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krirebr · 4 months

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More Than This 5

Pairing: Ransom Drysdale x f!reader, Steve Rogers & f!reader

Word Count: ~6.1k

Summary: Arranged marriages have always been used to solidify business deals among the ultra-wealthy. Your stepfather wants to be in business with Harlan Thrombey, so now it's your turn.

Warnings: Heavy angst, age difference, adult themes, institutional sexism, Linda being Linda, all of the Thrombeys being really awful actually, explicit language, references to bad sex, flagrant disregard for HIPAA (actually, just assume that HIPAA doesn't exist in this universe), the slooowest burn - Warnings will be added as needed for subsequent parts. All of my work is 18+ - Minors DNI

Dividers by @saradika-graphics

Series Masterlist

Masterlist

A/N: Oh god. I promise that there will be a point when this isn't so sad all the time and that point is soon. But it also isn't today. I'm so sorry. 😬

Huge thanks as always to @paperweight91 who listened to me whine and read countless fuzzy screenshots, and gave great advice and was just all around awesome. And to @stargazingfangirl18 who reached out with encouragement when the words just weren't coming.

Any comment, reblog, or ask to let me know what you think will be greatly appreciated. And if you need to come scream at me, that's ok too!

As always, thank you so much for reading! 💜

Ransom had the complete collection of Harlan’s books. You couldn’t say exactly why that surprised you, but it did. He even had the two poorly-received romance novels Harlan had written under a pseudonym. You hadn’t known the two of them were so close, but then again, you still didn’t really know anything about Ransom.

So that’s what you’d been doing with your days, making your way through Harlan’s complete works. You were currently reading one about an au pair that had been found dead in her charge’s locked nursery when your phone rang.

Your brow furrowed. The list of people who ever contacted you had gotten much shorter since you’d moved to Boston. Steve, Ransom, Linda unfortunately. That was pretty much it. You looked down at your phone to see your mother’s name. Oh.

You’d expected her to reach out in some way since your wedding and had tried very hard not to feel hurt when she hadn’t. Everyone’s lives had moved on. You were the only one stuck. But you still hadn’t had it in you to be the one who called her. You took a deep breath and answered your phone.

“Hi, Mom.”

“Honey! How are you?”

You kept in your sigh. “I’m fine. How are you?”

“Good, good,” she said, but she sounded sad. She always sounded so fucking sad. It struck you then, that that’s probably how you’d sound too, in ten or twenty years. Maybe less. Probably a lot less. “It’s so nice to hear your voice honey.”

“Yeah,” you said, and, pathetically, you could feel the tears starting to gather in your eyes. You weren’t angry with her. You couldn’t be. It wasn’t her fault she was so broken. It was inevitable. For all of you. And your frustration with her didn’t change how much you missed her. Missed home. Missed the way things used to be. “It’s good to hear you too.”

“I know it’s been a while,” she said softly, “but I wanted to give you a chance to get settled. How are things going?”

“They’re going fine,” you said quietly. You paused. You didn’t want to say anything bad or worry anyone, but also it was your mom. “I don’t know. It’s different here. I don’t have anything to do.”

She just chuckled. “Cherish that. It’ll change soon and then you’ll miss this time.” You didn’t know what to say to that so you didn’t say anything. After a few moments of silence, she continued. “And how’s Ransom?”

You stifled a groan. You didn’t want to talk about him. Things had been… better since your panic attack. He came home at a decent hour regularly. You fucked most nights now. But he was still just this looming presence. You didn’t know what to do with him. “He’s fine,” you said with a shrug.

That was apparently the wrong answer, judging by the little hum she made. “I know it’s hard at the beginning. When I first married your father–” she cut herself off with a deep breath. “Remember, honey, keeping him happy is your one job now. It’ll get easier the longer you do it.”

A few tears finally broke free and fell down your cheeks. “I don’t– I don’t know him. I don’t know what makes him happy.”

“Then finding out will be a good use of your free time, won’t it?” You glanced at the book beside you, feeling shamed in spite of yourself. “I know it feels so hard, but men are shockingly easy. They just want to be taken care of. That’s all you have to do. Make him dinner. Keep his home warm. Give him heirs. Don’t argue. That’s all. You’re going to be such a good wife to him, sweetheart. I know you can do it.”

You shrunk down into the couch, wrapping your arms around your knees, making yourself as small as possible. You hated this. Hated that she didn’t want more for you. That she’d never tried to give you more. But you were tired, too, of being upset with her for not doing the impossible. What else was she supposed to have done? What else could she give you when she didn’t have anything herself? “Ok,” you whispered. It was all you could manage.

“Joseph says hello, of course,” she said, and you wanted to laugh. He’d done no such thing. “He’s so proud that you’ve made such a good match. He’ll be happy to hear it’s going well.”

“Mmm,” was all you were able to say. You hated this. You couldn’t do it anymore. “It’s so good to hear from you, mom. But uh, I have to– I have to go.”

“Oh,” she said, sounding disappointed. “Well, alright. I miss you so much, sweetheart. We’ll talk again soon. I love you.”

You could barely hold the tears back now. “I love you too,” you said, your voice thick. “Bye.” The moment you hung up the phone, the damn broke. You couldn’t stop it. You cried for your mom. You cried for yourself. You cried for the way everything had changed and there was no going back. You cried because this was a day when it felt like no one on earth was on your side. A shaking Lola forced her way into your lap and you held her until you were able to calm down.

Once you’d stopped crying, you looked around. You couldn’t sit still, your mother’s words ringing in your ears. Your eyes locked on the kitchen. That was something you could do. You glanced at the time. If Ransom came home at his new regular time, it would be tight, but you could do it if you made something simple. But not too simple. Something that showed effort. That you were trying.

You got up and looked in the fridge. All those tidy little glass containers full of meals his housekeeper, Carol, made. You’d never felt like they were taunting you before, but now. Now you wanted to smash them. You could do this. You could make him like you. Show him what you were worth. You could make yourself a life better than your mother’s, maybe. Get him on your side.

There weren’t a ton of raw ingredients, but after combing through the entire contents of the fridge and pantry, you found what you’d need for a decent spaghetti. Carol was probably planning it for later in the week. Well, now she wouldn’t have to. You’d do it yourself.

You put some music on and got to work. Losing yourself in the prep. But you’d lost yourself too much maybe, because you were still chopping when Ransom walked in the door.

Lola, of course, rushed to greet him. It still rankled. She didn’t realize that one wrong move would have him kicking her out. His words from that first dinner had never left your mind. But a few days ago, he’d started reaching down to pet her as she danced around him. You didn’t know what either of them were playing at.

He looked at you, now trying to hurry through the rest of your prep, his brow furrowed. “What are you doing?” he asked.

“I’m making dinner,” you said, gesturing to all your work obviously. You looked at the time. You weren’t slow. He was early. Why the fuck was he early? He was ruining all your plans.

“Why?” he asked as he took off his coat, then shoes. “Carol’s put plenty of meals in the fridge.”

“Because I wanted to!” You said, your knife coming down on the onion under your hand too hard.

The knife hitting the cutting board caught his attention. He looked at what you were doing. “I don’t like onions.”

You threw down the knife more carelessly than you should have. It slid across the cutting board before coming to a stop at the edge of the counter. “Then why were they in the pantry?!”

“How should I know?!” he shouted back, matching your tone. But then he looked at you and stopped. “Have you been crying? What happened?”

You froze. Shit. You hadn’t even thought to check what you looked like. You swiped at your face and turned away. “It’s the onions. Obviously.”

“Your face– that looks like more than onions.” He now stood at the edge of the kitchen, only the island between you.

“I’m fine!” you snapped, then forced yourself to take a breath. “My mom called,” you conceded. “It’s fine.”

“Oh,” was all he said for a moment and then, “You and your parents are close then?”

You couldn’t explain why the question irritated you so much. Maybe it was the assumption of homesickness. Or referring to Joseph as your parent. Or just him being here earlier than he was supposed to be, asking you anything. You couldn’t keep the shortness out of your voice when you responded, “My mom. Sometimes.”

You looked around at your progress, the mess you’d made, the onions he didn’t want. So much for keeping him happy. What a stupid idea. You felt done. Over everything. You began cleaning up all the food, scooping it into the garbage.

“What are you doing?”

“I changed my mind! You don’t want any of this anyway. Have one of Carol’s fucking dinners.”

“The fuck is going on with you?!” he shouted as he watched you clean up the kitchen.

“I changed my mind,” you repeated, throwing the cutting board into the sink. “I’m not hungry. I’m going upstairs.” You stomped over to the staircase.

“You’re not going to eat anything?” he called after you.

“No! I’m fine!” You shouted as you took the first few stairs.

“Yeah, you sure seem fucking fine,” he grumbled as he headed to the fridge.

You stopped and glared at him. “Wake me if I’m asleep when you come up. I’m ovulating, so. Tonight’s important.”

He let out a humorless chuckle. “Yeah,” he said, flatly. “I got your text.” That was news to you. He'd never responded to it. As you turned to continue up the stairs, you heard him add under his breath, “Although I’m not sure why you feel like you need to be awake for it.”

You stopped and turned around, coming back down a step. “What was that?!”

He turned to you, one of Carol’s glass containers in his hand, and sighed. “Nothing. I’ve had a long day.” You just stared at each other and then he added, “Aren’t you tired of it being such a chore?”

Something crumpled in you at that, but you didn’t want to stop and look at what it was. “Well,” you said. “The sooner I’m pregnant, the sooner it won’t be.” Then you turned and stomped the rest of the way upstairs.

When he woke you later that night, he was already ready to go. You didn’t even take off your pajamas, just slid your shorts down to your calves. He was right. It was a chore.

It was a few days later when he texted you in the middle of the day. You were hiding in the bedroom while Carol cleaned downstairs. She was still mad that you’d wasted the spaghetti ingredients. You were reading in bed with Lola when your phone buzzed beside you.

Big family thing at Harlan’s on Saturday. We’ll be expected.

For some reason, it was the ‘we’ that caught you. It was the first time you’d realized you were a package deal now. If Ransom was invited somewhere, you would accompany him. And vice versa if you were ever invited anywhere. You couldn’t imagine it, with how small your world had gotten.

The rest of his message caught up with you. His family. Linda had reached out multiple times since her awful visit. Every time you spoke to her, you got so small. You worried that prolonged exposure to her might cause you to completely disappear.

Aside from his parents, you’d barely interacted with the rest of his family at the wedding. It would be fine. You would be fine. You’d have to be. They were your family now too. You’d be seeing so much of them. For the rest of your life. You ignored how much your chest tightened at that thought.

Saturday came too soon.

Ransom paced around the bedroom while you both got ready. You’d never seen him like this before. He wasn’t dressed. He just kept walking in and out of his closet. And looking at you. You didn’t know if you were doing something wrong. He didn’t say anything, he just couldn’t keep still. The one time you’d asked if he was alright, he’d barked back at you that he was fine, so you hadn’t asked again.

Watching him pace around was making you even more anxious than you already were. So you focused all you could on getting yourself ready. You’d asked Ransom earlier if his family dressed for dinner and he’d just grunted in response. But it felt like a no, so you wore one of your favorite day dresses. It was your favorite color. You hoped it would give you confidence. You did your hair. You put diamond studs in your ears, with a matching tennis bracelet on your wrist. Reasonable heels on your feet. A spritz of perfume on your pulse points. It was the best you could do without more information.

You stood in the middle of the bedroom once you were done. Ransom was still undressed, still moving. “Uh,” you ventured, hesitantly, glancing at the clock on his bedside table. “Will we have enough time to get there?”

“Who gives a shit?” he growled, thundering back into his closet. A few moments later he came back out, wearing dress slacks and a cream cable-knit sweater. There were holes in it. You could see them clearly from the other side of the room.

“Ransom,” you said softly, oddly feeling like you were speaking to a spooked animal, “don’t you think that sweater’s a little worn?”

“It doesn’t fucking matter,” he rasped. “Let’s go.” Then he was out of the room and halfway down the stairs, with you scrambling to keep up behind him.

The drive to Harlan’s country estate was mostly silent. You’d tried to turn on the radio at one point, but Ransom just turned it right back off. He gripped the steering wheel so tightly, his hands were bright red. You wondered if he was hurting himself. You didn’t know why he was so stressed. You were the one about to walk into the lion’s den, the one who had no idea what was waiting for you. It was his family. He’d be fine. You had no idea if you would be. You rested your hands in your lap, clutching them, and settled into the silence.

You knew that Harlan lived quite a ways out of town, but you still got to his home much too quickly. The large mansion loomed over you as Ransom parked his car amongst the others in the drive. He turned off the ignition and then just sat there, staring ahead. Just as you were about to call his name, he slapped the steering wheel harshly with one hand then growled “Let’s go!” to you and got out of the car. Once again, you scrambled after him, but this time, he slowed, slightly, to let you catch up. Once you had, he put a firm hand on the small of your back and ushered you up the path and into the house. You didn’t have time to react to that or try to figure out what on earth he was doing before you were greeted by a woman Ransom snidely called Franny. She responded with a very curt “Hugh” of her own then introduced herself to you as the housekeeper. She took your coats, and then Ransom’s hand was back on you, guiding you into a sitting room.

The entire family was already there, most with drinks in hand, and they all turned to watch you enter. You felt pinned by their gazes. “Well!” Ransom’s uncle Walt called out. “Look who finally decided to show. And just in time for the food, of course!”

Ransom stiffened slightly beside you then smirked. “Well, thank god we’re in time for your fifth drink, Walt. Who’d want to miss that?”

Walt scowled as he got up from his seat, then lumbered across the room, knocking his shoulder into Ransom’s as he passed and jostling you in the process. You started to sway a little, and Ransom’s hand immediately came to your hip to try to steady you. Your gaze flitted down to it, but just as quickly it was gone.

Everyone else began to get up and make their way out of the room. Meg, at least, gave you a small smile and wave, but otherwise, you were mostly ignored. That was, at least, until there were only three people left, Ransom’s parents and Harlan.

Harlan immediately hugged you. “It’s wonderful to see you, my dear. You look so lovely.” He took a step back to look at you both. “I trust you’re taking good care of each other. This is one of the most important times in your marriage. I hope you’re cherishing it.”

“Sure Grandad,” Ransom snarked, “we’re loving being married to a complete stranger.”

“Ah, now, you’ll only remain strangers if you let that happen.”

You saw Ransom about to open his mouth to say something else, so you jumped in with a quiet, “Thank you, Harlan, we really appreciate that.”

Harlan smiled at you, big and genuine, and then clapped Ransom on the shoulder. “See, my boy,” he said. “I knew she was exactly what you needed!”

Ransom’s jaw ticked but he didn’t say anything. You didn’t know how to respond either. Harlan’s kindness had a way of making you feel invisible.

Linda stepped up to you all then. “Darling,” she said, her tone dripping friendliness in a way that made you brace for impact. “I see not even your positive influence can make my son be on time. How disappointing.” She added a little chuckle onto the end, but you took it as the reprimand it was meant to be. You pasted on your most benign smile, but as always, she made you feel about a foot tall. You had no idea how anyone thought you were supposed to make this man do anything. Like he cared about what you thought or wanted. Like you had any power at all.

“Is that why you married me off, mother?” Ransom asked, matching her friendly tone, but when you looked up at him, his eyes were hard. “So there’d be someone to handle me?”

“Well,” she said, a placid smile on her face to match your own, “someone has to. Lord knows you haven’t listened to me in years.”

“And yet,” Ransom said, his tone dropping all friendliness, “you still got me here, didn’t you?”

The look on his face startled you. You’d never seen him this angry. Without thinking, you reached out and wrapped your fingers around his wrist. At your touch, his eyes snapped to yours. You weren’t sure exactly what he found there, you felt lost enough that you couldn’t imagine your expression was much help, but after staring at you for what felt like an age, he gave you the smallest nod and relaxed his posture.

“We don’t want dinner to get cold,” Harlan called from the doorway.

Linda straightened, finally ending the standoff with her son. “Yes, of course,” she said. Then she looked at you, really looked, her eyes traveling up and down your body, taking in all of you and everything you were wearing. She quirked her eyebrow at you and let out a distinctly judgemental little hum. Then that friendly smile was back and she turned away from you. “Oh, Dad, there was actually something I wanted to talk to you about,” she said as they both left the room.

You stared after her. You didn’t know what you’d done wrong. You’d looked at everyone when you’d arrived and confirmed that you weren’t under or overdressed. She herself was wearing a simple but smart pantsuit. Your clothes were nice, clean, and pressed. You were put together. What could her problem possibly be? You tried to breathe but you could still feel her looking at you and your chest was so tight.

You were brought back to the present by Richard wrapping you in a hug. His lips brushed your cheek as he said, “So nice to see you again, honey.” Then one of his hands on your back traveled lower until it grazed the top of your ass. You couldn’t help the way you jumped.

“Are you fucking kidding me, Dad?” Ransom shouted next to you. “I’m standing right here!”

Richard pulled away and you took a deep breath at being free of him. What the hell had just happened?

“What?” Richard rounded on his son. “I can’t greet my daughter-in-law? You’re so sensitive, Ransom. A little attention is flattering, isn’t it, honey?”

They were both staring at you. You knew you needed to say something but all you could do in your shock was gape at them.

Ransom wrapped one arm around your waist to pull you close to him. “You’re a fucking creep,” he growled.

Richard just scowled and made his way to the hall. “Disrepectful little shit,” he muttered as he left the room.

It wasn’t until his father was completely gone that Ransom dropped his arm from around you. He looked you right in the eye, his face so serious, as he asked, “Are you ok?” And there was something in his tone, fear maybe, that startled you just as much as Richard’s hand.

“I’m fine,” you nodded, your voice shaking only the slightest bit. When he still didn’t release you from his gaze, you brushed your fingers over his arm. “I’m alright.”

Finally, he nodded but didn’t really relax. “He’s–” he began, but cut himself off. “Just, watch out for him.”

“Ok,” you said, trying to sound strong. Reassuring. Ransom still just stood there. “Are– are you alright?”

That seemed to bring him out of wherever he’d been. “What?” he asked, somewhat sharply. “Yeah, of course. Come on,” he said, turning to the doorway. “Let’s get this shitshow over with.”

Everyone else was already seated at the large dining room table when you came in. Ransom guided you over to the two empty chairs in the middle of one side and pulled yours out for you before seating himself. The catering staff moved around the table setting down plates and pouring wine for everyone. But when the server got to you, they moved past you without pouring anything. In case you were pregnant. Of course. That was fine. You just hoped no one else noticed.

“I’m sorry,” Ransom said from beside you and your stomach dropped. “Is there a reason my wife isn’t being served wine tonight?”

“Ransom,” you whispered, still hoping everyone would just ignore it, but it was too late.

From the other side of the table, Walt piped up liked he’d just been waiting for an opportunity. “Maybe the staff got confused and didn’t realize she’s old enough to drink.” His eyes sparkled and he grinned, proud of himself, as it took every muscle in your body not to shrink down in your seat.

“Great catch, Walt! You’re right. She is still much younger than me. Like I said before, and I’m sure I’ll have to say again, neither of us chose this. I would’ve thought that’d be a concept you’re familiar with, seeing as how you practically begged Harlan not to make you marry Donna.”

“Ransom!” you admonished quietly. Your eyes cut to the willowy blonde sitting next to Walt, looking like a deer caught in headlights. You had no doubt that he deserved this, but you had no idea if she did.

Ransom’s eyes cut to you. “You’re right,” he said, before looking back at his aunt and uncle. “I should be nicer to Donna. I’m sure being married to Walt is punishment enough.”

“You little shit!” Walt responded. “I’ll have you know my wife is very happy. Which I’m sure is more than you can say for yours! What’s it been, a month? Two? And she already looks completely miserable.”

You felt all eyes turn to you again and you weren’t sure you’d ever felt more self-conscious in your life. Your entire body was on fire. You didn’t know what to do. You couldn’t say anything, so you picked up your fork and took a bite of the fish you’d just been served. It didn’t taste like anything.

From your left, Joanie spoke up. “Hey, those first few months of marriage are hard. But so rewarding. I know when Neal and I were first married–”

“Yes, Joanie,” Linda cut in, dryly. “My brother was a saint and we all miss him very much.” She turned back to her son. “There’s no need to get upset, Ransom. We just didn’t want to accidentally serve a pregnant woman alcohol. Better safe than sorry.” She picked up her own fork to begin eating. “Speaking of, if the two of you have an announcement to make, now’d be the perfect time.”

You couldn’t stop your grimace. Ransom stiffened next to you, then answered, “No. No announcement.”

“It’ll come,” Harlan finally joined in from his place at the head of the table. “There’s still plenty of time.”

From the other end of the table, a teenage boy you’d never even met before said, “Maybe not. Maybe she’s barren.” And you felt all the wind go out of you.

“Oh fuck off, you little incel shit!” Ransom shouted.

“She isn’t barren, Jacob,” Linda said, calmly. “We have all her medical records to confirm she’s perfectly fertile.”

You could’ve sworn you blacked out at the moment. You’d known, on some level, that if there was a clause in the contract, it’d come with some sort of confirmation that, at least on your side, it was even possible. But to know that they had your medical records and now were discussing them like you weren’t even here, like you just didn’t matter… You hoped the earth might open up and swallow you whole.

You felt a gentle hand land on your knee but it didn’t really register. Nothing did. You didn’t know where the conversation went from there. You couldn’t hear anything above the ringing in your ears. It was all you could do to keep breathing. But you knew they all kept sniping at each other. And you felt the anger radiating off of Ransom the entire time.

The clinking of plates and scraping of chairs finally got you out of your stupor as the family got out of their chairs and staff started clearing the dishes. You looked over at Ransom, for help or support maybe, you didn’t really know. But he also looked like he’d gone somewhere else. He could barely meet your gaze.

You were still numb as people made their way back to the original sitting room. You just needed to make it through the rest of the evening. You could do that. Just as you had gotten to the other room, Harlan stopped Ransom with a hand on his shoulder. “I’d like a word in private with you, my boy.”

Ransom looked at you for a moment, then sighed and said softly, “I’ll be right back,” before following his grandfather deeper into the house.

And then you were alone. You were at a loss as to what to do with yourself, so you went back into the sitting room and settled on a vacant couch. Not everyone had migrated there. There were only a few people in the room now. Jacob sat in the corner, hunched over his phone, but every once in a while he would look up, catch your eye, and smirk at you. It had you sliding further back in your seat. His mother was no help. Donna was slumped over in an armchair, still cradling half a glass of wine. Meg had already shrugged on her coat, giving a hurried wave as she moved through the room. And Richard–

Richard sat down next to you. You slid down the couch as subtly as you could. “You know,” he said, “I didn’t get much of a chance to talk to you at the wedding.”

Alarm bells went off through your whole body. You saw Ransom’s face again, from earlier. How angry, yes, but more than that ashamed and unsurprised. How he’d looked at you. How he’d asked if you were ok. How it’d felt urgent. “It was a busy day,” you gritted out, trying to think of any way to get yourself out of this room.

“Ransom is a very lucky man,” he said, inching closer, his arm draped over the back of the couch, “to have such a beautiful bride.”

“Thank you,” you chuckled uncomfortably. “That’s very sweet.” You looked around helplessly. As he opened his mouth to say something else, you stood up. “I’m going to go get myself some water. Do you need anything?” you asked, but didn’t give him a chance to answer. “No? Ok, I’ll be right back.” And then you fled.

You hurried down the hall toward the kitchen but slowed when you heard voices. You picked out Joanie first, then Linda. You slowed to a stop right outside the kitchen door, trying to weigh just how much you wanted that water. Was it worth facing them? Were they any better than Richard?

“Okay,” Joanie said, “but what do you really think about her?” Your stomach dropped. You tried to reassure yourself that they could be talking about anything, anyone. You pressed closer to the door as quietly as you could.

“I think,” Linda said, then paused while you heard the clink of glassware, “that she will serve her purpose just fine.”

Joanie laughed. “I just have a hard time picturing Ransom with such a mouse.” You closed your eyes. You should go right now. Nothing they had to say would be of any help to you. But, despite your best interests, you were rooted to the spot.

“She definitely wasn’t chosen for her personality, but Ransom understands how good this will be for the whole family. How important it is”

“Oh, of course,” Joanie simpered, and you just hated both of these women so much at that moment, maybe more than you’d ever hated anyone. “I just feel so bad for him. He must be so bored.”

“Listen, I told him that he just needs to get her pregnant, and then he can do whatever he needs to do. Once he has an heir. As long as he’s discreet, of course.”

Joanie cackled. “You didn’t! Oh, you’re so bad!”

“He might already be behind on that one, anyway,” Linda said, and you could practically hear her smirk. But you didn’t know what she could possibly be talking about. She didn’t know you and there was no one– unless. Oh god.

“Well.” Linda continued. “You know, she and her step-brother are very close, if you know what I mean.”

“Really?” Joanie asked, fucking eagerly.

“Mhmm,” Linda hummed. “Did you not see them at the wedding? They were practically hanging all over each other. He had to be kicked out of her dressing room.”

“No! Does Ransom know?”

“Well, I haven’t told him yet. You know how he gets. I’m waiting for the right time.”

“You know what they call that on the internet, don’t you?”

Linda sighed. “You know that I don’t, Joanie.”

“Stepcest!” Joanie said gleefully.

And that was it. That was all you could do. This fucking family. How– Why? You’d never done anything. You hadn’t even chosen to be here! And they still took so much joy in cutting you down. And if Linda managed to get to Ransom and tell him… Who knows what he’d do?

You moved as quietly as you could back down the hall, swiping at the tears beginning to gather in your eyes, hoping not to call any attention to yourself, when shouts suddenly erupted from the other side of the house. As soon as you recognized one of the raised voices as Ransom’s, you began to hurry in that direction.

You hadn’t made it very far before he came barreling out in your direction. “Get your coat,” he growled. “We’re leaving.”

You didn’t argue, more than ready to get out of there yourself. You followed him to the closet, and then once you both had your coats, out the door. The crisp night air was bracing after feeling suffocated in that house for hours. Neither of you said anything as you got into Ransom’s car.

It wasn’t until you were fully off Harlan’s property that you felt brave enough to ask, “Is everything alright?”

He glanced at you before returning his eyes to the road and letting out a humorless chuckle. “Sure,” he said.

“What– What did he want to talk to you about?”

“Just his same old bullshit,” he scoffed.

“I–” you had no idea what to say. “Is it always like that?” You felt foolish as soon as you asked. Of course, it was. You could tell.

“Oh, no,” he said, and his tone was so cold, so detached, that you couldn’t help but stare. This felt like a brand new Ransom. “Sometimes it’s really bad.”

You didn’t say anything to that. You had no idea what to do with this sudden urge to comfort him, this man who had so much power over you, this man you couldn’t even say you liked most days. Especially after what you’d just been through. So you kept your hands in your lap and stared out the window.

After a few minutes of silence, he surprised you by being the one to break it. “So. I bet your family looks like the fucking Waltons compared to that.”

You thought of dinner with your own family. Joseph crowing loudly about his successes. Your mother cowering the moment any small thing went wrong. Steve getting into screaming matches with his father. You feeling invisible, on a good day. “No,” you said, hollowly. “Not really.” He turned his head sharply to look at you and you held his gaze for just a moment before he had to look back at the road. There was one large difference though. You’d always had Steve. As far as you could tell, Ransom didn’t have anyone.

That thought led you back to what you’d heard right before you’d left and your anxiety returned. “Steve and I–” you blurted out. “He’s my brother.”

Ransom’s brow furrowed in confusion. “Uh, yeah, I am aware of that.”

You shook your head. “No, I just– I know we aren’t related biologically, but– Nothing’s ever happened between us. Not ever. He’s my brother.”

“What the fuck?!” he called out as he made a left turn more sharply than necessary. “Why would you–” he cut himself off. “Did someone say something to you?”

You ignored his question. “I just–” you said, “I just wanted you to hear it from me.”

“Jesus Christ,” he muttered. Neither of you said anything else for the rest of the drive.

When you got back to his house, Ransom went straight upstairs while you let Lola out one last time before bed. When you joined him in the bedroom once that was done, he was already in bed. “Listen,” he said softly, “I know you’re probably even more anxious about this whole thing after– I just, I’m really fucking tired. Is it ok if we don’t– If we just go to bed?”

You nodded, relief flooding through you. You were just as tired and didn’t think you could deal with all that after everything else that had happened that day. You quickly went through your nighttime routine in the bathroom. When you came back out once you’d finished, you found Ransom still awake, lying on his back staring at the ceiling. Lola was curled up at his side and he absently scratched her belly. You climbed into bed and turned the lamp off, turning onto your side. You felt him move behind you, scooting closer, not enough that you were touching at all, but you could feel his body heat. It was oddly soothing. You closed your eyes and hoped sleep would come fast, ready for this day to be over.

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genericpuff · 2 months

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say sike right now, she's actually going back to The Doctor Pepper Show-

Like, this is just "What if The Doctor Pepper Show and LO had a baby?" Because at this point it's very clear Rachel only knows how to write from inside her own head, which is full of unresolved salt towards her childhood and medical fetish shit. The imagery in the first panel is very LO, and the imagery in the second is literally The Doctor Foxglove Show-

Evidently she's been reskinning the same shit for years-

Listen, I've been, for the most part, keeping my lips sealed on a lot of Rachel's old projects and what I've dug up on her previous works, for a few reasons:

1.) We were all cringe on the Internet at some point in time and a lot of these older works, such as Freak Scene Surgery and The Doctor Pepper Show, would have been from when she was in her late teens / early 20's. I'm not here to judge Rachel's personal preferences or whatever kind of fetishes she's into. It's totally normal, expected even, for a lot of creators to have older works they're trying to bury or disconnect themselves from because it's simply not them anymore.

2.) Ultimately I've been focused on discussion around Lore Olympus and Rachel as she currently operates as a creator, so I don't want to go digging up her old skeletons as any sort of "gotcha" towards LO today. Ultimately a lot of these works don't have anything to really 'do' with LO as it exists today.

That said, the reason I'm bringing it up now is because these new series... are bridging that gap that I've been avoiding for ages now. The gap that's filled with skeletons of Rachel's past that she's trying to both disconnect herself from but now fall back on with LO come and gone. It almost goes to show that her being a one-note pony goes back since far before LO - these are literally the only ideas she's able to come up with at this point, and it's painfully obvious in how both these new "graphic novel pitches" are pretty much the exact same and could apply to the same character, and that character may as well just be Persephone, i.e. Rachel, all over again.

Like, I'm calling it now, Patients in the Dark is just gonna be more "moms are bad" rhetoric, and Eleanor's Deathbed is gonna be Hades and Persephone, but replace Hades with some death god and Persephone with a training mortician, which is basically also still just Foxglove training to be a doctor, and Icy Shaw bragging about fondling corpses.

If anything, now that Webtoons is no longer carrying her around on their shoulders, this is gonna be Rachel's moment of "put up or shut up". She can either actually put in an active effort to write something that's decent, or she can flounder under the weight of her own tired mediocrity that's been knocking at her door for years now. As much as she's using her labels that were bought for her to sell these books which aren't even in real development yet-

-Webtoons isn't gonna be there to buy her Eisners forever. This is entirely on her and the imprint that Webtoons shoved her into. Her process is still the same, she's learned nothing from the experience of making LO, she's just got the money and awards now and is trying to run with it, but all she has are the same tired pitch lines that she's been using for decades now and just so happened to work with LO because LO had both Webtoons and the appeal of it being a Greek myth "retelling" to carry it into fame.

I'm gonna go into a bit of a tangent here, but it's been weighing on my mind since I found out this news and have been discussing it with pals within the ULO circle. Rachel once said in an interview that she wanted to use her platform to raise awareness of issues regarding sexual assault, mental health, and "the patriarchy":

"Who do you know that hasn’t been sexually assaulted? The number is depressingly low, right? Why is that? There is no short answer or an easy fix. I have a platform. I can tell a story that will hopefully educate and help others feel acknowledged and vindicated." - Rachel Smythe, Interview with Gossamer Rainbow

"...obviously I'm very feminist, and that sort of stuff really matters to me, um, the best way to approach this question is… I began, the pilot was written in sort of mid-2017, and I think what I wanted, what I wanted to achieve, and I don't even know… probably in 5 years time I don't know how I'm going to feel about this but I'm taking the risk, I really wanted to write a story where, uh…this female character goes through these things and I think what I wanted to do, what I wanted to achieve, was like a really common, I can't speak for like, men, but I can definitely speak for like, you know, if you're sitting in a group of your female friends and you're like "Hey! Who's been sexually assaulted?" … The response is going to be really depressing… Most female people that you know have probably experienced sexual assault to, on one level or another, and I'm like, for me I'm like "Why is that? Why?" And is it because there is a lack of information, lack of education, like what is it? And I'm lucky enough to have a platform and I'm like, if I could just provide some information in story format, would that help? Is this what I can contribute? So I feel like, especially, when writing sexual assault in media often it's… it's a way for the main male character to be, like, uplifted to hero-ness by, usually like, violence is the way to fix the problem, and that's not the approach that I want to take… um, I think [sighs], oh god, sorry I've lost my train of thought, [sighs], yeah, I think a lot of the time in movies when they, like, show rapists or something it's generally someone who's jumped out from behind the tree at a lady in a park and it's not really how it is like 90% of the time [laughs], so I just wanted to make something realistic where people could at it and be, like, "hey, nagging someone into sex isn't cool" or like removing all of their opportunities to say no isn't cool, or for someone to look at it, and just like feel validation, this is me trying, trying my best to make a difference with the platform that I have, and yeah, this is my roundabout answer for it" - Rachel Smythe, Interview with The Comic Source

And yet not once has Rachel actually used her platform for good outside of herself. She just asks the question, "Sexual assault?" and then writes off the answer "yes, it's bad!" and it especially shows in LO where the resolution to the one plotline she kept around to draw in readers was "assaulters are sent to the timeout corner!" Sure, it works for the readers who are simply seeking validation that their experiences aren't unique to themselves, but is it actually doing any real work to talk about the systems in place that leads to people like Apollo being created? Is it doing anything to address purity culture as it exists and the double standards that exist for women who are navigating sexual relationships? Is it doing anything to take the discussion outside of the narrative and put it into action through support of women's shelters, charities, mental health support for men, etc.? Not really. Like many of Rachel's ideas throughout LO, she simply goes, "Men, amirite?" and the answer is "yeah men suck!" and nothing more. The answer to the entire SA plotline is "rape is bad, don't do it" when anyone who could even relate to that conclusion in the first place already knows that.

Ultimately the activism she claims she's trying to do doesn't actually service the issue at hand - it just services herself and her own insecurities, her own unresolved trauma, her own need for validation through Eisners and merch sales. She asks the question, "Who hasn't been assaulted?" so that when she responds to the women who come forward and relate to Persephone, it's with the intent of getting them to read LO and buy her merchandise. She winds up making herself the center of other people's experiences, even ones that she cannot relate to. At BEST her attempts to "use her platform" as a means of starting discussion around ongoing societal issues like the patriarchy and sexual assault towards women is about as effective as Bell #LetsTalk, it's purely performative, self-profiting, and offers nothing of real tangibility.

If she just wants to write her own self-empowering personal works, that would be fine. Plenty of creators do it. Art is, at its core, self-expression. But it's extremely telling that she's built a platform off her self-expression, and twisted it into what she believes to be "activism" and "feminism", so that she can continue to profit off it in her future works such as this, which, again, are just reskins of her previous projects which were largely centered around the fetishizing of abuse towards women.

I don't want to claim that this is what it is, but... how much of the "feminism" in LO is done purely through the lens of victimizing women? Why is there more effort put into torturing female characters like Hera, and Demeter, and Minthe, and even Persephone to a certain degree, than there is into actually addressing the larger issue that she's claiming she wants to shed light on and resolving her questions with actionable answers?

That is the only question I will leave you all with. I am absolutely 100% not planning on touching these works with a ten foot pole, even if they should come to fruition. With the recent realization that she was into artists like Trevor Brown, alongside the fact that we've known for a long time she's into Lolita and there are very clear parallels to draw between it and LO, I think it's safe to say at this point that Rachel's work is not something I want to continue to support even when it's "hate reading". Again, I'm not going to outright accuse her of anything, but I feel like the writing is clearly on the wall here and I'm taking that writing as my warning to steer clear.

I didn't want to discuss the elephant in the room - her older works as they exist in the distant past of the early 2000's - but she's now riding the elephant.

#there's STILL some stuff I could say regarding her older work that i just don't want to get into because #i feel like it would still be way too much and open way too many cans of worms with her #in a way that gets way too deeply personal and none of our business #but seeing these two new series and how they echo her older works and the things she was doing back then #it's just proof she left it behind not because she outgrew it #but because she's trying to get better at hiding it #it all feels very uhh co-opted if you know what i'm saying #not saying that's necessarily true but the vibes i'm getting off this are NOT good.#lore olympus critical #lo critical #anti lore olympus

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eelclaw · 4 months

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okay new arc... my thoughts.

leafstar:

leafstar was one of my favorite characters as a kid, but not because of anything she actually did. i liked her graphic novels, but only mostly because i was delighted by sol being a pathetic girlfailure.

also my copy of skyclan's destiny was misprinted and had pages out of order, and i loved having a fucked up book.

i liked her in firestar's quest, but... she's done nothing in every book since.

sharpclaw pushes her around in skyclan's destiny, then tells her he was just challenging her to make her a more confident leader. nothing comes out of this.

she's worried about female leaders not being allowed to have kits and about inviting daylight warriors into the clan, and it would've been great to just skip these plotlines entirely. skyclan had a chance to be a different kind of clan, a breath of fresh air from the shit we normally read about, and they didn't take it.

in ravenpaw's farewell she decides that skyclan hates outsiders. then ravenpaw proves her wrong by helping chase out some rogues that skyclan somehow couldn't chase out on their own, so she changes her mind, but only enough to take in bella and riley.

the general back-and-forth and nothing getting done in avos, tbc, and asc just annoys me.

her going blind is actually pretty interesting, but it needs to be handled well, and it's not going to be.

she's pretty old at this point, so i hope she dies, but the kid in me still hopes she gets an awesome death.

tawnypelt:

the way she's treated in avos and in her novella is incredibly uninteresting.

her clanmates don't take her seriously because of how closely she was associated with rowanstar. that's cool! that's interesting! but how long has it been since avos? she's far and away proved herself to be a valuable member of shadowclan.

the "kids these days" plotline is so fucking frustrating, i don't want it to come back.

i thought her novella had a nice conclusion. she accepted that her lost loved ones were lost, and that she could not go back to the way things were, but she could keep moving forward, and she would see her family in starclan some day. from the blurb, this conclusion is going to be completely trampled.

i'm also sick of tigerheartstar changing every book, just to drive whatever the current mess of a plot is.

moonpaw:

not many thoughts. betting her parents are nightheart and sunbeam.

hoping she's distinct from frostpaw and shadowsight. i can't take a third one.

it would be interesting if nightheart dies before she's born, paralleling larksong dying before nightheart was born. then nightheart might realize a bit of what his parents were going through.

overall. not hopeful. i'm super tired of the formula they've been using for the past few arcs. i don't care about "the end of the cats' connection to starclan". just because these books are about religious cats doesn't mean we can't have deep, meaningful, character-driven plots. why can't we get one of those.

#changing skies spoilers #leafstar #leafdapple #tawnypelt #moonpaw #warrior cats #wc #eel tag

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slayingfiction · 2 years

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How I push through writing when I don't feel like writing.

Here are some of the techniques that I use to help me write more often or more consistantly when my laziness/depression/anxiety starts to take over.

I watch TV. I don't do it with the purpose of zoning out though. I watch something popular and well-liked such as the LOR or Harry Potter to get new ideas on how I can develop my story and apply their in-depth world-building ideas to help develop mine. Without plagarizing of course!!!!

Zoning out and daydreaming. As I have mentionned before, daydreaming is a huge part of my story outlining and world-building process. I'll stand in the shower, or take a walk and think about how my charcaters would act/react/behave in situations, mundane or not. Doing this gives me a better sense of my characters, and sometimes gives me ideas for scenes I use later on.

Work on writing related projects. These work well at keeping me distracted while still being productive on my writing goals. Example, I have one story I am working now, I made a new language (alphabet and numbers included) to include as a cool and fun component for the book. So, at times when I don't wan't to write, I continue creating the dictionary (very fun, 8/10 would recommend). Also, for the same book, my characters don't work off the Georigian calendar and 24 hour clock, so I've been working at creating a new calendar (harder than it seems, 2.5/10 dont recommend). These are side projects that help my story, without having to write.

Reading. You saw this one coming, I know. Reading is great, especially when you're editing, your writing style will unconsciously change to be more similar the author you were just reading. Also, most importantly, I'll be reading and think, "this story is really good, but you know what story I like even better? Mine." then change to writing.

This one is my biggest life saver!! I learnt about a year ago that sometimes I'll get bored of writing a story, and have difficulty keeping on track. That's why I finished my first book in 2016 and just started editing the first draft last week. The solution for me was to work on multiple projects at once, because it was much harder to be bored of multiple stories. I stick to 2, but will sometimes add a third. This is easy for me, because I have a list of over a dozen series I want to write. Don't abandon one project for another, use them as a distraction/ motivation for each other, so you're always furthering at least one project. I've never heard someone say, "oh no, i accidentally worked on this other writing project for three months instead of the other writing project I was doing. Dammit." No, we're just happy we have written something. Be sure to have well outlined story lines before starting, don't just start writing randomly or you'll reach a point where you don't know where to go from there.

Author/ writer projects. Maybe this is building a following, or community to share your projects and engage with. Tumblr, Insta, Reddit, whatever it is. My hope this year is to start up my website to offer publishing services (editing, graphic design, short writing courses) and build a following as a writer. (See what I did there? Never a bad time to self-promote ;) ) Having your own projects like this will help you in the future when you're going to try to publish and sell your books!

Talk with friends and a writing community. Never underestimate the passion that will burn inside you when talking about your story, or when others are talking about theirs. Surrounding yourself with a positive writing community can be the best thing for you as a writer.

Write or read (your story) every day. I'm not going to be one of those people that say you need to write 1000 words a day, that's a lot. But maybe try for 100? That could maybe only take 5 minutes, and at the end of the year that's still over 36 thousand words of a novel. Or just read your story, and I've always found it helped me get in the creative mood.

Make a playlist of songs that remind you of your characters, your story, or just puts you in the mood to write. Then play it ONLY when you're having trouble writing. Playing it while writing will not help, you'll get annoyed with the songs.

Just really can't do it today? That's okay, take a break. You deserve it. There's always tomorrow.

Does anyone else have ways they push themselves to keep writing? Let us know in the comments!

Happy Writing!

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thankskenpenders · 3 months

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I know Ken is notorious for his, um, odd creation habits, but even I’m shocked that it’s been over 10 years of work and THIS is all he has to show for it. I would maybe be a bit more lenient if each new page was hyper detailed or something like that, but as you pointed out in your review, he reused the same images across plenty of panels and so many of his backgrounds are just stock photos. The only way I can reconcile this to myself is wondering if maybe a bunch of that time was eaten up by extensive rewrites to his plans for the whole series, but even then, I’ll be even more shocked if the next volume ever comes out.

So I didn't get into this in the review because I really just wanted to focus on the book and the weird copyright situation that led to its creation, not Ken's personal life or his other endeavors, but he did make something else in the time since The Lara-Su Chronicles' announcement 13 years ago. That being his independent film: The Republic. Because after he left Archie Ken figured he'd move on to a career in Hollywood.

I think this was originally supposed to be a TV show, the pilot episode for which was released in 2010, but then in 2016 he decided to retool it as a commentary on Trump's immigration policies. I think the movie is still somehow not out despite being shot a few years ago, but he put out a trailer here:

youtube

Yes, the trailer really opens with 30 seconds of footage of Trump from CNN. I know writers who use subtext and they're all cowards etc. etc.

At least the cast is clearly trying their best in spite of the material. It's not Birdemic bad. And yes, that's Sean Young. THE Sean Young! Rachael from Blade Runner! I guess Ken's really eager to flex the fact that he's friends with a couple lower-level Hollywood producers.

Anyway, I think he's still looking for a distributor for this. It's truly a mystery why no one was eager to pick this up.

Ken's also said some stuff about how he waited years to put out TLSC: Beginnings as part of the 4D chess game he's playing with the copyright stuff. He has a general idea of what he can do based on the terms of the settlement, but he's eager to push it as far as he can. He tested the waters with things like a few small pieces of TLSC merch and an NFT announcement, to see if Sega would take legal action. In particular, the announcement that he was going to sell an NFT of Shade from Sonic Chronicles was a stunt designed to see if Sega would challenge his claim that Shade is legally the same character as Julie-Su. Since they haven't gone after him, and now it's been a few years, he's taking that as evidence that Sega isn't actively exercising those copyrights and isn't going to fight for this stuff.

There's some logic here. Part of the reason Dan DeCarlo lost his battle with Archie over the rights to Josie and the Pussycats is that he didn't take action against them sooner for making merch and whatnot. It's "use it or lose it" with copyrights. But it mostly just comes off as an excuse. If it was purely a waiting game and he had all this extra time, why did he need to recycle art so much in Beginnings? Why is he only releasing 30 new pages of material instead of a whole graphic novel? Where's the app? Why didn't he spellcheck the damn book?

#ask #anon #tkp asks

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blogthebooklover · 8 months

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30 Things I Learned As An Adult

In honor of me turning 30 in January, I’ve decided to write out a list of 30 things I learned as an adult. Now, some of these worked for me through trial and error, while others did not.

1. Self Care Is Important

I cannot stress this enough. We all need to practice self care, to take time for ourselves. It takes baby steps to find a good self-care routine, and there’s plenty of online resources to find one to your tastes. Remember it is all about trial and error, and don’t worry about perfecting it right away. Research some different self care routines online as a starting point.

2. Read Books, Not Fanfiction

Okay, don’t get me wrong, I do love reading some good ole fanfiction, and current events. However, definitely pick up a book once in a while. Whether it’s a graphic novel, comics, manga, please develop a reading habit. It definitely helped me out a lot as a former college dropout, there are reading lists on sites like Goodreads, here on Tumblr, even colleges have lists what books students are required to read. And it does help with expanding your knowledge and vocabulary. As I’ve previously said, I’m a former college dropout who’s currently back in school, however, developing a healthy reading habit is what kept me grounded. If you need a starting point, I recommend reading a fiction book, preferably in the SciFi/Fantasy genre; or reread a book from your childhood. Also, PLEASE GET A LIBRARY CARD! You’ll definitely be saving a lot of money, and we need to support our public libraries now more than ever.

3. Say “No” More Often

If you don’t feel comfortable going out, or if your manager calls and asks to cover a shift, just say “no.” Remember, you have the power to set boundaries, especially with family, friends, and work. This correlates to number 1 on my list, self care is super important, and you cannot put your health at risk for anyone. I’m going to repeat that last part: SELF CARE IS SUPER IMPORTANT, AND YOU CANNOT PUT YOUR HEALTH AT RISK FOR ANYONE!

4. Register To Vote, And Vote In Every Election

With politics being so polarized and divisive in the past decade, and the upcoming 2024 US Presidential Election, please register to vote. And voter suppression has been very rampant in the past two, arguably three, decades. To anyone about to turn 18 here in the US, please register to vote ASAP! And vote in every goddamn election, both national and local. I seriously cannot stress this enough.

5. Eat Healthy, No Seriously

I love some fast food once in a while now, however, please take some time to learn about healthy eating. It will catch up with you in the future, and our US healthcare system is already fucked as all hell. I know the rising costs of everything, including food, is insane right now; but please keep informed about how to prepare good healthy food.

6. Take Breaks From Current Events, Social Media, and the Internet

This also correlates with number one. While it is very important to stay informed with what is happening in the world/country of origin; especially with the US Presidential Election year. Remember, it’s okay to take breaks from reading too much news, and scrolling through social media feeds. It really does have an effect on your mental health, and unfortunately too many people tend to fall down the conspiracy theory rabbit hole on all sides of the political spectrum. To the teenagers and young adults, take breaks and focus on your mental health and well-being. To the adults, read the previous sentence. With everything so polarizing, take care of yourself first.

7. High School Friends DO NOT LAST!

My friends from high school and early college years were definitely the “ride and die” type of friends, metaphorically speaking. If you have that one friend who was/is the “give the shirt off their back” type, check in on them once in a while. However, with the former, just move on. The friends I had in high school definitely had a lot of childhood trauma, and in one aspect, I’m glad that they were honest about it; it was/is a way to heal. However, any “friend” who just doesn’t want to better themselves and use you for any convenience, DUMP THEM AND CUT OFF ALL CONTACT! Remember just as you set boundaries with your toxic family members, and even for your job, you should do the same with friends.

8. Change Jobs, ASAP!

This is a very important one. I didn’t really have a job as a teenager, I wanted to enjoy being a kid for a little longer, however, I did have an occasional babysitting job. At 23 years old, I got a job at a fast food place. While I do appreciate part of the experience, like how to use the “customer service” voice, however, any red flags that pop up in your head, change jobs, ASAP! It was toxic, too political (for some weird reason) and a lot of drama (and not from the teenagers). The grocery store I work at now does have its busy times, however, it’s much more calmer, and I don’t see too many “Karen” types.

9. Declutter More Often

This is also a definite must as you get older. Whatever you don’t need anymore, donate them. Whatever is completely broken, throw it away! Whatever it is that is in good condition, sell it or maybe give it to someone as a birthday/holiday present. Any old makeup, throw it away! It’ll help reduce the amount of clutter and mess. If you need a starting point, I suggest the KonMari method. It really did help me out a lot.

10. Use A Planner

This is a life-and-time saver. Write down any appointments, cleaning days, paydays, bill charges, etc.; into a physical planner. If you’re in college, please use one! And write down any assignments to work on/turn in BEFORE the deadline. Also, anything important, put into your calendar app on your phone and laptop as a reminder.

11. Have A Skin Care Routine

Okay, I know having a skin care routine isn’t for everyone, and we all have different reactions to skin care products; however, don’t be afraid to experiment with a good skin care routine. In my early teen years, I used Proactiv skin care for my acne, and it helped out a lot. Remember: cleanse, tone, any serum of your choice, and moisturize. This also helps out if you don’t feel like jumping into the shower. Also, use sunscreen, seriously.

12. Don’t Get Married, Until You’re Ready

This is coming from someone who is single, lol. If you plan on getting married to your romantic partner, I’m proud of you! Marriage is about communication, being honest, and doing equal amount of work (finances, household chores, etc.) Save money if you’re planning for a wedding, or go to your local courthouse to get a marriage license if you don’t want the big, fancy reception.

13. Don’t Have Kids, Until You’re Ready

Again, this is coming from someone who is single and childless, lol. Having kids is a lot of work: physically, mentally, emotionally, and financially. Not everyone is capable of being a parent, and I have read PLENTY of posts on here and other websites about toxic parents/parenting styles. Take time and think about if you’re ready to become a parent.

14. Learn How To Budget Your Money

This is for anyone of any age out there. Please learn how to budget your spending. Look for stuff on sale or clearance, or cut back on certain types of spending. I know most people have no idea where to start, but there is! There’s some great websites and YouTube channels on how to budget your money. Another great tool to use are spreadsheets like Microsoft Excel or Google Sheets. I use a Google Sheet template to help track my spending and budget my finances. Also, if you have gift cards from your birthday/holidays/etc; definitely use them, you won't be breaking your bank account :). Also, definitely have some paper cash in your wallet for emergency use.

15. Open A Savings/Emergency Funds Account, ASAP!

This is a huge one to have as an adult, especially during the COVID-19 pandemic. Anything left over from paying the bills, from a side hustle, or from your tax returns, put that into savings. Certain banks will also have the option of creating “financial goals” in savings accounts; so I highly recommend using that as well. This also correlates with number 14. If you’re interested, open two or three savings accounts, the last one should only be for emergency funds.

16. Get A Physical Hobby, AKA Exercise!

It doesn’t matter what type of exercise you do, please do it! And for anyone who is physically disabled, there are modified options provided on YouTube. We do lose certain motor functions as we age, so definitely pick an exercise that’s right for you, as they say. Even if it's just going outside for a walk for 30 minutes, please do some type of exercise.

17. Learn How To Meal Prep

It doesn’t have to be for every meal of every day, pick a meal you want to make and prepare ahead of time. And prepare that meal the day before, so it will be on hand when you leave your house. There are some great videos on YouTube, and some ideas from Pinterest if you need a starting point.

18. If You’re Able To, Go To The Dentist!

Seriously though, try and go for a checkup/teeth cleaning. You’re only given one set of teeth after all your baby teeth fall out, and you need to take good care of them. If you’re able to, or live near to one, local colleges have free cleanings through their dental training programs.

19. If Your Job Offers a 401K, GET ON IT NOW!

My old job at a fast food restaurant didn’t have retirement benefits, but my current grocery store job does. I jumped on it right away, even if it’s not the job I want right now. And it’s a good starting point to have some money saved up for retirement. If you leave the job that has a 401k, you can do what's called a rollover. This will put the money that was set into the first retirement fund into another one; you can do this with your bank or if your new job has a 401k.

20. If You Don’t Have Health Insurance, Sign Up With The State, or Through Your Job.

In my experience, I have insurance through the state at the moment. If your job offers health insurance as well, jump on it right away, even if it’s not the job you want, it’ll be a starting point that correlates with number 19.

21. It’s Okay To Not Go To College

This is coming from someone who was a college dropout at 19, and currently back in school. If you don’t feel ready to go to college, that’s okay too. College is very expensive, especially here in the US, and not everyone can get a scholarship, even if they did apply for a lot of them. Maybe get a part-time job or two (for some income), explore some hobbies you enjoy, and take some time to think about some goals.

22. If You’re In College, It’s Okay To Stay At Home

Again, coming from a former college dropout, I stayed at home while attending a nearby community college in another state. However, out-of-state tuition and housing is also very expensive. If you have a good relationship with your parents, and if you’re going to school in-state, talk to them about staying home while going to school. If you don’t, then talk to a trusted friend or family member about getting an apartment together that isn’t on-site housing while you’re attending school.

23. Watch Non-English Language Movies

If you’re a movie lover like me, take some time to watch some foreign language films once in a while; and I know we anime fans do, lol. To be honest, it does get very boring watching English language films all the time, whether from the States, England, or Canada. Watching foreign language movies will definitely help you to understand the world a lot better, if you don’t have the means for traveling yet; and they will help you to understand that no matter where we live, we all have similar issues, hopes, dreams, etc. If you need a starting point, I recommend any of the Studio Ghibli movies, I would start with Kiki’s Delivery Service; or Guillermo del Toro’s Pan’s Labyrinth.

24. SET BOUNDARIES

Remember: toxic family members and friends are not worth it. You are worthy and valid for love and respect. This correlates to number 7. This is also very useful in the workplace.

25. Express Yourself Through Fashion

Like everyone else, I feel most comfortable in jeans and a t-shirt myself; however sometimes I like to dress up just for fun, or to build up my self esteem and image. This also helps when learning to pair an accessory with an outfit. Play around with different color palettes and clothing styles, and find the one you feel the most “you.” For example, I’ve always looked my best in jewel tones and a cooler color palette. Read some fashion articles or watch some YouTube videos about how to pick out an outfit.

26. It Is Not Selfish To Prioritize Yourself

This correlates with number 3. I have noticed it’s mostly a Western/American/Christian culture norm, we’re always told to take care of others before taking care of ourselves; or we’re selfish for prioritizing ourselves over others. It is not selfish, it is part of self care. Again, this is tied in with number 24.

27. Failing and Making Mistakes Is Part of Growing

There is so much societal pressure on trying to be successful in life and work, especially in the Western/American hemisphere. However, making mistakes and failing at something is part of growing, and learning as an individual.

28. It's Okay to Not Have a Label to Define Yourself

Hear me out. I understand the use of labels in society and culture in general; everyone wants to belong somewhere and feel accepted. However, it is okay to not have a label to define who you are, and who you want/choose to be. Take all the time you need to figure out what's best for you. And sometimes people don't realize a label will fit them until they are much older in life. Or they couldn't at the time.

29. Don't Compare, You'll Get There

We are human, and we all have the tendency to compare ourselves to others. Unfortunately, this doesn't end after high school and college. And that needs to seriously change, especially in the Western/American hemisphere. Simply writing down "don't compare, you'll get there" is a great reminder to have for yourself. Everyone learns and grows at their own pace.

30. It Really Is The Little Things That Keep Us Going

When life seems to get too hard, it really is the little things that keep us going. Whether it is something as simple as someone holding a door open for you, or someone complimenting* you on your outfit or your work ethic; those moments are the ones that matter the most. Remember those moments, hold on to them.

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dduane · 11 months

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Hope this isn't an ask you get all the time, but how do you track your progress when you're doing editing?

Everyone talks about word goals, and that seems fine for a first draft, but doesn't make sense to me when it comes to revisions. Do you have any kind of system for setting daily goals for your revisions?

Actually, I don't think anyone's ever asked me about this. :) So no sweat.

Briefly: I think you're wise in not attempting wordcounting in this phase of dealing with an MS—or trying to push yourself into a structure so rigid. ...There's this, too: there's a whole lot too much emphasis out there at the moment on trying to force yourself into other people's writing and editing paradigms—so many of them riddled with bar graphs and "demonstrable" daily progress. You need to find what works for you. More words dealt with in a day, sure, that's encouraging in its way. But are they the right words?

Today’s Writer Take that will probably strike some as Hot (and ask me if I care): Some kinds of writing progress are just neither graphically nor numerically quantifiable. And damned to the least TripAdvisorally-acceptable regions of [insert your preferred underworld here] be those who’ve tried to sell people the idea that they are.

(sigh)

Now, for what it's worth: here's how I do it. Which may be useful to other people, or not so much so. And that's fine, because I'm not editing their novels. :)

(Adding a break here. Under the cut: advice + advice = advice, and some images of text I shouldn't be letting y'all see just yet... but WTF.)

Revision for me is a fairly relaxed business—unless my editor has told me WE NEED THIS ON TUESDAY, which thank sweet Thoth on his e-bike is very rare.

It also helps that I like revising. (When I was a kid, I liked liver, too. And spinach. Just call me Miss Outlier and let's move on.) I really enjoy the feeling of the work’s rough edges being filed down and the sparse places being filled out.

And also: second draft/first revision draft is nowhere near as tense for me as first draft. Because, thank God, at least there's a book.

First draft is where I sweat blood and otherwise suffer. While I can see the story just fine in my head, it's not really real for me until the first draft, whole in narrative and action, is complete on paper/in the machine. And till it's achieved at least that level of reality, I can't relax.

But by the time I hit my second/revision draft, I can be confident that any really serious problems in the novel have already been solved—because I'm an outliner. In the outline stage, potential thematic or structural troubles will routinely have revealed themselves way long ago: before drafting even got started, as I first wired the story's bones together. The successfully-executed first draft acts as proof-of-concept for that structural wiring. By the time that draft’s done, it’s immediately apparent whether the skeleton can successfully stand up by itself. And gods is that a relief when it does! You’re tempted to jump around yelling “It's aliiiiiive!" as the lightning strikes around you.*

However, if after submitting that draft my editor's found something structurally or thematically troublesome in it that I've completely missed until this point, my first order of business becomes to fix whatever their notes involve and submit the fixes. Nothing further happens until the editor sees what I've done about those problems, and until I get agreement that whatever intervention I've enacted has now sorted the problems out.

After that, everything happens in bed.

(...casually noting that for a line to use somewhere else...) :)

But seriously: I do my best revision and editing before getting up in the morning.

Some of this is because, for me, the mind's nice and quiet and (theoretically) at least moderately well rested, right after sleep. I might take the briefest glance at my email first to make sure nothing urgent needs attention... but once that’s done, I refuse to let myself go any further down that hole. That early-morning calm is a mental state I'm glad to exploit, and one I jealously guard. On days when I'm forced to do without the working lie-in**, I use a different approach: when there's a pause, sit down and do nothing—no reading, no video, no music, no phone, nothing—for half an hour: then start editing. Routinely, the quiet I need will once more have fallen.

The in-bed-editing approach also works for me because (since I'm working in Scrivener) it's absolutely no big deal to finish a day's editing on a file by exporting a version of the file containing the day's edits to ebook format, and into my Dropbox. From there, in the morning, without ever getting out from under the covers, I can pull that .epub file into my tablet and read it as an ebook, making corrections and notes there.

This is what it looks like (on a page without too many corrections) if the app you're using is "Books" in an iPad. The second image is what you get when you touch on the marginal yellow square of the note to examine it.

Then, when I'm finished looking over the previous day's/evening's writing and adding notes to it, I go downstairs, get some caffeine in me, and make the changes in the main Scrivener file. (If I was running the project in question on the iPad version of Scrivener, I'd just make the change right there. But who knows when I'd actually get up, then? Better to do it this way.) :)

In the normal flow of things I'll attempt to deal with a chapter or two a day in this mode. (Always bearing in mind that my chapters in early drafts typically run long—often 10K or so—and I'm likely enough to rebreak them later.) This first level of revision is the easy one: catching typos and bad or clumsy phrasings, reworking character interactions that need smoothing out; adding better descriptive passages (with particular emphasis on staying in the visual, audio and tactile senses), etc., etc.

So again: no way I'd ever bother worrying about word counts, with these. What seems to count for more is giving yourself time to recognize, gradually, at a reader's pace, what's working in the prose and what isn't. Rush—or try to force the pace to a given number of words per day—and you run the risk of missing something vital. To me, at the tracking level, it seems sufficient to note which chapters have been dealt with, and which are still hanging fire. (I can change the chapters' color labels in Scrivener to make this status visible at a glance, if I need to.)

When everything's dealt with on this pass—which if I'm lucky will take no more than a couple/few weeks—I try to take a couple weeks off before dealing with the MS again. Sometimes that's possible: sometimes not. The longer you can leave the book alone to let your perceptions of it rest and reset themselves, the better. Distance—mental or temporal—seems to lend clarity.

In any case, for me, next comes another pass, tougher to describe. Casually, I refer to it as the "Missed Opportunities/Complications" pass. This is a thing that one of the very best writers I know, John M. Ford, used to do. One of his editors (I think it was) came across him working on an MS one time, and asked him what he was doing. "Complications," Mike muttered. "Removing them?" said his editor. Mike shook his head. "Adding them," he said.

In this pass you look for in-novel connections you've previously missed making. Some dramatic moments have their impact significantly increased if you've found a way to connect them, even casually, with previous events, situations, character thoughts, or dialogue. (The cheap and easy mnemonic for this kind of thing: "Say a thing twice, and it echoes. Say it three times, and it resonates.")

Equally, events (and people) may turn out to require more complex backstory than you've given them in your first draft; so this is where you take care of that. And of course there are almost certainly character and emotional interactions that can use attention; fewer words, more depth, more complexity. What things do these people, in this situation, need to say to one another that they haven't? And also, what drama got scamped or passed up on because you were just too damn tired in the last draft? —Because you too, poor baby, are human; and that state can, entirely logically, make you want not to deal with any more damn drama just now. Even though drama is the lifeblood of your narrative, usually, and tying a tourniquet around it really doesn't help. You are the conduit of power into your narrative, and your varying ability to conduct it is always an issue… so you need to keep an eye open for places where the flow may have temporarily failed.

This pass, ideally, might take no more than another few weeks or a month. And again, I'm not sure any attempt at wordcount tracking would do this work any good. Because, again... are they the right words? And to make the narrative more effective, you may wind up removing as many words as you added in previous passes.

Finally, with all things taken together, I usually reach a point where (by myself, anyway) I can't think of anything to do that'll make this book any better. That's where there then comes—and again, impossible to assign a word count to it—a time when you know you're as Done As You Can Be. If you've been doing this long enough, you may even hear a strange kind of sigh in the back of your head, as the book gives up and lets go...

...into the next stage of production. But even then you keep an eye on it… because in my experience it’s rare that any book's ever that easily just finished. Even in page proofs, something may happen to surprise you.

Anyway, that's when I throw the book the hell out of the house—because no matter how much I've loved it previously, by that time I'm usually seriously tired of it—and wait to see whether the editor feels it needs one more draft. (Disclosure: this has never happened. There might be a few notes that need to be handled. But another full draft? Never yet.)

Anyway: hope this is of help to you.

But the heart of it all? Find your own way, and screw the bar graphs.

*That line, too, is an indicator of trouble to come. "It's?" Not "he's"? Tsk tsk.

**Usually sort of 7-9 AM. Sometimes way earlier, depending on the time of year. Dawn comes real early in the summertime in Ireland…

#writing advice #revisions

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rocksandboulders · 2 months

Text

ok yall can i please have some positive shit on my dash because like damn im getting tired of these negative takes. i haven't seen a single person on my dash who hasn't been like "i liked this but here is every single thing im disappointed about and nothing else"

like yeah sure it's shorter than the eleventh hour. but also the eleventh hour was after a huge hiatus. and also it's fucking hard to draw that many things, period. carey has taken on a crazy workload and it's super impressive.

and also the point of the graphic novel is not to be an exact podcast copy. it is to reach a wider audience and, to do that you have to simplify, cut, and change things to make it understandable to someone who might not have heard the podcast. thats literally what the artist not at the beginning of the first novel says.

also its expensive to put out books?? it's not like these guys are multi-millionares, they're three podcasters, their retired dad, and an independent artist. pages is time is money.

also i haven't heard a single person complain about cutting something that was actually plot relevant.

like, im just really tired of the lack of sympathy for the creators. they gave us something beautiful and excellent. they put so much work in and i think it paid off. the world of the graphic novel WAS NEVER meant to be the world of the podcast, it was ALWAYS going to have changes, and i just want to see this beautiful piece of artwork be appreciated.

so please reblog this with what you liked about the book. i want to talk about that.

#taz gn #taz balance #taz #the adventure zone

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colleendoran · 2 years

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Neil Gaiman's CHIVALRY: From Illuminated Manuscripts to Comics

One of the many reasons I wanted to adapt Neil Gaiman's Chivalry into graphic novel form was to create a comic as a bridge and commentary re: comics and illuminated manuscripts.

We're often told that the first comic book was Action Comics #1 featuring Superman, a collection of Superman comic strips that morphed into comic books as an art form.

Sequential art predates Action Comics #1.

Action Comics popularized sequential art book storytelling that had already appeared in other forms in fits and starts throughout history. Comic books didn't take off as a popular medium for several reasons, not least of which was the necessary printing process hadn't been invented yet and it's hard to popularize - and commercialize - something most people can never see.

You find sequential art in cave paintings and in Egyptian hieroglyphics. I've read that comics (manga) were invented by the Japanese in 12th century scrolls.

And sequential art appears over and over again in Western art going back well over 1000 years, and in book form at least 1100 years ago.

The most obvious example of early sequential art in Western art - as a complete narrative in sequence - is the Bayeux Tapestry.

At 230 feet long, this embroidered length of cloth was likely commissioned around the year 1070 by Bishop Odo, brother of William the Conqueror. It depicts the Battle of Hastings in 1066 and the invasion of England by the Normans. (The tapestry was made in England, not in France, but it is called the Bayeux tapestry because that's where it is now.)

Imagine what a task it was to embroider this thing. Whew. And you thought it was hard learning Photoshop.

This work of art is important in the history of sequential narrative, but the Norman invasion is also important to the legend of King Arthur - and another important English legend - for reasons we'll get into later.

It's complicated.

All this is why you see this art in the background of this page of Chivalry.

Using the Romanesque art style of the tapestry in panel 1, I've added the Latin phrase "Rex Quondom, Rexque Futurus" - "The Once and Future King", the final words of Sir Thomas Malory's Le Morte d'Arthur as inscribed on King Arthur's tomb, and the title of T.H. White's famous Arthurian novel. (EDIT) and it has been kindly pointed out to me that QUONDOM should be QUONDAM, which is hilarious and annoying and this is how history gets rewritten by accident.

My original intention was to draw this Bayeux Tapestry scene out and juxtapose it with shots of Galaad interacting with the children, but the two page sequence I imagined didn't really work as well in reality as it did in my head.

Foremost among my concerns was that the tapestry reference might be too obscure for most readers. I wanted to weave the visual meta-text of Chivalry into the story (For further reading on this project and my use of visual meta-text, symbolism, and history in Neil Gaiman's Chivalry, go HERE. And HERE. And HERE. And Yet again HERE.) in such a way as it would enhance the experience for people who "got" the visual meaning, while not dragging things down for people who didn't. So I cut this scene down to one panel.

The tapestry is a complete, long form comic strip created over 1100 years before some people claim comics were invented. So, I loved being able to reference it here.

But even more interesting to me are the sequential art sequences that appear in illuminated manuscripts - comics in book form.

I once got into a rather vicious argument with an academic who insisted illuminated manuscripts were comics. I said no. She said yes. Then she insulted the lowly comic artist and blocked me on Facebook.

Whatever.

My point was not that you can't find sequential art in illuminated manuscripts. My point is that an illustrated book isn't de facto a comic. Most illuminated manuscripts are illustrated books. Some illuminated manuscripts contain sequential art.

Just because opera is music, that doesn't mean all music is opera.

Just because comics books are books that doesn't mean all books are comic books.

And just because some illuminated manuscripts contain sequential art, that doesn't mean all illuminated manuscripts are sequential art.

But one is.

Let me show you it.

One of the earliest examples of an illuminated manuscript with comic art is The Bible d'Etienne Harding which you can see in this really bad jpg here, sorry, best I could find.

Created around the year 1109, property of a French Cistercian monk, it combines sequences like this with pages of text and illustration.

Not a comic book IMHO, but an illuminated manuscript with sequences of text, illustration and sequential narrative.

It's no more a "comic book" than a newspaper is for having text, illustration, and comic strips in it.

IMHO, academic lady.

And here's a look at the Old English Hexateuch (hexateuch refers to the first 6 books of the Bible) which I think is far more visually complex and interesting work, and comes much closer to the illuminated manuscript as comic, but still intersperses large sequences of text and illustration with sequential storytelling sequences. So I don't consider it a comic, but a book with sequential work in it.

Now this work below is a different matter. This is from the Holkham Bible Picture Book, circa about 1330.

This thing is genius. It measures a little larger than a modern comic, around 8"x11", and almost every page of it is like this spread here. 231 pages of beautifully rendered art, with repeated use of banderoles - "speech scrolls" (basically word balloons) - and captions, and (mostly) real sequential art. I've never seen anything else that comes even close to it, and by all accounts, neither has anyone else.

It may not be a modern comic book - but it's a comic book as far as I can tell. I don't think there's any other illuminated manuscript that is as complete, sophisticated, and innovative a sequential storytelling work.

If this were printed and seen by more people, the comic book medium would have taken off centuries earlier, IMHO. But it wasn't. It was tucked away in a monastery somewhere and few people ever saw it. It ended up being forgotten for centuries until it popped up again around 1816 when a banker sold it to an avid book collector, Thomas Coke, Earl of Leicester, who inherited Holkham Hall and its library and set about restoring and expanding it.

The banker wrote, “a very curious MS. just brought here from the Continent. . . which I think one of the greatest curiosities I ever saw”.

Sequential art got invented over and over and over by one artist after another until one day centuries later, some teenaged boys found their newspaper strips gathered together in a cheap format, and suddenly comic books were popular and like new.

And then a lot of people who didn't seem to realize that books had had pictures in them for centuries got all up in arms about the harms of books with pictures in them.

I think it's funny that it is called the Holkham Bible Picture Book. There really was no "comic" art language when this work was created or when academics began to catalogue this sort of thing. Will they change the name now?

Who can say.

Anyway, another Holkham Bible Picture Book reference for you.

Look familiar?

I referenced it in this scene in Chivalry.

One of the fun things about the Holkham is that it opens with a discussion between a friar who has commissioned the work and the artist. The friar admonishes the artist to do a good job on the project because it will be shown to important people. And the artist responds, "Indeed, I certainly will and, if God lets me live, never will you see another such book."

He wasn't kidding.

You can see the entire manuscript HERE.

Sponsored by my Patreon. Thank you.

#chivalry #neilgaiman #neil gaiman #darkhorsecomics #dark horse comics #illuminated manuscript #medieval art #medieval manuscripts #watercolor #watercolor art #king arthur #arthuriana #arthurian legend #sir galahad

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wings-of-fire-confessions · 2 months

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Questionable writing towards disabled characters I noticed within Wings of Fire:

TW: Ableism and a brief mentioning of Suicide

Chameleon’s backstory not being properly addressed as awful, with Peril dismissing Chameleon’s mentioning of his bad past and the ableism he faced within the Rainforest Kingdom as “sob stories”.

Stonemover not (really) being shown to have any comfort and support from others and/or other dragons helping Stonemover recover from the depression he’s had for a long time (7 years).

The first disabled characters shown within the series (Dune and Osprey) being brutally murdered within the same book they were introduced in. (Scarlet calling Dune the C slur and stating that she’s surprised Dune didn’t k*** himself already because he became physically disabled, right before killing him. (which didn’t occur within the Book 1 Graphic Novel btw). And that Osprey was brutally killed by being thrown off into a cliff, and wasn’t able to save himself because he couldn’t fly (the writing probably creating and using Osprey, a like-able disabled character, (solely) for plot device and then shortly killing him after, can be seen as a quite questionable choice when writing disabled characters, to say the least.)

Turtle having thoughts about ‘fixing’ Tamarins eyes and Anemone thinking about ‘curing’ Starflight’s disability - while being ignorant to Starflight being hesitant about being ‘cured’ of his blindness. And that Anemone attempted to ‘cure’ Tamarin’s - her love interest’s - disability with her magic, and that Turtle thought about and then attempted to ‘fix’ Starflight’s disability too.

Which is a PROBLEM due to the fact that Turtle and Anemone didn’t consider whether or not Tamarin and Starflight actually wanted to be ‘fixed’ or ‘cured’ of their disability or not - and that Turtle’s and Anemone’s point of views towards blindness aren’t addressed within the writing to be flawed and/or incorrect, therefore making the writing within the series (unintentionally?) normalize these questionable and/or icky thoughts towards a certain disability within the writing.

So yeah - those are some examples of the questionable and/or possibly ableist writing I’ve noticed within the series.

Please note that I’m NOT physically disabled though, so if anyone reading this IS physically disabled, feel free to add more info to this confession and/or state any flaws and/or inaccuracies that you’ve noticed within this confession.

#wof confessions #wings of fire confessions #wof #wings of fire #ablism

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taylor-titmouse · 9 months

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2023 Book Retrospective

it's pretty much the end of the year, and i've never done this before, but i wanted to take a look at what i managed to do in 2023 and share some of my thoughts on it! i published five novellas this year (though i didn't actually write one of them) plus the public release of the demo and first huge update to You're A Mage on Monsterfuck Mountain. that's a lot!

so let's dig into all that. this will contain some spoilers for the books, because it's hard to talk about them without talking about what's in 'em, so maybe check out my itchio first and grab anything you missed! (but also.... perhaps wait until this weekend before you buy anything. shh.)

You're A Mage on Monsterfuck Mountain, released in March

TECHNICALLY, the demo was finished and available on patreon around the end of last year, and didn't become public until I'd finished the garden update, which i did finish this year. and what a massive fuckin THING that was. 60k words! 50 illustrations!! the biggest thing i ever put out and technically finished, and the beginning of a move to being less afraid of writing "weird" sex. there was so much bee sex in it. arguably too much bee sex in it. which i'd left entirely til last to do which meant i was writing nothing but bee sex for weeks.

this was the first time i let myself really indulge in writing dubcon for the bad endings, and it was a lot of fun. very often it was more interesting than the deliberately horny routes, because it meant writing a way to be put in the situation, and also making it hot every time. i'm very much of the philosophy with dubcon that even if the situation wasn't Ideal for the character, they're still going to get good sex out of it. i believe i put it at another point as, i'm here to write the pleasure of helplessness, not suffering. to that point, the dubcon endings for the armor, the dryad, and the queen bee were my favorite bits from this.

the fact i never got a second update out this year is a big regret. i finished a bunch of the routes for it, but ultimately i wanted to have things i could release! shortly after publishing the demo and update, i officially put my webcomic on hiatus so i could focus more on my graphic novel, and also spend more time on my writing. having that extra time is probably the only reason i was able to write as much as i did this year, and i didn't want to spend it toiling away on a serial project i couldn't release for months at a time.

which leads us to the release of my first novella of the year...

House of the Risen King, released in April

now this is when i truly said "i'm just going to write what i think is hot and interesting and not worry about how it's perceived!!" and went whole hog on exhibitionism and monster dubcon cult horror. house was mostly inspired by the ending of Hereditary, and was originally going to be more poltergiesty and played more straight, with vee being harangued by a bunch of horny ghost-demons and nothing more sinister than that. but i've had cult shit percolating at the back of my brain forever, and i wanted to play with ideas i'd first developed in shadow in the shelves with rituals and shadows, so here we are! the scene of hettie fingering vee in the bathtub while vee's god-fucked out of her mind is my favorite.

fun fact, the original seed for this book was actually going to feature max and mortis, my photographer/model couple (that link goes to cohost because i wasn't posting here yet when i was drawing them the most). the idea was they'd go do an urban exploration shoot and mortis would start getting fucked by a ghost while max filmed it, but the more time i spent with those characters the less i wanted to involve the supernatural. which meant i never wrote their book, and had to make a new character to do the idea. and then it wasn't even that idea anymore.

that's writing, folks

Roger Crenshaw: The Dogs at Duskfall, released in June

... which makes it ironic that the next book is one i didn't even write! r/l monroe @mortalityplays has been my friend for years, and was my editor for a long time (until he got a REAL JOB and didn't have TIME to edit anymore. sobs, cries, kicks a stone and walks into the distance). he's also always been an incredible writer, and for my birthday this year i asked him to write me something. i asked with the expectation of a little short story about our old tabletop RP characters, or a fanfic scene for one of my books he'd edited.

and then he wrote me 20,000+ words digging into the character of roger crenshaw and who he is that perfectly summed him up and tied all his stories together, such that i don't think i ever need to write another one. he did it, he wrote the perfect ending to roger. AND he did it using my favorite of his ocs from our tabletop campaign, AND there's some really hot and sweet smut in it. AND HE DID IT IN LIKE TWO WEEKS.

i loved it so much that i asked if i could illustrate and publish it as an official novella, and to my delight he agreed, and it was so so nice to collaborate with him on it. even if it meant beating our heads against the wall for 30 minutes about the placement of certain images on the page.

this was a great tragedy. i'd drawn the vagina one first, but an image earlier in the book had to be moved, which affected the placement of everything else. the vagina image had been perfectly at the start of a new page, and then suddenly it wasn't. so i had to do the penis one instead for better placement. tragic!!!

it's hard to pick a favorite scene in something written entirely, lovingly for you. how can i choose between the characters' pitch perfect semantic arguments on the nature of folk lore, the millenium princess-ass memory hopping, or the really really hot smut? i can't. i love it all. thank you r/l for being so good at what you do and writing this for me, i'll treasure it always.

The Dragon Double Feature, released in May

apparently this came out in may, and not july. i don't know why i've been convinced this came out in july. oh well i can't be bothered to insert it on top of the roger one.

anyway. THIS book. this book exists because i believe at the time i was a bit blocked, and wanted to just write SOMETHING. for a long time i've had the idea of a dragon wrecking a princess' wedding and fucking her in front of the congregation just sitting in my back pocket. it was the 'i know i could just slam this out if i wanted. i don't have to care about it it's just sex and then it's done' fallback idea, and i finally did it!

and then it was too short. i don't like the idea of publishing anything less than 10k words for full price, so i was like. okay. alright. i've always thought fucking an eastern dragon would be hot and have this other idea i was going to use for roger (back when i had an idea for every monster possible for roger), let's just write that. kenta is only kenta because i took a poll for what body type i should pair with a dragon (he was 'big boy', i think the other options were twink, older woman, and average woman). and i was also Really into the movie inu-oh at the time, which is probably obvious with kenta being a blind musician, lol.

the musician and the waterfall was tougher to write because i didn't have a clear vision of how it should end or even how they should fuck (the mechanics of fucking long noodle dragon have challenged me for years) but i'm ultimately pleased with it. it would have been a long time since i wrote something sincerely romantic, and it was nice to go back to it. i'm a HUGE romantic at heart.

both stories are pretty much one extended scene so it's hard to pick a favorite moment from them, but i will say i'm very pleased with how i approached writing the musician and the waterfall, specifically in the challenge i set myself to never use visual description kenta couldn't reasonably guess. writing from the POV of a blind man made me focus in on different senses and ways to describe them.

this book is also, as of right now, my best seller. which is great! i love that for me.

The Dragon Double Feature 2, released in July

okay i guess THIS one released in july.

anyway i got stricken with the curse with this one. a lot of people wanted me to write a sequel, but i wasn't going to. and every time i say i'm not going to do something, i end up doing it. it's so annoying. this one only happened because i wanted to write a SHORT! a SHORT extra for patreon describing kenta and wakatake's first time having sex as humans.

and then i wrote too much preamble describing their time on the beach. and then i got emotionally invested in unpacking their actual relationship, and also added a third character with mrs arakawa, and had to bring it all together into a story that was coherent and had something to say about the way they loved and ALSO ended in a THREESOME because WHATS THE POINT OF INTRODUCING A THIRD CHARACTER if they aren't all going to FUCK TOGETHER!!

it was tough. but i'm really, really happy with it in the end, and think it's one of the best things i've ever written. my favorite scene is definitely them playing with the hermit crab on the beach. metaphors babie.

the gundrid/eveline story is fine too. lmao. i NEVER PLANNED TO WRITE ANOTHER WITH THEM!! i only did it because the idea of publishing a sequel to a story from a double feature without writing a sequel to the other half of the feature was insane. and now eveline and gundrid are some of my most beloved characters, to the point of writing another book featuring them...

The Tenebrous Tower, released November

yet another book i'm pretty sure i was like 'i don't need to write this. this character doesn't work for a story on his own, what am i ever gonna do with him' and then i dumped a bunch of fantasy characters into a jar with him and suddenly i had a story. I ONLY MADE ROMICK BECAUSE I WANTED TO DRAW FUCKED UP WIZARD PORN AND MY ONLY OTHER OPTION WAS A GRANDPA!!!

anyway i started writing it as something to do on vacation, and it was just gonna be a bunch of dungeon bdsm vignettes until i hit on a throughline and suddenly i had a story and an emotional arc and damn i did it again. i did it again. i have a book.

i was expecting this one not to do very well because it had multiple prerequisites, but because i am a master of my craft i made sure to write it so you didn't need to read those. and then people read it without reading those. so it worked out anyway and now it's done just about as well as dragons 2. the people love romick, but they especially love the idea of him being destroyed. maybe someday. maybe someday. (except on patreon, where it's already happened)

the final vignette with the doll is, of course my favorite. i think it was a lot of people's favorites.

............................................

and that's everything i published this year! honorable mention to my novel starbuster, which i'd written most of last year, then spent all of october this year revising with the intent of finishing it, only to run out of steam by the time i was done revising it. so it's exactly where i left it last year. just better written. god it would be nice to finish that fuckin thing next year.

my goals for 2024 are, of course: release more books!! i have a big project i've been working on illustrating for the past month that i'd like to release in january, and i've also been working on a spin-off one-shot with mrs arakawa and an oni. i think this coming year i want to Try to blast through some of the one-off ideas i developed this year so they'll quit banging cowbells in my brain. like the sleeping garden. it makes me insane i never actually wrote the sleeping garden.

anyway if you actually made it to the end of this, thank you!! if you've bought all of these books, double thank you!!! i've been able to pay my rent and expenses just with my adult work this year, and it's been amazing and fun and super fulfilling. thank you for supporting me in 2023, here's to a horny 2024!!

#tt talks writing #taylor titmouse

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zahri-melitor · 1 month

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Okay because I am setting my expectations as low as possible in the hopes I get to be pleasantly surprised, here is the history of Black Canary as a solo title at DC:

Black Canary 1991: 4 issue miniseries. Probably best described as 'mediocre'. Dinah discovers Ollie's being an unemployed dropkick who has been stealing/borrowing money from the Sherwood Florist till and not accounting for it; out of her frustration at him she goes and beats up a drug cartel and white supremacists with the help of her new friend Gan Ngyuen, who would be a better boyfriend to Dinah than Ollie is being right now. In conversation with her Grell appearances, but seriously underestimates Dinah's actual skillset.

Black Canary 1993: 12 issue ongoing. Dinah's basically broken up with Ollie for the whole of this, which is completely fine by me, as Ollie uses some of his appearances in this book to accuse Dinah of sleeping with Ray Terrill. Who is 18 and was trying to look after the injured superhero who turned up on his doorstep. Time to go die in a firey helicopter crash, Ollie, you are terrible in the early 90s. Anyway, this is an incredibly uneven run that covers topics like Dinah's backstory, why Ray Terrill develops the biggest puppy crush on Dinah, and also the very first Nightwing-Oracle-Huntress-Black Canary team up. Tragically despite the compelling characterisation going on in this title between the four of them, the story they are in is a white slavery plot, rendering it almost impossible to recommend to people who aren't the sort to read every single appearance of a character.

Black Canary 2007: 4 issue miniseries. This would actually have been a compelling story apart from its intent and outcome. Dinah and Ollie, in the lead up to their wedding, grapple with combining their families and Dinah works with integrating Sin into the US educational system. Unfortunately, Sin is abducted and then Ollie fakes her death and doesn't tell Dinah what he's done, as he makes Connor take her off to one of the Himalayan monasteries various Arrows and companions have spent time at. Sin does not get to attend their wedding, and for some reason Dinah does not tell Ollie it's off even though he just faked Sin's death and lied to her about it.

Black Canary and Zatanna: Bloodspell 2014: Graphic novel. Paul Dini's pet project that he spent the best part of a decade trying to get DC to publish. The only decent Dinah solo on this list, it's not actually a Dinah solo because it's co-starring Zee. Dinah and Zatanna met each other as teens trying to live up to the expectations of their families, then reunite in Vegas after some of Dinah's friends tell her that someone's made them swear a magic oath to take part in a heist, and it's killing them. Hijinks ensue! This is the only title of any of them on this list that's actually full of joy. Please read it.

Black Canary 2015: 12 issue ongoing. 'What if Dinah decided to make Black Canary be the stage name of a musician in a band rather than a superhero?' Does this have any connections to previous Dinah characterisation? Not really, no. Does it sound like the premise of an Elseworlds rather than main continuity, even for n52? Yes. Dinah decides being a superhero is just too much work, so she'll be in a band instead, aside from all those times she needs to stop singing to fight crime in the audience. Contains a time travel plot involving Kurt Lance, aka the worst decision DC has ever made in regards to Dinah's love life, and I'm including Ra's al Ghul and marrying Ollie on that list. I think they made Kurt Lance save the universe but I admit I was hatereading at that point. The final issue has Dinah have her life flash before her eyes while retconning out most of the n52 changes to her characterisation and also suggesting she got pregnant with Ollie's baby at age 53 before dying of a mystery disease at age 69.

EDIT: Reminded of the Teen Book

Black Canary: Ignite 2019: DC teen graphic novel. Written by Meg Cabot, this is one of their teen alternate continuity rewrites set around the awkward period when Dinah was a teen and wanting to be a superhero like her mother, but Dinah Drake was firmly refusing to train her. Contains Larry Lance and is actually set in Gotham! (this is a good thing) On the other hand, maintains the 'was in a band' concept from Black Canary 2015, which personally I would rather stuff into a black hole never to be seen again, but angry teens singing in bands is a genre conceit for a reason. It's cute.

So really. Why would I let myself get my hopes up over Black Canary Volume 5?

#dinah lance #you have no idea how even the premise of this Tom King run has put it ahead of 2015 to start with #and even mildly competent execution will get it past 1991 and 2007 #my expectations are so so low #you may also have noticed that Ollie is eternally terrible in Black Canary solos #I tend to think of it as vengeance for how many times Dinah's autonomy and perspective as a character is ignored in Green Arrow #black canary

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thepersonperson · 1 month

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The Reproductive Horror of JJK Part 2 (Dealing with Trauma)

Part 1

Notes before we start.

1) This analysis deals heavily with topics of nonconsent, grooming, abuse, and reproductive manipulation. Please proceed with caution.

2) This post was inspired by @hermitw and @tangsakura

3) Read the light novels. They are the equivalent of Bleach's CFYOW for JJK. There is a fan translation (Book 1 & Book 2), but I will be citing the official translations from my own copies.

4) I will be mainly using the TCB scans for the manga because of their accessibility.

5) Written as of JJK 265.

(Click images for captions/citations.)

Preface

This was written with the assumption you've also read these other analyses:

Thoughts on Sukuna and Kenjaku’s relationship as of JJK 258.

Gojo's You Pronouns (Gojo's Relationship with Toji and Geto)

Please give them a quick glance at least.

...

Some of you may have found it odd that a discussion about bodies being irreversibly changed and used left out Mahito whose ability quite literally irreversibly changes bodies for them to use. That was deliberate. Blame Tumblr’s 30 photo limit.

The previous post was actually about Mahito.

Mahito

For series that has a power system based on strong negative emotions, it is a bit odd that curses surrounding sexual trauma aren’t ever directly mentioned in this work. You could chalk it up to the series being Shounen and not Seinen. But that is precisely why I think JJK delves into the topic using abstract representations. It allows the topic to be explored in a way that connects well with those who’ve experienced it without being too graphic for the younger audience.

Though Kenjaku is a literal rapist, I argued the methodology and effects behind vessel creation resemble rape. Someone's body belonging to another through force, permanent changes brought about after experiencing immense trauma, being groomed into tolerating it as a natural part of this world… When I think of a curse equivalent to this, there is no one other than Mahito that fits.

The transfigured humans Mahito creates are through nonconsentual touch that strips them not only of their autonomy, but their clothing as well. These people are in immense pain from the distortion of their bodies and can never be returned to their original state. In this way, transfigured humans can be read as a stand in for victims of sexual assault.

I didn’t propose this idea first. The Tumblr user that inspired this entire analysis, hermitw, did so in this post (please read it, it's very good). This person’s ideas will be reiterated in this discussion and I will expand upon them starting with how poorly other characters react to their Cursed Technique (CT).

Breaking Composure

Mahito sets themself apart from other curses by how they’re able to get under the skin of the most seasoned sorcerers. It’s not because of their words but the transfigured humans.

Nanami is heralded as the no-nonsense man. Nothing gets to him. He is always calm and professional no matter the circumstances. Mahito's first interaction with him immediately throws him off kilter.

We saw how much fun Gojo was having beating Hanami to death and tearing Jogo apart. That stops entirely when the transfigured humans show up. Yuji can see it coming too. This is the first time during the fight that Gojo’s composure visibly breaks. His reaction to Mahito isn’t any better. There are no smiles and he looks to be in shock.

Gojo’s Six Eyes allow him to see Cursed Energy (CE) to the point where he can infer someone’s CT at a glance. When he sees those transfigured humans, he’s probably seeing the extent of their pain in how the CE controls their souls.

I also want to point out that sexual harassment on trains is such a massive problem in Japan that they have special cars for women. There’s something to be said here about a train full of people that can represent victims of sexual assault.

This visceral disgust when it comes to Mahito isn’t limited to the protagonists either—the main antagonist, Sukuna, finds them to be repulsive after a few interactions. In this instance, Mahito's touching of Sukuna's soul is straight up compared to a patron harassing a hostess.

Just like Gojo, Sukuna goes from having fun to having a really bad time in an instant.

I bring their reactions to Mahito up because there is something off about it. These are all characters that hardly balk at the gore and death brought about by curses. It’s as if Mahito’s brand of violence needs to be categorized as something else.

If Mahito is seen as the embodiment of sexual assault, this is in line with how sexual violence is separated into its own category for treatment and study. When compared to non-sexual violence, the lasting effects are so severe it's not helpful to treat it the same way.

And that’s just what Mahito is. An exceptionally dangerous curse that Jujutsu Society deems needs to be exorcized before it destroys everything because barely anyone can deal with its effects. Likening that damage to something on par with natural disasters is significant.

Mahito as a Natural Disaster

Mahito is the leader of the natural disaster curses despite being born of humans. Hanami, Jogo, and Dagon are forms of wrath spawned from environmental damage brought about by humans. When nature, the ocean, or volcanoes cause mass death, people accept it as a part of living in this world. Sometimes they’ll go as far as to blame others for causing their own demise by living so close to it.

Mahito doesn’t seem to fit into this category unless you consider how widespread sexual assault is. In the US alone 81% of women and 43% of men reported experiencing some form of sexual harassment and/or assault in their lifetime. These numbers are likely higher due to the underreporting of this crime in general.

In 2021 it was estimated that 101.8 million people were affected by natural disasters or about 1% of the current 7.9 billion population. By 2050 some estimate that 1.2 billion people will be displaced by climate change related natural disasters. That’s about 15% of the current population.

Compared to natural disasters, sexual assault certainly rivals their numbers. But when compared to reporting? It’s under discussed. People chase storms. Natural disasters are tracked extensively by the damage and cost. Nations build infrastructure and plan around them. They’re acknowledged as a problem that is to be dealt with. The victims of sexual assault get no such attention. Warnings against perpetrators are often ignored and the victims are something people would rather keep invisible.

Mahito is a lot like that. Able to go about unnoticed as they stockpile thousands of humans whose bodies disturb those around them. The transfigured humans are targeted first by sorcerers both because it’s easier and because the one creating them seems untouchable.

Mahito’s effectiveness as a curse is their ability to force people to reckon with the worst humanity has to offer. They mirror every little sin and exploitation committed by others, putting it on full display with their manipulation of Junpei.

Just like Mei Mei grooming Ui Ui with inappropriate but gentle touches and praise…

Just like Kenjaku manipulating the vulnerable to gain access to and use their bodies, only to betray them in the end…

You might call Mahito Kenjaku’s protégé. Really taking after all the worst aspects of that bastard. However, I have read CFYOW. Mahito’s true source of inspiration comes from someone unexpected.

Allegory in Darkness (JJK Summer of Ashes, Autumn of Dust, Chapter 3)

Before Mahito met Junpei, they met a blind homeless man living under a bridge. Their interactions with this man fundamentally change their view on humans and their approach to breaking them. This short story is one of the most harrowing things I’ve ever read. The quiet horror of JJK is on full display here. I’m not going to summarize all of what happens. Just read this.

This old man is so detached from himself and the world around him that he has essentially become nothing. He exists as a thing. This fascinates Mahito and they decide to observe them, forming a weird sort of companionship with him. Eventually, Mahito learns why the old man is this way.

Immense trauma. Abused and disfigured, the old man gives up on everything and in turn is freed from his suffering. Mahito likens his state to enlightenment Buddhist monks may achieve.

They’re not wrong about this. Buddhism is centered around the escape from suffering via detachment. But there’s something greatly unsettling about this situation. Unfortunately that never gets addressed, the old man dies and Mahito oversees it.

And what’s this? Right at the end. The old man appreciates Mahito for being there for him. His “enlightened” state is revealed for the facade that it is, causing his soul to waver. He appreciates that his suffering has been acknowledged by another and dies satisfied, leaving Mahito both in a state of mourning and with the perfect way to manipulate someone before they pass.

What a human is to Mahito.

There’s a lot I left out in my summarization of Allegory of Darkness. Mainly the little discussions they had to build a relationship. They’re centered around movies and books because Mahito uses those to understand the humans around them.

From their studies, they conclude the following.

Humans are creatures that eat, sleep, and rape while curses are creatures that deceive, cheat, and kill. But I’d like to break down the kanji Mahito uses for their description of humans.

食 (ku) is usually read as "ta" which is in line with regular eating. The "ku" reading is more like devouring and it can be a sexual innuendo.

寝 (ne) means to sleep. And just like in English it can mean to have sex with someone.

犯す (okasu) is the tricky one. It can mean to commit a crime, to break, to violate, to contravene, to deflower, to rape.

Translating this as rape isn’t wrong, but it can overemphasize the sexual connotation. Okasu is more about the nonconsent. Doing something against another’s will.

However in Mahito’s case, they’re most definitely drawing attention to that. The eat uses the ku reading and is next to sleep with heavy innuendo. Okasu implies an assault on a body that does not belong to them. With this in mind, I think eat would be best localized as consume to get across the greedy inconsideration.

This isn’t coming from nowhere. They watched such a thing occur first hand. That old man I mentioned? He’s killed by two random men on a dare because they see him as something for their consumption. His body doesn’t belong to him. It’s a thing for them to play with.

Kenjaku, a human, reinforces this behavior by having Mahito participate in death womb painting incarnations and other manipulative schemes. And in the end, Kenjaku causes Mahito to fall to the same victimization they learned from humans.

Mahito sees humans, not curses, as creatures that take without consideration. They’re beings that have made the violation of boundaries so commonplace it can be seen as natural. And he’s not really wrong about that in the context of this story. All the stuff I mentioned in the previous post—it’s both right there in your face and nearly invisible.

The acts themselves are never depicted but always implied. It’s an insidious thing that goes ignored or is outright denied by fans. Anyone who has experienced these things, recognizes it, and points it out will be chastised for reading too much into it.

But can you blame them? The perpetrators are named. They’re goofy and strong and interesting. Their victims are footnotes with little presence and are sometimes outright denied names. And yet they’re always there, just out of sight, suffering in the background.

How horrific that this mirrors a victim’s experience almost identically.

Mahito vs Yuji

The first time Yuji kills a human, it’s as a mercy. At the request of the transfigured human, Yuji puts them out of their misery.

It’s a sin Nanami has been trying to protect Yuji from as a child and Mahito forces it on him with a cruel choice between leaving them to suffer or ending it for them. Yuji chooses to liberate them from suffering.

I think Yuji is able to see the outline of Mahito’s soul, not because of Sukuna, but because he is willing to see Mahito for what they are and face them head on. He doesn’t hide how the transfigured humans or deaths affect him. He cries over them and carries on with that hurt.

And it’s painful. Yuji vomits and wails on the floor. But he deals with it. Unlike his mentors who bury their emotions and pretend everything is ok.

This is what makes Yuji fundamentally incompatible with Mahito. He is the exception that won’t allow Mahito to go unnoticed and slip away. He does it for their victims and himself. And still Mahito taints him. Yuji starts to see himself as a cog no different than Mahito.

He carries that mentality until he finally confronts Sukuna in JJK 265. Acknowledging why he started thinking that way in the first place, moving past it and onto something better.

That’s what I love about Yuji the most. To him, anyone’s trauma will never be invisible.

And the horror persists…

Even though Yuji is this tiny beacon of hope in this rather depressing narrative, there’s still so much he can do as a 15 year old boy. The trauma he takes on and deals with is only for those he was witnessed or has been told of. This means a lot of the characters don’t have their grievances addressed in a way that gives me comfort.

The old man under the bridge may have died satisfied, but I can’t stop thinking about him. His suffering and isolation masked by numbness went on for decades. The happiness he experienced at the end was for seconds. And the worst of the worst, Mahito, was the one to comfort him…

I can't stop thinking about the old man under the bridge.

There’s a lot I left out in my summarization of Allegory in Darkness. I really wanted to include more, but I found it to not fit into the rest of this discussion. Strange little bits of dialogue like these.

When I read these passages, a single question lingers in my mind.

Why does this man resemble Sukuna?

I lied. This post is actually about Sukuna.

Let’s go back to that homeless old man under the bridge. Mahito admires him as enlightened, but anyone can his state is mortifying. He has coped with the abuse, disfigurement, and suffering by becoming nothing. No different than a rock. He has no name. He’s not a person. He feels nothing. And the worst thing about it is how that’s technically better than being tormented by those memories.

JJK asks how does one cope with trauma? And repeatedly this question is answered by most characters in one of two ways:

1) You let it consume all that you are.

2) You become nothing as you detach yourself from it entirely.

The old man under the bridge is what Gojo tried to and failed to become. As much as he pretended otherwise, his attachment to grief and love controlled him. Sukuna mocks him for this. Calling him painfully ordinary in the English localization isn't incorrect, but it strips away that religious context. In Japanese this kanji 凡夫 (bonpu) can be read as Unenlightened.

The old man reached enlightenment while coping with his trauma. It worked for so long. But right at the end, when Mahito shows some semblance of care for him, those feelings he thought were shaved off cause him to waver.

A new question plagues my mind.

What the hell happened to Sukuna?

It’s presented as a humorous thing. Framing Mahito’s nonconsensual touching of Sukuna’s soul as a handsy patron ignoring the boundaries of a hostess.

Gege sometimes introduces character quirks as something funny before they’re revealed to be induced by trauma. Gojo Satoru is the biggest culprit of this with his sweet tooth and manner of speech and childish behavior that desperately tries to claw back the youth that was stolen from him.

Sukuna has such an averse reaction to having his soul touched by Mahito. He’s wearing women’s clothes when it happens. He’s likened to a hostess for it.

When we consider this and the quiet way misogyny and sexual assault is woven into this story… And how Gojo, the Strongest, was preyed on by older women. And how Yuki escaped having her body being used by someone much older than her by becoming strong. And how Rika, the Queen of Curses, is likely a victim of CSA by someone who was supposed to take care of her. And how Mai, a twin and a victim of CSA, creates a stronger twin by dying when she can no longer cope with her trauma.

I don’t like what this suggests for Sukuna at all.

Sukuna is willing to bond with all the other natural disaster cursed spirits, except Mahito. He himself became something akin to a natural disaster so it makes sense he liked the company of those like them. It’s him rejecting the strongest of the bunch because of how their CT violates others’ bodies is something I cannot overlook.

Jogo’s fire is so kind in comparison. The bodies he burns and the corpses he leaves cannot be defiled by anyone. It’s what would’ve prevented Geto’s body from being stolen. And hey! Sukuna returns the favor, burning Jogo in a way that prevents Kenjaku from absorbing him.

The easiest way for Sukuna to permanently scar and traumatize Yuji is to inflict sexual violence on him or his loved ones. JJK does not shy away from having rapists like Noaya and Kenjaku do just that. A common complaint from fans is Sukuna not trying to manipulate Yuji into working with him. JJK does not shy away from having groomers like Kenjaku, Mahito, and Mei Mei (and to an extent Tengen) do just that.

Sukuna is strong and clever enough to do these things, but he doesn’t. I think there’s more to this than a disinterest in sex.

Choso’s mother faced ostracization for her unique body that allowed her to give birth to hybrid children. With nowhere left to go she wound up at a temple for sorcerers. Kenjaku took advantage of her situation and body, partaking in her rape to satiate intellectual curiosity.

Sukuna faced ostracization as a child for his unique body that made him a great sorcerer. Just about everyone who knows him has tried to exploit his abilities for their benefit.

There’s a massive blank in this parallel. What happened to Sukuna growing up to make him this way? Every time I try to fill in that blank with the information we have now, I’m left with something deeply unpleasant.

When Sukuna has flashbacks, it only ever goes as far back to his time as Yujikuna. He verbally recounts his time in the womb and there’s nothing else. The first time we see Heian Era Sukuna in full, it’s from Yorozu’s memory. And if you recall…this introduction is him being sexually assaulted.

Sukuna’s fingers are scattered everywhere, fragments of himself are throughout the world and in a little bit of everyone. A curse that cannot be destroyed that only gets stronger with time. He’s something that was repressed despite everyone knowing he exists—a victim of sexual abuse.

Sukuna’s Backstory—Revised

Back when I theorized that Sukuna is an ex-slave, I deliberately withheld references to sexual abuse slaves are often subjected to because I felt it was too heavy for the post.

But seeing others theorize something that severe happened in part because of his CT’s name and spiritual pederasty practices at the time, makes me regret not including it. Please read the post by Tumblr user tangsakura that brought this to my attention.

Pederasty, if you do not know, refers to a boy having a sexual “relationship” with an older man sometimes as a form of “guidance”. The most known form of this originates from ancient Rome and Greece. I put “relationship” and “guidance” in quotations because children cannot consent to or grow from this kind of abuse.

Such a thing was common, sometimes socially accepted, systemic abuse in the ancient world. (Though a form of it exists to this day.) Japan partook in pederasty, even in certain types of Buddhist temples, prior to the Meiji Restoration in 1868. (Here’s a video source on it. Be warned it's pretty upsetting.)

And in most of these societies that accepted pederasty, a relationship between two men of equal standing was frowned upon or not tolerated at all. The imbalance of power and exploitation of children was the socially acceptable thing. Despite, you know, the resulting trauma and suicides of the victims.

As discussed in the linked video, the children at these temples were seen as pure and therefore closer to Buddha. Since celibacy between human monks was expected, fetishizing these children as gods allowed for the mental gymnastics to justify molesting them.

That’s not too surprising. Organized religion with massive followings all have it in common—the sexual abuse of minors and tolerating it or covering it up. What’s striking about this abuse is that it was considered important to or even necessary for enlightenment by some sects. Their suffering brought about enlightenment.

Mini crash course for those not familiar with Buddhism. There are 4 Noble Truths that are foundational to this religion. (Copy and pasted from Wikipedia.)

1) Dukkha: Suffering exists: Life is suffering. Suffering is real and almost universal. Suffering has many causes: loss, sickness, pain, failure, and the impermanence of pleasure.'Dukkha: Suffering exists: Life is suffering. Suffering is real and almost universal. Suffering has many causes: loss, sickness, pain, failure, and the impermanence of pleasure.

2) Samudaya: There is a cause of suffering. Suffering is due to attachment. It is the desire to have and control things. It can take many forms: craving of sensual pleasures; the desire for fame; the desire to avoid unpleasant sensations, like fear, anger or jealousy.

3) Nirodha: There is an end to suffering. Attachment can be overcome. Suffering ceases with the final liberation of Nirvana. The mind experiences complete freedom, liberation and non-attachment. It lets go of any desire or craving.

4) Magga: In order to end suffering, follow the Eightfold Path.

Per the 3rd Noble Truth, enlightenment comes from the end of suffering, not its continuation. The idea that suffering is needed for enlightenment contradicts this Truth. But that’s not surprising either. I was raised Protestant and I’ve got a whole laundry list of how that branch of Christianity seems to have ignored the basic fundamentals of Biblical text.

What I want to get into is the specific branch of Buddhism Sukuna appears to have been abused under—Tachikawa-ryū. Just as a heads up, information on this sect is limited as this person explains:

“Tachikawa practice became forbidden and the school’s ritual texts were destroyed. As a result, only a few original scriptures and rituals survived the persecution, which makes it very difficult nowadays to fully understand the teachings of the Tachikawa-ryū.”

(The wikipedia page is straight up missing citations so feel free to correct me if I get some stuff wrong.)

The destruction of records sounds exactly like what happened with Kenjaku and the Meiji girl. But the similarities don’t start or end there. This sect is accused of using human and animal skulls for rituals. And if you recall, Sukuna sits on a throne of oxen skulls. Other heretical acts included the consumption of meat, which at the time was forbidden. Another thing Sukuna loves to do.

But what this sect is most known for are the bizarre sex rituals needed for enlightenment. You know the thing Sukuna explicitly has no interest in. More excerpts about that from the non-wiki source:

“Since the idea of a world, created by the union of male (yang) and female (yin) elements, is the essence of cosmology in Tantrism, sexual union serves as the “real life” version of this dualism. In other words, sex is an effective way to achieve buddhahood in a relatively short amount of time (best case scenario: this life, “becoming a buddha in this very body (即身成仏 sokushin jōbutsu)”). Furthermore, much ink has flown on the description and discussion of a human skull ritual that involved sexual intercourse and the use of seminal and vaginal fluids to create an object of worship.”

This melding of male and female elements is everywhere in JJK. It’s a massive component of the reproductive horror too. Everything with Kenjaku is self explanatory. But Sukuna, who wears women’s clothes, is currently pregnant with the Merger, and has a gender ambiguous servant… He’s a part of this too.

It should also be noted that Tachikawa-ryū is actually a sub-sect of a sect. It originates from Shingon Buddhism. …Which was first introduced in the Heian Era.

Here are some quotes from the wiki article:

“The essence of Shingon practice is to experience the Dharmakaya, the ultimate reality, by emulating the inner realization of the Dharmakaya through the synchronized meditative ritual use of mantras, mudras (hand gestures) and visualization of mandalas.”

Oh hey that sounds like what Jujutsu Sorcerers do.

“The goma (護摩) fire ritual is an important and recognizable ritual in Shingon. The meaning of goma is to burn the firewood of delusion with the wisdom flame, consuming it completely.”

Oh hey that sounds like Sukuna’s fire CT.

“The most important Shingon mandalas are known as the Mandala of the Two Realms which are: The Womb Realm (Sanskrit: Garbhadhātu; Japanese: 胎蔵界曼荼羅, romanized: Taizōkai) mandala based on the Mahavairocana Sutra and the Diamond Realm (Sanskrit: Vajradhātu; Japanese: 金剛界曼荼羅, romanized: Kongōkai) mandala based on the Vajrasekhara Sutra.”

Oh hey that’s Kenjaku’s Domain.

I wasn’t raised any kind of Buddhist, so there’s probably a lot here I’m missing. My point here is that the symbolism and historical context are in line with Sukuna enduring some pretty horrific abuse as a child. It’s very likely that the way he behaves and thinks is one massive cope to rationalize what happened to him.

Identity and Trauma

Sukuna is a difficult character to grasp because he’s so unforthcoming in personal information. He’s not once introduced himself by name and reveals fragments about himself in very cryptic ways. Most of what we know about him is from other characters. (Much like how the original writings of Tachikawa-ryū are lost and the remaining info is sourced from outsiders.)

To better understand him, I’ve been working under the assumption that other characters reflect fragments of Sukuna that will eventually fall into place.

Sukuna is like Maki. Consuming his twin to survive and becoming stronger for it.

Sukuna is like Toji. Discriminated against for the way he was born, he becomes strong enough to separate himself from Jujutsu Society only to be dragged back in.

Sukuna is like Geto. Falling from grace and procuring a cult-like following.

Sukuna is like Todo. He’s completely self-centered and hates taking orders from those weaker than him.

Sukuna is like Mechamaru. Disfigured by birth, longing to connect with others, he finds himself at the end of a manipulative deal that promised him a second life.

Sukuna is like Kenjaku. He sees himself as above others and only wants equals for companionship. Other people are playthings for him to consume to stave off boredom.

Sukuna is like Mahito. Endlessly curious about the humans he was born of, he consumes their art and lives in an attempt to understand them.

Sukuna is like Yorozu. Obsessively pursuing a single person, trying to teach them love through violence.

Sukuna is like Yuji. Adapting to any situation with battle intuition like no other by understanding his opponent.

Sukuna is Gojo. I call them twin flames since they have the most in common. If you noticed, that homeless old man from Allegory in Darkness resembles Gojo a lot too. For this reason I often use Gojo as a reference to infer how Sukuna is as a character.

Gojo’s trauma that helped him reach his self-proclaimed enlightenment was Toji. And that was just normal assault. But let’s reframe that battle as something a little more abstract…

As a teenager Gojo has his Infinity, a barrier that kept him safe, forcibly penetrated by a much older man. This both kills him and awakens him to immense power that irreversibly changes him. His loved ones can no longer recognize him and his relationships are destroyed by this. His ability to feel pleasure and his sexuality are contorted in ways that others find deeply perverse.

This is the plot of Baby Reindeer—an extremely upsetting semi-autobiographical recounting of how the creator’s sexual trauma ruined his life.

But that’s not how everything is framed at first. The main character, Donny is introduced as a man trying to report his stalker, Martha, to the police.

Martha recognizes that Donny has been abused. Maybe not in the same way as her, but similar enough to the point where they become toxicly attached to each other. She stalks him and assaults him in what she believes to be acts of love. You both pity her for her circumstances and hate her for the destruction she causes.

That sounds like Sukuna doesn’t it?

Sukuna saw something in Gojo he can’t recognize in anyone else. And I think it’s much more than the loneliness that comes with being strong—It’s having your body violated and no one recognizing or taking your trauma seriously because you’re supposed to be strong.

Toji’s failed assassination attempt on Gojo resembles sexual assault in how Gojo reacts to the whole ordeal. He wants some kind of support but pushes everyone away. He craves touch but has a barrier to prevent it running 24/7. He both pities Toji and admires him, fears him and kills anything like him. His sexuality cannot be divorced from this incident, needing a good deal of violence to get off. It’s too similar to how Donny engages his own sexuality after his assault.

But to my knowledge, Gojo hasn’t been raped. He went through something that resembled it and Sukuna picked up on that. During their fight, Sukuna essentially dealt with that trauma. He became a sort of Toji that satisfied Gojo’s perverse needs while tearing through the very thing that had him targeted in the first place—Infinity.

This is the source suffering Sukuna seemingly liberates Gojo from with extreme violence like some kind of heretical Bodhisattva. There’s also something to be said about him using Mahoraga to do this.The Eight-Handled in its title is a reference to the Eightfold Path that’s to be followed in order to obtain enlightenment.

And they both have this trait in common—using violence to guide others towards enlightenment, a perversion of the 3rd Noble Truth. Gojo just calls it tough love.

(And notice how Megumi recalls both Sukuna and Gojo's words as he grows from a difficult fight.)

I know that Gojo does this because of his trauma with Toji and his own “growth” coming from it. It’s one of Gojo’s many destructive coping mechanisms. He’s stuck in the past trying to relive what was stolen from him. Like I mentioned before, Sukuna calls Gojo unenlightened for this. And if they’re twin flames, I have reason to believe Sukuna is the exact same way.

Sukuna finds Maki to be the most compelling of Gojo’s students. And I think there’s more to this than seeing a fellow monster in her. She’s what he wants to be.

Not only is Maki free of the sorcery that ruined their lives, she has confronted and dealt with her trauma. She killed the source of her suffering, the Zenins, and has accepted the death of her twin she was so dearly attached to. And unlike her mentors, Maki appears to be emotionally stable because she did this in spite of her trauma, not through it. The sumo guy's compassion is what guides her. In other words, she’s obtained enlightenment outside of violence.

Maki also succeeds where Toji failed. There isn’t anything left that would cause her to waver. She stays true to herself and remains enlightened.

That seems to be a recurring thing—characters deviating from their “enlightened” state through human connections that rouse their unresolved emotional issues and then dying. Toji’s projection of his trauma from Jujutsu Society onto Gojo gets him killed. Kenjaku’s desperation for companionship has Takaba create the perfect opening for Todo and Yuta’s ambush.

Sukuna has started to deviate from himself because of Yuji. And it’s probably because he’s projecting his trauma onto him. If that’s the reason both Toji and Kenjaku were felled, it’ll be the reason for Sukuna’s downfall too. Just like that old man under the bridge.

Sukuna and Yuji

Umineko no Naku Koro ni (When the Seagulls Cry) is a visual novel about a person who is fundamentally misunderstood by those around them. They desperately want to be loved without being perceived, believing themself to be unworthy due to trauma and immutable characteristics given to them at birth. Instead of telling anyone these feelings directly, they play games akin to torture. They torment the ones they love over and over in hopes they'll see through their actions and understand them.

I’ve always compared Sukuna to this character, but for this analysis I’ll be comparing him to another from Umineko—Rosa Ushiromiya.

The youngest of 4 from a rich conservative household, Rosa was subjected to physical and verbal abuse by her father and older siblings. As an adult around them she cowers. She shows her abusers respect they don’t deserve because of her social standing within the family and tolerates their jeering.

But with her little 9 year old daughter who can’t fight back? She beats her the moment she makes any mistake. As she beats this child she screams about how everything is her fault. Rosa projects her financial woes, her childhood abuse, and systemic misogyny all onto this child that never asked to be born. She blames this child for her own shortcomings that keep her tethered to her abusers year after year.

The sad thing is that Rosa doesn’t realize why she’s doing this. She is unable to come to terms with her own trauma and remains stuck in the cycle of abuse as both a victim and a perpetrator, unable to spare her daughter from it.

Knowing that Sukuna and Yuji are blood uncle and nephew. And knowing that by technicalities, Yuji would be genetically recognized as Sukuna’s son…I see that kind of hurt in their relationship.

Sukuna is a very good liar. Most take him at his word. He says that he hates Yuji for his ideals—how he puts his life on the line in service to others. The things Megumi, Higuruma, and Gojo do as well. And yet Sukuna admires them. Todo sacrifices himself to prop up Yuji and save Hana. Sukuna calls him a true sorcerer for this. It’s not unreasonable to conclude that Sukuna isn’t being honest about why he hates Yuji.

I think it’s because Yuji is somehow linked to Sukuna’s trauma through no fault of his own. And because Yuji is easier to target, Sukuna uses him as an outlet.

We’ve seen this scenario play out before in JJK. Mai lashes out at Maki instead of Naoya or all the other men like Naobito who enabled or partook in her abuse because it’s the safer thing to do. She doesn’t actually hate Maki. She hates what she has to endure at the Zenin Clan and sees it as inevitable. Fighting back is scary and she really hates doing that. If the manga didn’t make that clear, the CFYOW: Thorny Road at Dawn, Chapter 4: Advancing in the Face of Fear sure does.

Yuji isn’t a cage to Sukuna because he chose to be this way. Kenjaku made him for it and even manipulated him into ingesting the fingers. But you know, Yuji is someone Sukuna can attack without consequence.

I do not know if Kenjaku is the person who abused Sukuna or if Kenjaku merely resembles the person who abused Sukuna. Kenjaku is older than Sukuna, has a fascination with him, and has manipulated him. There are plenty of other characters that have been traumatized by Kenjaku.

Whatever the true nature of their relationship is, Sukuna is choosing to attack a symptom of his restriction instead of its source. He’s behaving no different than Mai or Rosa which leads me to believe there’s something deeper to his hatred of Yuji.

Yuji’s Role

I think that Yuji is aware something terrible happened to Sukuna. He’s not really sure what. The type of abuse Sukuna likely went through is not common historical knowledge even in Japan.

For the longest time, Yuji regarded Sukuna as a curse and denied him his humanity. But as of JJK 265, Yuji treats Sukuna like a human. He takes him through his memories and plays little games with him. He rejects the cog mentality Mahito groomed him into and says this:

“I could very well be doing the wrong thing here. So I thought I should at least let you see the humanity of someone other than yourself.”

Yuji is admits that his approach to Sukuna may be flawed.

And flawed it is. This entire chapter and offer Yuji makes to Sukuna might be one of the cruelest things he has done so far and he isn’t even aware of it. Yuji is recounting a pleasant childhood full of love and quiet moments. That’s something Sukuna didn’t have because it was taken away for reasons beyond his control.

This accidental cruelty isn’t anything new. It happens right before Junpei dies to an ability that resembles sexual assault. Yuji reaches out to him and asks what’s wrong. He notices something is off and tries to console Junpei through it.

And here he apologizes for saying something so insensitive. He didn’t know, but he had to ask. Sukuna was there to see that.

I think that's what Sukuna wants from him. He wants Yuji to acknowledge he was hurt. To recognize that something happened to him and offer something like he did with Junpei. It’s a bit odd that he humors Yuji’s kindness towards him instead of immediately opening his domain as a counter. This could be an explanation for that.

Yuji hasn’t given Sukuna the same treatment yet. In fact he’s done the exact opposite thing he does with other people. Yuji usually lets his opponent yap at him and meets them as they are. This time, Yuji is the one who does the bulk of the talking and he doesn’t give Sukuna a chance to open up about himself.

That’s not his fault at all. He’s 15 and it’s not his job. The reason he thought Sukuna was a curse for so long is because everyone else told him he wasn’t human and Sukuna never denied it. But just like with Junpei, Yuji did something really insensitive.

Yuji showed Sukuna pity then told him to die or go back into his cage.

People picked up on Yuji being posed like the Fallen Lucifer painting. I think it’s deliberate this offer is being framed as villainous. If Sukuna is outright revealed to be a former slave or a victim of CSA, on reread this would come across as wicked.

It wouldn’t be the first time a scene goes from hype to depressing on reread. I loved watching Yuji and Nobara grow as they killed Eso and Kezichu. After Choso? That fight breaks my heart. Yuji has been manipulated into killing his own brothers and he didn’t even know it.

Yuji’s status as a cage is likely reminiscent of whatever bound Sukuna to the abuse in the first place. And that’s what he’s offering. Death or existing in that state you could argue is much worse than death—a state where his body does not belong to him. Where he is forced to watch a normalish life he can’t have play out for the one tormenting him.

The anger Sukuna displays at Yuji for this is something we’ve only seen him lob towards Mahito. Hell, it’s the same kind of face Yuji makes at Mahito.

I think it’s also telling that Sukuna couldn’t feel anything towards the small things in life. That’s common for anyone who has undergone immense trauma. He was rather cordial about trying this stuff out until Yuji gave his ultimatum.

I’m sure Yuji would give Sukuna more grace if he’d just be honest with his feelings. But this guy is no different than Gojo. He bottles everything up and gets mad at others for not intuiting he’s about to explode.

Strength and Masculinity

Baki the Grappler. This is a manga where men destroy each other’s bodies as a test of strength. It’s poorly written but the art is terrifying and I love it so dearly. Between fights of extreme violence and body horror the characters eat. And that’s it. That’s the manga.

I’ve brought this series up before when discussing how fights can be used as a dialogue between characters. In Baki, many of those combat convos ask the following:

What is strength? What does it mean to be strong?

What is a man? What does it mean to be a man?

Various characters will answer in their own ways. But I want to focus on the man who seeks to challenge death.

This is a man, who after being raped feels like he’s less of a man. And he thinks that others will see him as less of a man if he ever admits to it. (This happens in Baby Reindeer too.)

In a misogynistic society, women are expected to tolerate sexual assault. Their identity is often linked to experiencing it. Men are expected to be perpetrators of it, not victims. This is why this character calls his rape being shown “the woman within him”.

Echoing this sentiment, Sukuna, in women’s clothing, is quite literally referred to as a girl when Mahito touches him without permission. It’s also treated as a joke. The Baki character doesn’t fare any better in fanspaces. If you mention his name, someone will eventually reply “Yujiro Rapes Mid Diff”. It’s got an abbreviation too: “YRMD”. A little in-joke since the fandom at large refuses to take his assault seriously.

This is probably why Sukuna refuses to even hint at his abuse. It fundamentally conflicts with his identity. He’s the strongest sorcerer in all of history who would be mocked for being a victim. After all, he did just that to Junpei and torments Yuji over his helplessness. He perpetuates the cycle of shame to protect himself even though he’d benefit more from dismantling it.

And there’s another reason Sukuna wouldn’t be forthcoming with his trauma—predators will take advantage of this vulnerability and revictimize people. It’s often why those who escape abusive relationships find themselves in another. Straight up, that’s why it’s considered safer to not list out your traumas and mental illnesses on dating apps. It’s safer not to trust.

But still, this is something you eventually have to disclose with anyone you’re trying to connect with. Otherwise they won’t understand you or why certain things send you into a panic. And that’s the problem. When is it safe to do that? When can you tell someone of this thing that makes you so vulnerable? It’s not like you can show up to a first date and go, “Hi, I was abused as a child. I need to make sure you’re not going to hurt me. If your voice rises above a certain pitch I’m going to cry on the spot.” If that somehow doesn’t sour the mood, they now have the exact tools to hurt you with. That’s scary as hell.

Sukuna has been destroying absolutely anyone that can have power over him, despite him craving companionship from those of equal strength. Gojo did this same song and dance with anything that resembled Toji until it killed him. It’s a consequence of a coping mechanism this toxic. As long as they are strong, they can’t be hurt like that again. And because they are strong they must endure solitude. The loneliness is worth being safe.

Yuji’s approach to trauma is the polar opposite. He faces it and deals with it. In the same way Mahito forces sorcerers to see the worst of humanity they’ve been overlooking, Yuji is forcing Sukuna to reckon with something he’s been repressing for centuries. This is why Yuji can strike at his soul.

Outliers

This section is for characters I don’t know how to fit into the rest of this analysis and should be considered because of their direct relationships to Sukuna.

Megumi

Sukuna is rather merciful with his kills compared to other characters like Kenjaku. When he’s done playing with someone, they die. He’ll even be respectful about it in his strange little way. Megumi is the sole exception to this, putting him in a very weird spot with the rest of this analysis.

Sukuna forced himself into Megumi’s body through incarnation and has subjugated his soul. And though this has been better for combat as he wanted, Sukuna is noticeably more miserable. Yujikuna before the Culling Games is still the happiest we’ve seen Sukuna. Whether this is from Megumi’s gloominess influencing him or Sukuna no longer having a goal to work towards or Sukuna incidentally retraumatizing himself by repeating the cycle remains to be seen. Maybe it’s all of this at once.

This is probably one of those things that will make more sense to me with more information. For now, I’ll focus on how Megumi’s name means blessing. Sukuna stole Gojo’s Blessing and destroyed it. And if Sukuna is Gojo, he has also destroyed his Blessing.

That kind of makes sense. Mahoraga, a representation of the path to enlightenment, has been destroyed by Sukuna’s actions as Megkuna. Adaptation is something that could’ve kept Sukuna entertained for a very long time since it would evolve with him. It could’ve also killed him and set him free. But he squandered that blessing when used it to satisfy Gojo instead.

Uraume

Uraume is also in a weird spot. They can gauge Sukuna’s mood by his CE and anticipate his needs in an instant. And yet Sukuna doesn’t feel fully understood by them.

That’s mostly Sukuna’s fault. He didn’t disclose he was a twin to them for over 1,000 years, so it’s unlikely they know the extent of his trauma. However, Uraume dresses like a monk and has the androgynous features considered desirable in the child acolytes that were abused in historical Japan. This could mean they went through something similar to Sukuna and share that connection. It would explain why Sukuna is so gentle towards them compared to other characters.

In other words, Sukuna should be able to trust them of all people with his trauma. They’re loyal and have always been there for him. So why won’t he do that?

Looking at Gojo's relationships for an explanation, this kind of reminds me of how Gojo blew off Shoko’s friendship after Geto left. If someone that close to Gojo could betray him, why would Shoko be any different? Plus he’s stronger the more alone he is. And strong people don’t need help with their emotions. (Cue increasingly contradictory and destructive behavior stemming from a combination of trauma and toxic masculinity fuelled by questionable practices based in religion.)

Yuji differs from Uraume in how he has directly shown Sukuna time and time again that he is a person who can be trusted. Everyone who has admitted their trauma to him has been taken seriously. Sukuna sat there and watched Yuji’s soul never once stray from compassion. He may hate this about him, but Sukuna seems to know he is the safest person to be open with. I think this is why Yuji is being framed as the one to guide Sukuna towards true enlightenment. (Aka addressing your trauma instead of burying it until you no longer understand how it is influencing your actions.)

In conclusion…

I want to emphasize that I am trying to explain why Sukuna is the way he is. To do so I’ve been rather assertive about his trauma despite it remaining unrevealed.

I’m certain something really awful happened to Sukuna. Exactly what I don’t know, but it’s likely something worse than what all the other named characters have experienced. I can say this with relative confidence because of this:

Sukuna himself suggests he has suffered more than Yuji.

Gege has been very careful not to show extreme instances of child abuse outright. If any of this gets confirmed, it’ll likely be vague.

But as it currently stands, I think you can read Sukuna as a victim of CSA. This sort of thing has always been in the manga, it’s just hard to see it.

#cactus yaps #This is another one of those please for the love of fudge read the content warnings I’m not messing around.#I never want to write about this topic again.#Had Lie Alaia playing on loop in my head as I realized what the hell was going on.#I know inspirations for JJK have been listed out but are we Sure Gege hasn’t read Umineko?#Gege! Directly reference Umineko and my life is yours!#jjk spoilers #jujutsu kaisen #jjk meta #mahito #itadori yuji #ryomen sukuna

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