#but the discussion is rarely developed into talking about all the implications of this thing

[heesdreamer]

skin on skin

PAIRING ➩ jake x reader

GENRE ➩ religious corruption au, church boy jake au, evil reader

WARNINGS ➩ heavy criticism of religion in an extreme exaggerated manner, manipulation, multiple smut scenes, the mc is straight up mean and evil and says mean things all the time lol. parental and spousal abuse… think that’s it maybe lol it’s an intense read

WC ➩ 20.4k (😵‍💫)

AUTHORS NOTE ➩ the spacing is a bit weird because apparently this exceeded the length amount in tumblr… i don’t care about your think pieces on religion or the way it’s discussed in this so please don’t try to educate me on the actual ways of christianity! it’s a story! that being said this is in no way making a mockery of jake and his religion. this is my favorite story ive ever done and i had a good time writing it which is rare lately so i really hope you enjoy it and if you make it to the end let me know what you think! hope you like it as much as i do

It wasn’t like you came out of the womb with horns and a little forked tail.

The nurses didn’t scream in terror and your mother didn’t faint at the sight of you, it wasn’t some grand discovery that anybody could see or anybody could plan for.

You made it through your formative years relatively normal, or at least as normal as you could be considering who your father was. But it wasn’t until middle school when you realized how different kids would treat you because of this.

Those were your favorite years you could remember. The half decade before anybody cared, or knew enough to care, what it meant for you to be who you were. Then you were old enough to have consciousness and design your own set of morals, something all the parents in your town dreaded.

Your town was barely that, more so a few neighborhoods sprawled across barren lands with more fields and trees than concrete and signs of the modern world that had seemingly developed everywhere, except for where you’d been born.

Sometimes you wondered if you’d been cursed to stay here forever. It seemed like everybody who was born here, died here, but unlike you they all seemed pretty content with this fact. Proud even, the elders stating the amount of years and generations they’d own their rusty old homes like it didn’t create a nasty pit in your stomach.

Time was frozen and the world had moved on, leaving all 2,000 of you behind to die and birth and die again until eventually the last generation killed themselves off in an act of sympathy, a mercy slaughter.

It was probably immoral to be thinking about your entire town dying whilst in church. But you didn’t think much about the implication of having sinful thoughts anywhere, regardless of how many crosses were currently burning stares into your back.

More than 70% of your life was spent inside these four walls, on this exact weathered seat on this same old pew.

See, when turned 12 years old and the kids at school made you aware of the fact your dad was the lead preacher at the only church in town, you figured this made you some sort of royalty.

Not once did you feel the overwhelming holy presence of god that everybody else seemed to be experiencing everyday after school and work when you all settled in together to listen to your fathers teachings.

You’d sit with a scowl on your face, turning around in the front row pew reserved for the preachers family and you’d observe the people around you. You knew everybody in your town, some more than others, but you always thought people looked different when they prayed.

The nice man who worked at the grocery store looked far more guilty and weathered with his eyes closed and the angry woman two blocks away who yelled at the kids riding their bikes too close to her sprinklers, looked peaceful like she was talking to an old friend.

Your mother would hiss under her breath in an attempt to catch your attention, sending soft pinches to your thighs until you’d begrudgingly turn back in your seat and plop down in your puffy dress, tuning out the sound of your fathers loud voice.

Looking back on it now, your mother seemed to notice the dark parts of you brewing before you even did. The two of you never saw eye to eye and despite the fact you were her only child, much to her dismay considering they tried for years after your birth to have another but to no avail, she never treated you with any sort of motherly warmth or kindness.

She’d glare at you from across the dinner table while her and your father conjoined hands and thanked the lord for the meal that your mother had cooked. You’d started to sit on your hands at dinner when you were 7 years old and what once was a cute misbehaving habit quickly became the warning sign of your future endeavors.

Still, part of being the preachers family was playing an act. So you’d all get up early in the mornings and wordlessly move around the house like the backstage of a play, dressing the part and giving bright smiles to each family that walked through the doorway on Sunday morning.

Your mother would stand behind you with a long stretched out smile, hands on your thin shoulders as she dug her nails down every time she felt you tense up at a greeting.

Then you were 16 and for the first time in your life, you heard her voice the thing you’d always assumed she believed. You stood in the hallway in your nightgown, standing stiff as a board to avoid the creaking wood of your old house, peering around a dimly lit corner to hear your parents conversation more clearly.

“She hasn’t done anything wrong Mary.” Your fathers rough low voice was flowing in your direction, sounding tired and agitated. You could vaguely hear the sounds of his rough hands rubbing over his unshaven scruff in frustration.

“She will.” Your mother sounded panicked and alert, desperate for him to understand her case. “I can’t explain it but she has this darkness in her, I’ve felt it ever since I was pregnant.”

Your breath caught in your throat as they spoke, understanding now they were referring to you. You were only slightly surprised, no grand feelings of fear or betrayal arising.

That nights conversation had ended with your mother in a fit of tears and your father uttering words of reassurance in an attempt to calm her down as you used the sounds of her loud sobs to sneak back to your room, getting under the covers and blowing out the candles by the time your father was opening your door to insure you were in bed.

He’d stood there for a few minutes, the door cracked with his hand on the knob. Do this day you wondered what he was waiting for. Maybe he was expecting you to talk in your sleep or he was trying to get some sense of the evil your mother was spewing about, but eventually you heard his tired sigh and the door shutting.

It’d been three years now since that conversation and you still hadn’t fully understood the evil your mother was referring to. You didn’t believe in god, that much had been clear to you from a very early age but you didn’t believe in the devil either.

You didn’t feel things maybe you should be feeling, sadness when an elder passed away unexpectedly or happiness when a new baby was born into the community. You didn’t feel pain when your mother shot you looks of disgust and you only felt slight jolts of satisfaction when she leapt in fear every time you entered a quiet room.

The seed of evil that was apparently inside of you never bloomed, no matter how much you waited for its arrival.

Until the day the Sim’s arrived to town.

It was extremely rare for somebody to move out of your hometown, and you’d been instructed to never speak about the families that left, to let yourself forget their names and faces. Forget any interaction you’d had with them now that they were gone.

But you’d never once contemplated the fact that it was possible to move here willingly. It hadn’t occurred to you that somebody would choose this place to live and that they’d be allowed to stay peacefully, and especially not given a grand welcome.

So you felt yourself uncharacteristically thrown off guard as you found yourself at church on a Saturday, typically your only day you weren’t required to be here. You’d spend these days down by the creek or riding around the abandoned section of town on your bike, trying to find something interesting to see.

As you stood near the stage, where your fathers podium was perfectly centered and polished, greeting the usual faces with a forced smile, your eyes landed on the most interesting sight you’d ever seen.

The Sim’s were a direct mirror of your family as they stood in front of you. Only three of them, a tall man giving your father a sturdy handshake and laughing like old friends and a small meek woman who was holding your mothers hand in both of hers, a thankful smile on her face.

Placed directly in front of you was a boy, seemingly your age, shifting back and forth on his feet as he waited for you to initiate any form of greeting.

There was people your age in town, your graduating class held 25 kids and over half of them were girls, daughters that were considered blessings for their special ability to continue on your towns population. You’d met boys, few handsome but handsome none the less but nobody who looked like the one standing in front of you.

He was taller than you, peering down at you from behind thin framed glasses and about double your width. You imagined you were hidden behind his shoulders to the view of the people stood in line behind him, waiting to greet your family.

His skin was tanned, something that you imagined wouldn’t last long considering you weren’t sure your town was blessed by the sun at all, almost constantly grey and dreary looking even in the peak of summer.

You took your time observing the boy, not feeling any sense of urgency at the knowledge people were watching and waiting, not even at the fact your mother was stood directly next to you and you could feel her stare on the side of your face. Her loss of attention seemed to make the boys mother nervous and she placed her hands on his shoulders.

“And this is our son, Jake.” She was chirping out and you almost wanted to laugh at how desperate she seemed to impress your family. The boy, Jake, was looking at you still for a second before his eyes shot to your mother and he gave her a nervous smile. “He’s shy at first but he’s a very good boy.”

His eyes flicked back over to yours as she spoke and your mouth quirked up in a small smile, finally sticking out your hand in offering to him.

You felt a strange feeling build up inside you, splattering against your ribs and painting your insides with something deep and powerful. As you held his hand in yours, your eyes caught onto your mothers and you could see the fear crossing over her expression at her own realization.

“Hi Jake.”

And the seed bloomed.

——

It wasn’t more than 30 seconds after your father finished his last word, the remains of it still echoing throughout the room underneath the chorus of ‘amen’s, that your mother was gripping your arm and dragging you back into his office space.

She closed the door swiftly and you yanked your arm out of her grip with a scowl, staring at her for an explanation about her sudden behavior despite having a slight inkling of what she was about to say to you.

“You can’t.” She spoke vaguely, an angry desperation in her voice like you were a feral dog with a hungry look in its eye.

“What are you talking about?” You lowered your agitation, doing your best impression of a confused and fearful daughter. She scoffed at your expression and held a hand to her mouth like she was genuinely amazed at your audacity.

“You leave that boy alone Y/N, or so help me God.” She was shaking her head at you and you felt a surge of annoyance at her tone, her voice shaky and weak.

You thought she was slightly pathetic. She’d spent her entire life treating you like the devil, implying your evil and avoiding you at all cost but the second you finally start to understand her concern and she’s immediately turned to pleading and bargaining. There was no fun in this for you.

Soft knocks against the door caught her attention and she looked over your shoulder, trying to ignore the fact you were still staring at her and not bothering to turn and face whoever had entered.

“Go home and get dinner started.” Your fathers voice was entering the room now in a hushed whisper, like somebody was still outside behind him. “We are going to have a welcome meal with the new residents.”

Your mothers eyes shot back in your direction at his words, like she was begging you to remember her previous warning and you offered her a small smirk before turning to face your father with a toothy grin, expression changing now.

“Of course father, whatever you need.”

——

You’d ignored your mothers glare the entire time you worked on dinner together, setting the table casually and changing into a less formal dress that gained a thumbs up of approval from your father.

When the Sim’s arrived, you greeted them similarly to how you did at church except your mother made sure to shake Jake’s hand for a prolonged amount of time so you couldn’t, only breaking apart when your father cleared his throat and ushered you all towards the polished dining room.

He took his seat at the head of the table and you briefly wondered what type of man Jake’s father was. He was larger than your dad, much larger and you noticed a hint of irritation in his face when he took a seat on the side. You imagined he sat similarly to your father at his own house and didn’t find great pleasure in the new arrangement.

There was three seats on each side and your mother had rushed to take a middle seat next to you, attempting to block anybody else from being seated beside you.

However your father cleared his throat subtly and sent the both of you a small glare, confused at the fact she hadn’t adorned her usual seat next to him. You were sure he realized it would be strange for her to sit a seat away from him, making them look distant or troubled.

She sent you a small angry look but shifted over a space so she was now sat in her usual place, leaning an empty chair between the two of you.

An empty chair that was soon taken by Jake, his mother sending him an encouraging smile and giving him a slight nudge in your direction. You remembered what she said about him being shy, not hiding the fact she was trying to create a friendship between the two of you.

His mothers face angered you more than your own. She was small and weak looking, constantly smiling with wide eyes like she was waiting to drop into a conversation at any time to force a connection, yet she rarely did throughout dinner. For the most part she stayed silent, nodding along obediently every time her husband spoke.

So you kept your attention on the boy for the most part, figuring the adults were too busy kissing eachothers ass’s to care about what the two silent teenagers were doing at the end of the table.

You knew he could feel the way you were watching him, sending you small glances out of the side of his eye and shifting uncomfortably in his seat every time he realized you were still looking.

He really was handsome you were deciding. You’d never really paid attention to boys before, understanding the difference between being attractive and not but it didn’t have any affect on you. You liked the slope of his nose and the way his throat bobbed with every nervous gulp he took.

Your father was seemingly noticing your mutual disinterest in the conversation, you watching Jake and him watching his empty plate. “Y/N honey, why don’t you take Jake to your room and show him some of your notes on our latest teachings.”

Both of your heads turned towards him as he said this, your eyes lighting up with excitement and Jake’s widening slightly.

“Oh..” His mother was starting and you resisted the urge to glare in her direction. “Jake isn’t… he’s never..”

Jake’s father sent her a sharp look and she snapped her mouth shut immediately, looking away from him. Your excitement only doubled as you realized she wasn’t comfortable leaving her son alone with a girl, leading you to believe he never had been before.

“Of course father.” You smiled at him softly, standing and flattening out your dress in a prudish manner. Jake glanced in your direction as you stood, clumsily rising out of his own chair as you headed up the stairs and down the hall to your room.

He followed wordlessly behind, still not speaking even when you stood in the doorway and let him awkwardly squeeze past you so he was stood stiffly in the center of your room. You closed the door behind you and he froze, eyes widening again.

“What are you doing?” His voice was high with worry and you realized it was your first time hearing him speak.

“What are you talking about?” You played dumb as you observed him, walking backwards until your legs hit your bed and you could sit carefully. He stayed standing as he watched you with confusion and worry.

“Mother says not to close doors.” He was shaking his head and it looked like he wanted to go and open it himself. He didn’t move however and you leaned back to rest on your hand, cocking your head in his direction.

“Do you always do what mommy says?” You questioned.

His eyebrows furrowed slightly at your condescending tone. You’d seemed nice enough at church and dinner, not speaking much but polite to your parents whenever you did. He was suddenly worried he had angered you.

“I guess she did say you were a good boy.” You quoted what his mother had said when she introduced him, voice carrying a faint mocking tone as you spoke.

He didn’t say anything after you said that, just standing there looking at you like you were some form of animal he’d never seen before. And maybe he hadn’t you were beginning to think, his speech was structured and tight like he was reciting lines and you were curious if he’d ever had a conversation with somebody his own age.

Your hand reached over to pat the bed next to you, raising an eyebrow at him and urging him to sit.

He watched you with that same look for a few seconds before looking back at the door like he was contemplating how fast he’d have to bolt out of it before you could sink your claws into him. He seemed to decide it wasn’t worth it, crossing the room and sitting down as far away from you as he could possibly get.

“Where’d you come from?” You didn’t plan to say that but the curiosity was driving you crazy, not quite understanding how he could be so sheltered.

“A village not far from here.” He was eventually answering with a soft shrug. He was sat perfectly straight on your bed, posture making him look even taller than he already was considering you were still leaned back on your palm.

You should’ve figured he was from a village, suddenly understanding why his mother was practically a house wife from the 1800’s and his dad looked relatively similar to a lumberjack.

“No girls at your village?” You were watching the side of his face as you questioned him, growing slightly agitated that he wasn’t looking at you. “Jake.”

He turned his face towards you when you addressed him, eyes widening like he was worried you were going to scold him from the sound of your stern call.

“I asked you a question.” When he didn’t immediately answer you assumed he hadn’t heard you, repeating yourself. “Was there no girls where you’re from?”

He was shaking his head swiftly, looking at his hands and then back towards you. “None like..”

“None like me?” You interrupted him as he started to trail off and your lips quirked into a smile. “So no pretty girls then.”

He frowned as you hummed and nodded your head like you’d made sense of what he was trying to say. He didn’t look like even he understood what the things you were saying meant and you almost pitied him as you slowly unlocked the full extent of his naivety.

“You’ve probably never even held hands with a girl right?” You kept your tone sweet despite your intentions.

He looked like he only slightly relaxed at your change of tone, glancing at you as he shook his head as a way to answer your question. He didn’t understand why you wanted to know this.

You were sitting back up straight, off your hands, and leaning sideways to get closer to him. He watched you with panicked eyes as you reached down near his lap and took his hand in yours, similarly to how you shook it at the church but the tension in the room was a direct opposite.

He made a strange noise when you touched him, a semi squeak at the suddenness of your contact and you smiled at him, scooting closer so you weren’t awkwardly stretching your arm in his direction.

“How does it feel?” You murmured, fighting the urge to lean against him and whisper in his ear. You didn’t want to scare him off just yet.

“I don’t think I should be in here.” He was shaking his head as he spoke and staring down at your conjoined hands or maybe the floor past them. They were resting in his lap, the back of your hand on his right thigh.

You frowned softly although he wasn’t looking at you, trying to keep up with your act. He seemed to be more pliant earlier when he thought he had upset you. “Jake.”

He glanced at you as you said his name, just like he had before, and his gaze looked guilty when he noticed the frown on your face. You squeezed his hand to try to bring his attention back to the fact you were touching him but he shook his head again.

“I really need to go Y/N.” He was still trying to sound polite despite his obvious discomfort and you almost smiled at the innocence of that.

“You don’t want me to touch you?” You let a small whine sink into your tone, really trying to drive home the idea that he was upsetting you and you felt him squeeze your hand absentmindedly.

He didn’t reply after you said that and the room fell into a strange silence. Then he was sending a heavy glance in your direction and your mouth parted in realization, understanding his inner monologue by the thick amount of guilt in his expression.

“You do want me to touch you.” You let your smile show now, not finding any reason to hide it now that he clearly took your bait. He squeezed his eyes shut as you said this and shook his head again, his hair messy now and falling into his face.

“What’s wrong Jake?” You were almost cooing at him, your hand sliding out of his and up his wrist, in result the back of your hand going further up his thigh. You kneaded at his wrist bone and he grunted at the almost painful sensation. “It’s just skin.”

He looked at you with a frustrated expression, holding eye contact for a few seconds much to your surprise. You were almost worried he was going to cry. You didn’t mind it personally, if anything you were thinking about how pretty he’d look with watery eyes and a red nose, but you imagined it would cause some level of concern with the parents.

So you released your grip on his wrist, taking your hand back and placing it on your own lap. You were still sitting far too close to him but he visibly relaxed at the lack of touch, however slightly confused why you had backed off.

Almost like the world had been paused for the entirety of your conversation and now played again, a soft knock on your door caused you to leap away from him and grab the bible your father insisted was kept on your nightstand at all times.

You were relieved to see his face when the door opened, knowing your mother would have most likely immediately sniff out what you’d been doing. Or at least attempting to do.

Your father looked between the two of you and the large space, nodding in approval when you flashed him a smile and opened to a random page in the book. He didn’t seem to notice how tense Jake was or the fact your door had been closed in the first place.

“Your parents are leaving Jake. You can stay a bit longer if you two are having fun.” Your father was saying in a welcoming voice but Jake was hopping off your bed before he even had a chance to finish.

“No, sir. Thank you but I really should get home and finish unpacking.” He was stumbling over his words and awkwardly shifting in place, waiting for your dad to move out of the doorway so he could make his escape.

Your dad shot you a confused look over Jake’s shoulder and you gave him a small shrug, fighting the urge to smile.

——

Guilt was eating Jake alive the entire ride home. He wasn’t quite sure what he had necessarily done wrong, what level of sin he had just committed, but his mother kept shooting him disappointed looks in the mirror.

“Will you stop looking at the boy like that.” His fathers gruff voice was mumbling from the drivers seat and his mom snapped her eyes back to the front window obediently. “It’ll be good for him to make a friend.”

“What type of girl leads a boy to her bedroom?” He was surprised his mother had spoken again, especially in the harsh tone she was using. She must’ve been angry enough at you and your behavior to forget the fear she held for Jake’s father.

He felt a bit strange as she said that. You were definitely weird and had made Jake feel something he’d never experienced, and he positively wanted to leave your room as quick as possible but he didn’t think you deserved such a mean comment.

He continued to feel strange for the rest of the night.

Jake laid in bed, hours past his usual bed time, and replayed your interaction in his head. Every time he got to the part where you grabbed his wrist in your tight hold, he squeezed his eyes shut and asked god to forgive him.

He could feel his stomach light up when he thought about your hand on his pants and he wanted to dig his nails into the skin as a self punishment for the thoughts brewing in his head, thoughts he had never had before and didn’t understand.

Rolling over in his bed, stomach to the mattress, he stuffed his face into his pillow and cried softly until he eventually fell asleep.

——

You felt giddy in the church pew the next morning after seeing Jake walk in with his parents. You immediately knew your plan had worked judging by his puffy face and swollen eyes. He’d clearly gotten no sleep and you could take a strong guess at the reason why.

A sick part of you was ecstatic at the fact you had something to do, something that actually managed to catch your interest.

If all it took to keep Jake up all night was you touching his hand, than you were preparing for more fun than you originally thought.

The morning had gone routinely as you remained in your seat for the entire sermon, not spinning around to try to catch a look at the boy despite the urge constantly in the back of your mind. You didn’t focus for a second but you did a solid job pretending until you heard a hushed voice behind you excusing themself.

You snuck a glance back to see Jake passing through his pew with muttered apologies and thanks to the people he was passing, smiling softly at them.

You watched him exit the pew and make his way down the main aisle, no doubt heading towards the bathroom hall since it was the only other part of the building outside of your fathers head office. You let him disappear from your sight and counted to 30 before abruptly standing and following his path before your mother could grab your hand in denial.

By the time you made it to the hall, Jake was exiting the bathroom with damp hands and a few wet strands of hair like he had splashed his face in an attempt to wake up.

His eyes widened when he saw you approaching and he glanced behind him like he was considering disappearing back into the bathroom so you couldn’t say anything to him. You smiled at this but didn’t move closer to him, leaning against the wall.

“What are you doing?” He watched you with careful eyes, not quite sure what you wanted.

You shrugged and furrowed your eyebrows. “What are you doing? You look tired, did you not get any sleep?”

He didn’t say anything as he looked at you, eyes heavy and guilty again like he was afraid you could read his mind. Unlucky for him, you didn’t have to read his mind to know what was happening in it.

“Were you thinking about me?” You pushed forward on his suspicions when he didn’t respond to you, tilting your head as you looked at him.

He didn’t respond again, letting out a small tired exhale before leaning against the wall opposite of you. The hallway was tensioned despite not being close enough to touch even if you stretched your arm out.

“I was thinking about you.” You suddenly confessed in an attempt to catch his interest or potentially get him to lower his walls enough for a solid conversation. It seemed to work considering his head was snapping up and he was looking at you with wide questioning eyes. “Is thinking a sin?”

He watched you for a few seconds, slightly embarrassed that you had somehow realized what his inner dilemma lead back to.

“Yes.” He answered matter of factly and you let out a small laugh.

You observed the way his lips awkwardly quirked up, like he was pleased he made you laugh despite being dead serious in his answer. His smile pulled at his cheeks for a second and you liked the way he nervously wiped his sweaty hands on his pants.

“What… what were you thinking about?” He squeezed the words out like they were painful after a silence fell between the two of you. You felt a bud of satisfaction at the fact he’d been curious enough to ask.

“Touching you.” You shrugged like it was a casual thing to say, watching his shoulders tense and his mouth part slightly in shock and disapproval.

“My hand?” You were a bit surprised that he asked a follow up question, voice dropping into a scared whisper like he was worried somebody was eavesdropping, maybe he was worried god could hear him.

You were watching him for a few uncomfortable beats, liking the way his cheeks turned red and he kept looking away from your gaze anxiously. Then you were shaking your head to answer his question, taking a step closer to his side of the hall.

His breath hitched as you kept taking small strides in his direction, taking your time with a loose smile on your face like you were out for a casual walk. You stopped next to him, turning and pressing your back against the wall he was leaned on so your shoulders were pressing together.

You wondered if he was planning to hold his breath the entire time you were touching him this time around, his face reddening even though your skin was separated by multiple pieces of thick fabric.

“Would you let me touch you again?” You leaned over slightly so you were closer to his ear, your chin hovering over his shoulder.

“You can’t.” He was immediately denying your request, stiff and agitated sounding. His voice was tight as he spoke like he was having to force the words out. “Please don’t do this.”

“Because you’re a good boy right?” You were even closer now, your lips touching the shell of his ear and he was shuddering against you, a frustrated whine in his throat.

He sent a sharp glare in your direction, at least as sharp as his features could get. You thought he looked cute when he was mad at you, eyes brows furrowed and his glasses sliding to the tip of his nose. Despite the way he was looking at you, he made no attempt to push you away or step apart himself.

“I want you to come to my house after church.” You whispered to him and he didn’t say anything, for once not shaking his head and just looking at you as you spoke your cruel demands. “I’ll tell my dad to talk to your parents about helping you catch up on his teachings.”

He looked amazed at your audacity, to not only lie to your parents but to lie about the lord and the Bible made his stomach turn in disgust.

Still, he almost couldn’t help but to lean his shoulder closer to yours and watch you with wide eyes and a parted mouth. He felt almost transfixed by you and your newness, the unique energy you gave off that made his head spin. He nodded his head slowly and watched you smile.

——

You’d waited for your mother to leave the house, a very rare occurrence for her outside of her weekly bingo nights at the recreational center in town, before you poked your head into your fathers office to request he calls the Sim’s.

You felt strangely jittery as you waited for them to send Jake over. Surprisingly, the Sim’s hadn’t moved into a house that far from you and you imagined he could probably ride a bike to your house in less than twenty minutes if the weather ever allowed it, rainy days an almost constant feature around this time of year.

It was only around half an hour before you heard knocks on the front door, followed by the low tone of your fathers voice and eventually the creaking of the steps as somebody made their way up to your bedroom.

Jake seemed thrown off when he saw you, dressed in far more casual clothes than he’d seen you in so far. He also looked momentarily relieved at the fact your door was wide open and you didn’t make any move to shut it as he crossed into the threshold of your room.

“Hi.” He politely addressed you with a slight bow and wave, avoiding looking at you fully where you sat on the bed. You gave him an incredulous look and sighed before patting the spot next to you.

He looked like he was dreading this but expecting it, only taking a few seconds of hesitation before he was shuffling over and sitting slowly down on your soft bed. You immediately scooted closer to him and grabbed his hand in yours.

His reaction wasn’t as intense as last time although he did immediately stiffen and his eyes snapped wide open, but he didn’t let out a small shriek at the feeling of your touch like he did yesterday.

“Are you going to let me touch you today?” You kept your voice low and he was suddenly very aware of the fact your door was completely open and your father was just a few feet away downstairs.

He slowly looked over at you, peering up from behind his long eyelashes and you wanted to grab his face with your nails. He looked like a puppy who had just done something naughty, big eyes unmoving from nerves as they darted around your face so he could avoid holding your strong gaze.

“This isn’t right.” He whispered back, eyes pleading as they finally locked onto yours. You almost felt sorry for him as he spoke, obviously so desperate to set you back on the right path in life. “Mother said I shouldn’t lay a hand on anybody, not even myself.”

You almost smiled as he said this, pleased at the new information he was unknowingly providing you with.

“It’s just skin.” You were reminding him again, slowly leaning against him so your chest was pressed against the side of his arm. His breath hitched at this and he glanced down at your upper body for a second. “You’ve never touched yourself?”

He shook his head immediately, face annoyed like he was offended you’d even suggest he would do such a thing. You liked that even though he was uncomfortable and denying his thoughts towards you, he still wasn’t seemingly capable of pushing you away. He’d still shown up to your house.

“I touch myself.” You were leaning forward more so you could talk into his ear again. A soft whimper left his throat when your lips grazed his skin again but he didn’t say anything, like he was waiting for you to continue. “On this bed, I touch myself every night.”

It was a slight exaggeration. You hadn’t really felt a strong need to touch yourself ever, never having a subject of attraction that left you longing enough that you’d roll around in bed late at night thinking about it, squeezing your thighs together in frustration.

But you were transfixed by the way he immediately tensed again, glancing back behind you towards where your pillows were and then immediately shooting forward and falling to the cross hanging on the wall in front of you both.

“It’s just skin.” You repeated to him again and he sucked in a shaky breath as you said it, bringing his guilty pained eyes back to you. You almost cooed at him, clicking your tongue and holding his chin softly. He leaned into the touch like he wasn’t meaning to and you wondered how touch starved he must be.

Your hand that wasn’t holding his face fell down to his lap, laying flat and still on his thigh as you let him process what you were doing.

He stiffened again and let out a low troubled groan, shaking his head again at himself. You wondered what he was thinking right now, if he was convinced he was heading straight for hell because of his thoughts alone so maybe it didn’t matter if he let you touch him. Or maybe he was seconds away from bolting downstairs and telling your father about what you’d been attempting to do.

“This isn’t right.” He was whispering and still trying to shake his head the best he could with your grip on his face. His repetition was starting to bug you, suddenly feeling impatient as he still hadn’t taken the bait fully.

“But it feels so good.” You purred into his ear, turning his head back to look at the cross and scooting closer so you were pressed tightly against his side. The sensation of this mixed with your hand on his leg was overwhelming and he felt slightly suffocated. “I want to show you Jake, let me show you how good it feels.”

He didn’t say anything for a few seconds and you considered letting him go, wanting to have him completely might mean waiting some time so you didn’t scare him off.

Then he was surprising you and looking back in your direction, your hand falling to his collarbones instead so he could decide what to do with his head. He gave you a soft nod, looking like he immediately regretted it when you wasted no time, pushing your hand forward onto the center of his pants.

He immediately lurched forward with a loud groan at the feeling of your hand on him and you shushed him softly, using the hand on his face to bring him back up to a sitting position and pet his face lovingly.

“You have to be quiet Jake.” You whispered in his ear and nodded towards your open door. He looked at you with a desperate glance, like he was pleading for you to close it despite his upset at that yesterday. You shook your head softly. “Can you be a good boy Jake?”

You started to slowly knead your hand against him, wanting to smile at the fact he was already hard before you had touched him. Light teasing and your soft hand on his thigh already had him bothered.

He was making small noises and you kept his face turned in your direction with your hold back on his jaw. You were sitting up straighter than him so he was a bit below you, having to look up through his eyelashes as he surprisingly held eye contact with you.

“Doesn’t it feel good?” You murmured excitedly, eyes wild and eager. He didn’t reply verbally, another small whine slipping from his throat and you pressed down hard on his cock through his pants. “I asked a question.”

Now he was nodding desperately, hands reaching out to grip your wrist in an attempt to lessen the pressure you were applying to him. “Good- feels good.”

His voice was strained and raspy like it was crawling its way out of his throat and you smiled with sick satisfaction, leaning forward so you were closer to his face. Your nose pressed against his and you thought about kissing him for just a few seconds, eventually deciding against it.

Jake was writhing on the bed now, desperately moving into your hand with small groans and whines, his hips lifting off the blanket in an attempt to chase your touch every time you removed it. He didn’t even seem to realize he was doing it, a dazed expression on his face.

He seemed out of it until your hand was leaving his face and sliding down his sweater covered chest. He didn’t seem to realize you were doing it until your hand was pressing on his stomach slightly, fidgeting with the singular button on his jeans and tugging on the zipper impatiently.

“No, no.” He was whining, grabbing your wrist to stop you from snaking your hand down his pants, touching him without any layers between. “You can’t do that.”

“Why?” You asked incredulously, leaning forward so you were hovering over him slightly. He leaned back on his hand a bit to avoid bumping into your face and you were a few inches from laying on top of him. “I promise it’ll feel so good Jake.”

The usage of his name made him wince, realizing he liked it far too much when you said it. He’d never really considered his name before, completely indifferent to it until he heard the way it rolled off your snake like tongue.

“You aren’t supposed to do that.” He practically spat the words at you but his tone lacked any anger instead sounding fearful and pained. “You can’t touch me there, you just can’t.”

You felt slightly sorry for him as he hiccuped, his voice breaking around the words as you watched tears collect in his pretty eyelashes. His eyes kept darting to the cross on the wall with a guilty expression.

You took your hands off of his lap, listening to his sigh of longing at the loss of contact. You weren’t quite sure what to do in this situation despite seeing it coming, eventually opting for sitting up further on the bed and pulling him into your neck, wrapping your arms around his shaking body in a hug.

He leaned into it and hesitantly wrapped himself around you, tucking his face into your warm neck and letting out a few sobs, tugging you forward slightly by your lower back.

You let him cry for a while, hushing him softly every few minutes just in case, although you were in a less compromising position now, you still didn’t think your father would be thrilled to find you half in the lap of a sniffling boy who was still hard against you.

“Jake.” You were eventually murmuring into his hair once his hiccups subsided slightly, he nuzzled into your neck further at the sound of your soft tone. “What if I didn’t use my hands?”

He picked his head up at this and furrowed his eyebrows at you, his eyes puffy and red with wet streaks still going down his face.

“I don’t understand.” He looked more puppy like than normal as he said this in a soft breathy voice, voice hoarse from crying and his lip almost jutting out into a confused frown.

“Can I show you?” You kept your voice soft as you spoke to him and he immediately nodded his head. He clearly had found some sort of comfort in your embrace, a connection being made enough for him to fall into this state of vulnerability, willingly to accept what you were wanting to give him now.

You felt a sick rush of adrenaline at his lowered walls, the sudden dumb eagerness in his eyes as he seemed to seek out any sign of contact from you.

You imagined it was a flood of emotions, a confusion and tiring feeling to suddenly be presented with a situation that went against everything your life had been carefully crafted around. Not to mention how addicting it must feel to suddenly learn what was on the other side and how good it felt, having unbothered access to it as the two of you sat huddled on your bed.

Kissing his cheek softly, you slowly slid off the bed onto the floor, suddenly thankful you had a thick rug on your bed side. He watched you in confusion, looking like he wanted to grab you and help you up before you shot him a stern look.

Your hands were back on his jeans now that you were fully situated and he looked like he wanted to object for just a second before lifting his hips off the bed so you could pull them down to pool around his ankles.

You took just a second to admire him, his pretty tanned skin overwhelming you a bit in its sheer amount. His legs were surprisingly thick, muscular like an athlete and you briefly remembered you didn’t know much about him at all.

That didn’t bother you at all, if anything it made you want him more when you looked up at him to see his nervous eyes staring down at you in concern. He looked humiliated and you imagined it had something to do with the fact he was still extremely hard, even after crying for so long.

If he was more stable in his emotions, less flighty, you would’ve made fun of him. You would’ve called him names and made him cry all over again and then taken his innocence without a second thought.

Instead you carried on the kindness act, leaning forward and pressing a kiss against his length through his underwear.

He immediately hissed and shot forward, not realizing what you were planning to do and not understanding why you were doing this. He started to stammer out in confusion and you shushed him again, sending a sharp glare towards the open door in warning.

“What are you doing?” He sounded absolutely blown away now, even more than he did earlier and it settled in your mind that he clearly had absolute no sexual knowledge, including blowjobs. “That’s dirty, you can’t do that.”

“Why not?” You were mock frowning up at him. “Did mommy say so?”

He knew you were making fun of him but he still nodded in response, not liking the sudden return of your mean tone. He forgot all about it when you were leaning forward again, this time touching your lips to him longer and sucking softly through the fabric.

“Mommy’s not here.” You were breathing out when you pulled away from him again, much to his dismay considering he immediately lifted his hips back in your direction. “And doesn’t it feel nice?”

He was nodding his head dumbly in agreement, feeling dizzy from the foreign emotions. He still didn’t understand what you were doing but it felt too good to keep questioning, forgetting momentarily about sin and how much punishment was going to come his way after this.

You were sliding your hands up his thighs slowly, stopping at the waistband of his boxers and glancing up at him for any sign of refusal. You didn’t care much for his discomfort but you weren’t going to force him to do anything, despite how much fun you were having with him.

He didn’t make any move to stop you, not even seeming to notice or understand what you were planning to do until you pulled on the elastic swiftly.

Then he was shooting back up from where he’d been leaning back, shaking his head again and covering himself with his hands. You smiled at him from your place on the floor and he looked at you like you were crazy.

You were getting slightly frustrated despite your pleased expression, wanting him to quickly understand what you were planning on doing. You gripped his wrist tightly and pulled them away from his lap

“What are you doing?” He was whispering in a panicked tone, his hands hovering above your head like he was debating pulling you away from him. He let out a yelp when you leaned forward and took the head of his cock into your mouth, watching him with hooded eyes. “T-that’s dirty, stop it.”

You wanted to laugh at his wording choices, sounding like he was a worried mother scolding their child for playing in mud.

“It’s dirty?” You frowned at him when you pulled back for a moment, his wide eyes falling on your wet lips. They squeezed shut just for a moment when you were licking up his full length slowly, humming at the taste of him and his weight on your tongue. “I should probably stop then right?”

He let out a panicked cry and ran a hand over his face in frustration. He wanted you to stop or at least he knew he should want you to stop. His mother had been right and you were not a nice girl, not the type of girl he should be around and he felt his stomach turn at the knowledge he was committing a very large sin by finding pleasure in your lust.

But the pleasure was prominent and overwhelming him to the point he couldn’t think straight.

He understood what sex was and his father had taught him about boyish lust, the kind that wakes you up from your sleep needing to change into a new pair of pajamas but he’d been warned from an early age to simply ignore the occurring urge.

He could still hear his mothers shrieks and cries when she caught him with a pillow between his legs in high school, could feel the welts on the back of his hands from the ruler his father had punished him with. Jake sometimes wondered if other people experienced this urge, this call to sin, as much as he did or if he was rotten inside.

But for the first time in his entire life, Jake couldn’t find it in himself to think about the consequences to falling victim to it. Not when you were touching him in ways not even his dreams could think to imagine.

When he didn’t answer you’d taken him back in your mouth, slightly impressed by how thick he was. He bucked forward his hips instinctively, pushing himself deeper into your mouth and you pinched his thigh roughly in warning.

You heard him cry out in a sob, his hands gripping the blankets so hard they were turning white and shaking at an almost alarming rate.

“Please.” He was begging and you weren’t sure he even knew what for, his voice coming out desperate and needy. “Please i-it feels really weird.”

You hummed around his cock in understanding, your hand petting his thigh and pushing his shirt up on his stomach so you could feel more of him. He didn’t even seem to register you touching him, the sounds of his soft cries and pleads distracting you slightly.

You tapped his hip bone a few times and he seemed to somehow understand the message, pushing his cock deeper into your mouth at a slower pace this time. You let him do what he wanted despite the urge to take control of the situation, knowing there wasn’t any chance he was lasting more than 30 seconds anyways.

He was slightly surprising you already, truthfully you’d expected him to cum before you even got his boxers off his thighs.

You imagined his inner monologue was causing him some issue as you listened to him cry softly from pleasure, little overwhelmed gasps and hiccups as one of his hands grabbed onto the one you were running across his stomach and squeezed it tightly.

“You need to just let it go baby.” You were whispering to him as you pulled off for a second when his hips started to twitch awkwardly, overwhelmed and not understanding what the feeling building up deep in his gut was. “Don’t worry about making a mess.”

The second you took him back in your lips he was following your instructions with a loud moan, completely forgetting you were meant to keep quiet as he came inside your warm mouth.

You winced slightly at the unexpectedness of it, leaning backwards on your knees as you waited for his hips to stop jerking forward.

He was shaking his head at you, eyes teary and his face red as he squinted his eyes in confusion. “What w-was -“

“You came.” You said matter of factly, standing up with a groan from your uncomfortable kneeling position and sitting next to him on the bed again. He leaned sideways into you, much to your surprise, and you resisted the urge to push him off you.

“Was I supposed to?” He whispered in embarrassment and pushed his face into your neck again. You were slightly uncomfortable at his clinginess but you let him do it, knowing he must be feeling a lot.

“Yes Jake. Maybe not all over my face though.” You were trying to joke with him to lighten the atmosphere but you sighed as you heard him let out a little cry into your neck, clearly upset and humiliated.

He was mumbling against your skin, repeated mantras that you couldn’t quite understood through his sobs but had a good guess in what they contained. You imagined reality was coming back to him now and he was processing what he’d just done without the hazy cloud of need cursing his judgement.

“Jake, you need to stop crying.” You were sighing and bringing your hand up to his hair, petting it softly to try to calm him down.

“Did I do a bad thing?” He pulled off your neck to look you in the eyes, his wide and desperate like he was fishing for any bit of reassurance that what you’d just done was okay, that he hadn’t just committed a sin so unholy. You could tell by his expression he was asking just to hear it reaffirmed, for you to tell him again it was just skin.

“My poor baby.” You were cooing at him, lips jutted out in a pout as your hands came up to hold his face, cupping it softly and wiping his teary cheeks with your thumbs. “Of course you did a bad thing.”

He froze completely in your hold and you felt a laugh bubble into your throat, holding it down with all your might so you could get the full extent of his reaction. He sat up slightly, attempting to pull out of your hands before realizing you were holding his face too tight. He gave you a confused and hurt look.

“What?” He was stammering out and his face was curling back into another sob.

“How could you let me do that?” You were tsking at him as you spoke, eyebrows furrowed like he had genuinely offended you. He watched you as panic settled into his eyes at the sound of you kissing your teeth and shaking your head softly. “We were supposed to be studying.”

“B-but.” He was shaking his head and holding onto your wrist, eyes filling with tears. “But you said that..”

He trailed off and you watched him with a raised eyebrow, waiting for him to pass the blame off onto you. Of course he didn’t, his expression hardening although you knew he hadn’t quite realized your motive. He was too innocent to believe you’d deceive him, too stupid to understand every action you did was a carefully crafted lie.

“Maybe it’s time you go Jakey.” You were nodding as you spoke, petting his hair and pushing it back out of his eyes.

He didn’t say anything else, his expression dazed out as he came out of such a vulnerable compliant headspace with a jolt. You watched him in silence as he gathered himself enough to get dressed awkwardly and walk out of your room, loose and tilting like he had just woken up.

You waited for him to be completely out of sight, the sound of the front door closing, before falling back on your bed with a big smile.

——

You’d fallen asleep soon after that without much thought on the situation, feeling only a deep satisfaction at the progress you’d made with Jake and a slight tinge of excitement for the next time you got to see him.

By the time you’d woken up, your mother was already in your room and standing staring down at you. You barely reacted to her presence although you were slightly unnerved and curious just how long she’d been watching you sleep.

“Can I help you?” Your voice was groggy as you sat up and pushed your bedridden hair out of your face.

Any other mother might have found your tired movements cute, maybe they’d give you an endeared smile and reminisce on when you were a baby waking up from naps.

However you were born with a very specific type of mother, maybe one of her kind. She was watching you with a nasty scowl, a knowing look in her eye as she did a slow pan around your room. “Your father said the boy was here yesterday.”

You hummed in agreement, tilting your head softly to try and get a further reaction from her.

“His mother called and said he won’t be at church this morning.” She spat the words at you, accusatory and nasty. “He’s sick.”

You could tell by the way she said that she knew it was a lie, wether Jake was the one telling it or his mother. At first you were slightly shocked he’d lie about being sick but you figured he might just be feeling so, driven by the extreme emotions he’d been feeling.

“What a shame. He seemed more than fine yesterday.” You put in a pity filled voice, shaking your head as you let the innuendo sink in for her, watching the way her face curled with disgust.

“Almost ready?” You father was suddenly in your doorway, observing the scene with a raised eyebrow as he buttoned the cuff of his sleeve.

“Father, would it be okay if I stopped by the Sim’s before heading to service? I’d like to bring Jake some soup for his cold.” Your voice was dripping with sweetness and you vaguely saw your mothers jaw tick with irritation.

“I can do it.” She was rushing to say.

Your father shook his head immediately and held a hand up to silence the both of you from speaking again. He finished buttoning his sleeve and cleared his throat before speaking. “You agreed to meet with the Lee’s today Mary. I think it’d be a good idea for Y/N to go, since they’re friends.”

You smiled appreciatively at him and he gave you a small nod before leaving the room. You glanced at your mother to see her stony expression but surprisingly she didn’t say anything, simply shaking her head in disapproval and following behind him.

It was strange to not leave for church with them, to stand in the window with the curtain pulled back as you smiled and waved watching the car drive off.

You dropped the grin the second they turned the street corner and hurried out the door to get on your bike and head over to the Sim’s house.

You hadn’t been there before despite your father pointing it out on your way home yesterday but it looked pretty much the exact same as the other houses in the neighborhood. It was large and eerie, the rainy atmosphere not helping it.

The door was opening before you could even dismount your bike let alone knock and you saw Jake’s mom standing in the archway with a small frown.

“What are you doing here?” Her tone was harsh and for a second you wondered if he had told her about what happened, confessed his sins in a fit of guilt.

You were so thrown off that you didn’t immediately respond, suddenly aware of the fact you didn’t bring any sort of soup or medicine like you had originally planned, too eager to get out the door to remember your cover story.

Lucky for you, Jake’s father was coming into sight now and a small grunt from him sent the rude woman cowering away.

You observed this with a curious expression and tried not to frown. Maybe Jake wasn’t as innocent and pure as he seemed considering he apparently had some familial issues, obvious in the way his mother showed a fearful obedience to the large man in front of you.

“You here for my boy?” His voice was low and gruff and it was a bit remarkable how different Jake was than his father.

You opted for a small nod, only slightly playing a part considering he actually did a good job at intimidating you. He let out a hum of approval and stepped aside so you could enter the house, not asking anymore questions.

“It’s good you two get along.” You were taking in the main living space as you entered, his voice picking up a conversational tone that sounded slightly unnatural. “I was beginning to think he’d never talk to someone his own age, let alone a girl.”

He had a typical mannish tone, one you’d heard in movies or from the gross men who sat outside the town bar in a drunken haze as they catcalled and talked at a volume far too loud for your small town. It lacked the usual religious hold you were more used to, he almost sounded pleased at the idea of his son being with a girl.

You glanced at him and held his stare. You wondered for a second if he was testing you now, waiting for you to reveal any sinful intentions you had so he could run back to your father and earn some brownie points for catching your sickness in the act.

He raised an eyebrow at you as you cocked your head, willing him to talk further and continue in his attempt at baiting you.

“Upstairs on the right.” He eventually said, your stare unrelenting. You unfroze your stony expression and gave him a small smile, knowing you probably looked crazy with how fast your face changed.

You were walking away from him before he could say anything else or before Jake’s mother could return, skipping a step at a time in your haste to get upstairs.

Without knocking, you pushed open his door and barged in.

He was sat up in bed, lower half under the covers, and he let out a small shriek of surprise at your sudden intrusion, furthered by a quick inhale when he realized who it was that had just walked in.

“W-what are you doing here?” He was rushing out as he watched you close the door behind you and sit down on the end of his bed.

“I came to check on you.” You said it like it was obvious, a soft shrug of your shoulders. “Since you’re sick.”

His mouth parted in confusion for a second before he seemingly remembered he was meant to be ill, looking awkward and guilty at the reminder he had lied.

You didn’t address his obvious reaction, telling you what you already assumed, and instead climbed up further on his bed. He made a strange noise when you got closer to him, pulling back the blankets and getting underneath them with him. You briefly caught sight of his plaid pajama pants before you covered the both of you up.

“M-my parents.” He was shaking his head and anxiously looking at the door like he was waiting for his mom to walk in any second. You watched his distress, wondering if he was possibly hoping for that to happen, before you heard the sound of the front door slamming.

A look of fear passed over his face at the realization his parents had just left him alone with you. You were a bit surprised yourself but you kept your face neutral, watching him to drink up his reaction.

“I came all this way and you can’t even say thank you.” You tsked and relaxed against his pillows with an annoyed expression. “Especially after what you did yesterday.”

He looked upset at the reminder and he was sitting up more now, the blanket pulling forward around his thighs and he practically kneeled and titled forward in your direction. He wasn’t touching you but his hands were clasped together as he practically did a full bow on his bed.

“I’m so sorry.” He started to say the words but his voice broke around them and he rocked slightly back and forth. You almost laughed at the fact he was already about to cry and it’d only been about five minutes alone with you. “Thank you for coming.”

You imagined he’d been doing a lot of crying since you saw him last, staying up all night running your words on loop in his mind. The sincerity in your voice when you told him he committed a disgusting sin.

“Get back under the covers.” You spoke in a calm voice and he picked his head up to look at you in confusion, face red and eyes teary. He looked surprised you weren’t scolding him, having seemingly forgotten you were the one who practically forced him to let you touch him.

He stayed frozen like that for a few seconds before snapping back to reality and nodding appreciatively, getting back under the blankets and pulling them up again so you were covered. He seemed to only now realize you were laying back against the pillows and he mirrored you, laying on his side so he could face you.

“I won’t tell anybody what you did.” You whispered to him now that his attention was fully on you. Your hand came up to hold his face and he tensed for a second at the contact. “Or maybe I will… I haven’t decided.”

He shook his head hastily, scooting closer to your body and grabbing ahold of your hand that was on his face, wrapping both of his around your wrist and squeezing it softly in desperation.

“Y-you can’t.” He urged and you felt his hands shaking around yours. “I mean you can b-but I’m really so sorry and my dad, he’d kill me.”

You shushed him as he started to ramble, petting his cheek and frowning deeply at what he had said. You figured Jake’s dad hurt his mother but you hadn’t considered it extending to his child as well. A strange surge of anger ran through you despite your own twisted intentions.

Scooting down a bit more so you were completely laid down, you put a hand on his back and pulled him towards you until he got the hint and curled into your side with a soft cry. He was stuffing his face back into your neck like he did yesterday and you rubbed his back softly.

You vaguely acknowledged the fact he was completely pressed against your side now, almost laying half on top of you in his emotional state.

“I won’t tell.” You whispered, his soft and messy hair tickling your face as you spoke. In his desperation for comfort he seemed to forget about not touching you, his arm coming up to wrap around your stomach, tugging you closer in a rush of thankfulness and your eyebrows raised in surprise. “But only if you answer my questions.”

He nodded immediately and picked his head up off your neck so he could look at you more clearly. He looked particularly cute like this you decided, his hair unstyled and still sticking up from where he’d slept on it and his soft pajamas that were rubbing against your legs.

“Did you touch yourself last night.” You held his chin as you spoke so he was looking up at you, his head almost resting against your chest as he peered with big wet eyes.

He was shaking his head as much as he could and furrowing his eyebrows like he did the last time you asked him. “I don’t- I wouldn’t. I don’t know how even.”

This fascinated you slightly. You figured he didn’t understand masturbating or its purpose outside of it being sinful but the fact he’d never once curiously touched himself was interesting. You wondered how many nights he laid in bed crying with confusion at the dull ache between his legs.

“Did you like being in my mouth?” Your voice dropped lower for the second question and an automatic whine slipped out from his lips, his face immediately flushing with embarrassment as he seemed to replay the memory.

He was nodding hesitantly much to your annoyance, you wanted to hear him say it but you figured you could take it easy on him today.

Maybe easy wasn’t the best way to describe your current plan for him considering the way you were suddenly pressing your thigh in between his legs, smiling at him when he groaned loudly and tightened his grip on you.

Your side burned slightly from the force in which he curled his hands up at the sudden contact.

“You’re hard.” You said matter of factly, telling the truth and not just teasing him. He was solid against your thigh now and you heard him whimper when you shifted slightly so his tight grip on you was more comfortable. “I barely said anything and you’re hard.”

He shook his head in disagreement but his hips twitched forward, rubbing his erection against you and making a low drawn out sound at the feeling.

“Did I say you could do that?” Your tone was harsh again and he immediately froze, groaning softly and tucking his head forward onto your chest. You let your hand go back to this hair, petting him for a second before gripping it tightly and tugging his head back up to look at you.

He winced at the pain, face contorted as he tried to scoot away from you. However he still didn’t remove his arm from around your stomach so he wasn’t able to go far, his hand still kneading against your side like he didn’t realize he was even moving it.

“Ask me.” You instructed him, still holding his hair in a tight fist. “Clear words, no crying bullshit.”

He looked momentarily taken back by you swearing and being so harsh but then he had a look of guilt like he was remembering the other day and he was attempting to nod in head in agreement.

“Please I want… I want you to touch me.” He settled on, not sure how to word what he needed. You smiled softly at him for his attempt but you weren’t convinced, deciding on helping him ask you properly.

“Tell me you’re disgusting.” You whispered, leaning your face forward so your nose was touching his again, like it did momentarily yesterday. “Say you want to hump my leg like a dog.”

He looked confused and overwhelmed at your words, shaking his head in refusal until you moved your leg again. It rubbed against him and you almost laughed at the fact he was almost harder now even after your tone changed. His hips chased the feeling and you tugged his hair again in warning, listening to his soft groan of frustration.

“I want..” He hiccuped softly and shook his head, trying to force the strange words from his mouth. “I want to hump your leg please please.”

You let go of his hair and his head fell back down onto your chest. He hadn’t completely fulfilled your request but it was good enough for now.

“Alright baby.” You didn’t need to say anything else for him to understand, immediately pulling you closer again and rocking against your side.

You listened to his soft little whines as he humped against you desperately, moving in messy motions as he tried to chase after the feeling he recognized from yesterday.

The feeling of his hand gripping your side was making your head spin a bit much to your irritation and you gripped it tightly, moving it off your waist. He seemed to misunderstand and instead placed it directly over your belly button where your sweater had ridden up, pushing down softly as he rubbed the soft skin of your stomach.

You let out a small groan and this seemed to ignite something in him because he let out a little cry and nuzzled further into you as he dragged his clothed cock over your hip harder.

“Tell me it feels good.” You instructed him and you felt more annoyance at the fact your voice came out breathy, not liking the effect he was having on you.

“S-so good.” He immediately responded and you felt his leg wrap around yours, trying to get closer to you despite it being impossible. “Going to die it’s good, it’s good.”

You laughed softly at his dramatic wording and pet his hair again, trying to get his attention. He slowed down the grinding of his hips to look at you and you nearly cooed at his hooded wet eyes, trying to focus on your face but struggling.

You were originally planning on teasing him some more, attempting to get him to repeat the words you wanted to hear earlier, but at the sight of his pretty overwhelmed face you couldn’t help yourself from leaning in and kissing him softly.

He yelped at the feeling, tensing up for a few seconds before closing his eyes and trying to kiss you back, failing miserably.

You laughed against his lips and you could feel him frowning, face getting red with embarrassment as he uncomfortably shifted against you.

“Come here.” You tapped his back softly and nudged him so he was fully on top of you, squishing you under him but making it so you could reach his mouth better. “Rub your cock on me while we kiss.”

He whined softly, nodding his head despite the flush on his face and you waited while he slowly experimented with the new position, practically in missionary now. When he started to move his hips again, his hard cock was now rubbing directly against your core and he faltered at the feeling, nearly collapsing on top of you.

You smiled at his reaction. You had full doubt that he knew what sex was or the fact he was basically imitating it but you imagine he could get the gist that what you were doing was wrong.

You leaned your head forward to kiss him again, easier now that he was on top of you and seemingly more eager to get it right this time. He was still sloppy, not really understanding how to move his mouth or when but you took over, moving your lips against his slowly.

He seemed to get the hang of it eventually and you could feel his thrust getting more desperate as the kiss got deeper and faster.

Your tongue was in his mouth before he even realized and he made a small startled sound, hips stopping against yours at the new feeling. He was letting out high pitched whines and moans as you licked into his mouth, him drooling slightly and desperately trying to keep your tongue where it was.

You could feel him sucking on it, twisting his head to try to get it deeper in his mouth and he instinctively gave a particularly hard thrust, causing you to moan into him.

This seemed to startle him, pulling back off your face with a wet chin and hooded eyes, looking down at you in amazement.

He did it again experimentally and you could feel the hard print of his cock directly against you, your back arching as your hand came up to grip his hair and stop him from doing it again. You were reminding yourself this wasn’t about your pleasure, you wanted to ruin him and nothing else.

But you couldn’t deny your attraction to him, almost the perfect boy for you if there was to ever be one.

It didn’t help he happened to have an impressive size on him, although you doubted he even realized he was bigger than usual or would know what to do if given that information.

You wrapped a leg around his side and he sucked in a breath, having better access now. He kept rolling his hips sloppily into you and moaning loudly, forgetting who he was or where he was currently at.

“What would mommy think if she saw you like this?” You took it upon yourself to remind him, whispering into his mouth with a pant and almost laughing at the way he immediately tensed and stopped humping against you. “If she walked it to see her son so desperate to sin.”

He was shaking his head and lifting it slightly to be able to look at you better, eyes welling up with tears as he glanced back over his shoulder at the closed door. You hadn’t been there long and you imagined church still had a few hours before it’d be over and they’d be heading back but he seemed to forget all this at the mention of his parents.

“I’m not.” His hair was messy in his face, bangs slightly damp from sweating and his previous tears. “I don’t want to sin, I don’t want to be bad. Please.”

You hummed softly at him, lips forming a mocking pout as you looked at him with gentle eyes. You stroked his cheek and he closed his eyes, leaning against your hand like a puppy.

“My poor baby.” You cooed and kissed him again briefly, he immediately chased after it when you pulled away and you tapped your finger on his cheek to stop him. “You have no idea what I’m going to do to you.”

He seemed confused at what you meant but too drunk on the feeling of your touch and lips, chasing after them again in a messy kiss that was mostly just him trying to get his tongue back against yours.

You indulged him and let him lick into it, letting out soft desperate moans and you were suddenly realizing how much you were aching for him despite managing to keep a cool demeanor on the outside.

You shifted your leg that was wrapped around his middle and he seemed to remember that he was currently on top of you and he went back to writhing against your body, his hard on rubbing against you an almost painful amount now that you were granting him more access with the switched position.

He wasn’t able to hold himself up, curling up on your chest while he moved his lower body with sobs of pain and need.

“God, I thought it’d take longer to break you.” You were trying to make fun of him but your voice broke in a moan at the feeling of him pushing himself against your sensitive clit. “You’re so fucking nasty, look at yourself.”

He was shaking his head and crying fully now, chasing after a high he didn’t even understand and you were almost feeling dizzy from the pace he was going.

“I’m good.” He was blabbering out and looking at you again, trying to lean forward for a kiss but letting out a sharp cry midway and falling back down with his head on your chest.

“You’re a good boy Jake.” You cooed at him, nodding even though he couldn’t see you and he felt sick at the constant changing of your tones. “My good boy right?”

He was suddenly sitting up again, pulling himself against you so he could look at you directly in the eye, if he could see through his tears. He was nodding his head in earnest and you felt your lip quirk up in a smile.

“I’m yours. I want to be yours.” He was rushing out, hands leaving your stomach to balance on either side of you. His tone was pleading and you wondered if he even knew what he was asking for or if he was just repeating what you’d said dumbly.

You kissed him softly and he let out a shaky breath of relief against your lips. However he started to frown when you were suddenly pushing him off of you and patting the empty space on the bed right beside where you were laying. He looked confused and hurt but he didn’t ask any questions, simply rolling over and waiting to see what you were attempting to do.

You watched him for a few seconds, taking in the change of appearance in such a short amount of time.

He was laid back fully on the bed, eyes hooded and cloudy. His mouth was parted slightly as he panted, his chest rising and falling at a fast speed as his arm reached up to try and push his messy hair out of his face. You liked the way he looked like this, especially the way his shirt was ridden up on his stomach, a sliver of skin showing.

He started making small impatient whines and groans so you took mercy on him, flipping yourself over slightly so you could situate yourself on his lap.

You sucked in a breath the second you did, quickly shutting your lips tight after so he didn’t catch sight of the display of pleasure. He was hard underneath and pressed tightly against your core as you sat on him.

“Oh my god.” He was crying out and his hands jutted forward like he was going to grab your sides, stopping midway and flailing around as he didn’t know what he was meant to do with them.

“Touch me.” You spat at him, reaching down to grab his wrist and put his hands on your ass as you leaned forward so you were in a similar position to his a few minutes ago, laying on top of him.

He froze as he touched you and you almost scolded him for acting so prudish with touching you like he wasn’t just trying to fuck you through his cute little pajamas. However you figured it was harder for him to deliberately do something versus acting purely on the overwhelming lust he was feeling.

You gripped his jaw harshly in your hand, your nails digging into his skin slightly as you used your thumb to pull his mouth open and hummed with satisfaction.

“Say you want me inside you.” You whispered, leaning down to talk into his open mouth. You watched his eyes widen in confusion but you rubbed your hips against him as motivation and he immediately complied.

“Want you inside me.” He moaned out, big fat tears sliding down his face. “Y/N please I need it please.”

He didn’t even know what he was asking for but he was overwhelmed and sinking back down into that fuzzy headspace, willing to do anything to get pleasure from you.

You kept his mouth open after he was done speaking and he opened it wider for you, although not understanding where you were heading with this action. He watched with wide confused eyes as you leaned over him and slowly spit into his open mouth.

He cried out, hips bucking up instinctively at the sensation of your spit on his tongue so directly and you almost fell forward from the roughness in which he fucked himself up into you. You smacked his cheek lightly and he snapped his mouth shut with another moan, eyes shut in euphoria.

You hummed at him in approval, leaning back down to kiss him again and lick into his mouth, letting him turn his head sideways in an attempt to get your tongue as deep as possible. You wondered if he was purposely imitating the blowjob you’d given him or if he was just that desperate to be consumed.

“I’m going to take you to hell with me.” You whispered, pulling out of the kiss and petting his hair softly. He shook his head and let out a small sob, this time not from pleasure.

“Do you want to cum?” You didn’t address his denial or tease him further for now, knowing now you had him completely hooked. He was addicted to you and the feelings you gave him and no mean words would be able to keep him away from you.

He seemed hesitant in his nod, now once again thinking about the sins he was committing and the fact he was skipping church to touch a girl inappropriately. But he did eventually nod his head, eyes still watering.

“Then fuck me baby.” You rolled back over as you spoke, flopping onto your back and rubbing his chest through his shirt, slightly surprised by the thick build he had. He was immediately on top of you again and you almost laughed at his haste.

You didn’t mean it literally and you didn’t fear him taking it as such considering he didn’t even know what it meant, he just knew you were cursing and being dirty.

You wondered if he even knew what you had inside your pants, scrapping that idea for another time instead so you didn’t get yourself too worked up thinking about how much it would ruin him to feel you.

He didn’t last long once he was back on top of you, only a few seconds passed before he was letting out a loud cry and hiccuping, his hips jutting against you a few more times in aftershock before he was collapsing on top of you.

“I’m sorry, I’m so sorry.” He was sobbing into your neck and you wrapped your arms around his back, rubbing it slowly with an eye roll. “I’m sorry, God please forgive me.”

——

Jake had fallen asleep on top of you shortly after that, exhausted from everything you’d been putting him through both mentally and physically.

You let him lay there on top of you surprisingly despite how uncomfortable it was and how much you kept readying yourself to shove him off of you and leave him without any comfort, you simply couldn’t.

You weren’t quite sure why, it wasn’t like being mean to him was going to ruin your plan and make him not want to talk to you anymore. He was trapped now with you.

Yet you found yourself staying and not only staying but watching him as he slept. He looked younger like this, despite always being very puppy like and boyish you couldn’t deny that Jake was a man and he could be an intimidating one if it wasn’t for his personality. His eyelashes were long and fluttering like he was having a vigorous dream and his back would rise and fall with every deep inhale he took.

By the time he woke up you’d been laying there for probably an hour or two staring at him or looking around his room with curiosity, you felt him shifting against you and almost pretended you were asleep before deciding against it.

He froze his movements when he realized where he was exactly, or at least who it was underneath him. Then he was rolling off of you onto his back with a groan and you were suddenly feeling very cold without his weight and body warmth.

“Did my parents come home?” His voice was low and groggy from sleep and crying and you turned your head to look at him now that you were laying side by side.

“Are you kidding? Like your mother isn’t going to run in here the first second the car parks and hose you down.”

He laughed softly at your words, almost a scoff and your lip quirked up in a smile at his casual reaction, knowing his guard must be down since he was still so tired.

“She wouldn’t do that.” He eventually whispered and you could feel his shoulder pressing against yours. “At least the hose part.”

“Is she as bad as mine?” You weren’t sure what prompted you to ask him something so personal or why you were even making conversation with him in the first place but you were suddenly curious.

“Not sure.” He was looking at you, you could feel it on the side of your head. “My dad is though.”

You hummed as a response, already figuring that from the times you’d interacted with him and the way Jake talked about him earlier. You felt a sudden wave of discomfort at your current situation and fidgeted in your spot on the bed.

“Are you going to leave?” His voice was a whisper still and he wasn’t looking at you anymore from what you could tell. He sounded slightly upset like the thought of you leaving wasn’t pleasant.

“You wanted me to earlier.” You scoffed softly but it was humorless, for some reason feeling offended at the reminder despite knowingly doing everything in your power to make him uncomfortable for your own satisfaction.

He didn’t say anything for a while and you listened to him breathing softly, wondering if he caught on to the hint of insecurity you were accidentally showcasing.

“Well… I guess I’ll see you tomorrow then.” He eventually said and you barely heard him considering how low his voice had gotten.

“See you tomorrow Jake.”

——

Tuesday’s were another day that your schedule was slightly shifted after church service. You had always been instructed to some form of community service on that day of the week, wether is be picking up trash or teaching a small class to the elders and children.

You didn’t mind this despite your distaste for religion. You got some sick satisfaction from watching religious people interact, like babies excitedly chatting about fairy tails and wishing for a big grand gesture to fix their own shitty lives.

Plus it got you out of your house and kept you slightly on the good side of your mother typically although you doubt with your recent actions you’d ever be on that side of the fence again.

So it was particularly annoying when you were tasked to clean the church basement, an area usually unseen by anybody in the town including yourself.

It was a mess of overfilled shelves and baskets stacked to the brim with old holiday decorations or donations from past families that were never put to use.

You’d been hesitant to agree, having to try ten times harder than usual to apply your usual fake smile towards your father when you graciously nodded and accepted the task. Luckily a handful of other volunteers had also followed you down the creaky stairs, one of them being Jake.

Not on his own volition considering the way his eyes bulged out of his head when his father roughly nudged him as you stood at the center of the stage requesting helping hands. He hesitantly held his in the air and avoided making eye contact with you as you smiled happily.

The same smile you held now as you stood side by side with him, taking things off the shelves and throwing them into a trash pile. He looked more anxious than usual, like he was genuinely worried you’d try to do something to him while people were watching.

“Miss Y/N?” One of the older women who had volunteered was approaching the two of you, holding a small basket of, what looked like, old arts and crafts. “I found this and was wondering if you thought your father might want to hang them up in the youth study room?”

“I think that’s a wonderful idea ma’am.” You were smiling widely at her, eyes soft and full of light. “You should bring them up to him.”

She was smiling appreciatively at you before turning and heading back up the stairs, missing the way your smile immediately dropped back into a blank expression.

Jake however, didn’t miss it and you heard him scoff from next to you as he observed the interaction. You glanced at him with a raised eyebrow and he shrugged.

“Don’t you get tired of doing that all the time?” He questioned and you faltered slightly. You hadn’t ever really considered it as something you were doing necessarily so his statement threw you off.

“I don’t know… I do it with everybody. I just do it.” You shrugged and awkwardly looked away from him, feeling confronted.

“You don’t do it with me.” He suddenly declared and you were reminded that you didn’t actually know Jake or his personality that well, completely caught off guard by his bluntness.

“Maybe because I knew you were just as bad as me.” You dropped your voice into a small whisper, leaning closer to him slightly as he glanced around to see which volunteers were over in your side of the basement.

He picked up an old toy and tossed it off in the distance, shaking his head in denial. “That’s not true at all.”

“Why isn’t it?” You cocked your head at him and stopped rummaging through the shelf, more interested in what he was saying. You turned your body so you were facing him and could lean against the wood.

“I believe in this.” He looked around the room as if to emphasize what he was referring to. “I love god.”

“Do you? Or have you just been told to?” You were already sure of the answer but you were curious what he would say about that, if he’s ever sat and thought that over or if his faith was really that unwavering.

“I never questioned it before.” He confirmed with a stern voice, sending you a sharp look so you would understand he was serious. “Not once in my life until we moved here. Not once until..”

He trailed off but the implication was heavy and he looked away with a bright flush on his face. He was obviously referring to you and you felt a small spark of satisfaction at the fact he was implying you were the first thing to ever make him doubt, implying that he was doubting at all.

He scowled slightly when he noticed the bright smile that was on your face, one you didn’t even realize you had.

“I’m serious Y/N. If anyone ever found out I…” He didn’t finish his sentence again but you could get the gist of what he was implying, your smile dropping into a frown.

“You think I don’t know that? The stakes are way higher on my side of things incase you forgot.” Your tone was harsher now but you were taking a step closer to him, not bothering to check if anybody was watching. “But you’re mine right? Like you said?”

He didn’t say anything for a minute, turning to face you and taking a big gulp when he realized you were practically close enough to kiss now. You waited for him to say something against your claim, to tell you he had been lust drunk or he didn’t mean it.

Instead he slowly nodded, eyes shooting down awkwardly to your feet. His shy expression was one you were more familiar seeing him with and your smile returned.

“Can you come over today?” You whispered and he looked back at you with a shocked expression, clearly not expecting you to say that. “I have something to show you.”

He was nodding again, not trusting himself to speak without stuttering and you grinned, turning back to the shelf and continuing with your sorting.

——

By the time church was over and Jake got to your house, you were already sat outside on the porch in a big sweater and a scarf wrapped around your neck.

“Are we not.. going in?” He was standing at the end of your driveway, putting his bikes kickstand down and watching you with a confused expression.

“I said I had to show you something didn’t I?” He watched you as you stood from the cement slab, grabbing your own bike from off the side of your house and walking it down towards him with a half smile.

He didn’t say anything as you both got on your bikes, following behind you as you rode off the curb and down the street.

The ride was long and cold, the sky grey as you passed by old houses and empty shops that’d been abandoned as the owners aged. Jake found the town sad a bit but he was curious what you were leading him too and slightly excited that you wanted to spend time with him in a different way than normal.

Eventually you were crossing the threshold of the city limit, a big sign with chipping paint that was welcoming you in or wishing you safe travels out.

After that it wasn’t long before you were slowing to a stop, surrounded by trees and a large field. Jake watched you get off your bike with a raised eyebrow, waiting until you looked back at him with a beckoning hand.

“It’s this way.” You urged and he hopped off, pushing the bikes alongside each other until you were on the other side of the muddy field, approaching a large river. The sound of it was loud as it rushed but not loud enough to block out the noise of the highway across from it, just off in the distance.

Jake watched it as you unpacked your backpack that he didn’t even realize you’d been wearing until now, unfolding a thick blanket and laying it down on the wet grass.

“They can’t build houses over here because the river always overflows.” You started to explain, pulling out a thermos and something wrapped in paper towel as you talked. “The water levels higher than usual because all the rain we get.”

“Sometimes I wonder if they even know we are over here.” You continued with a scoff, sitting criss cross on the blanket now and looking over at Jake who was dropping his bike.

He sat down too, carefully keeping his wet and muddy shoes off of the fabric.

“Do you come here a lot?” He was muttering what felt like his first words of the day, looking around the area and seeing virtually no signs of civilization other than the highway. He wondered for a second if you had even been able to hear him over the sound of it.

“I guess. There isn’t much else to do if you haven’t noticed by now.” You were shrugging as you spoke, you stuck one of your legs out so it nudged against his.

“I’ve been pretty occupied since I’ve gotten here so I guess I didn’t.” His words made you laugh although he was being serious, only having gone from home to church to your room.

He didn’t say anything as you laughed and he still didn’t when you were suddenly moving out of your sitting position, crawling towards him on all fours until you could press yourself against him.

Every part of you was touching as you sat side by side, both facing the rushing river and trying to not focus on how cold it was outside, the sky slowly darkening now since it was around dinner time. That reminded you that you had packed sandwiches and you were leaning forward slightly to reach them, handing him one and watching him unwrap the paper towel in confusion.

His cheeks turned red when he saw what it was, glancing at you and nodding softly in appreciation before taking a bite.

“Why are we here?” He was breaking the silence the two of you had fallen into as you ate and passed the warm thermos back and forth, watching the highway and the building traffic.

“I don’t know.” You felt strangely vulnerable at this question, not really knowing yourself why you’d taken him to such a private place. “Don’t think too deeply about it.”

Your sudden change of tone made him frown and tense against you, a harshness seeping into your words as you reminded him what type of relationship you had going here.

To further prove your point that this wasn’t anything being sin and attraction, you were quickly turning your upper body so you could face him before leaning forward and pressing into a kiss. He froze completely for a few seconds, brain short circuiting at the sudden contact.

Then he was closing his eyes slowly and kissing you back, a low him of appreciation slipping through your lips and vibrating against his.

You turned your body more so you could climb over his legs, straddling him and making a small noise of surprise when his hands were immediately on your lower back, tugging you in tighter against him.

The two of you kissed like that for a while, you sitting comfortably in his lap and feeling him grow hard underneath you embarrassingly quick. He felt strong and sturdy under you but he was letting out little whines and whimpers and he kept trying to pull you in closer, almost like he was trying to merge the two of you together.

Then you were sitting up on your knees and tugging your long skirt up so it was bunched around your hips, mouth parting slightly at the feeling of the cold air nipping at your bare skin. He watched you with confusion, eyes darting around your legs so fast he felt dizzy.

You sat back down on his hard on, now only separated by his jeans and your underwear and he let out a low moan, shooting forward and ducking his head forward into your neck.

“Y/N.” He whined out and you shushed him, petting his hair and rocking your hips slowly against him, liking the way his mouth parted against your skin as he took deep shuddering breaths.

“I want you to feel me.” You were whispering into his hair and he picked his up in alarm, shaking his head and glancing down at your exposed lap.

“I- I don’t know how.” He was rushing out and you laughed softly, reaching down to grab his wrist off the blanket and pick his hand up.

You placed it against your stomach like it was the other day when he was pressing on it absentmindedly, letting him feel the smooth skin above your underwear line for a while before pushing his hand down slightly past the elastic and listening to his gasp.

You were still rocking against him but slower now, letting him feel you for the first time at his own pace and trying not to overwhelm him.

His hand was shaking fast, from the cold and nerves. You imagined he could feel his own hand pressing against his cock as he kept moving it down, trapping it between the both of you. You dipped down again when he hesitatingly stopped moving it once he was fully in your underwear and he let out a cry at the feeling of your wetness against his skin.

“W-what?” He was crying out in concern, eyes shooting up to look at yours. “Are you okay? Are you bleeding?”

“I’m wet.” You explained to him with a breathy voice despite the fact you knew he didn’t understand what that would mean or if it was good or bad. “Means I feel good, you make me feel good.”

That seemed to alarm him more than the idea of you bleeding, his hand instinctively twitching and pressing against you. You leaned down to kiss him again and he reciprocated, forgetting his hand was on you for a few seconds before you were lowering your hips again.

He wasn’t doing anything but just the feeling of his large hands cupping you was making you feel dizzy, rocking against him again despite the strange noise he let out.

“Touch me baby c’mon.” He looked up at you at the sound of your urging, eyes big and wet. He looked nervous but he hesitatingly moved his fingers, curling slightly and pressing against your clit. You let out a cry and he immediately froze, mistaking it for pain. “No Jake, it’s okay do it again.”

He didn’t look sure but he followed your instructions anyways, curling his hand up and being amazed by the way you threw your head back in a small cry.

The two of you seemed to forget about your surroundings, about the rushing lake or the freezing air that was only making the cold grass more bitter to sit in. You almost forgot who you were or the fact you were only a few minutes outside of town, practically riding Jake in a field visible to anyone who cared.

“You’re so pretty.” You remarked and he frowned at your gentle word causing you to lean forward and kiss him softly. “I want to keep you forever.”

You were too lust drunk to think about the heavy implication of your words or the fact saying them went against everything you’d previously been attempting. The whole reason you’d even started touching him today was to distract him from the fact you’d taken him to a place personal to you, to make him forget your act of kindness.

“You can keep me.” He was stuttering out in a high voice, not really sure if you meant what you were saying considering how confusing he found you, how strange this whole situation was.

Jake had accepted at some point that his life was changing now and for some reason, god had put you in his path. At first he figured you were some type of test of faith, if he could just ignore you and your evil nature then he’d be able to prove he was a good man, a holy man. But he began to wonder eventually if you were truly as terrible as he originally thought, as his mother kept remarking every time his father wasn’t in the room.

You made him cry and you occasionally would say terrible things to him. And it was no doubt you had a habit of sinning and making him sin, even when he didn’t want to.

But he thought you were kind at other times and he could tell by the way you zoned out in church during service and were nice to the young residents or helpful to the old, that you didn’t have no emotion. Maybe you were right, although you had a twisted way of teaching him about it.

You were leaning down to kiss him again and he was taking his hand out of your underwear, wiping it on his pants briefly before cupping your face in both his palms and keeping you there.

“Did I ruin you?” You were muttering against his panting mouth with a small smile, hands petting his hair affectionately.

“Almost.” He answered with a slight laugh, kissing you again.

——

By the time you and Jake had left the field, giggling together while you stuffed the wet blanket back into your backpack and jumped over mud puddles, the sun was set and gone.

You followed the streetlights home, walking the bikes side by side the entire time so the 20 minute ride turned into an hour walk.

You went a few streets without talking for a while, listening to the sounds of your tires rolling over gravel or the music nature provided from the surrounding woods just off in the distance. By the time you were crossing back into city limits and setting your sights on the abandoned buildings on the outskirts of town, your curiosity was weighing on you.

“Why did you move here anyways?” You were mumbling on accident so you weren’t sure he had heard you until he cleared his throat.

“A council member caught dad hitting mom.” He said it casually and you wondered if he was used to it or it was a practiced tone. “I guess they thought it’d look bad to punish him there so they sent us away.”

“Does he hit you too?” You weren’t sure why you asked that considering you were already pretty positive of the answer.

“Yeah sometimes.” He shrugged and tried not to fidget at the feeling of you watching him, kicking at a loose rock in the gravel road. “I think he’s mad I’m not very manly.”

“I think you’re manly.” You were frowning and furrowing your eyebrows, only deepening when you heard him let out a disbelieving scoff. “I’m serious.”

And you were. Despite Jake’s outwardly timid personality and the way he basically turned into a nervous obedient puppy everytime you got your hands on him, he was clearly a man. Both in his broad athletic build and in his day to day actions and personality. He was blunt and honest, telling you what he felt even if he thought it might anger you.

“Yeah, whatever.” He was whispering, still not trusting what you were saying and you froze in your tracks, stood directly under a streetlight. He slowed to a stop when he realized you were walking anymore and looked back at you in confusion.

“You wouldn’t have picked on me if I was manly.” He was explaining once he caught sight of your frustrated expression. “You probably wouldn’t have even noticed me.”

“You think I’m picking on you?” You ignored his second statement for now, eyes darkening at the implication of the first.

You weren’t sure why it struck a nerve within you considering he wasn’t half wrong. You had originally sought him out as a victim for you, an experiment or a game. Maybe even a way to further upset your mother, but you didn’t think he thought you were picking on him entirely.

“I don’t know what to think.” He was shaking his head and his eyes looked sad. He started to push his bike again and you rushed to catch up with him. “This is just confusing.”

“Well I’m not.” You kept your voice firm in an attempt to assure him and he didn’t say anything else, sparing you a long glance before looking back forward so he didn’t accidentally hit a pothole.

The two of you didn’t talk anymore after that, walking in a comfortable silence as you slowly got to a more familiar area for him and he realized you were slowly approaching his neighborhood. You must be planning on dropping him off before making you own way home he decided.

Those plans were quickly halted when you turned the corner of his street and saw your own parents car in his driveway, right next to the Sim’s. You both froze in place and stared in front of you in horror.

“Maybe it’s a coincidence.” He whispered and you jumped at the sudden sound of his voice, the words shaking slightly. “We can tell them we got caught up studying at the park.”

“If they’re here they already know.” You immediately stated in a flat voice, having a sick gut feeling as you looked at the two cars. The lights were on in Jake’s living room and you could vaguely make out multiple shadows walking around inside. “I don’t understand.”

“Maybe your dad heard something the other day.” He was rushing out in a hush, looking at you and your uncharacteristically frozen figure. He’d never seen you scared before and it made his skin crawl. “Or that lady in the basement.”

“No that’s not possible, I was-“ Your words faltered and you sucked in a panicked breath, trying to recall the two incidents he was talking about. You had been so caught up in your giddiness to talk to him that you hadn’t paid attention to your surroundings this morning at all, saying damning idiotic things to him in the church of all places.

His hand was coming up and brushing against your arm that was covered in goosebumps. “Go home. I’ll think of a cover for you, I’ll handle it.”

You looked at him with big eyes, suddenly overwhelmed by his presence and the fact he was willingly to lie for you so easily, willing to sin to both his parents and yours so you could be spared from punishment.

“I can’t leave you with them.” You were shaking your head in earnest and he deflated, understanding immediately there was no way of talking you out of it.

You both stood there for a few more beats, staring at each other under the street light and you briefly wondered if you’d see him again after this. You weren’t sure what your parents knew or if they were just following a strong hunch but you knew it didn’t matter. The second they suspected anything, atleast the men, you wouldn’t be allowed to see Jake anymore.

Eventually he took the first step, setting his bike down at the corner of the street and nudging for you to follow suit although you gave him a confused glance.

Following closely behind him, you tried to match his slow casual pace approaching the door and almost felt like you were going to throw up on the porch when he pushed it open without knocking, deciding to not give them any warning you were approaching.

The sight was just as dreadful as you imagined it would be, your parents sat on the Sim’s old couch while his were standing at attention and listening to whatever it was your father had been saying before your arrival.

All heads turned in your direction when you entered, half looking surprised you were together and the others showing no reaction. Your mother was immediately leaping up from the couch and approaching you with a scowl.

You felt her hand hitting your cheek before you even processed she was crossing the room, your head shooting sideways as your own palms came up to grasp your face in shock. Despite your differences, your mother had never directly struck you.

“You’re a disgrace.” She spat, literally, in your direction and you vaguely saw Jake flinch in your direction like he wanted to grab you. “No more games little girl, they finally see what I have all these years.”

One glance in your fathers direction told you she was telling the truth. He’d never been a good father but he wasn’t cruel, choosing religion over warmth and parenting. So upon seeing his cold stare you automatically knew things were too far gone.

“And you.” She was turning to sneer in Jake’s direction now and you were slightly surprised to see him square back his shoulders, jaw clenching. “How can you be so stupid?”

“Mary, please advise yourself on how you speak to my son.” Jake’s mother was piling up from the couch “I thought we agreed that your daughter is the one at fault here.”

“What?” Jake was spitting out and your eyes widened, wanting to tell him to shut up and let it run its course. “It was as much me as it was her.”

“No it wasn’t.” You were shaking your head at lightning speed, taking a step forward but rocking back again when your mother shot a glare in your direction. “It was all me.”

Jake was glaring at you but you knew he held no anger, only frustration that you were attempting to take the punishment for this. He was crazy to think you wouldn’t considering it was all your doing in the first place.

“It doesn’t matter.” Your fathers cool and calm voice was ringing out and everybody turned to look at him. “Tomorrow morning Y/N will be sent to a correctional school. I should’ve listened to your mother when she begged me to send you years ago.”

Your eyes were watering as you looked at him with pure betrayal. Despite your hatred for your town, for your longing to leave and never return you felt an overwhelming sense of panic at the thought of being sent away. You looked over at Jake to find him already watching you with the same panic in his eyes.

Then he was turning back towards your father with a shake of his head and a stony expression. “I won’t let you do that.”

Jake’s father scoffed, making his first noise of the night and you glanced over at his large frame. He was watching Jake with disgust and amusement but you saw a faint hint of a challenge in his eyes.

“And what will you do son?” He was approaching Jake with a sneer, looking down at him. Jake raised his chin to meet his stare, his hands shaking against his sides. “You can’t even protect your own mother.”

It was said in a whisper so only Jake could hear it but you were standing close enough to faintly catch it, mouth parting in shock at his blunt admission before opening further when Jake was suddenly moving faster than you could even pinpoint when he had started.

Jake was on his father before he even had a chance to prepare for it and you could hear the shrieks of the women, your own fathers grunts as he jumped off the couch to try and control the situation. You were standing on the side, hands out and trying to grip a hold of Jake’s jacket to tug him back when he glanced back at your hurriedly while his dad was disoriented.

“Go.” He mouthed the word at you and you felt your heart shatter slightly, shaking your head in denial before he gave you a firm nod and a soft smile.

You could do nothing but watch in horror as his dad took advantage of him being distracted, slamming Jake onto the ground, nearly blocking the front door. You took your chance to run before somebody realized you were going to and stopped you, sparing Jake one last look before heading out the door.

You aggressively wiped your tears as you ran down the street, sobbing as you could still hear the screams and grunts of pain from Jake coming from the door you’d left open. Your cheek was stinging still but you powered through it, letting the cold numb you as you hopped on your bike you’d abandoned under the light and started peddling so hard your thighs burned.

The wind was howling as you sped past your own neighborhood and the church, the empty buildings a blur through your teary eyes and you fell off your bike once you finally approached the field you’d been in earlier that day, landing in the mud with a cry.

You left your bike near the entrance, wobbling closer to the river with harsh sobs ripping through you, your knees and skirt dripping in mud.

For a moment you wondered if this was it. If you’d been wrong your entire life about religion and sin and this was god letting you know he was here and he was furious with you for the evil you let harvest.

If taking Jake and hurting him was all because you had done bad things and harmed the people around you. You let out a scream of frustration and looked up at the dark grey, wanting to tell him you didn’t care if he was watching and it wasn’t fair.

Instead you let yourself fall against the wet grass, curling into a ball and hugging your knees to your chest as you listened to the rushing river and the honks of traffic. You briefly remembered you were still wearing your backpack and it contained a blanket you could cover up with but you had no energy left to reach back to get it.

You weren’t sure how long you laid there crying, the sky getting darker and darker as you sat and waited.

You weren’t positive what you were even waiting for. Maybe for your parents to come searching for you so they could drag you away to some far away place or maybe the more hopeful part of you was waiting for Jake to come, to tell you he was okay.

The thought of him made you cry harder when you remembered the sounds he was making as you ran out and how furious his father looked about being struck. A man with an ego was dangerous especially when it got wounded.

Waves of guilt were rushing over you for dragging Jake into your twisted fantasies, for wanting to keep him even after you’d gotten what you wanted. For liking him despite not knowing you were capable of that until he arrived. You wished the river would fill up and swallow you inside it.

Over all the combined sounds you barely registered a few being added.

You didn’t hear the sound of the bike tires approaching, or the splashing of the mud puddles underneath hurried feet. You didn’t hear his worried pants or the desperate call of your name in the distance.

It wasn’t until he was there did you feel him, it wasn’t until he was reaching down to grab your arm.

Not until it was skin on skin.

[mariacallous]

In Hollywood, the present is the future is the past.

Twin strikes shut down production for six months last year, and with its workforce still on ice, the entertainment industry has been slow to recover. Domestic box-office revenue is expected to be 30 percent lower this year compared to 2019. By 2028, cable TV subscriptions are expected to decline by 10 million. And with the looming acquisition of Paramount Global by Skydance Media, the future of Hollywood is as it ever was: reliably uncertain. As one studio executive described it to the Los Angeles Times, it’s “something of an existential question mark.”

Of course, this isn’t Hollywood’s first—or second or third, for that matter—financial reckoning. “When we look closely at history, we realize that all the negotiations we have to make about character, about financing, about representation and all these things have been asked before,” says Maya Cade. “Ego tells us that we must be the first, but why would we want that to be true?”

This, in part, was Cade’s mission when she launched Black Film Archive in 2021. At a “moment when people were demanding the full totality of our lives to be represented in media,” she says, “they felt as if Black film could not hold the capacity for Blackness.” Cade knew better. So she got to work and built what is now the most exhaustive online database of Black cinema titles, spanning diverse, obscure, and well-known films.

A former audience development strategist at the Criterion Collection, she tells me people were missing a larger context to the issues at hand. The archive, which celebrated its third anniversary this August, features more than 300 films released between 1898 to 1999, with each title available to stream online. What Cade has accomplished is both rare and essential: She has indexed a century's worth of Black moviemaking and made it free to access.

Anxious to learn more, I reached out to Cade to help make sense of what’s happening in Hollywood. Over the phone from Los Angeles, where she recently relocated, Cade and I talked about the fate of the entertainment business, the grave implications of the Internet Archive lawsuit, and how we can better preserve history on an internet that likes to forget.

Jason Parham: Is it true that the idea for Black Film Archive sprang from a conversation on Twitter?

Maya Cade: I was on Twitter in June 2020, and I saw a lot of people talking about how racist or dramatic Black films are as a way to dismiss them. So instead of shaming people for that opinion, in my mind I was like, OK, how do I make an offering for people to discuss that belief, to contrast that belief, and also move us past it. I don't want to dismiss the truth because it's harsh. And I know there are many ways to get to the truth. I also don’t want to dismiss people who feel that way. But I want to offer another lens of how they're seeing it. Because when we talk about Black films as only being traumatic, we're reducing the art form in a very minuscule kind of way. This idea of like, “Oh, all these films are about slavery. All of these films are about trauma porn.”

Which, of course, isn’t true.

I did the calculations of how many films are about slavery—and they were quite few across time. But I understand that at the same time, what does it mean when a white decisionmaker wants to see Black people in a specific way? They have the power of how we're told in media. I also understand that film becomes the dominant narrative of how history is told. So there are multiple truths to contend with. But I think we're better prepared to contend with those things when we have a full look of what Black film’s history can offer.

The Internet Archive recently lost an appeal, which could have major ramifications to how we access information. Resources like Black Film Archive and the Wayback Machine are also part of this conversation. This is a bit of an abstract question, but how do we better hold on?

One goal of the early internet was to democratize knowledge. Whether everyone agreed with that is a different point. And the Internet Archive is one of the only things from the early internet to still exist in its same way. Wikipedia, too. These two things are constantly under attack, because to share knowledge freely means that someone wants to come in and control the free flow of knowledge. They want to profit from that.

In so many ways greed has become a default response to various public resources.

With that being known, what do we do? The world has been upended. The only truth that we know is in books. On the internet, AI has turned knowledge upside down. AI leaves out the essence of truth. For example, through summary, it assumes who you are and what you want to know quickly about something, which isn't the same as a human would do it. That process can remove layers of truth at a very basic level. With that being the foundation of the internet of the future, the Internet Archive is essential. In the last 10 years, we have moved away from the internet as a service to the internet of things. An internet as service—it was a destination. It was a place that you could freely roam, explore, and use as a guide.

Is there a way back to that?

If we want places on the internet that aren't run by AI, where knowledge is freely shared, where we can explore as we desire, then we must invest our time, our coins, we must advocate and protect as much as we possibly can. There’s so much on the internet that would crumble if the Internet Archive or Wikipedia falls. That's a threat to many people because, ultimately, when you control the flow of knowledge, you control everything.

The consequences would be extraordinary.

It's almost as if the basic concept of the library would be a pie-in-the-sky idea today, because someone would ask, well, how could I make money from that? When Black Film Archive launched, many people wanted to profit off of it. Many people asked to sponsor it. The thing is, once you create something that becomes a front line of culture, the question isn’t “How do I help sustain you?” The question is “How do I own you?” I said no because I’m firm in Black Film Archive being free.

On the subject of money and ownership: Earlier this year, following the cancellation of several Black TV shows, you wrote, “Studios and streamers no longer care about loyalty or enduring legacy.” Why does Hollywood, in 2024, still have such a difficult time aligning its legacy with its business?

Well, here's the thing, the legacy business, they feel as if that work is behind them.

But isn’t that what Hollywood is built on?

Yes, but to create new legacy and new inroads, to them, that is less important than extracting every possible dollar from existing IP. It’s more “expensive,” quote-unquote, to create something than it is to rest on existing laurels. The beginning of the end of this, to me, was when Warner Brothers and UPN merged into The CW. Now, 20 years later, the CW is a shell of itself. In mergers, you're no longer competing with someone to make the best content. With the merger of Warner Brothers and Discovery, they own, what, one-fourth of TV? That competition era of television—it's over.

Which has a direct impact on the creative side.

The legacy-driven model only happens now in vanity. So a lot of stars are using their own distribution or first-look deals to produce things. And these are the majority of people who are allowed to create. So what does Hollywood mean when the only people who are given freedom are people who have already done the taxing work—if they have at all—to become stars? Hollywood is not in the business of guarantee. Everything must be proven before it's even created.

And if that’s the case, so many people get left out.

And if everything must be proven before it's even created, then Blackness never had a chance. It doesn't have a chance. The fight for nostalgia as currency comes in a moment where some of the highest rated things are non-white. That's not an accident. It’s as if television, media, and filmmaking are becoming manifest destiny in the wrong ways. And there's nothing sadder.

Perhaps we need better frameworks.

People have upended industries to chase Netflix. And no one has caught up. Everything has fallen in this chase. What’s happening now is, people are only duplicating the best and the most watched. There is no diversity in how things are being delivered.

You once described “post-2020 Black media as akin to a modern day blaxploitation boom.” It got me thinking about platforms like Tubi and AllBlk, which are sometimes mocked as being a kind of streaming ghetto, but those same streamers have also given opportunities to young creators.

Blaxploitation, as I was saying, makes way for Spike Lee, it makes way for the '80s independent Black movement that, of course, shapes everything we know about modern Black film and modern Black media. At every valley, there is a peak. It’s the nature of life. So what do I think is ahead? We should be thinking about independent models that have existed before our current era. There are many ways to make media. With pilot season essentially dying, as the studios have announced, what are some ways that Black creators can forge together to make what they desire?

I mean, I don't know if I have the answers, but I do have the curiosity. And oftentimes curiosity and care—and leading with them—can transform how we understand history and the future.

[dragon-in-a-fez]

Hi again dragon-in-a-fez! I have a question. I'm taking a course on childhood abuse and trauma at my college, and it's been a little tense but peaceful. My professor (has a child/developmental psychology PhD) has mentioned that the majority of parents do NOT abuse children, although child abuse is not rare. I did share with him studies of how violent discipline is still common around the world*, and we both agree spanking is obviously abuse. But he still says no, the majority of parents are not abusive, and I can't make general statements.

Today we had a class about sexual abuse and we discussed a little on how we could possibly know or decide what is abuse. We both mentioned if the kid feels discomfort or pain as one criterion, as is the case with spanking. And by that standard also, he mentioned if a parent is giving a child a shower/wiping their butt after pooping, the parent is not abusive if they have to touch the child's genitals but get no sexual pleasure out of it, and the child doesn't feel bad. But then he mentioned how there are things we make kids do that he says are not abusive, like having them do homework or go to bedtime. He then went from there when i asked him about making a child hug/kiss a parent/relative. He said that's totally different from sexual abuse since parents are resoonsible for teaching children socially acceptable behavior and norms. We also mentioned how sexual abuse is defined when it's deemed "inappropriate" (with the implication being that is what society and social norms say).

But i have some problems with my professor's takes, although i admit he knows 100x more than i do. Im just a student. First of all, since when did social norms ever dictate right from wrong? "Socially appropriate" doesn't rqual right, "socially inappropriate" doesn't equal wrong. Second, social norms and the very idea of what is "socially approproate/inappripriate" can be easily weaponized against chilldren. After all, parents/adult control society and are the ones dictating social norms in the first place. For example, like i just said, its still socially appropriate to make kids hug/kiss against their will, as well as to spank them. Its seen as socially inappropriate and bad manners for kids to refuse hugs/kisses. Its socially inappropriate for kids to say fuck or shit, but its socially appropriate to slap or spank kids who say fuck/shit or for any other perceived offense, or make them ingest soap. Its seen as socially inappropriate/impolite to talk about sex, especially with children. Even tho that knowledge could very well save children from abuse.

But anyways, Im no expert, though im still a lil skeptical of what my professor has said. How would you respond, as a professor in children's studies? I look forward to your take on this, and I trust your expertise. Do you think you can cite studies/reports too? I think my professor would be happy to look more into what I've been saying. Thanks for listening!

/*https://publications.aap.org/pediatrics/article/137/3/e20154079/81439/Global-Prevalence-of-Past-year-Violence-Against?autologincheck=redirected

http://globalreport.knowviolenceinchildhood.org/global-report/time-end-violence-childhood/

well, for starters, the last time I saw a survey of parents that asked if they'd ever hit their children, 58% said yes (this was in the UK - it's higher in the US but admittedly my knowledge there is based on older data). so you can't simultaneously acknowledge that hitting children is abuse and believe the majority of parents aren't abusive. like, that's just math. that's one where you can probably find data pretty easily.

the rest of it isn't going to be so data-driven. let me take a step back and explain what I mean.

one of the things I encourage my students to do is challenge how we decide what is child abuse and what isn't. historically, that determination has been made based on a question of whether something will harm development or lead to worse outcomes for a hypothetical future adult. (this goes back to the earliest child protection laws, which were framed as religious duties not to endanger the child's immortal soul.) this is still the way child abuse is often operationalised, as a question of "this thing is abusive if it will make the kid a worse adult in some measurable way".

to me it's obvious that that's bonkers. what we should be doing is defining child abuse the way we define other forms of abuse: as improper treatment of a person, in relation to that person's human rights to dignity, safety, and self-ownership.

I think your professor is probably stuck in that former mindset, and their logic is going something like: we don't have objective evidence that making kids hug people causes lasting harm into adulthood, and culturally we believe it does make kids grow up into adults who can connect with others, so the net impact on development is positive, so it's not abuse.

when someone has that mindset about spanking, it's (comparatively) easy to push back on, because all you need to do is point to decades of strong research evidence that spanking is developmentally harmful. so it's theoretically possible to get them to understand that it's abusive without actually needing to challenge their overall mental framework of abuse.

for something like consent to affection, the counterargument is more difficult. it needs to start with: you have to rethink how you're making your determinations about abuse. you have to see abuse not in terms of developmental harm, but in terms of denial of personhood. for someone who's been mired in a developmentalist view of childhood for a long career, that can be really difficult. I don't know that I have any specific advice - except to remain steadfast in your person-centred framework of how we should treat each other, and understand that you're not wrong and you're not alone.

[sssammich]

4?

lol oh ho ho ho i see what you're doing

ask meme

4. Share a dark thought? (Go on, vent a little)

IM GONNA VENT (this is behind oh well i had to get my feelings bubbling up)

honestly i hate canon or bust. it literally kills the joy and sucks the fun out of fandom. and even the source material itself. maybe it's just me being older and having been in fandom for literal decades, but like this crusade for Canon or Nothing At All is just so fucking bad and is just overall detrimental to engaging with the source material, with fanworks, and even just each other!!!

about to just drop everything under the cut because it's long and incoherent

like, okay. yes, do i want representation? sure. do i want stories written for queer characters deserving of story arcs equal or better than what the straights typically get? yeah of course im not a monster. but like, people don't even know how to handle the representation they do get. and then have the gall to ask for perfection when it does show up. that's the burden to bear of being the Chosen Ones is that the weight of expectations is heavier than, like, side character three. so i get it. i get all of that. i want the good things also. i want the ladies kissing ladies on television etc etc

but that's not what im talking about. im talking about the people who literally will just sour the well with their desire that if their Ship isn't canon then it's time to ruin the playground because if i'm not having fun no one can be having fun. and that's literally so terrible and bad and also makes everyone not like being there any more. you shat on their sandbox, you burned down the monkeybars. like, it's not fun there anymore. but the problem there (other than it's annoying and destructive), is that it just further puts fanworks under the agenda of Pushing for Canon Truth instead of, like, a fun thing to share and do with your community.

another caveat here: OF COURSE fandoms have been doing both of those things this whole time, but it just always feels like when i see a push for "make X canon" (X being a ship, 99% of the time), it almost doesn't care about just enjoying yourself??? making a ship canon can be and is important in the larger landscape of media, culture, and representation. yes yes, i'm with you. but i think especially in fandom spaces if canon is not there, then what else is left? is such a bad take.

the rare pairs are there. the multiships. but not even just ships, but dynamics between characters. there are probably other strong contenders for the piece of media that irrevocably changed the landscape of fan/media relations, but since i *was* in the glee fandom, i'm gonna blame that one. i think the nature of how glee essentially opened access to the actors, to the producers, to the showrunners that had direct impact on the source material's canon kinda set up the groundwork for how the rest of media would evolve for the next decade. the ship wars and the ship polls were kinda insane back then. idk if it's still insane now because i've retired from my 'fandom city apartment' to my 'fandom small coastal town bungalo' and just minding my business. all that to say that even as a shipper, 90% of fandom conversations when it comes to Canon is literally just the pursuit of making their two white men (or women) kiss.

which means that we lose out on actual conversations and discussions around character development, dynamics with others as foils or as antagonists, and the larger implication in the plot of the whole thing.

i know the desire for canonifying two characters with insane chemistry and with storylines that lead to romance were they cast as one heterosexual male and one heterosexual female comes from the unfairness and frustration that if it's already right there, why not just fucking do it? listen we're all fighting an uphill battle for equality across the board, so any step forward is gonna be met with a step back, if not more. so like, i'm cognizant of this. so i get why. but when the entire persona that someone displays is just to push for wanting a ship to be Canon above all else, that's when it breaks down for me.

i doubt im making any sense at this point so im just gonna close this out by saying that yeah, i want similar things at the end of the day. i also want the two women with insane chemistry and whose storylines beat for beat match that of a heterosexual pairing had they been cast as such. but canon is not my business, i have nothing to do with that. because i don't make my fun at the doll shop where i bought my barbies. that's not the appropriate place for me to play. i make my fun in the sandbox where i stick the barbies' heads in the sand, as a treat.

[theink-stainedfolk]

OC Facts Tag

Thank you for the tag @willtheweaver

I'll take my OCs from my new WIP A Matter Of Time

Xavian

1. Collector of Vintage Watches: Xavian has a fascination with vintage watches and has a growing collection in his room.

2. Talented Sketch Artist: He enjoys sketching in his free time, often drawing intricate designs of the antiques in the shop.

3. Coffee Enthusiast: Xavian starts every morning with a meticulously brewed cup of coffee, believing it fuels his sharp mind.

4. Secret Polyglot: He speaks multiple languages fluently, which often helps in deciphering inscriptions on ancient artifacts.

5. History Buff: Xavian loves diving into history books and documentaries, always eager to learn more about the past.

Garin

1. Loves Chocolate: Garin has a sweet tooth, especially for dark chocolate, and always keeps a stash hidden in the shop.

2. Bookworm: He spends his free time reading, favoring mystery novels and historical fiction.

3. Enjoys Napping: Garin often takes power naps during the day, finding them refreshing and essential for his energy.

4. Dislikes Apples: For some reason, Garin has a strong aversion to apples and avoids them at all costs.

5. Introverted: He prefers quiet environments and dislikes overly talkative people, except for Xavian, who he enjoys conversing with.

6. History and Politics Enthusiast: Garin has a deep interest in history and politics, often engaging in debates and discussions about historical events and their political implications.

Lainey

1. Antiquarian Expertise: Lainey has an exceptional ability to identify and analyze antique objects, making her invaluable to Timeless Treasures.

2. Fond of Tea: She enjoys trying different blends of tea and often shares her latest discoveries with Xavian and Garin.

3. Keen Observer: Lainey has an eye for detail, often noticing things others might overlook, which helps in uncovering clues.

4. Loves Classic Literature: She has a particular fondness for classic literature and often quotes her favorite lines.

5. Gardening Hobby: In her spare time, Lainey enjoys tending to a small garden, finding it a peaceful and grounding activity.

Combined Fun Facts

1. Weekly Game Nights: The trio has a tradition of hosting game nights every Friday, where they play various board games and card games.

2. Antique Hunting Trips: They often go on trips to find unique and rare antiques, which not only enriches their shop but also strengthens their bond.

3. Secret Codes: They have developed a set of secret codes and signals to communicate discreetly during their investigations.

4. Shared Journal: They maintain a shared journal where they document their discoveries, ideas, and personal reflections.

5. Music Lovers: Each has their own taste in music, and they often share playlists and recommendations with each other, creating a diverse and vibrant soundtrack to their lives.

I'll tag @cssnder @finickyfelix @ascotwriting @willtheweaver @agirlandherquill @leahnardo-da-veggie @illarian-rambling @winglesswriter @paeliae-occasionally @the-golden-comet @graveyardshift111 this is an open tag

[chai-fi-rush]

Hi-Fi Rush and Capitalism

I've seen multiple posts about how Hi-Fi Rush is capitalistic/neo-liberal propaganda and like. I'm not gonna say they're wrong but I'm also going to say it's a little more nuanced than that. Or at least there's multiple angles to look at this thing and I want to do that so I will.

Also I just want to quickly say that I think that even if something endorses certain aspects of capitalism while critiquing others doesn't mean that what it does critique is meaningless, or that everything that critiques capitalism should end with a radical change in it's story's system. Sometimes things that are sort of milquetoast can be fun or make some good points, albeit not rly something to strive to.

The first thing to address which is undeniably on the side of those posts I've seen is that HFR basically assumes that capitalism is the default. It tacitly accepts that the system must function through capital, and not just at the end where instead of getting rid of the company they just replace the CEO. This comes up the most in Zanzo's level when CNMN and Macaron say that budgeting and development are a balance. There's no implication that the idea of well-managed projects shouldn't have to rely on money to be able to function, just that Zanzo himself is bad with money due to unrealistic goals and Kale's light hand as long as he gets what he wants. Honestly, this is where a lot of real life people get tripped up on. They genuinely have a really hard time conceptualizing how a world without capital would function and often think of it as some lawless world. So, even when they disagree with capitalism they often try to think about how to change it without the removal of currency.

That being said, it's more accurate to describe Hi-Fi Rush's early stages not as a critique of capitalism, but as a critique of the conditions of capitalism (I know to us red-blooded commies those things are basically the same but hear me out). The only point where money is really important to the plot is in Zanzo's level and the overarching point of Kale using SPECTRA as a market manipulation tool. There are also undercurrents of class when it comes to Chai and Kale as foils, but that point is also linked with ableism (which is linked with classism under capitalism, but the game is very purposefully vague about Chai's backstory so I don't necessarily feel comfortable making too much speculation about it). The game vlog's heavily discuss the labor and physical exploitation of their employees, such as how all of the old Vandelay units such as CARR1E are being overloaded for the sake of productivity and you know. The fact that there are three or four Mondays. But the game rarely mentions the wages of the employees. I'm not going to say it never does even though I don't remember a time, but needless to say the actual working conditions of Vandelay's labor force is a much bigger focus. It does sort of come into play when Kale talks about how he's planning on firing almost everyone once SPECTRA gets up and running (something we are supposed to consider is Bad because without those jobs those people won't have money).

Breaking all this down abstractly, HFR is a story about corrupted intentions. The game's narrative exists in two different camps, the experience of what Vandelay is right now, and how everyone talk about what Vandelay was when Roxanne was in charge. Obviously, the first one is going to be more powerful. Characters like Peppermint, Macaron and Korsica can talk all day about how cool Roxanne was, but we basically have to take them at their word. There's no reason for us to consider them untrustworthy, but lets just say that as an audience member it's hard to fully reconcile the idea without actually seeing any of it in action besides Roxanne being kind of chill in the final cutscene and some vlogs about how the company used to work (particularly from O5KAR).

But what we can glean from this narrative is that Vandelay under Roxanne was not productivity driven. You get this idea from both the Zanzo and Roquefort levels, and a couple of those aforementioned vlogs. One that comes to mind is about how production used to take the time to actually fix defected products, but under Kale they all just get immediately scrapped because it's faster to just make a new one. Roxanne was someone who wanted to make things whereas Kale just wants to sell them. I mean, Roquefort is literally crushed underneath the quarter profits. HFR has a lot of metaphors, and they never really claimed that any of them were subtle.

Something that hangs over the entire story but rarely comes up (even within meta discussions about it) is that Project Armstrong was something born out of Roxanne's love for her disabled daughter. It's not just that she came up with the implant tech and then had Kale make the project as a scheme, Peppermint specifically says in Track 12 that it was Roxanne's idea. This was something that was made to genuinely help people, and Kale warped it into something that would get him more customers because it's not profitable to just "help people."

That's the story that HFR is trying to tell. It's about a project that was good, became bad through its management, and then had people who believed in the original intention of said project (I should note that Korsica's inclusion as someone who hadn't worked pre-Kale was also probably intentional so it wasn't solely a return to the old guard). The game isn't trying to say that any company can be fixed with the right leadership, that this one had its reigns taken away for the sake of profitability. A corruption of intentions. If you're willing to accept capital as the implicit base of society, it's incredibly inoffensive, but if you can conceptualize outside of that system it becomes a hand-wavey response to the problem. We all know that "just put good people in charge of capitalism" isn't actually a solution the the problem.

It's also worth mentioning that HFR bears a lot of meta-narrative about the video game industry specifically. The director said that some of the emails were literally taken from ones that he had received. It draws attention to its relationship in several ways, ESPECIALLY with the addition of Vandelay Gameworks. It's all stuff that can be applied to companies in general, but there's still that undercurrent of game devs upset about crunch time or being forced to throw out something that they worked hard on at the last minute because it "Just doesn't work." The kind of people who love what they're working on but work underneath conditions that make it feel like hell.

Anyways, hope that made sense. Hope I didn't sound too apologetic because I also take beef with endings that handwave capitalism away as an individual issue. Honestly, I think that HFR has far more interesting things to say about disability, but that's something that has to be its own post.

[harpagornis]

Four implications by Venetoraptor’s existence

Venetoraptor gassenae by Connor Ashbridge.

By now, everyone might have heard off the lagerpetid Venetoraptor gassenae, often touted as the pterosaurian missing link. Do note that it is still recovered deeply among lagerpetids, the sister group to pterosaurs, though if lagerpetids turn out to be paraphyletic it could easily end up as such. Key ingredients for this assumption are the large fourth digit (thus seen as a precursor to the pterosaurian wingfinger), the two dewclaps that combined with the large hands might imply arboreality and the beak at the end of its jaw tips.

There are a few things nobody seems to have noticed, however, and I find that fascinating. So lets dive in.

1. Fourth digit claw

The fourth digit of Venetoraptor has a massive claw, like the rest of its digits. This is typical for lagerpetids but unusual among archosaurs as a whole, suggesting that the lack of claws in digits IV and V in dinosaurs and pseudosuchians is not an ancestral condition of Archosauria, or that lagerpetids and a few others groups reaquired this claw. The earliest pterosaur wingfingers may very well have ended with a claw, as Mark Witton’s reconstruction in his book.

2. The sifaka-like locomotion

Lagerpetids and early pterosaurs both are adapted to hopping. Venetoraptor has hindlimbs so large that it has been suggested to be a biped. Combined with the suggested arboreality, this animal likely hopped from tree to tree or from ground to trees and vice versa. It is close in size to sifakas as well, though possibly more carnivorous if the large handclaws and hooked beak are anything to go by.

This has huge implications for the development of powered flight, as pterosaurs have in particular evidence for deriving from hopping forms. Rather than gliding, hopping might have been more relevant to the origin of flight.

3. That beak

The beak is often discussed, but rarely in the context of pterosaur evolution. Many pterosaurs have an “odontoid process”: that is, effectively a hook at the end of the jaws acting as an additional tooth. Venetoraptor‘s beak, if similarly restricted to the end of otherwise toothy jaws, might put the odontoid process as an ancestral pterosaurian trait.

4. Pterosaurs could had been bat winged

Finally, we gotta talk about the hands of the animal. Though the fourth digit is the longest, all digits are large, and so if Venetoraptor does represent a transitional stage to pterosaurs it’s strange that the flying reptiles ended with only a single wingfinger and progressively reduced the clawed digits. This has several implications for the ontological development of the pterosaurian wing, much as simple gene switches created the bat wing.

Conclusion

Venetoraptor is a truly remarkable specimen, and I hope I can stirr further discussion with these points.

[copperbadge]

WELL everyone has a lot of feelings about visual imagination. :D 

I went through the reblogs and comments on the two main posts I made about it and I decided not to respond to the reblogs mainly because the tags sometimes addressed me but most of the reblogs were offering personal accounts, which were very interesting to read but I don’t think really needed input from me. The same held true for a lot of the comments, but I found a few I wanted to answer.

I did want to say that I want us to be careful when we talk about visual imagination and visual thinking, or lack thereof -- the word “hallucination” came up occasionally (mainly in terms of “someone else said this” or in terms of self-description, which is a personal prerogative) and hallucination generally implies that you can’t control or discern the reality of what you’re perceiving, plus it carries negative/pejorative implications a lot of the time. I’d like to keep this discussion neutral and also make sure we refrain from stigmatizing hallucination, either, so just be cautious in how you discuss all of this. People shouldn’t feel belittled for the way in which they perceive the world, whatever that perception might be. You guys have actually been really great about this but it’s always good to vocalize those boundaries. 

gallusrostromegalus

If you tell me to picture an apple, i can imagine several apples, with different sizes, weights, textures and colors, and how the internal structure of the fruit develops from the bud like a time-lapse movie. It's wild to me that people CANNOT do this- though hilariously, it affects my writing in that I straight-up don't put descriptions in because my brain auto-generates scenes and appearences for me and I think i kind of assume everyone else's brain does too

Which is especially bananas because I don’t put in descriptions because I don’t see the point, like why would anyone want a bunch of irrelevant words, get to the important words! Two ends of a weird-ass range, I suppose. 

akela-nakamura

I very much see a picture when I'm writing/reading. In fact I sometimes get frustrated when I'm writing because I can't -quite- get the right words to describe what's in my head. It's not like, All of the time but I visualize things often and it usually doesn't get in my way. It's just...there lol

A bunch of people said that often when they write they’re describing the pictures in their head, which does sound incredibly frustrating and tedious at times, as a practice -- trying to get the right word to evoke a mental image does seem much harder than just picking a fun word that indicates the vibe, which is what I do. They’re difficult in different ways but yeah it does sound very annoying. 

taketheshot21

Brains are fascinating. Question, is it the same for voices? Do you 'hear' characters own voices in your head when you read/write or not?

It seems as though some people who don’t get visual do get audio, but I don’t get either. If I want to know how something sounds, I have to say it out loud myself -- often before I publish something I’ll read it out loud to myself to check for flow. Occasionally if I’m writing a scene in the Shivadhverse where I’m not sure of the speech patterns, I’ll go listen to people speaking in Welsh accents on YouTube to fix the accent in my mind for a bit so that I can write it properly, but it needs refreshing every time I do it. 

Like, in Twelve Points there’s a scene where Noah says something surprising to most of the family, and there’s a beat of silence before Michaelis starts to laugh -- and I know exactly how to evoke a sense of his reaction, but I don’t hear any of it in my mind, or see him sitting at the dinner table laughing. I have some sense of how most of the adults sound, but I’m around teenagers so rarely that I don’t really hear Noah’s voice at all -- but writing him as a twentysomething in a later story, I have a much better sense of what his fully-adult voice would sound like. 

byteduchess

I don't get mental IMAGES but I will experience phantom sensations sometimes especially with certain gory/painful descriptions which is. Fun.

This is why I assumed horror was such a popular genre for fiction podcasts, because it’s a “safe” way of experiencing horror stories without having to deal with the visuals or the jumpscares. It’s very perplexing to me now to know that some people absolutely still get the visuals, with horror podcasts. Although I suppose it still offers a higher level of control. 

svollga

People in dreams have faces...

Yeah, that must have sounded kind of creepy, I forget most people who dream in visuals do see faces. I knew that I was a bit unusual for not seeing them in dreams but it’s not like I see blank heads, I just never see anyone from the neck up, or if I do their face is in shadow. 

snazzy-hats-and-adhd

Hrm. Well now I kinda want to go and do a close reading of some of your stuff specifically looking for visual imagery to see if I can quantify an opinion on it, but since I've been following you since before I realized you had actual books published, it's probably a moot point. I hope your potato pancakes were delicious. 💜

They were! I do wonder how my books must read to people with visual imaginations, but comments seem to indicate I’m not bad at it (and thank you to those who said that, it was very reassuring), so my writing to evoke feeling and their reading to inspire seeing/hearing must mesh pretty well. It’s definitely something I’m going to keep in mind going forward, the fact that people will actually see what I describe, but I think also that might be why my fanfic is reasonably popular -- I leave a lot of scope for peoples’ minds to fill in the blanks, which we already want in fandom a lot of the time. 

thebibliosphere

Yeah, I am in the same boat and I get pissed off being told to "describe more things" and I'm like "why? That's just clunky." When I read and write I'm enjoying the formation and rhythm of the words, not the images in my head, because I do not have any. I can't even do it when I focus really hard and do nothing else. It's like a dream I can't reach. According to my psych person that's aphantasia but *shrug*. I've never known any different.

It really is bonkers. I’ve never known any different either, at least that I know of, and I don’t know that I get annoyed with it but I did used to be a bit confused as to why people wanted more description, it just always felt like padding to me. I once got into it with someone about how Sam Vimes is never described fully in the Discworld books, and I was like “Why would you? Pterry gets away with it, I should be able to” (which is rather arrogant of me admittedly) and they were like BECAUSE IT’S REALLY ANNOYING NOT TO HAVE A DESCRIPTION. And now I get why! Poor Sam Vimes was just a blur in their head! 

I don’t want to go into therapy but I’m reaching a point where I’m like “If I wait any longer, no therapist is going to take me” :D

br-nz

This is fascinating to me because i have a very rich visual inner world. I write fic too and i literally see the stories play out in my head, like a movie. It’s how i put myself to sleep at night, i lie there and plot out more scenes.

I mean, I do that too, I just don’t see the scenes visually. I think about situations and interactions, and sometimes I take notes if I come up with a really good turn of phrase, but it’s literally Telling Myself, there’s no showing :D 

delphinidin4

I would love to read your source on ~40% of people don't visualize when they read! I'm really interested in psychology and the imagination.

I actually got the stat reversed so apologies for that, but the research comes from the Wiki on Visual Thinking, so less reading in specific than just cognition in general: 

Research by child development theorist Linda Kreger Silverman suggests that less than 30% of the population strongly uses visual/spatial thinking, another 45% uses both visual/spatial thinking and thinking in the form of words, and 25% thinks exclusively in words.

laurabwrites

This is where the phrase 'in the mind's eye' comes from btw. Lots and lots of people picture things visually in the mind. As with everything there's a range of how detailed the visualizations are/can be. This website might be helpful to you: https://aphantasia.com/vviq/

Oh that test was really interesting and also extremely frustrating to take, lol. :D  

[proudfreakmetarusonikku]

Throughout the month of December, I’m going to be making several Exile Arc essays to explore my favourite arc in all of media, ever, and as a celebration of its two year anniversary! This essay is about going into detail about the severe physical and psychological harm Exile caused to Tommy- both the obvious and those a bit more speculative. Obviously, everything here is to do with the RP characters. Discussion of abuse in detail is inevitable, along with suicide, kidnapping, torture, mental health issues, and self harm, so be warned. And without further adieu, onto the essay!

——

If there's one thing that cannot be overstated about Exile, it's how much it utterly broke Tommy. Of course, he's always been traumatised and mentally ill- he's had symptoms of PTSD reaching back to the L'Manberg war, and emotional issues dealing with extremely low self esteem and a desperate need for validation well before that- but the cheerful and innocently chaotic nature he had never was stripped away before then, and it never quite recovered.

There is not a single part of Tommy that hasn’t been impacted by the meticulous damage, both physical and emotional, he went through in Exile, and every time those wounds started to heal they were picked wide open. And that’s just what we see in the explicitly stated text- reading between the lines into the implications, looking at real world psychology and biology, and with a little bit of real world experience into how those traumas manifest, an even bleaker picture is painted.

Yet, oddly enough, even the most obvious parts of Tommy's trauma from Exile often go unremarked upon and unexamined. Part of that is likely due to a lack of knowledge about the psychology of trauma, part of that is people not watching Exile, and unfortunately some of that’s due to the incredibly toxic and cruel nature of this fandom to relentlessly demonise all but one heavily idealised and often infantilised favourite character. So, to ensure everyone knows the absolute baseline going in, I'll provide a 100% factual, no speculation included, detailed recap on how Exile affected Tommy.

Most well known, perhaps, is the suicidal tendencies and self harming habits Tommy picked up. He’d refuse to protect himself or do MLGs, he'd sleepwalk into drowning himself every night, and he considered suicide on a regular basis. He also starved himself, which ties into something else about Exile- Tommy never had enough supplies. He only had the food Dream gifted him, and was rarely running on more than stone or iron tools unless they were gifted by Dream. Of course, he never had any armour or weaponry, leaving him incredibly vulnerable to mobs and forcing him to stick to Dream's side.

This made Tommy reliant on Dream, which twisted into a sick, unhealthy sort of loyalty and “friendship”. He was lead to see a lack of abuse as a reward, and even to see some of the actual abuse as bonding activities. Dream would constantly gaslight Tommy about his own feelings, insisting he was lying if he ever said a negative thought about Dream, and would often talk about how he was the only person who cared, forcing Tommy to rely on him for any sort of emotional bond. This developed a trauma-bond so deep that even months after Exile Tommy still felt conditioned to see Dream as a close friend and genuinely missed Exile on some days.

Tommy was heavily isolated, with few people visiting (and, according to Eret, few people even knowing where Tommy WAS). The few visits he had were often used as a way to hurt Tommy further by Dream- for example, leading Lazar to participate in the abuse (when he didn’t know the full scope of things obviously, he just wanted his armour back and didn’t realise how desperate and beaten down Tommy was), or taking visitors to the Christmas Tree when Tommy wasn’t even allowed to step through the portal.

The whole Beach Party was the absolute cruellest example of Tommy's deliberate isolation. Not only did Dream send Ghostbur somewhere dangerous to him to get him out of the way, he made absolutely sure no one would get invites, yet lied heavily to Tommy about how everyone must have got them and they simply didn’t care. This left Tommy incredibly distrustful of people by instinct, something he was never able to shed fully.

Tommy was HEAVILY physically abused on basically a day to day basis, especially towards the beginning of Exile. Dream would hit Tommy with his tools if he refused to follow orders- something that made Tommy scream in pain more than once and something he feared more than dying. Sometimes, this would leave Tommy very nearly dead, and sometimes Dream would do it simply for being too slow in putting his armour in the hole. Even outside of that, Dream would punch Tommy very frequently, to the point Tommy stopped reacting to it eventually, and would frequently blow up his items while he was in range of the TNT, causing him to get hit by the blast.

Even kindness was a weapon used against him- Dream would often lovebomb Tommy with meaningless gifts, and would often follow up every time he was especially cruel to Tommy with extra attention and doing whatever Tommy wanted to do. This left Tommy unable to realise how messed up Dream's treatment of him was, and made him rationalise all the times Dream hurt him as not that bad, or his own fault. In fact, it was only the dispelling of the illusion when Dream threatened to leave him alone and only come and watch that caused Tommy to even consider escaping, because up until that point he was conditioned into complete and total trust.

Tommy very quickly stopped sleeping, and fell into such severe hallucinations he couldn’t distinguish what was real and what was in his own head- at one point assuming that the real Tubbo was another hallucination because he’d seen so many. He also noticeably started experiencing delusions- believing he was dying on some occasions, and believing the logs were communicating with him in some way (this is why Logstedshire is built around them!)

After Exile, Tommy frequently has severe panic attacks around anything related to it, from lava and smiley faces to something as innocuous as a plains biome. Physically, he’s mentioned feeling a lot weaker, and he never quite seemed to recover. He also developed chronically shaking hands after Exile, something he frequently notes.

Now all of this on it's own is incredibly disturbing, but that’s just the basics. There are several things implied about Exile and it’s aftermath that we don’t explicitly see, Tommy displays symptoms of multiple mental and physical illness outside of PTSD as a result of Exile, and as a bonus, as someone who experienced something very similar (though much less extreme) I've decided to share exactly how some of this would feel! Don’t worry, there’s no trauma dumping here, just details on stuff like flashbacks.

First, it’s heavily implied Exile lasted longer than we see on camera, anywhere from a few days up to several months. Tommy repeatedly mentions Exile as being much longer than it was in real-time during the events, however, this could be chalked up to him not being able to tell the time due to his isolation and stress. What IS more concrete proof of this, however, is two things- Tommy's skins, and the mention of events that we don’t see.

For Tommy's skins, not only do we see him visibly deteriorate with his clothing turning to rags and his eyes going dull and bagged, we also see something very interesting. If you look very closely at Tommy's fringe, you'll notice his hair has been growing a little. It’s only a few pixels longer, even at the end, but this would indicate Tommy must have been in exile long enough for his hair to grow out to a noticeable degree, and it’s unlikely it would have grown that much in just under two weeks.

The second has to do with something Tommy brings up offhandedly- Dream getting upset at him when he didn’t collect armour and weapons for him to blow up as part of their “bonding ritual”. This isn’t something that happened on camera, and presumably happened on a day we didn’t see, and considering the point Tommy was at (being utterly obedient and devoted, even excited to see Dream) it’s unlikely to be something he'd make up… unless his hallucinations are worse than indicated (since, as far as we know, they’re limited to visual hallucinations, and that’d imply auditory and potentially touch hallucinations), which would be disturbing in its own right.

Another disturbing implication comes from much later in the series, from one of Aimsey's streams. During this, Aimsey met Tommy and gave him some gifts, which he responded to by attacking star and then claiming in the chat he thought star was going to hurt him. At first, this sounds like an excuse, but taken in the context of Tommy frequently being lovebombed after being abused, it makes a whole lot more sense. Tommy had grown to associate being given things with being beaten and hurt.

Finally, in terms of implications, there’s the disturbing parallels between Tommy's behaviour in the finale and his behaviour in Exile. On both occasions, they were extremely emotionally distressed and self hating- Tommy had basically blamed everything wrong with the server on himself the day before, and possibly did so again (it’s not entirely clear what exactly he's apologising for, and considering the prior fact it’s unfortunately possible that it was his own existence and not just accidentally upsetting and hurting people at the start of the server). On both occasions, they spent the whole time working around DREAM'S needs and emotions, ignoring their own.

They gave empathy to a degree that they were neglecting their own feelings, and, incredibly disturbingly considering we KNOW Tommy is conditioned into seeing Dream as a friend, he comes out of Limbo- a place we KNOW is in all occasions traumatic and psychologically torturous- saying that he and Dream could have been friends. The parallels between this, along with Wilbur's suicide, are so absurdly blatant (and deliberately drawn, on several occasions!) that I’m surprised very few people seemed to pick up on it (and a little uncomfortable that a lot of people are treating Tommy's blatant spiral into suicidality and falling back onto his conditioning as either a good thing that’s a sign of healing that all victims should aspire towards, or proof he's evil and cruel and mutually abusive and deserved everything that happened to him, as someone who's gone through those backslides themselves and knows how much they suck, but that’s a topic for another day).

For a look into biology/psychology, during Exile Tommy's hallucinations and delusions might be a simple response to stress and sleep deprivation… but there’s another, even more tragic possibility. Psychosis can be triggered by stressful situations, and not only are delusions and hallucinations a symptom of psychosis, but so is agitation, difficulty concentrating, difficulties in controlling impulses, paranoia, and muddled and disordered thoughts. All of these are things that Tommy struggles with, and considering he started experiencing delusions again in the Finale- much like Wilbur- the fact these symptoms aren’t a one time response to extreme trauma but appear to have been a constant struggle in Tommy's life makes it entirely possible.

Tommy's reluctance to eat during Exile, even when he’s starving, has a tragic resemblance to the beginnings of an eating disorder. It’s unfortunately common for young people in traumatic situations to develop these, as food intake can often be the only thing they can control. Tommy didn’t have a lot of food to begin with, but he still often refused to eat what he had available, and I do think it’s entirely possible it could have easily gotten a lot worse. Tommy's always struggled with disordered eating- he started binge eating golden apples immediately after this, for instance, and he stopped eating again after Dream escaped the prison- and this all seems to come back to Exile. While Tommy might not have body image issues, he’s definitely got an extremely concerning relationship with food, one that’s common among young people who are victims of abuse.

And for something physical- Tommy's shaking hands and weakness are possibly a result of the physical damage done to him by Dream. Specifically, it matches up to nerve damage- which can be caused by physical trauma to the nerves, which I imagine being hit by an axe could absolutely cause. Both weakness and uncontrollable spasms are common symptoms of damage to the nerves, especially in extremities like the hands and feet.

Finally, and to round this out I'd just like to share a bit on how exactly it feels to be in Tommy's shoes, because I think understanding that makes him much more understandable as a character! For one- you really do feel like you’re dying. It physically hurts to be under so much stress, and you feel incredibly sick, sicker than you’ve ever felt.

You also really do blame yourself. For young people in that situation, you have an instinctive trust on what authority figures say, even if you hate them. You really start internalising what they say, and it sticks with you forever, really. You always assume you’re in the wrong, you always apologise, you get that sick-feeling like you’re dying again the second you think you’ve upset someone. It’s hard to notice- I didn’t until I watched Exile, myself!- but it makes every day extremely stressful.

And flashbacks are as messed up as they sound. You actually do see and hear things from the past a little, but in my experience it's more like you can feel all the emotions and you go back to the thought processes of the time. It’s like you’re right there in your brain, like you got sent back in time to experience all the horrible stuff again, and it’s something that sticks for hours and makes it hard to do anything. It also makes it extremely hard to make perfect decisions- something I think people need to take in mind more talking about Tommy!

Anyway, what are your thoughts? Feel free to share- I love talking about Exile in any context and I’d love to hear other peoples opinions! I hope you enjoyed me talking about my special interest haha.

[citusfriend]

Ok so. That ending fucking sucked.

Not to go "he would not fucking say that" but c!tommy would not fucking say that. Oh boohoo the abuse man was happy before the annoying teen came to the server, guess that completely justifies the psychological, mental and physical torture he put tommy through and puts them on the same level. Not to mention they were literally talking about how c!dream and c!punz goal was "becoming gods" and how they did literally every bad thing under the sun and ruined everything for everyone else for that unrealistic, stupid goal no one else wanted. How was that setup not used to show how insane they both are?? How was that mindset not reprimanded?? HOW AND WHY DO THEY GET A FRESH START LIKE THAT JUST DIDN'T HAPPEN 5 SECONDS AGO??

Big Edit: i feel the need to clarify that i don't have a big problem with ctommy saying"sorry". Because he wasn't forgiving cdream.he didn't warn about the nuke. What i have an issue with is the idea of "understanding" cdream. c!dream is human, that's the big point here. But that should come with the realization that he's a horrible human. He does not need to be understood, because he doesn't want to understand anyone else. He's a megalomaniac with a god complex and the implication that all they needed was "understanding" and then them becoming friends immediately after with the reset just leaves a bad taste in my mouth. For fucks sake, just moments ago he was equating c!tommy, a teen, being annoying, stealing and causing pranks to himself stalking, murdering, manipulating and abusing c!tommy in every possible way. These 2 things are not equal. I get that ctommy choosing to "understand" cdream rather than spit on his abusers' face was to show how ctommy is the bigger person, a better human being than cdream. But god do i hate that idea. You shouldn't need to be the bigger person than your abuser, because your abuser should have gotten what they deserved already instead of you feeling like you have to just "move on" with your life when they didn't get what they deserved for what they did. "that's just how it is" but it shouldn't be. Remember the discsaga finale? Where it seemed that ctubbo and ctommys' actually got a victory for once, a satisfying conclusion? Only for it to be ripped away because actually, cdream and cpunz planned that all along!!! Let's be honest here, did c!dream ever actually lose? Because every single time, while he receives some consequences (rarely), he always ends up winning. The discsaga finale. The prison break. And now the s1 finale. What does that show us? What are we supposed to get from this? Why can't c!tubbo and c!tommy ever just be allowed to have an actual victory for once, a happy ending for themselves without compromises and actuallys?-

- Why aren't they allowed to be happy without c!dream ruining it and having to make compromises to live with the man who ruined their lives?

End of edit.

The lore has in general been all over the place and kinda shitty lately. It's just been going steadily downhill for a while imo. Wtf was that with c!sam clones. Where did that come from.

Also. they really just. Did Not Mention DreamXD AT ALL even though he seemed super important to both the discussion at hand and seemed to be doing something important before : "I've been real busy dealing with some stuff"

AND ALSO WHILE ON THAT TOPIC. FOOLISH. FOOLISHXD. i am SUPER annoyed that that plotline of Foolish getting souls for XD was left completely unfinished. Really guys, one of the most interesting dynamics in the whole server and you choose to do NOTHING with them? (I'm a foolishxd shipper can't you tell). Besides, this entire thing of the finale centers around death and life and the balance of it all. Ahem. FOOLISH AND XD ARE RIGHT. THERE. THEY!! WOULD AND SHOULD BE!! IMPORTANT!! TO THIS DISCUSSION!!

i am also incredibly afraid that this "fresh start" completely resets everyones lore and personalities and development. No one likes an ending like that. Because, if that does happen, then what was the point of it all? Yes i am specifically thinking about foolishxd leave me alone. But also we didn't see ANYONE except for c!tubbo, tommy and dream. That's why I'm afraid.

[cl0ckworkpuppet]

let's talk about generative AI from the perspective of a compsci student who has very little personal experience with generative AI

for the sake of this post, let's ignore the question of ethics or environmental impact when it comes to using generative AI services. these conversations deserve to be had, and deserve to be treated with their proper nuance, but that is not the topic of today's discussion

i will be STRICTLY talking about the efficacy of generative AI. basically, how well does it actually function?

well, it depends on what you're trying to generate, and what model you're specifically using. as technology develops, generative AI models will get more advanced, include more features, and become more efficient. what applies now may not apply in even the span of a year. that's just how technology, especially new budding technology, develops.

to talk about how well something functions, we must first understand HOW it functions. it's a very long and complicated explanation, with a solution that we still don't know exactly, but essentially what generative AI is trying to do is mimic a human. imagine it like a giant Talking Tom app, where it takes in input from a human and spits out something of its own creation. but unlike a parrot, it doesn't want to copy any specific person exactly, but it wants to essentially make an average of every human work it can get its hands on and spit out what it thinks you want to hear.

this creates a big problem when you're asking it to spit out factual information, or exact numbers/pixels/movements, because it doesn't know what those are. all it knows are the algorithms that function inside of it telling it what humans sound, look, draw, photograph, or record like.

this also makes everything it creates very generic. sure, it might look nice, it might be nicely written with proper grammar, but it's all generic nothingness. it's fluff, essentially.

this makes asking it for advice on certain fields shakier than others. for example, chatGPT tends to do... okay with programming, especially with basic concepts in higher-level languages. but as you get into more complicated fields, crocheting for example, it all starts to fall apart.

basically, the more complicated your topic, and the more nuanced your question, the more you run the risk of it getting something wrong. and even when it gets it technically right, the answer will be so generic and palatable that anyone who looks even slightly past the surface will be able to tell you it's generated.

this is why essays written by chatGPT will always get detected, among other things (for example, common words used by generative AI that are rarely used by humans).

you should not use generative AI for visual references purely from an efficacy standpoint. your composition will turn out bland and generic, or even with some proportions wrong depending on the model you use.

in a vacuum, generative LLMs (large language models) could be okay for getting ideas for writing. but it would have to be a springboard into brainstorming. not a springboard into writing, a springboard into transforming those generic ideas into your own.

and again, i'd like to clarify this post does not even touch on the ethical or environmental implications of generative AI as it stands. simply how well it works as a tool, as many people want to argue it is. and as a tool, it's passable, but mediocre and will not get you far at all if you rely on it.

[electricbluebutterflies]

hugging them from behind for the prompts <3

Late-era Jessica/Leto, PG-ish, also on ao3.

She hates these things. She’s good at them, but she still hates them.

Jessica has accepted most of the countless unexpected dramatic turns her life has taken over the years with surprisingly minimal complaining – the development of recurrent petty domestic fights is justifiable as long as it all stays petty – but most of the roles she has been put into still don’t feel right. Too visible, too…

Lady of the house in every way but formal title. That there is the heart of the problem.

If she were the person she is still occasionally accused of being, this would be frightfully easy to fix. She could lace her voice just so – most likely during intimacies, all her partner’s barriers already lower for her – and get what she wants. It wouldn’t even take much of a push, and she does think about it at times, and-

That is not who they are. She has promised, closest she will ever come to wedding vows, to respond in kind to how she is treated. When she made that decision she did not realize she was compartmentalizing her power, but it felt right when she did, one person kept immune to her, one person-

She is not the wife, she is not going to be the wife until they are both old enough that such a formality would only be a minor scandal, and she is still stuck vaguely supervising the preparations for one of the annual formal events. Her presence right now is optional; the protocols for this one haven’t changed in decades, but there has always been something calming about functional routines and-

This isn’t paranoia, she can claim that much. There is very little that could go wrong. Just the same decorations that have always been used, no noticeable modifications in the years that this event and its kin have been her problem, and-

Jessica is both unnecessary and distracted, and she does not realize she is not alone in her area until she feels arms wrap around her waist from behind.

Her partner likes to do this sometimes, when such rare occasions present themselves. Mess with her reflexes just a little, always affectionate, always-

“Have you hit anyone with that set of papers yet?”

She glances down at the few pieces in her hands, barely enough to use as a fan if she were so inclined. “You think this would do adequate damage?”

“More the effect of it all…”

If she were in a slightly different mood, she’d turn and demonstrate, but… current position feels too good to lose, his body molded around hers, much more public affection than she actually likes but she’ll take the intent. They have to actually talk like this, not show off how well they communicate with just facial expressions, and-

“I haven’t needed to,” she murmurs. “I don’t even really need to be here.”

“Then don’t be here. Find some other-“

“Trying to stay out of trouble, remember?” A phrase that should never need to be said by a thirtysomething woman with a stable romance and a child, but here they are and-

She turns her head just in time to watch her partner process the implications, and she normally loves how cooperative he is – there has been very little she’s ever needed to explain, he trusts his judgment of people and once he’d decided he wanted her close she ended up with far more plausible deniability than she even needs most of the time – but there’s still that moment of you’re-not-telling-me-something before it fades, compartmentalized perfectly and never to be discussed and-

“Trying to stay findable,” he repeats. “Understood.”

“Preemptive, not…”

“And you’re this bored.”

“That’s not the word I’d start with, but…”

She won’t go into how important it is for her to keep up appearances, to be everything she isn’t whether she actually enjoys it or not. There will always be rumors, but she can at least control what she does that makes people talk, and-

“You don’t need to prove anything to anyone,” her partner murmurs, at least aware where her anxieties usually lead her. “Not this early in the day, at least. Later…”

“I’ll look perfect.”

“You always do.”

He lets go of her slowly, and she is reminded how much this is her exception, how intensely and intentionally their dynamic goes against everything else she is. No one else knows her well enough to sneak up on her so easily, and no one else would be able to do so without receiving a few scars for their time, and-

“You have better things to do than make sure I don’t ruin us,” she says, twirling around to face him, and at the same time she doesn’t want the moment to end just yet, and-

“If you do enough damage to this one, the petty social repercussions could last generations. Change one light fixture…”

“I forget, am I technically even allowed to do anything that visible?”

“Allowed, yes, but…”

Jessica closes the distance again and takes a heartbeat of a kiss. “Don’t tempt me, darling.”

“You don’t need that kind of motivation.”

They separate, and she can’t help the longing as she watches him walk away. Today will be one of their good days; in the evening he’ll get pleasantly distracted by a dress he’s seen her in a dozen times, and she’ll be able to cling more than usual because at least this is a smaller-scale ritual, and-

She’s doing too much. She should do something about that. She never will.

[xtruss]

Why We Fight: US Openly Salivates Over Ukraine's Vast Untapped Titanium Reserves

The US and its allies set the stage for the Ukraine crisis by sponsoring the Maidan coup in 2014, which sparked a conflict in Donbass and escalated into a full-blown confrontation involving Moscow last February. One heavily underreported facet of the West’s Ukraine policy revolves around Kiev’s immense mineral wealth.

Ukraine could provide the United States and its allies with the titanium they need to build the fighter jets, warships, tanks, missiles, and other weapons required to confront Russia and China, sources on Capitol Hill with ties to the military-industrial complex have told US media.

“Ukraine has really significant deposits of rare earth minerals, and if we play our cards right could actually be a really attractive alternative to Russian and Chinese sources, which is where a lot of dependency currently is,” one anonymous congressional staffer said. “As there are increasing debates throughout the West about why it’s in our interest to keep supporting Ukraine, I think this is one of the arguments that you’re going to start hearing more,” the person said.

Titanium is also a “key vulnerability” for the US, a source with knowledge of the US defense sector said. “We’re talking about our ability to produce more planes, we’re talking about our ability to produce munitions. They all rely on titanium, and we’ve allowed ourselves to grow reliant on foreign suppliers for these things. Russia has previously been one of those primary suppliers,” they added.

US Faces Uphill Battle Against China’s Rare-Earth Dominance, Experts Say!

The US depends on imports for over 90 percent of its iron ore, and does not maintain titanium in its National Defense Stockpile.

A “nascent effort” is said to now be underway to study, develop, and use Ukraine’s “vast resources” of titanium and other mineral wealth. The Eastern European country is one of only a handful of nations in the world capable of producing vast quantities of titanium sponge – the basis for the metal – with others including China, Japan, Russia, Saudi Arabia, and Kazakhstan. India also has a fledgling titanium sponge industry, although its production is measured in hundreds of tons, not thousands or tens of thousands required to satiate the West’s thirst. In addition to weaponry, vast quantities of titanium are required for the production of commercial aircraft, prosthetics, certain paints, surgical tools, telecommunications equipment, and more.

Ukrainian government officials are openly touting their interest in becoming a resource colony of the West.

“We today have titanium and we have lithium, both are in great demand and they’re going to be even more in demand in the future,” Oleg Ustenko, advisor to President Volodymyr Zelensky, said. “My understanding is that the majority of these deposits are not even tapped. The business opportunities in this sector are really huge…We do not see our role only within the EU, but also in terms of the world supply. I do believe that it’s a really important role which might be played by Ukraine. But again, for that, we need to make sure we are in postwar conditions,” the aide stressed.

Germany Says EU Companies Should Stop Providing Funding to Mines in Russia - Reports

While US officials salivate over Ukraine’s minerals, US media also pointed to the implications of Moscow getting its hands on these resources, and the “boost” to Russia’s global influence that would be afforded by control over the “increasingly strategic resource.”

The battle for Ukraine’s titanium has come up repeatedly in discussions by US business outlets and Washington-based think tanks in recent months. Last September, the Atlanticist Center for European Policy Analysis think tank proposed developing long-term contracts with Ukrainian suppliers to "create an enduring material foundation under the process by which Ukraine could become more closely integrated with the West, in terms of both defense and economics."

Titanium is only one of dozens of natural resources which Ukraine has been amply blessed with, and which Western interests are looking to get their hands on. Others include the country’s vast chernozem (lit. "black soil") fields – highly fertile agricultural land rich in humus, phosphorous, and ammonia compounds, plus other metals like iron ore, coal, and uranium.

Poland, Baltics Pushing for Ban on Russian LNG, Sanctions on Bank Used for Gas Payments: Reports

US hedge fund giant BlackRock signed a memorandum of understanding with Ukraine’s Economy Ministry on playing an "advisory role" in the country’s reconstruction in November. Last month, President Volodymyr Zelensky and Blackrock CEO Larry Fink discussed “channeling investment into the most relevant and impactful sectors of the Ukrainian economy.”

Zelensky has a long history of working with Black Rock – a major holder of Ukrainian sovereign debt, and other foreign investors and global banking and financial institutions. In 2020, Ukraine’s parliament moved to partially lift a decades-old moratorium on the sale of Ukraine’s chernozem-rich farmland, paving the way for foreigners to potentially be able to buy the land outright instead of leasing it, pending a national referendum. The lifting of the land sale moratorium has been a key condition of multi-billion dollar International Monetary Fund "development loans" to Kiev.

“Ukraine No Longer ‘Sovereign and Independent Country,’ Opposition Leader Says”

Last week, Zelensky personally thanked BlackRock, JPMorgan and Goldman Sachs for their support for Ukraine’s war effort, as well as the US military-industrial complex. “Everyone can become a big business by working with Ukraine in all sectors from weapons and defense to construction, from communication to agriculture, from transport to IT, from banks to medicine. And I believe that freedom must always win,” he said.

[taylastudio2022]

READING : ’THE UNCERTAINTY OF OBJECTS AND IDEAS - RECENT SCULPTURE’

’THE UNCERTAINTY OF OBJECTS AND IDEAS - RECENT SCULPTURE’

Hirshhorn Museum and Sculpture Garden, 2007. 

Exhibition & Essays: 

Associate Curator : Anne Ellegood

“From the experimental figural forms of Aguste Rodin and Henri Matisse to the abstract, geometric constructions of Alexander Calder and David Smith, Hirshhorn’s collection traces important developments and trends in twentieth-century sculpture. The Uncertainty of Objects and Ideas propels this exploration….. This exhibition features recent pieces by nine influential and emerging international sculptors and examines both the ways in which these artists respond to the history of modern sculpture and their efforts to make tangible seemingly intangible and challenging concepts…” (Forward). 

Sculpture: Not-Not-Not (Or, Pretty Air) Johana Burton:

Notes:

’Sculpture is made with two instruments and some supports and pretty air’ - Gertrude Stein 

“A curious thing about ‘sculpture’ is the way it gets defined: in the same way that one must walk around sculpture in order to see all sides, it seems that one must also talk around sculpture - getting somewhere and nowhere at once…” (10). 

“…for Picasso, sculpture was “the best comment that a painter can make on painting”; for Tony Smith, it was neither a monument nor an object but something else; for Robert Morris, sculptures were “useless three-dimensional things” that were “generally…thought of as one of those objects not at the polarities but falling between”;….” (10). 

“..Louise Nevelson, the medium proffered the rare opportunity to “rehabilitate” banal materials into “another life”. “ (10). 

“Classical sculpture has often been discusses as a reductive process… in which the form is “found”…” (10). 

“…more recent definitions tent to lean toward the additive (Dada “assemblage”)…though this distinction, too, should be complicated…. “ (10). 

Ways of thinking .. relevant today? contemporary sculpture? (11). 

“These questions, in tartare the aim of a number of recent exhibitions that grapple with a sculptural legacy whose terms have come to include “formalism,” “phenomenology,’ “process”…”found objects” and “conceptualism”…… (11). 

‘INSTALLATION’

“..variously ascribed hybrid genealogies that place it as the offspring of Dada, Fluxus, Happenings, constructivism, performance site-specificity….” (14). 

“Many contemporary artists seem to “do” installation, though nobody really seems to know precisely  how to define it - and this appears to be the point” (14). 

“Installation” has gradually surfaced, particularly in the last twenty years or so, as a kind of catch-all formulation, one that easily bends to accomodate all manner of works and practices that deal, however obliquely, with the spaces in which they are experienced. If there appears to be one particular that emerges from installations’s otherwise fluid (anti)-ontology, it is installation work creates a kind of triadic skin between itself, it’s viewers, and the place or place in which it - situates itself..” (14). 

“…installation is not necessarily about a space; it is about bodies in space and serves as a reminder that, within the “expanded field,” distinctions between what is are and what isn’t are no longer easily parsed…” (14).

“..an audience will be afforded movement of some kind - physical, psychological, communal…” (14). 

Description of sculpture by Eva Hesse, in the form of a letter to her friend, Sol LeWitt: “…we are left ultimately with a visual presence why deny that. can’t deny that… “

“Leo Steinb rug wrote about Rodin’s sculpture - the way actions of both producing and viewing sculpture are given a kind of structural operation by way of air: “ - “To begin with the space he creates, Rodin’s intuition of is of sculptural form in suspension. He finds bodies that coast and roll as if on air currents, that stay up like the moon, or bunch and disband under gravitational pressures. He seeks to create, by implication, a space more energetic than the forms it holds in solution” (16). 

“Sculpture - perhaps it’s so obvious it needn’t even be said - responds to the space around it…. offers viewers a chance to see something (besides themselves) and the experience, if for a moment, just what Stein meant by “pretty air”.  If there is something innately uncertain about sculpture, the doubt (and the promise) of the medium hovers in the space carved out between viewers and things.” (17). 

^Robert Harrison, Two Bathers, 2005.^

I found this a very relevant and enlightening read - although I have been working with sculpture since the beginning of the year, I am only recently really refining and starting to develop my place within sculpture. Installation/site responsive work has been the most recent step in development with my textile sculptures. 

It’s always helpful to put words to thoughts, or read someone else’s thoughts about ideas, such as sculpture. Body, form, and space, are all things I am thinking about in my own practice. 

[mostly-mundane-atla]

Frequently Asked Questions:

Is eskimo a slur?

"Eskimo" has a complicated history, and given how the people it's been applied to have been subject to like 4 different nations' colonial rule (Russia, the United States, Canada, and Denmark are the ones I know about), you're going to get some different answers depending on who you ask. Insisting that the word Eskimo be treated as a slur in every context leads to policing Indigenous folks and how we talk about ourselves and our cultural identities, so do understand that there is nuance that comes not just with the time period, but with where and among whom the word is used. The best way I've heard it explained is that you wouldn't tell a guy from the Philipines not to call himself Filipino, even though it's an exonym and a product of imperialism. The word eskimo has a complicated history and has been weaponized against vulnerable peoples, and so it's understandable if you don't feel comfortable with it, but understand in turn that Indigenous peoples are not required to alter the language we use for ourselves to conform to your idea of respectability.

What's a kuspuk?

A kuspuk (also spelled qaspeq) is a smock-like garment resulting from Euro-American style dresses and shirts being introduced to Inupiaq and Yup'ik peoples. Missionaries insisted on us dressing more modestly indoors (because traditionally indoor clothes didn't cover much and there really wasn't a nudity taboo), and we made alterations to the patterns to suit our needs. They were made bigger and looser to be worn over skin clothes, similar to a gut parka, and to be quicker and easier to make. Hoods and large front pockets were also added. They have become regalia but are also open to outsiders. It is not cultural appropriation to wear or draw kuspuks as someone who isn't eskimo. Everyone is welcome to it and it is understood as appreciation.

What does nalauģmiu mean? Is it an insult?

The literal translation with all the connotations and implications is something like "person of (defined specifically by) not knowing" or more simply "person who doesn't know", basically used to mean white people or cultural outsiders in general. It's no more insulting than "newbie".

Can you tell me about [Inuit thing]?

I can certainly try. The Inuit are a culturally diverse and geographically scattered group, King Islanders/Ukivokmiut/Uguivoqmiut were especially unique in our architecture and diet. I can try to share what I've picked up on, but I can't guarantee I'll really get the nuance down, as it might not be something I've grown up with and might even be from the other side of the North American continent

Are Inupiat and Inuit the same?

The ancestors of the Canadian Inuit and Greenlanders split from the ancestors of the Inupiat about 1000 years ago and we've developed seperately, in culture, technology, what have you. My family never refered to us as Inuit, choosing Native, Inupiat, or Eskimo instead. I don't refer to myself, or even really consider myself, as Inuk even tho on a technicality I am.

Can I draw traditional tattoos?

I don't mind the idea of nalauģmiut drawing traditional tattoos. Like using the word eskimo, I think prioritizing the idea that it should never be done can ultimately do as much harm to the quieter communities involved (the Inuit and Inupiat are not the only peoples with women's face tattoos and non-natives rarely try to educate themselves on our cultures or look into white-passing folks' cultural backgrounds) as good. That said, people tend to put in as little research as possible, leading to the cultural practices portrayed being bastardized for the sake of neat fan art. There are other visual aspects to the culture that are entirely for aesthetics, and insisting on tattoos you don't know the rules for or significance of is pretty gross.

Are Yup'ik peoples Inuit?

No, they're Yup'ik and have just as much a right to these discussions.

What are your pronouns?

They/them

Do you have a dni?

Not against any specific kinds of people, just in forms of interaction. Please don't reblog my posts about eskimo stuff to blogs with a lot of z*tara content. Don't drag me into fandom discourse (if I want to talk about it, I will on my own terms). Don't ask me my opinion on or tell me about your ships unprompted. Do not ask me for my opinion and tell me i'm wrong for having an opinion (yes, this has happened to me already). Do not suggest I'm some kind of bigot for not wanting characters written to resemble people of my culture to be proselytized to (this has also already happened to me). Understand that I'm a disabled adult with bills, a job, and other responsibilities. I will not always have time or energy to respond right away. If you have a question and are unsure if it crosses a line, you can ask me. Private messages are open and asks on the topic will be answered privately

Do you post fanfiction anywhere?

No.

[reflections-in-a-critical-eye]

BTS Bangtan Bombs and Authenticity

BTS Bangtan Bomb is usually a sort of material that releases behind the scenes footage, its purpose being to see another face of the band, how they act outside the stage, music videos and a way to see the members interact with each other in a more natural environment. I wanted to make a short analysis on the nature of this kind of media content because the way it's delivered is a bit more complex than what it looks like.

A Bangtan Bomb is filmed using a handheld camera, it doesn't have a voice over narration, uses synchronous sound and due to these possibilities, it's easier for the person shooting to be right in the middle of events. Looking at these technical aspects, it's safe to say that this style is influenced by the changes that came in the 1960s in regards to documentary filmmaking, that is the cinema verite and direct cinema. I'll make a short summary to explain what both mean in order to understand why it's relevant to what Bangtan Bombs reveal. Both cinema verite and direct cinema are part of what we call observational documentary, with few significant differences, but both styles are concerned with reality/authenticity. Cinema verite implies self-reflexivity as the filmmaker is an active participant that interviews the people in the documentary, tries to interrogate them in order to make the subjects reveal some truth that needs outside ''help'' to come out. This is exemplified by what Jean Rouch thinks about the purpose of intervening in order to achieve that: ''Rouch admits that he does not film reality as it is but reality as it is provoked by the act of filming’’ (Rothman 1997:87). In contrast to that we have direct cinema (developed in North America, with D.A. Pennebaker as one if its representatives, his documentary on Bob Dylan Don't Look Back being a perfect example) which is more observational, it's not intrusive, it's more concerned with so called objectivity for which the truth lies in exactly what the camera observes, without an intervention from the filmmaker.

Now that the short history lesson on documentary is over, let's see how it can be connected to the Bangtan Bombs. At first I thought it was closer to a form of direct cinema simply because there is no direct implication of the filmmaker (here the staff that is assigned to film the BB). We don't hear any questions asked and usually it assumes the position of what is called ''fly-on-the-wall''. But to categorize Bangtan Bombs as direct cinema would mean to ignore a lot of other elements, which led me to the conclusion that this type of content is a sort of hybrid between cinema verite and direct cinema while at the same time not being able to achieve that common purpose, which is realness, authenticity in terms of what those movements aimed to do and I will explain why.

In cinema verite, the intention in being intrusive and asking questions is to put the subject in a position where they self-reflect. In a Bangtan bomb, we do not hear a question, but it is implied when one member talks to the camera. He explains what the shooting is about, a few words about the concept (this happens usually in a BB of a music video or when they prepare a certain performance). Basically, the intervention in form of an interview is not there to reveal some truth, but to add more information, sometimes even promotional. There are instances when the members talk about what they feel and what are their expectations about what they are doing at that time and how they wish fans would like it when it comes out. In short we have a combination of observational footage, and from the filmmaker's point of view, we see BTS on set working, making jokes, sitting around laughing with each other or focusing on their phones, combined with short interviews segment.

Going a bit back to the history lesson, both cinema verite and direct cinema were criticized for a number of reasons, but the main one being related to objectivity, as this is actually impossible to achieve. Even in an observational format, there is subjectivity that can be found in the way a shot is framed, what gets in and what is left out. Then it goes through another process, which is editing where the shots are chosen and then cut. Another aspect is the performative nature. The subject naturally, involuntarily acts a certain way in front of a camera. He may become comfortable, but is always aware that there's someone filming (for example, we don’t hear anyone swearing while on set or it’s cut during editing). We can easily apply this to how a Bangtan Bomb looks. If we watch recent BB (as in the last few years. I'm not necessarily talking about all BB, especially those in the beginning which were more chaotic and that made them a bit more authentic and at the same time they were an opportunity for BTS to get time on camera, making their presence known, acting a bit more), we can see how they use close up shots for the interviews, with no intervention from anyone else inside the frame. The framing is restrictive even with other shots of members being on set. It's fragmented and the material used in the final product is one that usually focuses on short exchanges of dialogue between some members. We rarely see a discussion from beginning to an end in a Bangtan Bomb. In the BB Butter Epilogue the camera was offered to the members and more than half the footage consisted of filming themselves and each other and barely talking, with extra-diegetic music in order to fill those gaps. 

It's a sort of behind the scenes footage, but one that focuses on showing very light/funny segments, without going further than that, which is to say that it leaves out a lot of other things. This is where it lacks a bit of that sort of realness that comes with this type of filming. Of course there is the matter of privacy, but this is not what I'm talking about here when I refer to what lacks in a BB. BTS are shown while they pose for a shot, a music video, make jokes, but they are filmed as if they only talk to each other, despite being surrounded by other people. This is where a BB, through framing and editing creates a narrative and why, despite using techniques of observational documentary, it presents a manufactured version of events. BTS members may as well act together as naturally and normally as possible, have fun with each other while also have real talks, a dynamic that is present with friends/co-workers, but that part is sometimes left out.