#There's a difference between transgression and transformation!!

[thatsonemorbidcorvid]

“For example, she wonders whether “fetishism is a reaction to the anxiety of living in a capitalist world”. “Perhaps to have a fetish is … a way of calming the noise of the world by knowing exactly what kind of object does it for you,” she says. Maxing out your credit card on wet-look bodystockings might look like shopping but real sophisticates know it’s an act of resistance to consumer culture. Yeah, right.

The pretentiousness reaches a zenith in a chapter on “monsters”, which deals with attraction to animal personas. “Imagine being strapped into a dog mask and looking up at someone from the floor … being touched and f***ed by endless limbs. Imagine surrendering to the desires of others,” she writes. “These feel like the perfect sites for …”

For what? If you thought the end of that sentence was going to be “having an orgasm”, no points to you. Instead, Fedorova thinks that these are “the perfect sites for questions inspired by post-structuralist philosophy”. Even if you agree that reading Judith Butler is strictly for masochists, this feels like a bit of a stretch.”

In Second Skin by Anastasiia Fedorova and in Love Expanded by Wren Burke the authors make a political case for their very different sexual identities. But it’s all rather pretentious and infantile

In the 20th century gay rights protesters had the slogan “good as you”. It was a rejection of prejudice and an insistence on dignity in the face of others’ disgust. The movement was a success. Such a success, in fact, that some straight people decided they wanted in.

Hence the ever-expanding label of “queer”, which was once a slur and is now embraced by anyone even marginally outside the sexual mainstream. In the era of identity, “straight” and even worse “vanilla” are tantamount to terms of abuse: basic, boring and definitely not aspirational.

And so the authors of both these books identify as queer despite it being hard to imagine two people with less sexual common ground between them. Anastasiia Fedorova is a fetishist. In Second Skin she writes about the pleasure of being “transformed” by latex, about the “sexual charge” of car parks and about the blissful disinhibition she experiences when wearing a dog mask in a fetish club.

In contrast to this torrent of filth, Wren Burke’s defining characteristic is a total uninterest in sex. Burke identifies as asexual (ace), aromantic (aro) and nonbinary to boot. That means Burke feels neither sexual nor romantic attraction to other people. Love Expanded is an attempt to define the asexual or aromantic spectrum (aspec) community as a political bloc.

Reading these very different books, though, the same question occurred to me: how is this my business? The writers appear to be under the impression their particular mode of sexuality is fascinating in and of itself. But other people’s sex lives are, in general, about as interesting as other people’s dreams. Unless you’re sleeping with them, why would you care?

Fedorova, who works as a curator as well as being a writer, gamely attempts to make a case for the significance of her subject. Her focus, she writes, is on “the way in which fetish can be a tool for transformation, expanding the boundaries of the self, as well as the way fetish transgresses the boundary of the erotic, spilling into day-to-day life”.

What this amounts to is the insistence that fetishes are inherently politically radical and valuable on that basis (rather than because they do anything as drab as help their practitioners to get off). This leads Fedorova to make some statements that are frankly perverse — in the logically incoherent sense, rather than in the fun, horny sense.

For example, she wonders whether “fetishism is a reaction to the anxiety of living in a capitalist world”. “Perhaps to have a fetish is … a way of calming the noise of the world by knowing exactly what kind of object does it for you,” she says. Maxing out your credit card on wet-look bodystockings might look like shopping but real sophisticates know it’s an act of resistance to consumer culture. Yeah, right.

The pretentiousness reaches a zenith in a chapter on “monsters”, which deals with attraction to animal personas. “Imagine being strapped into a dog mask and looking up at someone from the floor … being touched and f***ed by endless limbs. Imagine surrendering to the desires of others,” she writes. “These feel like the perfect sites for …”

For what? If you thought the end of that sentence was going to be “having an orgasm”, no points to you. Instead, Fedorova thinks that these are “the perfect sites for questions inspired by post-structuralist philosophy”. Even if you agree that reading Judith Butler is strictly for masochists, this feels like a bit of a stretch.

Running through Second Skin is the insistence that the author’s sex life gives her access to enlightenment that could never be experienced in the missionary position: that she is, in fact, better than you. The infuriating assumption here is that everyone else is living in a state of unreflective conformity, while Fedorova enjoys the insights afforded by having a recherché identity.

The same goes for Burke in Love Expanded. “Aroace [aromantic asexual] people,” Burke writes, “are no more uniquely predisposed towards loneliness than anyone else. But we are more disposed to opening up our concepts of family and love.” Similarly, Burke writes that as a nonbinary person, “I gained a deeper understanding and valuing of womanhood after I stepped outside its bonds”. In other words, Burke knows something the boring straights could never.

Burke’s desire to feel special is almost laughably transparent. That’s especially so in an account of Burke’s coming out as aroace as a teenager: Burke’s parents and brother are bathetically nonplussed, making the understandable (but, according to Burke, gravely offensive) suggestions that asexuality might not be a permanent state or a fixed identity.

Yet asexuality and aromanticism are so vaguely defined it’s hard to say what they mean. Aromantics, Burke writes, are capable of forming intimate relationships and “plenty of aces are sexually active”. As I read this book, I started to form the unworthy suspicion that the aroace label is really just a way to put other people permanently in the wrong.

If an asexual is in a relationship with an “allosexual” person (someone with a regular libido), then it’s the asexual who is seen as the victim. Burke writes of one such case (inevitably, nonbinary) that “they tried to fit their behaviour and even their internal identity to their allo partner’s needs because the price of not doing so was guilt, friction and, ultimately, the loss of their partner”.

This is infantile. Everyone, whatever their level of libido, is entitled to honesty from their partner. A person who isn’t interested in having sex should have the decency to announce it early on — and if their partner decides to break up with them that is not oppression: it’s a sensible decision in the interests of both parties’ happiness.

Burke ends the book with a call for the aspec community to be legally recognised within the Equality Act — not because there are any ways in which asexual people are deprived of rights but because, quoting a Stonewall report on asexuality, doing do “would act as a catalyst toward ace inclusion in the workplace by legitimising ace identities as real and worthy of protection”.

It is not the law’s job to legitimise identities. Burke surely doesn’t intend this, but writing about asexuals and aromantics as a specific community creates the unfortunate implication that everyone else is relentlessly up for it. It’s an individualist answer to a societal problem: being officially asexual acts as a get-out from the unpleasant demands of “raunch culture”.

Weirdly, Fedorova’s fetish seems to have the same protective function. The thrill of latex, she writes, is that it’s “a non-porous surface, so it keeps all the moisture and fluids on one side and everything in the surrounding environment on the other”. Effectively, she’s putting on a full-body condom. Latex sex as she describes it sounds like anti-intercourse.

Burke and Fedorova credit the internet with their sexual self-discovery (Burke’s via a meme and Fedorova’s via porn). What these books made me think is that the internet has been the enemy of sex. It has replaced desire with identity, and intimacy with the cold glow of a screen. Maybe we need a new sexual rights movement for the 21st century: one that argues for the right of sex to be fun again.

[lullabyes22-blog]

Snippet - Undercurrents - Forward but Never Forget/XOXO

Dark dynamics, old resentments and shifting allegiances begin to cohere...

Forward but Never Forget/XOXO

tw: mentions of child prostitution and unhealthy dynamics between mentor and student.

After, Sevika dragged her clothes back on. Her trousers were threadbare at the knees. Her vest was patched thrice-over. Her jacket was a cast-off of cracked leather and faded stripes. But with her baton holstered to her hip and her knife strapped to her calf, she was no less than a warrior-queen: aglow with anticipation at the blood-red sunset, and the battle-cry that'd call their city to arms. Transform it into something it had never been.

Something shining.

She grinned. The gleam cut him, deep.

"Ready to roll, Sil?"

He kissed her. Long, lingering, not a little possessive. He tasted sex, smoke, spirits, and underneath: a sweetness that was all her own. He wanted her again. He'd always want her, in one way or another: carnally, calculatedly, constantly. His flesh would cry out, even after it'd been pared down to the marrow.

Even after he'd been scarred past recognition, or resurrected into an altogether different shape, or rendered a ghost in his own story.

"It's time," he said.

She slipped from the backroom first, leaving the door open a crack, its glow beckoning. He lingered by the threshold, listening, not without fondness, as her solid footsteps faded. Smoked a quick one, relishing the smolder of tobacco at his throat. Then he extinguished his cigarillo, unfolded to his feet, and re-entered the fray.

In the corridor, he wasn't alone.

Nao, the young runner, was loitering in the hallway with a coy tilt to her head. A pitcher—midway to making its rounds upstairs between refills—was cradled in her arms.

Spotting Silco, she offered him a cool sluicing of water poured into a steel cup.

Silco accepted gratefully. Nao smiled, that hard, ingratiating smile he'd always deplored in scrappers. She'd been a teenager then, pretty in that soft unformed way that often invited roughing up from the wrong quarters.

Vander had, more often than not, wiped the floors with punters who'd gotten too handsy with the girl. Silco, typically, oversaw the aftermath: sending the malefactors packing with a smoldering cigarette stubbed out into their foreheads.

The two-punch combination was both a warning and a ritual. To discourage further transgression—and instill terror at its memory.

Lately, though, Silco had begun seeing more than fear in Nao's eyes. There was flint. Hunger, verging on bottomless, that spoke of some deep well within. He'd caught the girl, on more than one occasion, eyeing him intently as he passed.

The attention made his hackles rise, and he knew why.

She was a bit like him, Nao. Opportunistic, capable of great feats of cleverness. Already, she sensed that if tonight went as planned, Silco and Vander would take their place at the apex of Zaun's power structure. And Nao, budding gamester that she was, meant to capitalize on future gains. She couldn't ply her favors for coin just yet. Instead, she prostrated herself in smaller ways: topping up cups, offering cigarettes, dropping choice secrets.

She wanted Silco to see her. Recognize her worth. And, perhaps, reward it.

Ambition, Silco thinks in retrospect.

Is any monster more insidious?

"I iced it," Nao said in Va-Nox, as he tipped the glass back. "I knew you'd be thirsty."

"Because you were listening through the door." Silco made the accusation mildly in the same tongue. But his tone brooked no argument. He was fond of the girl, but she was just that: a girl. Too green, too rash. Too likely to find herself in the wrong pair of hands. "Don't do that again, Nao. It won't end well for you."

Her cheeks, darkly flushed, belied her nonchalant shrug. "I was curious, is all. Wanted to see what you two had going on."

"That's grown-up business. No affair of yours."

"How would you know?" The smile sat strangely on her features; it didn't suit. She was angling for bravado, but underneath, a rawboned woundedness bled through. "I've seen plenty. Endured plenty, too. My affairs would make yours blush."

"I don't doubt it."

"No?"

"But, doubt or no, you're a child." It was a flat summation of fact. "Your only affair ought to be your schooling. Are you still taking those classes? Math and reading?"

"A waste of time."

"On the contrary. Unless you'd like to be running these streets forever."

That earned him another look: sly, oddly calculating. "Who's to say I don't plan on it? Running these streets, I mean."

"Don't joke. The Lanes aren't a playground."

"No, they're a wolf-den." She sidled close, intimate in the narrow space. "And the only way out of a wolf-den is by kissing the one with the biggest teeth."

"You give Vander an earful of that, and he'll knock yours out."

"Not Vander." Her fingertip alighted on Silco's jugular notch. "You."

"Me?"

"I keep my ear to more than doors. I hear things. I know things." She tipped her face up: all smooth unblemished skin that, yet, stirred nothing but pity in Silco's gut. Her youth was precious, and she was ready to squander it for a penny's worth of promise. At her age, he'd done the same for less. "When Zaun is free, there will be a split. Right down the middle. One side: Vander's. The other side: yours. Which one, d'you think, will prove the winner's side?"

"I have no idea what you mean."

"Do you take me for a fool?" She tiptoed closer, pitcher resting on one shapely hip. The effect was spoiled by her gangling bones: too much child left to offset her burgeoning maturity. "Or are you the one who's fooling himself? There are whispers of what you did, to kickstart this fight. The Enforcers, dead in alleys, strung up in the rafters, floating in the river. They say you're not afraid to get your hands dirty. That you'll sacrifice anything to get what you want. That Vander leads the charge, but doesn't play the long game. Not the way you do."

"I'd put no stock in rumors," Silco warned. "They make fools of men and meat of little girls."

"I'm not a little girl." Her recalcitrant hand, approximating seduction through mimicry, veered south. "I can prove it."

He caught her wrist before it wandered off-course. Nao stilled.

She knew she was taking liberties where none were permitted. Yet she stood her ground. Defiant; hopeful. He saw, in her bold gaze, someone whose value system had been upended, and utterly shattered: like a porcelain vase smashed on the cobblestones.

He recognized the feeling. That broken-in emptiness. He'd lived it: a boy from the orphanages and mines, a lifetime's share of degradation buried in his young bones.

They deserved better, these children. Each and every one of them. Otherwise, the future mirrored in Nao's eyes—that warped amalgamation of ambition and avarice—would be Zaun's sole inheritance.

"I believe you," Silco told her, not unkindly. "You're growing up. Getting ideas about yourself. Nothing wrong with that. Same way there's nothing wrong with wanting more. But these games—they're not for you, Nao. Not yet. And if you're not careful, they'll lead you straight to an early grave."

Nao's lower-lip quivered; young pride, smote by rejection. But her spine held steady.

"Or lead me straight to you," she purred. "Isn't that the hand Sevika played?"

Anger cut cold through Silco's bones. His grip tightened fractionally; Nao flinched.

"Sevika," he said, "is a grown woman. You're a chit of a girl with ambitions beyond her scope. Learn your limits, before you break your neck stepping outside of them."

"But—"

He dropped her hand, done with her and every bit of this sordid business.

“Get back upstairs," he ordered. "If I catch you propositioning me, or any man again, I'll tell Vander. How d'you think he'll take to a scrap such as you peddling herself under his roof? Mark me, he'll thrash your backside raw. And, right after, I'll tell Sevika, and watch as she rips you a new one."

The threat, paired with the glint of permafrosted steel, did the trick.

Tears sprang to Nao’s eyes. She jerked away as if scalded.

"You're cruel!" she cried. "Heartless! I hate you!"

She fled back upstairs. In her hurry, she knocked over the pitcher: the steel clattering, water splashing everywhere. Bad luck, in the Fissures. A portent of disaster.

The echo, blending with Nao's receding footsteps, would linger: in the here-and-now, and in Silco's memory, for decades to come.

Irony, the bitch, was an inveterate houseguest.

On the stairwell, Silco scooped up the fallen pitcher. Rounding the landing, he encountered a presence blocking his path.

Vander.

The Hound's silhouette loomed darkly. A towering bulk encased in metal and leather. The gauntlets, hanging from his belt, caught the red lamplight, and turned to brimming cups of blood.

He must've spotted Nao fleeing upstairs. Spotted Silco, still radiating the postcoital languor from Sevika, on her heels. Whatever conclusions Vander drew in the interval stayed sequestered beneath his shadowed eye-sockets.

But, for a moment, he looked every inch the behemoth. Hardened. Brutal. Uncompromising.

A monster of mythological proportions.

"Trouble?" Vander rumbled quietly.

"Just a spill." Silco hefted the pitcher, tipping it upside down. The drips pattered in his footsteps. "Mind the puddle in the corridor."

"Tears? Or blood?"

Vander seemed mellow enough. His eyes told a different story.

When, Silco wondered, had it come to this? How and where had they fallen into this tarpit of mutual suspicion? Vander should be his staunchest ally; the most stalwart of his defenders. When had he become the man who'd imagine Silco would corner little chits in shadowy corridors, and coerce them into shameful acts?

Yet he could read between the lines.

Vander had always been primed for Silco's corruption. Always seeking evidence of the irredeemable. The boy with the outsized ambitions of outsized vengeance, flaunting his mockery at The Sprout to the miners' cheers. The young man with the barbed teeth and seething eyes, stalking Vander and Lika through the dancefloor of the Blue Lantern, as loneliness hung off him like miasma. The two-faced punisher prowling the tunnels at night, his blade slicing across Enforcers' throats, the cold scales of his ire encircling the heart of a city until it burst.

To Vander, Silco had become a subterranean spook, haunting every nook and crevice of portent.

Waiting. Watching. Wanting.

Until the monster had its fill.

And, it struck Silco then: a revelation far too late. Someday, a reckoning would come. Between himself and the monster inside Vander: the one that held apart, teeth bared, and meted out judgment on the transgressor who'd wandered too far beyond the pack. The beastly instinct that demanded honor as its due; obedience as recompense.

Someday, sooner or later, they'd both come to blows. Only one would survive. And it would be either him, or everything they'd built.

Tonight wasn't that night.

"Neither," Silco said, flatly. "Little brat fancies herself the lady of the manor. I set her straight."

"Did you?"

Silco ignored the pinch between his shoulderblades: a sharpness, reminiscent of a knife, sinking deep.

"Caught her skulking in the corridors," he elaborated, "while Sevika and I were occupied. Thought she'd pull a similar act, and I'd be enticed." He scoffed, shoulders rolling back. "As if anyone, least of all a half-pint still wet-behind-the-ears, has a snowball's chance in hell of warming my sheets while Sevika walks and breathes. Not to mention: she'd tear me limb from limb. Nail my cock above the door like a hunting trophy."

Vander's silence weighed. Then a tiny smirk cracked his stony demeanor.

"That," he conceded, "is good incentive for fidelity."

"Have a word with Nao, will you? She'll get herself hurt, at this rate."

"I will." The smirk dimmed, tempered by seriousness. "Look. Sorry, all right? Just, saw her hurrying away. Crying. Thought—"

"I know." Silco exhaled through his teeth. "It's my own damn fault. I keep things from you because I don't want us at odds. And because I do, you start jumping at shadows. Next you're suspecting me of every debauchery under the sun. You ask questions; I get defensive. And round and round we go."

"Not forever." Vander closed the space between them. The anger receded, replaced by quiet regret. "Look, Blut. I get it, yeah? Folks know you get shit done. That's why they come to you with their grievances. Why they ask things of you that they won't from me. But I've said it before. Ain't going to stop saying it till it sticks. These wildcards you keep close—they're bad news. Sevika's got more sense than most, but the rest're trouble. Reckless trouble. Small wonder whelps like Nao are followin' in their footsteps."

Wryly, Silco said, "There is a certain moral flexibility in our line of work."

"That 'moral flexibility' makes you a prime target." A big hand reached out, settling on Silco's nape. Like an ironclad collar. Or a stranglehold disguised as a caress. "Gives you a reputation you don't need. I don't want the Lanes rememberin' you as the chancer who made his own bed."

"No?" Silco drawled, half-jibe, half-challenge. "How do you want me remembered?"

Vander didn't let go. His palm rested in the jut of Silco's vertebra, where a pulse ticked.

Beneath the skin: a love burning restless.

"As the best man I know," Vander said simply. "Smartest, bravest, most loyal. A man who'd walk through fire, if it meant giving us a future without chains. Who'd do anything for those he calls family."

His thumb smoothed Silco's jugular. His gray eyes crinkled, almost in pain.

"A champion of Zaun."

Emotion seared the corners of Silco's eyes. Rarely did he cherish the handspan of inches that put Vander at an advantage. Yet he savored this vantagepoint: the width of Vander's shoulders against the doorway, and the sheer physicality of him attuned to Silco's shadow.

Right then, there was no world, not anymore, where Silco had any right to feel small.

"Always," Silco said hoarsely. "No matter what comes."

They stood there, rooted in place. Upstairs, the revelry raged on. A woman's laugh—husky-edged—rolled through the gloom.

"She's waiting for me," Silco asked quietly.

"Nao?"

"Sevika."

Vander nodded, and unslung his hand off Silco's shoulder. A concession, grudgingly bestowed. It made Silco realize, with no small sense of wonderment, that Vander hadn't fully let go of him. That, in his own way, he envied Silco this small bedrock of physical intimacy.

Sevika, a constant presence: guarding his flank, stoking his fire, warding off foes.

Silco had been that for Vander, once. Through thick and thin, against all odds. But that'd changed, somewhere along the line. Changed in ways boys could hash out with bareknuckled brawls or confessions slurred through liquor-fumes.

Not grown men. Not leaders-in-arms.

Them, they kept their grievances hidden. Tucked like blades beneath their sleeves.

"Can't believe," Vander gruffed, "that in all the years I've known you, I've never imagine asking. But... d'you love her?"

Irritation, fleeting, winged through Silco. Vander would be the kind of sap to throw the word around so easily. As though he owned its exclusive license.

Still, Silco answered. What else could he do?

"I think," he said, with a plainspoken pragmatism that, yet, hid a bedrock of rawness, "if she ever stopped looking at me with that fire in her eyes, I'd die."

"An' that's enough?"

"Should there be more?"

"You tell me."

Silco didn't prevaricate. There was no room left: not tonight.

Instead, swiveling, he stood to face the flecked hallway mirror, smoothing his shirt-collar and buttoning up his cuffs. His hair was slipping loose from its tie; deep waves spilling over his forehead.

He thought of Sevika's hand fisted there, her teeth sunk into his throat, those strong sweet thighs cinching down on him like destiny...

Silco smiled. The light cut half his face into a patchwork of shadows. For one fleeting instant, he saw something there—something other. A vision of himself years down the track, irrevocably altered, irremediably destroyed.

And, beneath that, something that could never be erased.

"No," he said softly. "It's not enough. But the rest, we'll seize. Build for ourselves. Make it whatever we need it to be."

"Happily ever after?"

"Choice." Silco turned, and met Vander squarely, chin to chest. "And whatever choice I make will be mine to answer to."

"An' mine."

"Already crowned yourself king, eh?"

"Please. Throne's just another name for a chopping block." Vander shook his head. "Only kingdom I want's this."

"This?"

"The Drop tonight. Where everyone has a full plate, an' a warm hearth, an' hope." His smile spread; tender despite the bitterness spreading its stains between them. "What more d'we need?"

The right answer—the only answer—was nothing.

Nothing, except the freedom to keep it forever.

In the shadows, they embraced. The way men who've loved each other their whole lives would, at the crossroads of Fate. Not knowing if their paths were diverging, or colliding, but understanding that no matter what came, they'd walk out changed to the marrow.

They had no inkling of how far the change would span. That they'd die and live again: reborn in shapes less than whole. That the cost of tomorrow would be the past itself.

Riven in two; never to be remade.

This, Silco knows now, was the last night they'd hold each other not as enemies, but as brothers-in-arms.

For when dawn broke, everything would fall apart.

[allwormdiet]

Extermination 8.4

Armsmaster: I'm a genius! Armsmaster: Oh no!

Everything they do against Leviathan is insufficient. It's fucking horrifying.

Skitter just like "ehh, I don't think Parian's hardcore enough tbh"

Also, God, it's just getting increasingly dire just in terms of who's standing, huh? They're down most of the forcefield users at this point, the Triumvirate is down or handling other shit.

Also also I'm so sad that Purity didn't drown in the middle of the street like she deserves

Taylor is so fucking funny, she's like "I'm not brave like these other capes, I'm just standing and working to combat an Endbringer even though my power does absolutely nothing offensively or defensively against it. oh I'm not an adrenaline fiend or anything, I don't live for the thrill of battle, I just have an unreasonably high pain tolerance and not a whole lot of care for whether I live or die"

So her power gets stronger in especially high-stakes situations. Something about her emotional state, or something about an innate response to extreme threats?

Taylor's life seems to involve constant rapid-fire vacillation between predator and prey. It can't be helping with her stress levels, regardless of how good she is at being both of those things.

So this is a tactic that will slow Leviathan down, but if he gets to keep moving for too long then it will immediately turn around and bite them on the ass. Dunno how good of an idea that is tbh.

Fucking automaton freak of a superhero, truly

Also does the wider world never find it alarming that the order goes "parahumans < Endbringers < Scion" because I feel like that would prompt questions about Goldilocks on the regular

New Wave is at 75% strength and the invincible Ward just got fucking vincibled. God that's rough.

Wooo! Nazi down! Yeahhh!

WOOOOOOO NAZI DOWN!

Hope the water slide chaps your legless ass on the way to Hell, Kaiser, you rancid fuck!

Also haha whoops I sure hope that dead armband isn't indicative of some kinda foul play

Well yeah, fuck, I guess it's a good thing she had those decoys after all

Credit where credit is due, if it was possible to actually kill an Endbringer, which I fucking doubt, this would probably be the best show of doing it.

According to Wikipedia, "hubris" describes a personality quality of extreme or excessive pride or dangerous overconfidence and complacency, often in combination with (or synonymous with) arrogance.

According to studies, hubris, arrogance, and pretension are related to the need for victory (even if it does not always mean winning) instead of reconciliation, which "friendly" groups might promote. Hubris is usually perceived as a characteristic of an individual rather than a group, although the group the offender belongs to may suffer collateral consequences from wrongful acts. Hubris often indicates a loss of contact with reality and an overestimation of one's own competence, accomplishments, or capabilities. The adjectival form of the noun hubris/hybris is hubristic/hybristic.

The term hubris originated in Ancient Greek, where it had several different meanings depending on the context. In legal usage, it meant assault or sexual crimes and theft of public property, and in religious usage it meant emulation of divinity or transgression against a god.

Hesiod and Aeschylus used the word "hubris" to describe transgressions against the gods. A common way that hubris was committed was when a mortal claimed to be better than a god in a particular skill or attribute. Claims like these were rarely left unpunished, and so Arachne, a talented young weaver, was transformed into a spider when she said that her skills exceeded those of the goddess Athena, even though her claim was true. Additional examples include Icarus, Phaethon, Salmoneus, Niobe, Cassiopeia, Tantalus, and Tereus.

These events were not limited to myth, and certain figures in history were considered to have been punished for committing hubris through their arrogance. One such person was king Xerxes as portrayed in Aeschylus's play The Persians, and who allegedly threw chains to bind the Hellespont sea as punishment for daring to destroy his fleet.

What is common in all of these examples is the breaching of limits, as the Greeks believed that the Fates (Μοῖραι) had assigned each being with a particular area of freedom, an area that even the gods could not breach

In its modern usage, hubris denotes overconfident pride combined with arrogance. Hubris is also referred to as "pride that blinds" because it often causes a committer of hubris to act in foolish ways that belie common sense.

Anyway I guess Armsmaster has to be called Armmaster now, s- oh, what's this?

Congratulations allwormdiet! You are the 4,000,000th Worm reader to make the "Armmaster joke!"

Oh boy what do I win

Nothing!

O-oh.

Tfw the teenager you deliberately attempted to sacrifice in order to get your moment of glory soloing the raid boss still tries to save your stupid ass

Fucking remarkable that Skitter is still contributing at all considering how hard she's been rocked through all of this

And she's gonna keep doing it, too.

Tfw the teenager you deliberately attempted to sacrifice in order to get your moment of glory soloing the raid boss is the only thing saving your life

Current Thoughts

Colin, Colin, Colin. We'll get into it more once the fight's over but you truly fumbled on this already rancid day. I hope like Hell this will finally get you to be a little humble.

So, some more bad losses in this chapter obviously, sad to see Aegis go for all he was kinda bland and I'm sure New Wave is going to feel their losses something fierce.

But hey, two more dead Nazi capes, so it's not all downsides!

[jarethmgrim]

Dear Grim,

I've a story, should you accept. i recall in youth a dog passing. common, we were a family of hunters and dogs often perished in their fights against the noble boar. as tradition, we dragged the corpse to the far reach of our land and left it among the trees for nature to reclaim. to feed the earth as it fed us. after a time i took a walk, curiosity taking me to see the corpse of the dog. how much, i did wonder, had nature feasted on the gift we left for it?

Dear Grim, it was not the rot that captured my attention that day. nor the flies or mattered skin stretched with bloat, nor the putrid stench of meat becoming liquid under the unforgiving sun.

t'was the teeth of the beast. i cannot, in good faith to you, say this creature was a dog anymore. with its eyes gone and skin pulled taunt, in death this beast bared fangs at me. jewels of pure white among the rot. and i felt only malice from this beast. loyal in life, now furious in death. I fear i transgress by visiting the beast during its rot.

when i next seen the beast, it was only bone. laying silent and content. i have not since made the same mistake.

with learned respect, Taz

Dearest Taz,

Your offering is accepted. More than accepted… savored. You bring me a fine morsel dug from the rich dirt of memory.

Oh, the hunting dog meeting its end against its formidable prey… a practical demise. Nature keeping its balance. Fine tradition, returning the vessel to the earth that sustained it; commendable. Efficient.

Your return to the site is understandable. Curiosity seeds deep, a tenacious weed you never really can remove. It seems you glimpsed the truth through the flesh as it was still unraveling.

Exquisite observation: the true shape of the skull doesn’t waste energy on comforting lies. As the lively face sloughs off and the jowls surrender their shape, the essential architecture is revealed. That malice you perceived�� perhaps it was the bare grin of reality itself, the bone-deep truth stripped bare. The loyal companion reduced, or maybe elevated, to the fundamental predator structure beneath. Proof that even in service, the capacity to bite was always there. Death is brutally honest this way.

Your feeling of transgression… perceptive. The alchemy of active decay is a messy, sacred violence. One should approach such a crime scene with caution, yes. It is a private affair between the matter and the microbes. To witness it is one thing; to feel unwelcome is the correct response.

And then, the final state: bone, silent and content... what a tranquil image. The unbecoming chaos resolved into a sturdy fossil. Elegant, the finished masterpiece of decomposition. You understood the difference between the feverish work of being undone and the quiet dignity of reaching resolution. Horror of the change, serenity when the struggle ends.

A fine distinction to draw. A lesson well learned among the trees.

Keep observing, Taz; from a well-mannered distance, perhaps. You’ve learned the importance of giving a thing in the midst of transformation its solitude. Should further morbid clarity arise, this crypt door remains ajar for such thoughtful offerings.

With learned respect returned, J. M. Grim

[fatehbaz]

Mangroves. Estuaries. Shorelines where land meets water. Fluidity and porousness of boundaries. Imposition of imperial, colonial, European property law and the “fiction” of solid borders. Profit extraction from property, the “legal magic” of creating permanent borders, and the destruction of coastal forest-worlds.

---

[T]his tropical coastal ecology is a site of continual refiguration: neither sea nor land, neither river nor sea, bearing neither salty nor fresh water [...]. The mangrove has been prone to confused definitions, [...] also a complex coastal ecosystem in itself. With these hybrid conditions of “belonging,” the mangrove lends itself to helping us think through the present-day schematic of Euro-American crises [...]. Its polymorphous personality as a sediment-carrier, land-builder, defender of numerous life forms [...] renders the mangrove a fascinating study in the biopolitics of selfhood. [...] The Sundarbans covers an area of 10,000 square kilometers of intertidal zones between parts of southwestern Bangladesh and the state of West Bengal in India. The largest mangrove forest in the world [...]. As a landscape, the Sundarbans is marked by unfixity, since its intertidal nature places it between appearance and disappearance -- with islands being submerged overnight. [...] [T]heir porous quality does not allow for clear border-making. In reading [...] satellite image[ry] of the Sundarbans, produced by what is said to be “the most stable, best characterized Earth observation instrument ever placed in orbit,” we are met with the trembling instability of borders. [...] [H]ere the coastline becomes indiscernible as a single entity. The legal vexations of such amphibious and obtuse terrain become pronounced in sea-rights cases, wherein border-making becomes the necessity of tenure. Forming rulings over such zones lays legality prone to paradox. In the Blue Mud Bay case, heard by the High Court of Australia in 2008, a legal body was called upon to make a determination regarding the shifting geography of a mangrove coastal region. In the final ruling the aboriginal Yolgnu claimants were successful, with the court ruling that the column of tidal water lying above land should be regarded no differently from the land itself. Thus the court’s attempt to encompass Dholupuyngu cosmology and “aqueography” occasioned a legal magic transforming water flow into the fixity of “land.” [...] The mangrove line is, hence, one of sedimentary reclamation rather than clear political divisions of terra firma. In mangrove zones, human determinations become ghosts.

Text by: Natasha Ginwala and Vivian Ziherl. “Sensing Grounds: Mangroves, Unauthentic Belonging, Extra-Territoriality.” e-flux Journal Issue #45. May 2013.

---

Traveling through Bengal in the eighteenth century, [...] [travelers] saw a highly sophisticated water-based economy -- the blessing of rivers [...]. The rivers were not just channels of water; they carried a thriving trade, transporting people and goods from one part of the delta to another. [...] Bengal’s essential character as a fluid landscape was changed during the colonial times through legal interventions that were aimed at stabilizing lands and waters, at creating permanent boundaries between them, and at privileging land over water, in a land of shifting river courses, inundated irrigation, and river-based life. Such a separation of land and water was made possible not just by physical constructions but first and foremost by engineering a legal framework. [...] BADA, which stands for the Bengal Alluvion and Diluvion Act, a law passed by the colonial British rulers in 1825 [...]. Nature here represents a borderless world, or at best one in which borders are not fixed lines on the ground demarcating a territory, but are negotiated spaces or zones. Such “liminal spaces” comprise “not [only] lines of separation but zones of interaction…transformation, transgression, and possibility” [...]. Current boundaries of land and water are as much products of history as nature and the colonial rule of Bengal played a key role in changing the ideas and valuations of both. [...] [R]ivers do not always flow along a certain route [...]. The laws that the colonial British brought to Bengal, however, were founded upon the thinking of land as being fixed in place. [...] To entrench the system, the Permanent Settlement of 1793 created zamindars (or landlords) “in perpetuity” -- meaning for good. The system was aimed at reducing the complexities of revenue collection due to erratically shifting lands and unpredictable harvests in a monsoon-dependent area [...]. From a riverine community, within a hundred years, Bengal was transformed into a land-based community.

Text by: Kuntala Lahiri-Dutt. “Commodified Land, Dangerous Water: Colonial Perceptions of Riverine Bengal.” RCC Perspectives, no. 3, 17-22. 2014.

---

[A]t the shore, where the boundary between land and water is so often muddied [...] terrestrial principles of Western private property regimes feel like fictions [...]. Shorelines, indeed, do much to trouble the neat boundaries, borders […] of the colonial imaginary […]. And so thinking about shallows necessitates attention to the multiplicity of water, and the ways that tides, rivers, storm clouds, tide pools, and aquifers converse with the ocean [...]. For Kanaka Maoli, the muliwai, or estuary, best theorizes shoreline dynamics: It is not only where land and water mix, but also where different kinds of waters mix. Sea and river water mingle together to produce the brackish conditions that tenderly support certain plant and aquatic lives. [...] As Philipp Schorch and Noelle M.K.Y. Kahanu explain, the muliwai ebbs and flows with the tide, changing shape and form daily and seasonally. In metaphorical terms, the muliwai is a location and state of dissonance [...], but it is not “a space in between,” rather, it is its own space, a territory unique in each circumstance, depending the size and strength or a recent hard rain. […] [T]he muliwai [...] as a conditional state [...] undoes territorial logics. [...] It is not a space of exception. Rather, it is where we are reminded that places are never fixed or pure or static. Chamorro poet Craig Santos Perez reminds us in his critique of US territorialism that “territorialities are shifting currents, not irreducible elements.” If fixity and containment limit, by design, how futures might be imagined beyond property, then the muliwai envisions decolonial spaces as ones of tenderness, care, and interdependence. [...] Because water has the potential to trouble the boundaries of humanness, it may furthermore push us to think through […] categorical differences […], to consider the colonial mechanisms that produced hierarchies of bodies to begin with [...].

Text by: Hi’ilei Julia Hobart. “On Oceanic Fugitivity.” Ways of Water series, Items, Social Science Research Council. Published online 29 September 2020.

[librarycards]

can you explain what transMad means to you using simpler words and shorter sentences please? im not phd i don't understand all these citations. thankyou

i can try!

first, I recommend starting with the easy read version of toward transMad epistemologies: a working text. It's not an exact 1:1 and i have many gripes with the obfuscating/inaccuracy-making work of plain language. But it's a start! I'm also v open to feedback on it.

I'm also going to try my hand at simplifying + summarizing the excerpts I included in the other post, in the rough order that I list them there. below is my attempt. it will be imperfect but I hope it helps!

transMadness, redux:

transMadness isn't just, or most importantly, an identity per se. It's a way of thinking, knowing, and being in the world. I got the idea for transMadness, in part, from words like "neuroqueer" and "queercrip," portmanteaus that also gesture at the links between different forms of bodymind noncompliance. Both are interested in norm-transgression, and both don't hold with artificial boundaries between types (gender, sexual, disability, etc.) non-normativity.

What transMadness does with this knowledge is to embrace unruliness and borderlessness as important to how we know what we know. If psychiatry/the DSM establish authority by creating borders and categories for pathologizing us, transMadness embraces intellectual interdependence and ambiguity, as well as willful refusal of "sane" approaches to organizing the world.

transMadness is also an embrace of failure -- failure to comply, failure to "live up to" cis/sane standards, failure to work without friction -- as something generative, not negative. This is something we can bring into our research/relationships/pedagogy. We can embrace it as a feature of our community, and use it to navigate challenging situations where access needs conflict - for example, when bodily autonomy creates risk for multiple marginalized groups of people.

Another way that I look at transMadness is through xeno/neogender identity and community. For me, an orientation toward coinage/invention is a deeply transMad one, which takes psychiatric/medical authority over language and legitimacy and turns it on its head. Xenocommunities/self-dx oriented communities reclaim and transform hitherto violent language to suit their needs and possibly even serve collective liberation. The communities that form around identificatory self-determination are vital to keeping us alive and loved, and to transMad antipsych resistance. In the face of diagnostic practices that demand individual rehabilitation rather than social transformation, this is deeply necessary.

[sagaduwyrm]

See No Evil (Wipe Clean My Sins)

It was Nocturne who explained it to him first, the God of Dreams and Nightmares shocked that no one else had tried. Maybe they had. Danny hadn’t been the most aware in the early days, every shape he took too-big-too-small and the Infinite Expanse of the Infinite Realms resting heavy on his shoulders. When you are a god, the Sleeping Ancient said, every act against you is a transgression. When you are a god, every transgression becomes a sin.

It was Nocturne who explained it to him first, the God of Dreams and Nightmares shocked that no one else had tried.

Maybe they had. Danny hadn’t been the most aware in the early days, every shape he took too-big-too-small and the Infinite Expanse of the Infinite Realms resting heavy on his shoulders.

When you are a god, the Sleeping Ancient said, every act against you is a transgression. When you are a god, every transgression becomes a sin.

Danny hadn’t understood what he meant at the time. He couldn’t comprehend how it could matter so much, how a sin against a god could twist the fabric of reality into knots and bend the flow of time away from its path.

He understood now.

Ellie, his clone, his mirror-child, his daughter , looked the same as the day she was born but for the y-shape carved in her chest as she lay behind him. Before him stood his parents.

“Danny, sweetie, I need you to step away from the ghost.” Madeline Fenton's hands shook with fear. She thought it was fear for her son, standing too close to that dangerous spook as he was. It wasn’t. Madeline Fenton was afraid of her son, the young man that came back from college and stood tall in between his parents and the ghost, blocking their way.

Human instincts were not the most powerful of things. They had sacrificed that capability in exchange for a different kind of thinking, one that let them build grand workings and conquer their planet. Still, something in the depths of the human brain remembered what it was to fear something too big and bright for human eyes to perceive.

Danny’s eyes glinted strangely. His shadow thrashed on the floor, gentling where it circled the young girl.

“How. Dare. You.” Danny’s voice was steady and quiet, but something at the furthest reaches of human hearing howled .

The Fenton parents exchanged a glance. Jack Fenton spoke carefully. “Danny-boy, it’s a ghost. It isn’t a real person.” His voice picked up in excitement. “And just look at all the data we’ve already captured!”

Around them, the fabric of reality twisted, rippled, and fractured like a mirror dropped from a great height. The Fenton’s kept their eyes on their son, something in them quailing at the idea of looking at the cracks in the corners of their eyes.

Danny snarled. “That ghost is my daughter. Your granddaughter.”

Now they were alarmed. “Danny, if it has you believing it’s your daughter, we need to get you away from it right away. The GIW has a good program for detoxification from ghost control, they’ll help,” Maddie said. She wanted to turn and walk up the stairs, lead the way so her son would follow, but she couldn’t bring herself to believe that if she went outside of the basement the rest of the world would still exist. Somehow, it felt like the only thing that was still real was the space between them and their son.

Danny closed his eyes and let out a tired breath. “I’m sorry.”

“It’s okay son!” Jack smiled. “Just come over here and let us make this right.”

Danny kept talking like he hadn’t heard him. “I hoped you could change, that you would change. That you loved me enough to be better.” He met their eyes and his gaze was pained and filled with sorrow. Their hearts started picking up in their chests.

“I love you.”

"But I won't make the same mistake with Ellie that you did with me."

The world screamed . The weight of the Infinite descended all at once, tearing through fragile three-dimensional reality to reach the sinners standing before the King. The Fenton parents had time for one cut-off scream before the world settled and stilled and they were gone.

The High King of the Infinite Realms collapsed into a grief-stricken pile on the ground, pulling his daughter gently into his lap as he sobbed.

[ineffable-opinions]

School Culture & Male Androphilia in Japan

[This is part of a series on Takumi-kun 6. The aim of this piece is to discuss the origins of student culture and male androphilia & how it plays out in Takumi-kun series.]

Takumi-kun series is an early BL novel by Shinobu Gotoh with an enduring legacy. It is also an on-going work as we follow Takumi-kun and others beyond their student (gakusei) days and into adult (shakaijin) life.

Takumi-kun series is mostly set in an all-males boarding school Shido Academy. As I have mentioned in my previous posts, pre-modern Japan has a long tradition of male androphilia[1], much of which was age-stratified, class-stratified or both and involved strict/normative inserter/insertee dichotomy. BL has inherited (such as in seme/uke dynamics) and bastardized (such as with younger seme/older uke pairing) traditions of male androphilia in its tropes. Let's discuss a bit of the history before diving into how Shinobu Gotoh plays around with the setup of boarding school male-male sexuality that emerged in the Meiji period.

Part 1

[ Main resource used for this part of the write-up is the chapter titled “Toward the Margins: Male-Male Sexuality in Meiji Popular Discourse” from the book Cartographies of Desire: Male-Male Sexuality in Japanese Discourse, 1600-1950 by Gregory M. Pflugfelder. ]

What Review of Senryu From Meiji Japan Reveals

Meiji period Japan saw transformation of Japanese customary male-male sexuality ‘within the newly established framework of a centralized nation-state’.

…male-male sexuality, which had enjoyed a prominent and respectable place in Edo-period popular texts, came during Meiji times to be routinely represented as “barbarous,” “immoral,” or simply “unspeakable.”

The marginalization of male-male sexuality can be traced through its representation in senryü verse composed during that period. In post-Meiji Restoration popular humor Yoshichö districts of Edo well-known for organized sex work was no longer associated with the kagema or male sex worker. Instead, it was associated with female geisha, mirroring the 18th centuary decline of kagema teahouse and their shutdown by local authorities'. Once mainstream male-male sex work had to go underground and faded from popular memory.

Just as old customs were forgotten, new ones emerged in senryu of 1880.

Two figures […] associated with male-male sexuality were the bantö and detchi—clerk and apprentice, respectively, in a commercial house. The bantö wielded considerable authority over other employees, and had been portrayed in senryü since the Edo period indulging his lechery with young male coworkers. The detchi, on the other hand, may be seen as the merchant version of the priestly chigo or samurai page boy: male adolescents for whom the favor or disfavor of senior males might have significant consequences for their professional advancement.

Meanwhile male-male sexuality involving Buddhist priests went from being considered ‘a lesser transgression than fornication with women’ and a ‘contradiction between the priest's personal indulgence and the ascetic ideals of his religion” to an “emblem of “ancient evils” (kyühei) in dire need of reform’ and ‘a criminal offense’.

Following period saw state regulation of representation of sexuality in media (print media, theatre and paintings - artist Kawanabe Kyösai’s erotic drawing of Meiji oligarch Sanjö Sanetomi & a male foreigner landed him in jail; not much different from jailing of ero BL creators in present day[2]) and a shift in popular discourse that deemed that male-male eroticism has no place in the “civilized” environment of Meiji. Male-male sexuality was further marginalized through silence resulting from ‘state censorship, editorial discretion, authorial inclination, public taste’, etc. Meiji journalists continued reporting on male-male sexuality but adopted a tone of moralistic outrage and condemnation.

In the demarcation of civilized behavior, male-male sexuality was relegated to ‘the Japanese past, the southwestern periphery, and the world of adolescence’.

Japanese Past

‘Male-male erotic practices lay in the past’ which was seen as ‘a backward and “feudal” age, whose institutions and customs Japan must abandon in order to achieve “civilization.”’

Meiji era authors depicted male-male sexuality with historical backdrop (such as samurai society of the Sengoku and Edo eras) that would excuse their representation in the name of historical accuracy. [This is in contrast to say depiction in cinema which has largely avoided depiction of nanshoku with exception of Taboo (1999) and Kubi (2023).]

Pflugfelder gives a couple of examples:

Higeotoko (Man with a Beard; 1890–1896) by Köda Rohan – very shonen ai about the whole thing – involved light hand-holding and fade to blank.

Kagema no adauchi (Kagema's Vendetta; 1899) by Jöno Denpei –about a professional “love boy”. As a person born in 1832 Jöno was familiar with male sex workers like the protagonist from his childhood. But the practice has thoroughly disappeared from the cultural fabric by 1899 that Jöno had to introduce the protagonist whose profession was “disgraceful” “from today's perspective” and his gender identity ambiguous.

Marginalization of Male-Male Sexuality Was Japan's Southwestern Periphery

Centered around Kagoshima prefecture (the former domain of Satsuma), the region encompassed various parts of Kyushu, Shikoku, and Honshu. During the Meiji period, it was popularly believed that male-male erotic practices were more prevalent here than in the rest of Japan. Other than the obvious geographic distinction, there was a social reason too for this distinction. It was believed the region was a stronghold of old customs with lasting imprints of samurai class and the high concentration of warrior families. Satsuma had customary homosocial groups with strict sex-segregation practices such as hekogumi and gojü until the Restoration.

Male-male erotic interaction […] was reportedly common within such groups.

… the martial ethos of the samurai class slowly dissolved under the pressure of social change and “civilized morality.” Contemporary observers correlated the deterioration of shiki or “warrior morale” with a decline in male-male erotic practices.[3]

During the Meiji period, southwestern region (Kagoshima in particular) was known for its male-male sexual practices. These practices were seen as regional peculiarities, distinct from the mainstream culture centered in Tokyo. The southwestern region was viewed as a “feudal” backwater, and the association of male-male erotic practices with this area underscored their perceived “uncivilized” nature. Instead of being seen as a universal practice [the way shudo was percieved], male-male sexuality was considered a “folkway” (füzokü) surviving on the cultural margins of a newly “civilized” nation-state. In the 20th century, sexologists further marginalized these practices by diagnosing regions like Kagoshima with a hereditary condition called “regional same-sex love” (chihôteki döseiai). This effectively contained male-male sexuality within specific geographical and cultural boundaries.

Moreover, from Kagoshima men’s regional identity imperial navy and seafaring got associated with male-male eroticism in Meiji Japan.

male-male sexuality & the world of adolescence

… the sexual object in shudö had always been defined as a young male. In Meiji popular discourse, as in that of the Edo period, it was generally understood that youthfulness formed one of the conditions of male-male erotic desirability. More and more commonly, however, the desiring party too was presumed to be an adolescent, older than his partner as a rule, but neither of them yet an adult.

‘Adolescence (seishun) as an “institutionalized moratorium between childhood and adulthood” [allowed for a] social space where adult standards did not fully apply’. This also allowed male-male sexuality which had gained the status of uncivilized behavior to be excused as ‘youthful folly’.

Institutions of formal education were around since Edo period and so was male-male erotic practices in them. Not only that but also ‘violence between rivals in love’. Following the Restoration, schools mushroomed throughout Japan with an added emphasis on education as a vehicle for social mobility. Students, tasked with future nation building, were expected to be diligent in their study and to stay away from sexual diversion. Male-male sexuality in schools were not just that in discourse of the day but was inextricably linked with ‘shifting definitions of masculinity, regional and political rivalries, and the ongoing “civilization” of morality’. 

Mori Ögai - father of Mori Mari who wrote the first BL

Two terms born out of Mori Ögai's 1909 novel critiquing naturalism[4] Wita sekusuarisu (Vita Sexualis) köha and nanpa were used in discourses surrounding male-male sexuality among students. The term köha (translated as “roughnecks” by Pflugfelder and “queers” by Kazuji Ninomiya and Sanford Goldstein) referred to students who eschewed interest in male-female eroticism instead engaged in male-male sexual relations. This was in contrast to their nanpa (translated as “smoothies” by Pflugfelder and “mashers” by Kazuji Ninomiya and Sanford Goldstein) classmates.

[These are penetrator roles but not fixed categories. Students did move from one category to another even in Mori's novel. "Boy" (shonen) who were penetrated could take up penetrator role later on.]

“Smoothies” […] did not tuck up their sleeves or swagger about with menacing shoulders like their “roughneck” peers, but instead dandified themselves in silk kimonos and white socks (tabi) in order to win the favor of women.

In Mori’s school köha student were mostly from Kyushu and southwest Honshu prefecture of Yamaguchi while nanpa were from northeastern region. This regional distinction shows up in Tsubouchi Shöyö's novel Tösei shosei katagi (Spirit of Present Day Students; 1885–1886) wherein Kiriyama Benroku a quintessential köha is a native of Kyushu who wears coarse garb and is contrasted against his classmates womanizing peers not only by his leaning towards samurai ideals of masculinity but also by his interest in his companion Miyaga.

The köha-style of masculinity was modelled on engaging brute strength even in erotic dealings. Moreover ‘the strict age hierarchy that prevailed in student society constrained the very notion of consent, since junior males were in principle supposed to obey the dictates of senior schoolmates.’

In such an environment, male-male sexual practices often took a predatory form, with younger students providing fodder for older ones.

However, there were also non-forced köha-shonen sexual relations too.

Mori describes, for instance, a set of crude hand signals whereby a “boy” could consent to or refuse a senior male's overtures; subtler forms of seduction involved treats, favors, and the prospect of “special protection” (tokubetsu na hogo) by the older party.

Meiji newspapers was eager to cover köha violence wherein the older students who preyed upon “beautiful boy” in the streets of Tokyo and other Meiji cities or fought over a “beautiful boy”. They stood to gain readership especially those from middle- and upper-class who were likely to send their kids to boarding schools. It also fit well in the political context with journalistic crusade aimed at male-male sexuality & exploitation as a “Satsuma habit” in a time when ‘domination of the national government by the so-called “Satsuma clique” (Satsubatsu) faced mounting criticism’.

The portrayal of köha by journalists in post-Restoration Japan led to a strong association between male-male sexuality and adolescence. This association was so strong that any discussion of male-male sexuality would inevitably reference student societies and dormitories as common places for such relationships. Furthermore, accounts of school life often highlighted the culture of male-male eroticism as a distinctive feature. This is evident in memoirs by several notable figures such as Ösugi Sakae (himself a former köha), Iwaya Saza-nami, Ubukata Toshirô, as well as in literary works by Dazai Osamu, Hori Tatsuo, Kawabata Yasunari, Mushanoköji Saneatsu, Origuchi Shinobu, Satomi Ton, Tanizaki Jun’ichirö, and Uno Köji.

Chigo-nise ties (that is, erotic relationships between junior and senior youths) were reportedly common [in Kagoshima] as late as the 1940s, while student memoirs and other accounts describe similar attachments in schools outside the region. With the twentieth-century rise of the notion of [döseiai] “same-sex love,” however, popular representations of such relationships would come increasingly to focus on their psychological features, rather than on physical predation of the Meiji type.    

The other half of the ‘asymmetric dyad that made up a male-male erotic relationship’, the sexually penetrated partner, is referred to as ‘shonen’ (boy) in student lingo. By then a mix of inherited knowledge from various arena – Japanese past, classical Chinese, and contemporary forensic pathology – entered public discourse such as seen in Kömurö Shujin's Bishönenron (On the Beautiful Boy).

In Kömurö Shujin's work, the primary effect of this paradigm was to bring to the fore the psychology and physiology of the “beautiful boy” in a manner that would become increasingly common as the century progressed. Kömurö Shujin cited an impressive array of Western authorities on “same-sex love,” most of them doctors or scientists who believed that the “passive” partner in male-male intercourse differed from others of his sex on the basis of certain mental and physical peculiarities, both inborn and acquired. At the same time, the author's understanding of Western sexology was filtered through a set of native assumptions, emerging in a form that often differed in telling ways from the intentions of the original theorists.

Masculinity of wakashu was rarely ever problematized during Edo period. But with the medicalization of male-male sexuality led to attribution of “effemination” with “passive” partner put forth by Western sexologists as Richard von Krafft-Ebing to gain traction in Japan and persist.

[Parallels can be found in bishonen (beautiful boy) stock in BL deemed feminine by readers unfamiliar with the bishonen aesthetics. For example, misattribution bishonen Ayase even when contrasted with feminine Someya in No Money. This also extends to treatment of seme/uke dynamics as though it is a reflection of heterosexual pairing when it is in fact a pairing of two different masculine aesthetics, not to ignore the misogynistic, xenophobic and colonial conception of men who do not fit into specific masculine aesthetics being deemed unmanly/feminine.

Interestingly, Miki Koichiro the director (and screenwriter) of Pornographer, Given, Zettai BL, Bokura no Micro na Shuumatsu  etc. is well versed in the male androphilic traditions (among other queer traditions). We can see him using the term “shonen” when instructing the young actor playing Mob-san’s brother’s friend who has a crush on Mob-san. His usage was perfect, proving that he knows what he is doing.]

Part 2

Relics of traditional androphilia in Takumi-kun series

The norm or at least the expectation is that senior students (senpai) pursue pretty boy (bishonen) juniors (kouhai).

This is what outsiders expect even within the universe the novel series is set in as is seen from the conversation between Gii, his best friend Akaike Shouzou and Namiko (Shouzou’s girlfriend) in Sorera Subete Itoshiki Hibi (Those Were Precious Days), a part that never got live action adaptation.

This plays out in Takumi-kun series in various ways. There are two notable bishonen in Takumi-kun’s batch: Gii with his exotic beauty and the princess-like Takabayashi Izumi. In case of pursuit of Gii plays out in a pretty straight forward manner. He is relentlessly chased by seniors who are interested in Gii and their numerous attempts at wooing him.

Takumi-kun 4 - Gii & Sagara

Notable pursuer is Sagara Takahiro who was in the third year when Gii joins Shidou. Sagara as the school president organized many recreational events hoping Gii would participate and they would grow closer. But Gii refuses to participate except for in the final one which took place in Sagara’s absence, the Shinto Shrine Hunt event that is depicted in Takumi-kun 6. Even though the pursuit plays out straight forwardly, it come to nothing since Gii is not there to be pursued. He is there to pursue Takumi-kun.

In case of Takabayashi Izumi, he turns his most ardent pursuers into a band of followers. This obedient little group of lackeys help him to stir up trouble for his love rival Takumi. Moreover, Takabayashi is one of Gii’s pursuers. This pursuit also doesn’t yield any result as Gii doesn’t entertain any pursuit.

Thus, both bishonen of Takumi’s batch subverts expectations surrounding bishonen by being pursuers.

Takabayashi’s plot gets further complicated when he falls in love with Yoshizawa Michio. Their pairing is that of weak seme x weak uke type – both are reluctant to actively pursue each other and requires external intervention to set their ship in motion.

Meanwhile Misu Arata wishes to be the target of his senior Sagara Takahiro’s affections. He actively participates in Sagara’s events wanting to get close [and they do get close as schoolmates] but Sagara is only interested in Gii.

Takumi-kun 4 - Shingyouji & Misu

Misu’s plot further deviates from the pursued bishonen track when a junior (Shingyouji Kanemi) pursues and eventually gets together with him in a clear inversion of the norm.

Takumi is also pursued by his seniors. Aso Kei’s pursuit is depicted in Takumi-kun 6 while Nozaki Daisuke’s attempts at courtship is depicted in Takumi-kun 1.

Aso Kei is the only one Takumi is comfortable interacting with apart from Katakura Toshihisa (Takumi’s best friend). Aso’s pursuit is aided by Gii who wholeheartedly wishes for Takumi’s happiness irrespective of whom he gets together with. Gii creates opportunities for Aso and Takumi to meet by delegating library duty to Takumi when Aso is around thus getting them to interact. Aso’s courtship fails and he takes it out on Gii by showing off – he lies to him that Takumi agreed to shrine hunt with him. When Gii notices that Takumi doesn’t reciprocate Aso’s feelings, he decides to actively pursue Takumi and turns from Aso’s enabler to rival in love.

Nozaki Daisuke’s pursuit of Takumi plays out within the senior pursuing junior set up. Another classic trope is that of love rivals fighting over a bishonen with both literary and in real life precedents. This is evoked in a race between Gii and Nozaki in Takumi’s name from Takumi-kun 1. Here the love rival’s competition is complicated since Gii is a bishonen who is fought over by many others (Takumi, Takabayashi, Nogawa Masaru*, etc).

* Nogawa Masaru is not depicted in any of the movies as far as I can remember.

Even though the novel series is called Takumi-kun series, there are many parts that doesn’t involve Takumi-kun and some of them are exclusively from the point of view of other characters. All in all, Takumi-kun series is like an anthology of many many love stories involving characters who are directly or indirectly connected to Takumi-kun. There are other stories involving younger pursuer and older pursued with all sorts of seme/uke arrangements. Here are some that I can recall right away:

Even guys who are not androphilic such as Akaike Shouzou gets pursued by seniors (Shibata Shun in Shouzou’s case). But these courtships are doomed from the get go.

Younger guy pursues older – senior & junior, teacher & student, etc.

senior x junior pursuit abandoned to establish senior x senior romance (Moriyama & Shibata) or junior x junior romance.

senior x junior romance sometimes end in heartbreak. (Takumi-kun 2)

senior x senior relationships are abandoned in pursuit of senior x junior relationship.

Sometimes seniors employ their seniority to retain power imbalance. (Misu and Shingyouji)

In case it is not clear, who pursues who has got nothing to do with who is seme, uke or riba and vice versa. Since the novel series involves many pairings, we get to see all sorts of seme/uke/riba dynamics (if we are to call it that given Takumi-kun is a June novel).

-

Footnotes

[1] I prefer using male androphilia because queerness is a bit too vague and in most case in inappropriate since it was the norm. Academics usually use male-male sexuality, male-male desire, male-male eroticism, etc. Male androphilia must not be confused with the narrower term homosexuality.

[2] Danmei author Tian Yi and her companions were sentenced for 10 years for profiting from obscene content on male-male sexuality.

[3] while the courting of “beautiful boys” was a “barbaric custom” (banpü), domain authorities during the Edo period had tacitly encouraged it as a means of preventing young men from going “soft” (nyüjaku) through erotic involvement with women (joshoku).

[4] In the Company of Men: Representations of Male-Male Sexuality In Meiji Literature by Jim Reichert (199-208)

-

Takumi-kun meta series

1.Trailer plus

2.School culture and male androphilia in Japan. (you are here)

3.How does the movie compare with the source novel?

4.How does the movie compare with previous adaptations?

[cultellus]

The Mouth in the Hand: Inside Le Sang d’un Poète

Jean Cocteau’s ‘Le Sang D'un Poète’ is more than a surrealist film, it is a lyrical trance, an incantation spoken in surrealist tongues. it’s inhaled like smoke, or tasted like the skin of a lover you can never fully possess. Cocteau eroticises the artistic process, imbuing it with sensual, bloodied intimacy. Statues whisper, mirrors seduce, and wounds become openings to dreamscapes.

Every frame throbs with poetic decadence, a love letter to the tortured, fevered imagination. It is the sensuality of suffering, the beauty of internal collapse made flesh. Cocteau’s eroticism is never overt, it's mythic, metaphysical, hauntingly tender. A kiss becomes transgression; a bullet, transformation.

It is cinema as fever dream, sensual rite, and wholly private . This film doesn't just explore the connection between art and suffering, it worships it, lovingly, with blood and breath and the trembling intimacy of hands reaching through mirrors.

Blood of a poet is truly a love letter to the sacred agony of making art.

From the opening frame, we are submerged into Cocteau’s universe where logic dissolves and desire takes root. One of the most unforgettable scenes, is where a young artist finds the mouth from his drawing has come alive. It attaches itself to his hand like a kiss. This hauntingly erotic moment, one of flesh yielding to art, feels like a lover's secret written on the skin. The mouth whispers, teases, and pulls him into a dark mirror, literally, where identity liquefies.

Inside the mirror-world, the artist walks through a corridor of rooms: a man shot in slow collapse, card players unmoved by death, and a snowball fight that feels like murder in drag. Each vignette seduces with its own perverse poetry. When the statue, a living woman, played with both I differ and charm, comes to life and shares a kiss with the artist, it’s not romantic in any ordinary sense. It’s mythic. Erotic. Sacred.

She is not a lover but a muse who demands blood.

And Cocteau gives it,

freely, lovingly.

The film pulses with desire, not for sex exactly, but for transformation. For becoming something other, something more beautiful. A poet doesn’t simply suffer, he spills. He births universes through his wounds. Cocteau shows us the sublime eroticism of creation, of bleeding. It is sensuality draped in shadow and soft light, a lover’s breath caught between dreams and death.

I want to focus on my favourite scene in more depth

Cocteau’s artist draws a face. Suddenly, the mouth detaches, slithers free, and affixes itself to the palm of his hand. What follows is not horror, but seduction.

This living mouth, sensual, whispering, wet, is not just a surrealist flourish. It is a symbol of erotic transgression, of the artist’s body betraying and liberating itself. When the hand becomes a speaking, desiring thing, the boundary between self and creation dissolves. The mouth murmurs secrets. It compels. It haunts.

The artist, disturbed but entranced, tries to rid himself of it. He wipes it on a statue’s lips, transferring both the kiss and the burden. It’s a gesture so intimate, so strangely tender, it feels like the climax of a love affair, an unspoken goodbye between flesh and muse.

The statue awakens, transformed. The artist is marked.

This scene captures the essence of Cocteau’s erotic surrealism: sensuality that is mythic, metaphysical, unnerving in its quiet intensity. The mouth on the hand is more than a visual trick. It is the poet’s wound. The artist's secret. It’s the ache of creation made visible, the physical intrusion of the unconscious.

To love The Blood of a Poet is to fall for these strange intimacies. Cocteau offers us not narrative, but memory-fragments soaked in blood and dream. The hand-mouth is his seduction spell, asking: what if art craved you back? What if in it’s kiss lives everything? desire, discomfort, divinity.

Overall, Le Sang D'un Poète’ is not a narrative in the traditional sense but a surreal, symbolic meditation on the relationship between the artist and their inner world. It’s about the pain, ecstasy, and transformation involved in the creative process, paired with the blurred boundary between art, identity, death, and desire.

[israelites-were-black-and-muslim]

The idea that Gentiles (non-Jews) are spiritually linked to a lower or different heritage, especially in the context of Lilith and Samael, is a complex and controversial topic within Jewish mysticism, particularly within the occult and Kabbalistic traditions. While such ideas are often not found in mainstream or rabbinic Judaism, they do emerge in esoteric, Kabbalistic, and mystical texts, particularly those influenced by the medieval Kabbalistic tradition and later Sabbatean and Hasidic mystics. Below, I will explore the connections between Lilith, Samael, and the spiritual heritage of Gentiles in Jewish occultism, with reference to key sources.

1. Lilith and Samael in Kabbalistic Thought

Lilith and Samael are often portrayed as demonic or shadow figures in Kabbalistic cosmology, and their roles in spiritual impurity and chaos are central to the Qliphothic realm — the dark opposite of the Sefirot (the divine emanations of God).

Lilith is often associated with chaos, carnality, and the dark feminine. She is said to be the first wife of Adam, before Chavah (Eve), and is typically viewed as a rebellious figure who refused to submit to Adam and consequently became a demonic being. This myth has roots in the Alphabet of Ben Sira and has been expanded in later mystical texts, such as the Zohar.

Samael, on the other hand, is frequently depicted as Lilith's partner in the Qliphoth, and as the angel of death or a satanic figure. Samael’s relationship with Lilith is often seen as one of temptation, destruction, and perversion of creation, and he is sometimes considered the spiritual ruler of the Gentiles, representing spiritual impurity and the fallen world.

In this framework, Gentiles are sometimes portrayed as spiritually linked to these demonic forces because they do not partake in the holy covenant that is specific to Israel. The covenant of Abraham is often seen in Kabbalistic thought as a divine shield that separates the Jewish people from these demonic or impure influences, which are viewed as more accessible to Gentiles.

Source:

Zohar: In the Zohar, Lilith is associated with spiritual impurity and is portrayed as an obstacle to the divine light. This impure nature is often linked to the Gentiles, who are believed to be more susceptible to Lilith’s influence due to their lack of the sacred lineage of Israel.

In Zohar (1:19b), Lilith is associated with the "darkness" of the world, a power that resides outside the holy realm of Israel.

2. Sabbatean Influence and the Spiritual Heritage of Gentiles

The Sabbateans, a messianic movement that arose around Shabbatai Zevi in the 17th century, had complex and often heterodox interpretations of Jewish mysticism. The Sabbateans were known for their anti-authoritarian tendencies and for reinterpreting Jewish law and tradition in ways that challenged established rabbinic interpretations.

Lilith and Samael became prominent in Sabbatean thought as figures of rebellion. Shabbatai Zevi himself was considered a messiah figure, but his followers sometimes viewed Lilith and Samael not only as forces of evil but as transgressive energies that could lead to divine transformation.

In Sabbatean cosmology, the Sefirot and the Qliphoth (the dark side) were sometimes seen as interwoven or in flux, meaning that those on the fringes of the sacred community — like Gentiles — might be closer to the Qliphoth but could still play a role in the ultimate redemption through cosmic reversal.

Sources:

The Sabbatean Movement and Jewish Mysticism by Moshe Idel: This text examines how Sabbatean ideas reshaped Jewish mysticism and incorporated figures like Lilith and Samael into cosmologies of rebellion and transformation.

The Mystic Quest by Arthur Green: Green’s works explore the relationships between Jewish mysticism, Sabbateanism, and the symbolism of impure forces in relation to non-Jews.

3. Gentiles and Their Spiritual Purity

In many Kabbalistic and Jewish occult traditions, the spiritual purity of Gentiles is sometimes viewed as inferior to that of the chosen people of Israel. This is not always a literal statement, but a mystical and symbolic one that has roots in both Talmudic and Kabbalistic thought.

Kabbalistic concepts of purity often frame the Jewish people as the vessel for divine light, with Gentiles viewed as being more closely tied to the forces of darkness — represented by Lilith and Samael — due to their lack of divine covenant.

The Qliphoth (the dark side) is often seen as the realm of Gentiles, while the Sephirot is the domain of Israel. This notion could also tie into ideas that Gentiles are more prone to be influenced by Lilith, Samael, and the Qliphoth, given their exclusion from the holy lineage.

Source:

The Tree of Life: Kabbalistic Teachings by Israel Regardie: Regardie explores the symbolism of the Sephirot and the Qliphoth, discussing the spiritual divide between those who are initiated into the divine covenant (Israel) and those who are not (Gentiles), and the influence of Lilith and Samael.

4. Modern Esoteric Interpretations

In modern occult and esoteric Jewish thought, the Lilith-Samael narrative has evolved, and figures like Lilith are seen less as merely demonic and more as agents of transformation. Some modern Kabbalistic and Gnostic systems have reclaimed Lilith as a figure of empowerment, transcending traditional roles of impurity and rebellion. However, these interpretations often retain the idea that the Jewish people are spiritually distinct or chosen, while Gentiles are more susceptible to the darker forces of Lilith and Samael due to their lack of spiritual protection.

Conclusion:

While mainstream Jewish thought does not present Gentiles as being of a different or lower spiritual heritage per se, Jewish occultism, especially within Kabbalah, Sabbateanism, and some esoteric systems, has explored the spiritual roles of Gentiles in relation to Lilith and Samael. These figures are sometimes seen as part of a spiritual hierarchy in which Gentiles are more susceptible to the Qliphothic forces due to their perceived lack of covenant. However, these views are more metaphorical and symbolic than literal, and they often reflect the complex mystical systems within Jewish mysticism that address the dynamics of purity, rebellion, and spiritual ascent.

[maxksx]

That unconsciously and higher levels of consciousness use synchronicity, acausally, because they have no concept of time.  since there is no linear time in the sense that we have a past and a future, the connection between them is sought in another way, by energy similarity, and by the mapping of that energy which forms and patterns that appear at a higher level of organization as forms, images, symbols.  as in Gematria or Gloloslalia, the same case with astrology, &c.  You have a chess player who played for the American team, who was an ingenious psychotic, and who would not consent to treatment because he would lose his power to see beyond the ordinary.  since he was schizophrenic, it was difficult for him wherever there were cameras, and full of people, and of course he lost.  then he asked for a room in isolation without cameras or people, and won immediately.  quantum entanglement.

in psychotic acceleration, quantum entanglement and superposition in zero time occurs (constitutes a new, more integral form of consciousness).  a subject can simultaneously hold multiple contradictory beliefs or perceptions of reality through the prism of quantum phenomena, where the connections between events and ideas are fluid and unpredictable.  where different realities and possibilities are simultaneously present, which can lead to a sense of confusion and fragmentation.  the need for the predictable is actually fear, the person is out of control in the unconscious, which manifests in the conscious as the need for control).  I think that Nietzsche was in a psychotic acceleration where he canceled the Self, and entered a total chaos that he was not able to mentally and physically bear.  with acceleration, I like Spiritual Singularity (transcendence, radical transformation).  while in the case of technological singularity, the creation of a new consciousness that first crosses the current cognitive limits.

at the same time, a symbol is coded that is both yes and no, it is something that contains both yes and no, negation and affirmation. comes to neutralization and transcendence, every contradiction, like Zen koals, are transgressions of reason (causal), of cognitive limits.

[wickedsrest-rp]

Lamia (Pl: Lamia, Lamias)

QUICK FACTS:

Rarity: ★★★★☆

Lifespan: 70-90 years

Supernatural abilities: Reptile-like form including partial shifting, healing by shedding, tough skin, others depending on physiology

Enhanced/special senses: In reptilian form: Hearing, senses vibrations and heat, others depending on physiology

Immunities: None by default

Weaknesses: The cold while in reptile form, must shift to eat

Can detect: Undead, other lamia, banshees, other unusual body temps (all due to heat sensing in reptile form)

Detected by: Hunters (rangers) while partially or completely shifted into reptile form

Additional notes: This species does not usually have heightened strength; lamias do not have an innate sense to allow them to recognize other lamias unless by heat vision

OVERVIEW:

Lamias – shapeshifters that can take on a reptilian shape – have been around for many centuries, but they don’t have one single origin. Initially, all lamias are said to have originated from curses. The causes of these curses differed, but the result was that a human individual would be transformed into a reptile-like creature. When these cursed lamias went on to have children, their progeny were born as lamias as well, or become lamias around the same age as their lamia parent’s curse was inflicted. Because of this, some of the lamias around today were born and raised as them, while others became as such due to a long-standing generational curse, that may well stretch back to the times of Medusa (who some insist was a relative). 

Today, there are various lamia bloodlines that can all trace their lineage back to their cursed ancestor. There are some stories about lamias who were able to break their family’s curse and regain their humanity, but accounts are sparse and there is no clear-cut way to do this; they may merely be stories.

Lamia are able to shift between human and reptilian forms at will, but can only eat properly while in their reptilian state, and must remain in that state for about an hour afterward as the food settles. Therein lies the curse: lamias eat whole, live prey, and have somewhat of a negative reputation because of it. An adult lamia only has to eat about once every two weeks… if the prey is big. Some may choose only to eat insects and small mammals daily, but that can be difficult to maintain long term. Disturbing to some, certain lamias can unhinge their jaws to allow themselves to swallow large prey whole. Because they gain no nourishment from human food, they can only survive by frequently shifting – a constant reminder of their or their ancestor’s transgressions.

APPEARANCE: 

Lamias are able to change form with complete control and even partially shift. The reptilian form of lamias is still humanoid in shape, but may resemble any reptile (or even a mix of a couple of different species); they’re always covered in scales but beyond that are greatly varied. It’s common for a lamia’s appearance or abilities to be connected to the basis of their curse in some way. Some may be snake-like, having the lower half of a serpent and the upper half of a transformed, scaly human, and others may take on characteristics of a tortoise, chameleon, or other reptile.

CURSE: 

One can become a lamia in three different ways: be born as one, transform later in life, or become the first in a bloodline to be cursed themselves. All those born into a cursed bloodline will become a lamia, the same as their cursed relative. They will either be lamia from birth or have their transformation at the same age their relative was when they were originally cursed. The lamia curse can be inflicted either by spellcasters, or due to exposure to other powerful magic. There can be a considerable divide in perspective between those born as lamias and those becoming them against their will, much like werewolves – it can be seen as a gift or for the literal curse that it is. 

ABILITIES:

In their reptilian form, lamias have very sharp hearing and are able to “see” through vibrations in the ground. They can also see thermal energy at will, giving them the ability to identify undead or those with abnormally high or low body temperatures.

A lamia’s scales can be extremely tough and effectively act as armor against blunt weapons.

Lamias will have additional abilities tied to their specific anatomy, determined by the reptile species they resemble: a viper lamia might have fangs and venom while a gecko lamia may be able to climb walls with ease.

While lamias usually heal at a normal, human rate, they can speed this up (about 2-3x faster than normal) by shedding their skin over the course of a few days, or some other equivalent dictated by the species they resemble. This allows for the healing of even major injuries.

Lamias can evade detection from rangers by shifting back into human form. They can’t be sensed unless partially or completely shifted into reptile form; the more they’re shifted, the more easily rangers will sense them, even from a distance.

WEAKNESSES: 

While in human form, lamias don’t have access to any of their supernatural abilities.

In their reptile form, lamias are cold-blooded and will become sluggish and weak when exposed to cold temperatures, and will have a harder time shifting back into human form without first warming up.

They can be disoriented by heights due to their use of seismic communication.

Lamias may be killed through normal means such as decapitation, blood loss, and injury to a vital organ if you can get through their scales.

During a shed or other method of speeding up healing, lamias are especially vulnerable. 

Additionally, lamias may have other vulnerabilities based on which species they resemble, or elements of their curse.

Hunted by rangers, who can sense their presence.

[wrestriction]

THE THINGS WE CARRY

pairing: toji fushiguro/satoru gojo rating: e (for explicit, eventually) notes: post-hidden inventory & canon divergent (toji lives), aged-up gojo (but warning for an age gap of about ten years), guys being weird about the intimacy of violence, sex pollen(-adjacent) plot contrivance in part two, gojussy

SO THE PARABLE GOES, two monks sworn to celibacy encounter a young woman at the bank of a river. The waters are swollen from days of rain, earth sodden and slippery, and the maiden — needing to return home — implores the pair to help her cross.

The younger monk defers to his sacred vows; he isn't to look at, let alone touch, a woman. He proceeds down the muddy swale without a second thought to her plight, resolute in his convictions.

The elder monk joins him not long after, but to the novice's horror, his companion has taken the young woman onto his shoulder. Wordlessly, the senior monk carries her across the river, setting her back down as soon as they reach land. She thanks them at length and departs from their company shortly thereafter.

The two monks travel on, and for hours, the younger monk stews on his mentor's indiscretion. The teachings are clear, well-established and immutable. Even as the day burns down into evening, the novice obsesses over how a tenet of their very way of life has been transgressed, turning it over again and again in his mind, until he finally snaps.

"How could you touch that woman?" he demands to know. "Have you forgotten yourself?"

The elder monk shakes his head and replies with pity for his young charge. "I set that woman down hours ago. Why are you still carrying her?"

I. THE WOUND

There's a misconception surrounding his Heavenly Restriction that Toji has never been able to shake. Whether that's because his lineage has begotten centuries of pure-blooded sadism, or because no one had ever bothered to listen to a discarded child explain the difference between durable and indestructible, is anyone's guess. Maybe it's not even a worthwhile distinction to make. The effect has always been the same regardless: somebody correctly or incorrectly assuming he can take punishment others simply cannot. It's that sort of mythmaking which builds up an overconfidence that Toji had long since thought he'd outgrown.

The hole in his side is mended now, patched up with fresh pink skin that sticks out like an aftermarket door on a newly repaired car. His left arm is similarly restored, two-thirds of its bulk gleaming with sorcery-patented collagen, courtesy of some teenage girl who could outsmoke a chimney like Shiu into tar, easy. He can barely recall the aftermath of that fight, but with a nose as sensitive as his, some memories linger harder than tobacco stains on eggshell paint.

By all accounts, Toji should be dead. It's nothing he doesn't deserve or wouldn't have doled out in return were the roles reversed. Too stubborn to listen to his intuition, too proud to admit an awakened Limitless user would've been hard to chew at the acme of his career as a sorcerer killer, to say nothing of now, after years of rehabilitated stagnation.

Instead, he waits — alive — in a nondescript cell, under what he suspects is the Tokyo jujutsu school compound, bathed in the orange glow of perpetual candlelight, with little more than a chair and futon to cycle through for comfort. Toji finds the seals lining every wall of his confines like posted bills to be a nice touch. Feels good to be considered a threat, still. Enriching to think some idiot in a suit believes 1) he's dangerous enough to warrant the effort, and 2) that warding talismans are anything more than home furnishings to a man with zero cursed energy of his own.

Days go by. Then weeks. Necessities appear, miraculously, while Toji sleeps — and only when he sleeps. He's tried, of course, to feign rest in the hopes of catching his attendant in the act, get some leverage going in a hostage situation, but they're cautious. Probably wise to him, knowing the trouble he's caused over the last decade. He doesn't blame them, but the monotony of imprisonment is maddening. At times, Toji wonders if that chainsmoking sorcerer really fucked him by healing that yawning void the Six Eyes left in his chest, rather than just letting him bleed out and be done with it.

The new muscles ache more today than they normally do. So much so, in fact, that their nagging pangs stir him from some overplayed dream spliced together from scraps of his youth. His eyes aren't even open yet when he realizes he's not alone in the room. The cursed energy stands out, first. Silvery and sharp in the air, but ubiquitous, oppressive like summer humidity in Okinawa. He recognizes it immediately, even before he's met with the other familiar sensory cues — the scent of white tea and peach from some upscale-brand toiletry, frictive squeak of high-quality rubber soles on wood. That smug voice, self-assured even with a blade goring him through the breast.

[ read the rest here! ]

[helianthus21]

accompanying fic to this fanart in the Early Adoption AU by the amazing @nalivaa who wondered what would happen if rival mafiosi exploited the weakness Vin's cute little brother posed and kidnapped him,,,,

The mafia business is a lawless one but there are some rules, unspoken or not, that you just have to adhere to. 

Such as, Never rat out your friends.

Or, Don’t start a fight you cannot win.

And perhaps the most important one in Milanese circles: You are not to touch a hair on the head of Vincenzo Cassano's little brother.

Like with most rules, they get established after the transgression has already been committed, even if just once. And the poor sons of bitches who tried are example enough to deter any madmen from even trying to copy them, even though, or rather because all but one of them did not live to tell the tale.

Having such a reputation is a relief to Vincenzo, though he has regrets about the way it was built up. Not because of what he had to do to get there – he doesn’t give two fucks about the poor suckers who became victims of his wrath – but because of what Han-seo had been forced to endure. 

Han-seo should’ve never gotten dragged into this. He should not even be a blip on the radar of any mafia members. Unfortunately, no matter how careful Vincenzo thought he was in keeping Han-seo's existence a secret from the mafia circles, trying to keep hidden someone who is such an essential part of your life is something of a herculean effort. 

He still remembers, all too vividly, the numbing fear he'd felt back then, when Luca had approached him and told him that his brother was gone. Taken. Fear that had quickly transformed into white-hot rage: he would kill everyone who had dared lay a finger on Han-seo, and everyone who got in his way would burn to cinder.

Without waiting for Luca or any of the other guys Luca had been trying to rally as reinforcement, he'd taken his Father's precious Cadillac and sped to the location he'd been told.

Apparently they'd demanded ransom – an insane amount at that – as well as some land Don Fabio had appropriated but Vincenzo couldn’t care less about any demands, let alone about fulfilling them. All he would fulfill that night was the blood-thirsty need for revenge that raged inside him.

They had taken Han-seo. 

They were going to pay.

When Vincenzo arrived at the scene, there were four armed men guarding the entrance to the warehouse that held Han-seo captive. As a rule, it is foolish to take on four armed men single-handedly. The four armed men seemed to think so too, which must have been why they did not even lift a brow (or move a trigger finger) when they saw Vincenzo approaching. 

Underestimation, Vincenzo had long since understood, was man’s greatest downfall, right next to pride.

That was why, when Vincenzo raised his gun, aimed, and shot the nearest guy right between his eyes, it took them a second to even process what was happening.

A second too long.

A second enough for Vincenzo. Taking advantage of their delay in action, he shot off two more bullets. One hit Goon Number Two in the heart, the other one missed by a hair's breadth and got Goon Number Three at the shoulder instead. By then, Vincenzo was close enough that some of his blood splattered on his hands.

Number Three and Four had caught themselves enough to coordinate each other: taking off in different directions, they tried their luck by coming at Vincenzo from different angles at once. But Vincenzo didn't hesitate for a moment. He let out another shot to his left, didn’t even stop to check if he'd hit home before whipping around again, anticipating Number Four pouncing on him. 

That was his second mistake.

"Guns are a long-distance weapon, stupido!" Vincenzo commented as he dodged Goon Number Four's attack, grabbed him by the wrist to kick the gun from his grip and spun him around to use as a shield just in time for when Goon Number Three recovered and fired off his own shot in their direction.

Vincenzo pushed a limp Goon Number Four on him and shot Goon Number Three in the aorta.

There was no time to lose. 

"Where is he?"

With the weight of Goon Number Four squarely over his chest and bleeding out, Goon Number Three glared at him. "Testa di cazzo!"

Unimpressed, Vincenzo pushed his foot down on the hole in his leg and repeated his question, voice raised over the man's scream of pain. "Where. Is. He."

"Third door down the corridor to the left."

Expression impassive, Vincenzo nodded. "Keys. And I'll make it quick for you."

From his pocket, the man pulled out the keys to the warehouse and handed them to him

As promised, Vincenzo blew his brains right out.

Vincenzo took a moment to reload his gun. This time, he had every intention of going in with a plan. A more solid one, maybe find a way to see how everyone was positioned around the room before entering or such.

Until he heard Han-seo’s voice.

“Hyu–”

It went muffled at the end, like someone pressed a hand to his mouth to silence him. 

Someone put a hand on him. 

And silenced him.

And Vincenzo saw red.

What happened next is a blur to Vincenzo to this day. He knows that he bullied his way inside, somehow, that at one point he lost his gun – someone must’ve kicked it from his grip – so that he’d have nothing but his fists and whatever he could leverage from his surroundings. He doesn’t know exactly how he fought against all of Han-seo’s captors and came up on top, all he can say is that there were four more dead men, and three gravely injured, once he was done with them. 

What he remembers, though, all too clearly, is standing in that room, gun still firm in his hand like an extension of himself, and looking for his brother in the midst of all that grime and death. 

Han-seo was standing, staring, wide-eyed. 

Some blood had splattered on his face and clothes when Vincenzo had shot the man who’d been holding Han-seo in the cruel attempt to use him as a shield. It had been, perhaps, the scariest moment for Vincenzo in this whole mess. In his entire life thus far, perhaps: the risk he had to take when he aimed with Han-seo so close to his target. But he’d hit home, hit the man in the shoulder, not enough to kill, but enough to make him stumble away from Han-seo. Then, he followed up with another bullet, to his thigh this time, just to keep him from running.

Han-seo had tumbled to the ground, hands and knees breaking his fall. Wincing, Vincenzo took a look at the stone floor. That must have hurt, he thought, and rage flared up once more at that. “Han-seo,” he rasped, taking a step towards him. “Are you okay? Are you hurt?”

There was a mirror, just behind Han-seo, a little to the left, and it caught Vincenzo’s eye the moment he moved. It was leaning against the wall, an old thing, with cracks at the upper left corner and dust sticking to the rest of it, distorting Vincenzo’s reflection into a grotesque form, like a specter. Blood was splattered all across his suit. Blood sullied the white of his collar. His own blood dripped sluggishly down a cut on his cheek, and blood stuck to his hands: the blood of the people he killed to get here.

He looked like–

He looked like a monster.

He couldn’t look Han-seo in the eyes, wouldn’t bear to see fear reflected in them: fear of his own brother.

“Hy- hyung?”

Han-seo’s voice sounded so thin, so shaky, and this made Vincenzo seek his gaze after all. His feet brought him the rest of the way to him, closing the distance. He dropped to his knees before his brother. Han-seo was still wearing the same jacket he’d been wearing when Vincenzo had dropped him off at school that morning. An ugly atrocity of brightly colored patterns reminiscent of eighties fashion that Han-seo had zoned in on at the mall and absolutely insisted on. He was the same boy from that morning, yet ages had passed behind his eyes. 

Taking care not to touch Han-seo directly, he examined the handcuffs that chafed the skin around his wrists. Bastardos, he thought. To do that to a child! Don Fabio had clear rules about never involving women and children in their work, never harming the innocent and he demanded from his men to abide by this law religiously. 

These men were worse than trash for putting Han-seo through this hell. 

With practiced ease, Vincenzo unlocked the cuffs with a safety pin, careful not to let the metal scrape against Han-seo’s skin any more. They fell to the floor with a clang.

Throughout it all, he felt Han-seo's eyes on him, and the urge to hide his face, to shield Han-seo’s eyes from all this grew by the second. He dreaded to know what Han-seo was thinking now, how the picture of his big brother had, undoubtedly, changed irrevocably. He never wanted Han-seo to see this side of him.

Instead of meeting Han-seo's eyes, Vincenzo focused on his hands: the scratches on his wrist were an angry red, and Vincenzo reached out, then, by instinct, but he caught himself before his hands (the hands of a killer) could meet bare skin, and gripped Han-seo by the arm instead, as though the fabric of his jacket was barrier enough from his tainting touch. Instead, his bloody hands sullied that damn jacket, pink mixing with red, but despite the disgust at himself, Vincenzo needed to make sure he was real, solid. That he was fine.

“Hanseo-yah,” he whispered. 

Han-seo stared at him. 

His knees were bleeding, and Vincenzo was partly to blame for that. There was a cut on his right cheek, smaller than the one Vincenzo sported, yet enough to make his heart constrict at the sight. 

Almost more incriminating, tears were welling in his eyes. When one spilled over, Vincenzo reached out a hand to his left cheek, by instinct, to wipe it away with his thumb. “Han-seo,” he whispered again. “I’m sorry.” 

Horrified by the way his touch left a stain of red on Han-seo’s face, he wanted to draw back, but Han-seo was faster. Like a dam breaking, more tears spilled from his eyes and he launched himself at Vincenzo, scraped knees hitting the cold hard floor once more and it was all Vincenzo could do to catch him in his arms as Han-seo began to cry for real.

For a moment, Vincenzo was too stunned to do more. 

Wasn’t he scared of him? Wasn’t he horrified?

“Hyung!” Han-seo got out between sobs. “They– they…”

They hurt him. 

Any other thought flew out the window, as Vincenzo’s heart flared with the feeling that had risen in him since the first time he’d laid eyes on Han-seo, when Vincenzo had sworn to protect him, that small boy that got left behind just like Vincenzo himself had been left behind.

Vincenzo pulled Han-seo closer, tightened his hold on him, so tight it might almost hurt. “It’s okay.”

“I was so scared!”

“It’s okay, I’m here now.”

“They hurt me.”

“I know.” Vincenzo swallowed. He pushed down another wave of nauseating rage. “I’m sorry.”

“Hyung.”

“You’re alright,” Vincenzo promised  “I’m here now. You’re okay. I won’t let anything happen to you.” One of his hands rubbed back and forth soothingly across his back. “By my first father’s grave, I swear this. Anyone who tries, I’ll…”

He’ll pay them back tenfold, and his currency is pain. He’ll make them feel every second of blinding fear he’d felt for Han-seo since the moment he realized he was missing. Every second that Han-seo was scared, that he had to live in a world where he wasn’t safe, where Vincenzo had failed him. 

Eyes drifting, he caught another glance at the mirror. 

He looked awful.

Like a killer.

Like a monster. 

Suddenly, he couldn’t bear to be near Han-seo. His innocent, carefree dongsaeng had been pulled into this world, his world, and he was the one to blame. He couldn’t stand to touch him with his filthy hands, hands full of blood. 

But as he loosened his grip to draw back, Han-seo only clung to him more tightly.

“Hyung, please!” Han-seo wailed. “Please stay.”

Stunned, Vincenzo didn’t move. “I’m not going anywhere,” he assured. “I’ll keep you safe, from now on. I promise.”

While Vincenzo was wearing the blood of his enemies, the blood on Han-seo  was mostly his own. His knees. His cheek. His wrists were full of scratches from where he had likely pulled against his too tight restraints. He must’ve been so scared. 

Vincenzo would kill them all again, would shoot another load of bullets in their bodies. Make it hurt this time, draw it out, for what they put Han-seo through. For every drop of blood they drew from him, he’d draw a hundred, for every tear that fell from his eyes, he’d tear off a limb. 

He doesn’t know how long they stayed like this, how long until Luca arrived with the cavalry. But when their medic tried to rip them apart to treat their injuries, Han-seo wailed even louder than before. 

"Han-seo," Vincenzo chided carefully, not letting go either. "You need to let them have a look at you."

"No, I'm fine, I just–" he sniffed, and Vincenzo's heart melted. 

He didn’t spend more than a furtive second wondering what Father’s men will think of him now, seeing him fold so easily for this kid. That was less important. More important was to keep Han-seo close, to reassure himself that he was here, that he was fine. He hadn’t been able to breathe since he found out Han-seo had been captured, and now he finally could. He closed his eyes, took in the vague smell of candy and Han-seo’s strawberry shampoo and, most damningly, the iron smell of blood that now clung to his little brother. Instinctively, Vincenzo hugged him a little tighter.

“You’re alright.” He couldn’t in all sincerity tell anymore if the reassurance was for Han-seo’s or his own sake.

Now that he knew that Han-seo was largely unharmed, the thing he most abhorred about this day was the fear these men put Han-seo through. The fear that shook his world view, burst the bubble that his world was a safe one. The fear that stripped him of the belief that as long as his brother was around, things would go alright, that he’d never let any harm come his way. 

Because he had been there, and harm had still found Han-seo.

In the worst way, Vincenzo had failed. If something worse had happened to Han-seo, he’d never have forgiven himself…

In the end it was Luca who managed to dislodge Han-seo’s iron hold on Vincenzo.

“Han-seo,” he’d addressed the boy directly. “We really need to have a look at the both of you. Your hyung doesn’t look so good himself…”

Immediately, Han-seo drew back to look Vincenzo over. There was a determined look in his watery eyes fighting to overthrow the state of distress he was obviously still in, his cheeks marked with tear tracks. Vincenzo reached out to wipe them away but the sight of blood on his hands made him waver.

He wanted to drop his hand to his side, but Han-seo was faster.

"Hyung, your hands!" His brother caught them between his smaller ones, the same delicate fingers that had pieced together a toy car at the breakfast table this morning brushing over Vincenzo’s bruised knuckles, where skin had ripped open when he’d punched his way through Han-seo’s captors. More blood transferred from Vincenzo onto Han-seo’s skin, and his stomach lurched at the sight, urge to pull back growing exponentially but Han-seo was insistent. “You need a band-aid!”

And in front of the eyes of his Father’s most trusted men, their medic and the corpses of their enemies, Han-seo reached into his pants’ pocket, pulled out a strip of dinosaur-themed bandaid and, very gently, stuck it right across Vincenzo’s knuckles.

Wide-eyed, Vincenzo stared at him. A small smile brightened Han-seo’s miserable face as he examined his handiwork and Vincenzo remembered what he had said to Han-seo, on that fateful day when Han-seo was hand-delivered to his doorstep by an uncaring former brother.

Let's just take care of one another from now on.

Han-seo never failed to save Vincenzo right back, it seemed.

*

He let the man go, the one who had used Han-seo as a shield. Someone needs to live to tell the tale. The tale of what happened when you dared to mess with Vincenzo Cassano's little brother. 

The saying doesn’t specify for how long that person should be allowed to live, however. But Vincenzo was a patient man when he wanted to be. He liked to play with his food.That man was how Vincenzo earned the title of the gatto sazio, but that's another story yet to tell.

[denimbex1986]

'There is a moment in NT Live’s Vanya – a one-man version of Anton Chekhov’s 1898 classic Uncle Vanya – where it feels fully possible that Andrew Scott could have cloned himself, and that three versions of him are on stage at once. He’s chameleonic enough that you’d believe it.

Vanya shows how life on a rural estate is completely upended when famous filmmaker Alexander, and his young, glamorous second wife Helena, visit. During this time, estate manager Ivan (Vanya) and country doctor Michael both fall for Helena, and consequently reevaluate their lives. The play stars Andrew Scott portraying all seven characters – including Ivan’s niece Sonya, housekeeper Maureen and local boy Liam – in a powerhouse, multipronged performance. The production enjoyed a sell-out run on the West End last year, alongside a spate of five-star reviews.

In a way, it feels like Scott’s career has been building towards Vanya, so varied are his most celebrated roles. Starting out on the stages of his native Ireland, the West End and Broadway, Scott burst onto our television screens in 2010 as the delightfully unhinged villain Jim Moriarty in BBC’s Sherlock. He gave a playful, terrifying edge to a character who is usually dull and professorial in his ruthlessness. Since then, Scott has been a mainstay of stage and screen, his characters running the gamut from Hamlet to Bond antagonist (Spectre), fantasy hero (His Dark Materials) to droll matinée idol (Present Laughter), the latter of which earned him an Olivier. With every part, Scott conveys a sense of something deeper going on under the surface – unsaid, but clearly legible on his face.

With his beloved ‘Hot Priest’, hired to officiate a family wedding in series two of Fleabag (2019), Scott further demonstrated this facility for internal performances. His clergyman forms a tentative, transgressive romantic relationship with Phoebe Waller-Bridge’s titular tearaway, which simultaneously heals and serves as rock bottom for both of them. Scott brings a quiet confidence to the priest as he flirts with abandoning his vows, trying to do the right thing no matter how much it hurts. It’s terrifically subtle, deeply felt work.

Scott is uniquely adept at holding space for emotion, as seen with Adam, a man dealing with the impact of a lifetime of loneliness in Andrew Haigh’s All of Us Strangers. He brings a guardedness to the character, who discovers that his late parents are alive and waiting for him in the house he grew up in. His visits home become the key to opening himself up to a romantic relationship with his neighbour (Paul Mescal). Throughout the film, we feel Adam’s gratitude and grief as he discovers the love and support he’s denied himself for so long. Scott is a master of smiles that never quite make it to the eyes, of lit-up eyes downplayed with hesitant smiles. His emotions are fluid, never vacillating, never overwrought.

He takes his considerable skills to new heights in Vanya, where he showcases his immense versatility as an actor. One minute, he’s a beleaguered and gossipy housekeeper, and the next – literally, the very next – he’s a bored and depressed doctor. Another moment, and he’s a young woman filled with hope and energy, and, almost in the same breath, he’s transformed into her uncle, whose decline from cringey jokester to an utterly lost man has happened before our eyes.

Scott introduces us to each of his characters slowly: establishing their physicality, their voices, their mannerisms. His transitions between them are more marked at the beginning, when he uses props and leaves space for us to register his change in posture, or physically moves from one side of the room to another. He accustoms us to the characters’ different voices – Helena’s is cold, reserved and posh; Alexander’s slow and scatterbrained; Ivan’s jovial and tense, like something could imminently break. Some characters are linked with certain props: Sonya with her tea towel, Michael with his tennis ball, Ivan, again, with his comedy sound-effects box.

But eventually these visual clues fall away, and we know everyone by their sound and posture. Soon, Scott is setting one character down and picking another up as he rises. He is both the person being blocked and the one doing the blocking, the person being comforted and the one tenderly stroking their head. Even the scenes of sexual intimacy between two characters are made believable, handled in a way so focused and naturalistic they don’t seem contrived or actorly. By the play’s end, Scott is throwing his voice as one character and reacting as another, and we know who is who by the arc of his brow, the curve of his smile or the movement of his hand.

These smaller movements, which would be felt more than seen from anywhere other than the front rows of a theatre, are what give this cinematic version of Vanya its magic. It’s in the way Sonya can handle a tea towel both nervously and with resolve, the way Michael’s slumped posture goes from listless to lustful and the way Ivan slowly crumbles, sloughing off layer upon layer of coping mechanisms. All of the decisions Scott makes as an actor are clearly rooted in a deep empathy for each of these characters. Quite a feat, then, to maintain this dedication for more characters than can be counted on one hand over the course of two hours.

Vanya is an acting masterclass, a beautiful unfurling of Scott’s multifacetedness. It’s a culmination of what we love about him as an actor: his constant, daring shapeshifting. If he was at the top of his game before, then now he is absolutely stratospheric.'

[fairylandblog]

Faeries and Curses

Folklore frequently depicts faerie curses, an intriguing part of the mythological world. Supernatural entities known as faeries typically cast these curses as enchantments or spells. These curses, typically depicted as a form of vengeance or punishment, reflect the complex and unpredictable nature of faeries. In contrast to the conventional human conceptions of right and wrong, faeries behave in accordance with their own moral norms, which may be arbitrary or contrary to human standards. Consequently, people especially revere and fear their curses. It is common for fairy curses to be the result of crimes committed against faeries or violations of their limits, regardless of whether the offenses were intentional or inadvertent. Disturbing a faerie's residence or neglecting to show adequate respect are two examples of the many different types of transgressions that fall under this category. These powerful spells often target humans who violate faeries' pledges or infringe upon their borders. It is possible for the curses to take several forms, such as physical alterations, adverse luck that lasts forever, or sleep that never ends. Each of these manifestations aligns with the perceived offense.

It's not always the case that these curses are directly harmful. Some curses serve as lessons or tests, compelling the cursed individual to embark on a journey of personal development or redemption. In this way, faerie curses are a reflection of the intricacies of the human experience, since they intertwine themes of transformation and consequence. Frequently, the cursed individual embarks on a journey to break the curse, requiring bravery, ingenuity, and occasionally the assistance of friendly faeries or other magical beings. In locations where there is a significant belief in faeries, the concept of faerie curses is firmly ingrained in the religious and cultural fabric of regions regions. For instance, the stories of the "Good People" in Celtic folklore contain a large number of descriptions of human beings suffering as a result of faerie characters' anger. These stories serve as cautionary tales, reminding people to respect nature and the invisible world. Even in modern times, these myths continue to have an impact on cultural traditions, such as the practice of leaving offerings to please faeries or avoiding certain locations that are known to be haunted by faeries.

In addition, faerie curses are a manifestation of the overarching theme of the power and mystery of the natural world. These symbols represent the idea that humans are not the ultimate authority in the cosmos, and that there are forces beyond our control that require respect and understanding. Because faerie curses are unpredictable, they remind us of the delicate balance that exists between mankind and the otherworldly, which contributes to both the attraction and the horror associated with them. To this day, faerie curses continue to captivate the mind, both in the realm of literature and popular culture. The plot employs these devices to explore themes such as destiny, justice, and redemption. The continuing attraction of these curses lies in their capacity to challenge characters and readers alike, prompting us to contemplate the repercussions of our choices and the mysterious forces that influence our lives. This ability is present in a wide range of storytelling genres, from traditional fairy tales to contemporary fantasy novels. Within the context of these tales, faerie curses continue to serve as a potent representation of the enchantment and peril that the world of mythology has.