welcome-to-oslov

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Okay if you need a laugh, I am going to throw out the dumbest Tilrey comparison ever 👀 Bear with me 😂

Just did a brief Felicity S1 rewatch and let me tell you for one reason & one reason only: Ben i.e. young Scott Speedman. My god that guy was stunning. He surprisingly played vulnerable very well. And it turned out his character had a traumatic background I forgot all about.

In S1Ep5, he & Felicity had a home invasion in his loft while studying: guns held to their heads, shoved to the floor, he got punched in the stomach, etc. It turns out he didn't handle it well: they barely knew each other at that point, but he started showing up at her apt to sleep b/c he was scared to be in his. Bolted out of the police station while they were supposed to look at suspects b/c he couldn't handle it. He finally confessed to her that the attack, which she'd handled pretty well, triggered him badly because his father was an unpredictable abusive alcoholic. "I came all the way to New York to feel safe; imagine that, NYC to be safe," he said wryly. He hinted about his dad. "I never wanted to feel that again. And now, in that loft..."

Anyway, reminded me a bit of what you wrote about Tilrey needing so much to, but being so far from, feeling safe.

(Also, proof of concept for Eternally Hot Tilrey: the guy turns 50 this year and still looks almost as good as he did in his 20s. It can be done! 😄)

Tilrey comparisons are never dumb! I watched Felicity when it first aired (feels like yesterday 😁), and I totally forgot about that episode. And how hot he was. He’s aged well, oh my. I should revisit that show.

Speaking of TV, I finally got into The Bear, and while I wouldn’t compare any of those guys physically to Tilrey, the portrayal of men dealing with traumatic histories and vulnerability is excellent (and not at all what I expected from the first couple episodes). Joel McHale’s character is the Malsha of the chef world.

Working on the next chapter, since we can’t leave Tilrey like that! 😢

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Random question but I'm curious:

What does Tilrey not like about anal sex?

From his kettle boy days to his secretary life, his thoughts mention several times throughout the saga that he doesn't usually like it happening to him.

We get inside his head a lot during sex which has been super interesting and just hungry for more

Good question! I think the problem is his history with the act rather than the act itself. He eventually starts to relax and enjoy it more, probably in Harbour with Gersha, though I’d need to reread to be sure.

He did enjoy it with Bror too, but he had trouble relaxing into it without imagining he was Ansha. So it’s more of a mental block than an inability to enjoy it physically. And Tilrey himself created that mental block earlier, when he was going through violent rape and then gentler but still unwanted sex with Malsha. He learned to distance and dissociate and convince himself it wasn’t even happening. At this point, staying inside his body while it happens is an incredible struggle for him.

I think it’s easier for him to give head because he’s not expecting to enjoy it, and he feels like a professional who is doing an expert job. That’s the lesson Matthias taught him at the Brothel—he could be active and in control, and that could feel good in its own way. Of course, that control was taken away during the Spring Fling.

But to enjoy anal, he would need to enjoy losing or relinquishing control to an extent. And he can’t fathom willingly doing that right now. What he needs, I think, is to feel safe—not just to know intellectually that he’s safe, but to feel it deep down in his bones. And that feeling can take years after the abuse to sink in. 😢

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Everyone's being so hard on Jorning -- c'mon, he apologized, right?! j/k

I did find his prayer sweet fwiw

I go back and forth on Jorning but taking him at face value: I think he's exactly as he appears. He values his job and will fulfill it to the death (literally). He's a bit of a weirdo others might not like who prob ended up in this job with Linden b/c Linden's a bit of a weirdo too who others wouldn't want to work for. I think he's turned on by D/s -- being with Linden lets him scratch that itch like an Upstart... and maybe he doesn't quite admit to himself how much he likes that. He's turned on by Tilrey's inexperience or naivete when it comes to their scenes; why else is he such a poor communicator before scenes? He's not a monster, he does want to help Tilrey & take care of him, but...his actions don't match that? Maybe he's gaslighting himself too :/

I think you called it—Jorning is a weirdo, he doesn’t really grasp how creepy and contradictory he’s being, and he’s gaslighting himself. He clings to rules—military discipline was probably very reassuring to him. Obeying the Fir is Rule No. 1 in his mind, and he can’t even imagine breaking it. He tells himself that it’s right for Tilrey to be punished because Tilrey broke the rules. But then he’s shocked (though he shouldn’t be) to see that Linden himself is breaking the rules by seriously hurting Tilrey.

I don’t think Jorning enjoyed restraining Tilrey for this horrific beating the way he enjoyed the D/s scene. The lack of boundaries scared him. But he still did it. Even if the whole thing happened very fast, that’s messed-up behavior. He’s clearly got some “banality of evil” and “I was only following orders” going on—hence the apologies and disclaimers later.

I think Jorning Stockholm syndromed himself into accepting abuse from the Fir, and now he’ll do his best to have the same effect on Tilrey. I know Stockholm syndrome has been debunked, but in certain abusive situations, bonding with the abuser can seem like a survival strategy—especially when seeking outside help isn’t an option. And Jorning is in a position to present himself as protector rather than abuser, good cop to Linden’s bad cop, even though we know that’s not true.

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well I guess Tilrey's gonna get a little break from getting fucked that he was so tired of 😳😭 No hospital conjugal visits I presume 😭

Yes, he will get a bit of a break! But not as long as he’d like. There’s a flashback in the final story where we see that he had to go to Verán with his jaw still wired—something that can last 4-6 weeks depending on the severity of the injury, according to my very cursory research. 🥺

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Re Ch. 53...

Oh Tilrey 🥺

I'm more happy than ever that he fought back in that dungeon in Oslov Unravelled.

....As for right now 🥺.... He's been lying to himself for so long. That he can be okay and control things. He can behave. He can learn. He has status. He's young, he's gotten strong, he could even fight them off.

Refusing to think about the times/ways he couldn't be okay and couldn't control things.

But now he has to face the reality that the only reason nothing that awful has happened to him before is simply because no one did it to him before. That any of them could, at any time.

You phrased it so perfectly! That realization that the boundaries are just made up, that there are no boundaries unless he can enforce them, is chilling. I think that’s maybe one of the scariest realizations a person (or sometimes a whole society!) can have.

Tilrey has been working so hard on establishing a sense of safety and normality in his life, and Bror helped him, because for Bror being a kettle boy is pretty normal and okay. But Bror has an Upstart patron who wouldn’t allow him to be hurt, and he has family in Redda who would at least attempt to do something about it. Tilrey has neither.

The rest of Tilrey’s time with Linden will be about rebuilding his sense of safety, because it’s the only way to stay sane. But learning the “rules” to keep himself safe (such as they are) comes at a price, as we already know. 🥺

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I'm curious: do you think anyone in Redda who benefitted from Tilrey ever also felt sorry for him?

I guess thinking of him in these kettleboy years, but really any time I guess.

Fir Jena did mention (while enraged at him in the first chapter) "And to think, I'd felt *sorry* for you!" And we know he'd sobbed to his wife (presumably the day of Tilrey's first conscious time with him) "I raped him". Artur felt sorry for him. Verán's wife too, I suppose, on that plane? And Adelbert, who screwed him over & really hurt him, taking advantage of his naive hope to be freed.

But as for those who actually used him? Saldegren came so close to actually seeing young Tilrey's situation yet just glazed right over it, and I guess Gourmanian in a way did but instead reveled in it. Maybe any other Gershas out there who observed but turned down participating?

I’ve been pondering this one! It seems like everyone who actually does use Tilrey finds a way to rationalize it, and that means not pitying him. Even Gersha, at first, falls for the front that Tilrey is putting up. By that time, Tilrey has stopped expressing discomfort or sadness and is presenting as the happy kettle boy they all want him to be. He’s learned from Saldegren, Gourmanian, and the rest what they want to see from him. Even Besha, who knows Tilrey tried to run away, appears to buy this act—but Besha is a sadistic little shit, so I guess he also doesn’t care much how Tilrey feels.

There are two more borderline cases coming up, though. First is Tollsha, who’s sort of thrown together with Tilrey, much like Gersha. And second (soonish to come) is Tollsha’s mom, Adeled. You may remember from ASB that she does use Tilrey. But she’s also quite sympathetic to him and wishes she could help him more.

Both these Lindens have enough empathy to see Tilrey is in a bad situation, but they fail to do anything to stop their brother/uncle from engaging in DV, beyond having stern words for him. So they carry a lot of guilt—which is why Tollsha is so deeply uncomfortable with Tilrey years later and thinks that what happened with Tilrey and Vera is a twisted revenge on him. On some level, he knows he deserves payback from Tilrey!

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"All the Kinds of Broken," Chap. 53

I got to the Major Sad Trauma Chapter faster than I expected. This is a big turning point that explains a lot about the rest of Tilrey's time with Linden. It's one of the low points of poor Tilrey's whole arc. To write it, I found I needed to dig a little into Linden and why he's so horrible.

Only semi-relevant: I just read Silver Elite, the big dystopian romance everybody's talking about. I was curious. I had to force myself through, because that style of MF military romance is not for me. But I'm glad mainstream publishing is now sort of accepting dystopian romance again, or at least paying lip service to it, or something. Does anyone know a better example?

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"All the Kinds of Broken," Chap. 52

I'm back. I'm not sure, but I think the stress of the past few months inspired Ansha's little origin story here.

Tilrey never wanted to be molded by Malsha or anyone else. Here we learn that Ansha craves someone to mentor and mold him and make him "better," even if the process is abusive and painful. He looks back nostalgically to a "boot camp" period in his life.

And I totally relate to that! There's a part of me that wants that experience of being "forced" to improve, no matter how toxic it is. Who misses the metaphorical boot camp when it's over. Is this really weird, or is it a common experience?

Anyway. Magistrate Linden will be back in the next chapter. Do we want his POV? Can we take his POV? Still deciding.

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Does Tilrey ever still have trouble swallowing food, or waking with a sensation of choking? 😢

I’m not sure if you mean still at this point in AtKoB or in later life, but yes! Those are both such powerful anxiety symptoms, and considering the way his mouth/throat has sometimes been treated… 😢

Thank you for reminding me, because I do want to describe how all this affects him day to day as we head into some Bad Times. 😕

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Love the new chapters! I hope you're doing well, thanks for always building out this world!

Random question given the way Verán just denigrated Tilrey for having been fucked by so many people: does Tilrey feel shame about that - the volume? Does Redda culture or Thurskein culture have hang-ups about sluttiness, or sleeping around?

I know he was angry when asked later, during the Gersha years, about his experiences - answered sarcastically/bitterly something like, it would take too long to count up everyone who ever had sex with him when he didn't want to. And of course in his youngest years with Malsha, despairing, please, not another stranger.

Anyway, seeing as how Verán threw out this type of insult at his most enraged, I'm curious about whether it holds any special power in Oslov mentalities about sexuality.

Thank you! 🩷 I’m going through an absolute hell period of deadlines (hopefully worth it in the long run!), but I hope to get back to writing this story soon.

This is such a good question, because Oslov is definitely more open about sexuality and less slut-shaming than current western culture. The thing that Oslovs tend to judge the most is promiscuous M/F sex (or M/F across Level lines), and the man and woman are judged relatively equally for that. Promiscuous M/M or F/F sex isn’t really seen as an issue.

One value built into Oslov is that “Decadence” is bad. “Decadence” is associated with the lords of the bygone Feudal times and their customs, which include keeping kettle boys. Now, clearly high Upstarts have made the kettle boy system fundamental to Oslov politics too, but deep down they know this is hypocritical and even Decadent by their own standards. So when Verán calls Tilrey a slut, etc., I think he’s scapegoating him for this hypocrisy. It’s basically projection of the Decadence and fundamental inequality of the system onto the people the system victimizes. Just as hypocritical religious men like to blame “temptresses” and “Jezebels” for their own failure to live up to their beliefs, Upstarts insist that kettle boys are Decadent sluts and they’re just taking advantage of their eagerness to be exploited. 😡

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I saw a post recently by a somatic sexuality coach, copied below. It made me think of Tilrey & Gersha and all the issues they had: Gersha frustrated Tilrey couldn't/wouldn't let go, nor communicate his needs, Tilrey even wondering under his breath if Gersha would mind if he knew he didn't always want it. 

The kettleboy system steals so much from anyone pushed into it so young during such a pivotal time in life:

"If we perform or have a hard time being 'seen' during intimacy, it's likely because we've been running years of a body/mind habit of focusing on another person's experience over our own - making it very hard to stay with our own internal experience and relax into pleasure and fully receive. 

These are not things you can think your way through. We need to learn to stay with our own experience. This is when emotions naturally arise. We must anchor these old & unfelt feelings with pleasure, so that your body feels safe to experience and feel them.

Pleasure is a sign of safety for your body. It says, 'I feel good,' and that it's safe to feel."

That's exactly what Malsha did to Tilrey, in reverse: forced him to disconnect himself from his feelings, because Malsha made them too hard to bear. All his kettleboy work anchoring all new feelings of sex with men with fear & humiliation rather than pleasure & confidence.

I always love the first time Tilrey & Gersha reunited in Harbour - the first time something in Tilrey really let him let go. But his challenges continued lifelong 😢. Maybe after these breakthroughs he's had at the denouement of Oslov's revolution (finally fighting back & pushing someone off him! Publicly standing up to Upstarts' anger and derision!) he'll have another major breakthrough ❤️‍🩹

Love the quote and perspective! This puts so many things in a new and helpful light for me. And I hope Tilrey does have a new breakthrough.

“Pleasure is a sign of safety” is such a powerful idea. By forcing Tilrey to become “responsive” to sexual stimulation he didn’t want, Malsha took that safety away from him and made “pleasure” into just another tool to subjugate him. Taking that back is incredibly hard, though he has made some progress over the years. Because, as the coach says, you can’t think your way into safety!

There’s one chapter I called “Smoothed Out”—the one where Tilrey returns from Einara to Gersha and tells him about the “sexual therapy” he’s been getting—and that’s how I always think of that feeling of safety. Like a feeling of roughness being smoothed. 😊

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The new chapters made me think again about how Tilrey puts his feelings on others, scared to feel full-on that they're his.

Tilrey got SO triggered by Tzara. He just felt pushed out of control for two whole chapters.

I think he couldn't even acknowledge to himself it's really his rage and despair over what happened to him - safer to feel that way about her than himself (even though she didn't even care that much about being in that situation).

Yes!! Seeing Tzara’s situation brought back everything that Tilrey has been pushing aside, not allowing himself to feel. And I think it’s because she’s a girl, so she’s just different enough from him, like a reflection from a new angle. It upset him to see how young Ulli (new kettle boy) was, but not this much.

Also, she reminds him of Dal, and picturing someone he loves in this situation allows all the suppressed anger to come out. There are many things that make Tzara’s situation different from Tilrey’s—she wasn’t kidnapped from her home; she believes she is choosing this regardless of the obvious age of consent issue; she sees the relationship as transactional and beneficial to her. But Tilrey sees only a young person being taken advantage of.

He’s been told so many times that he shouldn’t complain because he is of age, because he’s a Skeinsha and a criminal, because he’s “strong enough to take it,” because it’s “for his own good.” He’s fully internalized that, because complaining always leads to worse treatment anyway. But when he sees it happening to someone who is younger and physically weaker, suddenly he feels “allowed” (by his own strict internal controls) to protest on her behalf.

Even if the protest only gets him in worse trouble. 😢

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"All the Kinds of Broken," Chap. 51

I just got bad news. The actual paying project I've been working on is ... still ... not ... right, so I have to work on a tight deadline for at least a few more weeks.

But for now, I wanted to post this chapter because it's the sequel to the previous one. And it's sad and a cliffhanger, for which I apologize, but, well ... you know Tilrey will survive this. Thank you, as always, for reading. This story is keeping me sane.

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"All the Kinds of Broken," Chap. 50

I've gotten some asks about whether Tilrey has limits—things that could make him say no or fight back, despite the consequences. Here is one.

And yes, I got some stuff about health-care inequity in there. What can I say? It's on my mind. A lot of people depend on the ACA to afford health care in the U.S.'s ridiculous, broken system, including freelancers like me.

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If we ever truly run out of Oslov sagas, I wouldn't mind a short one written by Vera or her perspective. I mean, I'm not *dying* for it, but I sure would read it!

Her family life growing up in Upstart Redda.

Her crazy dad, mom, *grandpa*. How they seemed to someone they were being normal to.

Her having the experience we've all had: meeting a boy at 17/18 and thinking you have a connection and he never quite leaves your mind, ever - as your paths do keep crossing every few years during your gorgeous youths. But... for him, the connection wasn't quite the same.

I'm sure her novel would romanticize Tilrey. Not just what she felt about him, but about what she learned about him, sadly and painfully, over time. And how that challenged her view of herself and her family -- though never quite getting it, so her misty-eyed view of Tilrey would be interesting to read. She is one of the few people he really lost his temper with and got real with, in way. That time in her apartment before they ultimately put a wall between them after Ceill.

Though I'd be sad to have Tilrey recede more into the background of her novel, it would be interesting to see her years of motherhood of Ceill, continued (I'm SURE!) conflicted daydreams of Tilrey, and what it was like to finally partner up with a love match from Thurskein who, let's say, looked just like she wanted.

That would be so interesting to write! Interesting yet frustrating, because her perspective would be pretty navel-gazey and oblivious to Tilrey’s reality, at least when she’s younger. Romanticized, for sure.

But I’d love to explore what happened between Vera and Mal and how she eventually warmed up to the revolution. It’s a major character development that I basically shoved off-page, lol. Even though Mal was her Tilrey 2.0, I think he was way more than a boy toy and called Vera out and played a big role in radicalizing her, along with Lisha. Vera and Mal had the opportunity for a closer-to-equal relationship than she and Tilrey ever did, and part of her evolution is understanding why Tilrey could never see her as a peer.

And yes, her extremely fucked-up family would be fun to write! Funny you should mention them, because I just finished a chapter featuring the brief return of Jena, her dad, plus Lindthardt, Vera’s would-be suitor who failed to court her thanks to Tilrey’s intervention. Lots of not-fun flashbacks for poor Tilrey. Hope to post that in the next couple days!

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I've re-read the latest All the Kinds of Broken chapter like a dozen times! What a tour de force.

Blows my mind noticing one particular connection between this night and his later life. One of the few times Tilrey really breaks down with Gersha is when Ceill's born, triggered by the lack of consent in that, the overwhelming worry for the baby & reflection on himself it evokes, maybe also partially triggered by the confrontations happening with Tollsha around that time. He emerges from sleep, emotionally out of control like he usually isn't, lets Gersha hold him, voice hitched as he's crying, "Don't you understand? I'm nothing. I'm an object to be used. That's what I am."

Exactly what Linden says to him as he rapes him 😢😭One thing I've noticed about him later in life is a lot of his feelings about what happened to him are too overwhelming to feel - both while he's living it and throughout his life for years to come. Thoughts come through his mind and he lets them float by, not engaging deeply with the ones that would be too catastrophic to confront.

Others, to absorb them, he rewrites history, misremembers himself: He likes to be beaten, he even needs it sometimes, he feels control through it. 

Oh, does he? Tilrey right now, when it first happens to him, sure doesn't. He is disturbed by it, he doesn't understand it, he's scared of it. 😭

I need to reread that chapter with his breakdown! This is such a great way to describe what’s happening inside his head in AtKoB. Some things are just too hard to process and have to be buried or shut out. Others can be woven into a new narrative in which he has some “control” over what’s happening to him.

Being beaten is uncontrollable and horrifying, and his brain is desperate to assert control over it, to figure out the “rules” that he can follow to keep from getting truly hurt. Once he’s done that (or thinks he has, anyway), the beating becomes like a ritual that has to be performed, and he can “enjoy” the adrenaline rush that comes with it. But again, it’s all in his head. He’s trying to turn abuse from someone else into a form of self-harm that he controls.

Really, I think it’s amazing that Tilrey doesn’t practice worse self-harm later in life. Some of his behavior probably does qualify as such, like when he deliberately enters situations where a sex partner will mistreat or humiliate him, but he keeps fairly tight boundaries on it. Underneath all the self-destructive tendencies that have been sorta forced on him, he has a very strong sense of self-preservation.

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Naive belief in his own strength - that's so interesting.

Catching up on posts and similar to what you said a few back, Tilrey's "always trying to believe he can maintain some sort of control and numb himself to what’s happening."

That's one thing that's so intriguing about him beginning to engage more with Linden. For all the man's half hold on reality, the half of him that's still there certainly has a singular style, motivation, and strength: to degrade, to hurt, to crushingly control. This is different from anything Tilrey's heart & mind has needed to get him through before. I think he's going to find in these early days of this next stage of his life that there will be times he *can't* hold onto any sense of control over himself or his body, can't stay numb like he needs to. :'(

Poor Tilrey. It's like I see this horror coming and wish I could save him from it - but know he must experience this and must go through this since in his life as we know it it has already happened (ofc could've also said this at the beginning of AKoB!).

I wish I could save him from it too! 😢 But I guess without that Tilrey, we never get Revolution!Tilrey. For better or worse, he would be a different person.

I’ve been giving some thought to Linden and his backstory and why he is this way, which all feeds into this story even if it’s not directly relevant. Some people just have this unsubtle narcissistic need to dominate and degrade other people, and it’s not easy to confront that! I find it much easier to understand Malsha, awful as he is, because he’s a control freak and a perfectionist and he finds Tilrey fascinating—even if that leads him to want to hurt Tilrey. But Linden is just such a blunt instrument.

And I think that’s a problem for Tilrey too, because he’s a thinker and a control freak and he likes to figure people out and learn how to manipulate them. But some people you cannot manipulate because they just refuse to see you as a real person, a fellow human being, someone they could ever have empathy for. And maybe that’s scariest of all. 😰

At least we know he’ll pull through in the end, and he’ll eventually break down that defense mechanism of numbness and feel things again.