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prodsh00ky · 5 months

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from the cradle to the grave

pairing: vampire!seonghwa x reader

warnings: use of words probably, crying, mentions of blood, death, war and violence, seonghwa creeps the reader out by breaking into their house, deja vu era seonghwa look combined with 2023 long haired hwa bc this should be a warning, some angsty stuff, fluff if u squint really really hard, past lives (sort of), reader is referred to using they/them pronouns but i might have left something that suggest they’re female/afab in the way; please let me know if there’s more

wc: ~4.6k words

notes: i tried to finish this in time for halloween (it was sitting in my drafts since 2021...) so this was supposed to be a spooky season fic. it didn’t work but here it is anyways! hope you guys like it. im a big vampire enthusiast and a bIG seonghwa enthusiast which makes me the biggest vamp!hwa agenda supporter so lets gooo

well, at least your gut feeling was probably right.

these last days have been… weird, to say the least. every time you’d go back to your apartment after college you felt like you were being observed, maybe even followed. it was like there was someone always behind you or around the place you were in a way that made you feel like you were never alone indeed, and you didn't like the shivers you got from it. to top it off, the whole thing was giving you even more bad nightmares than the usual; the most recent ones involved big mansions from the eighteenth century or something, a lot of fighting, blood and a pair of piercing eyes staring into your soul. the worst part was that you always forgot in the course of your day that you were having them, only remembering when waking up in a cold sweat from a new one. your friends told you it probably was due to the time of the year since spooky season just began, and you thought it might be it; a scary vibe was nothing less than expected from fall.

but the tall figure standing behind your favorite armchair that welcomed you home seconds ago after you locked your apartment’s door told you otherwise. you automatically move to grab your floor lamp to defend yourself.

“who are you and what are you doing here?”

“so you’re feisty. i should keep track of that.”

his voice is deep but also smooth. he’s probably a head and a half taller than you and wears a white shirt with a v cut, black trousers paired with a black blazer and his neck is adorned with a sole silk ribbon. when he turns to you, you get to see that his long black hair would probably reach his silver pendant earrings if it wasn't tucked into a fancy hairstyle with a silver pin holding the front and that his eyes are sharp and piercing (and strangely similar with the ones in your recent nightmares, but this time they feel familiar and not frightening as usual), just as the rest of his facial features. he is probably the most handsome man you’ve ever seen. but you still have no idea of who he is or how he got inside your house, so you quietly get your phone and dial 911.

“i'm going to repeat it just once more. who are you, what are you and how the fuck have you gotten inside?” he seems too entertained eyeing you from head to toe for some seconds, but he quickly wakes from his apparent trance and answers you.

“right. i'm sorry for the rudeness... and for the invasion, for that matter, although this apartment was virtually 100% accessible for me. oh, and for the last few days too, but i'm afraid the observing was necessary. i’m park seonghwa, one of the royal eight, and deeply pleasured to know you.” he bows lightly and opens his mouth to continue and it shows you a glimpse of long sharp canine teeth. it makes you interrupt him.

“so you’re the one who’s following me? know what, it doesn’t matter actually, i’m calling the cops.” you turn to open the door and get outside, however the keys aren't in the door handle anymore. with the lamp still in your hold you try to open the knob forcefully, adrenaline beginning to fill you due to despair, but the jittery sound of the keys dangling makes you turn to the stranger once more. he holds the keys with his left hand, the right one leaning in the armchair.

“forgive me for my ways, but calling the police won’t be needed and after you listen to me you’ll see why. i’m not here to hurt you in any way, it’s actually… quite the opposite. i was following you because me and my brothers needed to reach you, and after i finally found you i wanted to know who we were looking for. if you’re willing to give me some of your time, i’ll be happy to explain everything i can for now. please?”

considering your options, either you jump out of the window into a 65 feet fall or listen to him. but you still want to be sure someone is keeping track of you, so you move to open the window hoping today the old couple and the friendly lady who lives in the building next to yours and are always inviting you to spend the holidays and have dinner with them are gaping inside your place as usual and turn on the localization device in your phone.

“you have ten minutes.”

“thank you for considering my offer.” he answers, seemingly more relieved, and starts talking. “i’m not sure how to address it correctly… there probably isn't a correct way to do it, so i’ll be plainspoken. i’m a vampire, such as my brothers, and we need your help because you hold powers that can save our empire from the mass attack it is suffering right now.”

you huff, because it’s the only thing you feel like doing.

“you really invaded my house to fool me into a halloween prank? who made you do it? oh, it must have been yeonjun and kai, right? i'm calling the bastards right now, this is way off limits.” you manage to grab your phone in your pocket again but, just like your keys, you see it appearing in the guy’s hands.

“it’s not a prank and your human friends have nothing to deal with it, swear with my long gone soul. i am indeed a vampire, as you can verify by my teeth. vampires exist, such as some other ‘magical creatures’, as your people like to call us. i’m park seonghwa, the second vampire emperor, or prince, whatever you’d prefer, and am here to plead for your help because my empire is perishing and the eight of us can’t do much without you.”

the serious way he’s speaking almost convinces you, but it still sounds so crazy and nonsensical you keep yourself skeptical. you can't avoid some classical questions, though.

“why aren’t you burning or shining in the sun, then? and i don't see you sweating due to the giant amount of garlic in my kitchen. there’s no proof to your allegations, fang boy.”

seonghwa finds it really hard to suppress a smile. you were much more fun (and cute) than he thought, and seeing you being so doubtful only added to the feeling he had.

“because not all the tales you humans like to tell about us are true. garlic does not affect vampires at all, i have no idea where this... thing came from. we only get paler in the sunlight, as you may perceive.” he moves closer to your window, and you can see his slightly tanned skin turning paler and paler until his veins start to become proeminent and dark blue in his skin. it’s almost as if he's like a living canvas full of paint.

“i don’t believe you.”

“do you expect me to prove my identity then? because the only way to do it is by feeding, and im afraid you’re the only human in the nearer 260 feet at least.'' he steps closer and while he’s talking you see his fangs getting longer. and sharper. he touches his pointer finger with his teeth and his skin rips easily as if a needle had been dragged along it. when you look into his eyes they’re rouge as… blood. fear creeps into you and you step back, moving your head no.

“y-you can go on! i will hear you, i p-promise. i'm not exactly doubting it anymore.” you say, voice weak with fear. you move to your couch slowly, eyes still fixated in his every move. “i-im going to sit because this doesn’t sound like a conversation i’ll be able to take in while standing. feel free to sit too.” he moves to sit in the same armchair he’s leaning, but you start to talk again before you forget and his eyes move up to you again. “oh, but i want my keys and phone. you’ll not be getting my help making it look like you want to keep me in captivity.”

he nods, putting your phone and keys in your center table. you grab them almost immediately murmuring “thanks” because well, look where you are. he nods again and waits until you stop moving to talk.

“i’m shall start from the beginning since you have no familiarity with the vampires situation, right?” you nod, asking yourself what a vampire situation would mean. “the… ‘magic’ realm, i’ll call it this way for now because it’s easier, is hidden from human eyes. we have our own rules that exist to ensure mainly two things: that we won’t reveal ourselves to you with ease and that we will have peace, or anything closest to it, within us. some centuries ago people lived in balance and each kind had their own inside rules and organization besides these two major ones, but a riot some of the folks started created chaos and eventually a war. it was a slaughter; many villages were destroyed and many creatures, killed. it’s one of the darkest chapters of our story.

“wait, what do you mean by ‘creatures’ and ‘folks’? you’re not saying…”

“witches, elves, mermaids and sirens, gnomes, fairies, fauns, they’re all real. at some level, at least. i say this due to the fact you humans love to fantasize about their characteristics way too much, as you could testify with me and the sun belief you had. the majority of things you assume you know about them or about ur are probably inaccurate.”

your frown, “and what is the truth about all of you, then? what is wrong in the things i’ve been taught?”

there’s hints of a smirk in his lips, but he tries his best to keep neutral. “curious, aren't’ we? i’d love to share it with you, but it’s best that you learn it by yourself.” your eyebrows raise and he gets the sign to keep talking. “we’ll get there, do not worry.”

he takes a deep breath, a shadow of something gray crossing his sharp features. “after the war finished, pretty much all that was left was chaos. in an effort to save the survivors, an assembly was arranged so we could fix new rules and try to establish things. it happens that the vampires were the race that had the fewest deaths and casualties during the war and managed to better organize ourselves for that to happen, so it was decided by majority that we would rule all races from then on.”

“holy crap-” you tap your mouth, using the best of your self control skills to not laugh in his face, “this sounds like a fanfic i’d have read when i was twelve. how did you guys manage all the power? and you said majority, not unanimity. there was someone against it, i suppose.”

seonghwa allows himself to smile, happy to observe you notice things rather quickly. you try to suppress your own reaction; if he was already handsome poker faced, it felt like his smile alone could convince you about anything he was saying and more. “we accepted it, since it was what most wanted. some begged, even, at some point of the discussion. it was never easy, though. we have faults and committed many mistakes, some worse than others and some… unforgivable, if i’m being honest. but i assure we hardly did then out of personal selfishness, the weight of keeping things in place is always something that humbles us down. and yes, you assumed correctly, there were people against it.”

he pauses abruptly, looks at you and laughs quietly, which confuses you. the fact that his laughing warms you inside has nothing to do with it, you reassure yourself.

“what?”

“if you thought the previous facts i’ve told you sounded like a… fantasy book or so, you can’t wait for the next bit.” he tries to dwell his laughter down to answer you, but you can see he’s struggling. “guess who disagreed with us being in power?”

it takes you less than a millisecond to reply. “no shit it were the werewolves.”

he starts laughing again but freely, not trying to refrain himself, and this time you can’t control the shocked smile that creeps onto your face along with your eyes widening.

“jesus fuck, seonghwa-” you have to pause for a second to recompose yourself, because you started laughing too hard along with him without even realizing, “it was already hard to believe the whole vampire convo and all, now you’re saying that not only other species of magical creatures do exist but the rivalry between vampires and werewolves is real? how do you expect me not to think this is some sort of twilight remake?"

“oh, no, not that movie,” he says while trying to stop laughing, “i’ve never watched it but it has caused enough misunderstandings already about us.”

you eye him up and down, “have some respect, it’s a masterpiece! i’m sure you just have never watched it because you know you’ll get inferiority complex since you’ll never be edward cullen.”

“i’ll pretend i know what you’re talking about and agree.” you laugh but on your own this time, and he can’t avoid admiring the wrinkles in your face when you do it. “resuming, the werewolves were never exactly comfortable with the idea of us in power in the first place, but as i said it was what the majority wanted. it has been like this for over eight centuries, and everything was going peacefully until around the nineteenth century. the werewolves started a rebellion against our empire, and to do it joined forces with each and every wrongdoer in our realm. they managed to have each and every single creature that had committed horrendous crimes as their allies, which caught us by surprise. we’ve tried to talk to them in the beginning, but it didn't work; they started to kill vampires and pretty much everyone that agreed with our power. it has been like this since then, and we were succeeding in controlling the war until one century ago.”

“oh.” nice way to react, you think. but what would be a great reaction for a narnia x game of thrones crossover of sorts? “i’m… i’m sorry, i guess. i’m not sure how to properly react to all of this, and it’s harder to conceive it as true. and what does it all have to do with me? swear i’m trying not to be a jerk or so, but why are you telling me all of this? why did you come after me?”

seonghwa, once again, has to control a smile creeping in. “because you, y/n, might be the key to saving everything.”

your brain short circuits. “what?” you freeze, wanting to laugh in his face, but the serious and hopeful look he gives you indicates he’s telling the truth. then a detail, a tiny but important detail comes to your mind. “wait- how the fuck do you even know know my name? i haven’t said it to you until now, there’s pretty much no mail you could get that from and most of my friends call me by nicknames, how do you know it?”

despair flashes through his eyes, but it’s only for a second. “well, here's where things start getting… interesting. or complex. i know it might sound crazy but… there’s… you… you’re…”

its the first time he seems uncertain or insecure and maybe even afraid in his speech if you squint, but the next bit that comes out of his mouth makes everything really sound like a big joke.

“i’m afraid there’s no easy way to let you know this, so i’ll have to be straightforward. you’re a living amplifier to any type of supernatural being. this amplifying power is given to a human in earth as a blessing from whatever force that keeps the universe balanced from time to time, but there are always at least a few centuries that part the amplifiers’ births. the last amplifier was a friend, an ally of ours that helped - or rather lead us vampires to our victory and was the sole reason why i and pretty much all of the survivors are still alive. i know your name because it was one of the last words he said before passing after sacrificing so much to guarantee peace amongst supernatural folks. i’m here to ask or rather plead for your help, because although we have more resources and ways of fighting now we’re afraid that it might not be enough for the challenges we might face.”

you blink once. twice. then you sneer.

“you know, i was almost believing you. i’m ashamed to admit it, but it was almost getting to me. but after this i'm afraid i’ll have to call kai and yeonjun and tell them to stop fucking with me every halloween season because this is way off limits. you’re a great actor, though,”, you say, reaching for you phone, “i’m sure you’ll go the distance or so. your costume is very well made too, i have no idea who thought about the eye mechanism but is sure surpr-

he takes your hand with his extremely cold one before you reach your phone.

“please. me and my brothers don’t have much time to deal with your doubts properly, and i’m sorry about that, so i beg of you. it probably sounds way far from your human rationality, but have you never felt anything different? any other type or force or liveliness different from what others feel? have you never seen the way some people thrive when they’re by your side? how they go higher than they probably would if they weren’t close to you? how it’s so easy for your to really connect to the people you love and how pleased they seem to be to love you back? have you ever felt observed? have you never seen that there are beings trying to put their eyes on you all the time, specially in nightmares?”

you head starts to spin. yes. he actually had a point. your presence around people you liked seemed to bring them more joy and great opportunities for some unknown reason, and it has been this way since ever. your childhood nickname was “lucky” due to this; the games and toys were funnier and happier when you were around, even if one of your friends got hurt - it would be fine, after all, right? the foster home you grew up in started to receive more donations after you arrived, and your foster dads were able to house even more children. your presence became a must in problem solvings while you grew up, because, for some reason, the fact that you were there made it all calmer and somehow easier. your friends would get higher grades, nicer positions in the school teams, greater opportunities and happier memories if you were involved or cheering for them; you were a walking lucky charm all over your life. your parents, your foster siblings and the few real friends you have always said the love they feel towards you is different than any type of love they’ve ever experienced. kai and yeonjun even like to joke that you have some type of magic on your blood or something, because they feel that your friendship will undoubtedly last for the rest of your life, no room for doubt.

and the nightmares. they were way more intense and frequent when you were a child. creepy and lone places, destroyed cities, dark alleyways stained with blood, desolated ghost-like faces, cries of help you never knew whom they belonged to. but the worse ones were the ones that had eyes around aware of your every move no matter what you did. they were the ones that offered your nights of sleep no mercy and made you wake up crying hard and shaking up from despair for years. funnily enough, they always seem to happen again frequently each spooky season.

“i-i suppose you’re right in some way, b-but-”

“have you had a time where you painted a lot? maybe when you were a kid?”

that’s what breaks you.

“h-how the fuck do you know this?”

his lips curve up, a sad smile reaching his eyes. “eden, the last amplifier, was a painter. probably one of the best ever seen in the whole world, if i have a say on that. an amplifier born will always have and nurture the last amplifier’s talents for at least some time, specially during their childhood. if you took on his talent, i bet your paintings were astonishing, even more for a child.”

your memories flash in front of your eyes: how many paintings have you made for your parents’ office? how many times did you spend your early sunday mornings painting in order to gift your siblings? how many of these were still with them, in their houses, becoming part of the scenery of their lives until nowadays? and why the fact you abruptly stopped doing them when you were nine or ten had never made sense until now?

“i’m- i’m sorry, but- this must be some type of misunderstanding or bad taste joke, that’s ithe only explanation, that's it-”

“as said before im deeply sorry that we don’t have more time to do this with ease but…”, he huffs, looking down and then to you again, “this is what will have you believing me. i’m really sorry.”

he stares into your eyes for one, two, three, four, five, six, seven, eight seconds straight.

and then it all hits you.

flashes of some of the places you saw in your nightmares, but this time live, in person, because you were there; a giant castle with an art studio, your beloved art studio, where all your creativity flew through the canvases, where life seemed to make more sense. flashes of people you never met; unfamiliar smiles in their faces, but the lingering feeling there’s no physical building that could carry your conception of home more than they could; nights together singing by the moonlight, but also serious conversations and arguing and fighting but always making up because, in the end, they’re your family; war and horrible battles and you standing in all of them offering everything this force inside of you could because things had to end in peace; crying, seeing red and hearing their last words for you. darkness, solitude, happiness, yearning, melancholy, bliss, doubt, joy, frustration, hope, all types of feelings that weren’t and were yours at the same time.

you snap out of it with the feeling of seonghwa’s cold thumbs drying the tears you didn’t realize were streaming down your cheeks.

“i’m sorry this is so unfair to you,” he whispers, “i really wish this could happen naturally, without demanding so much of you and shattering the world you know with such violence as it has always been with the others…”

for a while, you just allow him to hold your face and caress it, too overwhelmed by everything that’s flooding your brain. after what could be some seconds, minutes or even hours, you’re not sure at this point, you move away from his touch and he lets you go, something heavy in his eyes you are not able to decipher due to your state.

“you need time to digest it all, and you’ll have it. i’ll make sure that no nightmares or even visions plague your mind in the next days so you can rest. but i’ll have to come back in a week or two to ask you to come with me and help us if you’re willing to do it. i promise that i’ll answer any of your questions then and that more understanding of what you’re capable of will make it a bit easier. you can share all of this, but be sure to do it only with trusted ones and with as fewer people as possible.”

he gets up and makes the beeline to the door, but comes back and leaves a black business card in the table in front of you, just a single phone number written in red in it.

“if you need anything, do not hesitate to call this number and talk to me. i’ll do anything in my power to help you.”

he opens the door, turning to look at you for one last time. ”we’ll see each other again, y/n.”

seonghwa closes your apartment’s door and in a couple of minutes he’s walking in the street again. he takes his phone, dials a number he knows by heart and waits. the voice that answers him is curious, yet patient.

“hey, are you fine? how did it go?”

he huffs before replying, “as well as you would expect, hongjoong. they didn’t hit me with a broom or tried to shoo away with garlic, but also didn’t believe me until i forced them to see.”

“so you did have to hypnotize them?”

“unfortunately. humans got way too used to believe we’re bedtime stories, specially in this century, so it wasn't something i didn't expect, but i-”

“you’re not entirely comfortable with doing it too, i know. by the way, how did you feel? since it all probably got stronger, was it okay for you?”

seonghwa hesitates for a few seconds. “it was ecstatic, hongjoong. i’m not sure i’m able to fully translate it into words. the more time I spent there and the more I understood about who they are now the more it became hard to let go. this is nothing like anything else that i ever felt, and it’s only the first time i saw them. i feel lost but also as if i had finally found something very important inside me at the same time. i… have no idea of what to do.”

“maybe telling them, if you already didn’t?”

“no way. it was hard enough for them to believe the whole thing, it would be twice as hard if they knew- if i told them things probably would have been even harder. they’ll know when the right time comes.”

“sure, then. it’s your choice. are you already coming back?”

“yeah, i’ll call for the car in some minutes.”

“great. thanks, hwa. i know this was probably tough on you. come home safely.”

seonghwa replies with a hushed see you soon and hangs up. he knows hongjoong just wants to be sure, but they knew each other well enough for hongjoong to presume nothing of the matter would have been said to you by seonghwa.

because how could he? right after stealing the truth you had been living until and shattering it into pieces? it sounded too cruel for him, he felt it in the moment he laid eyes on you today.

time would say when he’d tell you that besides your name, eden also said that the next amplifier would be his soulmate, and that this would allow to change things forever.

©prodsh00ky 2023. no crossposting or translations allowed.

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askendy · 1 month

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Hiya!! just wanted to say I love your blog!! When I started drawing like 10 years ago I was OBSESSED with it. I looked to you a lot for reference and inspiration and every few years, when I check back in on Tumblr, I'm really glad to see that you're still kicking :D To this day, your art and characters are still so Mwah Mwah Chef's Kiss and still inspires me to put more into my art :>

After a decade I've never figured out (but now finally have the courage to ask) if there's like a compilation of The Lore somewhere?? After all this time I'd actually love to fully know What is Going On TT v TT Best I could figure to do back then was spend a few hours scrolling to the very beginning of your blog and reading until the ol' laptop crashed.

I hope you're doing well!!

L: first of all thank you so much for sticking around for so long it means a lot! <3 These are the most important events in Endy's story in order and from his perspective without including the most recent ones (everything after beginning 2021 - the revival of the fandom). I hope it helps! The blog is a mess and it's missing a bunch of my art due to the images being previously linked from my now dead imgur account. But if you're still interested in getting to know his story in greater detail I turned off the endless scrolling ^^ It has pages now so it's easier on your laptop and more convenient for others to browse too.

#endy #enderman #lilaira

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leounderthemoon · 3 months

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A rant and theory

It’s really long, but I think I make some valid points.

Supernatural was on for 15 years. There have been interactions with the cast, some crew, some producers, directors, writers, etc. due to the ongoing conventions and the existence of social media. Writers will talk about changes to scripts, actors will talk about filming, directors will talk about why they chose a certain angle.

Given that most of the fans/stans do not personally know any of the people involved or personally know anything about the things that are/aren’t going on, it’s weird the way some fans/stans speak so confidently about what happened with SPN behind-the-scenes, production, writing, casting, you name it!

Especially when it comes to PrequelGate. People will state with their whole chest, that their version of events is absolutely correct. One J is an asshole, and one J is an innocent baby. Which J is which depends on who is talking. It can be either or both. The only thing that all fans who have theories have in common is that there is a definite good guy and a bad guy.

But the Js are still friends. They say they got over it and forgave. Since no one has given any details, I thought I’d join the bandwagon and come up with a theory of my own. One where there is no good guy/bad guy. So here goes.

I fully believe that the story of The Winchesters was not meant to be an AU. It was supposed to take place between 15.19 and 15.20, with Dean and Sam finding out about their parents. They had to switch it to the AU version because of the leak, a new timetable, and the fact that Jared was no longer available. There is also a recent podcast (I don't have a link) where a writer from The Winchesters said that Robbie Thompson, the writer and show runner for The Winchesters, kind of knew that they were only going to get 1 season because of all the mergers/sales of the networks and studios.

Robbie Thompson said in an interview (https://tvline.com/news/the-winchesters-recap-season-1-finale-dean-heaven-multiverse-jensen-ackles-1234942742/) “There was the spot that takes place in between Episodes 19 and 20, when what happens to Dean happens to Dean… So there was an opportunity to tell stories there, but that just didn’t work for me because we wouldn’t have access to Sam in that way, in a way that we could easily explain or at least emotionally explain, and that just didn’t feel like it was a story that certainly I wanted to tell and none of us did.” (Underlining mine) They wouldn’t have access to Sam because Jared could not be involved. Not because no one wanted him, but because he just couldn’t.

The reason I believe this is because of the following.

It starts with Virtual Con (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ADYwrZ787a0) held in March 2021. In the video, the question about Chaos Machine projects starts at around 23 minutes. Watch Jared’s face throughout Jensen’s whole answer. He’s nodding along, looking at his screen, and not even showing the slightest surprise in what Jensen is saying. He doesn’t because he already knows. To me, that is the face of someone who already knows what the other person is talking about. Jared already knows which projects Jensen is working on. He knows which alum he is talking about. So he just sits there and lets Jensen answer. His quip at the end that he will also be acting in it is just that, a quip for the fans. Because (supposedly) he is bound by a 5-year contract to CBS. He can not legally get involved in Jensen’s project with WB. He can acknowledge that he knows about it, but he has to show that he is absolutely not involved.

Next is the announcement of The Winchesters in June 2021 by Deadline. There were tweets by Jared that said he was upset that he didn’t know about it and that he wasn’t involved. There was also a tweet directed at Robbie Thompson calling him a back stabber that was later deleted. And, silence from Jensen, because he was unable to come online and address anything because he was on set in Canada.

Things were set in motion that were not meant to be put in motion for a while. I don’t think Chaos Machine was ready to start casting/filming yet. I think Jensen and Jared were trying to make it work with CBS so that Jared could be involved in the prequel. But those talks weren’t finished, or possibly even started yet. But the leak by Deadline, the WB/Discovery merger, and Mark Pedowitz leaving, combined to put pressure to do the show sooner, while Pedowitz was still in charge. If they waited, then nothing might come of Chaos Machine’s deal with WB once the new owners came in. Maybe they were waiting for Jensen to finish shooting The Boys to get together and talk about all this, but they still hadn't.

And this is what Jared was upset about. He thought there was time before the show would start, so was surprised that it was announced without him knowing. It also explains why he thought Robbie Thompson back-stabbed him. Because he was going to be a part of this show, and now he couldn’t. He couldn’t even say he had been part of the development from the beginning because it would be against his contract with CBS. He can’t even say wants to be a part of it now, because again, it would be against his contract with CBS. He’s upset, because he hasn’t had any communication from Jensen about this going through, and Jensen was also unreachable. So he vented online a little.

Once this narrative that Jared was never involved, and would not appear in it, spread, all of them had to run with it. Jensen apologized for not telling Jared. He said he was superstitious. He wanted to tell Jared, but he didn’t have his phone. That he was on set. That Jared couldn’t participate because he was busy. Etc. etc.

But, when Jared spoke with Jensen, and was (possibly) made aware that the news came out because it was leaked, and that they didn’t have time to clue Jared in, and (possibly) they were thinking of doing the show sooner because of WB, Pedowitz, Zaslav, etc., and that they were still in a holding phase, Jared forgave Jensen.

All of the above explains the inconsistencies and “lies” and “tantrums” and finally the forgiveness, and moving on.

I choose to believe that neither Jared nor Jensen are entitled assholes. They do not owe the fans any BTS details.

I’m sure people can tear this apart, but their theories don’t hold up either.

#jensen ackles #jared padalecki #spnfandom #spn #prequelgate #supernatural #the winchesters #supernatural fandom

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dontmeantobepoliticalbut · 9 months

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Young women are more likely to identify as liberal now than at any time in the past two decades, a trend that puts them squarely at odds with young men.

44% of young women counted themselves liberal in 2021, compared to 25% of young men, according to Gallup Poll data analyzed by the Survey Center on American Life. The gender gap is the largest recorded in 24 years of polling. The finding culminates years of rising liberalism among women ages 18 to 29, without any increase among their male peers.

Several societal forces have conspired to push young women to the left in recent years, including the #MeToo movement, former President Trump, rising LGBTQ identification and, most recently, abortion policy. Slower-cooking trends in marital status and educational attainment have also nudged the needle.

“I think there is a big generational shift that happened with Generation Z women who were really coming of age in the last five years,” said Kelsy Kretschmer, a sociologist at Oregon State University who studies gender politics.

The rift between young men and women may widen further. Earlier this year, the Supreme Court overturned Roe v. Wade, a precedent that had protected abortion as a constitutional right for nearly half a century. The ruling has energized young women. New survey data, released this week, shows that 61% of young women consider abortion a critical issue, compared with 36% of all Americans.

“I would always choose a candidate that’s pro-abortion,” said Rose Merjos, 21, a government major at Wesleyan University in Connecticut who is an avowed liberal. “Almost everyone either knows someone who has had an abortion or has had one themselves. This is something everyone can relate to.”

The share of men who identify as liberal has held fairly steady for almost 25 years, according to annual Gallup surveys. Roughly one-quarter of men ages 18 to 29 term themselves liberal, year after year.

Meanwhile, among young women, liberalism has exploded. In the late 1990s and early 2000s, fewer than 30% of women identified as liberal. The liberal camp grew through the second term of former President George W. Bush. It expanded further during the tenure of former President Obama. It reached 39% in 2017 with the inauguration of Trump. In the last two years, liberalism surged anew.

“Young women today are much more liberal than young men,” Daniel Cox wrote in a June newsletter of the Survey Center on American Life, a project of the American Enterprise Institute. His work documents “a growing political rift” between young women and men.

Merjos attends a university long associated with both liberalism and activism. These days, though, she senses more of both among the women.

“In all of my government classes, there are probably two men out of 18 people,” she said. “ACLU [American Civil Liberties Union], that’s mostly women. I’m wondering if women are maybe just more inclined to be involved in the community, engaged in the community. And that liberalizes them.”

Ezra Meyer, 22, is a senior at the George Washington (GW) University who leads the College Republicans. He is a conservative on a campus that is overwhelmingly liberal and largely female. In conversations with classmates about politics, he treads lightly.

“My metric for deciding if I’m going to be friends with someone really does not come down to what their politics are,” he said. “It comes down to how tolerant they are.”

Meyer doesn’t know whether the men at GW skew more liberal or conservative than the women. But he has noticed a distinct trend among campus conservatives this fall.

“We’ve been doing a lot of recruiting of freshmen on campus,” he said. “And I would say, overwhelmingly, it has been male. The conservative females that do get involved, there’s fewer of them, but they tend to be way more passionate and way more involved.”

Several factors have liberalized the nation’s 20-something women. The most recent, and perhaps the most powerful, is #MeToo, an uprising against sexual assault, abuse and harassment that caught fire in 2017, empowering millions of women to come forward and seek justice.

The inauguration of Trump in the same year pushed more young women into the liberal column. The 45th president battled his own #MeToo allegations and proved uniquely unpopular among young, female voters. Polling in 2016 showed that only 25% of women ages 18 to 34 favored Trump, compared with 40% of same-aged men.

The rise of liberalism among young women has also marched apace with a dramatic increase in young people identifying as lesbian, gay, bisexual, transgender or queer. In a recent survey, 56% of young women reported exclusive attraction to men, while three-quarters of young men said they were solely attracted to women. Prior research suggests LGBTQ Americans of all ages trend toward liberalism.

Several longer-term trends have fed the liberalization of young women as well. One is marriage. The share of women ages 18-29 who are married has fallen by half in twenty years, from 31% in 2000 to 15% in 2021, according to the National Opinion Research Center.

The growing ranks of single, 20-something women feel a sense of “linked fate,” researchers say. They gravitate toward female friends in political views, whereas married women more often mirror the politics of their spouses.

“The correlation between women’s sense of linked fate and liberal political preferences suggests that the Democratic Party will benefit” from declining marriage rates among young women, Kretschmer and two co-authors wrote in a 2017 paper for the journal Political Research Quarterly. They noted that “women make up the majority of the population and vote at high rates.”

Women also outpace men in educational attainment, a trend that dates to the 1980s. The ratio of women to men in college enrollment now stands at roughly 60 to 40, and it continues to grow. Americans who complete college are more liberal than those who do not.

“Putting off marriage, going to college, entering the workforce, women are doing that at much higher rates than they used to,” said Marc Hetherington, a professor of political science at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill. “And all of those things are going to make conservatism and the Republicans significantly less attractive to women.”

In 1998, the first year of data collected by Gallup in its Social Series surveys, 28% of young men and 29% of young women identified as liberal. The gender gap in liberalism grew steadily wider in the 2000s, wider still in the 2010s. The 2021 poll yielded a 19-point spread between young men and young women, the largest on record.

“I do have some male friends that are moderate,” said Luci Paczkowski, 20, a California liberal. “And it annoys the hell out of me.”

What bothers Paczkowski about her nonliberal friends is not their centrism but her suspicion that they “do not have any clue why they are moderate. They just do not want to pick a side and, therefore, they are apathetic.”

#us politics #news #the hill #2022 #liberals #liberalism #Democrats #polls #polling #Survey Center on American Life #Gallup Poll #conservatives #conservatism #republicans #graphs #data #National Opinion Research Center

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bits-and-babs · 1 year

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✰ 𝐂𝐎𝐕𝐄𝐑𝐓 𝐒𝐄𝐃𝐔𝐂𝐓𝐈𝐎𝐍 — 𝐉𝐀𝐕𝐈𝐄𝐑 𝐏𝐄𝐍𝐀

↳ summary: a bad day at work drives you to drink. When a stranger offers to be your drinking partner for the night, you realise that he’s the solution to your problems.

↳ pairing: javier peña x f!reader

↳ [6.7k words] content: 18+ MDNI. Alcohol, diabolical attempts at flirting. Fingering, oral ( m & f receiving ), p in v sex, twist at the end! This is a @beskarbabs remaster — original post date 2021.

javi masterlist I| main masterlist |I join the taglist here

Cigarette smoke and aged whiskey assault your nostrils, the acrid scents singeing the inside of your nose the moment you walk through the doorway and step into the bar. Your aching muscles buzz at the microdose of nicotine, driving you forward despite the exhaustion that desperately tries to pull your throbbing body back to your apartment and the comfort of your bed.

Peering inside, you find the older patrons at the counter smoking cigars while engaged in small talk that you can’t discern from this far away. The smouldering ends pinched between their fingers add to the already significant, smoky haze that blurs the ceiling above your head. Neon lights douse the foggy air with a crimson overlay, and classic Spanish guitar music plays quietly from the radio in the corner of the room. Public houses in the middle of Medellín were busy most nights, but this was a Monday evening, and most of the sticky tabletops were vacant. Desperate to unwind after the taxing work, you resign yourself to the smell of tobacco.

As you reach the bar, you pull your coin purse from your pocket and pinch the zipper between your thumb and forefinger. You can’t help glancing at it as though it may explode in your face. You’re almost out of money; the account is running on empty. Considering you are yet to make a significant breakthrough for your boss and the mission he levied on you, you couldn’t exactly act shocked. You only get money when you provide what he requests. Sure, it probably broke every trading law in the book, but that was the ‘contract’ you’d signed.

You settle onto a stool separate from the rest of the customers and mumble your request to the bartender for a shot of tequila. Sliding over the exact amount of pesos needed to cover the drink over the tacky countertop covered in alcoholic liquid and cigarette burns, you let out a shaky sigh. You couldn't be giving away any tips with how little money you had. In reality, you shouldn't have even walked through the door, but you were desperate to unwind, even just for a little while. It wasn’t ideal, but you could always turn off the television for a week to prevent the electricity bill from racking up more than you could afford – those telenovelas were shit anyway.

Tapping at the surface of the serving area with your nails, you wait impatiently on the drink. You can’t even recall the last time events at work drove you to drink; you usually excelled at meeting your boss's demands. Business had been turbulent recently, the constant violence that plagued the streets of Medellín causing significant strain in your line of work. You rub at your temples with the pads of your thumbs in exasperation as you feel the irritation begin to mount again, nipping uncomfortably at the edges of your mind in the form of a headache.

"You look like shit," the barman points out honestly, and the laugh you return is bitter. If anyone else had ‘blessed’ you with such a compliment, you’d be throwing the tequila into their eyes– but it was too fucking expensive to pass up, and you knew Jose well. He speaks the truth, ugly as it is. You'd been coming to this bar since you moved to Medellín, and you’d never entered the doors as anguished as you are now. He passes over the shot of tequila, and you thank him tacitly with a nod.

"I do," you admit with a sigh of indignation, continuing to tap your nail on the cool, smooth side of the shot glass.

"Lover? Family? Work?" Jose probes, watching you as he polishes a pint glass with a microfibre cloth. You shrug awkwardly, considering just how much you could safely indulge him.

"Work, but it's not that important," you dismiss with a wave of your hand, and he thankfully takes the hint, nodding and walking to serve the older men at the end of the bar attempting to wave him over.

You pick up your shot glass and knock it back with a wince, mildly enjoying the burn in the back of your throat. It adds to the warmth on your skin, the humid summer air having already dampened your brow with sweat. Leaning into the comfort of it, you take a moment to appreciate the taste and the immediate ease of the work pressure that had been silently crushing you.

Tracing the rim of the empty shot glass with your fingertip as you wait for Jose to finish serving the elderly gentlemen, you consider ordering a refill. You don’t plan on getting drunk, but you hope to relax a little. Recently, you’d spent so many evenings staring up at the ceiling while silently bargaining with the plasterboard to let you sleep. The dark circles taking root under your eyes are mildly concerning. Eventually, you decide on just enough to drink to get you tipsy enough to fall asleep the moment your head hits the pillow in your apartment.

"Need another, Hermosa?" A gravelly voice speaks up over your shoulder. Twisting in the stool, you take a glimpse back at the person who spoke—a handsome man dressed in a red button-down shirt and tight-fitted denim jeans that look as though they went out of fashion a decade ago and yet look delicious strapped across his thighs. He has yellow-tinted aviators tucked into the collar of his button-down, which you observe is unbuttoned far enough that it exposes more of his bronze-tanned skin and flashes his collarbone.

"I do, actually," you hum with a smile, taking him in. He’s easy on the eyes, and you aren't exactly about to turn down a free drink, so you decided to play along with his game. You playfully gaze into those wandering eyes through your lashes, and his sultry lips pull up into a smirk.

The handsome stranger clicks his fingers with self-assured arrogance, grabbing the attention of the barman, Jose, almost instantly. His American accent, laced with a southern twang, slips seamlessly into Spanish, ordering you another tequila shot and himself a glass of whiskey as he settles down on the stool beside you. All the while, his eyes remain rooted to you, taking in the curves and plains of your body. The hubris this man gives off is excessive, and yet it suits him well. It is clear to you he knew how attractive he was, and how to use it to his advantage.

"That's very kind of you, sir," you thank him politely, turning in your stool to face him. He arches his eyebrow a little at that, lips tugging his smile wider. The honorifics seemed to please him.

"Well, I couldn't help but notice you were all alone," he drags his eyes over the length of your body, clearly enjoying drinking in the view, "So I thought I'd join you. You were staring into oblivion looking as though you were waiting for Prince Charming to save you from a miserable day."

"Oh, are you saying you are my Prince Charming?" You quiz with an arched eyebrow, keeping up with his teasing. You rest your chin on the balls of your palm and balance your elbow on the countertop. A sparkle dances in the warmth of his irises, amused by your ability to match his flirtatious taunts.

"Why don't you wait and see?" He keeps his eyes on yours, and his voice drops to a thrilling, gruff tone that sparks excitement down your spine. He’s bold and brazen, and you find yourself already warming to this stranger’s charms. He turns back to the counter, breaking the spell momentarily as Jose approaches with your drinks.

While he speaks to the bartender and thanks him for his service, you mindlessly drop your gaze to his hand and spot something that piques your interest. When he pulls out his leather-bound wallet to pay, you note his identification cards, driver's licence, bank card and recognise the flash of a silver badge too. Etched into the shape of a shield, the badge very clearly states in bold, midnight blue writing that the dashing stranger beside you belonged to the DEA—a Drug Enforcement Officer. You sit back slightly on your stool, observing the man as he hands over a few pesos notes and pushes your drink over the counter to you.

"Cheers, Hermosa," he nods to you, taking up his whiskey and holding it aloft for you to tap your glass against. You waste no time picking up the shot and clinking glasses before knocking back your drink with a grimace. It burns your tongue and heats your stomach lining. He sips at his, swirling the amber liquid around the crystal glass slowly as he takes in the view of your body again.

You purse your lips, glancing around the room for a second to act indifferent, despite the fact you are now very much interested in this stranger. "So, what is the name of my Prince Charming?" You urge him to talk about himself. He smirks at your questioning, undeniably assuming this meant he’d hooked you in this ‘pick-up game’.

"Javier," he answers, sipping his whiskey again as you repeat it back to him with a hum. You trace the rim of your shot glass with your fingertip absentmindedly. The man before you had captured your attention enough for you to escape boredom for just a little while at least. It could get interesting from here on.

"Prince Javier works for the DEA too?" You ask with a knowing smirk. He pauses, glancing at the wallet in his palm. “I didn’t realise they hired royalty.”

"You're observant," Javier says cautiously, his voice suddenly guarded as he places his wallet back into the pocket of his jeans. You shrug, keeping the light and flirty atmosphere between you as Javier rests his forearm on the countertop, still holding his glass of whiskey.

"I have to be. Can't be too careful when a random man is buying me a drink," you point out, indicating you felt safe around him now you knew his occupation.

"But I'm not just a random man, Hermosa. I'm Prince Charming," He winks at you, but also finds himself grimacing at the clunky attempt at flirtatious raillery. It triggers a giggle through you, shaking your head as you twist the shot glass over the countertop with a grin.

"So you keep saying. Why don't you prove it by sticking around and having a few more drinks with me?" You ask in a coy tone while slowly inching forward and tracing shapes on the back of his palm with the tip of your index finger, the pad wet with remnants of your tequila shot that coated the rim of the glass. His eyes flit between your touch to the curve of your lips as a cheeky smile stretches across his mouth.

"Only if you let me buy you another drink," he raises his eyebrows.

"I like the sound of that, Javier."

-----------

The hours fly by, and the hands on the clock on the wall complete two rotations by the time you notice. Javier had moved his stool closer to yours and ramped up the flirting the more he drank. You’d both bounced off each other, conversations about family and interests flowing smoother than the alcohol between you. It’s way past one o'clock in the morning, yet neither of you seemed to tire, invigorated by each other's presence.

You had told him about your funniest stories, and he, in turn, spun you a tale from when he was back in Texas as a teenager, leaving his high school sweetheart at the altar to fight the narcotics epidemic in Columbia— You hang onto his every word, clasping his palm in your own.

At this stage, the two of you had been through quite a few glasses of tequila and whiskey, and while Javier is clearly feeling the effects of his drinks, you maintain a constant tipsiness. You had been pacing yourself, not wanting to look a fool in front of such a handsome man.

Despite his intoxication, Javier was still charming and had been showering you with so many compliments that you had lost count. During the shared drinks and life stories, the two of you had settled on the nickname Princesa despite you giving him your name, given he insisted upon making himself out to be ‘Prince Charming’. It was cringe, but the two of you found the funny side in your drunken states.

"Mhm, Javi- I like your dress shirt," you muse, reaching over to smooth the collar. Your fingertips trace the tanned skin just beyond the fabric, noting the heat that rolls from him.

"You do?" He watches you closely, taking a drag from a cigarette he had lit a few minutes ago. He claimed it was because he was craving the nicotine, but you hadn’t failed to notice how his jeans looked a whole lot tighter.

It was subtle at first. You hadn't been able to stop yourself, moving your hand to his bicep as you laughed, with Javier returning your touches by stroking his hand up and down your thigh while you converse. It had been give and take, teasing touches and lingering gazes adding to the sexually charged atmosphere between you. The circles he thumbed across your knee had settled butterflies in the pit of your stomach, the hungry eye he’d aimed at you heating your cheeks.

"I do. It suits you," you trace your hand down the front of his shirt and across his sternum as you look up at Javier through your lashes. His pupils blow wide, swallowing the warm brown of his irises and watching you hungrily as you circle the buttons of his shirt with your fingertips. You knew that you were driving him crazy; he’d been giving you this look for hours— like he'd been ready to throw you over his shoulder and carry you out of there around an hour ago.

His hand drags up your thigh slowly, settling on the hip of your skirt as he pulls you to the edge of your stool. It tears a gasp of surprise when your noses bump. He makes no effort to remove himself from your personal space, and you can smell the whisky on his breath. It’s strong, the heavy, woody scent swimming in your mind as you sink your teeth into your lower lip.

He groans softly.

"Princesa, this bar is closing soon. Would you like to come back to my apartment?" He says it so casually, as though he isn't implying anything at all. Like he was just asking you back for another drink, his body, however, betrays the unceremonious offer. His eyes are hungry, and his hand squeezes at your hip, underlining the question and almost leaving you light-headed.

"I'd like that," you whisper, gazing back into his brown eyes, your own heavy-lidded with want. He smirks and gets so close, *so close* that you swear he’s going to kiss you until he’s patting at your hip before standing. He thanks the bartender, leaving you light-headed and giving a small wave before Javi practically drags you to the door. The red lighting in the bar bleeds into the street, the dark of the outside punctuated by the yellowish glow of the sparse street lamps.

"I assume you don't live very far away?" You ask quietly as he walks alongside you. He shakes his head and gives a small smile.

"No. I only live around the corner, actually."

Well, that was convenient.

You both walk in relative silence after that, taking in the quiet street and the sounds of the city in the background. Loud drunkards stumble out of the closing bars as the owners begin to throw them out, and there’s the distant sound of cars driving on the main roads.

Distracted by the ‘music’ of Medellin, you felt the back of Javier’s hands brush your knuckles gently, skimming the skin in a feather-light touch. It’s such an innocent connection, and yet the touch sparks heat in between your legs and lights up your spine. You don’t even need to look up at him to see if he feels the same way; the excitement crackles thickly in the slither of distance between your bodies.

You both walk into the apartment's hallway, walking to one of the doors on the first floor, directly opposite the entry door. Room number 3. It's a pleasant apartment complex, unremarkable, clean and quiet, with stairs leading to other floors.

Finally, Javier pulls his keys out of his jeans pocket, and he looks at you. Those fucking eyes drag over your body again, unashamed in how they drink you in and savour the view. You watch, anxious with anticipation and chewing on your lip, as he slips the key into the lock. The click echoes in the small hallway.

The nerves begin to kick in a little now, and you start shifting your weight from one foot onto the other as you wait impatiently. Javi looks at you with such an intense hunger that you feel the warmth pooling deep down in your abdomen. It feels as though he’s sparking your nerves set alight, blooming across your skin that was begging for his touch. You’re sure you’re sweating, a soft sheen clinging the fabric of your clothes to your body.

He takes his time as he steps towards you, and you try to steady your breath as he closes the space between the two of you with ease. Tingles of excitement tickle your skin as he takes you by the hip, his large palm swallowing your side and anchoring you against his chest gently. He backs you against the door, which he hasn't yet opened.

The hand on the curve of your pelvis is dangerously slow as it skims your body, trailing his fingertips from your hip across your waist and tracing the edge of your breast until it settles, cupping the side of your neck gently. Javier’s thumb brushes your throat delicately as he stares fixedly into your eyes.

"Javi," you whimper, breathing shallowly as you watch him touch you delicately.

"You're such a tease, Princesa. Kept touching me, kept giving me these looks like you wanted me to bend you over the counter right there in that bar," his voice is gruff, and you feel yourself throb at his filthy words. You’re beginning to think you wouldn't have complained if he had; grasping the edge of the countertop, wailing as he took you from behind in front of the patrons and claimed you for himsel-

Javier uses his gentle grip on your throat to pull you impossibly closer, so your nose brushes with his. Once again, you can smell the whiskey on his breath, but also the scent of what you assumed was his aftershave. It was citrusy and mixed with the smell of the cigarettes he had been smoking in the bar. You wanted so desperately to kiss at his neck and take in that scent deeper, drag the tip of your nose against his jugular and sink your teeth in.

"Is this okay?" He asks under his breath, wanting to be sure this is what you wanted. Before your mind even has the time to process the query through the haze of citrus fruit and cigarette smoke, you’re nodding your head with a soft whimper. Tilting your head up to chase his mouth, you gaze into his eyes in a desperate, silent plea. He takes in your expression for just a moment, relishing the evident arousal he draws from you and then smirks, leaning in and pressing his lips to yours in a soft brush of a kiss.

Javier controls the kiss, still clasping your throat gently as he keeps the kiss soft. His moustache brushes your skin slightly, and yet you don't mind it; you're too lost in his touch to care. His tongue slips into your mouth, tracing over your own and taking in your taste as he leans you back while fumbling for the door knob to open the door into the hallway. You're both stumbling in the darkness, with Javi blindly feeling against the wall to turn on the lights. You pull him closer by the collar of his red button-down, his aviator glasses clattering to the floor and skidding beneath some of the furniture. He groans, tugging on your lower lip with his teeth and guiding you towards the bedroom.

The kiss is rough now, all teeth and tongue as you move your fingers on one hand into his hair, the other gripping the open collar of his shirt. He nudges the door open with his shoulder with practised ease, not once breaking away from the kiss in the process. He edges you towards the bed, carefully helping you lay down when the backs of your knees hit the mattress. Javi climbs over you with a soft groan of praise at the sight of you beneath him, the sound making your body almost vibrate with need.

"You're such a minx. Could barely keep it together this long," he growls in your ear, spreading your thighs with his palms and slotting his hips between them. His lips trace against your neck, kissing gently over your throat.

"Fuck, Javi, "you breathe out, a crack of white-hot pleasure running down your spine as he wastes no time in sucking marks onto your neck that you are sure will be a violent purple tomorrow. Already your body craves him, arching against the mattress to chase more of his touch, to pull him impossibly closer.

Javier’s hand shifts further, slipping beneath your skirt and brushing his thumb across your soaked lace underwear. The pad presses against your swollen clit, and he chuckles as your body jolts in shock at the sudden stimulation. Javi anchors his free hand to your pelvis to push your hips down, keeping you exactly where he wants you.

"You're so wet, Hermosa. Your panties are soaked," he whispers as your hips grind into his palm, desperate for more friction. The burning need in your abdomen has you babbling, begging to be filled. You’re not even sure that you’re making any sense any more; the only words spilling from your lips are a pathetic mixture of ‘Javi’ and ‘please’ and curses all strung together.

"Do you want to get off on my fingers? Is that what you want?" He rasps, rubbing tight little circles through the fabric that makes you choke out a needy, sinful little whine. It’s like you can’t suck in enough air to your lungs, toes curling at the build-up of pleasure in your core. Fuck yes, that's what you wanted, but you found yourself utterly inept at trying to form words while he teased your clit like this, slowly and teasingly circling it with the pad of his calloused fingers. He's dragging out wails of bliss from your shuddering chest with each brush of the bundle of nerves.

"Please, Javi, plea-" you're cut off, eyes rolling back into your skull as your panties are pushed to the side, and his finger slowly slides into you. You feel every individual ridge of each knuckle as it stretches you, adding a bite of dull pain to the tingling pleasure burning through your cunt. Javier watches your expression as your mouth falls open, brows knitting together. Your hands reach up, gripping at his red button-down as he begins to move his fingers in and out of you slowly.

It's like your brain short-circuits. He seems to know every part of your body that makes you feel good, not once missing those pleasure points that make your toes curl with each gentle thrust of his fingers. Your hips are again rising off the bed, legs spreading wider, desperate to take him deeper. Javi waits until you're clenching around his digits before he pulls them out despite your pine of protest. He's teasing you, repeatedly giving you hardly any time to enjoy the full feeling and then pulling his fingers out again, leaving you begging for more.

"Javi!" You beg, breaking off into a sob. You need his touch so badly, the pulsing ache between your legs almost painful. He ignores your pleas, hooking his fingers unto the waistband of your underwear and sliding them down your thighs achingly slowly. He tosses them somewhere on the other side of the room and hikes your skirt up to your hips, too impatient to battle with the zip to rid you of it entirely. Subconsciously, you lean into his kisses, fingers making quick work of his button-down and sliding it slowly off of his shoulders and down his arms to reveal his carved biceps and a white undershirt. He pulls back and yanks this over his head, discarding it in the same general direction he had thrown your lace. Even in the dimly lit bedroom, you can still make out the delicious expanse of tanned skin on his chest and toned stomach. Before you have the chance to taste it, craving to leave kisses across his sternum, his head is trailing down your body. He's mouthing at your thighs, gripping your hips to hold them in place as you sit up on your forearms to watch him.

"Or do you want to get off on my tongue?" He murmurs, the lewd sound that escapes your throat in answer louder than you expect it to be. Javier clutches your thighs, pulling your legs over his shoulders and causing your breath to hitch in your throat with anticipation.

Then his nose brushes over your clit, followed by the warmth of his tongue dragging a stripe over the length of your cunt and eliciting a soft moan from you. Despite your best efforts to restrain yourself, your fingers found themselves in his dark curls, pulling slightly to ground yourself as the tip of his tongue swiped over your clit. He moans at your taste, causing a familiar, buzzing sensation that has you clenching around nothing. Fuck, he felt heavenly, tongue moving lazily against your clit as he built that electrifying arousal.

"Don't stop," you beg him, gripping tighter at his hair and pushing his face deeper, almost terrified he’ll stop. Javi doesn't miss a beat, instantly fulfilling your wordless desire for more by slipping his fingers back inside of you and sucking on your clit. He's brutal, not giving you a moment's rest as he continues stimulating your throbbing bundle of nerves while moving his fingers in and out of you. It's so good, a coil of bliss working its way at the base of your spine and causing you to lose any form of inhibition. You use his hair to anchor him as you shift your hips, attempting to ride his face for more friction to satiate the growing wave of ecstasy between your thighs.

His teeth graze at your clit, and suddenly your mind is wavering as it goes blank.

"Shit-"you gasp out, feeling your climax build tightly between your legs as you desperately pull at his hair.

"Fuck, please, pl-please-"you gasp out, a sound of elation caught in your throat as his fingertips brush a spot inside of you, which drives your hips from the mattress entirely. Your mouth falls open in a silent scream as you tip headfirst into your blinding orgasm. You’re enraptured, caught in the most intense sensation of bliss as your ears ring, cumming against Javier's mouth. He continues to tongue your clit, your legs trembling, and your back lifts off the bed as you keen, tears streaming down your face. Javi keeps at it until you're sobbing, grasping at his hair and forcing him back. His tongue runs over his bottom lip, his moustache slick and glistening with your cum.

"You taste so fucking good, Princesa," he purrs, watching you as you float back down from your high and into your spasm-wracked body. He takes your face in his palm and moves back up towards your face, kissing you gently while settling onto the mattress beside you. You can taste yourself, musky and heady, yet it's so good with the hint of woodsy whiskey still lingering on his tongue.

You wind your arms around his neck, pulling Javier closer while he fumbles his belt. You know he must be struggling in those painfully tight jeans, his cock straining against the denim, so you trace your fingertips against the zipper. Pulling it down ever so slowly, you watch as Javi pulls the belt from the loops.

As you slide your hands down into his pants, you feel for the waistline of his boxers to dip your fingers underneath. The further you move down, however, you're shocked to find he's not wearing any at all. You pause, minding the arousal that floods back between your thighs at his brazen choice. When you look at Javi, he's smirking at your expression, the cheeky bastard.

"Are you really not wearing any boxers?" You whisper, staring at him in shock.

"Easier access," he muses, enjoying your surprise. Heat prickles the skin of your cheeks, and you focus on tugging his jeans past his hips. Javier helps you pull them off entirely as you concentrate on the throbbing urgency of his cock. The head of his dick is flushed red, needy after almost three hours of incessant teasing. Tentatively, you take his length into your palm to stroke him, and Javier lets out a soft groan as he lays his head back against the pillows. His breath is shaky, hand gripping at your hips again as you pump his cock slowly.

"Fuck," he breathes out, eyes rolling back into their sockets as you run your tongue over the head of his dick, tasting the salty precum leaking from the tip. You keep your mouth busy, taking him deeper as you use one hand to unzip your bunched-up skirt and wiggle out of it, kicking it off the mattress somewhere onto the floor over the side of the bed. His fingers slowly card through your hair, but do not apply any pressure.

You whimper softly, hollowing your cheeks as you take the rest of him into your hand and begin to jerk him off slowly. Javier tilts his head back further into the soft down of his pillows, hips twitching slightly as he attempts not to thrust down your throat. The moans that creep up your throat send vibrations from base to tip, and Javier releases soft gasps of shock as your tongue traces the veins on the underside of his thick cock.

"Dios mío, Princesa," he growls, lifting your head off of him and flipping you suddenly onto your back. You yelp in surprise, Javier quickly grasping the base of his twitching length to stave off any impending orgasm.

"If you keep doing that, I'll cum," he rasps, lips tracing the shell of your ear as you wrap your arms around his neck. Pulling your thighs around his waist, Javi reaches for one of the drawers on his nightstand. You pat him quickly on the chest, stopping him.

"It's okay," you whisper, and he looks down at you in surprise.

“Princes-“

"I'm on contraception.” You swear that even in the dark, you see his pupils dilate as he stares at you. Avidly, he lines himself up with your folds, holding your face in his palm and smoothing your cheekbone with his thumb. Brushing the head of his cock up against your clit, Javier groans as he watches you jolt slightly, still hyper-sensitive from that mind-shattering orgasm. You slowly trace your fingers down the shaved skin of his chest, eyes pleading with him to fill you.

Javi begins to sink his hips heavily, cock pushing at your entrance and stretching your walls deliciously. You whine, head cocking back into the pillows and exposing your throat for him to kiss while you adjust to the sting between your legs. Javier holds your hips in his hands, rubbing circles into your skin soothingly as you grow accustomed to the intrusion. By the time he's sheathed fully inside you, you're convinced he's split you open, begging for him to start moving.

And then he does, slamming his cock into you and setting a cruel pace. He feels so fucking good, the pleasure so intense and the slam of his hips so heavy that you can feel your walls fluttering around his cock already. He's stoking the fire twisting between your thighs and making you feel so full that your eyes are out of focus, tears welling up in them.

Javier pulls back from your throat, looking over your body with a ragged groan as he uses his grip on your sides to pull you back onto his cock harder. The overwhelming waves of bliss grow maddening as his tight hold on your waist leaves a dull, painful sensation, and you're almost sure you'll have bruises the shape of his fingerprints in the morning, complete with swirls and arches. You can feel Javi pulse inside you and grinds his hips, attempting to find that earth-shattering spot inside of you again.

"Fuck, you look so good like this; keep your eyes on me," he demands, wanting to see the build-up of pleasure in your eyes. You roll your hips, whimpering at the way he commands you. Soon, with your combined efforts, the head of his cock is knocking up against your cervix, and the pressure has you wheezing out his name with a sharp intake of air. Javi takes this moment to brush his thumb over your clit, growling when he sees your eyes roll back into your skull at the sudden fervour you feel that's bringing you closer and closer to climax.

Then he brushes against something inside of you that makes your nerves light up, and you're sobbing desperately, eyes squeezing shut and trying so hard to chase that high. Javier pulls his calloused hands over your stomach, pressing down on the pliant skin there to feel himself move in and out of you at a rapid pace. Your pleasure is threatening to spill over, sparking at the base of your spine, and suddenly it's too much to hold back.

"Javi-"you beg, voice catching in your throat.

"Come on, Hermosa. Come on, give it to me," he purrs, brushing his thumb against your clit one more time and suddenly— oh, suddenly, you're there. Time seems to slow down for a moment, suspended in the air until it crashes down on you. It’s so intense, so overwhelming that you have tears streaming down your cheeks, cumming with a keen of his name. Your cunt is pulsing and tightening around Javi's cock, and he's growling out a moan as he goes rigid inside of you, pumping you full of his cum. He's shuddering, and his fingers dig tightly into your waist.

For a moment, the two of you stay still, Javi leaning over you and peppering your chin with soft, open-mouthed kisses. As the afterglow kicks in, you're giggling, covering your face with your palms as the delirium kicks in. You hear Javi chuckle to himself, pressing his lips to your hairline and wiping away the sheen of sweat at your temple.

As you come down from your high, you relax into the covers of the bed, entirely spent. Exhaustion is ebbing at your mind, your breath still heavy as Javi pulls out of you with a haggard groan and holds you close to him. You both don't say anything to each other at first, too blissed out to form a sentence.

Javi kisses your forehead over and over, brushing his hand along your bruised side in an attempt to ease the painful ache his fingers left behind. You find yourself leaning into his touch, allowing yourself to revel in the post-orgasm bliss.

"Do you need some water?" He asks you softly, stroking your hair back, to which you shake your head no but thank him quietly for his consideration. He nods and gently pulls the thin cotton covers over your body as he settles in beside you. You both lay in each other’s silent company, Javi's thumb tracing lazy patterns on the skin of your abdomen as his eyes slip closed, alcohol and blissful exhaustion causing him to fall into sleep relatively quickly.

The room is quiet, Javi's breathing the only sound you can make out. You lay perfectly still for at least ten minutes, feeling the man beside you ease into unconsciousness. With his breathing slowed and his thumb eventually stilling at your side, you assume sleep has him in a tight grasp. Ever so gently, you ease out of his hold, slipping out of bed and picking up your clothes. You’re careful to be silent — the last thing you needed was him waking up and discovering what you were about to do.

A part of you feels terrible, using Javier this way. He'd been kind enough to buy you drinks. Instead, fear motivates you to put one foot in front of the other, the bare soles of your feet padded across the floor towards the bedroom door. Your boss, Pablo Escobar, had demanded information on DEA agents from you and the other women he had hired, and you daren’t argue, fearful of the bullets that you were almost certain had your name etched into them. Having bumped into Javier at the bar, it was a stroke of luck akin to striking gold; a stay of execution.

Don Pablo had hired a group of women into his staff only recently. Well known for hiring only men, like most drug lords in Columbia, he knew the women he hired would not come under the scrutiny of the DEA or the Columbian police. With the support of the American government, the DEA was closing in on him, and the Medellin cartel at a frightening pace, and he was in dire need of some form of information to get ahead of the gringos - stat.

Without the suspicion of the police, you had managed to get around relatively quickly, but finding the information without talking to anyone and alerting people of Don Pablo's covert mission was a much more challenging task than anticipated. You had carried on regardless, motivated by knowing you wouldn't get paid unless you handed over relative information to Escobar and his cousin Gustavo. You were getting pretty desperate for both the money and your life, knowing Escobar was anything but forgiving. Javier just happened to step into the line of fire.

You find your way back to the living room in the darkness and grab at anything you can see that could be of value. Papers that had Escobar's name on them and had multiple attack plans regarding the cartel's drugs labs in the Amazon Rainforest lay in the drawers of the desk underneath the television and a recording device that was set on the table. When you play it, the sound of Javier and his partner, whom he referred to as 'Murphy’ in the bar, floats quietly from the speakers.

Covert recordings of sicarios' conversations played, revealing the code words Pablo and his men used that the two partners had managed to decipher and use to their advantage.

You could almost laugh at how careless Javier had been to allow you into his house with all of this information just strewn about in the open, but you suppose he thought that you weren't a threat. No one did.

You take the items you snatched from Javier's apartment and slip out into the humid street once again. As you walk back to your apartment, you can’t help but think back to the conversation you and Javier had at the bar. The one where he claimed he was "Prince Charming saving you from a miserable day." You realise, looking back on it, that he had done precisely that. Prince Charming had unknowingly given you all the information you needed for a payout from Escobar and managed to save you from the end of a pistol barrel.

And you try to convince yourself of your shamelessness, insisting to yourself that you aren’t exactly the princess he’s looking for.

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red-moon-at-night · 11 months

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An Analysis of Haruka’s MVs: Distance and Disability

Hello! I’ve recently fallen down the rabbit hole that is Milgram and I have been itching to make some completely normal and sane analysis posts. My silly alternate title for this was gonna be “Things About Haruka’s MVs That Just Make Sense: A Hyperfixation-fuelled Analysis”, because honestly my autistic brain has been having a field day over here.

I am in awe with just about every single music video in this project; the animation is incredible and each one packs so much carefully laid out information. But I have been rotating Haruka’s in my head constantly since I first watched them, and I have a lot of Thoughts. Not about whether he’s guilty or innocent/forgiven or unforgiven. Not about whether or not I can justify his murders. Just some straight up imagery and symbolism analysis, through the lens of disability.

Haruka’s disability has not been specified, but I am confident we can at least say he is neurodivergent. I feel like the cultural differences in names for several things e.g. ‘learning disability’ vs ‘learning difficulty’ will just invite unnecessary drama, and is a little pedantic. What does matter here is that Haruka's experience as a disabled person is heavily intertwined within his story and his motives.

So, without further ado... let’s get into this!

Trigger warnings/TW: I will be discussing ableism, eugenics and harm towards disabled people. Everything else will be related to the music videos ‘Weakness’ and ‘All Knowing and All Agony’, so any triggering content within them may also be mentioned. Read at your own discretion and stay safe!

Disability: some brief (important) historical context

It is only within the last few decades that those who are disabled have been ‘seen’ for the first time. A modern society is (ideally) expected to be built to include and accommodate for disability, and to acknowledge disabled people’s existence. But for many countries (even the ones making steps outlined above) this is still not the case. For a very, very long time, globally, that has not been the case.

For most disabled people, society makes it very clear that they are a burden to it and are better off not existing.

I’m going to make this section as succinct as possible because...it’s heavy stuff. But it’s important, and I want you all to get the gist of what I’m saying. The weight of it.

Let’s highlight a piece of history regarding IQ and eugenics, surrounding the publication and subsequent worldwide reception of ‘The Kallikak Family: A Study in the Heredity of Feeble-mindedness’ by Henry Herbert Goddard in 1913:

“In 1927, it was used as evidence in the case of Buck v. Bell, which culminated in a Supreme Court ruling that the involuntary sterilization of ‘mentally defective’ persons was not unconstitutional in the United States. By 1938, thirty-three US states had passed laws allowing for the forced sterilization of women with learning disabilities and twenty-nine had made sterilization compulsory for people who were thought to have genetic conditions. Many European countries followed suit: Denmark in 1929, then Norway in 1934, and after that Sweden, Finland, Estonia, Iceland, Czechoslovakia, Yugoslavia, Latvia, Hungary and Turkey.”

— Limburg, J. (2021) Letters To My Weird Sisters: On Autism and Feminism, p. 126

This history of a ‘sterilization law’ includes Japan, who between 1948 and 1996 enacted the Eugenics Protection Law which “authorised the sterilization of people with intellectual disabilities, mental illnesses or hereditary disorders.” According to the government, about 25,000 were sterilized.

SO. It’s important to bring this up. To establish how much disabled people are not wanted, just from their governments. Let alone society. To this day, disabled people are hidden away from the public by families that are ashamed of their existence.

Japanese culture values collectivism, and maintaining the harmony of a group...to the extent of excluding those that don’t fit into the mould. That are different.

The question is: where do they go? The ones that are publicly rejected?

Haruka and The Curious Case of Distant Waters

Okay that’s enough of the heavy real-world stuff! Time to delve into some...*checks notes*...heavy fictional stuff. Fun!

Haruka’s MVs prominently display themes of distance and separation through the motif of water, specifically being submerged underwater.

The name Haruka reinforces this concept as the specific kanji used (遥) translates to ‘distant’, ‘remote’ or ‘far away’. As there are many, many kanji choices for the name (including but not limited to: ocean/sea, eternity/permeance, clear/distinct/obvious, and spring/growth/cherry blossom) it feels like a particularly cruel and intentional choice to go with that one.

Through the exploration of this motif, we can see the extent in which Otherness/the state of being ‘Other’ drives Haruka to great lengths to close the distance and escape it.

What I noticed throughout both MVs (particularly AK&AA but note the beginning scene of Weakness), is that whenever Haruka looks at himself in a reflective surface (e.g. the vanity mirror, the fish tank), water either begins to rise and overwhelms him, or is already there and he appears submerged:

I think this is the “All-Knowing” part of AK&AA. He knows he’s different, and he knows there’s a huge ocean between him and his peers, his family, everyone. A disconnect when trying to listen and understand, but also when trying to be understood by others and listened to himself.

You know when you submerge your head in water, and your hearing gets all muffled and incomprehensible? And have you ever tried speaking underwater? You can’t, because if you open your mouth you’ll drown. It’ll just come out as bubbles rising to the surface.

I also think the bubbles symbolise rising tension, between what he wants and what he currently has. Bubbles are everywhere in these MVs, even in places where they shouldn’t logically be? Such as this scene, following the line “don’t wipe me out, don’t wipe me out”:

Immediately pans up to Haruka gasping for breath, droplets of water rising from...somewhere. For about a split second, and they’re gone.

This boy is really going through it. I’m getting an ‘emerging from the ocean before I drown’ vibe from this one folks. When the line that follows this scene is “I can’t stop, I can’t stop”, what I’m REALLY hearing is “I can’t stop (killing) or I’ll drown”. This is his lifeboat, pulling him out from the depths of being neglected and hidden away, into the spotlight.

Some interesting images from Weakness in relation to that (of spotlights):

Anyways, onto the next point:

Blue to Orange: Water to...Nectar?

So, the orange liquid. It’s clearly representing blood, but I don’t think this is just a “danganronpa pink blood” situation of censoring/getting this video onto youtube without restrictions.

I think it’s most likely honey, specifically nectar.

The etymology of the word nectar shows its compounds translate to “death” and “overcoming”. Nectar is also called the drink of the gods, so it would make sense for it to be a ‘death-defeating’, immortalizing liquid.

For Haruka’s victims to contain nectar is very interesting. It reinforces that necessity to kill, to take the life of another, to sustain himself. To overcome the ‘living death’ he is experiencing by being hidden away from society.

This is his means of escape from drowning.

However, as we all know, things don’t turn out great for him. By the end of AK&AA Haruka is rejected once again by his mother, after which the door is shut (the light with it is gone too) and we’re met with this imagery:

The nectar floods the room, engulfing him much like the water from earlier.

There are many things we could take from this. One being that the nectar-gathering/killing-spree has clouded his vision; it’s so sweet, so sickly sweet and he’s addicted to the taste of attention, even if it’s very bad attention.

Who else has honey imagery in their MV again?

Oh, right.

Anyway, the nectar/honey situation could also be representing submerging into an even further level of distance. All that murder is gonna push people away, despite his motive being to close the gap between him and normal people. The 'ocean’ has lost clarity and become a maddening, delusional substance. After all, there is a type of honey literally called ‘mad honey’ known for its medicinal and hallucinogenic properties.

That’s enough about honey, though. Let’s move onto less unfortunate... oh, sorry, what was that? *checks notes*...Ah, yes. I meant to say, let’s move onto even more unfortunate symbolism:

The Necklace

So, this necklace. Haruka steals it from his mother’s belongings, and is his only material, physical connection to her. It is taken on the declaration of “making (her) love me again” and getting her attention once more, now he is no longer a child but a teenager closer to adulthood (at least, that’s what I consider the ‘shirt with a vest sweater and tie’ to represent. child him = the blue polo, teenager him = this one, adult him = an amalgamation of his teenager clothes).

I wasn’t sure if this was an opal or pearl/mother of pearl, but I’m leaning towards opal from the other depiction of it in Weakness:

Opals are fun because they can symbolise both good luck and bad luck, usually to do with whether it’s your birthstone. There’s something to be said of Haruka’s belief in his ‘misfortune’ and the superstition surrounding these gemstones.

But they are even more interesting for the powers they supposedly have; in medieval times the opal was considered the ‘patron of thieves’ for their ability to grant the wearer invisibility.

There is a deliciously sad irony to Haruka’s theft with that titbit of information.

Now, if this isn’t an opal, and it’s a pearl/mother of pearl there’s still some fun interpretation to be had! A little less sad, even. Pearls invoke strong imagery of the sea, of purity, and of a connection to the maternal. If this is the last thing he has relating to his mother, I can see this necklace representing a lifeline when he’s deep in the ocean. A reminder of why he’s doing all of this killing, and who it’s for.

His mother’s attention (or the idea of having a mother at all, any mother) is his driving force in life.

Speaking of that...

So We Really Need To Talk About That Fish Tank: AKA, Why Haruka’s Mom Wins ‘The Worst Parent of The Year’ Award

This fucking fish tank.

Okay, I’m gonna start by saying: I don’t think this is reading too far into things. When it takes an animation team months, sometimes years to create a 3-5 minute music video, and one as detailed as this...you don’t just wing it. There are storyboards, there are key frames and there are choices made down to the smallest of details.

From the sheer volume of animal/insect/fish décor that resides in the Sakurai household, you bet I’m gonna pay attention to what type of fish are in that fish tank.

For one thing, they live in saltwater. This is a marine tank, aka the harder choice of aquarium to have. I mean, way, WAY harder. For the experienced only.

These fish right here? One is a clownfish, and the other is a yellow boxfish.

Boxfish are a nightmare to keep alive. This article goes into more detail than I will, but all you need to know is: if there was ever a fish out of all the fish you could possibly want in your tank, this is the one to avoid like the plague.

They release deadly toxins when stressed, as a survival instinct. Boom. All your fish are dead. They need to eat a shit ton of food, but are notoriously clumsy swimmers and slow eaters. Boom. Starving, stressed out boxfish. Boxfish either dies from starvation or dies from stress and toxins.

For Haruka’s mom to have not just one of these fuckers, but a tank consisting ONLY OF MULTIPLE BOXFISH AND CLOWNFISH...

This is a high-maintenance tank. And it shows how much time and effort, how much care she puts into the things she loves.

How neglectful she is as a parent of a disabled child in contrast.

There’s something about the last scene between Haruka and his mother that reinforces this for me:

Haruka’s relationship with animals and himself: AKA, “why don’t I just become the damn fish tank?”

Let me backpedal a little bit. This subheading will make sense in a minute.

So, like I said earlier we have a lot of décor in this house relating to insects and fish. We also have a lot of pets. Both living and dead, taxidermized creatures in one household, proudly on display.

I think this may have created some confusion for Haruka regarding the value of animals being alive or dead, as in his perspective his mother values both equally. The fish in a tank may be full of alive creatures, but they’re still on display as if it’s artwork. Isn’t breaking the glass of a framed picture of a fish equal to breaking the glass of a tank with a ‘picture of living fish’?

(This isn’t to say Haruka is clueless to the impact of his actions, nor to justify any harm to animals. I just find the train of thought to be intriguing.)

So when considering these ‘objects’ are proud trophies of his work:

This is a carefully arranged display, which by the way, doesn’t contain a single fish. In fact the only piece of that moment visible here is the...large piece of driftwood? Okay. Keep that in mind.

We proceed into Haruka’s mother opening the door and seeing her son, for the first time in any of the MVs. Note the way they composed this shot:

I’m obsessed with this scene. The blue eye framing Haruka, with a literal fishbowl effect on him...

He is the goddamn fish in the aquarium now. His mother’s full attention is on him and him alone, with only the dead animals, the books, the lamp and the driftwood as window dressing to this wonderful display.

Doesn’t it just scream “Look at me! Look at what I did, mom!” to you?

That blue spotlight is on him once more. He is not just drifting deeper into an endless ocean, but contained in a vessel to be stared at.

One Last Observation

I didn’t know where to fit this in but I think the end feels appropriate.

His clothing here:

Is a frankenstein-esque mash up of clothes from his younger years. He wears this throughout AK&AA, and as I mentioned before it signifies him as an adult. However, I should clarify what I mean here as Haruka says “he thinks he’s 17″ and “doesn’t care about his age”. So... not an adult, but on the cusp of adulthood.

But I think he actually does care about his age, and quite a lot too.

This outfit feels symbolic of refusing to let go of the past, and of himself as a child. He’s literally grown out of his clothing, but he still clings onto it. He’s attached to the past because it not only contains his happiest moments, but the change from being loved to becoming neglected.

As a disabled person, you’re often treated with a lot more forgiveness when you’re younger. That is to say, some people don’t realise that children with disabilities grow up into adults with disabilities. There is a point where even support from medical and social services drops off like a cliff edge once you turn 18.

The ill-fitting clothing in this context becomes more than a reflection on Haruka’s feelings, and extends to reflecting society’s feelings on disabled adults ‘refusing to grow up’.

I don’t blame Haruka for holding onto his childhood like this. He’ll be even less publicly visible and seen once he is no longer a pitiful child, but a ‘weird’ adult in ill-fitting, children’s clothes.

#milgram #haruka sakurai #analysis #weakness #all-knowing and all-agony #symbolism #disability #*drops this onto the fandom like a ton of bricks* hi i'm new here pleasure to meet u #oh man I finally finished it... this is a very (and I mean a VERY) long post asdfghjkl #I'm pretty happy with how it turned out though! I got most of the things I wanted to say and point out down #believe it or not there was actually MORE I could've said but I think tumblr may have crashed on me if I did that lmao #particularly to do with Weakness as I focused more on AK&AA here. but anyways #I love how morally grey everyone is in this series! It makes for some really fun analysis!#it's so so nice seeing a disabled character in such a position too and not just 'is a cinnamon roll' or 'the devil reincarnate' yknow #I debated leaving in the real-world history stuff but I think it sets the tone of my analysis pretty well and shows the importance of--#--haruka's disability not as a justification of his actions but as a vital backdrop to his environment and struggles

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seeminglyranch87 · 5 months

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Taylor & Travis Timeline

December 2023 - part 1

December 1 - Taylor and Travis attend Christmas Party at a pop-up bar wearing matching Christmas sweaters featuring squirrels - or should we say "squirle"? IYKYK. (x) Kansas City

Twitter April 2011 - Travis

IG Halloween Oct. 2021 - Taylor

December 2 - Travis arrives ahead of Chiefs v Packers Game, Green Bay, WI

December 3 - Chiefs v Packers, Lambeau Field, Green Bay, Wisconsin. Defeated 19 - 27

Taylor attends the game bringing Brittany Mahomes & Lyndsay Bell with her on her jet. They return to KC immediately after the game.

December 5 - Taylor seen out for dinner with Jack Antonoff in NYC

December 6 - Taylor Swift is announced as TIME Person of the Year - 2023 (x) This is a brilliant article - go check it out!

Most recently, she’s been dating the NFL star Travis Kelce, as has been well documented when she attends his games. “I don’t know how they know what suite I’m in,” she says. “There’s a camera, like, a half-mile away, and you don’t know where it is, and you have no idea when the camera is putting you in the broadcast, so I don’t know if I’m being shown 17 times or once.” She is sensitive to the attention that’s put on her when she shows up. “I’m just there to support Travis,” she says. “I have no awareness of if I’m being shown too much and pissing off a few dads, Brads, and Chads.”

I point out that it’s a net positive for the NFL to have a few Swifties watching. “Football is awesome, it turns out,” Swift says playfully. “I’ve been missing out my whole life.” (A game she attended in October was the most-watched Sunday show since the Super Bowl.)

“This all started when Travis very adorably put me on blast on his podcast, which I thought was metal as hell,” she says. “We started hanging out right after that. So we actually had a significant amount of time that no one knew, which I’m grateful for, because we got to get to know each other. By the time I went to that first game, we were a couple. I think some people think that they saw our first date at that game? We would never be psychotic enough to hard launch a first date.” The larger point, for her, is that there’s nothing to hide. “When you say a relationship is public, that means I’m going to see him do what he loves, we’re showing up for each other, other people are there and we don’t care,” she says. “The opposite of that is you have to go to an extreme amount of effort to make sure no one knows that you’re seeing someone. And we’re just proud of each other.”

Taylor attends the premiere of "Poor Things" in support of friend Emma Stone, Rockefeller Center, NYC. Taylor sat with Laura Dern, Suki Waterhouse and Robert Pattinson

December 8 - Taylor seen out with Selena Gomez, Zöe Kravitz, Cara Delevingne, Anya Taylor-Joy in NYC

Go to December 2023 part 2

Return to the timeline

#squirle #squirrel #taylor swift #taylor and travis #travis kelce #87 and 89 #taylor swift and travis kelce #traylor #killatrav #seemingly ranch #timeline #87 + 13 = 100 #tayvis #taylor and travis timeline

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oceanallaround · 7 days

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Just some thoughts on almost driver team pairings and the potential butterfly effects from each, all very much AU.

Lewis Hamilton decided Mercedes was just too big a risk from McLaren in 2013. This resulted in their second choice (Hulk) joining Nico Rosberg instead, both giving Hulk podiums and wins and giving Rosberg the 2014 championship a couple years ahead of schedule. Maybe Lewis as Niki Lauda’s number 1 choice in a fading McLaren still joins Mercedes in 2015 but he’s joining a team where Nico is their most recent champion and as such their competition over the next few years is less resentful and Nico has the confidence to fight without mind games . In short brocedes but they were both champions before becoming teammates and it changes everything.

Carrying on from this thought in normal 2016 Nico Rosberg tells Toto he’s retiring at the end of the season regardless of the outcome far earlier than he actually does and they do manage to sign Hulk before he signs with Renault again ending his podium drought.

Toto gets his wish and when Valteri is struggling in 2018 on his one year contracts he actually does manage to sign Max Verstappen from 2019. Does this mean there’s a Max v Lewis championship battle ahead of schedule? I can definitely see it for 2020 in the HAM-BOT-VER podium era as well as 2021 of course. Knock on effects involve Daniel Ricciardo staying on at Red Bull and although I can’t see him beating Lewis or Max in 2021 the dominance of the car in 2022/3 may have made him a world champion if losing his edge was a result of his McLaren days rather than a natural progression. If it was a natural progression it is also more likely that Charles could have had a proper shot at the championship in 2022 as he did beat Checo (barely) even with Ferrari being Ferrari that year and it would be interesting to see how dominant Red Bull would have been in 2023 potentially without a driver that’s 15 seconds ahead- I can see multiple race winners for a start even if they get the championship.

A long shot that would likely never have happened but Sebastian Vettel returns to Red Bull in 2021. Ferrari drops him early on in 2020 (let’s say Checo never won that glorious race and he stays on at what becomes Aston Martin for a straightforward swap) and Red Bull was very much looking for a more experienced driver and what’s a better storyline than having Seb return to partner Max? This has ramifications of if Seb got his edge back and it was a three way title fight in 2021 plus he stays longer in the sport with a fast car, or if he was more a Checo/Valteri figure but managed to take valuable points off Lewis (let’s say Silverstone) for a less controversial end to the championship. You also get more of a relationship between Max and Seb instead of just parallels and likely some weirdness from Charles about that too. It’s definitely a bit of a middle finger to Ferrari as well.

The Ferrari Driver Academy does the sensible thing and does not listen to Haas about wanting German sponsorship. Thus Mick goes to partner Kimi at Alfa Romeo instead and gets a more functional team to develop in. Would definitely be curious to see if that would have made a difference!

Ron Dennis does not put a rookie in the fastest car on the grid but still speed runs his progression. As such Fernando gets his third world championship and Lewis still gets his a year later (sorry Kimi).

Oscar Piastri does in fact go to Alpine. This could mean Daniel Ricciardo stays on another year at McLaren with no broken contract when the car actually does get fast (would be interesting to see if he could make that work or not) and also that they might have a spare seat in 2025 where they would court one of their favourite sons for a Carlando reunion in a McLaren that could potentially fight Ferrari long term. Alternatively Alpine is breaking apart at the seems and Mark Webber still does his a plus managing and gets Oscar out of there for 2024 anyway. For 2023 it would mean that Pierre Gasly stays on at Alpha Tauri and that whole mess of Alpha Tauri musical chairs is avoided.

BONUS. Honda pushes for Max to join Aston Martin in 2026 just as he’s potentially looking for an out from Red Bull amidst new engine regulations and an uncomfortable environment. We know they want to work with Max again already. There may not be a championship fight but we do get Alonso and Max as a chaotic and sensational teammate pairing doing more than the car is capable of and a team where all drivers, manufacturers, and financial backers are properly pushing in the right direction. Or maybe he joins after Fernando takes a step away from driving and is in the back room pulling in those points with Lance still around.

BONUS. I just like to think of the pure chaos that would be a George and Max teammate pairing that is not going to happen but would be pure gold. Max gets infinitely annoyed at Mercedes for not knowing how to build a car but has enough experience fighting for wins and podiums in previous not too competitive Red Bull cars that he makes the best of it but George makes it very very hard at times and he is so not used to a teammate that won’t just get out of his way at this point that the “princess dickhead” tiffs become very common. George has a bunch of resentment that he’s not treated as first driver even now and from his side he’s not about to let Max pass just because he’s Max Verstappen and it’s just very funny to watch. Alternatively (in very much crack territory here) Horner has enough of Toto posturing about Max and signs Checo for one more year before stealing George in 2026. Toto shows up for a duel at dawn.

#f1 #f1 fanfic #brocedes #nico rosberg #lewis hamilton #max verstappen #nico hulkenberg #daniel ricciardo #oscar piastri #george russell #mick shumacher #the backwater contracts of this sport are one of the best things

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mariacallous · 1 month

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On Tuesday, the Supreme Court of the United States will hear oral arguments in a challenge to abortion pill access across the country, including in states where abortion is legal. The stakes for abortion rights are sky-high, and the case is the most consequential battle over reproductive health care access since Roe v. Wade was overturned in 2022.

At the center of this fight is mifepristone, a pill that blocks a hormone needed for pregnancy. The drug has been approved by the US Food and Drug Administration for more than two decades, and it’s used to treat some patients with Cushing’s syndrome, as well as endometriosis and uterine fibroids. But its primary use is the one contested now—mifepristone is the first of two pills taken in the first 10 weeks of pregnancy for a standard medication abortion, along with the drug misoprostol.

If the justices side with the antiabortion activists seeking to limit access to mifepristone, it could upend nationwide access to the most common form of abortion care. A ruling that invalidates mifepristone’s approval would open the door for any judge to reverse the FDA approval of any drug, especially ones sometimes seen as controversial, such as HIV drugs and hormonal birth control. It could also have a chilling effect on the development of new drugs, making companies wary of investing research into medicines that could later be pulled from the market.

Pills are now the leading abortion method in the US, and their popularity has spiked in recent years. More than six in 10 abortions in 2023 were carried out via medication, according to new data from the Guttmacher Institute. Since rules around telehealth were relaxed during the Covid-19 pandemic, many patients seeking medication abortions have relied on virtual clinics, which send abortion pills by mail. And it keeps getting more popular: Hey Jane, a prominent telemedicine provider, saw demand increase 73 percent from 2022 to 2023. It recorded another 28 percent spike comparing data from January 2023 to January 2024.

“Telemedicine abortion is too effective to not be in the targets of antiabortion folks,” says Julie F. Kay, a longtime reproductive rights lawyer and director of the advocacy group Abortion Coalition for Telemedicine.

Tomorrow’s argument comes after a long, tangled series of legal disputes in lower courts. The Supreme Court will be hearing two cases consolidated together, including FDA v. Alliance for Hippocratic Medicine, in which a coalition of antiabortion activists filed a suit challenging the FDA’s approval of mifepristone, asking for it to be removed from the market. The Alliance for Hippocratic Medicine is represented by the Alliance Defending Freedom, a right-wing Christian law firm that often takes politically charged cases.

Despite decades of scientific consensus on the drug’s safety record, the Alliance for Hippocratic Medicine has alleged that mifepristone is dangerous to women and leads to emergency room visits. A 2021 study cited by the plaintiffs to back up their claims was retracted in February after an independent review found that its authors came to inaccurate conclusions.

In April 2023, the Trump-appointed judge Matthew Kacsmaryk of the Northern District of Texas issued a preliminary ruling on the FDA case invalidating the agency’s approval of mifepristone. The ruling sent shock waves far beyond the reproductive-rights world, as it had major implications for the entire pharmaceutical industry, as well as the FDA itself; the ruling suggested that the courts could revoke a drug’s approval even after decades on the market.

The US 5th Circuit Court of Appeals narrowed Kacsmaryk’s decision a week later, allowing the drug to remain on the market, but undid FDA decisions in recent years that made mifepristone easier to prescribe and obtain. That decision limited the time frame in which it can be taken to the first seven weeks of pregnancy and put telemedicine access, as well as access to the generic version of the drug in jeopardy.

Following the 5th Circuit ruling, the FDA and Danco Laboratories sought emergency relief from the Supreme Court, asking the justices to preserve access until it could hear the case. In its legal filing, Danco aptly described the situation as “regulatory chaos.”

SCOTUS issued a temporary stay, maintaining the status quo; the court ultimately decided to take up the case in December 2023.

As all this was unfolding, pro-abortion-rights states across the country were passing what are known as shield laws, which protect medical practitioners who offer abortion care to pregnant patients in states where abortion is banned. This has allowed some providers, including the longtime medication-abortion-advocacy group Aid Access, to mail abortion pills to people who requested them in states like Louisiana and Arkansas.

Though the oral arguments before the Supreme Court begin on Tuesday, it will likely be months before a ruling. Court watchers suspect a decision may be handed down in June. With the US presidential election in the fall, the ruling may become a major campaign issue, especially as abortion access helped galvanize voters in the 2022 midterms.

If the Supreme Court agrees with the plaintiffs that mifepristone should be taken off the market, some in the pharmaceutical industry worry that it will undermine the authority of the FDA, the agency tasked with reviewing and approving drugs based on their safety and efficacy.

“This case isn't about mifepristone,” says Elizabeth Jeffords, CEO of Iolyx Therapeutics, a company developing drugs for immune and eye diseases. Jeffords is a signatory on an amicus brief filed in April 2023 that brought together 350 pharmaceutical companies, executives, and investors to challenge the Texas district court’s ruling.

“This case could have easily been about minoxidil for hair loss. It could have been about Mylotarg for cancer. It could have been about measles vaccines,” Jeffords says. “This is about whether or not the FDA is allowed to be the scientific arbiter of what is good and safe for patients.”

Greer Donley, an associate professor of law at the University of Pittsburgh and an expert on abortion on the law, doesn’t think it’s likely that the court will revoke mifepristone’s approval entirely. Instead, she sees two possible outcomes. The Supreme Court could dismiss the case or could undo the FDA’s decision in 2023 to permanently remove the in-person dispensing requirement and allow abortion by telehealth. “This would be an even more narrow decision than what the 5th Circuit did, but it would still be pretty devastating to abortion access,” she says.

The Supreme Court could also decide that the plaintiffs lack a right to bring the case to court, says David Cohen, a professor of law at Drexel University whose expertise is in constitutional law and gender issues. “This case could get kicked out on standing, meaning that the plaintiffs aren't the right people to bring this case,” he says. “If most of the questions are about standing, that will give you a sense that that's what the justices are concerned about.”

As the current Supreme Court is considered virulently antiabortion, reproductive-health-care workers are already preparing for the worst. Some telehealth providers have already floated a backup plan: offering misoprostol-only medication abortions. This is less than ideal, as the combination of pills is the current standard of care and offers the best results; misoprostol on its own can cause additional cramping and nausea. For some providers who may have to choose between misoprostol-only or nothing, it’s better than nothing.

Abortion-rights activists have no plans to give up on telehealth abortions, regardless of the outcome of this particular case. “Let us be clear, Hey Jane will not stop delivering telemedicine abortion care, regardless of the outcome of this case,” says Hey Jane’s CEO and cofounder, Kiki Freedman.

“They’re not going to stuff the genie back in the bottle,” Kay says.

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