#The context of the scene is what does it so I always want to send screensots to my sister but can't because like yeah it's funny but it's

[ironunderstands]

Here’s my comparison of Acheron, Aventurine and Ratio that I made in 2.1 which I forgot to upload here lol, I would like you to know my thoughts then because OH BOY HAS THIS AGED WELL

Aventurine, Acheron, Ratio and what the Nihility means to them

(Inspired by a convo I had with @aoxizu on Tumblr!)

The ending scene of the 2.1 update (the one featuring the black hole) is perhaps one of my favorite in all of fiction. I genuinely adore the way it was done and what it says about both the characters and life itself. This game has THEMES and by god did they come through then. So, I want to go over why I love it so much, and why it’s such a vital moment for Acheron, Aventurine and Ratios characters.

First, some context. Prior to Aventurine’s and Acheron’s conversation, Aventurine was taking the riskiest gamble of his life. Prior to the confrontation between him, Acheron and the Astral Express, Aventurine set up a plan to try and get to the secret at the heart of Penacony, as well as provide a ruse for Topaz and Jade to do, well whatever they planned on doing, the ending scene says they came there to “harvest”, so in 2.2 I assume we will find out what exactly that entails.

In order for this plan to work, Aventurine needed his cornerstone and to trick Sunday, so pre-2.0 he went to Dr. Ratio to include him in this plan, and set up a fake betrayal to fool Sunday and allow him to keep the Aventurine stone, with the Jade and Topaz stones also being acquired pre-Penacony. We know this because of Aventurine’s conversation with Topaz post 1.4 Belabog mission in which he requests her help in Penacony, something which we didn’t get confirmation on whether or not she accepted until 2.1, in which it’s revealed that one of the Cornerstones in the box is Topaz, meaning when they got confiscated in 2.0 she had already accepted his offer (we can assume a similar situation for Jade). 

Essentially, everything had been going according to plan for IPC (even if Aventurine was absolutely not having a fun time during it), Ratio even says as much, stating that the IPC is pleased to hear of his death sentence, so that part of the confrontation was already predetermined. This leaves Aventurine with one final gamble, hoping the Astral Express and Acheron take the bait, and that they will try and stop him from destroying the entire dreamscape, which if Acheron acts on it, he could entire the true dreamscape to find the truth, as only an emanator could break through the power of the harmony. 

Luckily for Aventurine, the gamble pays off and Aventurine does indeed draw her blade, both stopping him and sending them both into another plane entirely, it’s there in which one if my favorite scenes in fiction ever occurs. 

You see, even if Aventurine planned this all from the start, he hasn’t exactly been having a fun time while doing it. Being sentenced to death and then slowly hallucinating on Harmony sh1t until the manifestations of your past self and your present doubt and insecurities come to haunt you isn’t exactly fun for anyone, especially Aventurine. 1) Because his backstory is horrifically tragic and being faced with a reminder that you will never feel secure or valued or truly happy would be enough to erode away the psyche of anyone 2) A version of himself which claims to be his future, but is more like a personification of how much Aventurine doubts and hates himself. It’s even more telling that this isn’t the first time he has talked to this version of him, in fact it saved his life several times, meaning one of Aventurine’s driving motivations is his own self loathing. 

A trait that on the surface you don’t think he would have, Aventurine plays the role of the confident, unflappable gambler who always wins, when in reality his other hand is under the table, clutching his chips for dear life (something I quite literally paraphrased from the game). 

Therefore, going into this conversation, Aventurine is more relieved than anything, yet another one of his gambles paid off, but now he will have to see how to go from there, and that’s when Acheron’s advice comes in. She’s not stupid, and immediately recognizes that he won (or at least got what she wanted), and that killing him is meaningless, it’s not his time yet. However, what Aventurine is really focused on is the fact that out of all the emanators he could have come across, the one he faces now is an emanator of nihility.

And well, in the face of overwhelming nihility, one’s own value comes into question yet again, and that’s something Aventurine doesn’t even need the aeon for to ask. So, he talks to Acheron, as IX isn’t exactly going to answer, but she might know. Now, I’m just going to lay out the dialogue (then explain it obviously) because it’s genuinely amazing. 

Aventurine starts out by asking Acheron if she is an emanator of nihility, and I find her response to be really interesting. She doesn’t view herself as someone chosen by IX, as nihilism (the feeling of meaningless) envelops everyone equally, but she has simply walked in their shadow longer, tainted on the feeling. This leads Aventurine to question if this is the end, as if life has lost all meaning, in the face of overwhelming nihility, would that mean he’s dead?

Luckily Acheron immediately disagrees, stating that this is merely a manifestation of IX, not the end (he’s not dead guys idk how anyone can think that). However Aventurine still questions if his death has been determined, but Acheron doesn’t promise it. She mulls over his plan and and Aventurine asks her why she thinks he did it, and Acheron believes it was to find a secret deeper than the dream “deaths: the Real Penacony. He wonders how she found out, and Acheron says it’s the trailblazer’s identity which allowed her (and Aventurine) to come to this conclusion (we don’t yet know how this happened for either of them yet, but 2.2 should give answers).

They continue, Aventurine reveals that he believes the barrier the family built using the power of the harmony was not just to keep death out but the nightmare that is the real dreamscape. That the Memory Zone is simply a vast island built atop a violent ocean with the barrier keeping whatever nightmarish secrets from washing ashore. In order to break through this barrier and find the real dreamscape, which is why he kept killing himself earlier in the dream, but to no  avail. When Sparkle gave him the hint, he realized it was referring to Firefly, someone who had seen the other side and survived it, even if she was unable to let others know if it. It wasn’t proof of the families wrongdoing, but it was suspicious enough for him to try and get Acheron to kill him, rather than try and find the Meme to recreate Firefly’s death. 

Acheron points out just how insane this plan was, that if he hadn’t gotten lucky and crossed path with her, it wouldn’t have succeeded. Then, she commends him for playing it perfectly, pitting her perfectly against him and creating a plan that would be beneficial for the IPC no matter what happened, as even if he dies that would be great leverage. However, Aventurine disagrees with that last point, he truly can’t guarantee the IPCs success or even his own survival, that if she hadn’t drawn her blade it would have all be pointless. 

She’s doesn’t let him continue along this line of thought, what-ifs are pointless and he earned his ticket to the dreamscape. What matters now is what happens next, and Acheron asks him if he can return from the abyss (Childe reference?), but more importantly, she questioned if he has ever wavered, as even a gamble as seemingly insane as the one Aventurine just did seems to have not shaken him (from her POV, we know how terrified Aven was but everyone else minus maybe Ratio does). 

Aventurine tells her perhaps the most fundamental aspect of his character; he gambles simply because he has no other choice, betting on everything because he has nothing else to lose. Acheron tells him to wake up from this “dream” (aka find the true dreamscape), and she presumably goes to leave.

However (and this is my favorite part of the scene), he asks her one more question before she leaves, thinking she might know the answer as a pathstrider of nihility, “Why are we born in this world if it’s just to die?”

Her response is the best possible way you could answer this question. Acheron is an emanator of nihility, but she doesn’t think life is meaningless. The feeling of emptiness and pointlessness envelops everyone equally and that’s exactly why the nihility is pointless. It doesn’t matter that nothing matters, and we aren’t born into this world just to die. 

Aventurine still worries though, after all if the dice of fate will always roll to the same conclusion, then destiny is predetermined, so why struggle? Why does it matter?

Her answer again is not one he would expect, but one that absolutely makes sense. Acheron says the answer has been with Aventurine throughout his entire life and journey on Penacony, and that he’s already somewhat realized it. Aventurine said himself that sleep is a rehearsal of death, but people aren’t ready to welcome death, which is why they sleep to get a taste of it. Sleep is much like death, a realm of unreality in which anything might be possible within the dreams that define its existence. Death itself is an unreality, and nobody truly knows what it’s like to die, but dreams are the closest we might ever get before the end. Like Acheron says, in a way, dreams are just a preparation for death, a practice before it can be welcomed. 

However, much like how dreams can contain anything, even if we cannot choose to experience them or not, life itself is full of choices, regardless of if the ending is determined or not. Acheron understands that there are an infinite amount of things people cannot change before the end, but there are choices you can make up until it. Death is inevitable, but the life you live before it isn’t. This is what the words in red mean, both here and in my opinion, in general. 

Acheron reminds the trailblazer to make the right choice when time comes for it, in our first meeting with her. However, I don’t think the path we choose matters, but rather the the fact that we chose at all. Now the next paragraph will include a minor discussion of 2.2 leaks, so skip to the next slide if you don’t want to hear it. 

Sunday is getting a bossfight in 2.2, and it’s highly theorized that he works/believes in Ena the Order, especially because it looks like it’s their hand he’s touching in that one animation of the bossfight. Now here’s the thing, Order as a concept Chooses For You. I think the trailblazer making a decision is the thing that will save them and the rest of the gang, as within the face of an entity defined by limiting choice and free will, choosing to well, choose will save them (us?) and perhaps be the thing that gets the trailblazer acknowledged by the Harmony, a concept greater than Order. 

Anyways, after she says that, Acheron leaves Aventurine, saying the answer to his question was from his friend.

And Aventurine pulls out the vial from Dr. Ratio

The vial telling him that the only impossible thing in the dreamscape is dormancy (meaning the secrets from before are destined to rise and destroy the “island” that is Penacony.

The vial telling him to stay alive and wishing him the best of luck, which in the Chinese version is: 

Ratio answered both of Aventurine’s questions. The physical one, the one that pertains to Aventurines goals in Penacony, informing him of a vital aspect of the dreamscape that will help him win his gamble. But more importantly, he also answered Aventurine’s emotional one. What is the point of living? There is no real deeper meaning but to stay alive, survive and keep on living, because at the end of the day, that’s the only choice Aventurine can make, and that’s the one Ratio wants him to make.

Ratio Gives Aventurine A Reason To Live. 

Aventurine says that he has nothing left, his family is gone and he has nobody and nothing to fall back on which is why he gambles. But Acheron proves him wrong, he isn’t alone, she calls Ratio his “friend”, says that he’s the solution to his doubt. Someone caring about Aventurine is what saves his life, he walks into the massive black hole unafraid not because he holds some secret power or technique or trick, but because someone cares about him, and that someone taught him that caring about himself is enough. Aventurine didn’t need the power of an emanator to survive the true dreamscape, he only needed a friend, and the will to keep going that he realized from them. 

This is the true meaning of nihility, not that  Aventurine says that he has nothing left, his family is gone and he has nobody and nothing to fall back on which is why he gambles. But Acheron proves him wrong, he isn’t alone, she calls Ratio his “friend”, says that he’s the solution to his doubt. Someone caring about Aventurine is what saves his life, he walks into the massive black hole unafraid not because he holds some secret power or technique or trick, but because someone cares about him, and that someone taught him that caring about himself is enough. Aventurine didn’t need the power of an emanator to survive the true dreamscape, he only needed a friend, and the will to keep going that he realized from them. the universe is meaningless, but that regardless of if it has one or not, it doesn’t matter. It’s this realization that saves Acheron from losing herself like other emanators, it’s this realization that allows Aventurine to cross the event horizon of that manifestation of IX, and it’s this realization that I believe is why Dr. Ratio was never acknowledged by Nous: he was already treading the path of nihility without even realizing it. 

Now this is where my conversation with @aoxizu comes in, and I’m just gonna paste directly what they said because I think it’s amazing and everyone should read it, more importantly it’s what inspired this slideshow in the first place.

Ratio tells Aventurine to live despite everything because that’s the only thing he can do. It doesn’t matter how absurd life is, or how meaningless it all seems, choose to live anyways, because all you have are choices, and it doesn’t matter if they lead to some grand outcome or future or whatnot. To Ratio, life doesn’t, and shouldn’t care about that. Existence doesn’t need to make sense to be worth it, and that’s a sentiment both me, the characters and the og poster share.

Acheron is a lot like Ratio, she chooses to live despite having discovered the meaninglessness of the universe. In an existence seemingly black and white she chooses to paint the world red with her choices, accepting its reality and choosing to forge her own path rather than succumb to the madness. That’s why she says in her trailer, “there is no other choice but to move forward” and that’s because there really is no other choice, the universe doesn’t have some grand plan for anyone and you can’t turn back time to change anything, so all you can do is move forward.

My contribution! I’ve already kinda started but I do want to talk about how Ratio could be treading the path of nihility, but I’ll let this amazing post finish.

So yeah, amazing post, and I don’t think I could reword what they said in a better way than they did. Bringing up the philosophical aspects of this scene makes me really happy because they are so prominent, but most people aren’t really aware enough to notice. Absurdism is one of the driving inspirations behind the dreamscape, and it’s nice to see someone else besides you (see: my slideshow about Penacony and its American influences for an elaboration on this) bring it up. Honestly I think that philosophy fits Ratio far better than any of the Ancient Greek stuff you try to slap on him. Sure he obviously has the inspirations, but he’s closer in spirit to philosophers from the 1700s to now than them, a reinterpretation of Greek scholars rather than a copy of them. 

And this is where my idea that Ratio is a pathstrider of nihility (and he doesn’t even know it yet) comes in. He doesn’t view knowledge in the same way that pathstriders of Erudition do; knowledge for knowledges sake has never been something Ratio has cared about. Knowledge means something to Ratio because it allows people to better themselves, not because it has some sort of inherent value. That’s why he’s so determined to spread it, he wants everyone to reach their fullest potential, and dedicates his life to doing so. Regardless of if the universe has meaning or not, that doesn’t mean people can’t try and live their best lives, and that’s the philosophy Ratio truly believes in.

Moreover, this is why it’s so meaningful that Ratio is the one to help Aventurine, he’s teaching him something Ratio himself learned long ago when he got rejected by the Genius Society. Despite all of Ratio’s intellect and qualifications, he will never be good enough for them because he simply doesn’t view knowledge in the way they do. But instead of this meaninglessness (nihility) consuming him, Ratio dedicated his life to doing what brought him meaning and validation rather than searching for some hidden answers from the universe (specifically Nous).

And it’s not like he just accepted it happily. Ratio still wants their acknowledgement, and it still hurt (and hurts) him a lot to not have it, which is why I think he unknowingly strides the path of nihility. To Ratio, his view on knowledge is simply how knowledge is, and the fact that Nous will never perceive it in that way because his philosophy is more nihilistic than it is erudite is something Ratio might never come to terms with. But that’s ok. The point is that it’s ok, Ratio doesn’t need to be acknowledged or to understand the truth of the universe to be happy or do well for himself. Our universe might mean nothing and yeah that can and will suck, but existence is more valuable than some grand cosmic plan, and even if you don’t realize it, choosing to live is enough.

Continually, this reminds me of the conversation Aventurine had with his hallucination self, in which he told real Aventurine that him and Ratio are very similar. In a way, they are, both struggling to find meaning in their lives, and Ratio helps Aventurine find meaning in his without really even knowing how. Sure the note was meant to keep Aventurine going, but Ratio caused Aventurine to come to a conclusion that probably won’t find Ratio for a while. He helped Aventurine overcome nihility without even knowing it, without Ratio even realizing that THAT is the thing he has been struggling with, and the path he has been walking the whole time.

I really hope we get to see Ratio again, and at the very least I want a story quest for him because I want to analyze his brain under a microscope. Him and Acheron need to meet asap I want more Ratio content idc if everyone else in the fandom hates him I love him and he’s my pookie bear and I will write 3039493494 things about him when it comes to me UGHHHH. Anyways I didn’t know how end this so this is the ending yaaayyy! I hope you liked it and if you have any thoughts let me know! 

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Og post over! That was a long ass read and past me was absolutely cooking up a storm, oh god did this age well and I was right about or close to right about a lot of shit haha. Anyways I really do hope you enjoyed reading this, and this will hopefully provide some needed context for my next posts on this subject. Also feel free to repost this onto other sites I’m very proud of it

[ziracona]

Every single thing Chase writes for Two-Face is the funniest thing on the planet

[moonrisecoeur]

Ur the best sub Leon writer soooo… idk if you seen these but ppl treat las plagas parasite as sex pollen 😭 and I’m so here for it. Concept : re4 leon infected by the parasite OK but he starts out very agressive but ofc he’s a sub so he does whatever reader wants in order to yk… achieve the goal of the parasite (breeding 😔 who said that? Not me) And pls make the reader mean, I love mean femdoms sm, they are chefs kiss. If you need more clarification post it I’ll send another one idk but I’m just seeing what YOU come up with. LOVE UR WRITING btw I love how it’s pretty in character tbh cuz I read ur bully Leon one and I was like “yeah fr like he’s too caring to be a bully 💀”

OMG WAIT MY DUMBASS FORGOT TO ADD: you said smth so mean to him that he came too early. He was so sorry for coming early and the mess he made in you But then he continued to keep going trying to pump more- OK SORRY

the BEST?? idk about that but i shall take ur compliment and deliver to you only my best work so thank u bestie i appreciate it sm !! ^-^

las plagas is crazy cuz like the black veins, the loss of control with your physical body, the pain it causes… that’s literally so hot. leon was so fuckable all of re4 but especially in the scenes where his body is being controlled that man is SCRUMPTIOUS

also just so you know. the veins on his dick are black as well ♡

no pronouns mentioned, afab parts mentioned, plaga leon has to be a top im sorry (technically in straight relationships men are always topping unless u count pegging BUT in this context i mean he’s a top more like ‘he’s a sub but he’ll fuck u stupid’ like that’s the vibe)

you spot his blonde hair from across the hall, running over to him excitedly. thank god you found him.

“leon!” you call out, grabbing the attention of the man in question, as you catch up to him. finally finding him in this nightmarish place after getting separated was the best thing possible, “holy crap, i’m so- i’m so glad you’re okay— woah, what… what happened to you?”

he takes a cautious step back, still seemingly holding a little bit of control over his body, “they said it was a gift in my…. my blood… don’t know what the fuck that was about..”

you take a step forward, reaching out your hand to touch his face, fingers tracing the black lines that were once veins invisible to the naked eye. but he stops you, his hand roughly grabbing your wrist, “don’t.”

“don’t… what?” you ask nervously, shoulders slumped.

“you need to… stay away from me,” he groans from pain, and you’re too worried to listen to his words, “stop, get away from me, you— i could hurt you! i don’t want to hurt you…”

but you don’t listen to him, betraying his wishes by shaking off his grip and reaching your hand out again. he can’t try to stop you this time. he moans, actually moans, when your fingertips touch his face, caressing him softly.

“really? it’s that good?” you ask with a small smirk on your face. leon thinks he could die.

“f-fuck…” he mumbles, finally coming closer to you. his hands wrap around your waist as he leans in for a kiss that you’re not ready for, and you both stumble backwards while you try to ground yourself.

he’s getting rough, aggressive, and you need to push back a little or else he’ll consume you entirely. not that you’d mind.

“leon, ease up,” you whisper, pushing him back slightly, and when a growl escapes his throat, you know he’s clearly not in any state to listen, “leon.”

he annoyedly makes eye contact with you, trying his best to listen to what you’re about to say. he is trying, and that’s the worst part. this is him at his most gentle, most restrained.

“you need to listen to me, okay? can you do that?” you ask softly, hand against his chest to keep him from diving too deep into you, and pressing a kiss to his lips. it’s softer. he moans into your mouth needily, but you don’t let him get rough. instead you sweetly get the taste of him. sure, it’s not a delicious taste, but he’s a delicious experience.

you enjoy the way he’s trying so intensely to control and contain himself, for your sake. he knows what you want from him is not his full fledged desires out in the open, completely unchecked.

when you pull away, he looks wrecked already, “please, you can’t do this to me, not if you’re just going to walk away and leave me desperate.”

part of you wants to reassure him. i’m not going to leave you. i would never abandon you when you need me most. but the other part just wants to ravage him, take all of him for yourself, leave nothing of him left but the perfection you’ve created. perfection in your eyes. maybe he’s not the only one infected with some kind of tainted desire.

instead, to accomplish both, you kiss him again, letting your own intensity and desire take over, potentially overpowering his. he whimpers, his shaky hands holding your hips for stability. he’s not being grossly possessive and rough like before. he’s softer now, pliable.

when you pull away, you whisper, “we need to get somewhere safe.”

“wha… what?”

“i need to take my time with you, and we’re not safe out in the open like this…” you say, leaning in to press a kiss to that sweet spot right below his ear. it’s so cute how truly weak leon is right now. sure, that’s always been his weakness, but it’s elevated multiple times over by this parasite in his blood. you have half the mind to thank that weird cult.

when you find a safe room, you’re immediately back on him, pushing him against the wall, enjoying the way he whimpers as you kiss him, his need for you multiplying by the minute.

“please, please, i need you, i need you so fucking bad, please, i need to take you, need to make you mine, need to—”

“shut up,” you groan, fingers roughly grabbing his jaw, pushing his head back and away from you, “you’re going to be good, or you won’t get what you want. i don’t care how badly you fucking need me, you’re going to be patient. you’re going to be nice and obedient or you’ll get nothing from me. and that little parasite inside of you is horrified at the idea that you won’t get to fuck my pretty pussy, hm?”

he looks pathetic, moaning like a whore at just some words, but it’s the way you say them, the way you say them, that kills him. he eventually calms himself down enough to nod with his eyes shut tightly, “i’ll do whatever you say. you know that.”

“lay down on the floor,” you command, almost growling back at him, and he opens his eyes in surprise.

“what?”

“you heard me. on the ground, beneath me, right now, leon,” your eyes narrow at him, enjoying the way he weakly sinks to his knees before sitting down completely and laying back.

“like this..?” he asks, confused. he doesn’t know what’s about to happen, and that excites him immensely.

you take off your belt with all your utility tools and your jeans along with it. then finally, your underwear. he looks up at you with wide, delicious eyes.

he asks so sweetly, even though he knows the answer, “are you… are you gonna make me..?”

“yeah, you are. i’m going to sit down on your pretty, pretty face and you’re going to enjoy every second of being beneath me, where you belong, servicing me, and making me cum.”

his heart skips a beat at the thought of belonging beneath you, “yeah, fuck, okay—”

“—and you’re not going to fucking talk until i cum, got it?”

he nods, and once you sit down upon your throne, he gets right to work. he laps up the fluids of your cunt like a dog, working tirelessly, sucking on your clit and tongue fucking you. this is his place. he deserves nothing more than to be here with you, caving to your every desire even if all of his thoughts include breeding you and getting you pregnant with his babies. he’d do anything you asked if he could just have that.

he’d be at your service, at your mercy, until you chose to give him what he wanted.

but he makes you cum so fucking hard that it’s impossible to not give him what he wants, especially when rough hands grab onto your thighs as you’re cumming and he’s still giving you the head of your life through your orgasm. he grabs you just to stabilize you, but also to be possessive.

he can’t help how bad he’s gotten about jealousy and possessiveness with this parasite. he’s never been the jealous boyfriend, knowing you could hold your own and you’re loyal and stuff, but something about the way he looks at you now is different. it’s deep and primal. he looks at you like he needs to have you, and no one else can.

it’s insanely hot, but it’s also inconceivable how uncontrollable those urges are. leon has good self control, and you notice it in how he’s acting. again, this is him at his most restrained. he’s trying to keep himself from pouncing on you, taking everything he wants from you because he knows you don’t want that.

somewhere deep inside of him, he’s still himself, still that awkward and dorky guy that just wants to love you and give you everything you want. you wouldn’t want that.

when you roll off of him, laying down next to him to give yourself a moment to recover, you press a kiss to his shoulder, a sign that it’s an act, your harshness isn’t real. he returns the gesture by kissing the top of your head. a sign that he acknowledges your motives.

“please,” he whimpers suddenly, startling you out of your daze as his hand caresses your back softly, “i’ll let you control everything, you can do whatever you want with me, but fucking please, i’m so desperate to put my cock inside of your pussy, baby. i can’t think straight, and i’m trying so damn hard to control myself but i won’t be able to much longer…”

“yeah? you wanna put your cock inside of me? feel it throb inside the wetness and warmth of my cunt, fill me up with—”

he cuts you off with a loud moan, his hands grasping onto you and his eyes shutting tightly at the thought of such pleasure. he looks wrecked at the mere mention of cumming inside of you. you obviously have to capitalize on this fact.

“oh? so it’s the filling me up part, isn’t it? the ‘gift’ you have makes you really want to cum inside me, hm?” you say, smirking cruelly at him, watching his resolve crumble as he moans shamelessly, “do you want… breed me, leon?”

he gasps, breathing heavily. he’s incredibly wound up, and now you know the real reason he’s insatiable and uncontrollable, “f-fuck, i— it’s not that i want to, it’s that i need to… i need to fuck you and breed you so damn bad, i—”

you cover his mouth with the palm of your hand, enjoying the way he groan in pleasure when you straddle him. god, he’s not even inside of you, but he looks fucked out. he looks he’s about to burst already.

“god, you’re so fucking desperate,” you mumble to him, leaning in closer to whisper to him despite having him muzzled with your hand. not that he’d ever hurt you, he would never even imagine it, “you’re going to fuck me stupid, okay? you’re going to fuck me until my legs go numb and i can’t feel anything but you… and only when i tell you you can, you’ll breed me, fuck your cum even deeper into me and not let any of it escape. understood?”

he breathes shakily, not responding. obviously you forgot you have your hand over his mouth. when you take it off, he nervously says, “got it. i’ll… i’ll be good. i’ll make you feel so good.”

your voice is dark, cruel, full of malicious intent, “you fucking better, or i won’t let you cum. you’ll get to fuck me, sure, but i won’t ever give you the satisfying orgasm your body is desperately aching for. you won’t get to fill me up, and all you’ll have left to fuck for your little orgasm is your hand.”

his heart aches. the idea of disappointing you makes him feel a physical pit of nervousness in his stomach, the same ones he felt when he was more like himself. he just wants to feel like himself again.

“g-got it,” he whimpers. you get off of him, and he’s got you pinned immediately, gently resting you against the ground he was previously laying on. the image of you beneath him has him breathless. he feels like he’s worshipping a god with every move he makes.

he slides his cock into you, groaning at how easy it is, how wet you are. he bottoms out almost immediately, enjoying the way your body wraps around him in almost every sense. he silently adores you. he loves that you want him, crave him just like he craves you. that underneath all of your dominance, you’re his lover too.

fuck, he’s starting to feel possessive again. he beings to thrust into you, his body moving faster than either of you can handle, but you keep your cool better than he does.

“don’t let yourself start to think you’re in control,” you murmur, leaning up to press your lips to his shoulder, baring your teeth but not hard enough to draw blood. just enough to remind him of his place, “you belong to me. not the other way around, got it?” you growl into his ear.

he can’t even respond, too enraptured by your body and the feeling of your control over him leaving him a shuddering mess.

and you can’t even deny it. he’s putting in the work, thumb playing your with your clit just like how he knows you like, and clearly he’s getting the results he’s looking for. his body comes closer to the edge sooner than he’d like, but he tries to stave it off, for your sake.

still leaning into him, you whisper in your darkest voice, “maybe i should leave you like this, so you can stay this desperate… for me. i would try and cure you, but… not sure if i really care anymore.”

he shudders, voice giving out on him as he tries to plead with you. he cums without warning, obviously his body did it without the consent and go-ahead of his conscious mind. he already looks embarrassed at cumming without your permission. you don’t really have the mind to care right now, but you remember it for.. later.

“i’m gonna cum, fuck, leon, give it to me, give in to your cravings, your desires, your needs,” you moan in his ear, desperate for him, only him, and he’s yours, he’s all yours, it’s all he’s ever been and all he’ll ever be. he keep fucking you even after cumming, keeping you filled up, pushing it deeper, “make me yours.”

and he has no choice but to comply.

[iwritenarrativesandstuff]

Q's Relevance and Parallels to Double Black

I had a sudden brainwave of thoughts (read: I only got three hours of sleep last night) and needed to share. I've thought this for awhile but I really think Q will be returning to the series at some point.

First of all, there's just too much ambiguity there and I want to know more about Q in general. What happened to Q to spawn an ability like that? Why does Dazai speak about them like they're the devil incarnate? What was the incident that led to so many Mafia deaths in an effort to lock Q up? Is there any significance to Q's unusual eyes (remember that most characters tend to have fairly normal eyes, and this is a series where the eyes carry symbolic weight)? What's with Q being strung up in this position that is eerily similar to a crucifixion, shortly before Steinbeck has a conversation about God existing but not loving them?

There's a lot there. I've spoken about this before in the meta I did about Dazai's change in approach after the Q chapter, which was genuinely an unexpected event he did not anticipate. But there's something fascinating about the way Chuuya reacts to Q as well. In fact, both Dazai and Chuuya are almost uncharacteristically murderous towards this kid, and that's real interesting, seeing as many aspects of Q mirror aspects of their younger selves.

Now I understand you might be thinking: uncharacteristically murderous? Story, they have both literally killed many, many people before. Yes, but context is important here.

Dazai doesn't have strong violent urges - not even in the Mafia, where he was considered terrifying more so due to his apathy in killing than anything. I can't remember a scene where Dazai is described as radiating bloodlust like Kyouka or Mori. Dazai is scary because of his indifferent hollowness at his worst points. Odasaku was described similarly in Untold Origins - there was no real desire to kill, just a listless cold follow-through. Dazai's sadistic methods, brought up by Higuchi in Chapter 25, are acknowledged as a means to an end, a method, not something done out of any strong desire or enjoyment. So when Dazai makes death threats or appears visibly angered - that's something worth taking note of. For him to make a promise to Q to pluck out their heart - holy shit. That is not typical Dazai behaviour. He doesn't even make that kind of threat towards Fyodor. Whatever happened in the past clearly shook him, enough for this moment to change his approach in the series and send him back to using darker methods again.

As for Chuuya, while he has and does kill quite readily, this is mostly in the heat of a fight. For him to give the go-ahead for murdering an unconscious child - it's unusually cold-blooded for him, and I can't think of another instance where he's down with lethal intent outside of combat and direct orders. I've seen some people talk about his reaction to Dazai suggesting he'll kill Q as proof that he's gotten darker since we saw him last in Stormbringer, from someone who would plead for the lives of the Sheep to be spared ("They're just kids") to being ready and willing to kill a defenseless child. While I think it's likely true that he's gone darker since that point - Chuuya appears to be more cynical in the present as well as having darker eyes with a smaller central pinprick of light than in Fifteen and Stormbringer - that's not the only thing going on here.

Thing is, Chuuya has always been fairly ruthless. He’s a very vengeance oriented character, right down to his fighting style (rebounding attacks and bullets). Hurt him or someone he cares about and he hurts back - and that threat will be destroyed. Parallel to this is how he is seemingly unable to turn his back on people who have helped him. Help him and he will remain loyal and protective even if that person goes on to stab him in the back. He has a very “give and take” mentality. Chuuya operates on the reciprocity principle.

So, about Q, here’s the thing: Q is a part of the Mafia, that's true. But Q has never helped them, only hurt indiscriminately. Mafia philosophy says “protect your own and follow the boss' wishes no matter what”. But Chuuya’s philosophy is saying “neutralize the threat”. And interestingly, Chuuya’s philosophy won here. If Dazai had've killed Q, Chuuya would’ve defied Mori’s orders in favour of his own judgement, which is extra intriguing because it emphasizes Chuuya’s loyalty to the people within the Mafia, not the Mafia as an organization itself. This is in full contrast to people like Tachihara and Hirotsu, who prioritize the organization and orders above all.

And about Q being a child: I don’t think this is such a big change in his character if I'm being honest. Chuuya knows full well how dangerous a child can be - he was that dangerous child. People underestimated him as a teenager and paid for it dearly; do you really think he'd make that same mistake? He also has a very warped view on the responsibilities and ways a child should be treated… while I do believe he probably is protective of those younger than him, he also equally understands that a child can be just as much of a threat as anyone else. For Chuuya, it’s always a matter of what wins out: the person or the threat? In this case, it was the latter.

The thing is, it's interesting the way they react when you look at the way Q eerily parallels aspects of their younger selves - as well as some things that carry over to the present.

Dazai and Q share central themes of control.

Q's mind control ability is actually referenced by Dazai as being essentially the worst kind of ability there is, and I know I've mentioned before how he seems to react poorly to those people who attempt to mentally control others, placing them on a heightened level of danger (think Fyodor, Mori). I don't think I need to get into Dazai's control freak tendencies - and what's more, after Q's introduction, after he says that mind control is the worst kind of ability there is - he ramps up his masterminding and enacts as much control as he can over the proceedings of the events that follow. Q's ability is interesting in the sense that it allows them control over others, implying Q came from a background of little control. I have also hypothesized that Dazai, with his need for situational control, similarly came from a background of little control. It's also likely they both were hurt by others - Q's ability turns any pain inflicted on them back around, giving them a way to fight back, while Dazai can level the playing field of any unfair advantages by nullifying abilities.

Q's small segment in Fifteen is also interesting: they're near completely zoned out, just staring off into the distance without responding to their environment until Dazai gets directly in their face. Then Q suddenly flips a switch and becomes all cheerful and playful. It reminds me of young Dazai's quick switches between faux cheerfulness and emptiness earlier in that same book.

They also both have quite interesting relations to pain. Q wonders why cruel things always hurt them, but Q makes this a foregone conclusion by purposely arranging others to hurt them so they have an excuse to hurt those people back. Q's pain becomes a self-fulfilling prophecy: they hate it, but the only means of control they know in interactions with others requires it. Dazai similarly hates pain - his pain loop, however, is more emotional than physical. Dazai feels isolated and alienated from others, but his attempts to exert control require him to distance himself and rely on his mind over all else. He also leans into his inhuman side when it becomes apparent pain is unavoidable (I think often of his reactions throughout Dark Era to Ango's betrayal) - again, this becomes a self-fulfilling prophecy. He will not find anything. He will continue to be separate from humanity if this cycle continues. That was why it was imperative that Odasaku break him out of it. Self-sabotage behaviours and unhealthy cycles, physical and emotional, are apparent with these two.

For bonus points: both have injured right arms.

On a more superficial level too, Q and Dazai both have "creepy child" energy, with emphasis on the child part - they are both legitimately disturbing at times but also have moments where they show childlike interest and behaviour. (I encourage people to check out Q's mayoi cards for this - I know it's not super canon or anything but it emphasizes their "kiddishness".)

Also I'm unsure if this is significant, but there's this detail too:

Q has a very unusual right eye with a star in the center. The right eye is also the one Dazai kept covered in the Mafia. Notably also, Q's right eye is frequently obscured by their hair in key scenes.

...Does it mean something? I have no idea. But it's potentially interesting so I thought I'd add it.

Meanwhile, Chuuya and Q share themes of loss of control.

For Q, this is quite obvious. They are literally locked up; imprisoned within the Mafia and unable to exert control over their circumstances. For Chuuya, it's a little more subtle but still present, I believe: I invite people to look at his character song and mayoi (particularly aquarium) for direct references to feelings of being trapped. However, looking at Fifteen and Stormbringer, there are a few mentions of freedom that are intriguing in relation to Chuuya's character. In Fifteen, both Dazai and Shirase mention Chuuya's "freedom"... but this is almost a mockery of what's really going on. A party to celebrate Chuuya's freedom is really an elaborate set up for a trap. Shirase telling Chuuya that he should have the freedom to act on his own wishes is really a cover up for a betrayal. In both instances, Chuuya's freedom is a lie. Stormbringer, at the very least, instates a sense of agency where he at least has the freedom to make choices about his own actions - that's the whole point of his hat; it's a symbol of autonomy (also anti-mind control; more on that in a bit). However, Stormbringer also systematically strips away the start of any alternate path Chuuya could've taken - he cannot be the child he was, he never got to hear the pitch on living in the light. He feels genuine gratitude towards those in the Mafia - they have his back, which is more than he could say before, but at the same time, the Mafia is kind of the last option available there if he wants not to be alone... and Chuuya does not want to be alone. (Seriously. His character song. Please look at it. Also Stormbringer.)

Now, onto their abilities, which also parallel in the sense that they are both used to "get back" at people. Chuuya rebounds attacks - bullets shot at him ricochet back at the people who fired, and Q hurts people who hurt them. There's a very reciprocal relation to the way they use their abilities, and it is absolutely to induce fear and intimidation in others, but there's a key difference. Namely, Chuuya fights only against enemies or people who strike first. Q, on the other hand, intentionally makes "enemies" out of even innocent bystanders just to have a reason to hurt them back. A lot of this is due to Q's misanthropic nature - I doubt Q has ever had a positive bond with another person, and so Q sees the whole world as their enemy - a world which, to them, does not want them in it. Chuuya, on the other hand, has had people who care about him, and he cares about them in turn. He's a bit jaded but he doesn't hate humanity, far from it.

In that sense, Q parallels Verlaine in a sense, right down to being kept in a special secret room in the Mafia, hehe. Though again, there's differences. Verlaine chooses to stay in that room, first of all, while Q doesn't have a choice. Verlaine's angst is internal identity based while Q's is more external situation based. In response to their pain, Verlaine chooses to relinquish control of himself (Brutalization), and Q chooses to have everyone else lose control of themselves (Dogra Magra). Verlaine says "look at how monstrous I am and how I hate and hurt because of it" and Q says "look at how monstrous you all are and how I hate and hurt because of it".

Chuuya is not so far on either extreme that he emulates this - but he could've ended up like Verlaine, and he admits it in Stormbringer. He could've maybe ended up something like Q too, if he'd remained trapped as a lab rat. But see here's the key with Chuuya: his hat makes it so the choice to lose control of himself is his alone, and moreover, that losing control doesn't mean he goes out of control. He trusts that he can lose control for a bit, place it in someone else's hands for awhile before it goes too far. Trusts that the choice to lose himself will be followed by the keeping of a promise to bring him back to himself. Chuuya has bonds, and that's the key difference.

But uh. Going back to parallels... about the scene where Q gets tortured... and the scene where Chuuya gets tortured...

Is this significant...?

...is... is this...

...

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

Um. I may be delusional. But. Well. *gestures at all of this*

So, where does this leave us? Well, we have Dazai, who sees a manipulative, mind-controlling kid that he calls a "walking disaster", and we have Chuuya, who sees a dangerous ability user that is too big of a potential threat to not be dealt with, so the two decide the best course of action is to kill them about it. The reason Dazai did not follow through is likely a mix of his stated reason (the Mafia cannot harm Dazai so long as he is needed to stop Q), and probably also that he isn't really supposed to be directly killing anymore.

Nice, guys. Really clear and consciously held self-concepts you got there.

Considering everything, it's maddening that all we have on the dynamic between these three is: Q joins in Fifteen at the same time as the other two and is assigned to Dazai since he can stop their ability. Mori doesn't know what it is at that point but assumes whatever it is will be manageable because Dazai can just nullify it. It... clearly wasn't.

I feel like there has to be something here and that we're going to be coming back to it. Q, the old Boss, how Mori got so close as an underground physician in such a short time... there's so much about the Mafia we don't know so I'm assuming the story will shift to focus on these points again... someday. Hopefully.

[starmanskywalker]

possession · anakin skywalker x f!reader

hello there, @snippy-tano! i tried to do something different here, still respecting the core of your prompt and i wholeheartedly hope you enjoy this one, dear!

synopsis: you broke free from a cult a while ago. your leader - and ex-lover - wants you back. 

⚠️ the jedi temple in this fic is a literal cult. ⚠️ this is a modern, no powers!au fic set in the 70s bc i’ve always wanted to write something set in that decade. even though this is very much a dubcon work, i still feel like it deserves the dead dove do not eat tag, as cults are a delicate subject and there’s a scene featuring a very inebriated reader and a very sexually eager cult leader!anakin. huge, blaring trigger warnings for drug abuse, manipulation, coercion, psychological abuse and many other toxic behaviors cult leaders are known for having. if you're a minor, stay away!

i lowkey think this would also work so well as an obi-wan fic but anakin was also very, very fun to write in this context. feel free to send me prompts involving him or obi anytime you like (i might take a bit long to write but maybe you’ll think it’s worth it!)

word count: 6.599 (shit that’s long!)

When you left the Jedi Temple, you felt like the world as you knew it before turned upside down. To put it in more precise terms, you felt like an unfrozen comic book hero that came back from the realm of the unconscious.

You’ve spent seven years of your life with little contact to the mundane world outside of what Anakin allowed you and the other members of the Temple to see, hear and taste. Your entire existence revolved around him and his needs - after all, Anakin Skywalker was The Chosen One. The Force itself, that mysterious energy field that binds the galaxy and all members of the Jedi Temple together in its arduous mission to bring peace, equality and compassion to an increasingly unfair, unequal and war-torn world, chose him to lead you. So how could you say no to such a noble mission?

And what a mission that was. Seeing yourself in a mirror after all you’ve been through without the rose-colored glasses sponsored by Anakin’s constant and almost mantra-esque praise to you was quite something.

Your body was begging for rest in every possible way - your hair had stopped growing, giant dark circles had formed under your eyes and you didn't even have time to eat properly among so many tasks that were assigned to you on a daily basis, resulting in a drastic change on how you looked. During your time under Anakin’s watch, you were PR, secretary, cook, coordinator, supervisor, presenter, confidant, administrator and one of his many lovers; the amount of titles growing every day while no kind of worldly remuneration appeared as a reward.

Thinking about Anakin still stirred so many difficult and confusing feelings inside you. He supposedly loved you more than anything else in the world, yet still brought so many other women to his bed. You were his and only his, yet your body was often the bargaining chip he offered in some of his treasured, nefarious deals with politicians, bankers and other powerful men like him, which you accepted gracefully to please him. And Lord, how you yearned to please him in any and every way you could. This feeling was the only one you were able to discern clearly out of so many that disappeared in the mental fog of overwork. 

He was beautiful, even more dashing when his attention was directed entirely to you. His compliments meant more, his touches were more eager, his smiles wider when you did everything you could for his cause.

There were days you only thought about the good aspects of your past life - and there were days the only memories that pierced your mind were the bad ones. Yet it’s kinda funny how almost a year later after you left he is still the center of all these thoughts.

Even if your current life is stable, calm and fairly easy. Even if your current partner is an angel who does treat you like they indeed love you. Even if you made them a promise you would never, ever look back.

Anakin, as always, makes things way harder than they really need to be.

-

The weight of loving Anakin and his community became too heavy to bear for you and your partner around the same time, for widely different reasons that coincided with a period of growing closeness between you. The fact that what drew you to your current significant other was precisely how much they reminded you of Anakin made you worry about the future you were building together from the start, yet Anakin was an addiction you always knew you wouldn’t break free from easily.

(Better to wean off in gradually smaller doses than to quit cold turkey.)

Another thing you always knew was that your partner would adapt to this new life much easier than you did, as they weren't as loyal to the cause as you were. They found new friends that also became your friends, yet at dinners and parties you always felt a little more out of place than them. Your jokes didn’t quite land, you were never the funniest or smartest on the table, not even for a minute, despite how hard they always tried to make you feel included. It’s always been like that for you, really, except for the time you were there.

With Anakin. By his side.

The feeling of belonging somewhere, especially when accompanied (or led) by a beautiful, well-spoken and ambitious man is a hell of a drug. A drug strong enough to numb the rage within you brought by the memories of the alienation and paranoia spiral he instilled in you constantly. The memories of the countless sleepless nights you’ve spent dealing with Anakin’s coke-fueled persecution complex. The unspeakable things he had you do to prove you were by his side and not against him and the cause. 

A drug strong enough to make you accept a specific invitation.

At the beginning of a certain day, a stranger bumped into you while you walked into the street and left a piece of paper in your coat’s pocket. Classic Temple method of sending a message. However, instead of the usual threats and condemnations for leaving the community, you find something else entirely new.

Anakin wanted to speak to you. Alone.

You’d go just to get some much needed closure for what you went through by his side. Just that. Close this chapter of your life once and for all. After all, what harm could a simple conversation do?

You felt horrified that you still found yourself wondering what he’d think of you now; deep down you were afraid of him giving up on you entirely even though you truly didn’t want to be part of his mess anymore. Yet not having a door open to his path anymore frightened you to your core because even with its hundred million flaws, you still saw the Temple as a place you belonged in. 

You feared that feeling in itself. Every decision it made you take. All the euphoria it still, regrettably and shamefully, brings you.

Your partner notices you growing more silent by the day as the calendar approaches the fateful date. Your mind was in a complete state of turmoil. You left the Temple months ago, determined to start a new life for yourself, one free from the darkness that had consumed you before. But despite your best efforts, you couldn't shake the memories of what had transpired between you and Anakin, or the longing you felt for the leader who had shown you for the first time, even if in his own twisted way, what it was like to have an entire community to go back to, one that appreciated you. 

You feel a familiar flutter in your stomach, a mix of anticipation and fear that you couldn't ignore every time you think a little too much about Anakin's intense gaze and commanding presence. What would he say when he saw you? Would he be angry at you for leaving, or would he welcome you back with open arms? And more importantly, why would you even want to be welcomed back? 

As you sat across from each other at the dinner table night after night, your partner couldn't help but notice the faraway look in your eyes. You seemed to be lost in thought most of the time, and your change in behavior coincided with the growing feeling you shared that you were being spied on by Temple’s members everywhere you went. Your partner, more than anyone else, knew what the Temple meant to you, and that leaving it behind had been a difficult and painful process for you both, but they couldn't help but feel frustrated that they couldn't seem to reach you. 

And, dreadfully, that they know the reason why.

-

August 31st, 1979

As you drove to the address indicated in the now crumpled piece of paper, you couldn't help but feel a sense of nervous, reprehensible excitement building within you. It had been so long since you had felt this kind of intensity, this kind of connection to something greater than yourself. The memories of your time in the cult - your partner made sure to repeat this word to you as often as they could - flooded back to you, and you felt a sense of longing and belonging that you hadn't felt in a very long time.

But beneath the surface of your excitement, there was also a deep sense of fear and trepidation. You knew what Anakin was capable of, how he could push you to your limits and beyond. You remembered all the pain and all the humiliation, the sense of being stripped down to your very core. But even as these memories surfaced, you couldn't help but feel drawn to the system who had once held such power over you. You knew that what you were doing was dangerous, that you were walking a fine line between ecstasy and the destruction of everything you’ve built away from his grasp. But as you approach the place where you’ll meet him, you feel a sense of inevitability wash over you. You were in too deep, and there was no turning back now.

The few Temple members always present by Anakin’s side - you know them too well, after all, most of them also shared the same bed you slept on most nights - all welcome you with a disarming kindness that the outside world and its people just can’t match, even with the many hurtful words that were exchanged when you and your partner left. The outside world could never match such selflessness and forgiveness. This realization breaks your heart so strongly you swear you can feel it physically. Did I do wrong by leaving? Is it too late to have it all back? Why am I questioning myself over my safe, sane, final choice?

Padmé, Sabé, Ahsoka, they’re all wide smiles, lighthearted jokes and they exude a strong feeling of happiness for having you, even if for a short while, around them again. Despite an initial distrust from your part that manifested itself through curt words, you eventually engage in lively chatter with the girls like nothing between you ever changed. You talk about everything and nothing at the same time as you all tried to avoid the elephant in the room: the reason you were there.

Your smile falters when Padmé hands you a white, delicate, flimsy gown that leaves you feeling way more exposed than you’ve ever been since you left. She notices your discomfort and places a hand on your shoulder. “This is all about healing. We’re so happy you’re back.”

This specific dress is only used by women who go through The Rebirth. A private ceremony between the Temple’s leader and a follower that promises to bring the follower closer to the divine.

Despite how close you were to Anakin, you were never invited to a ritual of his yourself, you just heard of them. He always told you you didn’t need it and you knew better than to probe him about it. It’s funny how the opportunity appeared only after you left his circle.

All you knew was that the Temple’s rituals, usually aimed at the unruly, alternated through a range of activities and experiences intended to be intense, transformative, and meaningful; perfectly crafted to reach people Anakin couldn’t solely reach through words or promises. These imperfect followers would afterwards appear completely different after their closer encounters to the Force. Some left the Temple, some stayed. But they were all similarly profoundly changed: some women disappeared, some women started to believe in miracles, some became part of his inner circle.

“I’m… I’m just here to talk t--”

“And that’s all you’ll do, if that’s what you want. But keep in mind it's not every day that you’ll get to be a part of something like this.”

You begrudgingly nod, forcing yourself to smile again. “Okay.”

“You trust me?”

“I do.”

“I’ll tell him you’re here. Could you please change your clothes while I go up there? Remember we need you to be as comfortable as possible, so please don’t wear anything underneath the dress.”

“Okay.”

You close your eyes as you feel your stomach dropping. You take a few deep breaths.

You were just reminded of what you didn’t miss about the Temple.

Ahsoka and Sabé promptly offer to help you in changing clothes, which you accept. A few minutes later, Padmé returns with a kind expression on her face, extending a hand towards you. “Master Skywalker is waiting for you.”

You take her hand and follow her through the series of steps. You felt your heart racing as you were led deeper into the building. You knew that you’d been tricked, but now it was too late to turn back. You could feel the intensity of the ritual building around you, and you knew that you were in for something far more riskier than you had bargained for.

You finally arrive at the door and, surprisingly, Padmé gives you a warm hug before leaving. Some minutes pass, no sign of anything or anyone. Were you supposed to knock or something…?

Before you could answer that question to yourself, Anakin opens the door and the oxygen is ripped out of your lungs in a way you couldn’t anticipate. You’re like a fish out of water; you can hardly believe your eyes. There he is, the one person you thought you'd never see again, standing before you.

Anakin's bathed by the muted light of candles in a sight that could be painted by the Force itself. He’s shirtless, wearing only sweatpants, his golden skin and defined physique bared for you to see. He moves some rebellious strands away from his eyes to see you more clearly.

Your heart pounds in your chest as you struggle to catch your breath at the sight of him. The room is too hot, seeing him again is too overwhelming. You want to leave, to get as far away from this place as possible. But before you can make your way back, Anakin holds your arm, his voice calm and reassuring. “Are you okay?” he asks softly.

You shake your head, unable to form words.

"Come in," he says, taking you inside gently. “No need to be scared.”

As he envelops you in his arms and closes the door, you are immediately struck by the religious imagery that surrounds you. There are symbols and icons everywhere, each one imbued with its own powerful meaning. The space feels simultaneously cozy and imposing, the perfect balance between comfort and awe.

Your eyes drift across the room, taking in the details. There are candles burning in every corner, casting flickering shadows on the walls. The air is thick with incense, a heady mix of spice and smoke. In the center of the room, there is an altar, adorned with offerings and gifts.

He leads you to a quiet corner of the room. There, he holds you close, murmuring words of comfort and reassurance.

"I can’t believe you came, little bird," he says. "I’ve missed you.”

You can feel the strength of his arms around you, the familiar scent of his skin. As he pulls away and looks into your eyes, you can see a mixture of emotions playing across his face. You're not sure what he's thinking, but you sure can sense the power he still holds over you, especially when he calls you by that pet name. Despite your best intentions, you know that being in his presence again will be a test of your willpower and resolve. It’s already being one, to be honest.

As you struggle to calm down from your panic attack, Anakin continues to hold you close and stroke your hair. You feel his gentle touch and the steady rhythm of his breath, and it begins to soothe you. You hate the fact that it’s soothing you. 

He speaks to you softly, using words you can barely hear as you focus on slowing your breathing. "You're safe here," he says, "You're with me again, and everything will be okay."

You look up at him, trying to speak, but your voice is still caught in your throat. He nods, understanding, and simply holds you a little tighter.

As he continues to speak in soothing tones, you try to remind yourself that his words are simply a means to an end, a way to control you once again. Your mind races as you struggle to push away the memories of what he's done to you in the past. But despite your attempts to resist, you can't deny the feeling of safety that washes over you in his embrace.

You know that you shouldn't give in to his words, that you should fight back and leave this place. But deep down, a part of you yearns for the familiar comfort of the Temple, of him. The part of you that craves his attention, his approval, his touch. Who can’t get enough of it.

In that moment, you realize that you're falling prey to him all over again, despite everything you've been through. You feel a deep sense of shame and disgust at yourself, but it's drowned out by the overwhelming desire to be near him once more. Even if for a while.

That makes it even harder for you to speak. Your voice seems to have been swallowed up by the overwhelming emotions churning inside of you. You used to be so confident and outspoken while you were under his wing, but now you feel like a mere shadow of yourself, unsure of what to say or how to act. You hate how vulnerable you feel in his presence, how powerless you are against the pull he has over you. So you just stare, unable to do much else.

Anakin briefly lets go of you to gently touch your hand. He looks at you intently, his piercing gaze locked onto yours. "I understand how overwhelming this is for you, but I promise you you're safe with me. You don't have to say anything if you don't want to.”

“Why did you want to speak to me?” You protest, your voice cracking as you force the words out of you, almost as a way of rebelling against his guidance. You pull away and distance yourself from him.

Skywalker looks at you with a solemn expression, searching your face. "I called you here because I want to offer you a chance at redemption," he says, his voice steady and calm. "I know you've been struggling with feelings of inadequacy since you left us. I just want to help you find your way back to the right path."

He pauses for a moment, letting his words sink in. “You were always one of my most faithful Knights," he continues. "I know you still have that spark inside of you. The spark that made you believe in me, that made you want to devote yourself to this. I want to help you rekindle that spark.”

You feel a wave of conflicting emotions wash over you as you listen to his words. Part of you wants to believe him, to trust that he has your best interests at heart. But another part of you is wary, remembering that the only reason he knows that, literally, is because he’s been ordering people to follow you.

“I don't know if I can trust you,” you manage to say, your voice shaking slightly.

Anakin’s expression softens, and he takes a step closer to you. "I understand why you might feel that way," he says. "But I want to assure you that I have no intention of hurting you. I want to help you heal, to help you find peace and purpose in your life. All you have to do is trust me. I promise that I'll be there for you every step of the way."

“Even if I don’t stay?”

You notice a flash of desperation in his eyes, which he tries to conceal. “We have something for you much more powerful than what your current life is offering you. And I think you know that, too.”

“I left for a reason.”

“And I can give you many others to come back. Your new life is just an illusion, a temporary fix to a problem that will only grow worse.” As he speaks to you, you feel his words sinking into your mind. He’s a specialist at tearing down the walls you’ve built to protect yourself from his influence, brick by fucking brick. 

“I love my partner. That’s… that’s not an illusion.” You answer, not really believing your own words.

“A partner you’ve found here. A partner you’ve chosen to live a life with where you constantly look for things to try to fill the emptiness of not being here.”

You feel a maelstrom of emotions swirling within you, making it difficult to discern which way is up. The memories of the past, the good and the bad, flood your mind, clouding your judgment. You want to believe that you can be free from Anakin and live a normal life, but something inside you is drawn to his words. Something that also reminds you that there’s no such thing as a normal life after this one, after meeting him, after letting him in control for so long.

The thought of giving him another chance both terrifies and excites you, and you feel yet another wave of guilt crashing unto you for even entertaining it. He can tell he put you in a tug-of-war between what you know is right and what you truly want. “I only want what’s best for you. Deep down you know that being here is where you truly belong.”

"I don't know anymore. It's just... it's really not that simple--" You hesitate, noticing how his gaze is morphing into something much less fraternal the moment he notices there’s ground for his persuasiveness to tread on. You step back and start walking in the opposite direction, not noticing how easy you’re making it for him to corner you. He slowly, predatorily follows your steps.

“What's not simple about it? I know we bring you more fulfillment than anything or anyone else in this world.”

“I’m confused, Master!” You yelp, your heart beating fast once again at the looming threat of history repeating itself and at the shock of you instinctively calling him by his title again. You knock over an offering and you cover your mouth while trying not to hyperventilate once more.

“Then let me help you. Come back home and we can work through this together.” Successfully having you where he needed you to be, he moves your hand away from your mouth, almost whispering as he lowers his head to speak closer to your ears. “You just need the right guidance, the right push. And I am here to give that to you.”

“They are so devoted to you. I don't know if I can be like them. What if I change my mind again?”

"Don't worry about them. You're not like anyone else. You're special.” You find yourself getting lost in his words, feeling a sense of comfort that you haven't experienced in such a long time. You know that you shouldn't trust him, that he's just trying to fuck with you, but you can't help the way you're feeling. “I can mold you into the perfect follower, the perfect partner, the perfect lover. You'll be amazed at what we can accomplish together. It’s not like you don’t already know, right?"

In that moment, you're no longer the strong-willed person who left the Temple behind. Instead, you're a vulnerable follower once again, willing to do anything to please your leader.

“I mean it when I say I’ve missed you. You don’t know what you do to me,” he confesses in a raspy, needy tone while his fingers gently move the straps of your dress away from your shoulders, making you shiver. His need for you also tore down some of his own walls. “Couldn’t fucking breathe knowing you were living with someone else.”

“Anakin–” you squeak, breathless as the silky fabric slides easily above your skin and pools at your feet, leaving you bare in front of him like a freshly prepared meal. Vulnerable doesn’t even start to define how afraid, uncertain and exposed you feel right now. Anakin seems to notice things are going at a pace that’s not compatible with how frail your trust in him is, so he does his best to keep his composure and go back on track.

“Lie down for me at the altar, little bird.” He orders, his tone very artificially patient.

Trembling, you do as you're told. The marble is cold against your skin and you flinch at the touch, the heat of the candles balancing your temperature when you finish positioning yourself. 

“You were lost, but now you're found. You were blind, but now you see.” He intimately preaches for your ears only, punctuating his command with the softest of caresses on your cheek. Your voice weakly paired with his at the last few words, as you remembered them with a painful familiarity and ease. “You thought you could leave me behind, but you belong to me. You belong to this community and now we will reforge that bond. Would you like that?”

You close your eyes, the certainty of your fate now making place to a strange serenity. “Yes.”

“Good.” He replies, pouring oil in his hands and spreading it between his palms and fingers. “Now relax. You will be enlightened and empowered like never before.” His hands firmly massage your skin in unhurried movements making your stomach flood with butterflies, his touch as inebriating as the whirlwind of thoughts running inside your head. “I sense so much fear flowing through you.”

You moan in response to the smooth sliding of his hands over your tense body. As Anakin applies pressure to your muscles, making them feel looser and more relaxed by the minute, you shiver at the realization of how much you missed being this close to him in such an intimate way. “Fear leads to anger. Anger leads to hate…” 

“Hate… leads to suffering.” You complete, swallowing hard afterwards as if to clean how dirty you felt by falling into this as easily as you did.

“Exactly. Let yourself be at ease. You carry a heavy burden, love, and it's my job to help you lighten that load.” You can feel the purpose of his touch gradually morph into something much more unvirtuous as he palms your abdomen and moves upwards, now fondling both of your breasts exploratorily, basking on how velvety your skin feels after all this time you’ve spent apart. 

A flicker of apprehension rushes through your veins as you sluggishly try to move his hands away from you, but instead your limbs just rest atop of his, your relaxed body unable to follow through with any movement that demands more than a few active brain cells. ​​A wave of anger at yourself and at him rolls weakly through your mind, promptly subdued by how blurred the lines between pleasure and shame start to feel on your mind and frame. His soft touch starts driving you a little crazy; after what seems like forever, he finally tweaks your nipples, eliciting a soft whimper out of you.

“Let me take care of you,” he quietly pleads, hopefully having noticed to some degree that you still were trying to resist him in some way. While Anakin continues to knead the soft flesh, his thumb flicking across your nipple until it’s painfully erect, the other slowly goes down your abdomen until it reaches the most sensitive part of you. You sigh, utterly, impossibly resigned to the situation that’s unfolding. Also to let go, at least partially, of the anxiety that’s creepingly festering in your guts. “You deserve to be loved. To be here with me. You deserve everything that’s about to return in your life.”

Your eyes water at his words. It’s not that your partner doesn’t love you or make you feel like you don't deserve love, but it's overwhelming to hear this from Anakin after you loved him like you did (and maddeningly, regretfully, still do). Your partner gave you love, but not much else - and if there's something you learned from your time away from the Temple is that just romantic love isn’t enough when your new life didn't give you other people to rely on, didn’t scratch that persistent fucking itch that never really went away after you left the Temple.

You woke up every day feeling like you were missing something, like there was a hole in your chest that couldn’t be filled. You tried to distract yourself by immersing yourself in a new job, new hobbies, new social life. You went out with people, attended events, participated in activities of leisure, but the ache never really went away. You talked to people, but it all felt surface-level, small talk that went nowhere and meant nothing.

You started to feel like you were going crazy. Why couldn’t you just be satisfied? You have a partner who loves you, a job you enjoy, decent, lively people surrounding you both. You loathed yourself for the fact that the answer always led to the same place and person you prided yourself in leaving. You started to withdraw into yourself, keeping your feelings to yourself, afraid of burdening others with your problems. You didn’t want to seem ungrateful or needy, so you bottled everything up. But it only made things worse.

It made things bad enough that you searched for the only solution that could soothe it all easily. That always had all the answers all the time, regardless of the personal cost they had to you.

Anakin’s grayish eyes stare profoundly into yours for long seconds before he kisses you intensely. You eagerly retribute, his fingers still spreading the growing wetness between your legs in unhurried yet precise circular motions that make you moan unreservedly into his mouth. You can feel the slightest taste of whiskey and that bitter pill he always took on his tongue as a small reminder of everything you’re agreeing on letting take over the control of your life again, yet there's no way in hell you’re letting it go now. As a sign of such commitment, you cling to one of the arms that are stimulating you as if it’s a lifeline, an act that makes him smirk into the kiss and let out an appreciative groan. He’s still careful, though, trying hard not to lean entirely on the familiarity of how your body yearns for him, as this is above all your return back home. He needs to act accordingly.

His movements start to probe your cunt a bit further and after a little while of teasing, he inserts two fingers inside of you, his lips letting go of yours briefly just so he can hear how precious you sound while getting filled by his digits. You comply with his wish, letting your satisfaction echo inside the dimly lit room along with the filthy sound of how ready you are for him. “I’ve missed this so much.” He groans, letting out a shaky breath he shares with you as he feels the heat spreading under your skin, manifesting itself through glittery beads of sweat that start glistening over your figure.

“Me too, Master,” you whimper, a tempestuous river surging through your veins as you angle your hips repeatedly to meet his thrusts. He seems to understand your desperation, and it’s his turn to comply with your request. His thumb moves towards your pulsing clit and starts circling it in sync with the movement of his other fingers, setting your nerves on fire. 

Perhaps in order to get even more of you in the matter of sound, he goes back to putting his mouth to good use. You let out a shrill cry of pleasure as his mouth meets the breast he was previously fondling, while he expertly curls his fingers up to rub your G-spot after relentlessly scissoring them inside you. His teeth rake across your nipple and you jolt, arching your back in a desperate attempt to get closer. 

He has a look of hunger in his eyes as he stares you down, delighted at the effect he's having on you. "You're doing so well for me, little bird, so fucking wet," The noise that rips from your throat as an answer is halfway between a guttural moan and a desperate whine as your walls spasm and contract around his fingers. "Come for me." He commands in a hiss, resting his glistening forehead against the side of your head as your muscles convulse in staccato. 

You can practically feel stars exploding all over your body in wonderful pinpricks of pleasure as he coaxes from you the most intense orgasm you've ever had. You let out incoherent moans and whimpers while he continues fingering you through your high; you're floating in a bubble of submission and he knows he has to help you land gently on the ground. "I'm so proud of you, baby." He praises softly into your ear before ceasing his ministrations and taking the fingers coated in your release to his own tongue, to your hazy astonishment. 

“Thank you for that.” You breath, a confession of how much you needed to feel once more what he was capable of doing. He nods affectionately in return before distancing himself from you to wander nearby, and at the corner of your eye you see him pouring a red liquid on a small glass cup. You sigh in a bit of a fucked up pride at seeing how tented his sweatpants are. After he’s done, he comes back and hands it to you.

“Drink.”

You don’t question. You throw your sense of self-preservation out of the window perhaps as some kind of punishment to yourself over coming to him and still trusting him like that regardless of everything you went through. After lifting your torso just enough to be able to drink something without choking, you down the cup’s content in one swift gulp, a pleasant, sweet flavor filling your mouth. Your master strokes your hair fondly with a warm smile on his face, and kisses your forehead before you lie down again. “Now, for the main part of the rebirth, you might feel a slight tingling spread across your body as this potion does its magic. But don’t worry. This is the official beginning of a new life for you.” He instructs, now positioning himself between your legs, which he has no problem at all to part. 

Along with the tingling, you begin to feel a sensation of euphoria spreading through your body. Your mind is flooded with intense feelings of pleasure and happiness, and you feel as though you are floating on air.

Everything around you seems brighter and more vibrant than before. You notice the colors of the flowers attached to one of the offerings near you, and the smell of aromatic plants seems more potent - it’s as if a veil has lifted, and you've been given new sight.

As you look at Anakin, who now stands above you revealing what’s hidden below the thick fabric of his pants and positioning his throbbing cock inside your dripping pussy, you find yourself even more drawn to him in a way that you didn’t think was possible. You maniacally reevaluate the entire perception of him in your mind - have you ever truly given him the chance he deserved? You were now sure the things your partner said about him were the unfounded, harmful brainwash. Anakin was the Chosen One! He could do no wrong ever. How could he do wrong if you’re feeling so invincible, so blessed, so in love?

So absurdly, out of your mind wet?

Anakin notices your eagerness, chuckling at how twitchy and desperate you’ve become for him. He mumbles something about how beautiful of a fucktoy you are for him now, how you always have been, and all you can think about is you love the way his mouth moved when he talked. The forward way he set his jaw, making his teeth meet with such delicacy, enunciating every word. You want him to own you, you think before he kisses your sodden mouth and idly strokes himself.

Anakin obliges after a short while, entering you in one swift motion. He lets out a long groan. “Holy shit,” he breathes. You shut your eyes and wrap your arms around his shoulders, fingers digging into his skin when he begins to move, slowly pulling out and in at first. Every sound, every texture, every sensation is amplified to an almost overwhelming degree. You feel surges of energy coursing through your veins every time he reaches spots within you you didn’t even know existed.

His breathing is ragged and his eyes are half closed when you tilt your face up and kiss him sloppily, giving the green light for him to go faster. Your need is urgent, there is no possibility for precision. You wanted to spread the exquisite poison that he had given you. “I love you,” you yelp, “I'm madly in love with you.”

“My little bird,” he heaves, heavy breath syncing up with yours as he moves deliciously inside of you at a growingly unforgiving pace. Anakin lowers his head so his lips can hover over your ear and beckon you with an unholy invitation. “If you really mean it, come back home. Tonight.”

“Fuck. I don’t know if I can--” you whine, your hands palming his chest aimlessly as he fucks you to the moon and back, the loud sound of skin against skin driving you both insane. He’s bestowing upon you a blessing no one ever could, each thrust unceremoniously ripping yelp to pathetic yelp from your throat along with every remaining logical thought inside your head. “Fuck!”

“Of course you fucking know. You’ll always be welcome back home.” he murmurs against your neck in between kisses and bruising nips. ”Come back to me and you can have this everyday. Nothing needs to be the same.” A strong jolt of pleasure rocks you as his hand creeps down your inner thigh to masturbate you while you move against him for more sensation. A long, low moan vibrates in your chest. He shushes you with another deep kiss as your hips buck from the maddening pressure.

Very amused at how drenched you were, how you mewled at his every touch, he manipulates you with teasing circles until it was too much. You dissolve into pleasure so intensely you can barely register the exact moment you soak him as well in your juices, milking him for all that is worth in the way. He doesn’t take long to follow, his hips stuttering as he empties himself inside you in thick spurts that make you feel impressively full. You keep clenching around him, not willing to let him go, a wide smile on his face at his achievement and at the work of art he crafted so masterfully. He’s genuinely fucking brilliant at this.

“Nothing needs to be the same.” You repeat in a drunken stupor, moving hair strands from your sweaty face as you smile back to him, framed perfectly like yet another offering in his marble altar.

Perhaps his most prized one. 

[cordelia-cardale]

A lot of rumours have been circulating around the spoilers dropped about Colin and his sexual life. My main thought on this is: intimacy.

Of course, I have to start by saying that if it’s true, I don’t like it, I don’t agree with it, and I feel uncomfortable seeing it. But hey! The man is single and a grown adult, so he does what he wants.

However, I do think that if we want to see half of the things in the book, including some kinky talk and female sexual pleasure on Pen’s part (help, I’ve been in naughty jail for quite some time now) it is crucial for Colin to know a minimum about what he’s doing. That only happens if he’s had time to discover his own sexuality (although it does take away from the sweetness of them discovering themselves with each other).

Yet, that sweetness might still be here and this is where intimacy comes in. If it’s true and Colin is well and truly in his slutty era, I actually don’t think it’s so ooc of him. We’re talking here about a man who, after his first trip abroad, brought home drugs to get high on.

You know what that is? A sort of escapism.

I see his thrysts in brothels as another sort of escapism. Especially if he’s having threesomes.

No strings attached, no single person to focus on = no intimacy.

We know this man is seeking escape. We’ve also been told he has some demons of his own he needs to wrestle with this season. I think one of those demons might be an intimacy issue.

I mean we’re talking about a man who believed he was so in love in season one he was ready to marry immediately. Only to later find out that his trust had been abused (I’m not commenting on what Marina chose to do, I’m just saying that he most likely felt extremely betrayed). And even if he says that he’s moved on in season 2, which his sexual experiences in season 3 will attest to, that boy is probably quite scarred on a mental level and is probably still escaping all sorts of real attachment. I mean even the swagger shows it. He knows he’s handsome and he’s having fun with it, but he is probably nowhere close to being ready to commit when the season starts.

And in comes our beloved Pen and she’s taking none of his shit. Worse, she will see right through him and eventually confront him about his need to escape, which will lead to a passionate carriage make out scene (mind still in the gutter, I do apologise, honestly send help). And for Colin, who possesses all that swagger, is visiting brothels and having threesomes, for his knees to buckle and to have trouble breathing because Pen gives him a compliment about his eyes in the context of a suitor lesson? It’s absolutely hilarious.

That man will always melt into a puddle when he’s with her because it is her. It is Pen, his Pen, a part of the family and someone who brings out the vulnerability in him he is so desperate to hide away.

I think, just as much as she needs to grow in confidence, he needs to grow in his trust in a relationship and to stop running and seeking escape. And I think they will help each other grow in that way. They will discover themselves with each other because there will be that intimacy and that vulnerability that these two do not have with any one else.

Of course that is also what might make the reveal of Lady Whistledown even worse for Colin. Because she is in part responsible for the pain and the betrayal he’s experienced. She did try to warn him and he did not listen so she felt like she had no other choice. But it was badly handled and he says that too. So we might get a duality where Colin finds that intimacy and that trust in Penelope and only her, but he also cannot just ignore how she’s responsible for his demons. And they will have to learn to grow around each other’s best and worst parts and decide whether they are what they want or not.

Anyway all this rambling to say that the sex scenes (if we do get them, I’m still not totally convinced) are probably a way to explore Colin’s demons but mean nothing. And I think (hope) we’ll be able to see the stark contrast in his attitude when he’s with Pen. Because after all, this is Pen, and this is love, and this is nothing like he’s ever felt before.

[obscurecurse]

Kim's Balcony

I haven't decided what it all means yet but I'd like to present some figures on Kim cinematography.

It dawned on me yesterday that the first/last of Kim's scenes both take place on the balcony in his apartment. I wanted to revisit these scenes in order to consider the directorial choices because I suspected there might be some subtext there.

1. The first time we as the audience see Kim he is behind a screen, obscured. He's basically in another room from the viewer with the separation of glass and metal. He stands in daylight but there's no lights on in the apartment. We are not shown his face.

Starting with some face-value observations: scenes taking place on this balcony give the viewer a sense of how high up Kim's apartment is, how it overlooks the city, suggesting wealth, status. This is also his fortress, his safe space. He's physically elevated from the city, suggesting otherness - being "above" or isolated from other people. He's always shown alone in his isolated, other place, or starts off alone to be visited only by house staff. (Almost every Theerapanyakun has a scene like this, if memory serves.) Cities don't always have to represent isolation and power, by any means, but in Kim's case I think they do.

Obscuring him like this is purposeful. He is meant to be obscured narratively. (To the point that on the first watch I thought he was going to rise to the occasion of "main villain.") His blurring protects a thread of crucial reverse dramatic irony - because Kim knows way more than all of us for, like, most of the show.

2. But in his last scene he is no longer obscured:

We see him more clearly, both literally and narratively. His motivations were made clear and now they have completely shifted. The screen that previously made him unclear is just out of focus on the edge of this shot.

3. And then we see him even closer in his video for Chay. The camera just keeps zooming in on his framing, scene for scene. (When Chay watches Kim's video he is also set against the city, btw, in similar isolated conditions. Hmmmm. So close yet so far in their impasse.)

4. This extended shot after he sends the video does not really add to my meta but it's really a long shot of him looking emo and holding the guitar. I am curious as to whyyy he is always set against the context of the city in these shots? What is the significance there? To remind us his family owns the city?

But thennnnNNNN:

5. ....???!!!!?!?!?!!? Kim walks out of frame. I'm sure he needs to go pour a shot after being so vulnerable with Chay, but narratively, narrativelyyyyyy... He's abandoned his post! This was the place he started, and he no longer needs (or maybe even wants) to put himself in that position. HmmmMMMMMMMMM.

[nowmemoriees]

MIKE'S UNSENT LETTER TO WILL

i wasn't a firm believer of the "Mike carries a letter for Will" theory until I combined four different official hints: Music, Costume Designing, ST Social Media and the show parallels.

This theory came from the first hint: costume designing.

It's been pointed out that Mike's side pocket seems kinda.. weird. (Seems like there was some piece of paper inside of it).

This pocket was interesting even before the unsent letter theory, because many people pointed out that the grey piece looks like an arrow pointing to Mike's left, which is curious because we can see Will standing on Mike's left in suspicious scenes like this.

This pocket was mentioned again by Finn just a few days ago in the latest con. 👀

But, this is not part of the letter theory, so let's keep moving. Now let's find the context.

First of all, let's position here.

In season four, letters are probably one of the most relevant topic of the season. They're always brought up. They're meaningful. (El's letter, Jonathan's admission letter, Max's letters) Letters, Letters and more Letters.

So, it wouldn't be surprising if we had another hidden letter too, right?

Now, to go deeper, let's go back to season 3 ending.

First, we have Mike realizing his feelings for Will. (Too late for him, because now Will was moving across the country)

Then we have, surprise, another letter. Probably one of the most important letters in the show.

Hopper's letter. A letter where he tells El how he is feeling about all the recent changes.

But, somehow, this letter not only relates to Hop or El. We've been shown that Hopper's voiceover focuses on Mike at some specific phrases.

"Feelings. Jesus. The truth is, for so long I forgotten what those even were" - FOCUSES ON MIKE AND WILL HUG

"I guess I've been feeling distant from you. Like you're pulling away from me or something" - Focuses on Mike watching the Byers leaving.

"And I guess, If i'm being really honest, that' what scares me. I don't want things to change" - Focuses on Mike turning back to see the empty byers house for the last time, then focuses on Will crying.

"So I think maybe that's why I came in here. To try to maybe, stop that change. To turn back the clock, to make things go back to how they were" - Focuses on Mike hugging his mum, almost in tears. (Which also parallels the scene where he cries because he thought Will was d3ad)

Hopper's letter was not only the main hinter to Mike's feelings. It was also the beginning of some other meaningful letters in the show.

Now, let's focus on this detail before moving back to season 4. Second hint: parallels.

When Hopper wrote this letter, he never gave it to El. He never read it. He just hid it, he kept it on.. oh, his left pocket. Well, it could be just a coincidence, right?

But then, moving forward to season 4, again, we have another "hidden" letter.

Jonathan lies to Nancy about this letter, he says he never received it. But he has it. He hides it. Where does he hide the letter? Oh... his left pocket.

It wouldn't surprise me if there's another hidden letter on a left side pocket (cof cof, Mike's)

Well, now let's go to our third hint: Music.

We know background music is maybe one of the most important ways to send a message in this show.

We've been told about this by the writers. Music is carefully selected.

Then, I found this post on instagram (from @sagebyers on tumblr)

Mike nods. He understands what Will is saying on the heart to heart scene.

"Its scary to open up like that, especially to people you care about the most, because what if they don't like the truth?". Oh, have you got some hidden feelings there Michael? That phrase really got into your heart.

Yesterday, @emily-tumbles-on pointed out that El said, through her letter, that Will may like someone, so he has been acting weird. But the one who has been acting really, really weird this season was Mike.

This is related to his internal struggle. To his internal jealousy, too. But, could it also be about him trying to find the perfect moment to give Will that letter?

Finally, the fourth hint. Social media spoilers, maybe?

We've been hinted about the existence of, probably, another letter.

I believe this could be THE letter from Mike to Will. It couldn't be one of Max's letters, because what we are shown here is the date when Will went missing. So, it may be a letter for him. It must be. A letter signed with "Love, ...."

A letter that's probably about untold fellings "you mean so... / sorry I couldn't get this done.../" makes sense after Mike's realization. Right?

ok im editing this 3 days later cause we have some more hints already, i'll probably keep adding info.

- birthday letter? reblog

ok so now I've read a lot of your theories talking about the fact that the duffer bros may have actually INTENTIONALLY forgotten about Will's birthday, so it's an interesting point to add here because this letter could be a birthday one. It would make so much sense and also it would show us that Mike didn't really forget about Will's birthday, he just felt so uncomfortable that day.

if thay's the case this is going to hit so hard because i'm suffering as a Will Byers stan rn.

- another addition: finn's mention about the pocket

- addition: a great analysis here by @willbylersheart

- another analysis by @vulvatar

- mike's unsent letter to will is from season 1? analysis by @doriandrifting

[dichromaticdyke]

Analyzing Skwisgaar's Nightmare in "Dethlessons"

requested by @claudia-nomusaabara

hi. anyone else obsessed with grub toki?

let's get the context of this scene out of the way. toki has started going to get guitar lessons from dimneld selftcark, and nathan, pickles, and murderface have lied to skwisgaar and told him that those lessons have helped him improve. and we see that skwisgaar is not pleased with this situation.

the dream goes like this:

skwisgaar opens up his bedroom window from a deformed version of mordhaus. the whole scene is very post-apocalyptic and almost eldritch. looking at it visually, this is a world ruled by guitars. we see skwisgaar's explorer, toki's flying v, and even what appears to be dimneld's les paul.

there is a second skwisgaar. he is holding a deflated husk of toki's head. that thing is barely holding onto life, it is spurting out liquids. skwisgaar has a very neutral expression when looking at it. meanwhile, the original skwisgaar is trying to make a call while the other skwisgaar buries the toki head.

the other skwisgaar sees the dethklok helicopter fly overhead, and it fades to a shot of skwisgaar performing in front of a crowd--he is by himself, the rest of dethklok are not with him and he is not in his corpse paint. though the crowd is cheering for him, he can't play. his hands have become deformed stumps, and his guitar is made of flesh, a large gnawing mouth on the body.

we flash back to the original skwisgaar in the deformed mordhaus. he's still trying desperately make his call, but his hands have also become deformed. the skwisgaar that was burying the toki head is shocked. the toki head is no longer deflated and pathetic. it has started to grow out from the ground, taking on a more distinct floral shape. whereas before it looked like it was close to death, now it is fighting for life. (below/right screenshot was edited for less brightness/exposure).

the toki flower starts gnawing at the air, similar to the fleshy guitar that it flashes to briefly. then we change scenes to skwisgaar using a urinal in a public restroom. while pissing, he notices in the urinal an insect-like creature that has toki's signature fu manchu mustache. it is also pathetic and whimpering.

this is what sends skwisgaar falling down into the abyss. scene change. the two skwisgaars see a massive toki emerge. he is hulking, monstrous, his arms are two explorer guitars with mouths on the end.

the toki flower does...THIS???? the hulking toki makes a similar face, his eyes have also become mouths.

skwisgaar wakes up.

so, here are some themes i notice pretty quickly: 1) toki being seen as week/below skwisgaar, 2) growth, 3) hands, 4) mouths. taking this step by step:

1) skwisgaar sees himself as living in a world ruled by music. everything else is second to that. guitar rules his over his entire life. toki was someone he tried to nurture. we know from DSR that skwisgaar was the one who invited him into the band despite the fact that, for all intents and purposes, toki failed his audition--skwisgaar just saw something in him that no one else did. we also see from earlier in this episode that skwisgaar has no problem "teaching" toki, he just has a very particular way of doing it; an unhelpful way. he recognizes toki's talent, but he always will see him as being beneath him--or at least he always wants him beneath him, offering to help him grow because he knows he has the capacity and the raw talent for it, but refusing to help him in a way that would allow him to surpass him. skwisgaar is burying the husk of toki's head because it is nearly drained. there's not much left for him to give. but the other skwisgaar is trying desperately to call him, but he can't (or won't) hear these pleas. the other skwisgaar represents his knowledge of toki's ability. he's trying to warn his other self not to be dismissive of toki.

i also see the grub toki as representing toki when he first met skwisgaar. just a lost, pathetic kid who desperately needed anything to help him out. skwisgaar obviously saw something in him, but he was still so far beneath him. going from grub toki to skwisgaar falling down an abyss represents, in part, to me, the spiral that inviting this kid over would lead him down.

2) the fact that forms of toki grow not once, but twice. we have the head husk growing into the flower, representing that, even when skwisgaar seemingly gives up on toki, that's not going to stop him from growing. you could even argue that skwisgaar is holding him back from growing, and i do agree with that to an extent (skwisgaar is too afraid of failure and no longer being number one that he doesn't think of how he's hurting toki, he's just one-track mind).

"oh but mj you said pathetic forms of toki grow twice in this dream? only the toki head husk grows." you sweet summer child. you babe wrapped in swaddling cloth. what do you think the grub toki is? and i don't mean literally, because i don't know what the fuck cursed larva specimen he is. but remember what i said? the initial shot of the toki flower flashes to the deformed guitar before flashing to grub toki. they're all connected!!!! we also see grub toki right before hulking toki emerges, and hulking toki has the deformed guitar as hands. it is my correct theory that grub toki was a thirtsy little flower that was watered by skwisgaar's pee and became hulking toki. the flashes between flower toki and hulking toki with similar faces also reinforces the idea that they're similar creatures that skwisgaar had given up on but had used skwisgaar's degradation and dismissal to their advantage and to surpass him.

3) the biggest threat skwisgaar could have, outside of toki surpassing him, is something happening to his hands. you can't fuck up a guitarist's hands, that's kind of their whole thing. I WROTE A FIC ABOUT IT. skwisgaar's hands get fucked up here in two different scenarios: when actually playing, which makes sense as his biggest fear, but also when he's trying to contact himself about toki. he's not just scared about toki surpassing him. he's very much aware about how his own insecurities about the scenario could paralyze him from playing. he gets in his own head a lot (most notably during his fight with toki in "bookklok"), and so if he feels like he's not number one anymore, he's scared that he can't play at all--or if he can, it's not worth it because he's not the best. and then, his deformed hands also keep him from calling himself. he struggles with communication as it is, but the insecurity is wearing on him so much to make his terrible communication skills even worse. the hulking toki also has his hands replaced with explorers. NOT flying v's. while skwisgaar's hands and playing is at risk of being destroyed forever, according to his greatest fear, toki's will only be greatly improved, and having the explorers is reminiscent of the symbolic role of lead guitarist. toki doesn't need his flying v anymore--he has skwisgaar's guitar, he has his role in the band.

4) though so many of these cursed objects have mouths, this dream is completely dialogue-less. once again, we see that skwisgaar is struggling to actually speak to toki. and toki isn't interested in talking to him either. hell, toki doesn't even see what skwisgaar is struggling with, what he's so afraid of. husk toki doesn't have eyes. flower toki's eyes are replaced with flower buds. grub toki's eyes are black and empty. and hulking toki's eyes are replaced with mouths. toki does not want to look at skwisgaar, does not want to see in him what he also has so much of--insecurity about his guitar playing, just reflected back at him.

and the mouths. they just gnaw at nothing. they're trying to devour skwisgaar. hulking toki's eyes are mouths because he isn't interested in seeing him--he only wants to consume him, to rip him apart and take everything away from him.

TL;DR--skwisgaar's biggest fear is toki becoming better at him than guitar. he's regretting inviting him in, and all he can imagine is toki taking his role away from him, chewing him up, spitting him out, leaving him with nothing. but there's also a part of him that knows that this was partially his fault--that he always knew that toki had this potential. he blames himself, partially, but he's so insecure now and terrified of toki's potential that all he can do is imagine toki as delighting in this scenario.

toki was just a little larva when skwisgaar invited him into the band. he gave him just enough to help him grow, but he also did it in such a dismissive way. but the larva still grew, and it's a butterfly that's going to rip skwisgaar's hands clean off.

[hello-nichya-here]

So I've asked you this in private, but I thought the rest of your followers should see this as your thoughts are quite entertaining.

What is your opinion on the idea of stuff like this being the only acceptable method of pornography?

*cracks knuckles* Let's get the easiest part out of the way first.

Saying Something Is "Female-Friendly" Is Just Marketing

I'm sorry (not really) to be the one to state the obvious, but at best labeling any kind of pornography as "female friendly" means "most of the people that enjoy this are women" - which is very different from saying "ALL women are into this" or "No guys are ever into this." It's the good old "this cartoon is for boys, that one is for girls."

It's not a radical statement, it's not revolutionary, and it is at best a morally neutral mention of a random statistic that is being used to find the best demography to advertise to and at worst just pointlessly trying to force people into boxes with that they are/are not allowed to enjoy based on their gender.

Don't believe me? Well, too bad because this image you're seeing is literally part of a facebook ad for a porn site. The name of the site and of the artist they were working with can be seen at the top in the uncut version. Like I said, it doesn't matter how "radical" these claims of "this product is made for/by X minority group" pretend to be, at the end of the day it's just marketing.

"Oh, but people obviously support the message it's sending anyway!" True... but that message is at best filled with poor word choices, and full on terrible at worst.

Consent - Important In Real Life, Meaningless In Fantasy

In the context of this being an ad for a porno site, I think it's safe to say "Consent-based" is just a way of assuring viewers that every actress was fully consenting to every sexual act and was not pressured into anything in any way, which is the bare minimum.

HOWEVER, I've seen plenty of people misunderstand or flat out lie about the "consent-based porn" term means. Like I explained, it is meant to be about the ACTORS consenting - but their "characters" don't need to consent to anything because they are not real. A hardcore CNC fantasy with the actress pretending she doesn't want the sex/is not enjoying it while her co-star pretends to force themselves on her is STILL consent-based if the actress playing the victim role can stop the scene for literally any reason and even walk out completely if that's what she wants.

Unfortunatelly, because kink-shaming is still very much a thing, people act like that is crossing a line and totally counts as legitimate assault - even in videos that the actors before AND after the scene mention how excited they are, how great it was, openly discuss their kinks, etc.

Nobody needs to watch something so extreme if they don't want to, but I have a serious problem with people saying stuff like that shouldn't ever happen. If the people involved in the role-play are doing it WILLINGLY and can back down at any moment, then it isn't in anyway immoral.

Sexual Attraction Is NOT The Same As Respect/Acceptance

Once again, I'm sorry (not really) to be the one who has to tell you guys this, but "representation" in porn is meaningless because:

1 - It doesn't matter how many porn videos there are of any minority group - each individual person picking something to watch will only click on the ones that show people with the body-types and genders they are attracted to, doing stuff they personally find appealing.

2 - "This kind of porn is popular" does not in anyway translate to "this is what society deems morally acceptable". A ton of homophobes LOVE lesbian porn. My country, Brazil, has always had porn with trans people and crossdressers as one of THE most popular trends - yet we are also the country that commits hate crimes against them the most, even when compared to places where being trans or crossdressing is literally a crime that earns you an authomatic death sentence. Incest porn has been obscenely popular everywhere for decades yet most people STILL find the thought of real-life incest absoutely repulsive.

3 - "I am not usually/ever attracted to people of group X" doesn't authomatically mean "I HATE people of group X." Just cause I like red-heads and brunettes, doesn't mean I'll be commiting hate crimes against blondes. If that was how things worked, sex-repulsed asexuals would hate literally all of humanity.

Wanting porn to be inclusive is utterly pointless because sexual attraction is 100% morally neutral. Which brings us to...

What Even Counts As "Objectification"?

Once again, if by "Don't objectify people" we are talking about how "Just because you hired this person to star in a porno, it doesn't mean you can just ignore their consent, comfort and safety for the sake of your fetish" then yeah, that's the bare minimum.

However, if you're saying "don't objectify people" as a way to say "Don't make the video too graphic/obscene/kinky" then we absolutely have a problem here because, my guy, it's porn. It is all about letting us see hot people looking slutty and fucking in great, explict detail.

"Oh, but these sexual acts are humiliating and gross!" To you, maybe. But not to the actors that are very willing to do it. I've had some of my fetishes be called both deeply disturbing and gross AND the most vanilla shit ever. That kind of stuff is 100% subjective, and the only people who can say "I felt disrespected/unsafe/abused" are the actors themselves. Once again, if THEY consented, there's nothing wrong with it regardless of it appealing to you or not.

"Oh, but we'd be wasting an opportunity to educate people/give X group more representation"

If I ever click on a porno and there's a two minute intro with the actors, both belonging to some minority group, talking about how one of them is also historian and the other is a astronomer, I will STILL only care about seeing them fuck even though I love both history and astronomy - not because I don't think they can't possibly know what they're talking about since they are sex workers or because of some kind of bigotry, but because, surprise surprise, I only check out porn sites for the porn. That's what EVERYONE does.

Hell, bad porn can be used to educate people. 50 Shades is awful and a ton of ignorant people think it is 100% accurate to how BDSM actually works. However, this has led to entire groups of people who are actually kinky to discuss REAL BDSM with vanilla people and educate them on how it can be a great thing. And, of course, there's people that enjoy those shitty novels/movies but KNOW they are not accurate representiation of BDSM because they are aware that PORN IS JUST FANTASY, NOT A GUIDE TO HOW SEX SHOULD WORK!

"But it's so shallow to focus only on these people's looks and know literally nothing else about them!"

Yes, and? Being "shallow" isn't always bad, and feeling attracted to someone solely for their looks is not a crime.

Don't get me wrong, I'm a goddamn fanfic writer and I was once the classic "teenager that totally thinks she'd have a chance with that famous rockstar that is old enough to be her dad", I KNOW that the thought of a real connection (emotional, intelectual, etc) CAN be hot - but there's nothing wrong with "These two people whose names I don't even know look hot, I wanna see them fuck, then I'll go take a nap and never think of them again." These porn stars are not crying themselves to sleep because people whose faces they've never even seen don't know anything about them other than how they look without clothes on.

"Female" Pleasure - Yet ANOTHER Hollow Marketing Term!

Seriously, that last one REALLY irritated me because it's one of those things that tries to sound progressive, but are meaningless at best and downright sexist at worst, because it implies:

1 - There must be a strict separation between "female" pleasure and "male" pleasure. A sexual act cannot possibly be enjoyable for both the guy and the girl, and gender prevents men and women from EVER being into the same thing (as a woman that finds more porn that fits my taste in "male-centered" sites than in most "porn for women" sites, this one gets on my nerves).

2 - Pleasuring one's partner cannot possibly be enjoyable - so, say, a girl cannot possibly enjoying giving her boyfriend head, and vice versa.

3 - Sex is a competition and women NEED to win because "female" pleasure is apparently more moral than "male" pleasure (hence the "ALL porn can and should be 'female' friendly")

4 - ALL women are turned on/turned off by the exact same sexual acts, and the level of pleasure they get is always exactly the same. Preferences are not individual and never change over time. (Seriously, a woman directs a sex scene between two actresses, the editor is a woman, and all the viewers are women - which one will speak for her entire gender and decide what "female" pleasure looks like? You see how silly this sounds?)

Conclusion

Sex and sexuality can never be over-simplified like that, and fantasies are just harmless fun.

[darklinaforever]

This person is talking about this video :

For those who know this video, it's precisely a video analyzing tons of moments / events from the Atla series... And not just a girl talking about "vast misinterpretations" for two hours (for those who don't know it, I highly recommend it). There are literal scenes used to prove / support the point of view, exactly as this anti want.

But obviously, this anti will never bother to watch this video, while pretending to know what she is talking about. But, that's the whole principle when we talk about Zutara. We talk about their scenes in the series. No scenes from our imagination ! Wtf ?!

Let's be clear, if I generally post or send this video it is to prevent me from wasting my time unnecessarily sending messages to people who will not change their minds anyway. For what ? Because this video is essentially a summary of my opinion on the Zutara question with the arguments very well illustrated and supported by the scenes of the series and or its narration with the explanation of the character arcs, etc.

What I like the most is seeing people proud to affirm that they don't watch or read Zutara analyses, and then try to pretend they know what we're talking about in our analyzes dedicated to the Ship.

How everything we say is just fantasy, our imagination. That we are actually talking about events that never happened ! Or everything is misinterpretations because Zutara makes us horny. This ship is only based on thirst and the superficial pairing of the color blue and red in addition to their physical appearance ! Nothing deep ! (Thank you again for confirming that you have probably never read or watched Zutara analyses)

I don't understand why it's so hard for people to understand that canonical events aren't always good (especially for the characters) or well done in a story. We have to stop the bullshit. There are tons of examples of series with poor writing choices. Stop pretending that having a different opinion from canon is inherently wrong. (Or the show Atla is perfect)

Especially when your only arguments are to say that the opposing team's analyzes are like this or that, when in fact, you don't even look at them ! You have no credibility.

To say that we like a certain relationship because we are superficial / horny, and that if we like it is because we have understood nothing about the series, to see frankly that in fact we do not like it and that we do not like the characters, just because we don't accept certain choices of creators, is essentially admitting to not having any arguments in my opinion.

The anti Zutara piss me off with their fucking condescension.

Also... saying the Zutara fandom is dead ? Make me laugh.

Also, if you actually like Zutara for these reasons, namely the fire / water, red / blue pairing, the fact that these characters physically fit together and you find them sexy, well there is no does nothing wrong, because it's fictional. But the fact is that I've never seen Zutara fans like this ship for these things (except for the fire and water aspect, but generally in its context of Yin and Yang, therefore complementarity, which is in fact each time associated with the characters, their behaviors, relationships and arcs. So always in a deep and not superficial perspective). In fact they are never even named in the analyzes which I come across. Quite simply because generally, Zutara fans are very intelligent people with remarkable analytical skills regarding the Zutara relationship, canonically a friendship, but also clearly with a romantic connotation of very / too many times... But I won't dwell on that since the very video on this post already talks about it.

Kisses to all Zutara fans. And fuck anyone who comes and tells me, or even thinks, that I don't have a brain.

Merry Christmas to everyone.

[romeulusroy]

Succession Preference: Meeting S/O Family

Requested: I think it would be cute to have a succession preference of them meeting their partner's family <33 - anon

A/N: This is the cutest idea ever!!! Ty for requesting my love!!! Feedback is always appreciated!! 💜💜💜

Connor is so nervous to meet your family. He brought flowers and wine hoping to win them over. He really has no idea what to expect. He thinks all families work like his that there's always some mastermind plan going on behind the scenes, that there's always something left unsaid and he has to figure it out. But yours doesn't work that way, most don't. Your family welcomes him with open arms. They've heard, and read, so much about him, but they understand the media portrays people in an imperfect light. They welcome him with hugs and compliments and little jokes, something he's not quite used to. He can see now why you turned out so great and is thankful beyond words you don't come from a family like his. You deserve better than that, than them. He loves your family, adores them, and makes it a point to get together with them often.

Kendall is nervous to meet them. He knows he doesn't have the best reputation and a lot of what he's said and done has been taken out of context, but he really cares about you and wants to do right by you. Your parents are wary of him in private. Of course they know about rehab, about his father, his whole family. They just don't want you getting hurt by him. Kendall would rather die than hurt you, he makes that clear after he's hugged them and shaken their hand, that you are his whole world. Your family isn't perfect, but they're as close to it in his eyes. They ask him about work, about his family, and for once in his life he doesn't feel like he needs to be putting on a show, an act. His laugh comes easy and he's the most relaxed you've ever seen him. He likes your family a lot. He finds peace with them in a way he can't with his.

Shiv wants to make the best impression. She hasn't had to meet many families, her relationships are never that serious, but you're different. She changes her outfit a million times and struggles to pick the best bottle of wine to bring. In the end she isn't happy with either, but she doesn't want to be late. They've heard quote a bit about her and her family, but they know the headlines are rarely right. They think she's so intelligent as well as beautiful. She's quick to keep up in conversations about politics and current events. She's not used to the hugging and compliments. The only thing her mother gives her is contempt and guilt. She softens by the end of the night, no longer worried about keeping up appearances, about keeping up her image. She understand why you wanted her to meet them so badly, to show her that she can be loved for just bring her.

Roman never meets the parents. He's too afraid to. He can't be rejected by another set of parents, he's already got his own to deal with. He can't be rejected by another family, he's not sure he could take it. It takes a lot of convincing, but your family would love to meet him. They want to get to know the person who makes you so happy. He's unbelievably nervous and thinks about bailing, but what kind of message does that send? That he doesn't love you? He loves you more than anything. You warn him to keep the jokes PG, other than that he's a big hit. They think he's hilarious. Especially your younger family members, they adore him. You've warned them that hugs and things like that are a no-go. You can't watch him flinch at their touch. By the end of the night he's relaxed with his arm around you, listening to the embarrassing stories about you, smiling and laughing along with them. Roman likes your family, he finds a sense of warmth he can't find with his own. They like him for simply existing.

[twinklelilstarkey]

Tutor: Phone - Rafe Cameron

Words: 5.1k+ Type: Smut & Fluff Summary: While away from home, Rafe tries to forget the distance by contacting you every night. Today, things get carried away. Warnings: Fem!Reader. Secret Relationship. Ward's obliviousness to Rafe's relationship with the Reader. Missing one another. SMUT {phone sex (my first time writing it, it's not great, sorry), masturbation (fem and male)}. From this request and this request!

Tutor Masterlist (for context, you should read the smuts <3)

I do NOT give you permission to repost my work. If you’d like to read my stories on other platforms, you can find them on my Wattpad and AO3.

By clicking to read more you are agreeing that you are over the age of 18 and mature enough to read mature scenes :)

It has only been a few days. Rafe still has a week and a day before going home and to you, and he already feels some sort of insanity grow at the back of his brain. His days have been, probably, what he would’ve loved only mere months ago, but now, he isn’t exactly a fan.

He has to have breakfast with his dad and his friends every morning, have a meeting before lunch, have lunch with them too, then another meeting, and all of it ends with playing golf until sundown or doing whatever the old men want until going to sleep (from drinking to playing pool, all of it). The only thing he can actually take out of this trip until now is probably how many times his father has spoken of him in such a good light. It’s rare for him to do so, so, Rafe made sure to take every syllable in.

He also texts you every day and calls you before bed too. Unfortunately, the hotel, even though the most luxurious, has the worst internet connection on Rafe’s side of the building. He has to be near the outside pool and reception to get anything downloaded or do any sort of video call. So, only normal voice calls for the two of you.

You usually talk to him about whatever you feel like talking to him about. Rafe usually lets you be the one to make most of the conversation and take it whenever you want it to go. You talk about school, what you’ve done with your friends lately, and how his family is doing. It usually ends with something random you would remember at the last minute.

Your texts are different. They’re more about either of you being bored and wanting a distraction, or simply to get your daily attention from one another. Rafe is checking his phone and texting back at all times of the day, but during the meetings. His father has noticed that too.

Ward is not one to peek into his son’s phone, so he never tries to see who he’s texting or what he’s writing, but he does notice Rafe. He notices how he never hesitates to flip his phone around and check the screen every time it vibrates on the table of the restaurant, and usually how his face softens as he reads the content on said screen. Ward didn’t want to get carried away, but if this meant that his son had finally found someone… A true miracle had occurred, therefore, he should not intervene.

Today is day 6 of their trip, and Rafe is already returning to his room. He had been forced to stay in the bar with his dad and all of his friends. He doesn’t know how many times he was patted on the back, or how many times people had commented on how he had grown - even when this is a yearly trip that he always goes to.

He sends you a quick text to see if you’re awake while he blindly clicks on his floor’s button on the elevator and leans back on the elevator’s wall. He stares at himself in the mirrored wall and sighs. He needs a shower, that bar was way too warm.

Rafe walks out of the moving metal box and walks through the hallways to get to his room. His dad had stayed behind, as it is still only 9:30pm, but he didn’t hold his son back from going to his room to rest.

Rafe gets into his room and slips in his key card to turn on the lights in the room. The door closes behind him, and he locks it while looking around. The bed is made and the air conditioning is already getting rid of the stuffy hot air that got inside throughout the day. Rafe clicks on the lights of the bathroom and checks his phone before going to his shower. No text back yet.

Rafe puts his phone on the bathroom counter and removes his clothes before slipping into the shower. While he takes his shower, you’re lying on your bed, reading the book Kristy recommended you to read. Soft music is playing on your laptop beside your body, and the bedroom door is wide open as you carelessly read.

It’s only when the second vibration of the notification is made that you fetch for your phone. You lay the book on your chest and grab it from on top of your pillows. You quickly sit up when you see that it is Rafe that sent the text and check the time.

By the time Rafe is out of the shower, you have already answered back the text happily. He grabs a towel and wraps it around his waist before walking out of the bathroom. He gets rid of his laundry and quickly taps on your contact to call you, all while he tries to figure out what temperature he’d want the room to be.

With the vibrating phone in your hand, you run to close your bedroom door due to absolute paranoia and close your blinds. You jump back on your bed and accept the call.

“Hi!” You say happily, a little bit out of breath from running in your room and landing on the mattress.

“Hey.” Rafe answers, still figuring out the AC.

“How was your day?” You ask in interest.

Rafe answers you, a little distracted midway through and slowing down a few words, but you don’t mind it. You listen to his descriptions of the old men that he has to deal with and smile at the ceiling while he explains some other things about his day.

After that, Rafe asks you the same question. Your voice fills his ear, telling him all about your day. You went out with Kristy and the other girls. You went shopping with them, went out to eat, and then watched a movie with your parents in the afternoon. They also aren’t home tonight, and Rafe can't help but take that information to heart. Why did they have to leave the house on the days he’s out of the island? 

“What did you buy?”

You tell him how most of the things that were bought were for the girls, while you only got a new dress and two new skirts. While you spoke, Rafe eventually figured out the machine in front of him and walked over to his bed, sitting down at its side and eventually laying down over the cold duvet.

“What do they look like?” He asks when you mention the clothes, oddly interested in your shopping.

“More of what I already have, I guess.” You chuckle at yourself, “My mom actually tells me that I'm always buying the same clothes every time I buy new stuff... They're simple, the skirts are a solid color, but the dress has a cute pattern.”

“What color?”

“Guess.” You say playfully, only making the answer more obvious.

“All of them are pink?”

“Not all of them.” You say defensively, “There are some white details too.”

Rafe laughs at your words, and you feel your heart clench at the sound.

As you continue to talk about your clothes, Rafe never really subsides on the teasing for your constant pink clothes. You laugh at him and get to tease him back since he seems to like the pink clothes on you just as much as you do.

“Not always.” You say with fake defiance, right after being accused of always having pink on you.

“You probably have some on right now.”

You, ready to fire back at him with an ‘actually I do not’, open your mouth and even begin to say the first word, but you go dead silent when looking down at yourself. You just had to pick the pink underwear out of all the ones in your drawer, didn’t you?

“So…?” Rafe asks, making you bite your tongue and stare at the ceiling with an annoyed grunt.

You don’t answer, but that is enough to hear his chuckle on the other end of the line. You sigh loudly and stare at your feet as you have your legs up and toes pointing at the ceiling.

“That’s not fair.” You fake sadness in your tone.

“Oh, really?”

“You picked something that is a part of me. I've always loved pink.” You try to defend yourself, “It’s like if I were to say that you aren’t wearing a polo or a shirt that looks like one. You always wear them.”

“I’m not wearing one right now.”

“Oh, kindly screw you then.” You say, making him laugh, and you smile at the ceiling yet again.

While the two of you get back to the comfortable silence, your smile falls into a grin slowly, and you continue to stay focused on your feet, randomly moving them in the air. 

“What do you have on then?” You ask, curiously.

“Nothing.”

“What?” You laugh, confused.

“Just a towel.”

Talk about unfair. Had he called you a few hours ago, he also wouldn’t have been able to guess that you had pink on you because you would've been in a towel too.

You get ready to yelp about how that wasn't fair, but, either way, you don’t get to scream it since you let your mind run free way too fast. Meaning: you, now, have a clear image in your brain of your boyfriend with only a towel on him. Great.

“You-you can go put on your clothes if you want. I can wait.” You simply say.

Rafe frowned at that. Your tone is way different. It’s not playful at all. It's serious and almost too serious, in fact.

“It’s fine.” He tells you, still frowning. Wishing on going back to your playful tone, he speaks once more, “What part of your outfit is pink?”

You look down at your body again and sigh disappointedly at yourself.

“Panties.”

Rafe clears his throat and closes his eyes. Fuck. He tries to force himself to think of something else. Anything that doesn't include you in only underwear.

His mind is able to make him imagine all sorts of things, all of which that can never be sexualized. Rafe is almost clear from it, yet each undesirable thing that his brain offers him suddenly gets him to think of you again in some way.

“What is it?” You ask him, “You went dead silent.”

“Nothing.” Rafe says after clearing his throat again, bringing his hand up to scrub his face, “Are you tired yet?”

“Not really.” You say, knowing very well that there is no way that you would be able to fall asleep with such turmoil in your stomach and tingling in between your legs. What in the hell did you do to yourself? “How about you?” You ask while bringing your feet back down and unconsciously closing your legs tightly, still trying to fight back the image in your mind.

“Not too tired.”

The two of you go silent again, and Rafe opens his eyes to find only the meaning behind his disappointment in sight, the bulge on his towel.

“You went silent too.” Rafe says, closing his eyes once more, “Just now.”

“'m thinking.”

“About what?”

Rafe just pleads that you will mention something quickly. Anything that is able to make his dick get back down and clear his mind. Even if it’s just until the end of your call.

“I was thinking about you.” You admit, deciding to not give details.

Yeah, that didn’t exactly help him clear his mind.

“You’re thinking about me when you could be talking to me?” He tries to tease you, once again trying to get his mind out of the nasty gutter.

“Well… You did leave me for a trip with your dad.” You say, trying your best to be playful, “Left me all alone, as always.” You sigh out loud.

“Should’ve gotten in my bag while you still had time.”

You chuckle at the end of the line, and Rafe’s lips curve into a grin. He’s almost triumphant with his big and amazing change of conversation, but his mind takes him to his first night at the hotel. What he found in his bag that night... Fuck's sake.

“I miss you.” You sigh, seriously this time.

Rafe’s eyes open at your words.

“I know, baby. I miss you too.”

You let out a whine of pure despair while you roll in your bed, and Rafe’s hand tightens on his phone. He did not need to hear noises. Please do not make any more noises.

“Tutoring is boring now.” You tell him, oblivious to Rafe’s distress. You let out a sigh.

Your voice is a little muffled, so Rafe can only imagine that you have your head laid on the bed or on a pillow.

“And nights became boring too… It’s lonely.” You almost sound like you’re complaining to yourself, “Can’t you come back sooner?”

“I wish I could.”

You groan once more, and Rafe clenches his jaw.

“I miss you. A lot.” You say again for good measure.

Rafe doesn’t answer this time, as he is too focused on trying to redirect his mind somewhere else, but you don’t seem to mind his silence too much. You’re trying to redirect yours too (and failing).

Rafe can't shake away anything that his brain is able to create of you. He can't shake the image of you on your bed just now, probably laying on your stomach. He can imagine the clothes on your body, and the damned underwear. He can see how easy it would be just to reach in and touch you. His hand would move all throughout your smooth skin, and you would never complain. He could also reach in and pull your underwear to the side to feel you.

You let your head fall back on the bed as the images on your own head get worse with each silent second. You can look down at yourself and just imagine if Rafe was there. Gosh, you would let him do anything just about now. Your entire body feels tingly and everything feels weirdly stimulating - the sheets under your body, the coldness of the fabric, and how tight your clothes are to your skin. You sigh, deep in your despair, and stop imagining what it would feel to have his hands on you. Or worse.

It’s only when your song changes that you seem to reawake from your thoughts, all while Rafe is still deep in his. You’re probably soaking your underwear at this point. You need to take care of this issue, or you swear that you will start clawing up the walls.

“Rafe?” You call out.

He hums to let you know that he’s still there listening.

“I think I’m going to sleep.” You say, finally untwisting your legs.

“Already?” He asks you, still trying to seem playful and that nothing is wrong. “Thought you said you weren’t tired.”

“I’m not but-”

“You’re getting rid of me.” He teases you, “What book do you want to go back to?”

A little smile appears on your face since you are very much guilty for doing that on the days prior to this, but you quickly get back to your theatrics.

“No book. I uhm…” You begin but easily remember that you didn’t plan anything in advance. “I need to- uhm… Go take a walk...?”

You frown at your own words.

“A walk?”

“Yap, a walk. I need to get some air.”

Rafe chuckles at the other end of the line, and you let your head fall back to the bed. Why can’t he be clueless like those boys in the movies? Just pretty and no thoughts in his head, only with a singular fly hitting the walls of his cranium. Just for one day, why not?

“What are you really going to do?” He says, and you can hear his smile behind his words.

You huff out air dramatically, making Rafe smile further, but you don’t answer him.

“Come on.” He encourages you.

“It’s embarrassing.” You whine out the words, “I need to go.”

“Come on.” He repeats.

“Please don’t make me say it.”

Rafe felt ready to hear everything. From going to the bathroom to stealing your neighbor's dog. Whatever it was, he was ready. Or so he thought. He just needed to push you for a few more seconds, and you finally said it.

“I’m... uh! I'm wet, okay?” You cringe at yourself, “Now, please. Goodbye, and goodnight. We'll talk later.” You say everything extremely quickly, almost not making him understand you.

Even though you wanted to end the call, you didn’t. Rafe’s silence made you freeze.

“Ra-”

“Shut up.” He says right away.

You stare at your wall, having no idea what to say, do or think.

“Why didn’t you just say it?”

“It’s embarrassing to say these things over the phone!” You tell him in a very defensive tone. You then remember the tone he just used, “Are you mad?”

“No.” He says right as he can, “I’m just annoyed… at the situation.”

“Why?”

“Because I’ve been hard this entire time.”

You almost let your phone fall from your hand but you catch it in time. Rafe stays quiet. You stay quiet. It doesn’t last for too long, because, before you know it, you're talking.

“So what now?” You ask him, trying to get your breathing under control.

“What are you wearing?”

No fucking way.

“Are we really doing this?” You ask, sounding surprised.

“If you want to.”

You force your body to roll on the bed and let out a small breath. Is this actually happening?

“But… I’ve never done this before.” You hesitate, your voice sounding a little breathy due to your nerves.

“Just imagine I'm there with you.”

You take in a sharp inhale as you bring your eyes back to your ceiling, and force yourself to let out an answer.

“Okay.”

Your voice was small, so even Rafe could sense your nerves through the phone. You spoke your answer about the clothes. Your voice was careful, and you tried to pick the right words. You didn’t stutter, thankfully. And with that, you were able to describe your outfit. Nothing exciting, but due to the fact that Rafe has seen you in similar outfits before, it only became a much easier image to imagine.

Just a short tank top, probably no bra, and some underwear. With a low voice, one you’ve heard a few times already, Rafe talked back to you.

“Take your underwear off, princess.”

You do as told, struggling slightly with doing it while trying to hold your phone near your ear. You lift your hips and slide the fabric off of you, lifting your legs in the air for it to be easier for you to get rid of them.

You didn’t care much to toss it to the ground like Rafe usually does, so, you lay it just beside you. You look down at the underwear next to your body and mumble your next words.

“Done.”

Rafe, without telling you, quickly takes off the towel around his hips and stares at himself. You lay down comfortably and continue to hold the phone by your ear. You can imagine that it would be so much better for it to be on speaker mode, easier for you to move freely, but you can’t exactly bring yourself to do that. Even when home alone, what if someone hears?

Your palm rests on your stomach, and you smooth your own skin. You go underneath the fabric of your tanktop and can hear that Rafe is moving too through the phone. You decide to close your eyes and imagine him as he had said before.

“You can touch yourself, baby.”

You do as told, moving your legs hesitatingly to each side and opening space for you to move your hand in between. A small gasp is almost not captured by the microphone of the phone beside your head, but Rafe heard everything. Your fingers slide in between your lips and right as you slide to meet your entrance, you notice how wet you really are.

Rafe’s hand wraps around his cock, and he closes his eyes, listening to you. You're always silent at the start, and the one that speaks the most is Rafe. He has no idea if what he will hear will be enough to make him cum, but, at the same time, he’s sure it will.

As your finger slides over to your swollen clit a little moan comes out of your mouth. You almost catch it and do not make it leave your mouth, but you stop yourself from doing so. Rafe’s hand tightens around his dick, and he begins to move his hand back and forth.

It’s right as your finger begins to move over your, now, soaked clit that your lips fall loose. You can see Rafe in your mind, imagining his fingers instead of your own. They’re very different, both in size and with how they feel on you, but with the amount of lust that has been rolling around in your stomach this whole time, everything feels the same.

“Rafe…” You whisper.

The sound out of your mouth and the images passing through Rafe’s mind are enough to make him let out a sound of his own. You do a steady not too fast rhythm of circles over your clit, but even when the pleasure should not be rising, it does.

“Are you wet, princess?”

“Mhm…” You tell him.

If Rafe had his eyes open, they would’ve been now at the back of his head. He can imagine exactly how it feels when he slides his cock inside of you, and it’s almost like an out-of-body experience at first. You’re always so warm, and so soaked that your wetness can be heard every time he thrusts into you.

A small groan escapes Rafe as he begins to move his hand faster, and you automatically begin to do the same. Your finger over your clit begins to move faster and, right there and then, you can actually hear the sound your wet pussy makes while you move. The obscene sound gets to your brain, and your head sinks further into the pillow under you.

“Put your fingers in, pretty girl, come on.”

With closed eyes, you slide your fingers off your clit, stopping the stimulation and making your body almost complain by itself. Your fingers get to the tight hole, and you slide one first. Then you slide in the second and begin to move your hand slowly, back and forth, until your digits are wet enough to move any faster.

“Does it feel good?”

“Yes, so good.” You sigh out the answer.

You begin to speed the movements of your fingers, and Rafe can already see how your breathing has gotten higher in volume. He continues to move his hand, using his own precum to wet his own hand, and his eyes never begin to open. He can imagine you pleasuring yourself, but he can imagine it as if you were there with him, right on his lap.

Rafe groans at the image on his head. He can see you sitting over his thighs, one hand on him playing with his cock - with your smaller and softer hands -, but also using your other hand to pleasure yourself. Your usual frown of pleasure takes over your face while you pump two fingers in and out of yourself, repeatedly and at a fast pace, the same pace as the hand moving around his dick.

You, lost in your pleasure and in lust-filled confidence, pull your phone away from your ear, and with half-opened eyes, you turn it on speaker. You have the phone by your chest with a very low volume, and Rafe can hear the difference.

Pleasure strikes right into Rafe’s lower abdomen once he can hear it, he can actually hear the very faint small noises beneath your pleasured exhales, the wet squelches as your fingers move in and out of your cunt. If the image on his brain was visible before, now it is more than never.

Your mouth falls open as you continue to pleasure yourself and continue to imagine Rafe doing all sorts of things to you. Pleasure grows at a specularly quick pace, but you don’t care, you simply keep going and doing whatever makes you feel the most pleasure.

The two of them are completely lost in your own minds, letting out sounds that could only feed into the images in your brains.

You also shared words, questions, and answers, those that only made your pleasure grow entirely bigger. Either to speak of yourself and how you feel or even just the simple sound of your voice, everything fed into Rafe’s turmoil. And Rafe’s voice, orders, and grunts of pleasure, all of it fell into yours.

Your fingers are wet and easily moving in and out of yourself, all at a pace that even when it doesn’t meet the fastest Rafe has done to you, it still is pleasurable. It’s a softer type of pleasure that courses through you, one not too powerful yet powerful enough.

You can feel your stomach tighten and your orgasm begins to get closer and closer. Your moans begin to be louder as you feel confident within yourself as you move, and as pleasure begins to be your only priority. Your sounds begin to be pleasurable to you too. Your moans, your whimpers, and your gasps, everything that would usually make Rafe hold onto you tighter and thrust into you deeper. Sounds that drive him insane without fail.

Your orgasm rips through you when you least expect it as you find your g-stop inside of you, and you let out a loud moan. Your legs try to close in with your hand in between, and you keep on moving your fingers in and out of you - just like Rafe would. You ride and prolong your high for as long as you can.

While cumming, you know there are words that leave your lips, as well as many sounds. Yet you have no idea what they were. Your breathing is heavy and with moans in between, and that alone made Rafe reach his orgasm as well.

“Fuck.” You whisper to yourself while slowly doing your fingers inside of you.

Rafe opens his eyes finally and almost squints at the light in the room. His white cum coats his hand and a bit of his stomach. He lets his head back on the bed and brings his vacant (and clean) hand to his head, brushing his hair out of his forehead. He’s breathing heavily and so are you.

“Fuck, indeed.” He answers you.

Your laughter breaks through the silent air like one of the softest and most amazing sounds in the world. Rafe’s phone is also now on speaker, which makes him close his eyes and just imagine that you’re there with him once more. This time, not in a sexual way, just a… normal way.

Behind his eyelids, Rafe can imagine you just sitting beside him in bed and laughing randomly about something he said, or maybe even a story that you told. He can imagine the way you would smile at him and the way you would cradle his face with your hands before giving him a kiss and moving on to the next story about your day.

“I miss you.” You mumble into the phone again, not caring that you’re probably saying it for the thousandth time this week.

Your words are able to break Rafe’s fake world, but he doesn’t mind it, not when he has the real you to talk to.

“I miss you more.”

You let out a singular giggle at his words.

“As if.”

A grin lifts Rafe’s deep frown, and he exhales out a laugh. One his phone is close enough to capture and make you notice it.

“You’re doubting me?”

“I’m not doubting.” You tell him, staring at your ceiling again, “I’m just stating the facts. I miss you more than you miss me.”

Rafe practically snorts at your playful words, and you smile brightly at the sound.

“Whatever makes you happy, pretty girl.”

You move on your bed and stare at your phone lying beside you.

“Please try to come home early.”

“I will...” There's a pause, “I promise.”

There weren’t many words that were shared after his promise, but Rafe found himself closing his eyes again while talking to you. He's able to imagine you laying over his chest and looking up at him as you speak; with your soft hands moving up and down his body, caressing it as you usually do; your soft kisses against his skin when you listen to him speak, or against his lips even in the middle of your own sentences.

He says goodbye to you first as he can tell that your voice becomes smaller with each sentence shared between you. It is from both fatigue and sadness, Rafe could tell from the way you dragged your words and how he would not hear you move around in your bed anymore. Your voice sounds closer to the mic before saying your farewells.

“Sleep well.” You said to him in a soft and sad voice.

“You too, princess.”

The sound of the call ending was probably one of the rudest and most heartbreaking things in the world. The two of you would probably talk right in the morning, right whenever Rafe was up and about to leave to get breakfast, but still, something in that hurt.

He walked back to his bathroom and did what he had to do. When he was back in bed, he grabbed his phone and sighed. You sounded tired and that is what makes him not try to text you or call you for just another minute of call. Time had run fast while you spoke and it was getting late. You needed your sleep.

Rafe turns off his lights too and turns on the TV in the darkness. He lays down under his covers and stares at the screen as his eyes go back to the images in his mind.

He wants to have you beside him in bed, drifting off to sleep and fighting off your weighing-down eyelids. He wants you to tell him yet again that you're not tired while, at the same time, clinging further onto him, snugging closer, and practically lying on top of him. You never want him to leave, and Rafe is happy to oblige your wishes.

When Rafe looks over at what��s beside him, he sees nothing or no one. You aren’t there. And even if he just has to wait for just another week, he wants to see you now.

Deep down he knows that, when he will able to actually see you again, he won’t be able to do exactly what he wants. He won’t be able to kiss you or even hold you when he first sees you. You still need to act as if there’s nothing between the two of you.

At one point, all Rafe wants to do is just ‘fuck it’ and go for it, but he knows he can’t. He knows it would hurt you, and, therefore, hurt him too. He has to keep it going and know that he will see you soon. He just has to think this way, or else things will only seem harder. Just a week. Just a week.

When Rafe’s eyes close, ready to bring him to a much-needed sleep, all he can see in the darkness of his own mind is you, sleeping peacefully beside him. 

Gosh, he loves you.

I'm sorry if you guys didn't like this smut. I never read phone sex smut, and truly have only seen it in movies so I had to do what I could. I'm also not the best at dirty talk, so, if you have tips, help me out. I hope you guys liked it either way. Feedback is appreciated <3

[elysia-nsimp]

I WANT TO PREFACE THIS TWST INCORRECT QUOTES BY STATING THE FOLLOWING:

all of the quotes that are Jamil talking to Kalim are actually me talking to my dog Ivy! It’s a running gag with my friends and I that the stuff I say to Ivy just gets more and more out of context and someone always quotes Jamil when I share a new conversation

Tagging: @queerlordsimon @ladyzsgolla @aetherphobia @thesunshineriptide @end3rm1st (lmk if you want to be added or removed ^^)

Warnings: Cursing, lighthearted bullying, suggestive jokes made by a bunch of asexuals and their token allosexual, caps

Part 1 // Part 2 // Part 3 // Part 4 // Part 5

——

Ruggie, RUNNING down the hallway screaming: I GOT A POPTAAAAAAARTTTT

——

Idia: Screech was put down by the CDC for being a safety hazard.

——

Deuce: why do you wanna go to school?? you're a fucking EGG!.... dumb bitch...

——

Floyd: he's a merman. thats his merass

——

Azul: I wish this game would let me commit tax fraud

——

Jade: I DO NOT CONSENT TO THE SEXUALIZATION OF MY THREATS

——

Yuu, to Jade: can they go on little slug dates?

——

Floyd: It’s like depression if depression was a fish tank

——

Riddle: Well to me this sounds like colour 1 is a more complex colour that is made from something being added to the base of colour 2. Orange (colour 1) is just yellow (colour 2) but with red added. Similarly, green (colour 1) is just blue (colour 2) but with yellow added. Now how does this apply to purple? Thus far all colour two's have been primary colours (as the primary colours are red, yellow, and blue and so far we have yellow and blue but no red. This means that if we assume the same pattern to be true, the last colour 2 should be red. This also matches up with purple as the final colour 1 since red + blue = purple. Lastly, this enforces another pattern I have noticed. Let's look at the second set to see this pattern. In the second set we have blue (colour 2) + yellow = green (colour 1). Now something iinteresting here is that yellow is colour 2 of the previous set. This pattern continues in set 3. We have red (colour 2) + blue (colour 2 of the last set) = purple (colour 1). Finally, it even goes in a loop. In set one we have yellow (colour 2) + red = orange (colour 1). And what do we see here? That's right, red just so happens to be the colour 2 we determined to be the colour which finishes set 3. Therefore we can conclude from multiple patterns within this set that orange is to yellow as green is to blue as purple is to red.

——

Ace: it’s slightly NSFW, but there’s nothing explicit

Deuce: I’m allosexual, I’ll live

Ace: ok [sends picture]

Deuce: NEVERMIND

——

Trey: Dennys is like, the place you go when you burn your dinner for the holidays

——

Jade: Floyd… we’ve talked about this.

Floyd: about what

Jade: Tormenting the Gods…

——

Azul: If you or a loved one has been attacked by Timothy--

Idia: SCREECH

Azul: or Screech, yes-- [dies to screech]

Azul: ...oh

——

Floyd: this is what i call TRAUMA KARAOKE

——

Epel: the femininity is dwindling and the polyamory is spreading

——

Floyd, to Epel: Are you sustenance?….

——

Kalim: I have never felt more unsafe than with your face.

OB!Jamil: What the fuck.

——

Lilia: one day i will get my revenge. not only on the squirrel population, but the baby population

——

Floyd: There’s like 4.5 trans people in this room

Idia: .5??

Azul: am I the .5

Floyd: yes

——

Idia: Bad and naughty Discord users get put in the PS5 controller

——

Floyd: I am going to UNZIP YOUR SPINE.

——

Azul: This is all an elaborate game of pretend to them.

Floyd: AH YES. GAME OF PRETEND. LIKE HOW YOU KISSED ME ON THE MO U T H FOR PRA CT I CE

——

Epel, behind Vil’s back on why he’s a vampire: It’s because he’s so pasty

——

Kalim: i love sad cheesy romance scenes :)

Jamil: I love plotting evilly

Kalim: I also love plotting evilly but I also love sad cheesy romance scenes :)!!!

——

Jade: Yes, hello. I've been keeping Kalim company.

Floyd: yes 😏 company. and they KISSED ON THE MOUTH GAYLY

Jade, ignoring him: He's been teaching me aaall sorts of things...

Floyd: 😳😳 YEAH GAY THINGS. LIKE KISSING ON THE MOUTH.

Jamil: Answer me. What did you do to Kalim

Jade: What did I...do? We were just having a pleasant conversation.

Floyd: ah yes just a pleasant conversation. DEFINITELY NOT GAYLY KISSING

——

Jade: Out of the benevolence of Azul’s heart, he will let Jamil practice kissing with him.

Kalim: just like Floyd

——

Floyd: SWING THE DICK AT THEM. HELICOPTER DICK TO SCARE THE NINJAS AWAY

Jamil:

Kalim:

——

Trey: is it legal to milk clowns?

Jade: It depends on the clown… it depends on their sins…

Lilia: we dont like being milked actually

——

Ruggie: I wish I cried lemonade... because then I'd cry more often and then I'd have lemonade. And then I wouldn't be sad anymore... but then I'd cry happy tears because I have lemonade, which would make me cry more... and then the cycle repeats...

——

Floyd, in Minecraft: ooohhhHhhH Look at youUUU so KIND and GENEROUS HOUSEWARDEN--

Floyd, getting punched off the mineshaft by Azul: aH FUCK FUCK FUCK

——

Ortho, after Idia showed him many cursed furbys: You owe me a new pair of eyes.

Idia: can they be furby eyes 😀

——

Jack: Maybe the real booty is the friends we made along the way yknow

——

Prof. Trein: Talk amongst yourselves, do not speak in Welsh.

——

Cater: That's how Im gonna start commenting on things now. Just, person adjective

Deuce: Cater uh- nice

Cater, WITHOUT HESITATION: Deuce depressed

——

Che’nya: My emotionally identifying with cats has nothing to do with me being a furry and EVERYTHING to do with me being autistic

——

Yuu, about Grim: Your heart is bigger than your little body!!

Ace: so is his ego

Yuu, laughing: that’s true

——

Silver: you look very intimidating right now

Sebek: Wh- Silver- I am sitting here eating my pocket muffin Silver

——

Deuce: If you poke my eyes I won’t be able to breathe- wait

——

Trey with a slinky over his eyes: New technology makes it more difficult to see! Mobility disaids

——

Cater: You reenter the VC. I turn around in a swivel chair, filing my nails. “I've been expecting you,” I say.

Idia: ...... [disconnects]

——

Jamil, to Kalim: I was wondering about the dust bunny too.. nO, NO, DONT EAT THE DUST BUNNY—

——

Ace: What are we SUPPOSED to do? Hold each other by the toes and sing a friendship song???

——

Lilia: mmmm bacon soap….

Silver:

Malleus:

Lilia:

Silver:

Malleus: …did you just say “bacon soap”?

——

Silver: You DO look intimidating, eating your pocket muffin like an APPLE, staring into the middle distance dramatically

Sebek:

——

Jamil: I really don’t want to touch your… gooey… wet… ball, Kalim.

——

Leona: There’s weed in this tea… Hm. [takes another sip]

——

Jamil: Kalim, stop putting your balls under the greenhouse. I don’t want to keep fishing them out.

——

Floyd: Shrimpy, I want you to know that i am going to shit in your bathroom. just wanted to make sure you knew.

Azul: that is NOT how i expected you to end that sentence

——

Jade: Whatcha doing?

Floyd: Your m—

Floyd:

Jade: Go on.

Floyd:

Jade: Finish the sentence, Floyd.

Floyd:

Jade: Floyd finish the sentence.

——

Idia: THREE ASEXUALS… RECREATING SEX

Vil:

Jade: sex 2

——

Lilia: Reminiscing from the glory days to the whore-y days

——

Silver: I got off the plane, saw someone who was my friend, got hugged, then you TOOK OFF YOUR SHIRT, BIT INTO AN APPLE LIKE A MUFFIN, SAT AGAINST THE WINDOW LIKE A WALL SIT AND STARED AT ME

Sebek:

——

Idia, TERRIFIED: PLEASE DO NOT LOOK TO ME FOR WISDOM I AM FUCKING STUPID

——

Jamil: why do you have to pick the balls to kick that hurt the most, kalim

——

Floyd: I like my men like I like my SCPs… keter class.

——

Jamil: Don’t EAT your tie, Kalim-

——

Jamil: Don’t steal any more frogs Kalim

——

Idia: The heart wants what the heart wants… the heart wants autism. 🤷

——

Jamil: LEAVE MY BALL ALONE

——

Rook: maybe you can domesticate beastmen

Jack: I don’t like the implications of domesticated beastmen

Rook: I don’t think you appreciate my artistic interpretation here

——

Floyd: I can’t believe Azul is a sugar daddy

Jade: …DONT SAY IT LIKE THAT

——

Ace: if each day is a gift then can i return mondays?!

——

Sebek: IF YOU WOULDNT LIE TO FAERIES THEN YOU SHOULDNT LIE ABOUT BEAN AND CHEESE BURRITOS

——

Cater: Ace is dead?? Crab rave???

——

Vil: I can’t believe you

Rook: I feel like you don’t appreciate my artistic expression

——

Jamil: You need to go to the hospital

Floyd: I JUST WENT YESTERDAY!!!

Jamil: YEAH BUT THAT WAS BEFORE YOU ATE A MICROWAVE

——

Floyd: personally speaking, mood. professionally speaking, yeah.

——

Anyway that’s all this time, much longer than usual because I had a lot saved up

Lots of Floyd because he haunts my every thought my bad

[bonearenaofmyskull]

The OP has turned off reblogs at the time I'm posting this, so it seemed wise to move this discussion about the authenticity of Hannibal's love for Will over here. I want to give it its due, and the open invitation to discuss was out, so here is some context and my response.

The original ask went:

Hi! I've wanted to write about this for a long time, and your blog seems like a safe space. Let me give you a heads up—I am not against shipping at all. I am aware of the antis in your ask box, but I promise I am not affiliated with them. This is just a friendly direction. So, if you are truly open to discussion, I want you to view Hannibal as a selfish, manipulative, and extremely violent person. Notice how he is power-hungry and wanted to keep Will in his chokehold, never viewing them as equals. Hannibal created this delusional image of Will in his mind and inserted himself into Will's delusional world. Look at his actions again in season 3. Can you point out one scene where you can write, "Oh yes, Hannibal loves Will"? The problem with the antis is that they are questioning Will's feelings for Hannibal when they should question Hannibal's feelings for Will. Hannibal only liked Will when Will behaved like Hannibal—notice that in season 2. Does it change your view on them now?

OP didn't have anything to say to this, and my response was critical of anon's choice to bring this to OP's inbox, but the relevant part of what I said to the current discussion included the following:

...the basic rule [of writing discourse] is--if you're the one to posit the claim, then it is your job to support it.... You can't possibly do the leg work needed here to give your side its due. This is such a hefty claim that you've posed--that Hannibal's worst personality defects negate any authenticity/sincerity in his emotional response to Will--that the support it needs is probably running in the 6k words range. Or more.

To which @melancholymournia responded:

Let's start a discussion then --

I believe Anon has a valid perspective. They were seeking opinions and I believe it's within their right to do so. Anon's main argument is that Crimson should view Hannibal as an antagonist, as he embodies a sinister role in the narrative. Hannibal's love for Will is portrayed as selfish, driven by desperation for understanding. Anon points out Hannibal's creation of a false image of Will in his mind, particularly evident in Season 1's exploitative and abusive behavior. Anon contends that Hannibal only appreciates Will when he mirrors Hannibal's actions,evident in s2 and Will's attachment stems from trauma and a sense of justice. Will attempted to kill Hannibal numerous times and even succeeded, but Hannibal's plot armor consistently saved him. Despite this, according to Bryan, it's "Will Graham's story," implying that Hannibal's eventual demise was always a possibility. Hannibal maintained manipulation over Will even in Season 3, from start to finish. People's justification of the Dolce scene and romanticizing the gallery scene surprises me, considering both instances involved plans for mutual harm. Despite Will expressing fatigue with the chase, questions about why he fell for Hannibal linger. After discussions, it became clear to me that his attachment wasn't love but a trauma response to his abuser. In Season 3, even when Will urged Hannibal to leave, Hannibal surrendered, manipulating the situation rather than acting out of genuine love. Hannibal caged himself to ensnare Will, who later moved on with a family, but the fandom struggled to accept it, mirroring Will's Stockholm syndrome-like attachment to Hannibal. Hannibal continued harming Will, sending the Dragon to kill Will's family to manipulate him into a meeting. Ultimately, Will chose death to escape both Hannibal and himself, feeling a resemblance to Hannibal in his mind. Throughout the seasons, Hannibal's actions show a lack of genuine love, portraying him as a greedy figure taking relentlessly from Will and ultimately causing his destruction.

I think this is a teachable moment about meta and what it needs to be successful. So this is my response--partially aimed at the content of what you've said here, and partially aimed at talking about meta itself and what it needs and how to do it justice.

I think when we're thinking about writing meta that is successful, we need to be thinking about what it is we're trying to achieve. Personally, I ascribe to the belief that "the aim of argument, or of discussion, should be progress, not victory." This doesn't mean I or anyone else won't fall victim to being petty once in a while--we're all human here, I think--but that if we're doing our jobs the best we could be doing them, then we should be focused on getting to a shared deeper understanding of the text, rather than on trying to "win." Above that, I think our fandom has lost a sense of this in its discourse in the past couple months.

In pursuit of that, I don't think how you opened, with defense of anon, was wise. This argument, if it needs to be made, needs to be made for the perusal of the fandom, not specifically for one person. Crimson neither needed nor wanted to be a target. "They were seeking opinions" and having a "main argument is that Crimson should view Hannibal as [anything]" are essentially exclusive statements. Anon was not trying to get Crimson's opinion: they were trying to sway it. You stepping in to defend anon when more people than just myself have recognized the troll-y or even malicious aspects of the ask puts your argument in a bad light, which honestly doesn't serve you well. If your primary purpose is to make the argument (and actually sway opinions yourself) rather than to defend anon (create teams/advance fandom drama/"win"), then it would be better delivered if you maintained an air of neutrality by at minimum, avoiding commentary on anon themself.

That could be done by starting your own post and tagging the interested parties and just focusing on the topic at hand and ignoring anon. Or this could be done in your response by saying something along the lines of just "This is an interesting idea that I haven't seen discussed enough. I think..." and then proceed to say what you think. That then shifts the conversation to the claims being made rather than the people who make them, and how they made them. (Note my primary objection to the original ask is exactly about anon's behavior and choices rather than to the points themselves.)

So setting the issue of anon's choices aside, we next need to look at who the audience is (the broader fandom) and how they can be swayed. Because isn't that the goal, here, ultimately? It sounds like what you and your friends want is to shift general fandom attitude away from the merry-murder-husbands interpretation and into something more cognizant of the fucked up nature of the show.

And this is not in and of itself a bad goal overall, depending on how far you take it. But whether you succeed in this goal or just end up driving people out of the fandom because of the drama or because they become disillusioned with the ship itself is a very fine line to walk, and I'm not sure the people who have been walking it lately realize just how delicately they need to step (not necessarily you specifically--I don't remember seeing your name around before this tbh). It's not progress unless people come around to your way of thinking without becoming fed up and hurt and leaving.

(Obligatory reminder to my own follower base here: I don't condone people going around to anyone's inbox or comments specifically to harass them, regardless of what their opinions are. I am fully of the opinion that we can all play in the same sandbox together without throwing sand in each other's eyes, even if we think the other sand castles are ugly.)

One troubling fact of the whole-fandom-as-audience as it exists currently is that people have differing notions about what the fandom believes on the whole. To sum up, there seems to be three camps: "merry-murder-husbands," "Hannigram-BAD," and "Wtf happened to my peaceful fandom."

If you haven't deduced it already, I belong to the third group.

Merry-murder-husbands and Hannigram-BAD both seem to largely think that everyone who doesn't belong to their own group belongs to the opposing group. But I don't think that's a useful place to write meta from. Tonally, it's going to be off-putting from the very start to anyone who isn't in your own camp, even if their camp is just "Wtf." Getting your point across is also going to be extra difficult if people are from the opposing group--they're going to feel attacked or at the very least, condescended to.

For starters, your (and anon's) talking points aren't going to be focused on what matters to the Wtf crowd. Where this comes up in this particular discussion is with these points here:

Hannibal as a selfish, manipulative, and extremely violent person.

He is power-hungry and wanted to keep Will in his chokehold.

Hannibal as an antagonist, as he embodies a sinister role in the narrative.

Hannibal's love for Will is portrayed as selfish, driven by desperation for understanding.

Hannibal maintained manipulation over Will even in Season 3, from start to finish.

People's justification of the Dolce scene and romanticizing the gallery scene surprises me, considering both instances involved plans for mutual harm.

Hannibal continued harming Will, sending the Dragon to kill Will's family to manipulate him into a meeting.

Hannibal caged himself to ensnare Will.

To the Wtf crowd, this is sort of like arguing that water is wet. Is Hannibal, the biggest pile of dicks that ever existed, actually a big pile of dicks? Well, iunno...you tell me? Nobody from this crowd is arguing that Hannibal isn't a big pile of dicks. So this is basically spinning your wheels.

As to the merry-murder-husbands crowd, this is all justified because deep down, Will is just as big a pile of dicks as Hannibal, and Hannibal being a big pile of dicks to Will just uncovers Will's true dick pile qualities so they can go off and live as merry-piles-o'-dicks together. Now, personally, I think this particular response is full of circular logic and just plain wrong, but the point here is that you're never going to win against it by writing points that play into it. This crowd will move the goalposts on this discussion to a discussion about Will's character, and then you'll be dealing with that instead of the points you want to be making about Hannibal.

This also sets aside that some of these points could be argued against on their own specific merits. Does Hannibal really want to keep Will in his chokehold, or does the real excitement for Hannibal come when Will turns the tables on him? That's a whole meta post by itself, frankly, and more than we can discuss here feasibly. But it does highlight another problem with these points: some of them are interpretations and conclusions in and of themselves, not actual points of evidence.

There's an additional problem in the overall argument with multiple points being about Will rather than Hannibal:

Ultimately, Will chose death to escape both Hannibal and himself, feeling a resemblance to Hannibal in his mind.

Despite Will expressing fatigue with the chase, questions about why he fell for Hannibal linger. After discussions, it became clear to me that his attachment wasn't love but a trauma response to his abuser.

Will's attachment stems from trauma and a sense of justice. Will attempted to kill Hannibal numerous times and even succeeded, but Hannibal's plot armor consistently saved him.

Will…later moved on with a family, but the fandom struggled to accept it, mirroring Will's Stockholm syndrome-like attachment to Hannibal.

Despite this, according to Bryan, it's "Will Graham's story," implying that Hannibal's eventual demise was always a possibility.

The original anon defined this problem as "The problem with the antis is that they are questioning Will's feelings for Hannibal when they should question Hannibal's feelings for Will," but these all shift the discussion back onto Will, into places that serve your opposition rather than serving you. So even if you "won" this part of the argument--which is easier said than done--you still wouldn't have proven your point about Hannibal, you will have just made observations about Will.

Again, this is all beside the point for the Wtf crowd, and playing into the hands of the merry-murder-husbanders.

So what do we have left? These are the rest of the statements:

Hannibal surrendered, manipulating the situation rather than acting out of genuine love.

Hannibal's actions show a lack of genuine love, portraying him as a greedy figure taking relentlessly from Will and ultimately causing his destruction.

and

Hannibal created this delusional image of Will in his mind and inserted himself into Will's delusional world.

Hannibal only liked Will when Will behaved like Hannibal—notice that in season 2.

Anon points out Hannibal's creation of a false image of Will in his mind, particularly evident in Season 1's exploitative and abusive behavior. Anon contends that Hannibal only appreciates Will when he mirrors Hannibal's actions,evident in s2.

I've grouped them like this because they are each united by theme: one, that, as I put it in my original reblog, Hannibal's worst personality defects (his selfishness, manipulation, and sadism) negate any authenticity/sincerity in his emotional response to Will; and two, that Hannibal's image of Will in his mind is incorrect enough that it means that he's fallen in love with his idea of Will, rather than with the man himself.

I think we can all see that the second of these--although perhaps the more accurate one--is going to be plagued by the moving goalposts I mentioned above. In order to prove it, you've got to prove that Will isn't the person Hannibal perceives him to be. That might be doable with the Wtf crowd (probably why I see it as a more accurate concept, since I'm in this crowd), but it's going to be MONUMENTAL to try to get the merry-murder-husbands to see it this way. If you're willing to fight those off, well, you might make some headway with people who are more open-minded.

But it's going to be complicated by the fact that you're going to have to also prove the first claim in order to make the second stick, because the problems with the first one will set up problems with the second. And that first claim is going to be real difficult to prove.

Here's why: the basic presumption of the first claim--Hannibal's worst personality defects (his selfishness, manipulation, and sadism) negate any authenticity/sincerity in his emotional response to Will--is that it defines love in the kind of platitudes people use when they're teaching their children not to allow others to mistreat them. It's syllogistic.

A. Hannibal is greedy and manipulative and destructive with Will.

B. Love is not greedy, not manipulative, and not destructive.

C. Therefore Hannibal's feelings for Will are not love.

But we all know the problem with a syllogism: if either of the premises are false, the conclusion is also false.

In real life, premise in B. may or may not be a useful way to look at love, but that's beside the point here. The question is, Is the premise in B. the way the show Hannibal presents and defines love?

Fortunately for us, the show has given us two explicit statements on love and what it is and what it means, one in "Shiizakana" and one in "Secondo."

In "Secondo," the conversation is between Hannibal and Bedelia:

B: What your sister made you feel was beyond your conscious ability to control or predict. H: Or negotiate. B: I would suggest what Will Graham makes you feel is not dissimilar. A force of mind and circumstance. H: Love. He pays you a visit or he doesn't.

This view of love is that it is outside of the control of the one who experiences it. In order to support that Hannibal does experience this kind of love when it comes to Will Graham, then all you have to prove is that he had super strong feelings toward Will that caused him to be out of control, to badly predict his own behavior, and that he did stupid shit rather than negotiate his choices well. I think...well, these are all fairly easy to prove. Hannibal set his whole neatly curated world on fire for Will, all the while thinking he was in control when he was totally out of control. This would be the "Did you think you could change me, the way I changed you?" problem. Up until the moment that Will points out that he already did change Hannibal, Hannibal really thinks he's negotiating this force of mind and circumstance just fine. Meanwhile, he makes himself sad by getting Will incarcerated and mad at him, he plays his get-out-of-jail-free card with Miriam Lass, and then this loses him his very favorite murder identity of the Chesapeake Ripper, and eventually his home, practice, ability to live under his own identity and ultimately his freedom. The fact that he tries to control something that is very much out of his control is evidence for, not evidence against, defining his actions as motivated by love. At least by this definition.

The other definition presented in "Shiizakana" is probably the more damning one:

H (in Will's mind): No one can be fully aware of another human being unless we love them. By that love we see potential in our beloved. Through that love, we allow our beloved to see their potential. Expressing that love, our beloved's potential comes true.

If we stop after the first statement ("No one can be fully aware of another human being unless we love them") then it might seem like we have something workable with regards to the idea that Hannibal is in love with an idea of Will rather than the man himself. By this reasoning, because he's focused on his image of Will--his imago--then his love is less than fully aware of who Will really is. So maybe it's not really love.

But unfortunately that isn't the end of the statement. Seeing that person's potential (Hannibal's idea of Will) is part of being fully aware of them, by this definition. Will then coming to see that same potential in himself--the cause of him throwing them both off the cliff instead of just Hannibal--happens through Hannibal's love for him. And if Will does go full dark murder husband (the jury's still out on this, obviously, and will probably be out forever), then that would be because Hannibal expressed his love, in all those selfish and destructive and manipulative ways. Even if Will doesn't go full dark, where he has expressed his darkness--with Chiyoh and her prisoner, with touching Frederick Chilton's shoulder, with attempting to kill Hannibal himself, with his deceptions and manipulations and obvious enjoyment of terrorizing Freddie Lounds, etc, etc, whatever--is still that potential coming true.

This is going to be a really difficult point to argue past, especially because the show is largely concerned with transformation as an expression of love, all the way back to Garrett Jacob Hobbs and most of the murders of the first season. It may not be the way one should view love in the real world, but it's the way love is defined in the murderworld of Hannibal.

And that even leaves aside numerous other points, including but not limited to:

violence as an expression of love and/or sex

Bedelia--who herself disagrees with Hannibal's assessment of Will's character--nonetheless defining Hannibal's feelings as "in love"

the imago as an image of a loved one carried by the unconscious during a person's entire life, which is still defined as love even though it idealizes that person

the fact that Will planted Hannibal's imago himself

So if this is something that you really want to pursue, all this is what you're up against. It's a tall order, and that's probably why no one has really broached the issue much in the past except as a sort of moral judgment against shippers.

The limits of what I've laid out here include the interpretation of the cliffening being Will's rejection of going full dark. That's got some room to move, but it's problematic because if he fully rejected the concept of that being his potential, then he doesn't actually need to throw himself off the cliff, and additionally, it's undermined by the Bedelia leg-eating scene which suggests Will's involvement. Ultimately, it's also fully speculative--you only have those two scenes to work with, and everything else that falls under the general umbrella of speculations about S4 and beyond are just that--speculations. Not evidence.

There's probably an argument somewhere that the show draws a distinction between wholesome love (like Jack and Bella) and Hannibal's kind of love, but I don't know if that distinction is strong enough that Hannibal's love is not love at all, in the show's terms. Especially because Jack and Bella's love is partially defined through how her coping with death changes them both. But you still have the problem of it being about different types of love, not one thing being called love and another thing not. Overall, this would be hard to find all the pieces of and would require a lot of studying the stories about love that are outside of Hannibal and Will, and this would be challenging even to me, but it might be worth a look if someone wants to do that massive amount of homework.

I guess that's kind of where all this ultimately leads me, and back to the original point I made about why this kind of discussion doesn't belong in any one person's inbox. These are big questions: they can't be fully argued in a couple paragraphs. At least not well. The fandom is sorely missing meta writers at the moment who are willing to take the trouble to do the full amount of homework and effort that is required to really say something insightful. Mostly it just seems like people want to toss off a couple paragraphs and "win."

That's always been a problem with meta in fandom. It isn't a problem we're newly inventing. Everyone has opinions, regardless of the amount of thought they've put into them--but for the Hannibal fandom specifically there used to be more people who were willing to really dedicate themselves to getting to the bottom of things, to making progress understanding the show be the purpose of discussion and analysis, rather than achieving victory over a perceived group of people who are understanding the show "wrong." Right now there's...maybe one?

To be clear, I don't count myself as in that group of one person who is willing to work that hard. At least not for the most part. There's nothing wrong with opting out of that effort.

But there is something wrong with pursuing that "win," if it comes at the expense of people's peace of mind, the fandom family's unity, and deeper understanding of the show.

So if you want to have these discussions, please have them, but have them at the level that they deserve to be had. If there has to be a call to action at the end of the post, I suppose I'm asking people to do the homework--to watch the show ten more times, start to finish, to have the episodes ready to go at a moment's notice during a discussion, research existentialism and Christianity and Revelations and the original books and films and what Bryan Fuller and the cast have said and what the other meta writers said over the past eleven years.

But at the very least, let's stop letting our annoyance with each other dictate our understandings of the show itself. Yes, some interpretations and some people can be super annoying (believe me, I've been there!), but that has no place in generating bias over what the show itself has to say.

[unlikelyjapan]

s2e3 rewatch notes

One more before the weekend...

"When I was a kid anything that would give me some type of excitement, or amusement or enjoyment would get fucked ... Sometimes they'd try too hard, or they'd make promises they weren't able to keep" - everything in Carmy's AA statement can be related to cooking, the restaurant, drawing, Claire - pretty much the sum of Carmy's parts now.

Second Carmy/Syd kitchen scene:

Carmy is always the first to ask about anyone's parents (but only to Syd) - just like he inquires about Syd's Dad, his first concern is to ask about Marcus' mom while they debate sending him to Copenhagen. Family and people, in general, are always at the forefront of his mind, while progression is always at the forefront of Syd's (even if she does genuinely cares and checks in, it's secondary)

Carmy's "I want to make a suggestion" to go out was so loaded - it was obviously a premeditated move that he wanted to do the food tour with Syd. "I think WE need to go out, and we need to try some stuff"

After he tells her he'll see her in an hour, Goodbye Girl by Squeeze starts playing, and the track ends as Tina realizes that Ebra isn't ever going to be by her side in class *dies twice*

Richie dropping off his daughter: I have a precocious 6-year-old daughter as well and.....they tried to squeeze way too many lines into Eva to advance Richie's storyline when it should have come via Tiff or something - I hate being a negative nelly, but this part is so botched/lifetime drama-y.

(His obvious tenderness is sweet though)

10:44am call with Claire: this is only 2ish hours after his AA talk - I guess the subject matter was resonating with him?

Her forcing the convo on how ingratiated she is with his family makes me throw up my hands and say "no wonder the guy had a fucking panic attack later!". I was just highlighting how in AA how his family tries too hard sometimes - this is a prime example with her "I know all the fuckin' Faks" jousting.

And my god, she knew he was about to tell her that he was busy today, and she claps back "can you not make this weird?" - it literally harkens back to his family's bullying and expectations that Carmy will pacify them. (I know she can't know all this, but damn)

This part of the conversation gets its own bullet point:

"You know, he [Fak] told me that you guys are really close and that he's your best friend" - I didn't realize the first go around how bold the attempt at enmeshment was. With Fishes as context, the toxicity levels in this conversation are off the rails.

Also, her demented smile when she says "really?" when he says "no...no, Fak's not my best friend" - aggghhhh!

"No, no. He is. He's probably my best friend"

What the hell is this? "That's interesting, to sit with, for you" with the continued weird little smile -this isn't flirting, this is her relishing in the fact that she can manipulate him.

Why didn't I clue into how caustically fucked this scene was the first time? I think I was so distracted by the whispy dialogue and cadence of the conversation that I actually blacked out of the dialogue. Thank goodness for subtitles, because this script is mildly psychotic to read.

I know Storer said that one of the themes of this season is "winning is losing" - Claire is definitely playing to win at all costs. Is s2e10 showing that she lost? Or am I sitting through this dialogue again next season? I NEED TO KNOW.

Anyways, Secret Teadrops by Martin Rev (google the lyrics) plays as sydney enters Kasama - God, the music suggests she was thrilled to be spending a day out of the usual context with Carmy, and her checking her phone constantly is killing me.

Twenty Five Miles by Edwin Starr starts playing at the start of the food montage, just as Sydney gets the text from Carmy that she'll be doing it alone.

"I've been walking for three days and two lonely nights, and you know that I'm mighty mad"

After the owner of Avec tells her that she needs a great partner above all else, the lyrics blare again with "although my feet are tired, I can't lose my stride" - she can't abandon faith in Carmy just yet.

After the Pelican meats scene where the butcher (I forget his name, sorry!) tells Syd that he and his wife lost their restaurant in Bucktown after a business partner cut and ran, the song again blares with "I'm SO tired, but I just can't lose my stride"

Syd starts to adjust her language to "I'm not exactly solo" in the next restaurant scene- ugh - painful.

Enter conversations about profit sharing. Naiya assumes that she and Carmy are INVOLVED involved, and when she finds out they're just "gentleman's agreement" partners, she basically tells her to watch her back. Syd registers the statement, but looks so dejected, like she knows she's on a fool's errand now.

The lyrics flare one last time simply with "I've got to walk on"

Cue Carmy's phone going to voicemail as she has the jitters on the loading dock. She looks so sad, but also resigned to her fate at this point.

Sydney calls Marcus right after trying to call Carmy looking for any kind of sign or reinforcement. We're at the triangle again, with Marcus interpreting it one way, and Syd....really not reading anything into it at all.

I feel like Fak making fun of Marcus for "looking forward' with that big, dumb smile on his face means he knows Marcus' affection for Sydney.... and I'm starting to realize all the plots I don't like are the result of Fak's intuition and/or meddling.

Syd awkwardly trying to poach BOH workers is adorably baller and shows how aggressive she is just now realizing she needs to become- and she's so terrible at it, and I love her.

Future Perfect by Duretti Column (what an awesome deep cut) playing - I love that this part of the montage is Syd diving deep into herself and her more analytically-bent creative process and fuck everyone else. It's just her carrying the creative load of the restaurant right now, but she's truly free.

Lyrics repeat "You tell me stories, you speak in pictures"

She's being absolutely present ("Don't live in the future") and letting the food and the city that birthed it speak to her honestly and it's just so beautiful. The old family pictures surface in her memory alongside the plates she's crafting - her own contribution to the chaos menu, her past and present combined, her future (The Bear) undetermined.

Back to The Bear with "Make You Happy" by Tommy McGee playing in the background - I feel like enough ink has been spilled on this scene, but honestly read the lyrics here - ack.

One small observation after Carmy says "I'll let you know" - in the background, Marcus looks completely defeated, Fak's suppressing a laugh or something, and we get Richie's "ooooooohhhhhhh!"while Carm gives him dagger eyes. Y'all....these are not great men.

Syd rightfully realizes she needs to get the fuck away from everyone in that instant if she's going to do anything productive with the inspiration she's culled from her day of exploration and calls in the favor from the kitchen. I love that it almost immediately cuts to her there with her emotional support spoon 🥺

The ravioli failure - i.e. the fantasy vision of the food she had on the plate during her journey day not matching the reality of what she can craft on her own = the fantasy vision of the restaurant/life she could craft with Carmy not matching the reality of what she can is forced to craft on her own.

Oof, taking a break for a few days now....