#Magnanimity

[mbti-notes]

Anon wrote: INFJ with weak Fe. Immature FPs can be amazingly noble and loyal at times, but their combination of sensitivity and insensitivity toward others can irritate me. In particular, with my ISFP (now former, I guess) best friend of many years, in response to a question she asked about why I list my educational background (I went to top universities) on dating apps, I mentioned that I want to make it very clear that I value my career (to indicate I won't be e.g. a homemaker).

I realize this may have come off as arrogant or prejudiced. I truly believe that college admissions is very noisy and biased in countless ways, but I also cannot engage with all the people who show interest in dating apps and the goal here was to filter as efficiently as possible. I have observed that some men have a strong reaction to my accomplishments, and I think it’s best to filter that out from the outset - forgot whether I said that to her explicitly at the time.

It's an open question whether listing my education is the best way of filtering for compatibility, of course. She went to a less prestigious university, and has mentioned many times that she is deeply insecure about this. I could tell that she was quite offended (there was a lengthy pause after I said that), and despite 13 years of fairly close friendship she ghosted me almost immediately (it’s been a couple months now of no response). She was also going through a hard time more generally.

I was also very offended in this same conversation that she revealed some very private information to me about another friend of hers and spoke in a condescending manner toward this friend, who was going through a very tough time. Now I feel like my ability to trust her has seriously declined. This is abnormal behavior from her, I should say - she normally speaks of her other friends in a respectful manner and doesn't gossip about them.

She has been insensitive toward me in countless small ways (self-absorption, often being late or flaky, some insensitive comments, although usually when she herself is under stress), though also extremely sweet and caring at times (e.g. sending me encouraging notes on the day of important presentations, sending me a care package when I was going through a tough time, etc.). I don't think she's ever really been healthy as she consistently has sort of a cynical attitude.

I also get the sense that immature Fi types basically cannot handle criticism so am not even sure we can have a rational discussion about these topics. We’ve never really had a ”meta“ discussion about our friendship - there’s a lot that has been unsaid, with silent resentment on both sides presumably. I kind of attempted to ghost her (very immature, I know - not something I would do now) a few years ago, in response to her being very late yet again without an apology. To be fair, she was going through a breakup and was a bit of a mess. However, she was somewhat persistent and we continued the friendship, albeit on somewhat shakier footing.

Conversations with her are not quite as easy as with N types, but there's something special about the very long shared history. I am seriously considering whether to reach out and apologize for the educational pedigree comment, or just let the friendship go. The latter would sadden me - she was the only person outside of my family who was there for me during the most difficult time of my life. As of now, my inclination is toward reaching out to her and at least trying to hear her perspective on why she ghosted me. This would be the first step toward a more "conscious" friendship, which is one of my main goals in life more generally. Do you have any advice on how to best go about salvaging this friendship?

What am I missing about my own blind spots here? From her perspective, I can see that I may have made insensitive comments to her (saying that I am unlikely to go back to school due to the financial opportunity cost, in a conversation when she shared that she is experiencing anxiety due to emptying her savings to do a master's degree). And also being fairly self-absorbed on a vacation we went on awhile back, due to stress about grad school.

I'm not sure it feels totally right to me to apologize for the education comment - I stand by my reasoning that it's crucial to filter out incompatible people from the outset - although I do feel bad if her feelings were hurt at an already difficult time for her. I'm debating whether to bring up in the same message how her violating her friend's privacy weakened my trust in her, or defer that to later. )

[addendum] Funnily enough, though around three months had elapsed since my last message to her, she just texted me and we're planning to meet up sometime soon. So I guess my question is if you have advice on whether I should explicitly raise these topics - me making it clear I don't think less of anyone based on which college they went to, and also express that the way she spoke about her friend made me uncomfortable - and if so, how.

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1) With regard to communication skills: It's not my place to tell people what to do. You have to learn to trust your instincts in social situations, otherwise, you'll never be able to develop healthy Ni+Fe. When socializing, context matters a lot in deciding whether it's the right/wrong time to talk about something. There are no hard and fast rules other than be observant of the emotional atmosphere.

Work your way into difficult topics gradually or tentatively in order to gauge the other person's receptiveness. Being too abrupt/direct reveals your impatience and puts people on the spot, which is more likely to make them close up. Deliberately taking things slow makes difficult conversations go more smoothly because it gives people time and space to reflect and prepare mentally and emotionally.

2) With regard to your blind spots: It's not a crime to want certain things from a relationship or even to hope for them. However, it is unreasonable to expect/demand things from people who aren't capable of giving those things. For example, if I was a parent, of course I would wish for my child to be on their best behavior at all times. But it's unreasonable to expect/demand that children behave like perfect little adults because that's just not what they are, and it would do them great harm to stifle their natural tendency to be active and exploratory.

Relationship expectations should always be grounded in reality. One of the dangers of unhealthy Ni is not realizing when you are disconnected from reality. In the worst case scenario, Ni's idealism mutates into perfectionism, and then that perfectionism gets projected out onto the world in the form of unreasonable standards and expectations.

For example, you said that your friend has experienced certain hardships that account for her negative behavior, so are you still expecting her to behave like a person who hasn't experienced those hardships? You must be, since you still judge her for it. Answer honestly: Do you expect her to live up to some ideal in your head about what she should be? If so, the problem is you.

In a truly close relationship, both people should be mature enough to discuss anything openly and honestly. If that's not the case here, then you have to think more carefully about whether bringing up a problem will help/hurt the relationship. As a general rule, if you're unhappy about how a relationship is going, you ought to discuss it and try to resolve the issue together. However, if the source of unhappiness lies squarely in your unreasonable expectations, the burden falls mainly upon you to change your perspective in order to resolve the issue.

3) With regard to Fe development, there are several aspects to it and your lack of Fe development might produce some blind spots.

a) Empathy: You give off the appearance of empathizing, such as pointing out her good qualities and trying to understand what motivates her behavior, but your empathy isn't real when you just end up passing judgment on her. Your judgmentalness even leads you onto a moral high horse to stereotype all "immature" Fi people. If this is how you're going to apply ideas about type, i.e, to justify and vent about your frustrations, you're doing it wrong. The purpose of learning about different personality types is to foster empathy.

Developing Fe should promote empathy by allowing INFJs to inhabit the experience of others. However, immature FJs with ego development issues often end up twisting the idea of empathy. Perhaps they try too hard to be a good person for ego identity reasons and then empathy easily morphs into self-sacrifice or martyrdom and, eventually, self-harm. The more they sacrifice in relationships, the more resentment builds up, and the more repressed anger and then rage they unconsciously harbor. This makes them less and less empathetic and more and more judgmental over time, which sabotages their original goal of being a good person. The more judgmental they are, the more jaded their outlook, and the more likely they are to conclude that people are bad, adversarial, or even irredeemable, which then justifies continued fixation on people's negative qualities/behaviors in a vicious cycle.

Thus, judgmentalness is a common symptom of Fe development problems. To be in the habit of positioning oneself as "judge" is to like the feeling of being morally righteous and/or morally superior... but only in one's own mind. In reality, a judgmental attitude is the mark of an insecure person. Secure people have absolutely no need to convince themselves of their own righteousness or superiority, let alone try to prove it to anyone.

b) Emotional Intelligence: Judgmentalness is a sign of emotional immaturity. Being immature means you have yet to learn how to set a healthy boundary between self and world, so you are very inclined to believe that your feelings/emotions are caused by others, and this means your emotional stability is always at the mercy of others. Whenever you feel hurt, disappointed, jealous, resentful, angry, etc, you don't take responsibility for how you generated that feeling and, instead, look for someone/something to blame.

To blame is to be morally judgmental. People like to blame because it feels good; it feels as though you're righting a wrong when you identify the source of wrongdoing. In reality, blame only feels good because people willfully ignore its downsides.

For one, the longer you allow yourself to live in a blaming mindset, the easier and easier it becomes to justify bitter, cynical, harsh, aggressive, controlling, manipulative, vindictive, cruel, and even violent thoughts and behaviors. People don't start out life wanting to be a bad person. They become so when they aren't aware that their judgment process is increasingly fueled by negative emotions like resentment and anger, thereby opening up the space for dark traits to eventually take over.

The other downside of blame is that it severs connection, so it's basically poison to relationships. Casting blame is like barking a demand. You didn't like what the other person did, so you demand that they change and behave as you want them to, which puts them on the spot of either submitting (which foments resentment) or resisting (which foments anger). Since FJs really dislike open and naked conflict, they may resort to blaming people silently, believing that it has no real-world effect. However, it still motivates you to detach. In a close relationship, emotional distance or coldness is easily felt.

c) Fairness and Equality: Conflict is inevitable in close relationships, so it's important to accept the fact rather than try to avoid or resist it. Different people have different needs, desires, goals, and aspirations, so there's bound to be some disagreement that sparks conflict. What matters most is whether you can handle conflict in an objective way that allows both people to walk away feeling as though they were heard, understood, and treated fairly.

Being judgmental means you're not being fair because it's really just about projecting and venting your feelings and emotions. Thus, it makes your view of things too one-sided. If you approach the conflict resolution process with judgmentalness, you immediately put the other person on the defensive and at risk of judging you back in an attempt to "even the score". What happens then? Warfare.

When two people disagree, it should be accepted as normal, acceptable, and something that needs to be worked out through proper communication. When your emotional needs aren't being met in the relationship, take responsibility for them rather than blaming the other person, and discuss ways to move forward in way that both people can live with. See the article in the site index about Communicating Through Conflict for more detail.

d) Compassion, Generosity, and Magnanimity: These things come as you work to improve your capacity for empathy.

- Empathy allows you to feel the suffering of others, which motivates you to treat them with kindness and compassion, in order to alleviate some of that suffering. Observe yourself carefully when you're feeling judgmental and blame-y, is there still space left for kindness and compassion in you? You can't have it both ways, so choose the person you'd rather be.

- Mature FJs understand the concept of emotional needs: what they are, how to read them, how to fulfill them, and what happens when they go unfulfilled. They attend to everyone's emotional needs because they understand that doing so will improve spirits and make it far easier for people to grow closer and cooperate (harmony).

It doesn't matter what type you are, if you grew up in an environment that didn't recognize and honor emotional needs (which is true for a lot of people), you're more likely to be an emotionally "stingy" person and view relationships as win/lose competitions. Emotionally stingy people tend to view love as something they get (to fill the void within) rather than something they generate (for transforming their entire way of being). Emotionally stingy people are: unwilling to give others the benefit of the doubt, ignorant about how to meet emotional needs, and unwilling to devote energy to anything larger than themselves. But an emotionally deprived upbringing can be reversed in adulthood by actively nurturing emotional generosity.

Emotional generosity is about the willingness to give and not expect something in return other than to feel the simple joy of seeing someone else satisfied. This is a concept FJs often struggle with. They understand that when you expect something in return for giving, you aren't really being motivated by generosity. If generosity isn't the motivation, then it must be selfishness, right? Wrong.

Everyone has emotional needs, including you. Are you able to accept that you're human and have needs? Perfectionist INFJs aren't. It is important to attend to emotional needs in order to feel truly fulfilled in life. What's most important is how you go about getting your needs met. You have to be assertive to work for the things you need in life or ask for them when you aren't able to get them for yourself.

However, many FJs struggle with assertiveness because they have trouble acknowledging their own needs, so, instead, they give a lot to others in secret hopes of getting something back. And this is how they get into relationship trouble. This goes back to the idea of setting healthy boundaries between self and others. Getting what you need should not be too entangled with giving others what they need because it might produce a conflict of interest where you're forced to choose between yourself or others.

- When you learn to be more emotionally generous, you also become more magnanimous. This means you are able to keep your eye on the bigger picture, e.g.: of what kind of person you aspire to be, of what value a relationship truly has in your heart, of what your existence contributes to the larger fabric of society. Armed with a broader vision of life (which also relates to Ni development), you become a much more giving and forgiving person because you don't fixate on meaningless details or get distracted by trivial matters.

One thing I've observed over and over again is, when you ask people who are estranged from formerly close friends/family about "The Fight" that ended things, they often can't remember exactly what it was about. What does that tell you? It tells you that small-mindedness and pettiness often get in the way of love. Only with time and distance (i.e. the bigger picture) do they realize how insignificant the conflict really was and how pathetic it was to break up a relationship over something so minor. But, at the time of the break up, it seemed to them like the world was ending.

Are you guilty of small-mindedness? Are you so narrow in your focus in relationships that you're unable to see the bigger picture and then waste energy sweating all the small stuff? This goes back to the idea of expectations. If you're the kind of person who feels compelled to remake the world to match your ideal images, you're not going to do well in relationships. And if you are this kind of person, why? Usually, it is because of insecurity or self-loathing. If there are aspects of yourself that you deem unworthy of love and are constantly trying to disown/remove, how are you going to be accepting of these aspects when you see them out there in the world in other people?

To love is to accept someone as is. To love is to appreciate every aspect of someone because all their aspects are important for making them who they are. Before you think about how to filter people out of your dating pool, perhaps you should reflect on whether you are truly capable of love, which starts with being able to embrace and love all of yourself. If you're not capable of love, it doesn't matter who you meet, does it? Even if your perfect soulmate were to magically drop into your lap, you wouldn't be able to truly see and appreciate them anyway.

[eelhound]

"A young Italian was drafted into the army during the First World War. For months he hid in the mountains with his comrades. They had almost no provisions left. The order was to defend the mountain pass at any cost. Feeling a sense of absurdity that he tried to hide from the others, he kept a journal. One night he noticed the movement of troops in the pass on the other side of the cliffs separating the narrow valley, and he thought that all was lost. The offensive would occur the very next day, that much was certain, and he knew he and his comrades would not have enough ammunition.

That night, without his comrades knowing, he decided to venture as close as possible to the enemy camp. Halfway there he almost turned back; he heard a song rising from a gramophone. The surprise held him. He was so moved by it that he decided to come forward until he was seen in the open, a sign of surrender in his hand. He was captured immediately and brought to the officer of the German army. The record was still playing. They both knew the tune. The voice that rose from the recording had an unusual gentleness.

The German officer talked with this man all night. Risking everything, the Italian explained the position of his troops, their certain death, and put their fate completely in his hands. The German officer let him leave in the morning. And he never launched the attack. He went in the direction of another valley, leaving them time to withdraw and make their escape. This is a story of gentleness."

- Anne Dufourmantelle, from Power of Gentleness: Meditations on the Risk of Living, 2018.

[elegantzombielite]

"If you don't love me, it does not matter, anyway I can love for both of us."

Stendhal (Marie-Henri Beyle), novelist (23rd January 1783-1842)

[copela4692]

Magnanimity - Virtues at Work

William Adolphe Bouguereau – The Palm Leaf “It is the characteristic of the magnanimous man to ask no favour, but to be ready to do kindness to others.” Aristotle What is Magnanimity? Magnanimity (magna-anima) is to be ‘great-souled’. It is the opposite of pusillanimity, or ‘small-souledness’, which is to cower and shrink from great goods. It is part of the virtue of courage, which both…

[a-god-in-ruins-rises]

[seasideretreat]

I know, that good things don't matter in the vast indifference of nature, but something may happen, if we are focussed and prepared. The world of things is weird and insane, and we cannot do anything to realize the essence of the world.

The world is silly, but we can achieve much if we do our best. Things happen all the time and we can't see anything happen in the last analysis; but there is much to be done in the last analysis and we must try our best all the time, if we do what we can; and everything is weird. If the good things in the world are surrendered to the horrors of ordinary life, something may happen that shows us what the ordinariness of life really is, the ordinality of pure horror - in this sense, everything is insane and nothing corresponds to pure existence in the last analysis; but everything is known and we can do good things all the time if we do our best; and we know what we do and what we can possess, because the things we do are unique and satisfying and we can bring about great feats of work if we but try. The essence of ordinary realities are vague and obscure in the last analysis, but something can be done if we do ordinary things, but they do not appreciate the essence of the pure world, and the essence of the world is rediscovered in the last analysis and nothing can be made ordinary without any real help of ordinary things; and everything is known in the last analysis.

[bittersweetresilience]

so do you think he succeeded?

[iphisesque]

supernatural 2x21 / ovid at fifteen

[rickybaby]

Checo saw all the fight on twitter and said I’ll get both Daniel and Liam a seat

[jiubilant]

elf practice

satu and nurura are @zurin's characters <3

[mbti-notes]

Anon wrote: Hey MBTI notes, ESTP woman here looking for some perspective. I have an ENFJ coworker who is kind but seems to expect way too much of me. She will do things like demand I participate in some event or another, and if I say no she gets passive aggressive or loosely implies I’m a bad person for not wanting to do her flavor of activism. I find that the events she goes to feel performative to me - like mosh pits to one up each other morally. I already go out of my way to donate my money to causes I believe in and do volunteer jobs outside of work. And so I feel very annoyed with this woman when she implies I’m selfish for not engaging in her personal idea of what being a good person means.

Another issue I face with her is that she repeatedly has commentary to make about my body or food choices, which I wouldn’t normally have an issue with but the way in which she speaks to me is condescending. Like telling me to eat more or that I look unwell, she knows I had lost a substantial amount of weight and that I have insecurities due to being heavy when younger. But I’m happy with my appearance now so I don’t listen to her trying to insinuate I have a problem, no one else speaks this way to me.

So far I have told her I’m not interested in participating in events she goes to, and that my body isn’t her concern. That has worked but she will just say things adjacent to those subjects now, like mentioning my clothing instead of my body for instance or inviting via e-mail lol. I’m just generally not interested in speaking to her because I don’t think it’s a healthy dynamic for either of us, we are frankly acquaintances and she has tried to control me about 500 different times.

I used to deal with Se-Fe loop and Ni grip when faced with rejection or failure, and so I’d focus too much on the dynamics of ‘how to be a good person’(very abstract and usually unfruitful conclusions other than just being kind) and can become a bit paranoid about what others think of me since I don’t have pristine social/moral confidence, so the pressure she’s putting is definitely not conducive to a life well lived for me. I just try to brush it off but I’m not interested in hearing about my body or problems from another person when I can already scrutinize myself if I wanted to. Any practical advice on how to further deal?

***********************

Given that her behavior exhibits some "mean girl" qualities, it's hard to say whether she would be capable of a mature conversation. In a personal relationship, you communicate about the problem like adults, try to work it out together, and decide what to do together. In a work relationship, there should be a healthy boundary between personal and professional. Sometimes, there are weird power dynamics that make it dangerous to bring up personal issues in the workplace. Your options will depend on several factors:

1) Can Se+Ti work it out? Instead of interpreting her behavior as condescending, controlling, or {insert negative adjective}, why not take her purely at face value? Examples: If she promotes her flavor of activism, take it as a friendly suggestion (based on what she believes is her own authoritative knowledge) and nothing more. If she comments on your body, take it as a show of care/concern for your health/well-being and nothing more. If she expects more of you than you believe is warranted, treat it merely as constructive feedback (to be evaluated and accepted/rejected as you see fit) and nothing more.

You can take people's words as literal and sincere, or you can try to read between the lines and look for hidden meanings. Reading too much into things isn't going to reveal anything useful when what you're actually doing is unconsciously dredging up your past ego dramas (a symptom of Ni grip). The main point is that we all have cognitive biases that prime us to misinterpret information. When you've had a negative past experience with something, those memories make you highly sensitive to any information pertaining to it, and this easily morphs into a personal "issue" (aka "hangup").

Examples: If you've struggled with weight your whole life, you will of course be highly sensitive to weight comments, with a tendency to interpret them in a negative light. If you suffer from social anxiety due to having been rejected by your peers in adolescence, you'll have a tendency to misinterpret people's neutral facial expressions as angry or disapproving.

The human mind is littered with these kinds of biases because we are simply too good at learning from past experience. The question is: Are you 100% certain that you have always interpreted her behavior correctly? Impartiality is one of the key aspects of Ti development. Having mature Ti means that, when making judgments and decisions, you're able to acknowledge biases (aka bullshit) and focus solely on the content that is most relevant. Regardless of who is speaking and why, it should be more important to you whether what they say is factual/relevant to the situation. If what she says is false or irrelevant, what reason do you have to dwell on it? At that point, you're making the choice to dwell because you have ego drama going on, right? Healthy Se should help you quickly move on to something more interesting.

When I was very little, I used to complain about other kids teasing me, even when it wasn't malicious. My mother would say something to the extent of, "People talk shit all the time but it's your choice to eat it up. Are you gonna be a shit eater?" I didn't understand the truth of this until later in life, lol. A person can't get under your skin unless there is a sore spot under there that you don't want them to press on. In development terms, the more you refuse to confront a sore spot, the more you unconsciously attract the very people capable of exposing it. Due to your resistance, those seemingly "annoying" people are the only means left to you for becoming more aware of the problem and the need to resolve it.

Self-responsibility is another key tenet of Ti development. The first step to becoming less sensitive about your sore spots is to take full ownership of them: i) acknowledge that your mind is within your power to control, and ii) when your sore spots produce a negative effect, the onus is on you to learn how to get them under control. To your credit, you've been working on your loop/grip issues, but it sounds like you still have some work to do.

2) Can Fe work it out? Dominant Fe is highly motivated to form a closer relationship with people, so, to some extent, she can't help herself - it would be like asking a bird not to chirp. Because Fe is lower in your stack, there is a mismatch in beliefs about how much personal space one should be entitled to. This is a legitimate difference between FJ and TP that should be given acceptance and understanding. In a healthy relationship, both parties would compromise and try to be respectful of the other's preference.

As it stands, she wants to get closer than you are comfortable with. Do you fault her for triggering your insecurities? Sure, her words don't help matters, but she doesn't know the full extent of your personal issues. If she were a friend, you'd level with her and hopefully she'd understand and back off. But she's not a friend and perhaps her comments are meant to be probing to see where your personal issues lie, which is a natural step in the process of forming a new relationship. Perhaps she feels as though she's been unsuccessful at bonding with you and now she's resorting to immature methods of getting to you because she has taken your "rejection" too personally. That's her own baggage.

An important part of having healthy and mature Fe is nurturing empathy and magnanimity: Try to rise above pettiness and understand what people really need, underneath all the emotional baggage. You could make the choice to be understanding and give her the benefit of the doubt. Assume that her main motivation isn't coming from an evil place but, rather, a place of wanting to develop a relationship with you... despite choosing the wrong methods.

To be clear, it's not your duty to be her friend. But, if you acknowledge that a like-minded friend is probably what she's really after, you'd be more flattered than angry, and you'd be able to approach her with a less defensive/hostile mindset, which should help tamp down the tension in the relationship. The less you come off as "rejecting" in her eyes, the less compelled she will feel to prove anything. If she is indeed creating a drama out of her failure to form a relationship with you, the more you demonize her, react to her provocations, and feed into her suspicions, the harder she'll come at you. Sometimes, no response or an indifferent shrug works better than a sword at repelling an unwanted advance.

3) Can you set better boundaries? The obvious way is to avoid interacting with her, but that might not always be possible when you share the same social spaces. You've set boundaries to some extent by pushing back whenever you think she's being too inappropriate. If she's actually just a bully underneath it all (I can't make this judgment based on such limited information), attempts to be diplomatic may just be taken as participation in her mind games, in which case, bluntness could be more effective.

Let's say you push back exactly as hard as you wish to, what would the social consequences be and could you bear them? If you don't care about whether she likes you and she doesn't have the power/inclination to do any real harm to you, tell her to keep out of your business in no uncertain terms. Be firm but not mean (by avoiding personal attacks). However, if you don't want to have her ire hanging over you and/or you have reason to believe she could make your life difficult, then perhaps the first two options are the way to go. Use your best judgment.

[ayrennaranaaldmeri]

man the dev notes w/ the stormshore tabernacle convo. whatever they're there for it's kind of remarkable how so much of the notes there for her are just textbook abuser stuff.

[simcardiac-arrested]

ability to draw and its consequences

[thepersonalwords]

Nature blessed every person with the innate capacity to express wonder and awe for the eternal world and act with a kind and unstinting soul.

Kilroy J. Oldster, Dead Toad Scrolls

[seasideretreat]

Things

There are a lot of things in the world. Most of these things are bad, such as we often see: we don't like to wallow in nothingness, but neither do we wish to see the end of the Earth covered by the Great Wave off Kanagawa, as if we didn't need the entire world to be created by the Great Man. Or something. What do we need to do? The vast majority of weird things are weird and need a navigation to help them discover the power of the world - as my dad used to say, GPS is God. But the things that happen are strange, and nothing can help us to regenerate the vast majority of things and relive the strange delinquency of pure deficiency in ordinary creativity; that's a thing. However, we can do things. I realize that hard work is no given for ordinary work, but there might be something that we can do, something useful, if we just applied ourselves, that's a thing that might happen. But in the grand indifference of things there might be something we do or don't do that makes us realize the limitation of pure necessity, and gives us the makeshift belief in something bigger, that is nonetheless entirely subservient to horrid cause of great necessity or magnificence. We struggle for hope and glory, we try to do the best we can to survive.

Things are weird, and we cannot realize the truth. We must regenerate the creativities of pure necessity in the context of pure power. But that is not all. The things we do are strange and ludicrous, just like existence, but we can realize existence in the little things that matter in the grand scheme of things, which is a thing that we may or may not see because we are set upon the generation of pure power in the grand scheme of things. A sad plight. The things that happen in the redistribution of pure wealth is a necessity that confronts the nature of ordinary existence in the creativity of pure power, that makes us realize the necessity for ordinary things, but that can also return us to the home of ordinary reciprocity in the strict sense, and give us a sense of justice in the entirety of existence, that is crazy and obscure in the totality of ordinary existence and makes us feel confronted by ordinary necessities in the grand scheme of things, which is just a weird moment in time, that cannot unite us with the power of redistributory necessity and knowledge in the grand scheme of things in the last analysis, but that is nevertheless a totality of ordinary knowledge that gives us a power wielded by crazy notificators on the journey to self-preservation and rebirth, rejuvination in the stream of life and the fountain of youth, but this is all nothingness and craziness: our life is just a weird trajectory towards crazy necessities that mean nothing and that cannot presuppose the change in our hearts that happens in the crazy power of presupposition, changing the hope of ordinary dreams to a wider phantasm, but nevertheless not redoing the the crazy interpolation of strict events in the horrid discovery of wretched existence in the grand scheme of things, that makes us feel ordinary horror against the terrifying stuff that makes us feel crazy and non-essential, but that nevertheless confronts us with a new power and a new hope, which is just a necessary power that gives us a chance to start over with new powers and dreams in our pockets.

[thru-the-grapevine]

The Dock of the Bay (m)

Pairing: Han Seungwoo x fem!reader

Summary: The night is beautiful, the water is fine, and you aren’t afraid of anything. Except maybe getting caught.

Word Count: ~3k

Tags/Warnings: mature content (minors dni), skinny-dipping, pwp, established relationship, they’re both brats your honor

Author’s Note: @chanis-banani eat my ass <3

You’d never admit it, especially not to him, but Han Seungwoo deserves full marks for this date.

He sent you a link this afternoon to a restaurant for a type of food you’d never tried before, stating a time later that night and “be there”. You responded with the middle finger emoji for the bossiness, to which he replied “they’ve got your favorite whiskey and I just got paid, so it’s on me”. You immediately replied with the halo emoji, then “yes sir” and a wink. He said “thought so, little brat” and indulged your ensuing indignance.

Ghanaian food, it turns out, is absolutely delicious. You’re not sure why they have your whiskey there, since it isn’t Ghanaian, but maybe it’s just that the restaurant is local. One of the guys from Seungwoo’s pickup footie team comes out from the kitchen to say hey and offers you both another round on him, so you’re pleasantly buzzed by the time the two of you exit into the warm evening.

You love the way urban places are at night, and you think Seungwoo must know it. You love the way the temperature mellows, the way all the street lamps and storefront signs create a comforting glow in the dark. People are still out, but with less of a hurry or end goal, enjoying the same thing you are.

Seungwoo ends up guiding you both to the waterfront to meander along the boardwalk. Things are alive out here, hopping with snack vendors and entertainers and game booths. Seungwoo offers to try and win you a prize at a game, something he knows you’ll roll your eyes at him for (when has he ever been known for gentlemanly chivalry?) and he laughs when you do just that.

You do indulge in a fortune teller together, just for kicks and giggles, and the woman reads your palms. You’re pretty sure she’s besotted with Seungwoo, because she says something generic about you and then says, “careful with this one. He’s trouble. The good kind” about Seungwoo, with a wink.

You cross your eyes at him when he waggles his eyebrows at you.

He catches you staring out at the water a few times before taking your hand and suggesting you both go down to the shoreline. You both step over a low-hanging chain holding a “Closed: No Visitors Allowed” sign on it and ditch your socks and shoes nearby, wandering barefoot in the sand.

Your whiskey buzz from before has worn off, but the warmth of it has lingered in your blood, kept everything around you lovely. Even Seungwoo. You find yourself staring at him as he scours the shoreline for skipping rocks. The reflection of the moon on the water lighting his face, the breeze off the water ruffling his hair, gives him an unfairly ethereal aura. Unfair because his demeanor is never, ever ethereal; why should he get to look the part?

He tries to teach you how to skip rocks, finding more underneath a large, empty fishing pier farther down the shoreline. You learn to copy his stance and the flick of his wrist perfectly, but nothing ever skips. You don’t like him besting you in things, so to distract him you grab the hem of your shirt and peel it up and over your head.

Seungwoo’s eyebrows shoot up into his hairline.

“Is it my birthday?” He teases, gaze trailing over your newly exposed skin.

You roll your eyes and try to ignore the way his gaze makes your skin feel hot. You feign nonchalance as you half-fold your shirt and set it aside to reach behind you and unclasp your bra. “I want to go skinny-dipping.”

“What, here? Now?” He glances up and down the shoreline, then above your heads at the silent fishing pier above you.

You smile and turn your back to him teasingly, nudging your bra straps off your shoulders and removing it. “Why not? Too scared to join me?”

“Could get caught.”

You grin at him over your shoulder. “Isn’t that part of the fun?”

“Your definition of fun is interesting,” he says, but he’s grinning, too.

You turn back to your task and laugh when you hear the rustle of his own clothing.

He’s done faster than you, not bothering to be neat and leaving his clothes haphazard on the sand. You turn and watch him wade into the water as you finish folding your jeans, silently admiring his back muscles and what little ass he has to speak of while he can’t see you doing it.

He turns back in waist-deep water when you start wading in after him. He watches you with lazy heat, gaze trickling down your body from head to toe with unashamed lust.

You keep wading and fold your arms across your chest, fully aware it makes your tits look good and pretending you have no idea. “Staring is rude.”

“Uh huh,” he says absently, staring anyway. You can feel his gaze like a hand on your skin, especially when he lingers below your navel.

You kick at the water and splash him. He coughs in surprise, hands lifting and wiping the water from his face up into his hair.

“Perv,” you say lightly, smile tugging at the corner of your mouth.

His grin is wolfish when you come to a stop in front of him.

“It was your idea to swim naked in public and I’m the perv?”

He makes a compelling argument, but you’ll never admit it, so you splash him again.

He laughs and reaches out lightning-fast to catch your wrist before you can splash him a third time, grinning when your attempts to pull it free go in vain.

“Easy, little firecracker,” he murmurs, wading backwards into deeper water, pulling you with him.

You splash him with your free hand, and he grins and ducks fully underwater, letting go of you entirely. A moment later, you shriek as a hand on your ankle yanks you under, too.

You emerge, spluttering, a few seconds later to a grinning Seungwoo, rivulets of water flowing from his hair.

“Not fair,” you protest.

“Cry about it,” he suggests, biting his lip and splashing you full in the face before diving away.

You give chase, the two of you splashing and giggling and swimming farther out underneath the pier. You end up piggybacking him when the water becomes too deep for you to stand upright, and his hands settle under your knees, thumbs rubbing little circles into your skin.

You hook your ankles together around his front, and they brush faintly against a little thatch of hair low on his belly, and a smooth hardness.

You grin and hide your face in the crook of his neck. “Isn’t the fear of getting caught being publicly indecent supposed to kill libido?”

He sighs as you begin sucking a mark into his skin.

“Tell that to the body part of yours radiating a thousand degrees against my tailbone right now,” he says.

He makes another compelling argument, but you once again don’t want to admit it, so you suck a little harder at the spot on his neck.

He manhandles you around before you can protest until you’re piggybacking him from the front. Even in the dark beneath the pier, you can make out the smile on his face, one that feels especially fond. You love it, and it also makes some feeling in your chest squirm a little, so you lean in and kiss him before you have to think much about it, before he can say something dumb and ruin it.

He sighs and runs his hands up your thighs and hips, wrapping his arms around you and pulling you firmly against him. It’s different to kiss him like this, your mouths slick from swimming, naked bodies weightless and brushing into each other with the gentle swell of the water. You could easily get addicted to it. He’s an infuriatingly good kisser, as always, no other way to describe it but as somehow kissing you with his whole body. Every inch of him is into you, invested in the teasing, openmouthed kisses he’s engulfing you in, and maybe you were thinking of getting him to do exactly this, and that’s why you’re hot and bothered.

You get so lost in the building heat of kissing him that you make a noise of surprise when your back bumps up against something. Seungwoo only kisses you harder, one hand leaving your back to brace against whatever you’re leaning against—one of the posts holding up the pier, you realize—and the other guiding you closer to him. He grinds his hips into the scorching warmth of yours, unhurried, the water making the glide smooth. You both groan into one another’s mouths at the feeling. Your fingernails instinctively dig into his shoulders, both for purchase and in appreciation for the slow, hard way he’s grinding just right along your clit.

His mouth leaves yours and begins sucking a path of leisurely, biting kisses along your jawline. One of his hands weaves into your hair, angling your head so he can continue trailing the wet kisses down your neck. You can hear the swell of your racing pulse in your ears, the way each breath you take comes a little quicker, a little shallower. Lust shimmers under your skin, lighting up under his other hand, now coasting stealthily down the front of your body.

You moan and thump your head back against the post when he cups you firmly between your legs. Fuck, you need this. He lifts his head and covers your mouth with his again, kissing the breath out of you until your head is spinning and your body is aching for more of him. His pace is still deliberate and measured, fingertips massaging slowly up and down the swollen, parted opening of your body. You wriggle your hips, working to get him to touch the places that yearn to be petted most.

His hand tightens in your hair, securing you in place. You feel him smile into your mouth before he nips at your lower lip.

“Be good and hold still,” he murmurs, lips trailing along the water-slick curve of your jaw and brushing over your ear, “or I’ll make you wait longer to get what you need.”

Ugh. You huff out an exasperated breath. He always does this, always ruins a perfectly nice thing by challenging you to “be good” in some annoyingly pliant way. Be good, hah. What if he just gave you what you wanted when you wanted it, for a change? Would it injure his ego that much?

You grin and squirm in his hold, trying to snap your legs shut, but he’s right between them and won’t budge. Determined now, you keep fidgeting against him, trying to get away, fighting not to give him the satisfaction of teasing you. He lets go of your hair and grabs at your hip, trying to keep you in place, but the slippery nature of being submerged in water works against him and you slip free. You dive aside with a laugh, Seungwoo hot on your tail.

The two of you wrestle with one another, the water thrashing into choppy, bubbly little waves around you. Your mistake is letting him corral you into deeper water, where you don’t have the leverage of the ground. After another brief struggle, Seungwoo succeeds in pinning your arms immobile behind you, your back to his front. You strain your legs for the ground, pointing your toes and slicing them through the water below for purchase, but you can’t find it. In the end, you have to settle your feet against his shins just to keep your chin above the water.

Seungwoo is panting hard but grinning in triumph against your temple. He tsks at you.

“All that just for wanting to give you a nicer orgasm,” he says. “Amazing we didn’t attract any attention.”

Your body betrays you, thrilling back to life when his hand not securing you in place slides down your front again.

You gasp wildly, nearly choking on the water around you, when his fingers part you with ease and two of them sink inside you all the way to the knuckle.

Seungwoo’s smirk drifts from your temple to the shell of your ear. “Better keep quiet or someone might hear.”

You open your mouth to tell him just what you’d make them hear, just as his fingers crook inside of you roughly, right into a spot so sensitive you can’t think straight. You make a choked, gurgling noise, panting and fighting to keep your wits about you as he keeps massaging his fingertips right into that spot.

He chuckles, sucking a kiss to your earlobe, before snapping his wrist and fucking his fingers into you sharply. You moan out, conflicted between the desire to ruin his plans and the desire for him, for this. You try experimentally to wriggle away from him, failing.

“Mmmm,” he coos, building a steady but harsh pace. “Can’t move. Can’t struggle. So good and obedient for me.”

Horny rage floods your mind at “obedient”. How dare he? You lift a foot away from his leg to kick him, but you only lose your balance and slip sideways. His hand stays exactly where it is, meaning you fall hard into the thrust of his fingers. A desperate moan punches out of your chest against your will.

He makes it worse and grinds his palm hard into your clit, sparks of pleasure threatening to weaken your muscles.

“If you wanted it harder you could’ve asked,” Seungwoo purrs, and you can hear his grin.

“Oh f-fuck you—ah!”

You scramble to re-balance your feet against his shins as he picks up a harder pace. God. Fuck. Every rough thrust of his fingers is delicious, maddening. You can hear yourself laboring for breath over the gentle lap of the water, and then, worse—the distant murmur of voices.

Seungwoo finally releases your arms and covers your mouth, tilting your chin up an inch. You grasp up at his shoulders to keep yourself upright in the water as he takes another step deeper.

He presses your body firmly back against his, mouth at your ear again.

“Keep quiet unless you want them to hear how I make you come.”

And then he starts fingerfucking you harder than before. Your eyes roll back into your head; holy shit, that’s perfect, that’s so infuriatingly perfect. Fuck, it’s not fair. Footsteps continue closer from the shore end of the pier, and you bite down hard on your tongue to stifle all the pitiful noises you want to make. God, you want to be mad at him for this, but the threat of being discovered is only sending a spike of heat down your spine.

Seungwoo, for the brutal pace he’s setting, is keeping surprisingly quiet. Being further submerged in the water has kept any movement of his arm from making splashes. This hardly seems fair. Too easy for him. You let go of one of his shoulders and fumble behind you, down low on his torso, towards the solid protrusion pressed against your back.

You hear Seungwoo’s breath stutter as you wrap your hand around him and pump, attempting to keep pace with how his fingers are drilling into you. He thrusts sharply into that little sensitive patch inside of you in warning. You work desperately to keep pumping even as the pleasure fogs your mind. He startles you and bites down hard on your neck beneath your ear, muffling the quietest of moans into your skin.

The footsteps, as well as muffled voices, linger in place from down the pier. Your mind feels hazy, too many things to focus on at once—keeping yourself above water, keeping yourself quiet, despite your neck slowly bruising under Seungwoo’s mouth, your hand faltering over his cock, your intimate muscles gradually clamping into a vise around his unrelenting fingers. It’s so good, everything feels so good, he’s hitting the perfect spot over and over again just as rough as you like it, and fire is beginning to creep up the backs of your legs and into your stomach, euphoric heat stoking into a full flame, it’s perfect, just like that, right there—

You don’t realize he’s yanked his hand out from between your legs until it’s too late. You gape, entire body wracked with orgasmic shudders as you clamp down and down and down on nothing, nothing at all. Holy shit. Fuck. You gasp as quietly as you can for air, desire aching inside of you in unfulfilled disappointment. As the haze of lust slowly begins to dissipate, a whole different kind of fire begins to burn in your gut. Dipping your face down into the water, you scream in utter rage.

You feel Seungwoo smile against your neck.

The voices and the footsteps have retreated back down the pier and into the night. For a long moment, the two of you float there together, catching your breath.

Seungwoo speaks up first, letting go of you.

“Should’ve listened and let me give you the nice orgasm, huh?”

You turn to him, incredulous, and see the bastard grinning.

“I,” you say, with surprisingly even calmness, “am going to fucking kill you for that.”

The water is throwing little sparkles into his eyes, gleaming in amusement.

“Well…to kill me, you’d have to catch me first.”

And then his hands come down on your shoulders, dunking you beneath the surface.

In the tranquil quiet under the water, you take a moment to plot his demise. When your head breaks the surface again, he’s already swimming for shore. You give chase, and despite your righteous indignation at the ruined orgasm, you feel yourself grin.

As much as you hate to admit it…Han Seungwoo is knocking it out of the park with this date. And you’re going to make him pay for it.