#pallis — desires.

[temeryte]

NEW CHARACTER ALERT — Introducing Pallis, from Forgive Durden's Razia's Shadow. Pallis is the Crown Prince of the Dark, son to King Orionis and brother to Adakias. He is a study on The Resenter, The Dutiful Son, Forced into Evil, and more.  His face claim is Jonathan Rhys-Meyers and he is currently a secondary muse. Feel free to learn more about him on my Carrd.

[downs1de]

ADAKIAS: TAG DROP.

[godjo]

✮ — warrior’s executioner. 

you’re an earthquake that rocks his steady rhythm. 

tags — zoro x afab!reader. 1.3k wc. soft -> rough, like really, dappled with a lot of prose (i hope they make sense tbh). huge cock!zoro. creampie. a LOT of cum, sue me. cervix fucking. very explicit smut. minors, blank, and ageless blogs dni.

from hunter — i… don’t know. i felt so, so, soft for zoro in this fine afternoon. this fic made me vulnerable lmao. this is hardly proofread btw. ✮

imbued with an ache for glory since the sprout of his childhood, the way of the warrior lives in zoro’s skin and bones like a malignant disease of no existing palliative. he inhales the roughened edges of a samurai’s principle like air his lungs need to survive. these beliefs are claws of death that have grazed him one too many times, yet he wears the thousand cuts with pride. 

they whisper about him across the four seas: the devil wearing a human’s flesh, they say, siphoning his unyielding strength from the depths of hell. enemies see his swords like the embodiment of death, the extended hands of sharp torment, while allies revere his strength. 

his hands are tainted with blood from hard won victories. and zoro has never even thought of cleaning the proof of endless wars snaking along the lines of his palms until he’s met you. 

“are you sure you want this?” zoro asks for what seems like the third time, and for each you answer him with a feathery chuckle. “i don’t want to hurt you.” 

“you won’t hurt me, zoro.” there’s a spark of assurance in your eyes, fueled by conviction that it would take more than his tenacity to inflict pain upon you. 

zoro admires you for it; he desires you for that inelastic poise. and so he moistens his lips, guiding the raw end of his cock through your supple pussy lips. he’s been leaking like crazy, transparent lines of precum smeared all over your bare stomach where his rigid cock had been resting.

he palms his girth as if to soothe the stiffness; he’s unimaginably hard, pulsing with fierce vivacity. tremors rack zoro’s body, not on the account of anxiety, such is a distant feeling, but because of how much he wants to shove his thick cock right into your pussy, fuck you until your insides crumble.

“spread your legs wider for me,” he whispers, breath catching up in his throat when he feels the wet caress of your slabbering cunt around his flushed cocktip. 

you share a shuddering breath when he sheathes himself to the hilt, closing his good eye in concentration, in savoring the gummy embrace of your pussy around his twitching shaft. all the might and the brawn he’s built for years now melts into a thick puddle underneath his wavering feet. 

you’re an earthquake that rocks his steady rhythm. 

hovering above you, cautious as to not crush your ribcage with the weight of his immeasurable desire and wanton lust, zoro moves with calculated tempo. he pitches his head right below your chin, staggering breath fanning the crater between your collarbones. seconds— a dribble of a moment within which he loses his composure— that’s all it has taken for his gruff hand to cage the tender flesh of your waist and pull you with snapping vitality, therefore burying his hungry cock further in your insides. 

with an obscene yelp, you toss your head back. your weakened frame finds its leverage on zoro’s broad shoulders, leaving wild stripes of crimson on his golden skin with your nails. you can feel the ridges of his girth, the angry veins scraping your cunt repeatedly, making the little wet hole swell. 

“i’m sorry,” zoro confesses softly against your heated cheeks. “did i hurt you?”

you wish you can pour your heart out and say no, he’s not hurting you and he never will. tears grace the corner of your eyes, from the fluttering emotions hugging your belly, and you can only shake your head. at last, your hands find the curve of his flushed cheeks. he looks feverish, pushed into perpetual agony and terror of breaking you. like you’ve never done before, you tug him by the face and seal his lips with a kiss that quickly forms a whorl of saliva inside your mouths. you never let him go. 

zoro’s heart will burst, he swears it will. the unspoken consent triggers his primal need, the animalistic urge of wanting to prove how you drive him to the edge of insanity.

he pounds your pussy like a mad man freed from restraints. he folds your knees to fuck you properly while watching your cunt swallow his needy cock to the base. there are strings of transparent liquid connecting your pussy to his shaft, augmenting the smacking sound whenever he brings his weight down your soiled cervix. hungrily, repeatedly, mercilessly. 

“z… zoro!” your unabating and quivered chant injected with pleasure. “more… i need you— want you.”

need. 

his eye dilates as the word flows inside his system. he slides his upper body down to meet yours, a breathless yet fervent chuckle rising from his throat. zoro has been maiming your cervix with his insatiable cock for what seems like forever now. he’s been fucking you so maniacally that his bladder shudders and your pussy has turned a damped mess under his vigorous thrusts. all this is accompanied with brutal strength. 

instead of cowering away, you tell him to sink in you deeper. 

you, who emit the air of lavender blossoms and speak with honey in your mouth. you, whose featherlight touch whispers life into every withered thing. you, who keep a universe of all things soft and kind and gentle locked inside your velvet chest. 

“you’re perfect,” zoro murmurs against your mouth, pinning his cock one more time to your slabbering cunt. “and you’re mine.”

your belly heats up from the fervid claim. rapture, its pleasurable hand reaching for you, as zoro’s movements become deliberately slow. his spine moves like waves, the roll of his hips jittery yet deep. you feel it all at once when he pops your hardened nipple in his mouth. zoro suckles, salivating around the areola while maintaining his slow pace.

the heat picks up its intensity, along with the furiously lewd moan gaining strength and fleeing your lips. caged in a bubble of sensitivity that will burst at the seams with an airy touch, you clamp a hand over your mouth but zoro takes your wrist to pin beside your head. his final savage thrust sends rolling waves of euphoria squeezing your chest until the only way you can breathe again is to shout his name with a piece of your soul attached in it. 

zoro tattoos your expression in a huge part of his memory; the narrow of your brows, how your pretty lips shape his name, and the tears of release like silver satin adorning your eyes. with that image he buries his cock between your velvety walls, down and down until his cocktip meets your cervix again, and there— bouts of thick cum burst in your uterus. 

he screams your name, placing his life and his love between its syllables. you touch his face, soothing his shivers, but he just won’t stop filling your womb with fresh and viscid cum like he’s not busted a fat nut in a hundred years. zoro’s eye teared up at the sensation. 

“i… i can’t stop. fuck— it’s seeping. fuck, fuck—”

you lock your legs around his hips. “let it all out.”

zoro admits defeat and collapses on top of you. his cock continues to plug your pussy with blobs of cum. he withers beside you, then, and finally pulls out achingly. even without the grip of your cunt his swollen tip lazily oozes all over the sheets. 

“how are you feeling?” he tucks you in, securing your body with the warmth of his. 

“definitely sore,” you breathe, tracing the mark of stitches on his chest with a delicate finger. “but happy. how about you?”

he ponders at the question. how does he feel, truly? once, he wondered if his tenacity is just another word for wickedness and if shedding blood is the only purpose his unmatched strength serves. he pondered about the hunger he’s shackled in his core and whether it could only be satiated as he felled each enemy with a sword. 

zoro fears that he’ll never learn how to hold you close to his heart without tarnishing the perpetual twinkle of light in your luminescent eyes. but then he kisses you, and you do not flinch from its violence. 

zoro has found the answer, then. 

how could he ever hurt you when you make him tender?

how could he ever hurt you when you turn him to pieces?

[musicalslugs]

Grace and the Lords in Black: an analysis.

Okay, so, this may be obvious; although I haven’t seen anyone mention this as of yet. The link between Grace Chastity and the Lords in Black is clear, I mean we’ve all agreed that she seems to be like that, and Dirty Dudes must Die highlights her “corruption” plainly.

That being said! I think there may be more.

Firstly, the Lords in Black mention/talk to Grace first, before Peter and Stephanie (the arguable proper protagonists of this story).

Sure, Blinky’s motif is obvious, it’s of eyes, of watching and of observation. But to speak to Grace first, even if it seems (on the surface level) that it’s just to flex their omniscience and make her uncomfortable, is a little strange. Especially since they then speak mostly (only) to Steph for the rest of the song [The Summoning].

Secondly, because if that were all this wouldn’t be a very good analysis, we have her (Grace) and Nibbly being echoes of eachother.

“Swallow” and “devour” are synonymous. Both fit into Nibbly’s motif of consumption. Now, Grace could’ve said anything. Absorb, harness, control etc. I think the wording here is particular. Not exactly the same, but clearly within the same ball park.

What is exactly the same though, is Grace Chastity and Wiggly.

This may seem a bit out of left field at first, but hear me out.

In The Summoning, it is said that “Wiggly wants his Wrath”, Wrath is a vice, a sin. It may not be the exact opposite of Chastity, however Chastity is to do with restraint, whereas Wrath is very much, not so. Moreover, Wrath can be defined as ‘a great anger that expresses itself in a desire to punish someone’. Now… who else could be described as wrathful? Obviously Max. And Grace. I mean, her song is called Dirty Dudes must Die. As well as being a direct reflection of Max, it implies that she wants to harm someone. Punish someone though? Well, yes. Grace says “This is the consequence of what you’ve done!” - she must believe that death is a worthy punishment for their actions (being ‘pervs’). Thus, Wrath.

Lastly, and this is where the exactly comes in, Grace and Wiggly both say the same things. (Again, of course, I could write another analysis on how Grace and Max reflect each other beautifully by also saying the same/extremely similar things) The difference between Grace saying similar things to Max, is that she and Wiggly aren’t similar. It’s the same.

Example A) Stephy / Stephie.

Upon rewatching Nerdy Prudes Must Die and listening to the album on repeat, I noticed that no one bar these two call Stephanie: Stephie. I know Grace calls Ruth, Ruthy and Peter, Petey- so her calling Stephanie, Stephie, makes sense linguistically. That doesn’t take from the fact that Wiggly is the only other ‘person’ to use that particular moniker.

Example B) “bloody bits”

A particularly strange phrase that these two say. However, not really. The point of this analysis is to point out the links between the Lords in Black and Grace Chastity, specifically Wiggly and Grace. By pointing out the parallels in their idiolects, I have come to the conclusion that they are not only linked but INCREDIBLY similar.

Both are characters that use cutesy, almost childish language (“mommy spot” / “belly-well”) to disguise the violence, the wrath that lays beneath the surface. Wiggly (as shown in Black Friday) uses it as a facade. Throughout Black Friday and throughout The Summoning, he expresses himself as non-threatening (“We’re all pally-wals.” etc) before eventually showing what’s beneath the surface (“..deck the fucking halls!” / “We don’t give a shit about your phone!”). Both times are as abrupt as each other, showing that Wiggly has a fairly short temper. Grace doesn’t necessarily have a short temper, instead she has periods of ‘sin’, when stressed: Dirty Girl, calling “God a son of a B-Word”, smoking (after), having sex with Max, the scene of her ordering hot water etc etc. The visage, her carefully constructed facade, slips. Wether it’s because deep down she doesn’t believe in God (possibly shown in her “are you religious?” conversation with Shapiro), or that due to her upbringing she’s being confined, restrained, controlled, and this is when her ‘true self’ begins to peer through the cracks.

Either way, these are two characters who use similar themes (one of childishness, the other of purity/innocence (which can also be linked to childishness)) to cover their violence, their real selves.

Uhhh- anyway, watch Nerdy Prudes must Die on Youtube- it gave me brain worms.

[metanoias-substack]

Modern capitalism needs men who cooperate smoothly and in large numbers; who want to consume more and more; and whose tastes are standardized and can be easily influenced and anticipated. It needs men who feel free and independent, not subject to any authority or principle or conscience — yet willing to be commanded, to do what is expected of them, to fit into the social machine without friction; who can be guided without force, led without leaders, prompted without aim — except the one to make good, to be on the move, to function, to go ahead.

What is the outcome? Modern man is alienated from himself, from his fellow men, and from nature. He has been transformed into a commodity, experiences his life forces as an investment which must bring him the maximum profit obtainable under existing market conditions. Human relations are those of alienated automatons, each basing his security on staying close to the herd, and not being different in thought, feeling or action. While everybody tries to be as close as possible to the rest, everybody remains utterly alone, pervaded by the deep sense of insecurity, anxiety and guilt which always results when human separateness cannot be overcome.

Our civilization offers many palliatives which help people to be consciously unaware of this aloneness: first of all the strict routine of bureaucratized, mechanical work, which helps people to remain unaware of their most fundamental human desires, of the longing for transcendence and unity. Inasmuch the routine alone does not succeed in this, man overcomes his unconscious despair by the routine of amusement, the passive consumption of sounds and sights offered by the amusement industry; furthermore by the satisfaction of buying ever new things, and soon exchanging them for others.

Modern man is actually close to the picture Huxley describes in his Brave New World: well fed, well clad, satisfied sexually, yet without self, without any except the most superficial contact with his fellow man […].

Man's happiness today consists in "having fun". Having fun lies in the satisfaction of consuming and "taking in" commodities, sights, food, drinks, cigarettes, people, lectures, books, movies — all are consumed, swallowed. The world is one great object for our appetite, a big apple, a big bottle, a big breast; we are the sucklers, the eternally expectant ones, the hopeful ones — and the eternally disappointed ones. Our character is geared to exchange and to receive, to barter and to consume; everything, spiritual as well as material objects, becomes an object of exchange and of consumption.

— Erich Fromm, The Art of Loving (1956)

[compassionatereminders]

there is a girl with terminal cancer (she is under palliative care) on Instagram who announced that she is having a baby with her husband. She is being harshly criticized. people really are very cruel. One person even commented "aren't you going to die in less than a year? What do you want to have a child for?"

People are calling her selfish. This makes me so fucking mad. she simply loses the right to simply exist and fulfill her desires. People want her to live a miserable life. The hypocrisy is so big that people used to comment that they were hoping for a miracle and that she would get well soon. when she is well and happy, they comment absurd things. this world is terrible.

Yeah no that sucks! I support full fucking bodily autonomy for any disabled person, and if she and her husband wish to have a child, I think they're in their full right to do that

[thesargasmicgoddess]

I'm so envious of the way you live your life. Your energy and outlook are intoxicating! I wish we could be friends.

Thank you! My 40s have been a CRAZY RIDE so far. By choice. And I have no regrets. It has been about learning how to harness my passions, desires, and goals and just going for it. Sometimes you get hurt, sometimes you win big, but always you learn and grow.

Really, I just want to try to thrive and live with every moment I have--which has meant digging deep to embrace a certain energy and fearlessness I didn't know I had. There was a book I read not too long ago written by a palliative caregiver, and it really resonated with me. A lot of people live and die without truly living and leave this world with many regrets. I'm working to not be one of them.

Growth is scary, but oh, so beautiful. Thanks for following along this ride! ❤️

[duckprintspress]

National Non-Fiction Day: 31 Titles to Get Your Queer Learn On!

In the past year, we’ve posted a lot about our favorite queer fiction titles. We wanted to take Non-Fiction day to talk about the non-fiction titles that have impacted us! Whether self-help, memoirs, psychology, history, sociology, or a different non-fiction genre, these are books that have helped us learn, helped us teach, helped us improve, helped us see and be seen, and helped us be more informed. So join us as we introduce our thirty-one recommendations for National Non-Fiction Day!

Fine: A Comic About Gender by Rhea Ewing

Gender Born, Gender Made: Raising Healthy Gender-Nonconforming Children by Diane Ehrensaft

Dear Senthuran: A Black Spirit Memoir by Akwaeke Emezi

Fun Home: A Family Tragicomic by Alison Bechdel

Ace: What Asexuality Reveals about Desire, Society, and the Meaning of Sex by Angela Chen

Here For It: Or, How to Save Your Soul in America by R. Eric Thomas

Transforming: The Bible and the Lives of Transgender Christians by Austen Hartke

Bitch: On the Female of the Species by Lucy Cooke

Unmasking Autism: Discovering the New Faces of Neurodiversity by Devon Price

My Lesbian Experience with Loneliness by Nagata Kabi

transister: Raising Twins in a Gender-Bending World by Kate Brookes

!Hola Papi!: How to Come Out in a Walmart Parking Lot and Other Life Lessons by John Paul Brammer

Strangers: Homosexual Love in the Nineteenth Century by Graham Robb

London and the Culture of Homosexuality, 1885 – 1914 by Matt Cook

Queering Your Craft: Witchcraft from the Margins by Cassandra Snow

Female Husbands: A Trans History by Jen Manion

The Ethical Slut: A Guide to Infinite Sexual Possibilities by Janet W. W. Hardy and Dossie Easton

The New Queer Conscience by Adam Eli

Before We Were Trans: A New History of Gender by Kit Heyam

Testosterone Rex: Myths of Sex, Science, and Society by Cordelia Fine

Peculiar Places: A Queer Crip History of White Rural Nonconformity by Ryan Lee Cartwright

Delusions of Gender: How Our Minds, Society, and Neurosexism Create Difference by Cordelia Fine

Queer Budapest, 1873 – 1961 by Anita Kurimay

LGBTQ-Inclusive Hospice and Palliative Care by Kimberly D. Acquaviva

Queering Colonial Natal: Indigeneity and the Violence of Belonging in Southern Africa by T. J. Tallie

Handbook of LGBT Elders: An Interdisciplinary Approach to Principles, Practices, and Policies edited by Debra A. Harley and Pamela B. Teaster

LGBT Transnational Identity and the Media by Christopher Pullen

Gender Diversity: Crosscultural Variations by Serena Nanda

LGBTQ Cultures: What Healthcare Professionals Need to Know about Sexual and Gender Diversity by M. J. Eliason and P. L. Chinn

The Terrible We: Thinking with Trans Maladjustment by Cameron Awkward-Rich

Trans Bodies, Trans Selves: A Resource for the Transgender Community edited by Laura Erickson-Schroth

You can view this list as a shelf on Goodreads!

It can be so difficult to find good non-fiction resources on queer topics. Which titles to DO you recommend?

[santoschristos]

THE POWER OF SEX

If you knew the Power of Sex you wouldn't need therapists, or substances to stimulate you to joy. You wouldn't open the doors of your life to just anyone, looking for that someone who wants to love you.

If you knew the Power of Sex, you'd know that your body is a temple, and you wouldn't let anything or anyone desecrate it.

You would feed him pure energy, pure feelings, good love. You wouldn't allow toxicity into relationships or other poisons (like many of those you call medicine or food).

If you knew the Power of Sex you would know the body heals itself. Moreover, you should never have been sick. Why? Well, because the body is nourished with love, it is nourished with pleasure, of joy... And thats sex. A portal to the greatest love we can give ourselves, an emulation of primitive ecstasy. An evocation to the Origin of Stellar Being, a fractal of Creation in which to recreate ourselves. You can re-create yourself through sex.

Plus suppressed sexuality, resentful sexuality, has led us to extreme darkness. He has filled the sex of the mind and not of the spirit, he has desecrated the most Holy turning it into a source of pain, torture, distortion, self-punishment.

He who gives up his body without desire, without love, is condemned. Whoever seeks palliatives to his ego, his loneliness or his pain, only attracts more scarcity when, after sexual act, he becomes empty. And so matter degenerates. This is how disease, depression, dependence, fatigue, apathy appear. This is how personal power and couples dissolve. This is how the Holy Being, the Spiritual Being is lost into oblivion.

Sex is beauty. Sex is Purity. Sex is the Life-giving Force, that runs through your body right now. When you deny sex you are denying your own life energy, your connection to the whole, to life itself. When you exalt physical sex, you are denying a part (the most important) of yourself, and thereby hurting your energy and your physical body.

Therefore, if you want to resume good use of your sexual energy, you must remember that you are Spirit. That whoever shares with you is giving you his own Being, his own Holy Temple. Enter filled with humility and respect, honor the immense act of love of that moment, of that contact.

Sex to be "good" must start in the heart, not higher or lower. It must be imbued with Sacrificiality, not lust. And it can either be gentle or wild, as long as it follows the rhythm that bodies and hearts ask for. Also remember that there is sex in breathing, that looking at can be a caress. That your way of honoring your sexual expression is your way of honoring Life.

Like this one: enjoy it. Like this: Dare. Like this: Take it to the next level.

Feel, seek, explore, try and don't limit yourself. Remove your mind, put your heart in it and have fun! Be a kid playing forever.

From the wall of SYRIUS. 1.1.1.1.

Art: Embraced by Light by Phazed

[unsettlingconclusions]

As someone currently under training to become a palliative care doctor, Isidro’s storyline is amusing to me at the moment.

Medicine was extremely paternalistic until not very long ago. Patient centered medicine is extremely new. The movement making it more popular are like 20 years old or something.

“In patient-centered care, an individual’s specific health needs and desired health outcomes are the driving force behind all health care decisions and quality measurements”

It’s a novela, so the suffering from someone going through end-stage heart disease is certainly absent. An experimental treatment is what the name says, it’s an experiment. It might work, might not work, might prolong someone’s life in pain.

It being expensive was a script recourse to add drama and involve Marta’s family, which from a text point of view is ok. As it is more than okay for Isidro to refuse a care that is uncertain and would drown his daughter in debt. And he had every right to do that.

Unpopular opinion but on this topic, seeing it from a shallow view, Fina isn’t feisty, she’s being full of herself and trying to drive her father towards an unknown treatment to ease her wrongly perceived guilt of being to blame for her father’s death. And it’s not because she just doesn’t trust Jaime (which is fair! More than fair!), but she also didn’t listen to Luz when Luz wouldn’t tell her what she wanted. And won’t listen to Marta either, all she sees is her pain and her guilt.

Being deeper, it’s also understandable for Fina to go through all this considering she has just finally grasped the gravity of her dad’s condition and being faced with the inevitability of death (as in, death is by nature inevitable, but being faced with it brings a lot of feelings of fighting it as much as possible).

On the infodump side of things, this obstinacy in fighting death is also relatively new in human culture. Interestingly, it rose as medical technology increased, it’s a byproduct of the advancement of medicine. Which is precisely what we’re seeing here.

Anyways! We have here a 2024 telenovela writing a medical arc that happens in 1958 with doctors acting more human and less paternalistic than what we see in medicine today. I don’t know if it was intentional, but I admire this route anyway.

(Another point of interest, the paternalism was adopted by Damián. He behaved much the way that would have been expected of a doctor of those days. I could provide so many examples of how pervasive paternalistic medicine can be but I’m not going to ruin everyone’s day.)

[3fc0eb]

Clay Puppington, Overview Pt. 3

Until now I've left out one very influential figure in Clay's life. Someone who does offer a familiar feeling for him. A feeling he's sought after for years and has never found.

Danielle Stopframe.

Despite having only semi-officially met in the first episode, Danielle has had his eyes on Clay for much longer.

“...By the way, my name's–” “Later pally.”

We see evidence for how far back his obsession began in Beforel Orel, when he sleeps with Bloberta, and the photo album in Numb implies he's been leading her on even earlier than that in an effort to embed himself to get closer to Clay. 

He is repeatedly a source of comfort for Clay whenever things go downhill in his life.

“Don't worry. She'll never go through with the divorce.”

“No, you're better when you drink.”

“I'm just so tense.”

From writing him a twelve page letter to burning down the house of someone who brought Clay trouble, Danielle has effectively coddled Clay to a degree not dissimilar to Angela. 

The force of positive validation is what draws Clay back to Danielle time and again. He provides the closest feeling to Clay that he'd gotten from his mother.

And that is what Clay is seeking. A return to his mother. Such is alluded to in Nesting. 

Or, more accurately, a return to the feelings his mother gave him. He hasn't experienced that level of affection since he lost his mother, and as he's aged, he's conflated those feelings with what he desires from a significant other. 

Orel's argument against eggs triggers the realization in Clay that he craves his mother's love again, but now with a sexual element. 

He's disgusted with this fact, but it remains fixated in his mind, sparking his tangent about eggs in his debate against Censordoll. 

Notably, Nesting also returns to the idea that Clay represents death. Much like he himself realizes in Nature. His life is full of “sudden withering death.”

He killed his own happiness, he killed his wife's interest in him, he killed his own mother. 

Returning to his debate with Censordoll, his epiphany about eggs is met with flat faces in the audience and Putty awkwardly shifting to Censordoll's rebuttal. However, she keyed in on the underlying message in Clay's rant. She recognized his weakness to maternal love.

This is why, despite having been supporting him throughout the series, Censordoll gets further with Clay than Danielle ever had. 

Clay gets the affection he needs from Censordoll without paying any mind to Danielle. Honor centered around Danielle's conflicting feelings about Clay, coinciding with Orel's inability to find the good in his father. 

Clay witnesses the two bonding after Danielle shuts him down when he desires more positive reinforcement. 

The affection Clay wishes for is being spent on Orel instead, prompting Clay to find an excuse to storm Danielle's home.

“The thought of the two of you together makes my skin crawl.”

This scene illustrates the sheer jealousy Clay feels as someone else takes attention away from him. Just as he was when his mother revealed he wasn't her first child.

“Well it worked! You got to me! Now you stay away from him, he's not yours, I am!”

This scene needs to be carefully dissected, because this backwards confession is masked in order for Clay to have a frail excuse at maintaining appearances.

“I miss you Orel.”

“I need you in my life Orel.”

“And I- I love you. I love you I love you I love you… Orel.”

He clearly isn't talking about Orel. 

The first reaction would be that he's speaking about Danielle. 

However, what Clay craves– what he needs more than anything else in life– is the feeling Danielle gives him. 

Clay was raised to become a malignant narcissist, incapable of giving the type of love he demands to receive. 

He misses the affection.

He needs the affection in his life.

And he loves, more than anything else, the feeling of being worshiped.

Danielle just happened to be the closest source of what Clay desired. He's seeking affection.

That much is even supported by the writer, in 44 Nights of Moral Orel.

“Do you think Clay is gay?”

“No, I think Clay is looking for affection.”

“Yeah. That's what I thought, too.”

Danielle rejects him after this, realizing what it was that Clay was after and what he was truly like.

One of the canceled episodes was going to continue Clay's affair with Censordoll as well.

Unfortunately, none of that had come to pass as the series was canceled before these arcs were realized. 

Regardless, even with being cut short, the series has been impressively impactful and speaks volumes about the pressures of society and the complexities of interpersonal connections.

Clay never learned how to love, and thus, he only knows how to seek out love from others.

That concludes the evaluation of Clay's character. From archetypal father figure to an illustration of the effects of malignant narcissism.

I'm completely open for input, so if you feel I've overlooked something or evaluated something differently from you have, feel free to message me about it! I'd love to talk about these characters more.

[temeryte]

NEW CHARACTER ALERT — Introducing King Orionis, an original character set in the universe of Razia's Shadow by Forgive Durden. Orionis is the King of the Dark and father of Adakias and Pallis, and is a study on Tragic Backstories, Fractured Family Dynamics, The Weight of Duty, and more.  His face claim is Clive Standen and he is currently a secondary muse. Feel free to learn more about him on my Carrd.

[downs1de]

PALLIS: TAG DROP.

[oldbutnotyetwise]

Obituary

Obituary

Brady, David Joseph - Well if you are reading this then I guess I am now dead, I passed away on Thursday, May 23, 2024, shortly before my 65th birthday.  Death is a part of life, my death was not unexpected, and I had a good run. Don’t feel sorry for me because I left this earth surrounded by the best wife, daughter, family, and friends anyone could ever ask for.   For those of you who thought I could never achieve that smoking hot body, you are wrong, Cremation is to take place.

     I am predeceased by my Parents Gordon and Nora (Goldsworthy) and brother Michael.  I am survived by the absolutely best wife ever, Robin, the most incredible daughter Elizabeth, sister Patricia (Jeannine & Hannah), Step-Mother Alberta, and the Teodori Step Adults Quinton (Kiran), Harrison (Kristin), Jack and Isabelle.

     I was born and raised in St. Catharines and spent seven years with General Motors Security before moving to the Hamilton Police Service where I worked for 31 years and retired as the Grumpy Old Detective in the Corner.  Policing was both the best, and the worst career I could have ever asked for.  I like to think that I made a difference.  It also gave me a collection of inspiring, loving and empathetic friends, some who literally saved my life, and many who stayed by my side during the challenging times.

     Robin and I then became caretakers of our dream on 98 acres in the incredibly beautiful township of Nipissing.  It is here that I worked part time at the Powassan Home Hardware where I distinguished myself as a the carrier of heavy things and the getter of things on the top shelf.  When ALS came to visit, we gave up our dream in Nipissing and moved to Cambridge to be closer to family, friends and health care.

      So who was I?  I was just a regular guy trying to do what was right, and as I got older I like to think I got better at that.  I was proud of my career in Policing, and of all the awards received over the years, I was most proud of the Victim Services Award for looking after my Victims of Crime.  I enjoyed my time as a Baseball Coach with the Hamilton Challenger Baseball League where my players inspired me on a weekly basis.  I was an under appreciated Master of the Pun.  In later life I started writing a blog with my ponderances on this thing we call life, I am grateful to my small group of loyal readers.  I tried my best to be a good husband to Robin, and a good father to Elizabeth and I hope that they would say that I was.  I tried to be a dependable, loyal friend, a mentor and someone who dispensed random acts of kindness.  I hope if you knew me that you would agree that sounds a little bit like me.

     A special thank you to those who made the effort to stay in touch and help out during the challenging times, you know who you are, the words don’t exist that would adequately describe how grateful we were for everything that you did.  Thank you to the ALS Clinic at Sunnybrook Hospital, and all my fellow travellers on this ALS Highway that became friends.  Special Thanks to Dr. Sandor and her Palliative Care Team who looked after me so well at the end.

     If I can share one piece of advice, Don’t keep putting things off until tomorrow, because sometimes tomorrow doesn’t come.

     If you so desire, donations to ALS Action Canada (https://www.alsactioncanada.org), but I would really like it if you could just do something nice for someone who could use some kindness shown to them.

    

Live Simply

Love Generously

Care Deeply

Speak Kindly

        

[iamluzgar]

I finally finished FFXIV Dawntrail and I have many many thoughts about it. So, spoilers, and bare with me.

I had a lot of troubles to get into it at first, but I always feel that way for much of the extension I've played so it didn't change much. I pushed through, and I'm glad I did. I loved the theme of discovering new people and cultures to get to know them, and to like them. Which was an ongoing thing.

I liked Wuk Lamat a lot as a character. She's a bit immature, but she has a lot of potential, as you say to Gulool Ja. Loved having Thancred and Urianger against me for a change, especially in that dungeon. I got into it more and more, wanting Wuk Lamat to succeed because there were many hints showing she would do well (like for example with the bandits, I saw another post on tumblr mentioning it, but she directly thought about a system failiure problem, rather than thinking the people were bad). She adapted herself to the best of her ability to the culture she met with an open mind, even when she was afraid, unsure or disagreed with it. The VA did a fantastic job imo for her voice.

Of course the rest of the gang was here too and it was incredible. I loved how Erenville finally got the spotlight he so deserved. I wasn't a fan of Krile, but now I do like her and that's the power of FFXIV imo.

Anyway, the first part was great, and it was an important part because the WoL can finally indulge in some "selfish" actions like battling big dudes, deities, eating stuff, traveling, meeting people, doing the good old Azem and I think they'd be proud. The game keeps pushing you Emet, from what he said to you on the last expansion, and I liked that, it keeps him alive. I obviously missed Venat, Hythlodaeus, Elidibus and Emet a lot from this expansion, so it was nice to have some mentions of them. However, especially with the second part of the game, you realize how the shadow of the Ascien still fly above us and all of the reflections. Because I am persuaded they had a hand in the creation of electrope and the key.

The second part was even greater. It started weak with the Western like stuff (I'm not a fan of that and it felt like post-MSQ quests), but then it really starts: not only it brings back stakes (because... Well, I laughed when people made Valigarmanda a "big threat", considering we killed Despair a few months ago in the game), but it also is a pay off from the first part. You grew attached to Wuk Lamat, to Tuliyollal and its people. And now they're in danger.

Which brings us to New Alexandria, with its strange culture of pushing away death. The whole part with Alexandria felt like a metaphore from our own real world. We too, tend to push death away, put people dying away from society and from our eyes, forget them. It really resonated with my experience, especially considering I've been a volunteer in palliative care for a year. The whole thing of accepting death is a main topic in this second part of the game.

We brushed a bit too fast over the identity issues Zoraal Ja felt, I feel, sadly. I wish we could have had a bit more to humanize him.

Then the last zone... It truly touched my soul. We do the exact opposite thing that we did in Endwalker. In Endwalker, we started from nothing, we added music, colors, we reanimated species from death. In Dawntrail, we "turned off" people, we removed the colors and the songs from the places we were visiting. It was powerful to observe it, doing a different kind of walk, maybe even a harder one. Idk for WoL, but it was harder for me. Because we were still "killing" people, and we can only sympathize with Sphene's desires to let her people live more, whatever the cost of it. We hope and pray there might be another way for everybody to be happy.

It brings me back to palliative care in the real world. This world Sphene created, was a metaphor for therapeutic obstinacy and the artificial prolongation of life. At some point, there is nothing you can do, and you have to "pull the plug". You have to say good bye. To your own family, to your friends, to people you knew more or less. What's left of them then? All the memories you had with them, and that's it, and as the Yok Huy's philosophy, they kinda live through you that way.

Contrary to Meteion, our action of killing the people in that zone was not born of desperation of not being able to save them, but from an acknowledgement that this artificial prolongation of life is no longer sustainable, it will give more pain and will sacrifice ressources that could be given to people who still have a chance to continue living. At some point, when there is no chance to sustain a life, we need to make peace with the fact that it's over. That death is a part of life, and might always be. The next day always happen, with a beautiful sunset, new lives, new hopes, new stories, and new adventures, with new people. It's an end, but it's not the end.

As someone who lost my mom when I was a teenager, it was comforting to see those moms having so much hope, love and pride for their children. I could hear my own mom through them. We see a lot of moms, and we have to say good bye to a lot of them, and that was difficult. I both hate and like the fact that FFXIV has a tendency to kill moms or otherwise important female caretaking figures. :( They displayed a lot of different relationships between family members regarding their future death, and that was also interesting. Family, in the large sense of it, was a very big topic of this expansion.

On a gameplay part, I loved almost everything. They upped up the difficulty a notch, and it was perfect. I love how they made new ways of seeing AoE while also still making it clear it's an AoE. Very good ideas there. Loved the last two dungeons.

I was not a fan of the music this extension, but well nothing is perfect. I'm not a fan of FFIX and obviously a lot was taken from it.

Hope that didn't bore you out!

TL;DR Incredible writing as usual.

[mlybrnte]

Lolita - Vladimir Nabokov (Book Review)

What no one tells you about reading Lolita is that there is an initial visceral shock to encountering a very fucked up story. And then years later, you read it again in full attention and skill without realizing that so much tears have run out of you. 

Me at 15: “this is horrific.”

Me at 22: “sad, sad, sad.”

I found myself weeping the moment I woke up from a nap induced by the memory of Nabokov’s novel. Lolita is told from the perspective of the pedophile himself, Humbert Humbert. What I respect so much from Nabokov is that no matter how, in minute subtle ways, we get a glimpse of victim Dolores Haze’s mind, a triumphant reader is able to grasp the whole spectrum of her childhood. How her rebellious streak is a scream of help, her calculating participation in Humbert’s crime is an attempt to get away from him, that she, even in her young age, is able to discern and choose a miserable life as opposed to being with him. And contrary to popular opinion, Humbert was less manipulative. Dolores hated his guts, and had seen through his actions and words. And Nabokov presents Humbert only as a manipulator of a story rather than his own life. He is a terrible, pathetic, egoistic white man who believes he is not like other pedophiles by associating the beauty of his victim akin to Botticelli’s Venus. Lolita wasn’t groomed because Humbert was easily a charming man, she was groomed because she had nowhere else to go. And of course, who would dehumanize a 12-year old for not having enough agency to get away? 

What is so incredibly impressive in Nabokov’s approach that I believe some authors should imitate is depicting a crime without making it pornographic. For a book that is basically a pedophile’s account, the scenes were not explicit or sensual. But since he aimed to write from the point of view of a man who finds this as aesthetically pleasing, the narrative is obscured in flowery language and metaphor.  At one point, I could not gather whether he had already done it because of his attempts to pacify the reader with impressive writing. Even sickening was arguing that there was nothing wrong after all since Lolita was no longer a virgin.

At the very core, Lolita is a horror story. I am quite appalled at the common general belief that it is a love story; that at some point, Humbert did love his little girl. ‘The tragedy lies in their unrequited romance.’ Nabokov would’ve risen from the grave. I would argue that, yes, while the rape scenes were subtext, and the author did not attempt to exhaust anatomical details,  (actually, no matter how embellished a rape scene is with highbrow vocabulary and figures of speech, it’s an issue of skill for not arriving at the conclusion that he raped her, or perhaps a denial of one’s own true mental compass.) one paragraph from the novel struck me as a very obvious admission of guilt:

“Alas, I was unable to transcend the simple human fact that whatever spiritual solace I might find, whatever lithophanic eternities might be provided for me, nothing could make my Lolita forget the foul lust I had inflicted upon her. Unless it can be proven to me — to me as I am now, today, with my heart and by beard, and my putrefaction — that in the infinite run it does not matter a jot that a North American girl-child named Dolores Haze had been deprived of her childhood by a maniac, unless this can be proven (and if it can, then life is a joke), I see nothing for the treatment of my misery but the melancholy and very local palliative of articulate art.”

Humbert himself acknowledges that to otherwise admit he had ruined Lolita’s life is a joke. He would go to hell in any religion because of the foul lust he had inflicted upon her. And no being could prove to him that he did not deprive her of a childhood. No subtext needed. No desire for hints. So many paragraphs are evidence alone. Nabokov never painted Humbert in a color different from a monster. Many times he was clearly written like a pathetic loser who died as miserable as he was living. I believe Humbert’s account to have someone sympathize with him is in earnest, a hypocritical and narcissistic attempt to not hold himself fully accountable. And to point a finger at the author for being a ‘creep’ because of his depiction of abuse is quite ridiculous. Reading the book carefully would equip you with a crystal clear conclusion that depiction is not always endorsement. So to arrive at romanticizing the story, Nabokov does a good job of holding up a mirror to show confirmation that abuse can be in the form of romantic prose, that we lack the ability to set apart roses from blood. 

This is perhaps one of the saddest books I have ever read. I hope all Dolores Hazes in the world find peace and happiness.