/Graham and Daniel. They’re also explicitly leaders now - what power Graham and Daniel have, they derive from whichever tribal leader they’ve managed to attach themselves to. Of those three, I’m altering Waking Cloud the least and Salt-Upon-Wounds the most. Like I mentioned, I have a companion wheel for him so far and the bones of two other conversations - one, where you meet him for the first time, and the second, where you speak to him before the final battle. Will link as I finish them.

Original Characters

Each tribal leader now has a rival or right hand within their tribe so I can reflect the different ways the values of a specific community can express themselves.

Follows-Chalk’s primary rival among the Dead Horses is a man who refuses to tell you his name. That’s because using someone’s name in casual conversation is considered unspeakably rude, and the fact that Follows-Chalk is willing to share his own with you is, to Mysteriously Named Old Man Character, yet another sign of how disrespectful and laissez-faire Follows-Chalk is about their shared traditions. Old Man Character is suspicious of you initially, but if you speak to him more he starts to warm to you. The goal is to give you a sense that this he’s pretty xenophobic but for good reasons, and despite his political conflicts with Follows-Chalk, has a lot of love for him. He just wants what’s best for his family, and Follows-Chalk is part of that, even if Mysteriously Named Old Man Character thinks he’s making the wrong choices.

Kiiki is Salt-Upon-Wounds’ right-hand woman and intended as a contrast re: the approach to war and its costs. Salt-Upon-Wounds has done some horrible things and gets a fair bit of dialogue about that, but Kiiki is willing to go even further than he has with very little prompting. Her chief copes with what he’s done by trying to assure himself that the ends of war are worth the cost; Kiiki deals with it by trying to convince herself that the means weren't so bad, actually, and that anyone who isn’t nailing corpses to walls is being naive. All of that makes her sound pretty shitty, but she’s nowhere near as devoted to the idea of a Legion alliance as Salt-Upon-Wounds is. It only takes one very low Speech check to convince her that going Legion is a bad move, and one of the paths involves assassinating Salt-Upon-Wounds and installing her as the new leader as a way to stop the White Legs from joining Caesar. I haven’t added this path to the ending Twine because I’d like to finish Kiiki’s dialogues before I do that.

I’m replacing White Bird as the Sorrow’s spiritual leader with a woman named Imekanu. She’s incredibly old, savvy, and knowledgeable - she’s never been outside Zion, but has a store of books in English, Spanish, and Japanese that have allowed her some insight into what caused the war, if not the current state of the world. She’s also aware of the Survivalist’s origins - not because she’s entered any of his hideouts, but because she’s read over the scriptures and has correctly identified them as letters. Her perspective is that the Father in the Caves was a human being, but that doesn’t diminish his religious value. She sees him as analogous to the Buddha or a Catholic saint: human, sure, but still with access to some deeper truths about the purpose of man and the nature of human goodness. You’ll discover that this idea (that the Survivalist was a holy man rather than a literal god) is the most common perspective among the Sorrows, and you can talk to her about how this departs from Daniel’s perspective that the archetypal Father is divine, not human.

Quests

Each tribe has a specific quest that will either lower or bypass some of the penultimate checks that will determine your ending (people are more likely to believe what you’re telling them if you’ve already won their trust).

The Dead Horses: Joshua Graham has been putting the heads of the fallen up on pikes across Zion. The Dead Horses’ religion is deeply concerned with proper treatment of the deceased, and Graham’s decision to desecrate the corpses of his enemies goes against virtually everything they believe. The old man who won’t tell you his name asks you to take the heads off of the pikes and bury them deep in Zion, and to bring Follows-Chalk with you so you’ll have someone to tell you how to treat them properly. Over the course of the quest, Follows-Chalk will share some of his own beliefs about death, and you’ll have the opportunity to share your own. If you complete this quest without sabotaging it, Follows-Chalk will be willing to betray Graham to the White Legs before the final battle.

The Sorrows: This is basically just Ghost of She, but after defeating the Yao Guai you’ll discover a holotape revealing that the girl wasn’t killed by the bear, but by one of the murderers from Vault 22. Waking Cloud will speculate that maybe the Yao Guai wasn’t the ghost of the little girl at all but some other force that wanted to push you to discover the truth. If you wait until the end to tell Waking Cloud about the death of her husband, you’ll have to pass a Speech check of 75 to convince her you’re telling her the truth; completing this quest drops the check to 50.

The White Legs: Salt-Upon-Wounds will ask you to help him sabotage the Mormons’ preparations for the battle. If you help him with this, it’ll drop the Speech check for you to convince him to leave from 100 to 80. It’s not necessary at all to get the tribal confederacy ending, but a new note will appear in your inventory if you finish it and meet a couple other requirements (asking him certain questions, not attempting that one Speech check about religion, etc).

Endings

I’m trying to incorporate as much variety as possible, but there are three main ending paths: siding with the White Legs, siding with the other two tribes, and peace. The basic idea is that the outcome is predicated less on your direct intervention, and more on how other people act based on the facts they have available to them. Most of your influence is through your choices to hide or reveal key pieces of information, and the skill checks you need to access certain endings are less you convincing a character to do something and more convincing a character to believe you’re telling them the truth. There’s one major exception to this, it requires maxed Speech, and the ending it gives you is markedly bittersweet because you’re trying to get a guy to act against his own best interest. I’m writing all the endings up here, and will probably edit them as things change. The post where I explain them in more depth can be found here.

And that’s the story so far! Thank you for reading, and again: if there’s anything here you think is poorly-conceived, let me know. Thank you to @baelpenrose, who’s a grad student in the history of the American West, for helping me workshop a lot of this stuff. If you’ve got expert knowledge on any of the concepts I touch on or are personally a member of any of the groups I’m describing, please feel free to hmu: anon is on, and you’re always welcome to DM me. I’m just doing this for fun, but I still want it to be as not-shit as possible.

[saizoswifey]

Nezu Jinpachi

{N//SFW HC’s}

~Happy happy birthday, Jinpachi! And congrats again on your main story release! I think it goes without saying, since he doesn’t have any solo content in English yet but; A few very light spoilers for his route/events tied in here, so be warned!  

Jinpachi

Actually not a virgin. He doesn’t have a string of lovers tied around his waist, but there were a few trysts while he was at port or wandering from place to place. Perhaps one he thought might develop into more, but fizzled out. 

He’s never had a lover since coming to Ueda, though. 

When he feels pent up, he simply masturbates. His home is unknown to virtually everyone in the castle, so he doesn’t have to worry about people interrupting him in the middle of the act. He has a handful of tasteful erotic drawings hidden away and uses those for inspiration before meeting you. 

He doesn’t get the urge to jack off more than once a week, but his desires grow stronger once he meets you and he finds himself getting hard just thinking about you when he’s alone

An ass man, but he really likes everything. Prefers a slightly thicker MC as well 

He’s huge, and it’s no surprise he has a rather large cock. (In one of his CG’s, his hand is as big as MC’s head, so...) The man is pACKIN. It’s straight, it’s not overly thick, but if you are a size queen you are going to be very happy. 

He’s also extremely well groomed and clean, he takes super good care of himself. As right hand to the heir of a prominent clan, and especially one such as Nobuyuki, he has an image to upkeep. Luckily, it’s in his personality to be well kempt from his styled hair to his trim pubic hair. 

Biggest turn-ons are domestic things. When your hands are on him wrapping his wounds or you’re both enjoying a quiet evening in his room and you make him tea and feed him sweets. Or seeing you darning his hems by lamplight. 

He loves your touch. He finds the warmth you bring to his simple life incredibly sexy, and he will pounce on you many times over during these moments, just to remind you of how much he loves you

Also has a kink for being told what to do. His subservient attitude does not end at the bedclothes. Tell him where you want him, how you want him, when you want him. He’ll do anything you ask, just say it. 

Tell him to use his mouth, that you want to be fingered, tell him how fast and hard to fuck you or when you want him to come (or not come!)

Nobuyuki is much better about forcing him to take alone time for himself now that you’re together. 

That being said, Jinpachi is a man of action. In everything he does, he wastes no time and gets right to the point. So when he’s ready to fuck you, be prepared for the 0-100 intensity. 

I’m talking up against a wall, grabbing you and tossing the shit off of surfaces to lay you down for him right then and there. When he has the time--he doesn’t waste a second. 

He’ll surprise you by coming out of nowhere, you suddenly feel his hand tracing up your thigh to the underside of your ass for a squeeze from behind before it swiftly moves between your legs. 

“I want you...” he whispers to the crook of your neck, and it surprises you how quickly his hand between your legs is making you wet and dizzy. “I need you...now.” 

Though he can be rough in how quickly and passionately sex begins, and despite the fact that he would remain rough with you if it was you asked of him, he is quite a tender lover. 

There are lots of warm smiles, and he enjoys gazing into your eyes while you fuck. Also loves to hold your hand during sex. 

Loves positions where you can face each other and kiss. Favorite is you in his lap, bodies close, just rocking into each other and he can enjoy being deep and as close as possible to you, and feel every tension of your pleasure as you cling to him. Plus, he’s tall, so it’s the best way to fuck you without feeling like he’s overpowering you. 

He also really enjoys lay-down sex from behind. It works because he also finds morning sex very romantic and convenient. He wakes up very early, so he couldn’t imagine a better start to the day than to love you in the early hours, slip into you from behind under the bedclothes and start his day moaning shared “I love you’s” before sneaking off. You’ll usually drift back off to sleep after and wake up to a little note and fresh fruit by your pillow. 

Jinpachi really really really loves seeing you in barely anything. A thin silk robe just barely draped over your bare body after bathing, your nightclothes messed and just a hair away from revealing your most hidden parts. The images are burned into his mind and many times he uses them for masturbation. He thinks these sides of you are the sexiest. 

Can actually be smiley and light-hearted during sex. That’s his heart taking over. But he doesn’t mind smiling and laughing if you move the wrong way, or almost get caught by someone. Sometimes yoou’ll just catch him blushing and smiling and when you ask why he’ll just say, 

“I’m really happy.” “You look so beautiful.” 

Kissing his jaw is a major turn on for him, as well as guiding his hands where you want them to touch you. He also really loves your hands on his abs and gripping his sides while he thrusts. 

Another major turn on is just hearing you moan his name. It’s typical but something about it just lights a fire inside of him and he’ll be doing everything to try and hold back from fucking you senseless 

Jinpachi is also very vocal in bed, probably the one place you’ll hear him speak more than anywhere else. He definitely lets loose, there’s a lot of grunting and panting, but he also is the type to moan your name a lot between I love you’s. 

He’s also periodically asking if it feels good, do you like that pace, are you okay? etc. 

His pace depends on you, most of the time. He could pound your pussy at full speed for three hours straight if you’d let him, but he usually ends up doing a variety of speeds depending on how your body is responding to him that day. If you seem needy and ready to feel him, he has enough power to easily satisfy you and have you immobile at the end of his thrusts. And if you seem sensitive and tender, he’s going slow and scooping his hips so his cock can caress your walls just right. 

He’s pretty blunt about his PDA. He is almost never embarrassed or self-conscious unless it’s in regards to how you view him (i.e. his eating too fast or not being talkative enough for you). 

He can be pretty possessive, not in a negative way, but it manifests in the way he looks out for and cares for you above all else. It has to do with the way he grew up, but his desire to never lose you is strong. He’s fiercely protective of you, and will act however boldly necessary in order to send the message that you are with him. Holding hands, kissing you, embracing you etc. he will have no shame. 

It isn’t a rare occurrence  for him to be secretly following you as you wander around town and then throw a rock at or trip anyone who seems to be following you, or to show up and wrap his arm around you if some other guy is trying to flirt. 

Since he’s often so busy, you guys regularly exchange love notes (sometimes of the sexy variety) between each other. Because his libido is increased after beginning a relationship with you, he does keep a few on hand for sinspiration on those lonely nights when he’s away. 

Absolutely loses it every single time you give him head. He’s not used to receiving services. He’s putty in your hands, and its one of the only times you see him squirm and fluster. His cheeks are red, he’s biting at his knuckles, his broad chest expanding almost enough to block his view of your head bobbing up and down in his lap. 

“Mm!--ahhh...your tongue...that feels so good...w-wait, shit, if you suck like that I’ll come”

He’s surprised and taken back every time, but bonus points if you suck him off after sex when he’s extra sensitive

Because of this, he usually persuades you to turn blow jobs into 69 so he doesn’t have to feel as put on the spot and he can have something to focus that energy on--eating the fuck out of your pussy 

He’s marvelous at eating you out. He loves it. He loves the way you smell, the way you taste, getting to feel your ass while he does it, getting to make you so dripping wet that he can slide his cock in without fear of hurting or tearing you. He has a pretty wide tongue, not abnormally so, but it feels heavenly and it’s not shy to travel around every part of your body. 

Brushing his lush lips against your folds and giving tight suckles on your clit, “you’re extra wet today...can you feel it? Even your thighs are sticky. I can’t wait to slip inside you, the way you’re twitching is too erotic. Do you want me to keep going? I don’t mind continuing until you come again.” 

This mans mouth is so good he can suck an intense orgasm out of you in less than 3 minutes. 

His stamina is one of his best attributes in the bedroom. It’s astounding that he can go several long, long rounds and at the end of it he hasn’t even broken a sweat. 

There has been more than one occasion of you guys breaking a table, various furniture, and twice the shoji door, during sex. It’s usually so impassioned that Jinpachi doesn’t realize his own strength or what you guys are leaning on, but its always something you can giggle about together afterward 

Lives for coming inside of you. He’s actually pretty turned on at the idea of impregnating you, but it takes a while for him to warm up to the idea of inviting even more people into a life he was certain he would lead alone next to Nobuyuki. 

So for a while, all he feels comfortable doing is coming in your mouth or on your body from whatever position it is that you were in. He doesn’t really get off on jerking it onto a particular part of your body except for onto the outside of your pussy so he can use it like lube and continue to tease your clit with his head. He’ll clean it up for you before you can even blink. 

Sometimes ends up marking you in visible places on accident. At first, he was blasé about it, and blunt when, say, Saizo mentions the mark in a teasing way. But once he sees you’re shy, he’ll feel badly and try to style your hair in a way that covers it or help you put on makeup etc. 

Absolutely melts when you worship and kiss his scar while stroking him off. 

Quickie’s happen often when there’s a lot going on in the castle. You become no stranger to the heated 15 minute fuck fest in a seldom visited storeroom or sneaky bedroom tryst between meal services/meetings. 

Only a few times has one of the maids been lucky enough to catch a glimpse of you hauled off over Jinpachi’s shoulder. And Saizo’s learned a new Judging You™ form of teasing when you stumble back into the kitchen with flushed cheeks and hair a mess to find he’s been waiting to have you make him some dango

He’s actually quite a bit of a tease? He loves to randomly touch you when no one is looking, or swoop in for a super passionate kiss. If you’re cooking in the kitchen you may randomly take hold of your hand and suck your fingers in his mouth, “Delicious.” He likes to get you thinking about him long before the day winds down and he’s ready to get down to business. 

Kingly in aftercare because he doesn’t get winded--like, ever. So while you’re a puddly mess on the floor barely able to walk, he could still run a few miles. He mostly loves to just hold your limp body in a tight tight embrace and smell your hair and feel your skin to his skin. Lots of kisses on the neck etc, not meant to incite more passion but just because he can’t contain his love for you. He’ll make tea and bring you food if you still feel unable to get up from the floor, and he’ll tease you about feeding you if you want him to. 

[iamtotallycool]

EOA Characters Historical Figure Influences

For those that know me really well, I am a HUGE history lover, and it has only been growing greatly in the past year.

So I thought I would take this opportunity to share some of the Historical Figures that have given me inspiration for how I analyze and write some of these charters from Elena of Avalor.

Obviously, they are not a one-to-one parallel, but there is something about these people’s stories from history that speak to me and have fun small tidbits that I love to include!!!

Hopefully I’ll be able to find more of these, but here’s a small handful!

Enjoy!

* Queen Elena Castillo-Flores - Mary, Queen of Scots: Mary became Queen at a very young age, 6 days old in fact. She was matched off pretty quickly to marry Francis and become Queen of France one day. While she did marry Francis at the age of 16, and became Queen, he died a couple years later. So, she left France, no longer a consort and returned to Scotland to be a Queen all of her own, where no man was above her power, not even her next two husbands (one she may have conspired to kill but hey, he murdered her secretary right in front of her while she was heavily pregnant so he had to go). She was greeted excitedly by her people on her return to her homeland (that she had not set foot in for almost 2 decades) as she was known as being vivacious, clever, and extremely beautiful. Still, her reign was full of hard trials and pulling directions between factionalism, religious discontent, and her potential to claim the English throne as well. She is also known for her 4 ladies-in-waiting (all of them named Mary as well) as they were here greatest source of comfort and were her best friends that she kept close at heart.

* King Hector - King Henry VIII: Before entering his most infamous part of his life, he was actually regarded as quite a very handsome man and charming young man. It must have seen like a blessing then when his older brother died and suddenly he was next to be on the throne at the age of 17. His young age and being a 2nd son may have contributed to him leaving most of the hard work to his council as he was much more interested in dances, feasts, and tournaments anyways. Of course, the other half of this being that when he wanted something, he WANTED it, and would hire, fire, and executed whoever in order to get what he wanted and had quite the temper when things didn’t go his way. This poor attitude was would lead to his more notable character as he went through wives that suited his whims, never stayed faithful to them, and had the increase of not only his waist size, but also his paranoia of the enemies that he felt were always around him and waiting to strike.

* Princess Valentina - Marie Antoinette: Marie was the youngest of 14 siblings, but was still had much placed on her shoulders as she was to become Queen of France and held the Franco-Austrian alliance in her hands. She was forced to put on a brave face as she would forever leave her home behind and enter the glitzy and disorienting world of Versailles. While she was known for her generosity and kind heart (helping people no matter their station) she was also known for her boldly speaking her mind. She’s often held under much scrutiny do to her frivolous nature, partying ways, and expensive spending. However, she was always made to look worst by a lot of slander and rumors surrounding her from all sorts of scandals and the fact that she always seen as “The Austrian.” She grit her teeth though and fought back against these as much as she could. She also had no fear in changing some of the French Courts many, many customs, especially when it came to fashion, as she wanted to do things her way above all else.

* Rafa De Alva- Margaret Beaufort (mother of King Henry VII): A young woman, who became a mother and widow at the age of 13, trying to raise her son while a violent war and change of power was happening (The War of the Roses). She had little connection with the crown through marriage, so it was enough to keep her and her son safe originally (as Henry was the half-nephew to the king), until a new King came and took the throne. She lost many relatives, another husband, and many allies in the constant struggle of new Kings and allegiances, and had to cozy up to different sides by putting up a façade. All this, just to make sure her son was safe and he had his lands, which meant security. Finally, after many years of waiting, she had the allies, the resources, pulled her son from exile, and they rose to defeat Richard III, and Henry became King. This was sealed with him marrying the Yorkish Princess Elizabeth, ending the War of the Roses once and for all, and uniting under the Tudor rose for a new era.

* Master Royal Wizard Mateo De Alva - Prince Consort Albert (Husband to Queen Victoria): While this may have some shippy stuff surrounding it, hear me out! Albert was born the son of a Duke, however, his early life was not great due to his parent’s tumultuous marriage and eventual divorce, in which his mother was forced to be exiled and he unfortunately never saw her again. It was reported that the moment that Victoria saw him right before she was to become Queen, she was instantly smitten with him. They kept a close correspondence for a few years until they were finally wed. He wasn’t every one’s first pick for the British government as he came from an impoverished and undistinguished minor state, but Victoria wanted him, so she had him. As Prince Consort, he did many remarkable things such as advocate for education reform, abolition of slavery worldwide, patron of the sciences and arts, and of course construction of the Crystal Palace which held the Great Exhibition of 1851. And even with an Empire to run, 9 kids, and Victoria surviving 8 assassination attempts, the couple loved each other deeply and wholly until his unfortunate early demise, but his legacy and love still lived on in the large family he had left behind.

[untamedunrestrained]

The Untamed and Mo Dao Zu Shi

These past eight days have been surreal.

I have drowned so fully in this story that it feels like I am just surfacing.

On Valentine’s Day, fandom on tumblr reblogged this fanart of WangXian by qulfeeh and I was intrigued. The reblog was tagged with two important key words ‘Wangxian’ and ‘The Untamed’. In the brush of a few keystrokes I came across the Wikipedia page for a show known as the Untamed that was available on Netflix. The thing that stood out was that it was based on a BL novel and that both the very male protagonists were described as each other’s soulmates and somehow that was enough. So, I opened Netflix and after like a second of hesitation I started watching the show and I didn’t stop. I started at eight in the evening and I watched nine episodes in a row which basically meant I was up till five in the morning. What followed seems like a record for me. I finished all fifty episodes of the Untamed in under seventy-two hours.

I put hardly five minutes of thought into my decision to watch this story and ended up dedicating the past eight days straight. The first three days to the live action drama and the past five to reading the novel.

If it isn’t obvious this story is that good.

The Untamed

The Untamed is a first for me on so many levels. I have never watched a Chinese show before ever and that seemed extremely significant to me because China is actually a neighbouring country yet as far as my mind is concerned it might as well be on another planet. Which seems particularly odd considering shows from English speaking countries like the UK and the US are a staple for me which makes these countries feel so much closer though they are geographically on the other side of the planet. Of course, a major factor is the language barrier but another is the political scenario between our two countries and amazingly this show made me realise how much of an impact perceiving different cultures can have on your perception of their people. It has literally opened up a whole new world for me that I have just realised I have never taken the moment to discover. Well, considering this is me we are talking about, how appropriate, that it would be a drama based on a BL novel that unlocked this whole new world for me.

I have tried reading a Danmei novel before which was awful and it completely turned me off the genre but it did have a side effect of educating we about elements of a wuxia novel which made this xianxia world seem a little familiar but even if it hadn’t, I would have still been hooked.

It didn’t take long for The Untamed to find a new fan and I have been obsessing over it ever since.

The Untamed is an amazing drama which revolves around the love Lan WangJi and Wei WuXian have for each other and the plot is so intriguing that you wouldn’t be able to stop even if you tried (I didn’t because that thought didn’t even manage to enter my mind).

It’s a love story and that is undisputable for me, they don’t say it, it isn’t mentioned but there is this palpable force influencing events and you know they love each other. I have somehow really disregarded how much a show can show you stuff without ever explicitly stating it but The Untamed set me straight in that regard. I doubt anyone who watches the show would mistake it for anything but the love story it is.

Wei WuXian was an instant hit for me. He is a lovable, gregarious character always up to mischief but is someone who always wants to be on the side of justice and I have a weak spot for characters with a hard on for justice. He is just such a lively character who keeps smiling all the time that it’s just hard not to fall for him in minutes. His antics and his demeanour are so charming that you’re hooked. He would have easily been my most favourite character in any other drama that doesn’t have a Lan WangJi.

Lan WangJi is an amazing character. In a world, which has become increasing about everyone voicing their opinions (like I’m doing at present) it is hard to believe that people like Lan WangJi exist. People who are quiet, who don’t speak unless absolutely necessary. He is literally the embodiment of tranquillity and more important he is Wei WuXian’s hero. Like literally he protects him like he’s protecting his life which on second thought he definitely is.

I literally had second-hand embarrassment from how obviously romantic these two are.

Hands down the best thing I have watched in 2020 by far! The characters are amazing, the plot is intricate and it is so, so interesting. I watched almost fourty hours of this series non-stop and I don’t remember a single point where I felt like the story became boring for a second which now that I think about it is, is… astonishing. How can such a large drama be so engrossing? This isn’t binge-worthy there is literally no other way to watch the show!!!

Mo Dao Zu Shi

But after coming down from the high of the first seventy-two hours of being submerged in this world, I was reluctant to leave this world so much so that I didn’t even contemplate it. I had a wide variety of media to choose from. The story is based on a web series by Mo Xiang Tong Xiu that was made into a manhua, followed by an donghua, followed by an audio drama followed by The Untamed. It must speak to the universality of the story that the people are willing to read the same story in so many different formats, I know I’m not done.

But, high up on my list was the source material, one of the articles described the show as being extremely faithful to the novel, which made me want to jump on that wagon posthaste, and I agree whole-heartedly. I read the translation by Exiled Rebels Scanlations and what struck me was how the show and the novel were tonally the same. I had switched mediums but it didn’t feel like a different story or like I was reading different characters which is shocking because that’s literally how good the show was at translating words into video.

Differences

One of the startling things about the book is that it really ties up the plot neatly. There are tons of plot points that aren’t as completely resolved on the show as they are on the novel which I only ever realised after reading the novel. A lot of this had to do with how certain details of the plot are different. A classic example that the reason behind the scars on Lan Zhan’s back is different in the two. In the novel, LWJ whisks WWX away from the Nightless City after he massacres and pretty much beats-to-a-pulp the entire alliance of sects. LWJ then has to tend to WWX so they remain in hiding for three days. When cultivators from the GusuLan Sect finally discover the two, LWJ has to defeat all of them to keep WWX safe and that’s why he is given one whipping for every cultivator he defeated. Of course, since WWX dies on the battlefield in the show this couldn’t be the reason behind the scars so they have LWJ defend Burial Mounds which wasn’t all that fruitful considereing the LanlingJin Clan does end up with a lot of WWX’s artifacts, there was no point in defending Burial Mounds as he couldn’t have kept it up in the long run but him going to Burial Mounds after the massacre at Nightless City is important to ensure they story can credibly reveal Lan ShiZui to be A-Yuan. So, yeah differences, the show focuses on the Wen Clan and the Yin Iron while the novel doesn’t have the Yin Iron at all and focuses on Jin GuangYao. But, despite the differences the story still feels coherent between the two mediums mainly because the relationship between LWJ and WWX that is at the core of both remains central to the plot at all times.

The plot of the novel though is extremely intricate and the author does an amazing job of deconstructing it which makes it easier to understand what’s happening while the show in hindsight does get away with sweeping up certain loose ends.

Of course, the kisses and the sex are gone but I will gladly take that cliff scene in exchange. I was actually shocked that the novel actually doesn’t dwell on WWX’s first death at all. Like, we don’t even know how exactly he died in the novel and this was hsocking given how pivotal that cliff scene is in the show.

Characters

Surprisingly though a lot of the roles of side characters were expanded for the show, the novel seems to have delivered a better understanding of these characters. The biggest example for me being Jiang Yanli.

She has an elaborately expanded role in the show which does highlight how deep her bind with her brothers particularly WWX is but somehow she seems like a timid character among a bunch of very strong characters. What the novel does is that it gives you a very realistic picture of her, she might not seem like a significant influence on the story but her impact is far-reaching. The novel doesn’t showcase much of her character but the scenes that feature her in the book are some of the most poignant ones and incidentally those are the same ones that stand out in the show. I feel like novel did a better job of showing off her strength. While, in the show I couldn’t look beneath her timid demeanour the novel manages to showcase the strength of her love. She cares deeply and loves deeply and the novel manages to show you the courage it takes to love someone so deeply. I definitely admire her character more and in fact I’m kind of in awe that someone who appears so traditional was so awesome. It felt easy to dismiss her character but reading the author’s words made me realise that I would be very, very wrong in doing so.

Wei WuXian might be the luckiest guy in the world to have a shijie like her followed by a husband like LWJ who both seem very determined to spoil the hell out of him. I might be experiencing some jealousy right now.

The author somehow manages to imbue her characters with qualities that makes them real and unique. Like WWX forgetting everybody’s face which is a real world problem that I have never seen anybody suffer from in a novel but just the fact that WWX doesn’t immediately bring his old hang-ups in his subsequent meetings with side characters didn’t only have hilarious consequences but made everything that much more intriguing and credible.

This author also does an amazing job of flipping characters. There are very few villains who are black and white in this story. WWX himself is a character caught in the gray of it all, universally reviled for standing up for the right reasons. This is a theme throughout the show and the novel where bad characters might be good and good might be bad but the author endeavours to show us all sides to a character. While this most definitely applies to Jin GuangYao, I’m surprised with how it resonates with Xue Yang who’s relationship with Xiao Xinchen can only be characterized with the words “It’s Complicated”. I don’t actually know what to think of these two Xiao Xingchen was definitely betrayed but can we ignore the fact that he found himself a companion in Xue Yang his sworn enemy and Xue Yang’s feelings for Xiao Xingchen are enough to drive me crazy. This guy has no idea how frustrating he is, that piece of candy clenched in his fist will drive me crazy for the rest of my life. The entire Yi City Arc is a big mess of grey there are no whites and blacks and the show underscores that with this quote –

Once upon a time, there was a little child who liked sweets very much. But because he had no parents nor money, he could never have such things. So he’d been dreaming if only someone could give him a candy every day.

Don’t even get me started on the music that plays in the background when this quote is being narrated.

There are just so many amazing things about the show and the novel. I mean the show might have actually worked harder to make things more romantic and one scene that I’m surprised isn’t from the book is the lantern scene with both of them making pledges like that particular scene neatly underlined who WWX is and would become. The hand-fastening scene is also not from the book but then there are other scenes and other delights to be found in the novels.

This story is definitely worth reading and watching for years to come. If anyone has any apprehensions about the novel I will be glad to clarify but the everything about “The Untamed” and “Mo Dao Zu Shi” stand in the same breath.

[threeletterslife]

Our Love Like Fibonacci

→ summary: Namjoon likes to solve the never-ending Fibonacci Sequence. The act is reassuring, satisfying, even. It reminds him that there are things other than his life that are never-ending.

→ pairing/rating: namjoon x reader | PG-13

→ genre: 95% mellow angst, 5% fluff | reincarnation!au & immortal!au

→ warnings: death, very brief mention of suicides

→ wordcount: 2.5k

→ a/n: thank you to the wonderful @aaugustlee​, @fangirlfeelz​ and @meowxyoong​ for beta reading!

♫: Jamais Vu by BTS | Something Better (feat. Lady Antebellum) by Audien

cr. 

There is no one on this Earth who has endured more misfortune than Kim Namjoon. Namjoon likes to tell himself that he is in a blessed curse. For more than one thousand years, Namjoon's been stuck at the age of seventeen. He has not aged one single bit physically, but his mind has gone through much more than what an average man would experience in his lifetime. Namjoon's known disastrous conflict, suffered through world wars, survived global pandemics and loved only one woman in his life.

That woman is you.

For 1,026 years, Namjoon has been a man of change. He has accustomed himself to more than thousands of cultures around the world, learned hundreds of languages and fought through the perils of social media in the recent twenty-first century. But if one thing hasn't changed at all; that's you.

You're fated to die at the tender age of seventeen—the same age that Namjoon is stuck in for all of eternity. And fate so happens to bring you and Namjoon together every time. Just a week before your death, you are always scheduled to meet this immortal Kim Namjoon. You are to fall in love with him in seven days and convince yourself that you will live with him forever and ever. Then the universe will cruelly take your life.

Namjoon's watched you die many times. Sometimes, he is unable to hold you in his arms when you're at your very last breaths. Other times, he is with you when you die. Fate is random and strikes when Namjoon least expects it.

When you die, Namjoon must wait another decade until you are reborn. Then he must wait another seventeen years until you turn of age. But those first ten years are always the hardest because he knows you do not even exist in the world anymore; the universe feels empty without you. The day you are always born, the fateful, magical day of November 23rd, Namjoon celebrates it by himself and wishes you a happy birthday from afar. He would then wait seventeen years until fate brings the two of you together a week before your death.

Namjoon gets to see you for seven days after waiting for twenty-seven years. It's an unfair deal on his part, but it is also written in the stars somewhere above his reach that you will always fall in love with him. That is the only blessing in this curse.

Sometimes, he has a rocky start with you. The third time you were reborn, Namjoon had accidentally confessed his curse to you. You were confused, weirded-out, astonished. But two days later, you'd forgotten what he told you and became madly in love with the man. Other times, you fall in love with Namjoon from the first glance. It is always a mystery.

In fact, you are always an enigma.

Though your physical features never change, in some way or another, every time Namjoon meets you, you are another person. People are the product of their environment. Namjoon's seen you born as a daughter of a rich businessman, a princess from an obscure country, a prisoner of war, a peasant in the medieval times, and most often a middle-class citizen in hundreds of different countries. Every time, you are a different person with different values.

Before Namjoon was cursed, he thought it had been impossible to love someone through their changes. But fate has proved him wrong enough. After he's seen thirty-seven different versions of you, Namjoon is sure that he would love you no matter who you became. His love for you transcended time and bled into eternity.

He is always hit by a sense of nostalgia or what he likes to call, jamais vu, when he first sees you. He recognizes you, knows you, but you are always unfamiliar to him in the beginning. Even so, in his heart, Namjoon knows he is destined to be with you—even if it were for only seven days in twenty-seven years.

Twenty-seven years is a lot of time. Namjoon has accumulated a lot of strange, time-consuming habits. He counts sheep before he falls asleep every night. He's read every book in the Library of Congress. He learns and masters a new language every few months. He likes to listen to a lot of music to experience the changes between generations first-hand. But most of all, he likes to solve the never-ending Fibonacci Sequence.

0, 1, 1, 2, 3, 5, 8... The pattern continues on for eternity and Namjoon finds it amusing. Most people stop before they reach a number of over a million. Namjoon's been adding numbers so large these days, they can fill up a whole document when typed out. Now the digits are too long to plug into a calculator, so he's been adding the numbers himself. The act is reassuring, satisfying, even.

It reminds him that there are things other than his life that are never-ending.

This year marks your 38th reincarnation. You are a curious, intuitive high-schooler with hopes as big as your eyes and an intellect as sharp as a freshly crafted sword. This time, you are from a privileged upper-middle-class family, born as an only child and pampered with kisses and words of encouragement from your parents. You ask Namjoon a lot of questions.

How am I only meeting you now? Where are you from? Why do you know so much about history? How many languages do you really know? Why do you look so familiar?

Namjoon prefers the shy version of you who comes once in a couple of hundred years. You ask fewer questions when you are timid, and that means there is a smaller chance of Namjoon slipping up and telling you about his curse.

Regardless of your changing personality, any time Namjoon spends with you is a happy time.

But you are extremely persistent this year. It's as if for the first time, you know what Namjoon is dealing with. It's as if you can sense there is something off about him. This reincarnation, you were gifted with an innate talent for reading people, for noticing the infinitesimal details no one else bothered to notice. You are an inquisitive, confident young lady no longer oppressed by a highly patriarchal society. Namjoon isn't used to you being so straightforward, but a lot has changed for the women in society over the years.

You tell him that you want to know why he seems to know you so well. Why he seems so familiar to you. Why he acts like he's seen terrible things in the past. Why he seems to be hiding something from you. You're compelled by him and you don't quite understand why.

"Every time I see you," you say, "I have déjà vu."

"Really?" Namjoon says.

"I just can't put my finger on it," you say. "But I've totally seen you somewhere before. Maybe in my past life?" you joke.

Namjoon smiles understandingly.

"Sometimes, when I look at you, I see a man who's dealt with time itself," you say. "Is that weird? Does that sound weird?" you laugh at yourself. "I don't know. I just get this vibe."

"Are you calling me wise?" Namjoon chuckles.

"Yeah," you say, bluntly. "You hold a lot of knowledge in that snatched head of yours," you snort. "Like, no cap."

Namjoon squints, but smiles. It seems just like yesterday when you had been speaking in medieval English. Now, you're speaking in an increasingly popular dialect dominated by young teenagers who use Twitter religiously. It's interesting to see how time can shape you.

"What kind of knowledge?" Namjoon asks.

"You have a seasoned nuance to your voice," you point out. "And sometimes, when you gaze far off into the distance, you look like you're having war flashbacks."

"Really?" Namjoon laughs. You're not wrong. He often thinks about the wars he's lived through, the atrocities he's faced, though he tries not to show it. Again, you prove yourself to be incredibly observant.

"Yeah," you say. "I've seen you in my dreams before. You were my knight in shining armor when I was a princess..." you hum, closing your eyes as if to recall the memory.

Namjoon remembers that reincarnation. You'd been beheaded after the peasants in your kingdom had rebelled against your parents, the king and queen.

"You were the local farm boy I was in love with as a peasant," you giggle. "I have a lot of wack dreams." Hundreds and hundreds of years ago, it had been true, too. That year, you'd been killed off by the plague.

Never in the 1,026 years that Namjoon's known you have you ever remembered your past encounters with him in any way, shape or form. You're special this year; Namjoon can feel it.

"And you know? The day before we met, I had a dream full of numbers," you confess. "It looked a lot like a pattern." You squint. "If only I could remember the sequence... The numbers were increasing, too."

Shivers run down Namjoon's spine. There's no way. "Did it happen to be the Fibonacci Sequence?" he asks.

"The what?" you say.

"Zero, one, one, two, three, five?" Namjoon says. "You know? That sequence when the next number is found by adding up the two numbers before it?"

"Wait," you say. "I know what the Fibonacci Sequence is... But how did you guess?" you say carefully as if you were testing the waters.

"Um, well..." Namjoon sighs. "It was a lucky guess, I suppose."

"Or we're just soulmates," you giggle.

Something like that, Namjoon thinks.

"We definitely know each other from past lives or something," you declare. "Though I don't remember anything..."

You can't possibly be so casual about this. Don't you know? You're going to die in two days. And he's had to love you through the pain, get over your many deaths...

When Namjoon's silent, you speak again.

"You know, I've had a reoccurring dream my whole life," you say. "I die in this dream every time."

Namjoon jerks his head towards you. "What?"

"It's always after I see you too, Joonie. I die in my dream after I meet you," you say. "All my life, I've loved and hated your face. Do you know what you mean to me? You're like a poisonous true love. I was afraid of the day I would meet you because I knew that I would die shortly after. But when I finally met you in person," you smile, reaching to take his hand in yours, "a lot of that fear washed away. I feel like I met my soulmate. And if, no, when I die, I'll die knowing I don't regret meeting you."

Namjoon is speechless. He finally manages to stutter, "W-What else have you dreamed about?"

"Sometimes I dream in your perspective," you say. "It's lonely... And sad," you whisper. "You're immortal, though you've concluded that after you tried to die many times. Oftentimes, I wake up crying for you."

"God," Namjoon mutters under his breath. "You know everything, don't you?"

You beam. "I guess so."

"You've been waiting for me."

"Well, I always knew we'd meet one day," you confess. "I prepared myself to love you, too, you know? And in the last few years, I've been writing mini letters for you to read after I'm dead and until we meet in my next life," you say. "I wrote 108 so far! Do you think that'll cut it?"

"Y/N..." Namjoon breathes. "Of course that'll cut it. That's the best news I've heard in years."

"Great!" you say, giggling. "I hope they're not too cheesy for you."

Namjoon shakes his head. "No, I have a feeling they'll make me happy for a long time," he answers. "Thank you."

"Be sure to read the first letter on my 18th birthday," you reply, smiling softly. "You'll appreciate it more than at any other time."

It's the first time in his extended life that Namjoon feels like you know more than him.

Once in millions of Millenniums, people like the 38th reincarnation of you are born. Those who see things they were not there for, those who are clairvoyant, those who are young yet all-knowing.

You even knew how you were going to die in this life, but you'd refused to tell Namjoon. Most times, ignorance is bliss, you'd told him.

On the day of your death, you'd given a box full of letters to Namjoon. Then, you'd taken him out on a final date in your red car. You and Namjoon had both known that this car trip would be the end of your life, but neither of you bothered to meddle with what was destined to be.

It's always 4:44 p.m when it happens. This time, it happened in a busy intersection when the car in front of you had hit a jaywalking pedestrian. You'd screamed, jerking the steering wheel to the right to avoid hitting the vehicle in front of you. But that had caused your car to swerve off the road and flip over, tumbling down the hillside. Namjoon had miraculously survived, of course. But you were dead on the scene.

He's seen you die so many times, but something about that day was particularly worse. Maybe because you knew you were going to die.

And so the depressing cycle starts again.

A few lonely months after your death, Namjoon opens your first letter on your birthday: November 23rd. He hasn't felt this giddy in a very long time.

The envelope is labeled with a large "1," which means the letters are in order. Namjoon carefully opens the crisp envelope, pulling out a folded note. The paper is crisp, so you must have written the letter quite recently.

He takes a deep breath before he unfolds it. When he sees your small, minimalistic handwriting, he breathes out shakily. His hands shake as he grips the letter, and he begins to read.

To the Man in My Dreams (aka Namjoon),

Our love is like a lot of things. But I like to compare it most to the Fibonacci Sequence. We start off at zero. Then, we add on a one. The numbers accumulate as time progresses. The pattern is familiar, but the numbers never repeat. Isn't that literally us?

The me that you know specifically will never happen again. (Trust me, I know.) But you will see girls like me in your eternal life.

Every time you work on your Fibonacci Sequence, think of me, please. And I promise in my next lifetime, you'll find me again. (Though I can't guarantee that I'll remember any of this.) I hope the rest of these letters will keep you company.

You'll like the next Y/N very much, by the way.

Goodbye.

Goodbye, indeed, Namjoon thinks. Until next time.

masterlist

[swiss-cheeze]

(French Road, East) Apartment 23 || Spencer Reid

Gender: they/them, none.

Warnings: drug use, drug relapse, talk of drugs/‘shooting up’, talk of alcohol/being drunk, snooping?, mentions of sex but nothing written, agression

Description: weeks pass from the teams abduction, but one member can’t seem to keep his nightmares at bay.

A/N: PART 2 TO FRENCH ROAD, EAST. Read that first to get a better understand but you don’t necessarily have to?

Part 1: https://snitchthewitch.tumblr.com/post/625420152793694208/french-road-east-spencer-reid

———

“I need you to close your eyes Spencer, good, just like that. Can you tell me what happened before you and the team were kidnapped? Where were you?”

“I was with Morgan and Penelope, we went for some drinks to loosen ourselves up after the last case. It's dark, and cold, I'm drunk. Maybe...maybe tipsy?”

“It's okay Spence, you were drunk?”

“I couldn't walk well without help, Penelope was on one side, Morgan is on the other, he’s on his phone. I see your name, and he's texting you, i don't know what it is but its not words,”

“Okay, what's around you? People? Streets?”

“Its dark, so not many people are around, but there's this chilly feeling behind us as we drop Penelope off”

“So Penelope isn't with you two anymore?”

“No, not now, she's gone. Morgan and I are stumbling on the road for a little while but Morgan looks back and he's sobered up, he's walking and he's got his phone out. He's called you, something about someone under six foot,” Spencers breathing increased as his brows furrowed.

“Spencer, you are safe. What's happening now?”

“It's a blur, i-i cant...im calling for you, they’re dark, we’re in a van now-”

“They?”

“Five people, two in the front and the rest with us in the back, the one following us got in when they grabbed us,” he pauses, “they’re not looking and i take out my phone, just as i look up i see a road sign,”

“French Road”

“Yeah, yeah I sent that to you, I messaged it and added east, because we traveled east. One of the men sees my phone, he's slapped it out of my hand as another grabs my hair,” Spencer flinches and you have to stop yourself from grabbing his hand, “they throw Morgan and i somewhere, it's dark and smells, it's a sewer. I hear Rossi shouting, then i black out. The next time I wake up, everyone else is with us and they start questioning us, asking random things.”

“Random things?”

“Like lie detector questions; remember the Adam Jackson case? With D.I.D.?”

“I remember; its questions like random maths, english?”

“Yeah, yeah like that. I think they’re seeing how alive we are, if we are awake. We all are, I take a little to answer my question.”

“What was your question?” he pauses.

“‘What is the molecular formula for hydromorphone hydrochloride’”

“Dilaudid”

“Well, morphine but that's what they wanted me to remember anyway. It took a moment for me to come around, but I answered, correctly; C17H19NO3”

“What did they do?”

“They left, when we all answered our questions they left.”

“When’s the next time they come back?”

“I'm not sure, I just remember waking up and J.J. was being beaten,” Spencers voice shuddered at the mention of J.J. 's name.

“Good, that's good Spence,”

“C-can i open my eyes now?” of course he would ask before doing it, he couldn't see it but you did smile.

“Yeah, yeah you can Spence,” Spencer was quick to take action and opened his eyes, squinting at the white of the hospital walls around him.

“Did you tell them-”

“There is no morphine in your system Spencer,” you started, “there isn't anything else the doctors can do besides wait,” you sighed softly as you took Spencers hand in yours, “because it's a morphine based drug they can't do anything else,” Spencer nodded but you still had a feeling something was wrong, ”Spence?”

“How long has it been?” Spencer looked like he was going to cry.

“Three days,” the sharp intake of Spencers breath gave it away quickly, “the others have gone through the same line of cognitives Spencer, the story holds and it’s something we can use against the people that took you-”

“You mean they’re still not in jail?” Spencer questioned quietly, you sighed softly.

“They have to go through some other things first but i have been told that their sentence will be long, long enough for what they’ve done,”

“Im sorry,” Spencer sniffled, the tears in his eyes fell and hit the gown he was wearing, “i'm so sorry,”

“For what bubba?” it was hard to see the one you love looking and feeling like this, but you both had to stay strong. He shrugged.

“I broke my stre-”

“Don't you dare say that,” by now you had gotten up and were towering over Spencer as he refused to look at you, “you did not break anything, you didn't break a single thing Spencer. Those men, those people- those disgusting people! They did. They broke it. Not you.” you said firmly, Spencer nodded weakly. You pressed your hand to Spencer's cheek and made him look at you, his teary eyes made you weak at the knees as you ducked down and kissed his forehead.

“The fact that you uh,” Spencer sniffed and wiped his eyes, “you found us in under fifteen hours,” he laughed.

“What, you think i wouldn't?” you questioned, the joking lighting the mood.

“No, no, I just,” he paused, and with fake sadness said, “I just thought you'd find us in under ten,” you lightly punched Spencer's arm with mock anger as he laughed.

“That’s so rude Spence! Garcia and I went through a lot!”

“I know i know!” Spencer exclaimed with a smile. Though the team had gone through hell and back they looked in perfect health, unfortunately masking their trauma too easily.

-----

The entire team was given a mandatory four weeks off as well as daily therapy sessions for those weeks with once a week group therapy; the whole team coming in and talking about their week and what they’ve done via their therapist and such. Yourself, Spencer and Garcia had it worse as you and Garcia were the ones trying to find your friends and Spencer O.D.ed for three minutes.

Spencer was 10 minutes late, but you all agreed to start without him.

“I wrote down everything that happened,” you started, “but i still start to panic when i don't see anyone in the mornings,”

“That's normal (Y/n)” the therapist said from her chair, “from what you, and your team, has gone through it is very normal to feel sudden panic when not being able to pinpoint them. The same with your team,” her eyes flitted around to the others, “it is completely normal for you to feel panicked when possibly out at a bar, in a bookstore or anywhere without your friends,” she was about to open her mouth again to speak when the large doors opened harshly and out stepped Spencer, bag in hand and rushing to the only seat (which was next to you) open. He gave a rushed smile and avoided eye contact.

“Traffic,” Spencer mumbled, you two had gotten up at the same time (seeing as you lived together obviously) but Spencer said he wanted to stay back and finish some final paperwork before he came in; this wasn't an unusual thing to happen as it has happened before, so you had left with a kiss and a promise to see him in a few hours.

“Traffic?” the therapist asked.

“Yes traffic, that is what I said,” Spencer countered as he picked at his fingers, the therapist stayed silent for a moment.

“Would you like to share with the group what you have done this week?” she questioned, Spencer thought he subtly rolled his eyes before he finally looked up to his fellow teammates, but you had caught it. And he knew you did.

“I wake up feeling panicked sometimes,” Spencer started with a shrug, “that's about it.”

“Why panicked?” the therapist pressed.

“Because (Y/n) isn't next to me, they get up a little earlier than i do a lot of the time,” he looked at you with such sadness that you couldn't help the sympathetic smile you sent his way.

“Well, maybe you could ask (Y/n) to wake up at the same time,” the therapist pointed at yourself when she said your name. You nodded.

“I don't mind Spence, you can just ask,” you smiled sweetly to Spencer but he broke eye contact before you could even look at him and nodded, a ‘cool’ whispered under his breath as he twiddled his thumbs. Everyone went quiet for a moment.

“Well, I believe that concludes this week's therapy together!” the therapist said too happily as everyone started getting up and putting their chairs away, “please remember to keep going with your practices and remember to come in for your individual sessions!” Everyone gave a thank you and goodbye as the group started walking back to the bullpen; cases had been taken away from the team until a full evaluation and mental health check went over all of the team members. You jogged to keep up with Spencer.

“Wanna go out for lunch later babe?” you questioned, hand going out to hold his. Until it was whipped away quickly by the recipient.

“No, I'm good,” Spencer mumbled as he sped up his steps, causing you to slow your steps down and stopping completely as Spencer turned a corner and was out of sight. He didn't see the tears starting to spill down your cheeks as you felt a hand softly connect with your shoulder, making you jump and turn to face the person.

“We’ve seen it before,” Hotch said in his monotone voice, you nodded as you quickly wiped the tears away.

“Unfortunately i know,” you mumbled through a shaky breath, yourself and Spencer hadn't gotten together for awhile, simply pining after each other for a few years before finally opening up and becoming a couple. You had been his best friend for years before, being friends when you both were in college (him being younger than you but you two still getting into the FBI academy a year after the other), you had been the one person he confided in when the whole Tobias thing happened and was the number one reason (in Spencers words) that helped him get through his addiction.

“You should intervene,” Hotch said. So he knew too. You nodded.

“What if we’re wrong?” you questioned, it was always the ‘what ifs’ that got all of you.

“It’s been three weeks,” Hotch reminded you, “he wouldn't still be like this if he wasn't,” you sighed but nodded in understanding as Hotch pat your shoulder for a second and walked off to the bullpen, leaving you with your shaking breath and slight panic attack.

Spencer was using again.

But you had to find evidence before intervening.

-

Time was short as Spencer excused himself from his desk for the toilet. As he rounded the corner and disappeared from sight you made quick work with the limited time you had and delved into Spencer's bag.

Books, pencils, notepad, stray chess pieces, files and folders.

Damn.

Nothing.

It couldn't be that obvious could it? You sighed softly and took a peek to see if Spencer was coming back, when he didn't suddenly float into the room you turned to his desk and opened the drawers; shuffling through them.

“(Y/n)?” Spencer asked from behind you, you slammed the drawer shut and whirled around to face your boyfriend.

“Spence!” you gave a strained laugh.

“Why are you going through my drawers?” he questioned with a cock of his eyebrow.

“Just tryna find something,” you lied through your teeth, it didn't taste nice, “wow look!” you picked up the closest thing to you, a stapler, “found it!”

“You could've asked instead of going through my drawers,” Spencer mumbled offhandedly as he reached down in front of you and grabbed his bag before walking away.

“Where are you going?” you questioned, your voice carrying out through the whole bullpen, Spencer looked around at the few pairs of eyes looking at him, those few including his teammates before he did a 180 degree turn and went stalking off to the toilets.

If Spencer was using again then he was smart enough not to do it at work, unless you had missed it when shuffling through his bag.

-

Spencer seemed to be in a daze for most of the day as you gave him a chaste kiss, saying goodbye to him and the team as you headed home; your paperwork for the day ended quicker than the others. You made a mission to find plausible evidence of Spencer using again, if he was smart he would leave it at home, if he was smarter he would keep it on him, if he was as smart as his 187 IQ then he wouldn't be using at all. That is if he even is.

You rifled through everything in the house; books, cabinets, drawers, wardrobes, unused boxes, the back of your kitchen cabinets and drawers, turning the house upside down to find that small bottle of nightmares.

But to no avail.

The hours that passed seemed to go so slowly and yet so fast as you cleaned the house of your excursions, made yourself a cup of tea and settled down with a book, of course as soon as you opened it the first page had writing in the margins and title page; it was Spencer's book, the notes made you smile as the pages made you forget the recent nightmares for a few hours. The keys jingling in the lock made you jump from your imagination as Spencer stepped through the threshold and into the room, you gave him a sweet smile that he didn't even notice as he walked away to the bedroom with his bag. He never did that, Spencer always left his bag at the door in case he had to rush in order for him to grab and go.

“I was thinking of ordering in for dinner!” you called through the house, “haven't had some for a few weeks, treat ourselves!”

“Yeah whatever you want doll!” Spencer called back, he was chipier suddenly. You forced yourself to focus on the sounds coming from the bedroom but couldn't decipher exactly what they were when Spencer came back out wearing a cotton shirt and some plaid pants, you cocked an eyebrow.

“You got comfy quickly,” you mentioned, “normally you wait a few hours in case we have to go back.” Spencer shrugged as he walked into the kitchen and got himself a glass of water.

“Can't be bothered,” Spencer tried his hardest to mask the slurping of the water but when it got low enough he couldn't help himself as he downed a second glass.

“Didn't drink much today i see,” you mumbled as you looked back to your book, the empty tea cup almost calling your name for a second time as Spencer came up behind the couch and wrapped his arms around you, kissing your head. You chuckled, completely forgetting about his previous antics from the day, “chippy i see”, you felt Spencer shrug behind you.

“I think i just missed being with you is all,” Spencer mumbled into your hair, “smell good, you shower?” you laughed.

“Last night yeah,” you smiled and looked up at Spencer, the top of your head colliding softly with Spencers, also soft, tummy.

“That's my book?” Spencer observed as his eyes ran over the written graphite in the margins, you looked back down at the book and nodded.

“Mm hmm, didn't realise when i picked it up but i'm enjoying the little annotations,” you smiled softly as Spencer started kissing from the top of your head to your neck, soft pecks turned into nibbles, turned into purple bruises.

“Haven't felt you in so long,” Spencer mumbled into your neck, his hands gliding lower from your shoulders and down your torso.

“Yeah?” you questioned, feeling his fingers trace over your shirt, you knew the answer, and you definitely knew what was going to come out from this.

“Please?” Spencer asked, ah, consent, his number one turn on. The thought almost made you chuckle as you nodded.

“Yes,” you placed the book on the coffee table next to the abandoned empty cup and followed Spencer into the bedroom, his hand soft in yours as he guided you on the short trip.

That night made you forget about the previous days. It was true that you and Spencer hadn't done anything together for awhile, therapy taking up time along with paperwork and just not feeling in the moment of things, but that night was full of bliss; exploring one another again like it was your first time all over again.

It was beautiful. Truely.

For you anyway.

Of course Spencer loved it, every moment of it was beautiful and full of bliss for him as well, but there was a nagging in the back of his head, one that he couldn't shut up, even with your beautiful body in front of him. You were dead to the world, snuggled under the covers, as Spencer crept into your linked bathroom; there was someone else calling his name just as loud as you and Spencer had been calling each other's names a few hours ago.

Except this wasn't someone.

It was something.

And Spencer knew that this something wasn't right, of course he did. He was throwing away so much time, so many days and weeks of being clean, so many years. Unfortunately the nightmares Spencer had been talking about in group therapy where back.

And they were real.

Very, very real.

--------

The following week you worked on the paperwork from previous cases including material profiles on paper evidence until you got called in for your daily therapy session.

“So,” Mike started, “how has today been? Yesterday at group therapy?” you shrugged, thoughts clouded, “something on your mind?” Mike pressed.

“How would you gain evidence if you think someone is using drugs again without raising suspicion of everyone and said person?” you questioned quickly, “asking for a friend,” the end was added as a joke.

“Well, you would intervene,” Mike said. That's what you liked about Mike, he never questioned anything you asked or said, you could say you killed a man and he would ask how you hid the body and help with your alibi.

“How?” you questioned in a strained voice, the thought of Spencer using again was getting to you.

“Take them somewhere they're comfortable, sit them down and simply: ask” Mike said as he jotted down some things in his little notebook.

“If you're writing that I'm paranoid then dont bother,” Mike looked up from the book, “i'm not. I know that they’re using again, but if I don't have plausible evidence then they’ll just…” you shrugged, ''well I don't really know, do i?” Mike took a moment to respond.

“How are you feeling after your team got kidnapped,” it was a daily question, steering you away from the topic.

“Fine.”

“You're not,” Mike observed.

“Yeah well if its that fucking obvious then why arent these sessions helping?” you questioned aggressively, then paused, “i'm sorry.”

“It's quite alright (Y/n), bouts of random and unprecedented anger are normal after traumatic events like that,” Mike explained, “how do you think the others are going?”

“Not well, i can tell. Hotch is refusing to speak, Rossi is faking everything he says and does, Emily, J.J., and Garcia are all a bubbling mess of tears, Derek dissociates a lot more now and Spence…” you paused, Mike noticed this.

“Is the one using”

“That's what we think,” you sniffled softly and pulled a tissue from the nearby box before getting up from the chair you sat on and walking to one of the large windows, “do you think he’s in pain?” you questioned.

“I think they’re all in a great deal of pain,” Mike responded, “but. If you’re asking as a professional opinion I think they need time. If you're asking as a friend, well, i think you should be there for him,” your ear twitched at the change of pronoun for Spencer, saying ‘him’ specifically instead of ‘them’. You nodded.

“What should i do?”

“Ask. If you can't talk to your boyfriend about it then you’re not ready to face it, and the more time that goes past about it is the less time you potentially have to spend with him,” Mike was wise, you knew that, but that sounded too cheesy to be him, so you laughed softly.

“You sound like a wise old owl,” you mentioned as you grabbed your bag.

“I see you’ve been keeping track of the time,” Mike commented; you had 2 minutes left of the session.

“I see you’ve been keeping track of me,” you shot back playfully before leaving the room and going back to your paper profiles, the previous events playing in your mind; the kidnapping, finding the team, the group therapy, that session, Spencer. Of course you could have been wrong about what the other team members could be doing, and of course you lied slightly; Emily wouldn't be crying, she’d mask it like Hotch and pretend everything is okay like Rossi. J.J. would just blubber about her husband and kids. But the others were correct. A chocolate muffin sat on your desk with a note attached to the wrapping;

‘Love,

We need to talk.

Nothing bad, kind of.

Tonight?

Xx

S’

Spencer. You smiled softly, maybe he would come clean, tell you what's been going on in his giant mind like he’s meant to be doing. You held the note close to your chest and gave it a kiss before sitting down and biting into the muffin and continuing your work; you didn't see the pair of eyes watching you, filled with love and guilt that was standing next to the coffee machine, sugar tin almost empty.

-------

Spencer wasn't exactly dreading tonight, oh no, he wasn't looking forward to it of course, but he knew, knows, it's for the best. The rest of the day went by in a little blur; chaste kisses from you, sessions, talking with people, jamming the photocopier, and coffee. The bag wrapped around Spencer's torso felt like five tons against his tiny frame, weighing him down for the most of the day, the only time he couldn't feel that weight was when you were around; talking, kissing Spencer, holding his hand, little comments, slight brushes when rushing past each other. Those moments were the moments that brought up his confidence in preparation for tonight; he can't live without you, but he wouldn't die for you, oh no, he would live for you. Which is slightly ironic in Spencer's mind but it fits, he wouldn't let this nightmare come back for round two without trying his best to kick its ass first, and the only way he knew how to do that was, is, with you by his side.

Spencer felt triumphant as he walked through those glass doors and into the elevator, you had left two hours previously but Spencer didn't mind, it gave you both time to wind down and get ready for this talk. Which is exactly what you both needed. He knew you knew, you knew he knew that you knew, now it's just the point of who would come clean first.

-------

Spencer stood out the front of his apartment.

Apartment 23.

It felt like such a large barrier, a large step, one that’s heavy and is hard to make. But it was also an escape, an escape, and that’s what Spencer had to remember, his home (and yours) is a sanctuary, a safe space for the both of you no matter what the problem is. A big sigh escaped Spencer's lungs as he the floor started swaying beneath him, his breath being held, black and white dots encapsulating his vision.

And then he was through the door.

And it all drifted away as you walked from the kitchen holding two dinner plates.

“Spence!” you exclaimed happily, bringing Spencer from his thoughts, “roast pork for dinner tonight, adn veggies,” you smiled and placed the plates on the table before leaving again. Spencer brought his hands up to put his bag down but thought against it and instead leant it against the table as he sat down, you coming out again with a bottle of spirit water, the bottle fizzing when cracked open.

“Thought you would go for wine tonight” Spencer commented as you filled his glass, “thanks,” you shrugged as you poured your own drink before putting the bottle to the side and sitting down.

“Thought this would be better to go with the meal, clean the palette and everything,” you smiled as Spencer picked up his knife and fork as his mouth also opened to drop a fact.

“In Normandy, locals rely on apple brandy as a digestive called Le Trou Normand, or the Norman break. It’s a shot of Calvados in the middle of the meal which can be served as a sorbet rather than a shot of alcohol,” Spencer rambled slightly with a smile as he ate his dinner. It felt natural, you two never really got to have special dinners like this, instead opting for take out or left overs. The comment was left hanging in the air as both you and Spencer dug into the delicious meat and vegetables, cooked to perfection that both you and Spencer loved. Spencer cut the fat off of his piece of meat and left it on a side dish that you put down earlier; Spencer didn't, doesn't, like fat from meat, ‘it’s too chewy’ he’d always say.

“How have you been since…?” you questioned, voice cutting through the nice silence. Spencer stopped eating for a moment, was this it?

“I’ve been okay,” Spencer said softly as he continued eating after a second, “bored,” he shrugged, “only read five books recently, just can’t seem to focus,” you nodded.

“That’s normal after traumatic events Spencer, you know this,” you cleared your throat and took a mouthful of your drink, “maybe you could read to me after this?” Spencer's foot shuffled closer to his bag, it leaning against the leg of the table.

“If-” Spencer cut himself off, what should he say? ‘If you want?’, then there was no use for the note and it'll go unspoken, ‘we have to talk?’ no, that sounds like there's something bad. Fuckfuckfuck.

“Spence?” your voice brought Spencer out of his railroad of thoughts as you put down your knife and fork having finished your food.

“We need to talk tonight,” Spencer started, “but I want it to be natural, I don't want it to be forced,” you nodded.

“I feel the same,” you said softly, it wasn't hostile, you weren't angry, you were compassionate and understanding, “you finish your food and then you can read to me, yeah?” you questioned, Spencer nodded as he continued eating while you brought your plate into the kitchen to be washed later in the night. You kissed the top of Spencer's head when you passed him on your way to the bookshelf, the silence that followed was calm but there was heat behind it, the air wanted to squeeze into your lungs and bring the words you both oh so wanted to say.

But you held back.

Both of you.

“The Illustrated Man?” you asked as Spencer walked out of the kitchen having put his plate away and taking a mouthful of his drink. He hummed.

“What about Papillon?” Spencer asked as he came up behind you, wrapping his arms around your waist as he scanned the bookshelf for other books.

“No, reminds me too much of that Ted Bundy film too much,” you sighed out, you almost gave up before a book caught your eye; your hand moving out to grab it before you could even stop yourself as you handed it to Spencer.

“Murder on The Oriant Express huh?” Spencer questioned as he flipped the book over a few times, he nodded, “yeah, i could go with a murder mystery tonight” he smiled, as did you, as the two of you moved to the couch to read.

-

Hours passed of Spencer reading to you, and then the two of you switched for you to read to him. Neither of you said anything, almost forgetting about the elephant in the room.

“Do you think this is profiling?” you questioned as you got to a chapter, “what Poirot does?”

“I would think so,” Spencer said softly, “he deduces certain things to come to a conclusion, using evidence and simple common knowledge and deduction skills like Sherlock; id say he does”

“Do you think that's how i figured it out?” you questioned, Spencer brought his body up from its cuddled position to look at you.

“Figured out what?”

“That you’re using again”

Silence.

“So we’re going to talk about it,” Spencer spoke with such uncertainties you didn't know how to respond for a moment.

“So you are using again,” you spoke in a quiet voice, afraid that if your voice was too loud itll shatter the surrounding places.

“No.” Spencer was quick to disagree, “i mean,” he sighed as he fiddled with his hands, eyes staring at the carpet, refusing to look at you, “i did, for a little” you placed a hand on Spencer's shoulder as the book was discarded on the coffee table, “i stopped taking last week,” Spencer sniffled as he wiped his nose, tears landing in his lap, “i didn't want to, i really didn't, but it just got so hard, hard to cope with everything that has happened previously, every single case, every kid, every adult and father and mother and sister and brother and-”

“Spence breath” you commanded softly, Spencer had started hyperventilating as he spoke, he looked to you, finally, with tear filled eyes as you helped him even out his breathing and wiping away his tears.

“I started a few days after i was cleared from the hospital,” Spencer started again, his voice wavering slightly as he talked, “from there i started again, i don't know how long for,” Spencer looked down at his hands again, “i've lost my sense of time a lot more recently since starting again, so” he shrugged, “I knew how bad it was and could get but I didn't stop myself. Then I found you snooping in my drawers,” Spencer laughed softly at the memory, you doing the same, ''I found you snooping and i saw things in my bag messed about so i knew you had been looking for something, and i knew you knew what i was doing. Of course you did,” Spencer wiped his nose again, “that’s when i gave you that note, because i knew i had to stop, and it's been hard but i have” Spencer looked at you for reassurance.

“You did good Spencer,” you started, “i'm not...im not happy that you went back, you know i'm not,” he nodded, “and i'm not happy that you didn't tell me about you wanting to relapse,” another nod, “but i'm happy that you stopped yourself, and though it's not the perfect thing to be kidnapped again, you helped yourself stop this time,” you played with Spencer's hair as you talked. “I wish you told me,”

“I know”

“And i wish i could have helped,”

“I know”

“But I still love you,” Spencer smiled.

“Yeah?”

“Of course,” you sighed into Spencer's hair, “can’t leave you after everything that's happened and what we’ve been through, ‘snot right,” you slurred slightly, Spencer chuckled softly, “also because you’re great in bed,” you joked causing Spencer to laugh as a silence settled over the two of you for a moment.

“I’ll get help,”

“I know you will bub,” you threaded your fingers through Spencer's hair, “and i’ll be there every step of the way, always,” you pulled Spencer close, “is it still in your bag?” he nodded hesitantly. You got up slowly and pulled Spencer along with you as you dug in his bag, your fingers finally coming in contact with a glass bottle, you pulled it out as Spencer’s sharp intake of breath came from behind you.

“There's...here let me,” Spencer lent down to grab the bag, placing it on the nearest surface as he dug through it for a moment before pulling out another small glass bottle as his other hand went in. Spencer handed you the bottle as he pulled out two capped needles and shoved them into your hands as well, he didn't look at the needles or bottles and instead turned around, “I don't want them anymore, I really don't,” you nodded.

“We’ll dispose of these properly,” you said with a smile, Spencer couldn't see it but with your retreating footsteps Spencer finally turned around to see you placing the items into a small plastic bag, “tomorrow,” Spencer nodded as the two of you retreated to the bedroom.

“I um,” Spencer spoke as he started getting dressed for bed, you doing the same, “i just wanted you to know; the other night, when we had…”

“Sex,” you finished for Spencer with a slight laugh, he nodded.

“You fell asleep and...i….”

“I know,” you said softly, your fingers held Spencer's waist softly over the cotton shirt he wore as he stared at you.

“You-?”

“It's okay,” your fingers felt like heaven against Spencer's waist as your thumbs rubbed the spots they sat at, he nodded in understanding. You pressed your lips against Spencers in a soft, reassuring and loving kiss, one that you both needed before climbing into bed and cuddling as close as you could possibly get.

French Road, East taglist: @thelovelyrose || @colorfulsunflowerx || @thatsonezesty13 || @loki-an-idiot || @parkeroffline || @briannareneea985 || @lovebodymindstuff || @dilaudidwinchester || @awkwardnesshabitat

[thepeakyfckingblinders]

Disturbing || Tommy Shelby x reader

⤠ MASTERLIST⤟

Anon requested/summary:  Can you write one about tommy and reader breaking up, then months later tommy sees her with people he doesn’t approve, of drinking ( drugs eg if your comfortable) so he try’s to get her back? Maybe with younger reader

Warnings: Younger reader (20-25 yrs old), anxiety, maybe angst, drug use, heavy drinking, swearing (but, c’mon, it’s the peaky fooking blinders we’re talking about)

Author’s notes: 

I’m sorry if the title sucks, I can’t think of anything better at the moment

This was my very first request and I was so tense while writing it, I guess I smoked a thousand cigarettes in the process! I’m praying that you’ll like it, let me know what you think and tell me if this is what you expected  ♡

I myself suffer form anxiety, in the first part I just tried to explain how my brain works in certain situations and that’s why it is so long, I hope you won’t get bored.

I’m Italian, English isn’t my first language, so I apologize for every possible mistake I made. Also please, help me improve my writing by telling me if there’s something wrong

ENJOY!

You had been trying to keep control of your mind, you truly had, but in the end that familiar sense of pure fear took over you, again. A heavy form of anxiety had been haunting you ever since you were a little girl, but, as the years went by, you had learnt to cope with it well and when you met Thomas, things only got better, the strong bond between the two of you constantly helping you handle that issue. 

Nevertheless, during the last month, things got definitely out of hand: Tommy was always caught up with business, rarely paying attention to you and your increasing fragility, he hadn’t spent a night home since ages and still, in those rare moments you were together, he was just so distant, totally lost in his own mind.

On the other hand, you never once blamed him for the way his life worked, after all you were perfectly aware of how hard it was for him to look after his whole empire, always trying to deal with countless problems without causing any harm to his loved ones, and that was surely not the easiest thing to do. But this time was different: you couldn’t prevent your brain from having obsessive thoughts about Thomas getting completely tired of having you in his way, you actually convinced yourself he was sleeping with other women in the nights he didn’t come home, and on those nights your eyes never shut, you spent hours alone in your king size bed, staring at the white ceiling with short breath and palpitations. That’s why you just couldn’t take it anymore, anxiety was once more sucking the life out of you and you absolutely needed to talk to your boyfriend about it, so, as soon as he entered the house that night, you practically run towards him, determined to calmly explain everything; too bad, your exhausted mind wasn’t working straight and your mouth immediately made it clear.

-Y-you have to tell me-  Tears already streaming down your face while the handsome man in front of you gave you a confused look, not having a clue of what was going on. You could tell he also was in a bad mood, indeed your sentence was at first totally ignored as he walked into his study and quickly lit a cigarette, before filling his glass with whisky.

-What the hell are you talking about, y/n?-

You were now facing him again, your hands shamelessly trembling against your chest while you hardly held back the crying. -If there’s another woman, i-if you want to get rid of me, you have to tell me now, ‘cause I’m l-losing my mind, Thomas-

You slightly jumped when his now empty glass was roughly shoved against the huge desk separating your figures, then you unconsciously stepped back, noticing absolute fury burning in his glacial eyes.

-Are you serious right now, eh? Have you any idea how fucking difficult it is to keep everything working these days, eh?- His voice was loud and raspy as he stood from his seat -And you fucking come and tell me about other bloody women, how idiotic of you!- Heavy sobs started coming out of your throat, Thomas instead took a deep breath in order to calm down and stop shouting in your face; once he had partially blown off steam, he sat back in his chair, looking up at you almost with disgust.

-You know what? My brothers were right for once, you’re just a silly kid unable to fit in our world. This whole thing was a mistake, I need a fucking grown woman by my side!- A disturbing silence filled the room right after he spat those bitter words and you swore you heard your heart stop along with your breathing in that very moment, your eyelids instinctively tightened for several seconds, yet, when your eyes flew back open, you realized it wasn’t only a bad dream. Tommy was still staring at you with a stern expression, probably waiting on your next move, so you just looked into his blue irises one last time, unable to speak a single syllable, before leaving.

                                                                                                       3 months later

Days went by fast after your break up with Thomas, since then you’d been trying to avoid him in every way possible, humiliation and pain being still too intense to let you face him without terrible consequences for your already vulnerable spirit. Indeed, everything around you was literally going to pieces right before your eyes and you couldn’t help it; even though you’d always been a strong girl, pretty capable of getting through life and its adversities, recent events had left you in a state of such deep sorrow, that the only thing you were able to do was seek any practicable form of anesthesia in order to escape from reality, even just for a brief moment. In fact, you’d been hanging out with a group of very low guys from East Birmingham, which led you to do drugs and bend your elbow more and more often, severely damaging your ability to think rationally, and the worst part was that you didn’t even care about what you were doing to yourself, as long as it allowed you to get along with your demons.

And then one night, your presumed new friends literally dragged you to the Garrison, despite your loud protests arising from the awareness of the fact that Thomas would’ve been there too. Luckily, long before the Shelby brothers made their usual entrance into their pub, you ended up being utterly intoxicated by alcohol and cocaine to the point that, when the moment finally came and Tommy showed up, you barely noticed him. Too bad for you, Tom’s eyes, on the other hand, never failed in spotting your silhouette among the crowd. At first, seeing you again after all those days brought pure relief to his soul, God only knew how much he had missed you, but soon after he remembered the reason why you were gone and his jaw clenched with regret and shame for the unforgivable way he had treated you.  Conscious of the fact that he had already caused you too much pain, Thomas was about to go away and leave you be, until he saw you diving in some random guy’s arms while heavy drinking directly from a bottle. It just wasn’t like you to act in such a way, therefore he immediately realized that something must have been wrong, so, before his mind had a chance to catch up with the rest of his body, Tommy found himself taking long strides in your direction, roughly elbowing anyone who was in his path. All of a sudden, you observed your friend’s face turn pale and his eyes go wide with fear for no apparently reason, Andrew kept staring at a precise point behind your shoulders and when you turned around in order to understand what was going on, Thomas Shelby was in front of you in all his glory. For a couple of seconds he just stood there, sending deadly glares at the poor boy next to you, blood boiling in his veins because of the violent rage that affected him, then his attention entirely moved to your trembling figure.

-I need a word with you- You felt your chest shrinking in pain as his calm and deep voice reached your ears, but you still tried to play it cool with a strength you didn’t know you had. -Fuck you already, Thomas- A resentful laugh erupted from your throat while, careful not to look in his mesmerizing eyes, you attempted to turn your back on him, yet a gentle grip on your forearm stopped your movements, forcing you to stay in your place.

-I’m begging you, y/n, we need to talk- This time his crystal blue gaze successfully entangled yours and your mind went totally black for a moment, preventing you to fight against him as he guided you out of the pub. Birmingham’s cold breeze immediately hit both of your bodies, but you were hardly able to sense it, due to the effects that drugs and alcohol had on your brain; once you were far enough from the chaos, Tommy stopped walking, his large hand still on your arm. -What are you doing?- His thumb made it to your beautiful face, softly wiping away from your nose the traces of that familiar white powder. -This is not you, y/n!-

His tone raised, displaying all of his concern, you simply gave him a forceful shove in attempt to push him away, but his toned chest didn’t move an inch. -Why do you even care, Tommy? After all I’m just a silly kid to you!- You started screaming, prey of your frustration, as soon as you felt hot tears forming in your eyes; the realization of how you still hopelessly loved him stabbed you right in the ribs.

-Please, just listen to me, okay?- He said while cupping your face with both his hands, probably to make sure you were looking at him, so you managed to childishly close your eyes in a last desperate demonstration of your hard feelings towards him. -I know I hurt you, I know the things I said to you were cruel and unfair, you didn’t deserve that, nothing of that was true- Thomas leaned his forehead against yours, even though you still had your eyes closed and your fists harshly pressed against his chest, his voice now sounding a lot closer. -I was going through a hard time and I was a fucking bastard for putting it all on you. But I swear to God, love, look at me- he slightly rocked you in order to get your attention -Look at me, I love you, y/n- Your eyelids flew open instantly, that being the very first time he clearly admitted his feelings for you, and suddenly you were no longer able to control all of your destructive emotions: your body was now racked with violent sobs as you finally let him hold you properly, crying out loud against his waistcoat and shirt. -Shh, shh- Tommy’s thumbs gradually wiped the tears away from your cheeks, while his lips briefly pecked yours multiple times. -It’s okay, we’ll be fine-  he mumbled in between kisses - let’s go home now-.

[cincinnatusvirtue]

Culture in Focus: Al-Andalus; an overview of Muslim rule in  The Medieval Iberian Peninsula (Spain/Portugal) (711-1492 AD) Part I: A confluence of peoples and traditions...

The historical memory of Medieval Europe is varied in terms of focus and broader knowledge in the modern era.  The cultures and various peoples that existed during the centuries known as the Middle Ages are varied and rich in complex interwoven societies.  The focus of this post shall be what constituted the primary polity for much of the Medieval period in the Iberian Peninsula of southwestern Europe, in modern day Spain, Portugal, Andorra and even the south of France.  Though we more or less regard these countries today as traditionally bastions of the Roman Catholic religion with Latin based Romance languages.  The fact is from the early 8th to nearly the end of 15th centuries, the Iberian Peninsula had been dominated by an Islamic polity, one in which Arabic was the lingua franca among the elites and the majority population of parts of the peninsula were Muslim, with Christians and Jews living and interacting within that society too, at times relatively harmoniously and other times violently.  A well honed hierarchy was established between the three Abrahamic religions and a complex society was formed that lead to some of the most advanced and cultured learning in language, literature, history, science, math, art, religion, philosophy and economics during the Middle Ages took place. That society and region became known as Al-Andalus, the Arabic word from which the region of southern Spain known today as Andalusia takes it name.

Al-Andalus came to be the confluence of many societies in an era so often viewed in black and white terms of an us versus them portrayal between Christianity and Islam.  Indeed, these two religions would drive events in and define many aspects of society in Al-Andalus but they were not the sole factors in its being.  In fact, it was the fall of the Western Roman Empire during the 5th century would in part set the stage for Al-Andalus.  The Roman Empire has been the world’s foremost political, cultural and military superpower, certainly in Europe for several centuries.  However, internal strife, corruption and civil war had lead to the empire being divided and co-ruled between two halves, a Western and Eastern half.  The empire had transitioned from Roman polytheistic paganism to Christianity with Rome itself being the symbolic head of Christianity with the Papacy.  However, the West and East divide became a more practical than just symbolic division as the years rolled on.  The Eastern capital became Constantinople and in time the Eastern Roman Empire known to history as the Byzantine Empire would persist in a largely Greek influenced context quite separate from the Latin influenced Western half although it would maintain Roman political machinations.  

The year 410 was regarded as a watershed year, Rome, the Eternal City itself was sacked for the first time in 800 years, by barbarians.  Namely, the migratory Germanic tribe known as the Visigoths.  The Visigoths and the related Ostrogoths were part of a Germanic barbarian confederation called by the Romans, the Goths.  They had possibly come from Scandinavia and northeastern Germany and moved down to the Balkans and eventually into Greece and Italy, alternately serving and fighting against the Romans as auxiliaries and eventually partial conquerors.  The Visigoths under their King Alaric sacked Rome after a siege in 410 AD.  Rome was not even the capital nominally of the empire at the time but the symbolic fall out was tremendous.  Migrations of peoples over the next couple of centuries became the dawn of the Early Middle Ages also known as the Dark Ages when classical antiquity of Greece and Rome was said to be lost on the greater whole of Europe for centuries to come.  Many of these migrations included Germans, Huns, Slavs and Avars among others.  The Visigoths eventually moved from Italy into the south of France and the Iberian Peninsula.  Long the Roman territories of Gaul and Hispania respectively, the locals were a mix of Celtic and Iberian peoples who intermixed with Romans and adopted Latin and other Roman cultural aspects.  Now the powerful Visigoths ended their migration and established their own kingdom, the Visigothic Kingdom, long promised by those in Rome they had once served.  Their Germanic language was the that of the political elite whereas the majority continued to speak the local dialect of Latin while the coexisting Jewish community spoke Hebrew and Aramaic.  These descendants of Roman Jews from Judea and Syria and parts of Roman North Africa settled in Hispania forming a community that became known today as the Sephardic Jews.  They were subjected to increasing persecution under their Christian overlords.  The Visigoths themselves eventually adopted Christianity and for the next 300 years ruled the bulk of the Iberian peninsula.

The Visigoths continued many Roman traditions, such as bathing, use of aqueducts and indeed the Latin dialect persisted among the majority of the populace with the Germanic Goth language being relegated to the German minority in power.  The Visigothic nobility was also quite learned and well versed in politics, history, philosophy and science, even later Muslim sources regarding the city of Seville attest to this, dispelling the notion that the ancient Germans were entirely barbarians with no education.  However there were also political rivalries and civil war amongst its leadership.  Overtime, the Visigoths were increasingly absorbed into the Hispano-Roman culture leaving only traces of their Germanic origins overall.  By the time of the 8th century AD, these civil wars would weaken the state for new invaders.

Elsewhere in the world was the Arabian Peninsula and the various Arab tribes that inhabited it, long pagan and polytheistic, they also had Jewish and later Christian influences among their varied nomadic tribes.  In the 7th century AD, an Arab named Muhammad begin preaching the core tenets of a new Abrahamic religion of which he was prophet, this religion became of course Islam and in its founders wake the new religion unified the Arabs and later spread rapidly throughout much of greater Eurasia and Africa, forming a religious-political empire known as a caliphate.  In the midst of the rise of Islam, the Eastern Roman Empire was at war with the Persian Sassanian Empire for control of the Middle East, wars which exhausted both empires and with little concentrated military force on their southern borders, the Muslim armies post-Muhammad advanced within a few decades time from Arabia into Persia and the borders of India to parts of Anatolia, almost all of Palestine, Syria and Egypt and across the whole of North Africa to the Atlantic Ocean in modern Morocco.  The Arab Muslim conquest overran Roman citizens who lived on the coast of North Africa and it also ran into locals, an Afroasiatic people who were the true native inhabitants of the Sahara Desert, various mountains and coastlines of North Africa.  These people went by many names and were quite varied, divided into tribes and kingdoms known variously as Numidians, Libyans and Mauri among other names but were collectively, ethnically and linguistically related.  They called themselves the Amazigh or “free people” but the Romans called them what translates today in English as the Berbers, a variation of the word barbarians.  The Arabs and the Berbers began a long and complex history during the Muslim conquest of North Africa.  Many Berbers gradually converted to Islam and many adopted Arab culture and language as part of a cultural synthesis, though the Berbers would retain their own ethnolinguistic and cultural traditions too.  They remain the majority population of North Africa outside of Egypt to this very day.  Also the view of all Muslims being Arab was challenged even in these early days.  Arabs, Berbers, Persians, other Iranians, Syrians and later Turks along with various Europeans who converted to Islam were all different in their culture and language even if united by their religion at least nominally.

The first major caliphate was the Rashidun dynasty, overthrown by the Umayyads in 661 who made Damascus their capital in Syria.  The Umayyads controlled lands bordering India in the east all the way to Morocco in the west.  It was in the year 711 AD that from Morocco, part of the caliphate’s African province that an Arab and Berber army would turn its eyes northward to Christian Europe, specifically the Iberian Peninsula under the increasingly divided Visigothic Kingdom.  A Berber general, by the name Tariq Ibn Ziyad lead an expeditionary force into Hispania, by order of the Arab governor of the city of Tangier, Musa Ibn Nusayr, under the overall rule of Caliph Al-Walid I.  The army was made up of mostly Berbers newly converted to Islam and consisting of excellent light cavalry and numbered roughly 7,000 or so troops.  The Muslim army in the name of Umayyad Caliphate was according to legend helped by a renegade European count named Julian of Ceuta who supposedly wanted to avenge the dishonoring of his daughter (meaning rape) by the hands of the Visigoth king, Roderic.  Julian supposedly ferried and provided the Muslims with intelligence in an effort to overthrow the Visigoths.  The extent of truth to this tale is debated but it is the commonly cited source for the Muslim invasion of Iberia.

Tariq landed in April 711 AD near the modern day British territory of Gibraltar, indeed the famed Gibraltar Rock, one of the Pillars of Hercules in antiquity gets its name Gibraltar from Tariq himself (Djabal Tarik). His force began raiding and sacking Iberian towns, necessitating a Visigoth response.  Roderic met the Muslim force within a few months with an army numbering 25,000.  Exact sources on the battle that followed, known as the Batlle of Guadalete in July 711 aren’t definite in its details.  Most typically it is said that Roderic lead his troops in the center pushing against the Muslim force, only to be betrayed and abandoned by his subordinates on the wings due to their own personal reasons and deceit supposedly prearranged.  The Berber cavalry charged at the “sudden” opening on the now abandoned Visigoth center and what followed was a surrounding and destruction of the Visigoth force that remained loyal to Roderic, the king himself being slain, dying valiantly in battle.  Visigoth losses were high while the Berbers lost nearly 3,000 of their own men.  Those who betrayed Roderic were eventually pursued and slain too by the Muslim forces who got fresh Berber and Arab reinforcements from Tangiers.  The military rank and file was predominantly Berber with Arab and Arabized Berbers in command.  However, the Arabs and Berbers had an ethnic and cultural tension that persisted not only in the military but would exist throughout Al-Andalus’s history.  Arabs typically though numerically inferior were viewed as the top of the hierarchy, with Berbers and other non-Arab Muslims enjoying a second tiered but still relatively privileged placement in Al-Andalus society, though more on this social hierarchy and its implications later on.  For now, the Muslim conquest spread rapidly in Iberia like almost anywhere else.  The truth lies in the fact that civil war had indeed weakened the Visigoths and their disunity against a mostly unified force was their undoing.  Many cities were taken in rapid succession, most notably Cordoba which was to become the center piece and capital of Al-Andalus in the coming years and indeed an important Islamic city on par with Damascus and Baghdad, rivaling Constantinople in terms of size.  Tariq served as temporary governor of Iberia as the Visigoths fled north retreating to the mountains of the Spanish and French border, the Pyrenees.  Musa Ibn Nusayr took over governorship in 713 though both were recalled by the Caliph back to Syria in 714 where they lived out their remaining days.

The Muslim foothold on Iberia was firmly established within a couple year span, forming the basis for a new society, Al-Andalus.  With its new Muslim overlords of Arab and Berber extraction, its Christian majority of mostly Hispano-Roman origin, their former Visigothic rulers and a Sephardic Jewish community that had been long persecuted by the Visigoths and other Christians, new questions were being raised...What would this new society look like?  Could these various peoples coexist?  How far would Al-Andalus and by extension Muslim rule spread into Europe? Especially since Muslim Arabs had attempted and failed to take Constantinople in the east on more than one occasion, this expansion into Iberia was seen as a vindication of sorts.  Iberia had become a confluence of at least five different peoples with three religions between them, the coming decades would answer the aforementioned questions in the cementing of a new polity...

[ronnyshaiwrites]

Undergrad Thesis: Introduction

They began to weave curtains of       darkness, They erected large pillars round the Void, With golden hooks fastend in the pillars With infinite labour the Eternals A woof wove. and called it Science.

— William Blake, The First Book of Urizen

***

In early February of 1805 then burgeoning English chemist Humphrey Davy gave the first of a series of ten public lectures at the Royal Institution in London. The purpose for this lecture series was manifold. Having just returned from a geological expedition to Northern England and Scotland the previous year, the lectures were foremost intended to present Davy with a forum to exhibit his new collection of rocks and minerals. Yet, from the very start of his first lecture, members of the Royal Institution would have realized that the young scientist had taken considerable liberties in the scope of his project. Those in attendance who had expected a foray into the rock formations of Scotland would have been sorrily disappointed. Rather, on that fateful February afternoon at the dawn of the nineteenth century, Davy began by proclaiming that “the love of knowledge and of intellectual power is a faculty belonging to the human mind in every state of society; and it is one by which it is most justly characterized—one the most worthy of being cultivated and extended” (3). Indeed, nowhere in his introductory lecture does Davy make even the slightest allusion to geology, the proposed topic of his orations. Davy’s professions over the next ten weeks would set the pace of scientific endeavors for the next century and beyond. In his lectures, Davy details a glaring rebuke of the natural philosophers and scientists of centuries past. Commenting upon topics from scientific philosophy to the history of science and its role in the foundation of modern thought, Davy traced the course of scientific innovation from the ancients to Galileo and Isaac Newton. For the next ten weeks Davy continued in the same vein, presenting an inexplicable mixture of geology and scientific epistemology to packed lectures hall.

Underpinning Davy’s argument on scientific epistemology is what the chemist considers the most suitable method for deriving knowledge from nature. Facts and facts alone are the reliable basis for our understanding, Davy argued, adding to this a notable contempt for theoretical speculation. In his practice as well as in common life, the scientist, Davy contends, “ought only to be guided by certainties” or, at the least, by “distinct probabilities” (45). The most flagrant fault of scientists’ past and present being their choice “attribute to agents powers which they have never been observed to exert, or refer effects to causes, the operation of which they are ignorant” (70). To Davy, then, progress in science clearly is made in proportion to an increasing reliance on detailed observation and experimentation. He concludes that any person who calls themselves a scientist while turning a blind eye to observational detail will inveritably reach suppositions that “do not merit the name of science” (70). Davy further makes the case for meticulous experimentation by offering a comparison of two scientists that represent what are, in his opinion, the two vastly different epistemologies that undergird modern practice. To be held in the highest esteem is Francis Bacon, English philosopher and statesman credited by Davy as paramount to the European scientific revolution. Bacon, on who’s work the scientific method was founded cast inductive reasoning and empiricism as essential to the practice of “good” science. Contrary to the previous generation of natural philosophers who relied on some observations but primarily on deductive reasoning, Bacon’s staunch adherence to fact set him apart from his contemporaries. While “many scientific persons before Bacon had pursued the method of experiment,” he was the very “first philosopher who laid down plans for extending knowledge of universal application in all its precision” (39); a man who

wholly altered the face of every department of natural knowledge… Though much labour had been bestowed upon these extensive fields of investigation, they had hitherto…been little productive. Speculation had been misplaced, observation confined, and experiment principally directed rather towards impossible than to practical things. (39)

To contrast the towering figure of Bacon, Davy chooses Heinrich Cornelius Agrippa, German polymath, and an important figure in the occult movement of the sixteenth century. Whereas Bacon is “uniformly directed by reason,” (39) Agrippa, the failed scientist that he is, rather “begins by supposing” (36). With obvious contempt, Davy accuses Agrippa of suggesting the “grossest absurdities,” finding it “difficult to conjecture from them whether he is self-deluded or… endeavouring to deceive others” (37).  

More so than simply condemning the work of the latter early scientist, Davy extends his professional critique into a personal assault against Agrippa’s character. Davy actively portrays Agrippa as lesser than Bacon, emphasizing a new notion that would later become commonplace in nineteenth century academies: That the scientist is not sperate from his science, but that the perceived failures or successes of the investigator reflect the character of the man beyond the laboratory walls. In Davy’s characterization Bacon “was prepared by nature,” a “genius” whose “knowledge was extensive” and yet “gifted with a vivid imagination” that could nonetheless be “modified by a most correct taste” (39). Bacon’s scientific aptitude is conflated with the “influence of rank,” (40) and mention of his high political station. Whereas Bacon’s name would be remembered “into future ages with great and unchanging glory,” (39) Davy closes his section on Agrippa by depicting him as a wholly reprehensible character, a common “magician…vulgar” who will be remembered for his failed philosophies, “miserably poor,” (37) and as a lifelong prisoner to his own misconceptions, if remembered at all.

The image that Davy paints of Agrippa, a man forgotten to time and ridiculed by his successors, is as much a lesson in history as it is a warning to future scientists. Through the crowded lecture halls of the Royal Institution echoed Davy’s new idiom for science—facts are facts and facts alone are to be considered truth. To those that dare to “despise the logic and forms” (39) of Bacon’s perfect scientific method, Davy warns, should beware the wrath of a growing scientific community and prepared to deliver a “humiliating confession of ignorance” (39). The reasoned past of science, although presenting “romantic pictures” of nature should not, however, “in the slightest degree affect the opinion of the sound and judicious” (3) modern scientist. Speaking on the strong logical foundation of his argument Davy, somewhat paradoxically, concludes that such “truth scarcely requires any demonstration,” (3) although demonstration is the only way the scientist could arrive at facts and, through them, truth. The age of reason was over. The age of science had begun.

Lorraine Daston and Peter Galison, in their seminal study Objectivity (2007), chart the proliferation of this new scientific epistemology espoused by Davy and others through what they coin as “reasoned” and “mechanical” images. Belonging to the epoch of what Daston and Galison call “truth-to-nature” is the “reasoned image,” the “imposition of reason upon sensation and imagination” (98). Through the “exercise of will and reason in tandem,” (98) scientists prior to the late eighteenth century could forge an active scientific self, inclusive to non-empirical hypothesis, without fear of retribution from their colleagues. As evident from Davy’s lectures, beginning in the early-to-middle nineteenth century there emerged a new epistemic virtue, to draw again on the terminology used by Daston and Galison, called “mechanical objectivity.” The “mechanical image,” in contrast to its predecessor the reasoned image, sought to dissolve any trace of the scientific hand responsible for its conception. Mechanical images are thus “wary of human mediation between nature and representation,” (120) forcing scientists to strive for a “self-denying passivity” (121) in their work. The Romantic period is of particular interest due to the confluence and, later, the divergence of these two oftentimes conflicting epistemic virtues.

This research paper traces developing notions of the scientific self and its relationship to the practice of creating scientific images in three early science fiction novels, Mary Shelley’s Frankenstein; or, The Modern Prometheus (1818), Robert Louis Stevenson’s The Strange Case of Dr Jekyll and Mr. Hyde (1886), and H.G. Wells’ The Island of Doctor Moreau (1896). Herein, I examine how competing epistemic virtues of truth-to-nature and mechanical objectivity bore influence on scientist’s conceptions of self and, through them, the creation of distinct, albeit vacillating, images of nature. I also look at how scientist’s internalization of such epistemological anxieties came to shape the externalizing practice of creating scientific images. The epistemic virtue of truth-to nature, which dominated scientific practice throughout the late-eighteenth and early nineteenth centuries, focused the work of natural philosophers and early modern scientists on creating reasoned images, a practice which by no means would fade passively into the annals of science.

I begin by asking how science fiction beginning in the late-Romantic period captured the very real anxieties related to the movement of science away from truth-to-nature and towards a more objective epistemic frame. I seek to relate literary developments in the science fiction novel, with an emphasis on the relationship between scientists and their creations, to how the scientist mediates the governing epistemic virtues of the era with their conception of self. I trace such developments in early science fiction texts to first define and later explore the idea of the “scientific image,” the scientist’s use of semiotics and rhetorical devices to shape an image of nature, providing a degree of critical distance between subject and object. I relate the dynamic alterations in the scientist’s image making process to an overarching anxiety regarding the movement from natural philosophy to the more rigid and decidedly modern practice of objective science that persists today.

In the first chapter, I review the historical undercurrents in science and society beginning in the mid- to late-eighteenth century. Drawing on the work of historians and philosophers of science, I assess the changing conceptions of the scientific self and their relationship to more tangible scientific practice. I first discuss the prevailing and oftentimes conflicting epistemic virtues of truth-to-nature and mechanical objectivity, with specific attention given to the period of their overlap coinciding with late-Romanticism and the publication of Frankenstein. Next, I turn to the development of the scientific self in relation to the prevailing epistemic virtues of the age, making tangential inferences between Kantian objectivity and subjectivity and its influence on emerging anxieties of the self in nineteenth century England.

In the second chapter, I propose that the creation of scientific images is a distinctly literary practice, one that began in the late eighteenth century. Drawing on the scholarship of Amanda Jo Goldstein and Tita Chico, I explore the necessity of the literary imagination and the use of subjective inferencing to conceiving and communicating scientific ideas. I next turn my attention toward the role of the metaphor in the art-science of image creation. I first suggest that the metaphor, as a device used to create scientific images, is a response to the scientist’s anxiety of creating a reputable scientific self, thereby establishing a critical distance between creator and their creation. Aligning this development with the history of changing scientific practice, I propose that the literary imagination facilitated the creation of scientific images in the age of objectivity, allowing the scientist to, at all points in the process of discovery, remain partially removed from their creations. All the while, the creation (as image), takes on a subjectively endowed position, closer to that of the reasoned image of the truth-to-nature epoch. I conclude by asking how the use of metaphor and imagery endow scientific images with meaning that is supplementary to the significance first prescribed to them by their creators.

Beginning in chapter three, I turn to the early science fiction texts of the nineteenth century to examine how the transition from truth-to-nature to mechanical objectivity is imagined by science fiction authors. In chapter three I propose Victor Frankenstein’s creature as a scientific image that speaks back, commanding, for the first time in a literary meditation on modern science, the ability for objectified nature to speak for itself and redefine its image in a rebuke of its creator. I additionally suggest that the creature is an image-of-self, created by Frankenstein as a manifestation of his anxiety towards the act of scientific creation.

In chapter four, I continue with The Island of Dr. Moreau, furthering my line of inquiry into the late nineteenth century, when objectivity became firmly rooted as the prevailing epistemic virtue of science., I analyze the incongruency between self and image, proposing that mechanized scientific images, such as the monstrosities of Dr. Moreau’s island, put scientific reason and the subjective qualities of scientific practice into question. Here, I also explore a case study of scientific communication in miniature by regarding Edward Prendick as a representation of a knowledgeable public’s response to the potentially disturbing products of modern science in anticipation of current scientific advances.

In chapter five, I briefly turn to The Strange Case of Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde (hereafter referred to as Jekyll and Hyde), where I consider Edward Hyde as an exemplification of the scientific image as self, speaking not only to his creator, but for him as well. In this case, the image serves not as a manifestation of the scientific self but, quite oppositely, comes to define the self through comparison. I conclude by examining Edward Hyde as a scientific image that fails to separate from Henry Jekyll’s scientific self, denying Hyde the ultimate goal of the reasoned image: Complete autonomy. I conclude by theorizing on the death of images and the necessity of the scientist to the image’s life.

[duckseamail]

Break It - a short story

Here’s the short story I wrote for my english class!!! It’s about 2.5 k words, and kinda sad (it has a nice ending though!!!). I’m really happy with how it turned out, and would love any feedback!

Winona’s bangs are plastered to her forehead, rainwater sprinting its way past her eyes and over her lips. Her shoes slap on the saturated gray pavement.

Half a block away, she can see the faint glow of the porch lights from her apartment building. She grabs the edges of her raincoat tightly, hoping it's still wholly spread over her backpack, and sprints through the puddles and up to the front walk. Unfortunately, her face is assaulted with a smack by the large, unkempt bush that she can avoid on a good day. 

With a fierce kick at the stoop, Winona pushes into the small entryway.

She makes her way through the second pair of doors and goes to the stairwell. With a sigh, she starts the trek up to the seventh floor.

When she reaches her floor, she crinkles her nose in disgust. The thin carpet is thoroughly soaked and gathering little puddles of muddy water from all the people who have been coming in during the late afternoon downpour. 

She gets to her door and puts the key in the lock. It sticks a few times before finally, with much cursing and trying to force the locked door open, the locking mechanism catches and smoothly turns. Winona glares at the key as she pulls it out and enters her home. 

“Yeah...yeah, waiting for the rain to clear out next week sounds do-able.” A voice coming from the kitchen says.

Winona slips her soggy tennis shoes off and into the wicker basket by the door. She should ask her mom to take her to get some new rainboots soon.

“I actually did have a couple questions about the burial to ask you, Mr. Moro.”

Winona is about to hop past the square of harsh white light illuminating the hall when an arm shoots out in front of her. Busted. Mom is still on the phone with Mr. Moro, but the way her mouth is pursed conveys the “stay there and wait for a conversation” perfectly fine without words.

Mom walks around the small kitchen as she talks. She grabs a large, pink and green mug from the rack next to the sink. Winona watches as she takes out the ceramic jar labeled “calm” in a flowing cursive script and places a teabag from it into the empty mug.

“Thanks again for your time; I’ll call you soon.” Mom hangs up. Neither of them says anything.

The high, screaming whistle of the teakettle breaks the momentary silence.

Winona wishes she’d had time to change out of her wet clothes before having this conversation. The cold and sticky feeling of the bottoms of her jeans clinging to her ankles is almost as bad as the fact that her socks are basically little swimming pools. Rivulets from her hair drip over her ears and down her neck, soaking into the shirt collar.

“I got an email from your math teacher this afternoon,” Mom says

Winona ignores the insinuation that she should be explaining herself about now and asks, “What did it say?”

Her Mom’s hands tighten around her mug, and an angry flush breaks out high on her cheekbones. She seems to be so overcome that she can’t speak, so Winona unzips her dry backpack and pulls out the failed test and hopes it will explain itself and she can leave.

“Here,” she says, handing it over.

Mom sets down her mug with a dull thunk and takes the papers.

After a minute spent flipping through them, she says, “You said you spent all of last weekend studying for this.” Mom brings a hand up and rubs across her forehead that’s lined with tired wrinkles and fixes Winona with a disappointed sort of glare. 

“Yeah, well. I tried for a bit. But it’s not like anyone else cared about this test either, okay?” Winona says flippantly. She bites the edge of her hair, then continues speaking around it. “It just wasn’t the sort of test you’re supposed to study for.”

“What do you mean the sort of test you don’t study for?!” Mom asks incredulously. Her voice is creeping up, louder and louder. “You need to take responsibility. What would your grandma have to say about this if she were here?”

“ I am taking responsibility!” Winona shouts, her hair falling entirely out of her mouth and smacking her jaw.

“Obviously, you’re NOT!”

“You don’t even know how to organize a funeral! How can you talk about responsibility?” Winona yells back. All of a sudden, the frustration in her mom’s brown eyes freezes over. 

“Just. Just go.” Mom says, seething. She turns her back and dumps her over-steeped tea into the sink.

Rage at this icy dismissal floods through Winona’s blood and exits in a strangled roar. Before Mom can say anything back, she spins on her heel, storms out of the kitchen, down the short hall, and into her bedroom.

Winona grips her heavy wooden door with as much strength as she can muster and slams it closed.

“WE DON'T SLAM DOORS IN THIS HOUSE!” Mom shrieks from where Winona left her in the kitchen.

“I DON’T CARE!”

Her ears ring, and she flicks the overhead light on, only to turn it back off immediately. Though the anger simmering in her body is no longer boiling over, the bright light is too cheerful. The lightning that flashes through the window, however, is perfect.

Balling her hands up, Winona thrusts them under her arms in a half-pout half-hug and paces in circles. “This isn’t even a house. It’s an apartment.” She mutters snarkily to herself. She considers opening the door to send the comment her mom’s way but decides to keep stewing on it. She can come up with something better.

On her fifth lap around, her eyes catch on her grandmother's glass figurine, sitting primly on her cluttered desk.

It’s of a young woman lying back on a log, propping herself up on her elbows. Her tiny glass face looks up with a beautiful expression of wonder; the clear eyes seem to see everything and hold infinite wisdom. They’re surrounded by minuscule eyelashes that look too fluffy to be glass. The woman’s smooth glass lips are parted like she’s just seen something she needs to share immediately (more than once throughout her life, Winona had spoken to it in the hopes that maybe one day it would talk back). The woman’s hair is long and curls gently, sitting lightly over the figure’s shoulders and bouncing a few centimeters above the top of the log.

But Winona’s favorite thing about the glass figurine isn’t her face. It’s the sloping curves of the carved dress. It folds softly down to the ankles, each sweep lined with small creases, and the hem is covered in miniature flowers. The back fabric of the dress drapes over the log's rough ridges in a fantastic clash of textures. The sense of fluidity changing into firm resolve, the cracks and knots carved into the log holding strong. It knows exactly what it is; no room for doubts. It’s a log, each uncountable twist and turn working together to hold up the woman on top of it.

It’s fitting, though, because Winona’s Grandma Helen had gotten it the day she graduated college. Winona had been told the story of her family’s most prized possession many times. It was her favorite thing to do as a kid when Grandma came to visit. She and Mom would take turns telling the story, and when it was done, Winona always begged to hear it again.

Winona’s great-grandfather had been an extremely old-fashioned man and hadn’t been willing to help send her grandma to college. It had caused a massive fight between them that ended with Grandma leaving and vowing to only come back with a diploma in hand.

So, she’d left and spent the time working towards a degree in American history.

On the day of Helen’s graduation, she’d gone home to see her parents. Now, Grandma had kept in contact with her mother, but just like she had promised, this was Helen’s first time in years seeing her father again. 

He’d been sad and apologetic, begging for his daughter’s forgiveness. Apparently, there had been tears shed on both sides. And, of course, Grandma had missed her father desperately, and once she received an apology, she was quick to forgive him.

But an apology wasn't all Grandma had received. Her father also wished to congratulate her on her achievement in college. So he'd commissioned an artist to create a glass figurine of a young woman lounging on a log, looking ahead to the possibilities before her. It was based on a picture he had of Helen just before their fight, which made it all the more special.

Then, when Mom was a little kid, Grandma had given it to her. Mom brought it with her to every place she’d ever lived.

And finally, after a childhood spent pestering about when it would finally be her turn, Winona was given it for her sixteenth birthday just over seven months ago. 

Winona snaps from the torrent of memories to thunder booming. She takes a few steps up to her desk and runs her fingertips over the skirt of the dress.

Mom often comes into Winona’s room just to sit and look at it for a while - never touching - a habit that’s increased in the past few weeks since Grandma died.

She must find it comforting.

The thought of her mother feeling anything but sadness and pain swirls her remaining anger into a tempest. She wants her mom to hurt, to regret what she said about the stupid test.

Her head and her heart ache, and she wants her mom to feel that.

So, Winona wraps her hand around the glass figure and picks it up.

It’s surprisingly heavy for how delicate it looks, but Winona pitches for softball in the spring and has a good arm. She faces the plain door that Mom had just yelled at her about slamming and takes aim.

One of the ridges on the log catches against her palm as the figurine launches into the air. She doesn’t feel the cut, though.

The figurine tumbles over and over in the six feet it has to travel to hit the door, glinting a bit in the dark room. Adrenaline rushes through Winona’s brain, and with a crash, it collides.

The log bursts apart, tiny glass crystals falling like snow to the carpet. The young woman’s head breaks off and drops down in three chipped and scratched pieces. The body, surprisingly, is comparatively intact. The arms are gone, shattered among the carpet fibers; the dress's light folds are broken off, and there are deep cracks along the front. There is a large chunk missing from the upper back where the shoulders used to be. But, when Winona looks at where the body of the figurine rests, she can tell that it had once portrayed someone sitting.

And for a moment, standing and looking over the wreckage, calm and satisfaction is all she feels.

Then, the reality sinks in. Her mom’s, her grandma’s, her most special possession is gone. Winona broke it, and from the way it’s spread out over the floor, it can’t be fixed.

It feels like all the air has been knocked out of her. Winona opens her mouth, but she can’t tell if any sound comes out. It’s like all her senses are covered in a staticky fuzz.

Suddenly, her bedroom door flings open, knocking aside some of the larger pieces of glass.

“Are you okay? What hap-” Mom cuts herself off abruptly, and Winona wrenches her gaze up from the floor.

Mom’s eyes are fixed at her feet. Her mouth wobbles around words that die before making it out. Winona watches the tears drip down her mother’s cheeks, and everything feels terribly wrong. This shouldn’t be happening.

“Mom,” Her throat clenches, stopping her. She tries again. “Mommy, I- I didn’t mean- I’m-”

Her mom turns and leaves the room. The door is still wide open, and light from the hallway dances among the shards.

Winona finally notices her own sobbing. She isn’t sure how she missed it before because everything about her face feels wet. Her eyelashes are clumpy, and there is no break in the water streaming down her face. It goes past her nose, collecting snot on the way, and then parts. Some tears fall off her chin, and others collect in her mouth, coating her tongue with the taste of salt.

Slowly, she takes a blanket from her bed and curls up under it on the floor. Wiping her nose with her sleeve, Winona waits for the crying to stop.

-----------------

She wakes up to a pounding headache and a hand softly shaking her shoulder. Winona shifts the blanket off her face and sees Mom peering down at her.

Arms carefully reach around Winona’s shoulders and lift her so that she’s perched on the edge of her bed. Her clothes are removed and replaced with warm, dry pajamas. They’re the fluffy, purple polka-dotted ones - her favorite.

A plastic cup of water is pressed into her hands, and she takes grateful gulps of it ‘till the cup is empty.

The bathroom sink across from her room turns on, and Winona realizes her mom has left again. It’s only briefly, however, and Mom comes back with a wet washcloth in hand.

Winona takes it when it’s held out and rubs the sticky, overwhelming feeling of dry tears off her face. The water is warm and soothing, and even after she's clean, she takes an extra moment to press the cloth to her worn-out eyes.

She hands it back, and Mom places it on the bedside table before taking Winona’s right hand in hers. Winona wonders why she’s doing this when she notices a sharp red line crossing most of her palm. A throbbing heat is building there, but quick as a flash, her mom wipes a soaked cotton pad over it and then rubs on a layer of cooling antiseptic. Lastly, she places two large bandages over the entirety of Winona’s palm. Then, Mom helps her stand up.

Walking across the room into the now dark hallway, she realizes all the glass on the floor is gone. Mom must have taken the time to thoroughly clean up every last shard and speck while she was sleeping. Winona isn’t sure why, but as she’s walked over to her mom’s bedroom, she wishes she had been able to clean it up. It was her mess, after all.

But, her brain is moving too slowly to think up the words to best express that out loud, and moments later, she’s being herded onto one side of her mom’s bed.

The digital clock blinks at her. It’s 9:53 at night. Mom tucks the covers securely around Winona’s shoulders.

“I’m so sorry, Nony. We’ll fix things in the morning, okay?” Mom’s voice is hoarse when she says this, but the time for thinking is over now. Winona nods her head sleepily in reply and closes her eyes for the night.

[gunnerpalace]

Hi! Same anon as the previous one. Tbh, I agree wholeheartedly with you. Y'see I do ask rhetorically,too but i could really accept and understand how and why ppl can be oblivious to IchiRuki, and somehow felt that the 'canon' should suffice, even the most excruciating of all is the fact a number found the ending even acceptable (ships aside, too). Again, I could respect that. But it's my greatest bane when ppl ask 'why' and not be clear they are asking rhetorically because I literally will

provide you an actual answer. And I get it, it’s the reason why ppl find shipping wars toxic and silly. But then again, as human, conflicts are always part of us (partly because as social psych explains so, we are gravitated to the negative for that allows us to change and survive), and the reason why “logical fallacies” are coined in the first place. Human will always debate, and argue about something; the only thing we could change is how we approach the opposing views.

Again, I dont condone any way, shape or form of abuse and harm. In some certain extent, I could perhaps understand it’s much harder for some IH to approach the actual argument being there’s either too much noise, and trapped in their own island between sea of salt. Thus becoming too acquianted w/ few IH who shared the same thought until it became their views as the only truth (see, that’s why its important to have debates! it is what keep us grounded and fair! Just like you said)

Who am I to speak though? I never ever challenged anyone anyways. And as you said, you just have to understand things in every way you could possibly think of–endless ‘whys’. Which is where I agree in your reply the most–this silly fandom wars is just the black mirror to every truth that lies beneath human psyche–the dark and the grimy. Heck, being a psych major is like staring at dark hole–at times, good, but most just plain confusing, revolting even or just heartbreaking.

Sorry it’s been long, but for the final of this ask: let me tell how glad I was with IchiRuki fandom I found in tumblr. It was the saltiest I’ve ever been (im not generally a fandom person anyways) but it’s the himalayan salt–expensive and actually nutritive it really deepened my desire to become wiser in general. And you for your wonderful essays, critiques and whatnot. I definitively would love to talk with you more not only about IchiRuki but the wonders and nightmare that us humans! Kudos!

I have sitting in my drafts a post spelling out my thoughts on “canon” (and thus, the people who cling to it) in that as a concept it privileges:

officiality over quality when it comes to validity (thus violating Sturgeon’s law)

corporations (intellectual property rights holders) over fans, and thus capitalists over proletarians

hierarchical dominance over mutualist networking within fandom

curative fandom over transformative fandom

genre over literary content

plot over characters

events over emotions

It is notable that (1) generally degrades art as a whole, (2) generally advances the capitalist agenda, and (3–7) generally advances the dominance of men over women (as the genders tend to be instructed by society to view these as A. dichotomies rather than spectrums, and B. to ascribe gender to them and make them polarities). These form the sides of a mutually reinforcing power structure (in the typical “Iron Triangle” fashion) designed to preserve and maintain the status quo.

Who really benefits from say, the policing of what is or is not “canon” in Star Wars? Disney, first and foremost. And then whomever (almost certainly male) decides to dedicate their time to memorizing the minutiae of whatever that corporation has decided is “legitimate.”

One can imagine a universe in which fan fic is recognized by companies for what it is: free advertising. (Much like fan art already is.) Instead, it is specifically targeted by demonetization efforts in a way that fan art isn’t. Why? Because it demonstrates that corporate control and “official” sanction has no bearing on quality, and it is thus viewed as undermining the official products.

In the same way, by demonstrating that most “canonical” works are frankly shit, it undermines the investiture of fans in focusing on details that are ultimately errata (the events, the plot, the genre), which is the core function of curative fandom and the reason for its hierarchical structure. The people who “know the most” are at the top, but what they “know” is basically useless garbage. And those people so-engaged are, of course, usually male.

To “destroy” the basis of their credibility, and indeed the very purpose of their community, is naturally viewed by them as an attack.

(This is not to say that efforts to tear down internal consistency within established cultural properties are good unto themselves, or even desirable. For example, efforts to redefine properties such as Star Wars, Star Trek, Doctor Who, and Ghostbusters, for the sake of a identity-politics agenda have largely A. failed as art, B. failed as entertainment, C. failed to attract the supposedly intended audience, and D. failed to advance the agenda in question. Trying to repurpose extant media in the name of culture wars is essentially always doomed to failure unless it is done deftly and gradually.)

(At the same time, this also shows what I was talking about last time, with regard to people seeing whatever they want to see. You will see people complain that Star Trek and Doctor Who didn’t “used to be so political,” which is obviously nonsense. These shows were always political. What changed was how their politics were presented. For example, Star Trek has, since TNG, always shown a nominally socialist or outright communist future, but was beloved by plenty of conservatives because they could [somehow] ignore that aspect of it.)

Of course, almost no one is seriously suggesting that one side of the spectrums outlined above be destroyed, rather merely that a new balance be struck upon the spectrum. But, as we have seen time and again in society, any threat to the status quo, whether that be 20% of Hugo Awards going to non-white male authors or the top income tax rate in America being increased by a measly 5.3% (from 28.7% to 34%… when the all-time high was 94% and for over 50 years it was above 50%) is a threat. This is why, for example, Republicans are out there branding AOC as a “socialist” when her policies are really no different at all from a 1960 Democrat who believed in FDR’s New Deal. (Which they, of course, have also demonized as “socialism.”)

(As an aside, all this ignores the fact that most of the “literary canon” of Western civilization, or at least English literature… is Biblical or historical fan fic.)

And this is when I finally get to my point.

Those people out there who denigrate and mock shippers and shipping, the people who hurl “it reads like fan fiction” as an insult, and so on, are the people who benefit from and enjoy the extant power structure. You will see the same thing with self-identified “gamers” complaining about “fake girl gamers.” Admitting that the hobby has a lot of women in it, and a lot of “casuals,” and is indeed increasingly dominated by “non-traditional demographics” is an affront to the constructed identity of being a “gamer.” They are “losing control.” And they don’t like it.

This exact same sort of population is what the “fanbase” of Bleach has been largely reduced down to through a slow boiling off of any actual quality. Of course they’re dismissive of people who are looking for anything of substance: their identity, their “personal relationship” with the franchise, is founded on a superficial appreciation of it: things happening, flashy attacks, eye-catching character designs, fights, etc.

(What this really boils down to, at heart, is that society at large has generally told men that emotions are bad, romance and relationships of all kinds are gross, and that thinking and reflecting on things is stupid. So of course they not only don’t care about such things, but actively sneer at them as “girly” or “feminine,” which is again defined by society at large as strictly inferior. And this gender divide and misogyny is of course promulgated and reinforced by the powers that be, the capitalists, to facilitate class divisions just like say racism generally is.)

(The latest trick of these corporate overlords has been the weaponization of “woke” culture to continue to play the people off one another all the time. “If you don’t like this [poorly written, dimensionless Mary Sue] Strong Female Character, then you are a racist misogynist!” They are always only ever playing both sides for profit, not advancing an actual ideological position. It is worth noting that there was a push by IH some years ago to define IR as “anti-feminist” for critiquing Orihime for essentially the exact same reasons [admittedly, not for profit, but still as critical cover].)

Which makes it very curious, therefore, that the most ardent IH supporters tend to be women. (Though there are more than a few men, they seem to tend to support it because it is “canon” and to attack it is to attack “canon” and thus trigger all of the above, rather than out of any real investment.) I think there are a number of reasons for this (which I have detailed before) and at any rate it is not particularly surprising; 53% of white women voted for Trump, after all.

What we are really seeing in fandom, are again the exact same dynamics that we see at larger and larger scales, for the exact same reasons. The stakes are smaller, but the perception of the power struggle is exactly the same.

Of course, the people who are involved in these things rarely think to interrogate themselves as to the true dimensions and root causes of their motivations. People rarely do that in general.

Putting all that aside, I’m glad that you have found a place you enjoy and feel comfortable, and thank you for the kind words, although I am not of the opinion that there is anything poignant about the non-fiction I write. It is, as I keep trying to emphasize, all there to be seen. One just has to open their eyes. So, it’s hard for me to accept appreciation of it.

Anyway, don’t feel shy about coming off of anon rather than continuing to send asks. We don’t really bite.

[pseudofaux]

Play it cool (as a cucumber)

Kinktober Day 20: Object Insertion (MLQC Lucien) 🧡

Delayed... 12 gd days! I’ve had this idea (from @alloveroliver​‘s kinktober list xoxo) for a couple weeks now, but could only get to it last night.  

IT IS EXACTLY WHAT YOU THINK IT IS.

NSFW NSFW

N S F W

“Now, darling,” he said, smooth as custard and three times as sweet. That was what always got her in these positions, it was that he made his ideas sound so loving, no matter what he got them up to. Everything about Lucien in those moments made it clear he loved the domestic depravity of soothing her while she struggled, and her willingness to go along with his whims.

CW: object insertion (...), foodplay (not... really, but if the idea of fruits and/or veg in a vagina is not your kink, this is not the work for you! Go sin in another direction with my fullest wish for your happiness and comfort.)

“Now, darling,” he said, smooth as custard and three times as sweet. That was what always got her in these positions, it was that he made his ideas sound so loving, no matter what he got them up to. Everything about Lucien in those moments made it clear he loved the domestic depravity of soothing her while she struggled, and her willingness to go along with his whims.

“You’re shaking,” he told her. And she was— because he’d gotten her so worked up! Tonight’s play was something he’d several times alluded to wanting to try. Several very calculated allusions, she realized, as something blunt and chilly touched her belly button. When she agreed in the lovedrunk haze of making out earlier in the week, she had known in theory what he was going to do. He’d actually gotten her to agree by being graphically descriptive, her heart tripping over itself at the erotic image he created with his words in her ear. And his fingers flirting with her entrance, pressing and sliding and slapping between her pussy and her soaked panties, never going farther than just inside as he talked about watching her lips spread wiiiiiiiide around something that wasn’t him. And the way there was that thickness to his voice that meant he was disclosing something he really wanted.

She smiled at him in his bed, not 100% confident in what they were about to do, but sure enough that he would stop if she said she couldn’t go on. He had left all the choices, the yes or no and the final selection, up to her. Like always, he gave her more power than she really wanted. She was glad it was no secret how much she wanted to make her choices and then shove them into his hands, close her eyes, and let him pull her into something dark and wonderful.

There had been three varieties of cucumber, clean and dry on a kitchen towel. A very long English variety he had to have gotten from a specialty market; another, much plainer and smoother, perhaps as long as her hand and wider than two of her fingers; and a gherkin—large for a gherkin but significantly smaller than the others, with all the spikes rubbed off.

“Take all the time you need,” Lucien had said, so generously, his hands so warm as they slid over her shoulders. “If you can’t choose, we can always use them all.”

Immediately, she squeaked “One is plenty!” and then had to wonder if it was worth taking back what she’d just said. She relieved remembered feelings of his breath at her ear, suggesting how much she might like it and stating plainly how much he would.

She considered a long time, and he didn’t say anything or take the support of his warmth away. All her options were foreign, but the second was smoothest and looked the most like what had already been inside her, and... it was the widest. When she handed it to him, he pulled her close by the wrist and kissed her until she was dizzy. She caught her breath several cupboards away from where she thought they had started. His eyes were very narrow and dark and pleased. “I thought so,” he said, “You do like it thick. Now go take your bath and get yourself ready.”

And she had bathed and touched herself (not too much, but those kisses had been something), and then dressed in the only green robe she owned and met him on his bed. The warmth was gone from his hands but not his touch as he slipped his palms against her breasts and started his magic.

“I’d have fucked you with any of them,” he told her. His teeth found her cheek, her ear, wet slip-scratches that made her hips rock up toward his body, massive over hers. “But I knew you’d want this one.” His hands warmed as he cupped her, traced her ribs from sides to sternum. “You don’t like it so deep it hurts,” he said, hands settling inside her robe, loose around her waist until his thumbs could stroke at the dip her navel, “but you love to be stretched until your pussy can’t control its own fluttering, don’t you.”

It wasn’t a question. Her whine wasn’t an answer.

“Don’t fret,” Lucien said as he rubbed the tip of his nose to hers. “We’ll stretch you nicely. I can’t get a clear view of the vasocongestion you experience here when I fuck you, so this will be a treat for us both, hmm?”

And then he’d reached off to the side of the mattress, and when his hand came back it touched the cucumber to her belly and she’d been startled and he’d pointed it out. While she had been in the bath, he’d clearly put the thing on ice. It wasn’t a painful chill, but it was enough to make her skin sing.

He pushed it against her navel and asked “Did you come in the bath?” When she shook her head he murmured praise and used the cucumber to flip the hem of her robe up from her thighs. He settled himself between them and immediately nudged her lips apart. “Then let’s not leave you wanting,” he said.

She might have died if he had touched the coldness to her clit, so she was more relieved than grateful that he worked her with his thumb, broad as ever against the pinpoint of arousal. He kept the bluntness of the cucumber against her entrance, rocking it from side to side without enough pressure to go in. Every time it touched the inside of her thighs she could feel the weight of it and remembered it was wider across than two of her fingers— wider than Lucien, who filled her so well. Was that really okay?

“I don’t mind at all,” he said, speaking to her unvoiced thoughts as he always did. “I won’t mind if you ask for this again. Hold yourself open for me, I need both my hands.”

Her fingers found exactly the sticky slickness she expected. When she did as he asked, the cold pressure increased. In fact, the cucumbr notched between her inner lips, the suddenness so thrilling it felt like her hips jumped against it, the cold clearer, the width so much more obvious. Her body was confused by her desire for it to be in and the reflex to repel the chill from a place that was extremely sensitive to it.

He let her shake for a moment before he asked, “More time? Or shall I give you what we want?”

The stretch when he pressed just a little more— it was so cold and slick and good. Her body didn’t need more time, it needed more to clamp down on. She was too empty too close to something that would fill her full and make her feel— she didn’t know what, but she wanted to.

“No,” she said confidently. “Now.”

His response was a thoughtful sound, sweet and pleased, and it held her as he shook his thumb against her clit and pressed with his other hand. The cucumber was cold all the way in, and strong inside her like he was when he was just about to come. Her pussy kept twitching, feeling the difference and trying to bully warmth into the foreign object. Thick, smooth but not perfectly so. Wrong. Right. Good.

Lucien’s voice was even when he told her to keep moving her hips. “Do you want me to hold it in place for you or fuck you back?”

“Back,” she gasped, “Do it.” And he did.

The slip of it once he pulled it out and pushed it back in was extraordinary. It hit a nice depth with no pain, and the side of his grip brushing against her ass made her like it even more. Something so unwarm and inhuman should have felt rougher, she thought, but it was all smoothness except for the stretch, and that was extremely pleasurable. She couldn’t make out individual bumps on the skin of the cucumber, but there was just enough catch along the first few sensitive  centimeters inside her that she put her fingers against it for more detail. Hot flesh, very cool cucumber, both slick.

He laughed, but let her settle her fingers, even though she knew she must be blocking the view he wanted. God— he was wearing his watch when she got in bed, what did his wrist look like as it pulled and pushed the deep green cucumber in and out of her? Would it shock him if she asked him to take a picture? Mmm, maybe next time. His pace never left anything to be desired in these situations, it was like he lived to put her in unbalancing scenarios but never actually let her teeter on her toes alone.

“Fingers in your mouth if you won’t keep them out of the way,” he said, clearly not upset in the least.

“There’s a sight for sore eyes,” he murmured when she moved. “The color change is remarkable.” She could feel but not see the thin trail of her body’s willingness as it trailed up from her sex to her belly. She tried to suck her soaked fingers quietly to catch anything else he might say.

“I cleaned this thoroughly and you’ve made it glossier than any waxed fruit,” Lucien narrated. “I will never buy cucumbers again without thinking of this one and the way your body loves it. It does spread you a little more than I do, doesn’t it? Doesn’t it.”

He was a curious man. The demand in Lucien’s voice was dark but not displeased; it felt like his expectation was only for her to respond, not give him a particular response. He turned the cucumber as he pushed it back in, and the new drag, sideways instead of just forward, made her eyes go wide. He did it again in the other direction as he pulled it back.

Her babbles couldn’t have made much sense, and she did not remember answering his question, but he only laughed and promised “I will, I will.” He kept steady pressure on her clit, his palm warm against her

When she came it felt like her body was fighting to close more than it could, and the realization that was exactly what was happening curled a scream from her belly to her tongue until it freed itself, sharp in the heavy air of his bedroom. She felt the sound on her skin when he stretched out beside her a moment later, his hand still between her legs.

“I’ll leave this here,” he whispered, and tapped the end of the cucumber. The motion was light, but the way her muscles had clamped around it as she came made for a dry-feeling friction that surprised her, given how effortlessly it had moved in her before. Like the rasp of a cat’s tongue, deep inside her... Lucien had really gotten into her brain.

His chuckle registered right in her middle, far beyond what he could reach with anything he’d put inside her. “I thought of installing a dynamometer to see how hard you could squeeze, but that seemed unromantic.”

Her laugh at his ridiculousness turned into a gasp when her body was forced to feel the cucumber all over again. Lucien didn’t let it move at all, so the length inside her and all it meant was inescapable. The realization sent a new shiver of pleasure up her belly. He kissed her and swirled slow circles over her clit until she was panting into his mouth half-mindless and pushing herself against the cucumber with no thought beyond pleasure. When he stopped she actually bit his bottom lip, she was so wound up.

“Ah ah,” he said when she glared at him. “Now you’ll hold it, and let me get my fill of the sight.”