#brutality towards women and teenagers | Explore Tumblr Posts and Blogs

gayerthanevertbh · 2 years

Text

apeitheia - part one.

pairings | scarlett johansson x fem!reader

summary | you and scarlett likes to write letters to each other, but without both of you knowing that you guys do write for each other. everything goes downhill that fast, huh?

warnings | heavy angst, probably just that. let me know if there’s more. x

notes | the next chapter will be... HAHAHA but i hope you enjoy the first chapter. your thoughts are always appreciated. <3 have fun reading!

series masterlist | masterlist | taglist for this series

apeitheia (noun) - disobedience. A biblical term.

DAILY MAIL: SCARLETT, THE SERIAL CHEATER.

Hollywood’s biggest actress was found to be cheating with an unknown “woman” in the Hamptons last month. They were seen at a local store, cuddling like lovers. Some say that it’s surprising and amazing to see Johansson being in a relationship with a woman while others say that it’s disgusting to cheat on a man that is worth more than that woman. Scarlett has not said anything yet about this topic, as her management says nor will ever be talked away, under her circumstances. But us fans are curious about this new love life that Johansson has. The woman seems to be younger since of her height and look. Although we did not get her name, surely – it’ll be out once she’s been speculated more.

Another news report says that she’s been caught with another woman in Argentina, an underrated hotel that no celebrities go to. There were photos that were taken, but they say that it’s the same woman that she’s with at the Hamptons. Although we believe the woman is different, either way – what a serial cheater.

A lot of people on social media disagree with Johansson’s actions since they find it: committing adultery. We don’t know the whole story yet, but there will be more for sure to come.

I was now known as a cheater, who doesn’t have morals and respect for myself. It was my fault none of the less, but words do hurt when they don’t have the context of the story. Either way, it was the same thing. I was a cheater, a serial cheater who likes to “sleep” with women. It’s like the whole industry fetishizes that idea of me, the thought of sleeping with another woman that makes me look disgusting – and maybe I was. And the newspaper and paparazzi love that idea so much that it makes me look like a nasty cheater. My husband was a good and fair man with a handsome look on his face, and his charm strikes to the people that I admire. He was a charming man, and I fell for that. He was broad and tall, he took care of me when I was at my lowest. Then eventually, we got married. I thought I was content with what I had, really content.

Until that changed when she showed up in my life.

How cliche and boring, as they say. I do agree with the critics, but she was different. She struck me like a cupid, I was utterly in love with her – still am if I was brutally honest about it. God knows I felt like a teenager all over again whenever she walks in through the doors of my company, with her hair down to her shoulder – perfectly cut. She was always smiling and so genuine with her feelings and the actions that make people fall for her; I was in there too.

I could feel myself smiling from the immense thought of her. I was in love, so in love. I felt stupid and like a child for being so in love with a girl that I shouldn’t be in the first place.

But she’s gone, she left. She left me.

“Eat your food,” said Colin – my supposed husband – while brewing another cup of coffee for himself, since I took the other one without even thinking it was mine. I continued to stare at my untouched food, realizing that Colin wasn’t the best cook. He did make good food, it’s just that it was too local and boring. How mean was I to even think that way toward my husband, but I’m surely blunt about it.

She makes the best omelet.

“Later.” I responded with a whisper, but with a deep voice.

“You’ve been staring at your food ever since I woke you up.”

I looked up at him slowly, trying to see if he was upset about the whole story circulating around the internet. He probably must have known, but never spoke about it. The news was out almost a month ago, so Colin must have had an idea about the whole story. Knowing him, he’ll speak about it once he’s ready but – do I know for sure he is? He looked at me briefly then sighed, placing the mug on the countertop with silence roaring out of the atmosphere.

“I know what happened.”

He knows.

I could feel the sense of crying coming out and tried my best to hold it back, but when I think about her; the tears just come out naturally. He can see a single teardrop from my cheeks and almost felt saddened by the whole situation. Colin was an understanding person, even when the ones he loved hurt him. I was one of those people who truly hurt him. I didn’t mean to, I really tried holding it back. But she was dearest, he wasn’t.

I shook my head slowly and pinched my eyes, stopping those tears to fall out. I whispered with a crack in my voice: “I was supposed to tell you soon.”

He let out a laugh that seemed genuine but in an upsetting way. I averted my eyes back to him and saw how slightly red his face was. It was as if he was crying with me, sharing the same burden that I have. And maybe we do have the same burden, it’s just that I was the one who caused it. He leaned his upper body on the edge of the counter while clasping his hands together to keep himself up – because, in his situation, he was the loyal man in the marriage.

“But you didn’t.”

“I didn’t,” I repeated his words, mocking his tone. I looked down at my food again and could feel more tears trickling down from my eyes, feeling the sudden drop of my heart once I’m finally admitting my own wrongs. And knowing how genuine and kind he was, it was really time for me to open up about everything that has happened within a year.

“I fell in love with her, Colin.”

“You did,” he agreed, making my head bolt up slightly and seeing how understanding he was. The thought of him screaming at me and telling me how much of a whore – as the people say – did scare me a little, but it was so surprising that he was calm about it; making me think maybe he had an affair too. “I’ve known about it. Ever since I saw a message from her on your phone.”

“Colin–”

He cut me off, “Her name was petal, was it? You named her Petal. It wasn’t discreet of you, Scarlett.”

Petal. It was her nickname when we used to talk, the only name that I call her whenever I felt vulnerable and in love. I was her lovie while she was my petal. How my heart flutters whenever I repeat that name in my head that it shows on my face quickly, he caught me blushing from the name. Petal.

I wiped my tears roughly with my f0refinger and grabbed the nearby glass that had whiskey in it, realizing that it was probably a day old. I dunked it down my throat in one sitting and sighed with a shaky breath. He looked down at me with deeper eyes and said, “I love you, Scarlett. I don't think I will stop, but you love her.”

“I do,” I responded with a shallow whisper and looked at the window that was behind him, noticing the trees were being blown by the wind. I whispered, “And I will never stop loving her. I don’t think I can.”

“Why’s that?” he asked again but this time, he wanted me to spit it out like a drink – he wanted to know everything about our story, how we met, and how we fell in love. Could I blame him, though? If she, the love of my life, was in love with someone else and it wasn’t me: I’d start to have questions.

Why not me? Why was it never me?

“Because with her, everything feels normal. I feel me.”

MARCH 11, 2022. A year ago.

“Y/N?”

I looked around the desk to see who was talking to me until my eyes averted to Kate, who’s the CEO of Scarlett and her company: The Outset. I stood up abruptly and kept my chin up, like a soldier. Sometimes, I still feel frightened by her presence. Kate wasn’t scary – far from that actually – but I was working for her, so I felt very intimidated. She smiled kindly at me and asked me to come forward, then says something with: “Scarlett wants to meet you since she has been away because of a new movie coming up. She says she likes you and wants to know more about who you are.”

I must’ve mustered out a chuckle but then died when she wasn’t laughing back, but her face was kind.

“She wants to talk to me?” I asked, repeating her words. I can’t blame myself, I was going to be talked to by one of the biggest Hollywood actresses out there, and now – I’m working for her. Small world, wasn’t it?

“Yes,” she agrees, nodding. Then her hand went to my lower back and walked with me to the office, mentioning: “Scarlett is very open and sweet, she’s not a mean person. Just giving you a heads up.”

When she opened the door I saw an average figure sitting down, writing something on a sheet of paper, and looked up – our eyes meeting. She then smiles kindly and stands up, reaching out her hand for me to shake it. Of course, I did. But once our hands did touch, I felt a spark. And she did too since her face says it all, or maybe I was delusional about it.

“Nice to meet you Y/N,” she says my name as if she memorized it with the way it slips out of her tongue so easily, I was impressed. I smiled back at her and shook her hand, but not too tightly. It seemed like we’d been shaking our hands until I dropped it, not in an awkward way. She added, “Kate tells me so much about you and how good you are with your work. I must say, your ideas for this company are bright. I’m glad that you’re working for us.”

“It’s a pleasure, Ms. Johansson,” I responded, nodding while I watch her as she sat back down in her chair. She offered me a seat that was beside the desk, I sat on it quickly – trying not to disappoint her. I added, “I hope you’re having a good day.”

She laughs softly.

“I am… yeah I am,” Scarlett reaches for her glass on the table and drinks from it while looking at me with her piercing green eyes. Then she places it back with a sigh, leaning her back on the chair. I realize how short her hair was, but not all the way to her ear. Her hair was all the way down to her shoulders – like mine. I realized how similar our hair was, which was funny because I kept thinking about it. She then says, “Where do you live? How’s transportation coming to the warehouse?”

I responded, “Not that far. I live alone in an apartment. Well, a studio for the meantime.”

“Why a studio?” she asked, looking at me as if she was interested in my story. Was she interested? It was hard for me to be convinced that someone could be invested in my life or what I do, let alone my parents.

“I’m still in college,” I tell her, sounding as quiet as a mouse. She leans forward against her table and tilts her head slightly, and it makes me more nervous when she does that. “Last year, actually. I’m saving money for a bigger place. Apartments in New York are increasingly high.”

She nods, agreeing. Then replies: “Yeah, you can say that. What’s your course?”

“Fine arts.”

She nods again and that’s what she has been doing ever since I got here. She drinks from her glass again and smacked her lips together, putting her other leg on top of her thigh, asking: “I’ll double your salary.”

I shook my head in disapproval and chuckled nervously, how can she do that? It was a nice act, but I don’t need my salary to be higher just because I live in a studio. I quickly mustered, “Ms. Johansson, I don’t think that’s fair–”

“You’re the employee of the month in my company,” she reasoned with a sigh, looking at me with her glasses that looked a little square, but also in a circle. She pushes her glasses back on her nose bridge and continued, “I’m very interested in you, Y/N. I hope you do stay longer because I need you to be here.”

I need you to be here. She wants to be here, what does that even mean? How did that line up with her statement? The confusion started to take over and I nodded, letting the defeat take over our debation.

“You’re too kind, Ms. Johansson.”

Scarlett chuckles and shakes her head. Her hand reaches out to mine and our skin grazed, like a tango. I could feel my heart beating when she was near and how her charming smile affects me, I could almost feel hysterical about it. Then, she says in her deeper voice: “I’m always kind.”

I made a hasty exit and walked back to my desk, my heart wouldn’t stop thumping after that intimate conversation between us. Or maybe, I felt intimate. Though, the way she even spoke to me was as if she has known me ever since. My friend, Bobbie, looked at me questionably and asked: “You look so red.”

I chuckled nervously, trying to fan myself with my hand. I replied, “Do I? It must be so hot here, yeah?”

“What happened in there?”

I inhaled the atmosphere and leaned against my chair, feeling it bending back. I looked at them and shook my head once more, trying to figure out what I’m about to elaborate on. I said, “Ms. Johansson and I spoke to each other, she says that I’m quite interesting.”

“Well, you are since you’re literally the employee of the month.”

They had a point there, I was in fact – the employee of the month. But what if I wasn’t anymore? What if I flunk at this job and Scarlett starts to despise me like a vile creature? When she’s here, it’s like I have to make everything perfect. Since she already is perfect, it’s a matter of a fact that every move or idea I make was also perfect.

“You’ve got to calm down,” they tell me. “Could you give these to Martha over there? The papers are done.”

I nodded and got back to work.

The evening has come and everyone starts to leave, saying their goodbyes and goodnights. Usually, I’ll be the one left in the warehouse since I have to get things done before tomorrow starts. I began to turn off every lamp and light in the lounge when my eyes noticed that the corner right of the hallway was bright. Warm yellow bright. They must’ve forgotten to turn off the lights in that area so I walked briskly until I saw Scarlett with red wine in her glass, swirling it while there was a piece of soft faded music that was playing inside the room. We both made eye contact and briefly, I looked away. But then she calls out for me and asked, “Are you supposed to go home?”

I nodded but it wasn’t an affirmation or an agreement, but it was a yes. I felt distracted by the lights so I continued to look down at my feet until Scarlett softly demands: “Could you look me in the eyes?”

Her tone was full of warmth, inviting – yet demanding as I said. We made eye contact again and I heard her muttering: “Good.” I was about to ask what she said, but I heard her perfectly well. Too good. I could feel my knees begin to weaken when she continues to stare at me as if she wants to somehow talk to me or be accompanied; which I don’t mind giving, but I felt nervous. Intimidated. Scared. She leans against her office chair and clasped her hands together on her lap, her eyes asking me to sit down in front of her – and I did.

“Do you read books?” she asked, which was hysterically a random question – but I’d, of course, answer that. I nodded, not mumbling out a word. She asks again, “Could you answer me, please?”

“Sorry,” I muttered, playing with my thumb and my forefinger intensely while her eyes are still contracted to mine. I responded, “I do read books. The Alchemist for example.”

“I like that book,” she mentions, erupting with a smile on her face. “It seems like you have good taste.”

“And you do too.” I tell her, smiling back. Scarlett chuckles and drinks from her glass again, noticing how red her lips are because of the wine she takes. Her face too, for that matter. On my left, I see a tall bottle of wine that was displayed – and it explains why her face must be so red.

“I usually don’t make friends with employees but, I’ll make an exception for you.”

I felt honored to be her friend, but I have a feeling that she was just saying that. Out of respect or maybe in her drunken haze. I smiled brightly at her and still responded with a sincere genuine tone, saying: “That’s kind of you. I’m glad we’re friends then.”

“You aren’t scared of me?” she asked, her eyes scrunching together slightly. I thought about that question for a fat minute and realized that I was in fact scared of her. But the more that she talked to me and kept me company, the more that I felt safe around her presence.

“A little,” I responded quietly.

The lamp rays between us, mostly to her as I could see the little mole on her cheek. She smiled at me, but then faltered when I continued to stare at the bottle of wine for some weird reason. Though I was staring at her my eyes quickly looked away when she caught me staring. She felt amused by the stare, it felt like it was. But I was thinking of another picture until she cut me off from my thoughts by asking: “Is your home near the warehouse?”

I laughed but not in a rude way. In fact, in such an amusing way that she’s laughing too. I nodded, saying, “You already asked that question a while ago.”

“I must’ve forgotten then.”

We continued to stare at each other in such an intimidating way that I’m convinced I could feel the way she feels. I felt utterly and soundly safe with her, and I’m hoping I can give her the treatment back. She poured herself another glass and drank from it, almost finishing the whole wine glass. Then, realizing how late it was – I excused myself. She looked a little disappointed about my departure but gave me a small smile, telling me to stay safe.

As I was about to leave, she tapped on my shoulder and I turned around – my heart pounded with the sudden presence of her. I was easily scared as a person, and it would be embarrassing if I screamed that the windows break. She smiled and asked, “Could I have your number? For work purposes.”

“But I could just use the company’s number–”

“No, I um…” her words faltered a bit, and looked at me with weird-looking eyes that I can’t seem to understand what kind of emotion she was giving. She was my boss, after all. So contacting her would be necessary. “I trust you now. Is it okay if I type my number into your phone?”

After the whole numbering process, she tucks her gray sweater inside her pants and rubs her eyes. Our faces were close to each other and I could feel her breath intensify. Scarlett shakes her head and whispers, “Goodnight, Y/N. I hope to see you tomorrow.” I nodded and walked away, hearing the door closing behind me. Was I rude for not saying it back? Can she blame me? I felt a little awkward with our slightly warm interaction but it also felt really nice and inviting. I think I’ve never felt so safe after that immense conversation I had with Scarlett. It felt weird too, but in a good way that it’s unexplainable. Was she fond of me? It looked like it unless it was all fake. But knowing how genuine she was, it probably wasn’t as well.

PRESENT: MARCH 11, 2023.

Colin and I were sleeping separately for tonight, I acted on it first. He understood but still gave me a kiss on the cheek, a sign of saying: goodnight, I love you. I wish to say it back but I know it wouldn’t mean anything because petal was the only woman that I’ll ever love. With each glass of whiskey I intake, the more that I do think about her. How much she gave me love and hope when it came to us both like we were battling our lives with the critics and the people who might disapprove of what we have. I never felt that way ever since I met her, not even a single thought of being in the wrong. Because in my case, what I feel is right. And for petal, I felt like our love was right.

My phone buzzed and I quickly picked it up, bringing the speaker to my ear, and asked with a hoarse voice: “Who’s this?”

Hi, Scar.

Petal. After all these weeks, these burden weeks, she called me. She finally did! I felt happy, surprised, and excited so I stood up from my rocking chair and let out a sob of joy, finally hearing the voice that I’ve craved ever since the headlines started spreading around like fire.

“Hi,” I whispered, sobbing quietly with joy, and laid my head on the pillows – feeling at peace, somehow. I asked quickly, “Are you okay? Why did you call? Do you want me to visit you, my love?”

There was a long awkward pause, and I could tell this isn’t going to end well as I planned to happen. I gulped, feeling the heavy lump in my throat as she says those words that will haunt me until I possibly collapse.

I can’t see you anymore, Scarlett. You know that.

“Please don’t say that petal…”

I could hear her sob from the speaker of my phone, and my heart began to race with fear and sadness. The last time she cried to me was before she left me alone in that motel room. She was so frightened by the people and how they’ll see us, thinking and assuming that everything will end badly. I’d always hold her close to me and reassure her that I’ll always protect her, in every aspect of life.

But that didn’t happen, she left.

I can’t see you anymore, my family will be in danger.

“I’ll protect you and your family, you know that.”

I lowered the music speaker from my desk and paced back and forth inside the room, feeling a sweat forming against my forehead. I wiped it off with the back of my palm, as the silence went on. With each time ticking, the feeling of being happy again suppresses me. The thought of just holding her cheek and kissing her lips, her neck, and her beautiful face, could only help me to calm my thoughts. I long for her, I want her here, I need to hold her, I want everything with her. But when threats occur in life, sometimes it doesn’t work out that way. They were a threat to my love for petal, they are ruining me.

I love you, Scarlett. You know I always will. And I know you–god, I know you will protect me at every cost. But this is getting too dangerous for both of us

I could feel her whimpering on the speaker, it was as if she was about to leave me again – and I cannot let that happen. So I said quickly with a broken sob, “Don’t go, Y/N. You can’t.”

But my family is in danger with everyone practically stalking me everywhere! Scarlett, my life is in danger. My family’s life is in danger, I need to leave you and get on with my life.

“But my love for you will never fade away like that,” I reasoned, trying to make her stay on this phone call until I could ask for her address, it wouldn’t hurt to see her – right? “Y/N, let me see you tonight. Please? Baby, I love you.”

Do you love me?

“Yes.”

When I answered her question, all I could think about was the life we always planned to have. I remember vividly well when we were in Argentina, Y/N always tells me that she wanted to have a life in a quiet town, a few kids if I wanted to. I would tell her that it would happen soon and a kiss of reassurance would make her believe that it was going to happen. Breaking that promise like that will hurt me and her, it’s like giving up on something that hasn’t been done yet. With every heartbeat that thumps out of me, the thought of even marrying her floods through my head.

Then you have to let me go.

I shake my head in a frantic movement, responding with a deep voice but with a tinge of a crack in my vocal cords, “No, Y/N.” I could feel how pathetic I was, and how controlling my behavior was too. But with each second pass, I know she’s about to hang up on this phone. I added, “I love you, I love you, I love you.”

Please?

“I will protect you, baby girl,” I sounded desperate now, like begging to be exact. I was a woman with my words, I would do everything I could to just protect her. She knows that, I know that. She should’ve trusted me on that, but why can’t she? It’s like with each headline that pops out on the internet, the more she has lost me. With my head banging against the headboard quietly, I could hear her saying:

I love you, Lovie.

And she hangs up, making me grip my phone tightly as I was still expecting her voice, but nothing comes out. I couldn’t blame her, my heart could not bear it. She had a point, everyone was in danger because of our affair. If I could’ve divorced Colin last year, I would be walking hand-on-hand under the streetlights of New York. Considering how wealthy I am, I decided to use my money for good use.

I can’t let her go just like that.

I sat on my desk and pulled out my worn-out notebook, smiling unintentionally when I flipped through the pages of my writings down on the paper. I realized how truly in love I was with Y/N and realized that letting her go wouldn’t be the best-case scenario. I can’t do it, I simply can’t. I’ll fight for her if I have to, I’ll do everything for the woman I love. How cliche and boring that was, but never for me.

Y/N,

Your atmosphere radiates to me endlessly. I know I’ve only met you for a day, but there is something about you that I can’t seem to understand what it is. There’s this sense from you that I like, especially in the little conversation that we had last night. I couldn’t stop thinking if you felt the same way or possibly, never. I hope you do, don’t I sound a creep when I say that?

You will never reach these words out of my mouth and onto this paper, but I hope that you know that you looked beautiful tonight. I’m married for fucks sake, why am I kind of– anyway, I hope you have a goodnight.

Sincerely,

Scarlett.

Scarlett,

There’s something you must know and is that – you are genuinely the kindest person I’ve ever met, well aside from Kate. I didn’t know an actress like you would be kind enough towards me, like somehow inviting me into this friendship that you have offered. And as that thought runs through my head, the more that I’m excited to go to work just to see you.

You’re a married woman, too bad. I would’ve confessed that I’m having the slightest crush on you. Other than being beautiful, you’re really charming and forward. I never was that type of person, so you must know my actions toward you: way too awkward, right? You will never reach this journal but I hope you do know that you gave me a spark today that I can’t figure out.

Until next time.

Sincerely,

Y/N.

thoughts? <3 thank you for reading!

taglist: @when-wolves-howl @disappointment99 @mysticalcandyking @onetruwhore @d14n4ol @aliancvnas @princess-kennys-rats @aru-son @just-another-ant1 @blinkmuch @natashalovers @natasharomanoffswifeyyy @mrsromanoff @monaekelis @anxiousgoldengirl @nanathebb @bipolar-ride @blckwidowsbf @lizzieolsen89 (can’t seem to tag the others? :( )

#natasha romanoff x reader #scarlett johansson x reader #natasha romanoff x you #scarlett johansson x you #black widow x reader #scarlett johansson angst #scarlett johansson fanfic #apeitheia series

585 notes · View notes

carefulfears · 1 year

Text

thank you so much to everyone who has taken the time to read this post of mine and reblog and share your thoughts and send me messages about it, i really appreciate it. a few more thoughts below the cut but i wanted to say that first!

i feel like what i wrote the other day could be interpreted as derogatory towards the show and a byproduct of patriarchal writing that should have been different, and while there are many aspects of the show that are, i don't personally view it that way.

mulder and scully each have different reactions to violence that are rooted in different experiences, and from different points of view. this isn't a bad thing, this is the thesis of the story, but it is gendered. it is a position of privilege to wonder about exploitation. to be able to study and investigate it and desire to understand it, without it being personal. without having to confront that it could have easily been you, without having to reconcile that it has been you in the past. without having to incorporate those feelings and triggers into the process.

this grounds the characters, and is a very honest aspect of exposure to gendered violence, and the brutalization of women in particular, which is something that is rampant in both our world and the world of the x files.

more than any other defining characteristic, mulder understands the world that he lives in. he understands the systems that are in power, and he understands that certain people are more vulnerable, and aren't seen by those systems.

women, children, people of color, people with different experiences or abilities, are all disregarded by the world at large, seen as disposable, and not listened to. this is something that mulder expresses frustration about regularly, often repeating the sentiment that "nobody cares," such as with possible murders of migrant workers (el mundo gira), the deaths of black men (teliko), the abuse of haitian refugees (fresh bones), etc.

he knows that the FBI, and the government in general, are not interested in the victims, and are not interested in believing and listening to and helping everyone. the majority of his character and the majority of the show is spent focusing on those people, and refusing to accept the systems that ignore them.

this extends to local law enforcement, as virtually all of the confrontations that mulder has in any given episode are pushing back against cops, who are rarely supportive in his investigations. a stand-out to me is here in conduit, the sheriff who spends the entire episode dismissing the disappearance of a teenage girl, because she was "no prom queen" who drank and slept around, and her mom had a reputation of being crazy.

this is contrasted throughout the episode with mulder's obsessive dedication to trying to find her, advocating for her, and taking her mother seriously.

this is something that he does often, and notably when law enforcement treats victims (mostly women, sometimes teenagers, such as in schizogeny) as suspects, and tries to incriminate them rather than defend them (oubliette, mind's eye, terms of endearment, etc.)

as @iconicscullyoutfits wrote in her analysis of blood, "he always knows when someone is a victim despite seeming like a villain by all accounts."

in blood, he tells a woman who beat her mechanic to death that he wants to help her, and he cries out in her defense when a cop responds with deadly force to her attacking mulder. after she nearly kills him, he instantly turns his attention to the systems that caused her to act violently, and figures out that the town was being poisoned through pesticide, in what was likely a government experiment.

mulder was regarded as a brilliant analyst for his uncanny ability to always know who (or what) is responsible for the violence that he bears witness to, whether that be as the genius golden boy of the violent crimes division or spooky mulder in the basement, but that extends to an implicit understanding of how that violence came to be. what the systems are that enable it, and who the true victims are as well.

and the true victims, from the violent crimes division to the basement x-files to the government conspiracy, are often vulnerable and preyed upon groups. in the government/syndicate project, it's almost always women who are abducted, it is only women who come back with implants, and it is only women who get terminally sick as a result. it's women who have their bodily autonomy violated and who are stolen from and who are used for biological material. it's low-income areas who are targeted with military experiments, and who are used for the testing of military technology.

in deep throat, in conversation about government secrets, mulder asks scully, "when does the human cost become too high in the building of a better machine?" and the human cost is high and specific.

the specific targeting of women is something that mulder has been exposed to from every angle for his entire career, and while he has a less personal reaction to scully's, it is often also an emotional one

in oubliette, he openly weeps over the body of lucy householder, a kidnapping survivor who was a drug addict with convictions of prostitution and narcotic possession

in conduit, he visibly shakes and tears up when they find a grave that might belong to a missing girl

the victimization of women, children, and people otherwise viewed as disposable by society is an emotional issue to mulder, whose entire life is predicated on the person closest to him having been viewed as expendable to the government, to his parents, and to society.

samantha was sacrificed to the project instead of mulder, and her file originally had his name on it, a realization that he never gets over or stops trying to make up for. the realization that she was given up in his place.

when samantha went missing, their parents responded by pretending that she had never existed. the "investigation" into her disappearance was closed, and everyone attempted to move on with their lives as though nothing had happened, as though she had never mattered.

the people that she was being held by, government men on a military base, treated her as less than human

their mother burned photos of her

their father references "burying memories," and both bill and tena spend the rest of their lives trying to bury the truth about what happened to her

whereas mulder, in the pilot, looks at scully and tells her that "nothing else matters" to him. he views himself as committed to his sister, as having a responsibility to her, and he always surrounds himself with photos and memories of her. proof of her existence and the meaning behind his life's work.

he never stops looking for her in everything, in every room, in every victim

even years and decades after knowing and confirming that she's dead

and he extends that commitment and that compassion to every victim that he comes across. while they might not be samantha, they're somebody, and he's just as affected by the injustices that others suffer.

he's never willing to accept that this is just how the world he (and we) live in works, that the person who was everything to him was nothing to those in power, and he extends that indignation to the women who came before her

and who come after her

while his response to violence might be one of a privileged viewpoint, it isn't one of detachment, because he makes sure that it isn't. a little girl was sacrificed so that this wouldn't have to be his burden, so that the fact that people are sacrificial wouldn't be his problem, and he takes it on anyway.

he chooses to see the reality of the world, to not turn a blind eye, and he's never ever okay with it

#mulder apologia on main #it's not apologia if it's true <3 #i cited my sources #i adore him to pieces #thank you again everyone

139 notes · View notes

horizon-verizon · 8 months

Note

I think it’s possible to recognize that Rhaenrya was a victim of sexism while recognizing that she was also a brutal tyrant. I think we can say that Rhaenrya was a victim of the patriarchy but also someone who responded to her treatment by lashing out at everyone around her, especially those below her. Calling for the assassination of Nettles, a black teenage girl, isn’t an act of solidarity and feminism.

I agree. I agree that the blood purity she performs and uses is a feature of her heritage that she actively & consciously chooses but I do not know for certain that she'd suspect the dragonseeds if she hadn't had to emotionally gather herself only to lose not one, not two, but three kids to the stresses of usurpation. Ordering Nettles' execution is definitely a reflection of that Targ-Andal blood purity.

What I protest against are the ideas that:

Rhaenyra's tyranny later is told to have been inevitable without the greens' intervention or any instigation (I don't even care about Vaemond's death, he was just looking to endanger her kids/her for his own ambitions, like the greens. "Fair" play and he was going against the not unfair declaration Viserys made)

that there was no instigation or provocation; her reaction doesn't make sense (in a sense)

a woman has to show that she is capable of ruling because the history of male rulers makes her obligated to show "girls can do it, too" -> that it's justified to expect her to be above-average just because she happens to be the first up-and-coming Queen Regnant in ("united") Westerosi history -> -> to expect a woman to "prove" to a misogynist base (I mean specifically the other lords or even some of her male relatives) her worth and fitness to rule is coming from the context of women being kept from rulership that is both supported and reaffirms the idea that female authority = unnatural condition for women... (HERE is a post by mononijikayu explaining the progression and origins of the gender divisions in medieval Europe)

that being in the middle of a civil war that she did not start, having had the royal treasury bled out, that the rumormongering done by a hidden master of whispers and later the fear-mongering rhetoric of a seemingly mad version of Savonrola ARENT something that no other monarch ever had to deal with & WASN'T an extreme and volatile situation that even Jaehaerys would have much trouble with (I must remind people that Jaehaerys would have had a lot more problems without Alysanne and Septon Barth and Rogar Baratheon AND there was no agent working against him behind the shadows nor did he lose a child out of his own actions and unfairly until his much older age [Aemon], and that was only one NOR was it out of actual hate towards his person! or a belief that genitals "prove" he shouldn't rule)

and tons of other lies I don't even want to get into

In other words, there are a lot of bad-faith arguments that just wind up as being misogynist, so where do we move on if we're hung back?

Once more, Rhaenyra was never herself a feminist BOTH because there is no such thing as feminists in real/fictional medieval settings AND because she never consciously and intentionally sought to better other women's lives. The reason why we look at her story as a story of feminism is because as a woman, even just sitting on the throne provides enough precedent and justification for other women to claim and keep their seats (Jeyne Arryn, and other women and girls in even pre-Targ history who has lost the opp to rule)--and who knows, if she had been allowed to live and rule, actually consider instituting some laws for women either of her own inspiration or persuaded. Thus setting Westerosi towards a more woman-included political framework. Even though misogyny wouldn't disappear, the sentiment of women being bad or incapable or even just "unlucky" types of rulers wouldn't be as strong or as justified or more easily countered.

Plus, if I do not explain why it is important to understand Rhaenyra as a person affected by others and society, looking for agency, then the idea of a woman doing evil as being the blueprint of evil itself actually makes it worse for women in general. Because it fosters the connection between womanhood and evil or "unnaturalness" or the unnaturalness of gender-nonconformity of any kind. This is one-way progress even happens, Westerners still do not live in a utopia for women, anon. But Western (and some countries in Africa and Asia) women have a safer bet now than they did in ancient Greece, Japan, etc., or 200 years ago in U.S. history.

Once more, no one has to actually think Rhaenyra is a good person or even like her. She absolutely commits evil and there are other women in the dynasty who perform less or none (none or without their own faults but most [before the loss of dragons] display a lot of intelligence or autonomy-seeking) Just watch out for why you don't like her and what you think characterizes that evil, the events surrounding it, what inspires her, and all those implications. And recognize that good fiction doesn't ask you to name a good person based on your already-conceived notions of good vs evil, but to see the characters' development and role in the narrative and how their roles/lives/contentions mirror our own.

Aegon is a person born into a royal family with incumbent supreme power and he uses it against women and children (Aemond, too, but being a second son never he will not have the same access to power as his older brother, thereby there is a level of frustration that he himself nurtures). Rhaenyra is born into a world that consistently takes from women to give to men, and even her own family has a history of sidelining its women to affirm their men's power over them and Westeros. GRRM is asking us what does to women, how it makes them retreat into themselves and develop their methods of self-defense, or how she chooses to gain back some agency? How far or how little can she (the woman, not just Rhaenyra) go to gain power or agency, and once she gets past a certain point that she can't even see because she is so inured into a state of self-defense, how can she "come back" from that? Is there even room for it? And what does that do to men like Aegon & Aemond or even common-born men (who also abuse their wives, daughters, etc.) -- encourage them to perform violence against women and children?

So honestly, this back and forth about Rhaenyra being a bad ruler or just about her tyranny and paranoia is less interesting to me bc it is NOT THE ENTIRE POINT and it's boring as heck!!! (Unless we talking abt the progression into Dany's leadership & her own textual defiance of gender binaries)

*EDIT* (9/22/23)

As I told someone below in the comments, check your own logic before coming to this post. I have many other posts of me explaining and refuting other sexist takes that begin: HERE; HERE; HERE; HERE. And all link to many more posts where I explain to various anons why their arguments (very specific ones) are actually incorrect or just plain sexist.

#asoiaf asks to me #rhaenyra targaryen #rhaenyra's characterization #fire and blood characters #fire and blood #fandom misogyny #rhaenyra and feminism

47 notes · View notes

reasoningdaily · 8 months

Text

As the world braced for the verdict of the Chauvin trial, in Columbus, Ohio, there was another fatal shooting of 16-year-old Black girl named Ma’Khia Bryant. Many who watched the graphic and gut-wrenching bodycam video have decried the officer who deemed it necessary to use lethal force to defuse a physical altercation involving the Black teenager.

When juxtaposing what feels like a never-ending pattern of police brutality against Black people with the treatment of white perpetrators, there is an obvious disparity that highlights the pervasive nature of systemic racism. White gunmen who commit heinous crimes are often treated differently, with police being able to apprehend white suspects and bring them safely into custody.

Three recent examples of this: 21-year-old Dylann Roof, who was safely arrested after entering Emanuel African Methodist Church in Charleston, South Carolina and killing nine people in 2015. What’s even more disturbing is reports that police brought Roof Burger King following his arrest. In 2020, during protests of the shooting of Jacob Blake in Kenosha, Wisconsin, a 17-year-old gunman, Kyle Rittenhouse, used an AR-15 assault rifle to kill two people and injured a third. Law enforcement apparently offered Rittenhouse and a group of militia members water at some point before the shooting took place.

In March 2021, after a gunman shot and killed eight people, with six of them being Asian, Cherokee County Sheriff’s Office Director of Communications remarked that the shooter was having a “really bad day.” These comments drew public outrage at the humanization of the mass shooter. Black youth aren’t given the opportunity to be humanized, with a number of tragic stories illustrating this.

Over a decade ago, 7-year-old Aiyana Stanley Jones was fatally shot by Detroit police who were looking for a murder suspect. In 2012, the world was gripped by the killing of 17-year-old Trayvon Martin, who was shot by neighborhood watch captain George Zimmerman, who thought Martin looked suspicious. In 2014, a Black youth named Tamir Rice was shot by police. Rice, who was only 12 years old, was thought to be 20 years old. In 2015, a video of McKinney, Texas police officer Eric Casebolt went viral. Casebolt was filmed yelling at Black teenagers and threw one teenage girl to the ground while kneeling on her back. The video sparked rightful outrage at the excessive force used on the young girl.

Examining patterns of police treatment towards Black youth highlights a prominent issue: the adultification bias, which is the phenomenon where adults perceive Black youth as being older than they actually are. When the adultification bias was examined, one study found that Black girls as young as five years old were perceived as being less needing of protection and nurturing, compared to their white counterparts.

Research indicates that Black boys are perceived as older and less innocent when compared to their white counterparts. “Black boys can be seen as responsible for their actions at an age when white boys still benefit from the assumption that children are essentially innocent,” shared Phillip Atiba Goff, Ph.D., who authored a study examining this phenomenon in more detail. Black girls are treated disparately compared to their white counterparts and are more likely to be seen as older, while having to navigate the combined effects of racism and sexism.

The adultification bias contributes to the continued harm and abuse that Black youth face, not just at the hands of law enforcement, but also in the education system. When Black women and girls are mistreated, harmed and abused, it is less likely to be reported on. The Say Her Name campaign co-founded by scholar Kimberlé Crenshaw was designed to bring greater awareness to this issue.

Disrupting the adultification bias must first begin with awareness that this problem even exists. Despite the wealth of evidence detailing the ways it manifests, greater understanding is necessary. Training about the adultification bias should be mandatory, especially for folks working with and around Black youth populations. Understanding the ways that the adultification bias manifests as well as how to mitigate this type of bias is imperative.

Although research indicates that those who are marginalized are likely to internalize some of the biases and stereotypes about their own identity group, it is likely that having more Black people working with Black youth populations would lessen the occurrence of the adultification bias. One can assume that having experience and exposure to Black youth may increase one’s understanding, and limit the adultification bias from taking place. Resources must be allocated to support education about the adultification bias and how it can be interrupted. Lastly, rather than resorting to punitive measures when dealing with Black youth, we must encourage the learning of de-escalation and conflict resolution strategies.

#How The Adultification Bias Contributes To Black Trauma #adultification of Black Children #adultification #Black Children Matter

33 notes · View notes

afatlotofchance · 8 months

Text

Commission-story 2: The Glutton's Way of the Cross

From a cute little teenage romance and slice of life story, we jump into a completely different territory. More mature. More brutal. Darker.

Let's go to the most fanatical and backward parts of the Middle-Ages. Let's have some non-consensual force-feeding, some brutal gaining, and some painful fattening.

Trigger warning for violence, brutality, torture, all the gruesome side-effects of force-feeding, and other nasty things.

XXX

The monk at the door of the monastery scrutinised the horizon, waiting for the cart to appear at any moment.

“Well, brother Francis?”

Another monk had just joined the first one. Taller, thinner, and definitively scarier.

“I don’t know, brother Gilles… He is late. The bells have rung, but I still can’t see him.”

“Lateness is a symptom of laziness, and laziness is the son of sloth. Sloth is the weapon of the devil.”

“Indeed, brother Gilles. Do you think our food will be poisoned?”

At this moment, a cloud of dust arose from the road as the cart filled with the weekly food delivery approached.

“He is driving faster than usual.” Brother Francis noted.

“Well, he knows he did wrong. At least he shows signs of repentance.”

“I would say he rather shows signs of fear.”

“One leads to the other, brother.”

The cart finally arrived in front of the two monks.

“Well, my son? What kept you so late?”

“I was attacked, fathers!”

The monks opened wide their eyes.

“Attacked, my son?”

“Yes! A robber pushed me out of the cart and tried to steal it, with all the food inside! I still have a nasty bump from the hit! Thankfully, he got caught: he couldn’t control the horse!”

Brother Gilles looked at the horse. He always disliked horses – he knew a devil could be in them at every moment, spying on his every move.

“Do you hear that, brother Francis? A thief tried to rob us of our food!”

“I heard that, brother Gilles… My son, tell me, what happened to said thief?”

XXX

The small delegation of monks travelled through the streets of the little town. Every one they met on their way saluted them with a deep respect. Much more than simple politeness and respect for the man of the cloth, they rather acted out of the fear of what they considered dangerous and disturbing.

The monastery at the edge of the town wasn’t really liked around here. Not that the people hated them, they had too much respect for the religion for that. And these monks weren’t the kind that would revel in money and power to drink, eat, and lay with women like so many others did. But they also weren’t the kind to preach kindness and generosity like they were supposed to. You certainly weren’t going to see these ones begging, preaching, teaching or helping those in distress. Oh no.

The monks came rarely in town. They liked loneliness and to be secluded, working on the constant repentance of their own souls, for they knew the rest of the world had fallen ill beyond cure. They were so strict, so devoted and so pious that it became sickening and grim; and it was all the more frightening because they didn’t seem to remember what virtues and goods their own religion revolved around.

They were pale of skin, for they fled the hard work in the sun and buried themselves under stone roofs. They were thin, almost skeletal, for it seemed they only gathered food in their home just to not eat it. Their eyes were small and squint for spending their time in darkness and reading too much. But the worst of it were the marks of their… very specific devotions. Bruises. Scars. Burns. Sometimes a finger missing. One of the monks couldn’t speak, for his tongue wasn’t in his mouth any more – but nobody knew if the muscle was removed before or after he entered the monastery.

As a result, it was understandable that the crowd amassed on the town’s square would part like the sea before the old prophet at the mere sight of them marching towards the gallows.

Today, there was only one man to be hanged. The thief, brother Gilles guessed. He stepped forward and looked at the criminal. A small man near him was shouting at the crowd, explaining the boy’s crimes. But the monk did not listen to him – for he knew the crimes of the mortals and the sins of God were completely different things. The thief was young, barely a man, and he looked terrified. His hands were behind him, probably with rope around them, and the noose was around his neck – nicely tight. His eyes were wide open, jumping everywhere like wild rabbits, searching for a bit of help or mercy. He was sweating a lot, and his face bore the marks of terror – marks the monks knew very well. And they knew that with fear came redemption, repentance and faith.

“Stop!”

Everybody looked at the monks.

“Are you going to simply hang this poor young man like that? Without any form of trial? Without any form of judgement? Without any form of advice from the men of God?”

The small man looked quite embarrassed.

“Father, this man was a thief. Not only is he a thief, he is a sacrilegious thief, for he tried to steal your cart of food as it was leaving our town. The law claims that we should hang him.”

“The law of men, my son, not the law of God. God never said anything about hanging people – hanging other people is pagan, and hanging ourselves is only worth of a Judas, not of a petty thief. Thieves are to be crucified.”

The young man gulped down despite the noose around his neck, and he became even more pale and sweaty. Brother Gilles smirked. That was the reaction he was waiting for.

“But, as you said, he stole our belongings, our property, our food. We should have a word about his punishment.”

The monk got up on the gallows’ platform, and close to the young man. He was without a doubt a peasant – shirt, pants, small vest, a strong lace instead of a belt. His clothes were still dirtied with the dust and the mud from his failed crime attempt. He was young, as the monk had already noticed – young but stocky and bulky. Broad shoulders, thick chest, strong legs. He definitely looked like a worker, a hard worker, a farmer probably, certainly not a blacksmith. However, some elements of his morphology clearly showed a propensity towards sloth and gluttony. A soft flesh. A big belly, not round but slightly more prominent than the chest (never a good sign, for it meant the man’s heart was in his belly). A baby-like face, with fat cheeks and a double chin.

“How many years have you seen pass, my son?”

The boy gulped down once more.

“I will soon be sixteen years old, father.”

“You stole our food.”

“I was hungry!” the man cried out. “My father is dead, the taxes are heavy, my crops all withered and died! I don’t have enough money to buy bread, I would have died, only God could help me, and I had to do it, I succumbed to the temptation, for I was weak, and my belly ached, but…”

The monk put a hand on his mouth.

“Your head is shaved.”

“Huh?”

The monk took his hand and touched the top of his head.

“Your head is shaved, like those of our orders. Why so?”

“Keeps… keeps the little biting bugs away.”

“I see… Clean. Do you regret what you did?”

“Yes! Yes, so much, father, I repent father, please, I don’t want to be hanged, I’m not a criminal, I’m a faithful good…”

The monk made a sign to make him stop his pleas. Then he got near the small man that was shouting the boy’s crimes earlier on. He took him by the shoulder, leaned towards him and whispered in his ear:

“What do you know about the young man? Is he gluttonous? Slothful?”

“He certainly is both, father, everyone knows it around here! His father kept complaining that he was a good-for-nothing, a big belly with legs and without a heart! And when his father died, he inherited his farm with his field, but he never managed to get anything to grow there! I think he never really put any real effort in it, he just wanted to eat his own crops and had no patience to take care of it as he grew! Just a big gullet with legs, as his father said! Good for nothing.”

The monk nodded and turned back towards the young man, speaking loudly for everyone to hear:

“Hanging a man is not a dignified or Christian way to make him die. You are young, terrified and repentant. You are a sinner, yes, but if God executed all of the sinners on this Earth, only the pope would be left! We, as men of god, offer you a way to be punished for your crime while staying alive. A way that would purify your soul, make you repent and become a better person! We offer to punish you, not with a vulgar execution, but with a penitence! We will punish you like God Himself would!”

The crowd started to whisper.

“You shall be punished by where you sinned. Your mouth, your throat, your gullet.”

He got closer to the boy, his cold icy eyes straight into his. The young thief shivered in fear of the dreadful punishment that was awaiting him.

“Do you know what they do in Hell to gluttons?”

The young man shook his head.

“They are fed for all eternity. And so you shall be.”

The boy looked at him strangely. Was it… a joke? He never heard of a monk making a joke, even in in-jokes.

Brother Gilles turned towards the crowd.

“We will punish him by feeding him! He wanted to eat, well he will eat, until he realises his mistakes and his sins! He devoted his soul to the false god Gluttony, but we will show him the truth behind the lies, we will make him realise that food isn’t sustaining the soul, that what evil can offer is nothing but sickness and death! We will show him that eating isn’t a proper way to honour God!”

The small man, uneasy, looked at the executioner, who simply shrugged.

“Father… You want to feed him? That’s not…”

The look the monk gave him silenced him in the minute. Brother Gilles’ eyes were gleaming with a spark of pure madness, of insane cruelty, of the twisted fanaticism the townspeople had learned to fear since decades now.

“We offer him a chance to redeem himself! Isn’t that good? If he wants to follow our path, we will prepare his punishment. We will give the orders and the food, for we have plenty to spare – all we would borrow from the town are guards to carry on our orders, and your stocks, to keep him locked. But it is not your choice or mine.”

Brother Gilles turned towards the boy.

“It is yours. You can choose to redeem yourself and follow us. But if you would rather die as a sinner take the rope then, be my guest.”

“No, no! I don’t want the rope! I want to live! I want… I want to repent!”

“Good.”

Of course, the boy was afraid. He knew the reputation of these monks. He knew they liked the whips and the blades as much as the crosses and the rosaries. But what was the worst they could do by feeding him? They said it themselves, they would give him their own food. So nothing rotten or disgusting. They will offer him on a plate what he wanted to steal since the very beginning. They were so nuts in the head they didn’t even realise that their punishment was a reward more than anything.

Anyway, nothing could be worse than the gallows.

XXX

Of course, the stocks were pretty uncomfortable – forcing Yvan to stay on his knees, preventing his hands from moving – but it was better than the rope. At least, here, he had enough space around his neck to move his head.

The monks insisted on using the stocks of the marketplace. They refused to use those on the outskirts of the town. As they said themselves: “Like this, not only will his humiliation be greater, but he will also become an example, a lesson, a living book for the people of this town. Every day they will come and see him being punished, and mock him for having fallen so low – but at the same time, they will shiver for the sake of their own soul.”

On the stocks, was nailed a parchment upon which had been written only one word: “Glutton”. And indeed, his punishment seemed like a demonstration of what gluttony was.

Just like the monks had said, Yvan was being fed and that was the only thing they seemed to do to him. No whipping, no bone-breaking, no flesh-burning. Just… meals.

They served him three meals, three enormous meals – at sunrise, midday and sunset. Yvan never felt so happy and satisfied in his entire life! He was treated like a king, had his belly full, and could taste better food than he could have ever grown out of his own field! There were fruits of all sorts, apples, peaches, berries, nuts, olives, pears, oranges, along with a rich meal, good bread, and tasty wine. And there was meat! Real, juicy meat, cooked, roasted! He gulped down everything with glee and smiles, for he wasn’t even bothering with feeding himself: the guards were feeding him! Like a king, like a pope, like a god!

People soon gathered around him to see how the monks had planned to torture him – some even had rotten fruits ready to be thrown – but they all stood wide-eyed and still upon seeing the young, brutish, gluttonous, lazy man they all knew being pampered like the child of some nobleman. Were the monks completely mad?

Outside of the stocks, the only thing that seemed close to a humiliation was after his last meal – as the evening left place to the night and everybody was going home. Yvan had to relieve himself and the guards lowered his pants and made him defecate and urinate without taking him off the stocks. But, while it was humiliating for Yvan to know that all the women, men and children of the neighbourhood could take look his parts and dejections, and while it hurt him to hear the people’s laughs and mockeries, he quickly forgot everything about it, for the taste of the exquisite foods was still lingering on his tongue, and that was enough to make him happy.

As new guards arrived at night to watch over the stocks, Yvan liked his lips (still covered in juice and milk) and let out a small burp. His belly was full and heavy – the first time since… Oh, since his birth, probably.

Someone up there must be looking after him, he thought as he felt sleepy. Someone who whispered to the ear of the crazy monks.

This night, Yvan dreamed of huge feasts and banquets.

XXX

“Hey! I already had my meal at sunrise!” Yvan shouted to the guards as they approached with more food.

It was the middle of the morning. The market was taking place all around the young man, and the people nearby, merchants or clients, turned their heads towards the stocks.

“The monks said you’ll have five meals a day!” answered the guards.

“But I only had three yesterday!”

The other did not answer. Not that Yvan was complaining. Eating so much yesterday had woken up his appetite – he had felt hungry ever since sunrise and his breakfast, while big, certainly wasn’t enough to make him full.

Yvan salivated upon seeing the guards drop in front of him beautiful, greasy pieces of meat, firm and plump pomegranates, brilliant and sugary grapes, delicious buttery bread!

“That’s a lot of food!” he snickered merrily, still chipped up from the morning wine.

The guards looked at each other with a smirk.

“It is, indeed. Now open your mouth.”

XXX

They came back at midday, then in the middle of the afternoon, and at sunset. They helped him to do what he had to do, and the guards shifted for the night.

While still smiling as the idiot that he was, Yvan burped, not without a slight feeling of unease. The guards weren’t bothering with cleaning his mouth, so all the grease and fat of the meat was still dribbling down his chin, mixing itself with the milk and the wine in a pool on the ground. He felt light-headed, due to having much more wine than usual – which made him quite red in the face – but all the alcohol in his blood couldn’t erase the heaviness in his belly. His stomach felt so tight, in fact, it was nearly uncomfortable.

It’s nonsense, he thought to himself. No one can grow uncomfortable from eating too much. It’s hungriness that makes you suffer. Famine is the true pain. Not eating like a king.

Yet, his bowels still hanged dully from his guts, still feeling puffed up despite being emptied of their content not so long ago, and his stomach kept gurgling and bloating itself with gases and bubbles.

You couldn’t get sick from eating too much food… could you?

XXX

“Hey, could you… could you… just…”

One of the guards shoved a juicy and greasy chicken leg in Yvan’s mouth.

“What did’ya say?”

The young man munched and gulped down. “Could you slow down a bit? I’m starting to get…” An apple was put between his teeth. He had to bite. “… feeling really full now.” he said while munching.

“Don’t care.” the guard answered as he took a watermelon and cut it in big slices.

“I’m really…” Yvan let out a small burp. “If you go too fast, I might… choke you know?”

“The monks said nothing about you choking, or about us feeding you fast ofrslow. We just feed ya, and that’s all. The monks said: Feed him. And if he doesn’t want to eat…” The guard gave a violent kick to Yvan’s leg. The young man screamed, a bit of apple falling on the ground. “… then make him eat.”

Yvan ate the rest of the watermelon, but not without a slight nausea.

His stomach was so full he felt it could burst at any moment. Not that the food was bad – it was so delicious – and now he was getting kind of used to eating so much, even though it was really uncomfortable by the end of the day. It was the guards, they forced him to eat too much too quickly. He feared getting a stomach ache. He had one when he was little, after eating all of the apples of the neighbour's tree. But it quickly went away. He hoped this one will too.

Anyway, alcohol helped him soothe the pain. The wine they kept making him drink gurgled in his belly.

Another watermelon down, and Yvan burped again, but this time quite faintly, with a bit of saliva dripping from his lips.

He looked at what was left. Breads, several big pieces of bread. Anointed with oil and butter. To see them shine in the sun made his stomach turn and churn.

He could certainly do this. He wasn’t going to refuse eating some pieces of bread. Yvan, refusing food? That would be ridiculous.

XXX

“And that’s the last of it.”

Yvan gulped down what was left of the cheese. He burped and spat.

“I’m not feeling… good. Not at all…”

“You’re supposed to be punished, scum. You’re not supposed to feel good.”

Yvan looked at the guard. It was hard to look precisely at someone’s face while being drunk.

“I’m being fed. I’m eating. How is that a punishment? You can make me… hic! You can make me ache and sick and drunk, but… hic! It can’t be worse than the gallows, or starving in the street! Hic!”

The guard simply shook his head and went away, leaving the young man with his bloated belly and food-smeared mouth at the good hands of his colleagues.

If only this thief knew of the monk’s plan…

XXX

“Rise and shine! Time to eat!”

Yvan woke up. His stomach felt hard and heavy.

“What?”

He looked at the sky. It was dark blue, with barely a thin line of pink at the horizon.

“The sun’s not raising yet…”

“It’s the matins, my boy. Your first meal.”

“What?”

“Monks order. Make him eat at the matins. Bread, wine and fruit. Won’t hurt ya, right? Plus some nice cow milk! Fresh from the udder!”

Yvan didn’t feel like eating but… well, he had no other choice.

XXX

“Here’s the food!”

Yvan looked at the young guard that was bringing with him huge pieces of muttons, big apples and large pears.

“I just ate!” he said. “The matins are done!”

“Yeah, but the sky is all pink and the sun is rising, no? It’s the lauds.”

“The lauds?”

“Monks order. Give him food at the lauds. Come on, open up.”

XXX

“Food for ya, glutton!”

Another guard was coming, his arms filled with bread, quinces, plums and milk.

“I just ate… bwarp! Twice!” Yvan belched. “I’m full, really! I’m stuffed and not hungry any more!”

“But the sky is bright blue and the bells are ringing! It’s the prime, boy! The monks said you had to eat at the prime!”

“I’m full, I can’t eat any more!”

The guards gave him a kick in the butt.

“Come on, don’t squeal too much, you pig! You’re supposed to be a prisoner here. Don’t make me shove this food down your big throat. Come on, make some room, I’m sure you can.”

XXX

“I feel like… it’s so tight… I’m gonna burst.”

Yvan huffed and puffed. The young guard was back. He kneeled and looked at Yvan’s belly, opening a bit his vest and shirt.

“Indeed, I’ve never seen a gullet so round! Like a melon! The skin’s so tight I could play drum on it!”

“Please… don’t…” Yvan whispered.

“Well, I hope you’re hungry.” the young guard answered. “There’s lamb, and figs, and…”

“More… food?” Yvan cried.

“Yes. It’s the terce. The market is opening. Don’t you see?”

Indeed, the merchants had gathered on the market-place, preparing their stalls and stands.

“I… can’t eat. I… won’t eat. I don’t want… to eat. Stop.”

The young guard laughed.

“You know you can’t just ask that, right? If you don’t want to eat, you’ll be forced to. Please, show some courage. It’s not so bad, it’s just a big meal. Come on, open up.”

XXX

It was noon, now. The market was coming to an end, but a small crowd had gathered around the stocks to look at poor Yvan. He was as pale as his shirt, with a belly big and swollen. It kept gurgling, moaning and making strange noises. Sauces, juice, grease and saliva kept flowing from his half-opened mouth, staining his clothes and chins.

A guard appeared.

“It’s sext, my boy! Time to eat!”

“No… urg… no more…”

The gurgles were now coming from the back of his throat.

“Oh, you’ll eat, glutton. Open up, come on. Open… open. Open!”

The guard opened himself the boy’s mouth, forcing a piece of bread past his teeth. The entire bread finally went down, followed by some fruits. That’s when Yvan suddenly rejected the food he just ate, the fruits smashing on the guard’s chest. The guard recoiled with disgust.

“Can’t… I’m… urg…” Yvan whispered.

He vomited again, this time all the content of his previous meal. The guard looked at the slimy puddle of half-digested food.

“Oh, lad, you don’t know what you’re in for, do you? No matter how full you are, you’ll have to eat. Eat ‘til you burst. Monks orders.”

XXX

“Well, how is our little glutton?”

The head of the guards had walked all the way to the monastery. It was the smallest of the monks that had welcomed him – a weird one, with a sly smile, a dead eye and a missing finger.

“We did as you asked. Fed him at every service. Matins and lauds, prime and terce, sext and nones, vespers and compline.”

“Good. Is he regretting his actions now?”

“Don’t know. But he certainly regretted to eat. He puked it all out.”

The man nodded.

“Brother Gilles thought that it would happen. It means the boy is rejecting his sins. It’s not merely the food he vomits, it’s his crime. He’s expunging the Devil out of his own body. It’s good, very good. I hope you haven’t made him eat up what he vomited?”

“What? No!”

“That was the proposition of brother Francis. I’m glad to see you haven’t listened to him. Well, I’ll tell brother Gilles about our progress. I’m sure he is eager to share with you the next step of the plan.”

“The next step of the plan?”

“Yes, my son. Our little glutton is following his own Way of the Cross. And it means walking step by step. Each one more painful than the previous one.”

The little monk said that with such a childish glee that the head of the guards couldn’t help but shiver.

“My son… did you know we raised geese in the monastery, not so long ago?”

XXX

“Open your mouth.”

Yvan had no time to answer. The guards opened his jaws and put something in it. Something cold, metallic, long, that went down his throat. He wanted to gag, to spit out, to vomit, but he couldn’t. He squinted his eyes, trying to realise what had been put in his mouth.

The realisation hit his alcohol-imbibed brain.

It was a funnel.

Immediately, the food arrived. He couldn’t test it, but he felt it. Something soft, but heavy, that blocked his throat. He gulped down in order to not suffocate. And immediately something else came in, and he gulped it. The thing – food, must have been food – still came down his throat. It felt as something already munched and spit out. Must have been something mashed, grind, crushed. Probably purée or paste. Sometimes it was more jelly-like, other times it was a liquid. And of course, all of it had no taste, for not a single drop touched his tongue – all Yvan could taste was the cold, hard, nearly salty metal of the funnel in his mouth.

And said funnel was so big it blocked most of his view. The guards themselves wondered what kind of goose the monks could possibly feed with a funnel that big. But it was handy: everything slipped in it. The crushed nuts, the mashed fruits, the berries purée. They even pressed the meat, until it became a bloody and greasy pulp. It was still early in the morning, but they had a lot to do. The monks had warned them: more and more food will be added into the young thief’s belly, until food would take up so much space in his body the Devil would be forced to flee. Then, and only then, will the demonic sin drop the mask of pleasure and reveal its true face: that of a hellish torture, based on a ridiculous, base, pointless, unneeded material object. Food.

All day long the food kept coming. Now that the guards had to mash and prepare the food, each meal took twice the usual amount of time, and it had already been a lengthy process beforehand. Yvan felt like he was fed every minute of every hour of every part of the day, without any kind of pause or relief. Soon his belly felt full and round, but the food kept coming, making his stomach tighter and harder. Of course, all the food was pushed down to his lower parts – filling his intestines and gore, bloating the rest of his abdomen, until all of his internal plumber was clogged up. He felt like a sausage: a tight skin filled with stuffing. Half-sick, half-drunk, he daydreamed that if a butcher was to come and poke at him with his knife, his belly would probably slice itself in half, spilling everywhere the fruits and the meat and the bread he had been fed on, perfectly intact, still nice and shiny. But the mere thought of it made him sick again.

The nausea got so violent he tried to puke – but the funnel prevented such rejection. Worse, the small he had been able to get rid of was being forced down his throat once more.

By the end of the day, when they finally took away the metallic torture device, Yvan was crying.

He now understood how, exactly, being fed constantly could be, indeed, a true torture.

XXX

Brother Gilles followed the guard throughout the streets of the little town.

“And was there any other case of regurgitation?”

“It’s hard to tell with the funnel, father. But I don’t think so. I think he got used to it. After all, his stomach is twice as big – he can pack in much more than before.”

“What?”

The monk had stopped right in the middle of the street, staring at the guard with his icy stare.

“Well… yeah. He’s grown big. You’ve fattened him up real well.”

“He… fattened up?”

One of the monk’s eyes was wide open, expressing the most confused bewilderment. The other shone of some sort of dreadful angriness.

“Well… yeah.” the guard repeated, frightened. “Just like, you know… the goose. Like you said, how you’re feeding the goose. It’s fattening them up and… huh… he too.”

The monk ran towards the market place.

People had gathered around Yvan, smiling and quietly laughing at his ridiculous appearance. They talked to each other while pointing their dirty fingers toward him, clearly making fun of his situation – but Yvan had no ears for them. When he was being fed by the funnel, he could only think of gulping and swallowing so that he wouldn’t choke.

“We’ve stopped separating the foods.” the guards explained while catching up with the monk. “Now we mix all of it together. Fruits, bread, wine, meat, milk. It’all makes just one big goo. He takes him pretty easily. It’s just like a goose. And he doesn’t seem to mind.”

“Apparently, he can’t taste anything. He just eats and burps in our faces. The old guards don’t like it – they sometimes smack him in the face – but the others don’t mind.”

Indeed, when the guards took off the funnel, Yvan let out a deep belch that made all the people around laugh out loud.

All the people around except the monk – who merely screamed.

“Open the stocks! Put him on his feet! Open the stocks, I need to see it!”

The guards, quite surprised to see brother Gilles, obeyed. Yvan could barely stand up: sitting for weeks on his knees had weakened his legs. The sudden shift in position made him nauseous, and green in the face.

The monk rushed towards him and grabbed his belly. His now wide, fat, round belly.

His torso had doubled in size since their last meeting. Fat had bloated up his abdomen, enlarging his waist, padding his behind, rounding his belly – in fact, his midsection was nearly the shape of a perfect globe. His chest had also gotten thicker and larger, his shoulders broader and meatier. This transformation had, of course, an effect on his clothes: the laces that tied his sleeveless vest had all snapped, while the tighter one that he used as a belt was certainly about to do so. His shirt, ill-fitting when he was on the gallows, had now its fabric stretched on his gut.

“The mockery! It’s an outrage! He is mocking our punishment, he is mocking our order, he is mocking our God!”

Brother Gilles turned towards the guards and shouted, eyes injected with blood:

“He grew fat on the food we cursed him with! He turned our punishment of both body and mind into a display of excess and laziness! Look at him! Where’s the suffering in his face? Where’s the vomit of his repentance? Oh, I should have listened to brother Horace! We should have put living rats in his gullet so that they would devour him from the inside!”

The monk ordered the guards to put Yvan back in the stocks, before addressing the crowd around him:

“Look at this glutton! A thief, a glutton, a slothful, a prodigal son that dilapidated his father’s property! He killed his mother at birth, he tried to commit a monstrous sacrilege by depriving men of God of their sustenance! He is in league with the devilish horses! And now, what is he doing? He is being fed all day long, doing nothing but sit there, enjoying it!”

Finally, the nausea had passed and Yvan found the strength to speak.

“I’m not enjoying it!” Yvan cried out. “It’s hell! My belly aches, it makes me sick, I puke and I shit! My limbs are sore, I can barely walk any more! I’m feverish and sweaty and I don’t want to be here any more!”

“I don’t see your tears, liar! Your flesh is fat, glutton, sign of your own sin! You revel in your own evil! You’re bloated up like a vampire! Shut your vile mouth and speak no more!”

Brother Gilles took a lemon from a nearby stand and shoved it into Yvan’s mouth.

“You, people, are faithful! You were baptised, you are part of God’s livestock! You should act on his name, be his voice, be his warrior! You maybe can’t lead a crusade, you maybe can’t kill the heretics, but you can at least punish the sinners on Earth – this sinner on Earth, so that he won’t go to Hell after his death! Be kind to thy neighbour! Help this lost sheep! Push him back into the path of God! Do it!”

“But how?” the crowd asked.

“He’s a pig, treat him as such!”

The monk was now red and sweaty, a big vein pulsing on his bald head.

“This is a punishment! Make him regret! Make him feel what it would be like to be in hell! Don’t let him be complacent, don’t let him! By the authority of the High One, do it!”

The monk ran towards a merchant nearby, stole his knife and cut the tip of his own finger. Then he ran toward Yvan, took the lemon and put his finger instead.

“Drink! Drink my blood, for I am a man of God, and my blood is pure! You are a sinner, not worthy of the blood of the Great Saviour, so for your communion, you shall have the blood of a lesser servant. Drink! Drink! Drink, my son, drink!”

Yvan, terrified, sucked the monk’s finger, the strange taste of blood spreading on his tongue. It was quite similar to the taste of the funnel. The monk finally groaned and took off his finger.

“Perfect. You are absolved of your sins and crimes in the past weeks. Your mockery of our order will be forgotten. But, make sure you repent and suffer. Else… I’m afraid I wouldn’t be able to do anything more for you.”

XXX

Yvan punishment went on. Every day, from dawn till dusk, a gruesome mix of liquids and mashed food, once glorious and sumptuous meals reduced to a colourless ugly goo, was forced into the funnel, down Yvan’s throat, and the boy gulped and gulped until his stomach was bloated and ready to burst – which became less and less the frequent, weeks passing by. For indeed, his stomach slowly distended itself, and grew with this new amount of food. Thus, the guards needed more and more to satisfy him, and even more to actually make him sick. It became so bad that Yvan actually ended up feeling a bit peckish after each day of force-feeding. Hopefully, the townsfolk joined their effort to those of the guards.

The monks had ordered them to lash all of their cruelty and mockeries upon the glutton, and so they shall. Not directly of course, only the guards could hit him (even though many common people came to pat his firm and blubbery behind, saying how the pig was fattening up nicely). Plus, mockery wasn’t enough for them any more – they had done all they could, and they grew bored of it, especially since Yvan seemed to ignore them completely.

So, they rather decided to help the guards in their feeding duty. Each day, the scraps and rotten things they usually kept for their pigs or their dogs were given to the guards so they could add it to the repulsive mush they prepared. Sometimes, they even fed Yvan directly, steeping their own mashed leftovers down the funnel. Since Yvan’s stocks were on the market place, the merchants liked to get rid of their withered or ugly products by throwing it down his gullet. At first, it made Yvan quite nauseous to eat all of this bad food, his stomach churning and groaning as it had to digest elements too hard or too rotten, but he soon got used to it – he had eaten worse in his years. Anyway, the townsfolk understood that giving Yvan bad food only resulted in more violent and putrid public defecations, and deciding that their market place already stank enough without this gruesome addition, they decided to only give him scraps and discarded bits.

In a very strange way, Yvan’s punishment became the town’s entire distraction, a sort of communal activity that people watched and participated in like if it was some sort of play or game. When the market was held, people bought food specifically so they could feed it to Yvan, under the guard’s watch. They had invented, without knowing it yet, the concept of feeding animals in zoos, several centuries before any zoo actually existed.

The thief’s force-feeding became such an amusement, satisfying the perverse tastes and desperate craving for distraction of the peasants and common folk, that at night, some people bribed the guards, with either beer or money, so that they could “play” all by themselves with Yvan by feeding him.

The crazy monk had ordered Yvan to stop getting fat in order to show his repentance.

It obviously wasn’t going to happen any time soon.

XXX

“He’s choking!”

“What?”

“Look! He’s choking! He’s getting all red in the face! And his tongue’s all out!”

“Nah, he must be drunk.”

“No! Look, he’s coughing! He’s getting blue!”

“Blue? Get him out of here. We’ll see.”

The guards opened the stocks, freeing Yvan who fell on the floor, hissing and wheezing as he was able to breathe again.

“What, he choked on food?”

“No, I don’t think so… Oh, I think I found it! Look!”

The guard forced Yvan to get back on his knees and to put his head back in the stocks. The guard slowly lowered the top part of the wooden device, until it nearly closed itself on the man’s neck.

“His neck’s too big!”

“How can a man’s neck be too big for the stocks?”

The guards forced Yvan to stand up so that they could have a good look at him – something Yvan could barely do, his wobbly legs having a hard time supporting his enormous weight.

Indeed, Yvan’s neck was now too big for the stocks! If it was even a neck what he had now. A ball of fat had replaced what he had for a neck: between his cheeks that grew and fell over on each sides, and his goitre of a double chin that had blown up, along with the rolls of fat that piled up on his nape, his head seemed to now rest on a pile of lard, an enormous roll of flesh twice as big as his own rotund head, as plump as the full moon.

The guards, so used to seeing this big, round, bloated body kneeling on the ground, like a pig eating in his through or some fat cow munching the grass, understood with a great surprise and an even greater disgust just how big Yvan had gotten.

His torso, that used to be already quite spherical in shape, had now grown so fat, so wide and so vast that the sphere had fallen into a shapeless mount, overflowing from the sides of his over-stretched pants. The lace that he used as a belt had snapped one evening as the guards were feeding him and now was hanging pitifully. His shirt, too tight and too small for his new girth, rose up on the enormous hanging globe that was his belly, grotesquely distended after so many weeks of overeating. Above his belly, his chest had grown fat and soft, his pectorals now hanging like two huge slabs of meat. But it wasn’t just his head and his abdomen – the rest of his body had also changed. His arms, for example, were each so big they looked like two hams put together – they were even bigger and thicker than the arms of the strongest of the guards! And his legs had also gotten larger – his pale, fleshy, jelly-like thighs rubbing against each other like full, sloshing wineskins – and underneath, his calves, also rounder and thicker, tightened the laces around the legs of his pants so much the guards feared they would snap like those of his vest.

The man was now a beast, as heavy as a bear and as grotesque as a pig. Yvan looked at the guards, with his stuffed and round cheeks, his mouth dripping with food and saliva, with the enormous bulges that were now his chins, and with his eyes, his bagged eyes, so tiny inside the puffed-up flesh of his face, eyes haggard and nearly dead due to the town amount of pain, nausea, satisfaction, happiness, pleasure and sickness he had experienced these previous months. And the guards felt disgusted and uneasy by what they had just done.

People gathered around to see the monster Yvan had become, to look at his body that was now roughly the shape of a little mountain, and the guards rushed towards the monastery to warn the monks.

XXX

Brother Gilles, brother Francis and brother Horace arrived soon at the marketplace.

“You’ve freed him? What’s the meaning of this? You…”

The monk stopped speaking upon seeing the enormous young man.

“We can’t take it any more.” one of the guards explained nervously. “This all thing becomes perverted. He was punished enough, don’t ya think? His neck can’t even fit in the stocks! Just look at him! He’s like the old Eglon, I poke my blade in him, he wouldn’t feel a thing! He wouldn’t even bleed!”

Brother Gilles approached the boy. The dead eyes of Yvan were looking at something far away from here, something over the rainbow, that the monks couldn’t possibly see.

“My son? Are you here with us?”

The boy gurgled up something. He opened his mouth, drooling. He let out a half-drowned belch and gurgled some more.

“My son… have you repented?”

Yvan turned his eyes towards brother Gilles, eyes still dead and blank, without any light or spark in them. He smiled, exposing his crooked yellow teeth, worn out after gritting for so long on the funnel’s metal, his breath smelling of all sorts of foods and rotten things.

Brother Gilles suddenly straightened up his back, as immobile as a statue, and shouted: “He repented!”

The other monks cried in joy and applauded, soon followed by the cheers of the crowd.

Brother Gilles took some of Yvan’s saliva, made a quick cross over his forehead, blessed him, and after hearing more cheering, Yvan lost consciousness.

XXX

Yvan was woken up by a deep feeling of hungriness, and the loud wails of his own stomach.

Yvan was in a cell. His body felt heavy and sore all over, except in the area of his stomach, that felt painful and empty. It was like having a big hole in his belly.

Trying to get up, Yvan suddenly remembered everything. The monk, the stocks, the funnel… He looked down at his body and held back a horrified scream. He was enormous! He couldn’t even see his own feet past his gut! Was he really as big as a boar? That’s what the people said when he was in the stocks. His belly was even sticking out of his clothes!

He touched it, felt his fingers seek deeply into the flesh, and suddenly his stomach roared once more. He was famished.

“Oh, you’re up. Good. I wondered if you were dead.”

A guard was opening the door of the cell.

“What happened?”

“You’ve been there for days. Sleeping, unconscious. We thought all this eating had killed you. You know, something burst inside you. But you’re still kickin’, that’s good. The monks said your punishment was enough. You’re free to leave.”

Yvan, surprised to even be alive but joyful to finally leave all of this torture behind him, followed the guard in the street.

When he got out, the people in the street looked at him, pausing and snickering before returning to their activities.

Another loud groan got out of his belly.

“Still hungry, boy? We can get you the funnel, if you like.” the guard joked.

Yvan looked at him with spite and walked away. Or rather tried to. His feet were not used to lift such a mass, he stomped rather than walked, and with each movement his thighs rubbed against each other, his behind jiggling and trying to fit inside pants now too tight, his belly bouncing in front of him.

A woman looked at him and laughed. Yvan felt embarrassed. He must be a ridiculous sight to look at. He wasn’t even pleasantly plump, or round as a rich merchant. He was so big he looked like a beast, a hideous beast, a wild hog, a freakish animal!

Three kids ran towards him.

“Oh, look! It’s the pig! It’s the goose! It’s the glutton!” they screamed with glee.

They started running around him.

“He’s like a barrel! No, he’s bigger than that! Do you have grains? Feed him grains! Feed him scraps! Don’t forget the funnel!”

“Leave me alone!” Yvan screamed.

He tried to hit them, to smack them on the head or slap them on the cheek, but all this moving around and leaning forward ended up loudly ripping something behind him.

“He split his pants!” the kids laughed. “He split his pants! Look at his bum!”

And the kids smacked his behind. “It jiggles, it ripples!” the kids shouted.

Yvan became red and shouted back at the kids some of the worst insults he knew, but another one had grabbed his chest – or rather what his chest had become, wide rolls of fat hanging on each side of his body.

“Look, he has udders! He’s not a goose, he’s a cow! He’s not a pig, he’s a sow! Drink, boys, drink, I’m sure there’s milk in it, suck it!”

The boy who had grabbed Yvan’s man boob received a violent hit on the head. Yvan always had large and tough hands, and now, with the added weight of the meat that hanged around his arm, his fist was doing much more damage than before.

The kids ran away, but their screams echoed in the streets, and as to answer them, Yvan’s stomach gurgled once more.

XXX

Yvan finally arrived at his farm. His old dad’s farm, now his own.

He was huffing and puffing, red in the face and sweating between his rolls. Moving around was much harder than before. He felt like he was dragging a dead horse with him: he was hot, his heart was beating like a drum, and he had the hardest time breathing.

Passing by his field, he took a gloomy look at it. The few plants that had managed to grow in this weed-infested earth had all withered and died. Sighting, but happy to be back home, Yvan entered the small farm and sat on one of the old wooden chairs.

It cracked and Yvan fell to the ground. It would have been more painful without the extra-padding on his behind.

His stomach protested once more against its emptiness. Now hunger was becoming painful, like if his insides were sucked up and crushed.

Yvan wondered what he could possibly eat to ease the pain, before reminding himself that there was no food left. He had eaten everything already.

Yvan then wondered what he could buy – not at the market, for he couldn’t show up there after all the mockeries and humiliations – in one of the nearby shops, at the butcher or at another farmer’s house. He then remembered he had no money left. He had used all of what he had to buy himself food.

No money. No food. And now no clothes, for he doubted to find anything that would accommodate his gargantuan size.

His stomach roared once more, so loudly it seemed a lion had entered the room. Yvan patted his belly, only to feel how wide, round and fat it was.

The young man understood that his punishment was far from being over.

#weight gain #my stories #my writing #kink story #weight gain story #male #man #force-feeding #dark kink #brutal kink #fat #fat fiction

34 notes · View notes

itsparis-07 · 7 days

Text

BROOKLNY'S SPARROW PT.1

( since this my first fic ever please go easy on me now, and as always stay fresh and reblog this fic for pt.2!!! - with love, Paris!)

In the year 202X, Earth-42 was a world much like any other. People lived their lives, went to work, raised families, and tried their best to ignore the rising tide of crime that threatened to engulf their world. But in one small corner of the universe, in the bustling city of New York, there was a company called Oscorp that had a secret plan to change everything. They had created human-avian hybrids, soldiers designed to stop gang crime once and for all. The project, code-named "XJR-10," was supposedly aimed at restoring order to the city, but the truth was far more sinister.

Oscorp's real goal was to use these hybrids, known as "Reapers," to wipe out every bi-poc area in New York City, starting with Brooklyn. The plan was to infiltrate the neighborhoods, gather intelligence then launch a coordinated attack that would leave no witnesses. It was a brutal and a genocidal scheme, but it was one that Oscorp felt was necessary to maintain control over New York City.

As the Reapers began their mission, they encountered resistance from the very people they were supposed to protect. In one of Oscorp's "Metro" facilities in Brooklyn, a riot broke out as the Reapers tried to round up innocent civilians. The facility was overrun, and one of the hybrids, Michiko, managed to escape. As she fled into the night, she found herself in the midst of chaos and confusion.

Little did she know that her escape would lead her straight into the path of Rio Morales, a nurse at the time saw something in Michiko that reminded her of her own past, of the innocence and hope that had once filled him. She decided to take her in.

As they walked along to park slope, Rio walked her inside, placed down her bags and walked toward the kitchen. She grabbed a small box of Mango tea and started the kettle on the stove.

"Are your wings feeling better? You were in the hospital with me for awhile" Rio said as she placed the mug of tea in front of Michiko. Miciko smiled softly and nodded, "Yes, thank you." She took a sip of the tea and let out a small sigh of relief. "You've been very kind to me Ms.Rio, I'm not sure what I would've done if you hadn't found me." Rio chuckled, "I couldn't just leave you there not even if it was my son, as a mother I can't stand to see kids like you going through thing like that."

As they continued to talk, Rio began to tell Michiko about her family and her life before becoming a nurse. She shared stories of her childhood, her teenage years, and even her early adult life. Michiko, in turn, shared some of her own experiences, though she was careful not to reveal too much about her past as a Reaper. The two women seemed to connect on a deep level, and Rio couldn't help but feel a sense of protectiveness over Michiko.

As the front sofly opened Miles walked in to greet his mother as usual, as he walked to the kitchen he stopped to face the two women. Michiko and Rio looked up at him, their eyes filled with curiosity and wonder. "Miles, this is Michiko. She was in the Metro facility when it was attacked and she managed to escape. I found her wandering around and decided to take her in." Rio explained, her voice gentle but firm. Miles nodded, taking in the sight of the young woman with wings. Michiko smiled shyly and took a sip from her cup as she brushed her sister locs out of her face. He stared at Michiko for a bit then sat down at the table along with his mother.

"I know it's job your to take care of others, but she's can't be here for long. I mean she's on the news and Oscorp has the cops searching all of New York for her." Miles said worriedly.

Rio looked at Miles and then back at Michiko."We'll cross that bridge when we come to it, Miles. For now, let's focus on making sure she's safe and comfortable. And if the police do come looking for her, we'll figure something out then." She reached out to pat Michiko's hand reassuringly.

TO BE CONT!!!

#paris<3 #my first fic #earth 42 miles x reader #earth 42 miles morales x black!reader #atsv miles

11 notes · View notes

robotpussy · 2 years

Text

I know I have said before that I don't want to hear white people's critiques on black art, but I have just had enough of this thing that is going on right now between the violence portrayed on screen towards black people and people of colour and the white response to it

This film about Emmett Till is being labelled as "historically inaccurate" because there are no scenes that recount the series of racist events before he died and they didn't show him getting killed.

This review infuriates me so much. I am very confident in knowing that white people do indulge in seeing violence towards black people.

I've always known this, but with the recent series about Jeffery Dahmer and how many white people were coming out to say they were not phased by any of the violence the people of colour on that show faced I can definitely say there is some truth to this

I would like to say I wish I didn't understand why Kate Erbland (the writer of this review) doesn't understand why this entire movie was so hard for Mamie (Emmett Till's mother), as she didn't want to relive thosr events, but I can't say that is the truth for me.

I truly believe it is part of the lack of empathy white people have when it comes to discussing racism and the violence black people face, or when they do feel any kind of sympathy it is only when they are included in the narrative or they take what is being said personally,

and the context of this being, the reason for Till's death was because he was falsely accused by a white woman of whistling at her, and the thing most insidious about this is Emmett Till was a CHILD (14 years old) when this happened, so to see a white woman disregard a film because we are not show the death of a teenager makes this so much worse.

And also proves that white people will truly only have empathy when they see black people get brutalized otherwise there is no sympathy at all or they are completely unphased by it because they view lack of humanity in us.

and the fact that this review was written by a white woman shows there is a chance that Erbland feels more sympathy for Carolyn Bryant because white people tend to feel more sympathy for a white person who are the perpetrators of or are complacent in the violence and especially when it is a white woman

(e.g. when challenging the idea that white women were simply passive bystanders to the slave economy in the US and instead demonstrated their active participation in its structures of brutality and exploitation, it is sometimes met with people, notably white women who call it a act of misogyny to point it out)

But I can't make too many assumptions but it is so tiring and infuriating to continue to see white people see the deaths of black people as commodities and entertainment.

#emmett till #Till 2022 #sorry for the 'negativity' i just want to read reviews for this and i came across this and i just got angry #im so fucking tired #racism #articles #ref #film

174 notes · View notes

josefavomjaaga · 1 year

Text

Joseph and the ladies

Even Thierry Lentz, very well disposed towards Joseph and really trying to show in his book that Joseph was much more than the weakling he is often perceived as, is quite open about how Joseph spent his free time from the job as king of Spain:

In the Royal Palace or in La Moncloa [a country house], Joseph indulged in two of his favourite private activities: getting rich and loving.

With regards to the first activity, there’s a long story involving, among other things, the crown jewels of Spain, of which a certain amount at some point disappeared from Madrid (Napoleon blamed it on Murat but later learned that the thief had been his brother dearest). And as far as the second activity is concerned, Lentz of course also names the Marquise de Montehermoso, »non exclusive holder of the title mistress« [maîtresse en titre non exclusive]. But there are more. Plenty more.

So many that Colonel Desprez, Joseph’s clumsy aide de camp who had gone all the way to Moscow in order to hand Napoleon a letter of complaint, would later have some acerbic comments on his former master, put together in a report called »Caractère du roi d’Espagne, Joseph Bonaparte«. But this was indeed much later, after the fall of the empire, during the July monarchy, and – possibly on demand of one Marshal Soult . (The question of allowing the exiled Bonaparte family back into France frequently came up.) Soult and Joseph obviously kept up their mutual dislike a long time after Napoleon’s death.

Desprez in this report comments about the Marquise de Montehermoso as follows [quoted in Thierry Lentz, »Joseph Bonaparte«]:

This woman had an exquisite mind, a strongly organised head [...]. She didn't know anything about love other than the physical pleasures and she readily acknowledged this [...]. Her constant aim was to become rich [...]. The weak prince poured out showers of gold and, although forced to use this means, he never ceased to believe himself tenderly loved […]

and about Joseph’s way of life in Madrid in general:

I have often groaned to see a man called to such a prominent role waste his time in vain occupations, laying out paths, planting trees, tearing down walls, building others, changing at every moment the comings and goings of his chambers; giving parties [...], supervising the preparations himself, reading tragedy and repeating to exhaustion the passionate roles of which he thought himself suited to express the delirium [...]. I laugh with pity to see a king, whose throne is trembling, exhaust his attention on hemistichs [...].

But not everyone judged Joseph so harshly. Somebody who seems to even have greatly admired Joseph’s success with women is another aide de camp, General Bigarré. That’s not all too astonishing, as Bigarré’s own memoirs are a crude mix of brutalities, battle scenes, and lewd descriptions of himself seducing teenage girls. About Joseph he says:

In Spain, as in Naples, this prince has been bitterly criticised for occupying himself a little too much with women during the time he governed these two kingdoms. I will agree that he had a particular fondness for this sex, that he did not disdain conversations with the liveliest ladies of his court, that he was even very gallant with several of them, but nevertheless, I repeat, he never forgot what his duties as sovereign required of him.

Which is something, I guess. About Joseph’s entry into Sevilla and his tour around Andalusia, Bigarré also has an interesting remark:

The noble Andalusians, for their part, did not know what to think of in order to show the new King of Spain their love and devotion; some sent him a dozen magnificent bulls as a present, others perfectly harnessed Andalusian horses, and several placed their wives, daughters and houses at His Majesty's disposal. [...]

Hello there, strange French king! Here’s my bull, my horse, my house, my wife, my daughter – take your pick!

[…] the ladies of Sevilla who were invited also found the King of Spain very amiable and attractive. It is a fact that this prince had a wonderful gift for pleasing women. I do not know whether winning over women formed part of his policy, but in all the cities he visited he made many conquests, not only as a king, but also as a man.

Bigarré’s admiration here is palpable.

Bigarré also must have been very well informed about Joseph’s successes in this field, as apparently (according to Thierry Lentz), Joseph took care of Bigarré’s favourite mistress, a Madame Finesi, wife of an Italian actor, whenever the general was on a mission out of town. Bigarré in turn claims to once have had a fling with the Marquise de Montehermoso. But as Napoleon’s police spy Lagarde wrote home, these were hardly the only ladies whose company distracted Joseph from his »political chagrin«. Lentz also lists a Marquise de Jacuso and a Nancy Derrieux, wife of some official in the administration, as regulars in this early 19th century edition of a royal swinger club. Varying female extras were approached through Joseph’s valets, who habitually had to adress young ladies about their willingness to meet the king in private.

For the final judgement on this topic, here’s Napoleon, in Bertrand’s »Cahiers de Sainte Hélène«, echoing what cardinal Ruffo had told him:

Prince Joseph had gentle manners, fine qualities, but he could never attend to business and never pursued anything. He was locked up with a few women, not to fuck all the time, but for the pleasure of society.

Yes, that’s Napoleon using the F-word with regards to his brother. And I honestly do not know if he wanted to somehow excuse Joseph in emphasizing that it was only »for the pleasure of society«, or if he wanted to make sure people didn’t think too highly about Joseph’s stamina...

#napoleon's family #joseph bonaparte #madrid #peninsular war

53 notes · View notes

saintsenara · 10 months

Text

bookbinding tom riddle/myrtle warren teen | 35.5k words

‘men like practical women, pudding,’ had always been mum’s advice. men who like country walks don’t want girls in vertiginous high-heels, they want girls in wellington boots. men who like hearty meals don’t want girls who’ll only eat lettuce. men who are in trade unions don’t want girls who don’t pay the greengrocer on time.

men who are orphans, who believe themselves damned and are too thin and don’t sleep properly and live their lives sustained only by a current of murderous fury, require a different type of practicality. they don’t need to be soothed by a wet blanket - with those girls, they’ll push their luck and get into trouble and end up either in hospital or in prison.

they need a girl who’ll take charge and keep them on the straight-and-narrow, since they've made such a hash of managing their own lives so far.

which will win: sixteen years of planning for brutal world domination, or one (1) teenage girl?

this piece was written for week nine of @ladiesofhpfest, on the theme of heartthrobs and heartbreaks [you can find the masterlist for this week's fics here].

tom riddle and moaning myrtle may not be an instinctive pairing for that theme, but i like a challenge...

fortunately, so do they.

bookbinding is, at its heart, a romantic comedy, which means that it’s crammed full of lovely tropes and character archetypes.

there are some author's notes under the cut. let’s dive in.

our cast of characters

our heroine is, of course, moaning myrtle.

myrtle is someone who is not treated particularly kindly by the canon narrative, even though she ought to be objectively sympathetic by virtue of being a murder victim.

on the one hand, this is because she is sincerely and extremely annoying, and harry - from whose perspective the narrative is written - is a teenage boy with a low tolerance for irritation.

but, on the other, she is a victim of one of jkr’s worst tendencies: defaulting towards describing characters whom the audience is not supposed to regard as heroic as physically unattractive (and, especially, describing them as either fat or unusually thin). jkr also has a tendency to write women whom the narrative considers insubstantial in character as emotionally volatile and demonstrative: myrtle’s theatrical wailing and oversensitivity, for example, puts her in the same category as characters such as lavender brown and cho chang - not villains by any stretch of the imagination, but not people whose emotions really deserve to be taken seriously. the ‘good’ women of the series - ginny and hermione chief among them - are not emotionally repressed, but they are emotionally controlled.

i’ve always really disliked this - indeed, i’ve always thought that there’s a slightly victim-blaming tone to myrtle’s canon death (that is, that if she wasn’t crying in the loos about something trivial - olive hornby teasing her about her glasses - then she’d have been fine), rather than a message that voldemort’s bloodlust was unstoppable, and most of his victims were ordinary people who were in the wrong place at the wrong time.

the flip side of this is that myrtle makes a great rom-com heroine - the awkward nerd who ends up with the hottest boy in school is a popular trope for a reason. but, all too often, the heroines of these pieces of media end up conforming to stereotypes in the other direction; the ‘weird’ girl is actually cool, the ‘ugly’ girl takes off her glasses and is hot. the harry potter series already uses this trope with hermione - who only needs one hair product to transform into someone who looks as though they belong on the arm of an international quidditch star - and i thought it was trite when it was first published and i still think it’s trite now.

so it was important to me, then, that the myrtle of bookbinding wouldn’t transform either physically or emotionally beyond the changes which happen to all of us as we go from being fourteen to almost-nineteen. [after all, one of the reasons why the canonical myrtle acts the way she acts is because being perpetually fourteen must be hell - as she tells us here.]

it was also important to me that the characteristics and actions which jkr tends to take a dim view of in women would end up being myrtle’s greatest strengths. her pettiness can be a bad thing (she saves tom from dumbledore - her least favourite teacher - the night he kills the school roosters, allowing the chamber of secrets to be opened), but it also brings her power, not least since she is unwilling to let tom win any arguments. her tendency to seek out gossip and eavesdrop on the staff table ends up saving the world, when she informs tom that the school will be closed if the basilisk’s attacks continue. her predisposition towards wallowing and her own experience of sadness and loneliness makes her emotionally sensitive and good at reading people (as draco malfoy can attest). the fact that she is bullied gives her a certain devil-may-care attitude towards embarrassment. after all, buying chocolates for tom riddle and being rebuffed is probably less humiliating - in the world of the teenage girl - than olive hornby pointing out your spots.

so why shouldn’t myrtle get a hot (and only mildly terrifying) boyfriend? as a treat.

dear old tom marvolo riddle is many things.

he is a connoisseur of dark magic, a brilliant pupil who aspires to be a mass-murderer, a profoundly- traumatised orphan seeking a place in the world.

he is also a cringe teenage edgelord, who spends most of his time in the library doing extra reading and making up anagrams of his own name for fun. [which is of course why, like all teen edgelords in the 1940s, he has a performative interest in communism.]

i always think it’s worth remembering this: that lord voldemort was once actually young. so much about the adult voldemort is presented as inevitable in canon - even the eleven-year-old tom we meet in half-blood prince is written off as fundamentally inextricable from the shape his adult self takes - that the potential that even tiny things would have had on the outcome of his life aren’t considered. i think this is a shame - and i think it’s a great oversight from the series, given its emphasis on the value of choice.

and these tiny things could have been profound - dumbledore making any effort to deal with the young tom’s crushing grief over the death of his mother, for example - but they could also have been the sort of thing which seems more frivolous - a first kiss, a friend you can chat shit with, a really good piece of chocolate - but which can have a huge impact on the rest of someone’s life.

the tom of bookbinding, then, ends up on the straight-and-narrow through a series of lucky accidents. and this does not require him to be all that different from his canon self - he’s just not a murderer. this tom retains all of the canonical voldemort’s best character traits - he has a surprisingly well-developed sense of honour (the voldemort who castigates wormtail for betraying the marauders would certainly be scathing towards the bullies who don’t have the courage to attack myrtle to her face), he’s very camp, he’s extremely thin, he’s prickly and sickly, he’s a magpie (that the canonical voldemort loves working in the antiques trade is a headcanon i am completely wedded to), he’s a pragmatist, he has a series of very defined mannerisms (he tilts his head to one side when considering things! he examines his hands! he paces!), he’s not somebody incapable of empathy but just someone who sees these things primarily through the lens of himself, he has a tendency towards magical thinking and a very idealised view of his lineage and his place in the world (it’s good for all of us that he never realises how wrong he was about the gaunts)...

and he is absolutely desperate for affection.

which myrtle gives to him, one chocolate frog at a time.

and it turns his whole world upside down. not that he’s prepared to admit it until the very end of the story, of course - before then, he justifies his affection for her as pragmatism (he doesn’t allow the basilisk to hurt her because that would make it obvious it was him who’d opened the chamber), but he’s lying to himself.

i’ve never liked the fanon that tom was bullied at school - he dislikes being condescended to about his background, but i don’t think anyone would dare mock him for it - and i’ve always assumed that his descent from slytherin is widely known in his house. this leads to the belief among the student body in bookbinding - which he is only too happy to encourage - that he is a rich pureblood from exactly the sort of background as his friends.

and i have always preferred the idea - in contrast to dumbledore’s belief in half-blood prince that voldemort has no actual interest in them - that the teenage tom’s ‘devoted friends’ are exactly that. he feels a great deal of affection for the knights of walpurgis in his own little way and they’re not ‘rigidly controlled’ by him (another dumbledore special - in bookbinding we see all of them clearly thinking that tom’s obsession with the chamber of secrets is insane, and conspiring to make him less of a boring workaholic). the issue is that - since all of them are loved and well-off - they can’t entirely appreciate the depth of his need to be paid attention. it’s a good job they have myrtle to pick up the slack.

fans of my other writing will recognise the standard cast of knights - romulus lestrange (having a much better time in this piece than in one year in every ten), abraxas malfoy, tarquin rosier (brother of domitiana), eadmer avery, iago carrow, augustus rookwood and so on.

[if tom has a best friend, though, it’s definitely the basilisk, who is an absolute sweetheart.]

the knights are certainly not good people - none of them have any qualms about disparaging myrtle for being muggleborn - but, crucially, they’re teenagers who have the option to choose a better path. [i’d like to think they’re all sincerely delighted for tom when they hear about his upcoming marriage, and salazar and merope jr. have a devoted team of uncles who don’t spare their blood status a second thought.]

and, as with tom, i therefore wanted to give them a chance to be teens. they’re all deeply uncool piles of hormones who drink in the hog’s head - which trips the adult voldemort up in half-blood prince when he comes to hogwarts for his job interview, exactly as it does for hermione in order of the phoenix - because they think it makes them look interestingly dangerous. [it doesn’t.]

they’re also all obsessed with getting their ends away.

writing tom’s sexual awakening made me chuckle self-indulgently at numerous points - the poor thing was spiralling! and i will never get over how a commenter pointing out that he behaves like ‘a chaotic slut’ at several points in this story made me scream! - and so i think that we ought to give props to the two other women who end up saving the world beside myrtle. antimony tremblay is named after a poisonous metal, but her willingness to throw herself at tom in slughorn’s cupboard ended up curing him of his tendency towards isolation and detachment. domitiana rosier - sister of agrippina rosier lestrange, tom’s scourge in one year in every ten, who is minding her own business here - has an imperious demeanour to match her name, and her lack of interest in tom’s muggle blood ended up curing him once and for all of his flirtation with blood supremacy (she also trained him very thoroughly on what to do in bed). she will get her lovely pureblood marriage and be happy enough, but she will always regard tom as the one that got away. even though he considers himself to have hit the jackpot with myrtle, he will be insufferably smug about this.

we have two final shout-outs.

the first of these is to myrtle’s parents. in canon, all the muggleborns we meet seem to extract themselves from their world of their birth - hermione, who ceases to spend any meaningful time with her parents from the summer before prisoner of azkaban onwards, and whose violence towards them in deathly hallows is never interrogated, is the main example. i’ve never liked this - since it’s undermining the point the series thinks it’s making about how blood-supremacists’ beliefs that the magical and muggle should never mix are wrong - and so it was important to me that myrtle came from a loving home which she regards as infinitely superior to the cruelty of the magical world, with parents who respect and encourage her magic.

like their daughter, the warrens are ordinary people who show how being ordinary can change the world. myrtle’s mother, in particular, is the best sort of activist - a normal woman who snaps one day and throws an orange at the prince of wales, who believes that the hard work of compassion is best done through plying tom with iced buns, who is stubborn and never gives up, who isn’t afraid of taking on the state (she’ll get her review into wool’s orphanage), who is happy to be giggly and silly, and who gives extremely good advice. men do indeed like practical women.

the second deserves to go to albus dumbledore.

beyond the fact that he takes against the young voldemort immediately on the basis of his own self-loathing, one of the canonical dumbledore’s flaws is his tendency to prioritise interesting people and take a lack of interest in those who are not spectacular. as a teacher, i can imagine him having little time for the average pupil - as myrtle certainly thinks.

but he learns an important lesson here. there is, as he tells us, beauty in the ordinary - and he recognises, long before tom does, that the beautiful ordinariness of teenage friendship, and girlfriend trouble, and chocolate frogs, and a brilliant (but strange and lonely) boy realising that the love of his life is the world’s most normal girl has altered the course of history. he throws himself sincerely into match-making from then on.

and he’s definitely invited to the wedding.

our setting

we get some hints in canon - especially in half-blood prince - that hogwarts is a school full of teenagers, doing what teenagers do, but harry’s whole ‘saving-the-world thing’ means that he’s a bit too preoccupied to notice what must be a fundamental truth: that hundreds of hormonal creatures, locked up together for months at a time with virtually no adult supervision outside of lessons, will be insatiable.

our setting is also the hogwarts of the forties. i had great fun with the period slang, as well as with the names - beyond the anglo-norman names i use for most of my purebloods (tremblay, duhamel etc.), reginald chive and hubert fawley owe something to p.g. wodehouse, autonoë dashwood-brandon’s mother had clearly been reading sense and sensibility, isabella spats is a distant relation to carmelita spats from a series of unfortunate events, sandraudiga rowle has a norse name like her nephew thorfinn, henrietta savernake is from the poirot novel the hollow, and igor bagman - canonically friends with augustus rookwood - is just as good a quidditch player as his son.

this time-period is, of course, when the second world war was taking place. i’m on the record as disliking the fanon that the canonical voldemort is traumatised by the war (especially the blitz, which he’s at school during), and here his main hardship - as it was for many people - is rationing. myrtle’s shared detestation of the practice is one of the things which really makes his feelings for her (something he’s not quite understood yet when they run into each other in chapter two…) click into place.

our themes

jkr’s lack of sympathy for myrtle contrasts with the fact that she clearly has a sincere dislike of female bullying - and, especially, the sort of petty sniping about appearance which is so profoundly damaging to teenage girls [i do really advise reading what she says about pansy parkinson on this matter.]

however, it’s always seemed to me that her view can be assumed to be that ‘good’ women simply suffer through this torment, knowing that they have the moral high-ground - hermione must, like myrtle in bookbinding, be isolated by being the only girl in her dormitory not in a cliquey friendship-group, but she never seems upset about lavender or parvati excluding her; luna, whose shoes are hidden like myrtle’s are (i think this must be a standard ravenclaw thing), simply shrugs everything off.

but i think that’s bullshit. myrtle is allowed to wallow in her devastation at being bullied and ostracised - and, especially, at her devastation at not ever knowing what she’s done wrong. bringing your own packed lunch, or spilling pudding down yourself, or being happy to receive a birthday present, or having an attractive male friend are such benign things, but they are also the sorts of things which trigger so much cruelty in the teen ecosystem.

i also thought it important that lot of myrtle’s bullying should be connected to being muggleborn. olive hornby doesn’t have the sort of name which indicates being pureblood in canon, but here she is one, and her relationship with myrtle is absolutely driven by the fact that she is an inherent insider to the magical world and myrtle isn’t.

in canon, we get the hint that bullying people over blood status is the preserve of slytherins with death eater sympathies, but this has always seemed reductive to me (not least because blood status drives so much of the ‘good’ side’s narrative - the weasleys are protected by their class, for example, and this changes how they interact with the world to a significant extent, as ron’s view of house elves shows). after all, the trigger for so much teenage bullying is difference of any kind - and muggleborns are objectively different from those raised in the wizarding world. [especially since, as tom himself points out, wizarding society is pretty medieval - they should think about opening cinemas.]

they are also subject to plenty of pressure. i liked myrtle’s fury at dumbledore trying to make her work hard in transfiguration simply because she wouldn’t want to let other muggleborns down (with dumbledore never stopping to think, for example, about how myrtle might be disadvantaged by things like the trace, which never applies to her pureblood classmates). tom, too, is a victim of this pressure. i’m always struck in half-blood prince that dumbledore never tells mrs cole that he’s a wizard, meaning that he must be the only child in hogwarts whose guardian - whose relationship with him is already poor - must have no idea where he goes all year. this is one of the main examples of dumbledore failing to understand the canonical voldemort’s disjointed sense of belonging, and how his isolation feeds his rage, and it was nice to resolve it here, as tom’s colossal abandonment issues become something he finds more manageable once he’s created his own place in the world, with his house, his rabbit, his job, and - of course - a family of his own.

our love story

because, of course, bookbinding is really about one thing: how love can save the world.

tom and myrtle are a crack ship, of course, but i do think that they can be made to sincerely work as a couple because they both have a fundamental need for attention - it’s why he flounces over to her when she’s crying in the library, it’s why she storms off after him when he snaps at her, it’s why their meet-cute is neither of them allowing the other’s emotional state to distract from what they want to say.

but their need for attention manifests slightly differently in each of them. myrtle needs affection as reassurance, tom needs it as validation - dumbledore presents his belief that he’s special, his breathless glee at someone taking an interest in him, his joy at being listened to by his death eaters, as arrogance, but it’s clearly caused by the fact that he wasn’t allowed to develop a sense of being wanted and liked as a child. together, tom and myrtle can provide each other what they need - his expectation that she should take an interest in his interests ends up making her feel cleverer and braver, her expectation that he should hold her hand and walk her through things she fears ends up making him feel comforted and wanted for the first time in his life.

after all, the chocolates upend tom’s whole world. and the idea of love-as-comfort - something which the canonical series relegates to a subordinate position far below love-as-suffering and love-as-sacrifice - is one of the key themes of bookbinding. tom always refers to his attraction to myrtle using metaphors of things which are comforting - the roses round the door of the house, honey (after all, he has a famous sweet tooth), the cinnamon sprinkle on the top of a rice pudding, milky tea, a feather bed, a blancmange which cools a sore throat - which seems to be something which has really stood out to many readers. and he seeks out this comfort despite not really knowing why - in chapter two, it should be emphasised that it does, in fact, take that long to walk from spitalfields to walthamstow; tom is making at least a fifteen-mile round trip daily to see myrtle’s house.

and myrtle - who is much more insightful than she’s given credit for, even in canon - understands this. it’s why she notices that tom’s need to comfort himself is lying under the sinister things he reveals to her in the cave. his belief that he killed his mother is something i’ve written about elsewhere, as is his belief that he was always a wizard but nobody understood that - and the self-protective anger in which he wraps his loneliness and grief is a favourite theme of mine to explore when writing him. the shells and sea-glass - a motif of his childhood throughout my writing - turn up in bookbinding too, when myrtle forces him to think about his childhood for the first time in years.

it’s also why she gives him the marriage certificate. it’s implied in canon that voldemort never knows his mother’s name, and myrtle finding it for him is - therefore - one of the most sincerely lovely things anyone has ever done for him and his sense of self. i think it’s for the best that he believes that his parents’ marriage was happy, even though i know that many readers have found this bittersweet to consider.

of course, the fact that they’re both equally stubborn also helps myrtle set tom on the straight-and-narrow as well. the fact that myrtle doesn’t share his love of hogwarts or his obsession with magic is something tom initially can’t comprehend, but he comes to understand how his feeling of not belonging in the muggle world is what myrtle feels in the magical one. by chapter six, he’s a paid-up muggle defender, proud of his background, much to his friends’ initial dismay.

this is a rom-com, though, so they still manage to break up for a bit - although tom, whose canon version is capable of a surprisingly steadfast faithfulness, remains loyal to myrtle the whole time (as she does, bar some igor-bagman-wrangling, to him). but myrtle manages to show some self-growth of her own and realise that she is being a bit of a drama queen. [who among us?]

the course of true love rarely does run smooth… but everything works out in the end.

and the love between the soon-to-be mr and mrs riddle brings about glimpses of the changed future which numerous readers have told me have moved them. my favourite? it has to be tom riddle sr. falling in love with frank bryce, a concept which now has me in a chokehold.

after all - to borrow a life lesson from tom marvolo riddle - there is always something that can be done to fix things.

#asenora fics #tom riddle x myrtle warren #tom riddle #myrtle warren #bookbinding #ladies of hp fest #moaning myrtle stan account #annoying him into changing #i can fix him #and you did baby

52 notes · View notes