#context : computer programming is my prison | Explore Tumblr Posts and Blogs

sugaxjpg · 5 years

Text

paradise 17; m

⤷ “Welcome to Paradise 17, the immersive virtual reality of your most private fantasies. Please, to begin your pleasurable experience, click ‘proceed’ and pick your partner.”

✓ Couple: Taehyung x Reader | VirtualReality!AU

✓ Filed under: smut

✓ Look out for: dom!tae; overstimulation; praising; voyeurism; cock worship; spanking; vibrators... there’s also a mirror on the ceiling because science

✓ Words: 15,217

Author’s Note: Do you ever feel a feeling that doesn’t exist? That was my entire experience writing this fic. Hope you guys like it, because I even made a gif-cover for it.

The first time you heard about Immersive Virtual Reality, you thought that it could be the biggest breakthrough of the century. It was something straight out of a futuristic movie; an invention that even the most intelligent of programers could only aspire to achieve; or perhaps a trope that had been worn-out by repetitive anime remakes and hollywood producers. It was too good — too complex — to be true, and that was precisely why it worked so well.

There had been a huge fuss amongst online communities much longer before the devices hit the common sphere of customers. Forums whispered of a secret project of a big gaming company, supposedly a helmet that could induce a dream-like state, in which the individual was completely absorbed in an artificial, parallel world. Lo and behold: one of the most predominant tech names in the world — Idol — came out with their almighty IMVIT helmet soon after, and the promise of an “overwhelming new experience” for gamers worldwide.

Of course, it didn’t take long for humans do what they do best: turn something innocent into porn. In less than a year after Idol’s IMVIT helmet had hit the markets, the so-called Paradise 17 — with its embarassing slogan: the future has come — was already one of the top five most sold platforms, rapidly climbing up towards the first position. From what you had gathered, it worked as a hotel-like interface, in which you could mold an insubstantial partner into your perfect sexual fantasy, and then be taken into a personalized room, where the magic would take place. There were supposedly a lot of steps involved, for the system wished to reach as close as possible to perfection, while making sure that the entire experience was both pleasurable and safe — words from its website, not your own.

You told yourself that you wouldn’t succumb into the temptation that the program offered, but, of course, those had been mere superficial rationalizations. You lasted precisely three months — quite a long time, if you were to be completely honest — before you purchased the simulation. To your defense, it was one hell of a deal: since they had been getting ready to launch a new version of it, you managed to get it for 75% off in a stock clearing. Besides, it was only a five minute wait for the download.

The future had, indeed, come.

“Simulation fully downloaded. Connect your IMVIT helmet to your computer.”

Obediently, you did as the program requested, and watched as your system gradually recognized the device. From an outsider’s perspective, you probably looked like a lunatic — completely wrapped up by the adumbration of your bedroom, with only the phantasmagoric light of your computer to illuminate your expectant features; the rapid movement of your fingers against the keyboard, and your eyes over the lines on the screen. To be fair, you didn’t feel much different, and your position only worsened as the connection was concluded.

Next to you, your helmet — you always thought it looked like a motorcyclist's apparatus — lit up in pallid shades of emerald and yellow. Your computer, asymmetrically, turned off for an instant, and the sound of the fans started vibrating within its structure. Once it illuminated again, you were greeted with the logo of Paradise 17 in beautiful, golden cursive letters.

“Welcome to Paradise 17, the immersive virtual reality of your most private fantasies.” Could be read underneath it — bright pink characters against an alabastrine background. Through your speakers, came a robotic female voice, which you quickly turned off. Even her automatic timbre sounded a bit judgemental, but perhaps you were just paranoid. “Please, to begin your pleasurable experience, click ‘proceed’ and pick your partner.”

You did as it said, and watched as the screen morphed into a completely different image. Unanticipatedly hesitant, you swallowed dry, feeling as expectancy started to burn like wildfire at the bottom of your stomach.

With cautious movements, you leaned in and started to read. A second later, your eyes were growing wide as you saw the endless selection of categories. The “partners”, as they were called, were separated in criteria that went from race and gender, and all the way to a five-page quiz about your kinks and sexual preferences, rating them from “not hot” to “super hot” in a very cringe-worthy scale.

The answering section of Paradise 17 had been overlooked by other users, and the internet forums had forgotten to comment on how long and obnoxiously detailed the inquiries could be. You scrolled through those quizzes and randomized sections for what appeared to be hours — when, it reality, it was probably around fifteen minutes — until, at last, you found yourself facing the final page. On the screen, it could be read: these are your three finalists, sorted by your answers and preferences. Please, think about your choice, for there will be no possibility to switch during the simulation.

That page was much cleaner than the previous ones, and presented exactly what it had promised: on it, three pastel-colored pictures and, underneath each one, the specifics about the guy, and how he would behave in the simulation — from a quick look, you could see that they had all been classified under “strictly dominant” in bold crimson letters, which had been one of the first choices you had to make. With a subdued hum of interest, you stared at the options, and started to read what they had to offer.

Firstly, Seokjin. The primordial thought that crossed your mind once you met his picture was that they must have based it off a real life model, because there was no way that a computer program could come up with that level of handsomeness by its own devices. Just like the other two photographies, the image was quite simple — against a anemic blue background, he stood, disheveled black hair and semi-parted lips, his mouth vaguely stained by a shade of pink. Under his picture, it claimed that he was especially fond of voyeurism and bondage. Interesting — but the second wasn’t really your cup of tea.

Then, Taehyung. One thing that made him stand out had been the shirt he was wearing — black as midnight, while the others used white ones. The choice of wardrobe contrasted against the clear strands of his blonde hair, which fell down his face like golden cascades; mingling harmoniously with the lackluster blush that dwelled upon his cheeks. Under, his interests listed spanking and overstimulation. That was something you could deal with. Gladly.

At last, Jimin. His features were somewhat softer than the other options, but his gaze was even more piercing, sending electrical charges through your veins the second that you met the profoundness of his irises. You could not tell how a computer-generated man could look so good, but, then again, that was the kind of awe-inspiring perfection you would face in that simulation, so you should probably prepare yourself for it. It said that he was a fan of praising and cock worship. Which was nice… very nice.

Still, there was a decision to be made, and three fantastic options standing right before you — so, you did what you had to do, and went straight for the superficial desires of the flesh prison that you called a body. You would never admit that to anyone else, but the only element that pushed you towards a choice had been the... size difference. If your simulated body was going to have some fun, you might as well go out out.

With another deep, tremulous breath, you selected your partner.

How should TAEHYUNG call you? We advise not to use real names, or share any sort of personal information.

Several fake names crossed your mind, but none of them seemed to be a good pick for the circumstances presented to you. Your eyes trailed off onto the details of your room, attempting to find some sort of inspiration amongst scattered books and random objects, but all that came to you were overly-complex character names, or simply ones that you didn’t feel like would be suited for that pornographic scenario — Cordelia, Constance, Galadriel, Ophelia… Elizabeth Bennet? You didn’t even like Pride and Prejudice. You should pick some new books for a change, that was getting ridiculous.

At last, your gaze paused on a vase at the corner of your cubicle. Many weeks prior to your impulsive decision to purchase Paradise 17, one of your friends had gifted you with a rose for your birthday — before such a burning shade of scarlet, now a despondent tinge of purple, withered and dried up, barely standing in a vase of yellowed water. Gross. It was not in the best condition but, hey, your mental state wasn’t much better. It would have to serve.

Eager to get those steps done with, your fingers quickly typed “Rose”, and clicked to the next page before you could second guess your resolution. It wasn’t as if it was a life or death situation — you were about to have simulated sex, for fuck’s sake, not receive a nobel prize. Your name didn’t really matter.

Finally, pick your context. Paradise 17 is a sexual roleplaying simulator, please play your part accordingly. The storylines compatible with TAEHYUNG ar—

Now, that was a decision you did not expect to face. In an instant of startlement, you ran through your thoughts in a failed attempt to recall anything about that part of the program, but you could not remember anyone in the forums mentioning that Paradise 17 was about roleplaying — but, then again, you did select that kink before, so maybe that was it.

You ended up going for a simple one: you had just come back from a long time away, and Taehyung had booked a hotel room for the two of you. You didn’t believe you’d be capable of roleplaying anything much more complex than that — like the sugar daddy or teacher/student dynamics that the platform had suggested — especially when you were already so nervous about it. It was your first time trying it out, after all, you might want to ease your way in. Kind of.

Anticipation controlled your movements as you clicked for the next step, only to be met with a warning. The letters were white against a black background, quite a striking view when compared to the page’s clear and minimalistic style, and also with everything you had been presented so far.

Curious, you started reading: “Warning: Your session in Paradise 17 will go on for as long as you, the user, decides. Please be aware that prolonged exposure to Immersive Virtual Reality is not advised, and should not exceed five hours at a time. Do you wish to set a time limit, or decide later when to cease the simulation? The program will warn you half an hour before you reach the advised period of immersion.”

You hummed in an instant of thought, then clicked your preference. Decide later.

“Please enter your safe word. When spoken, the simulation will cease, and your progress will be saved. We advise you to use a word that would not come up normally during this context.”

Cinnamon. You had no idea why it had been the first one to reach your senses, but it would have to do the job for now — hell, you were winging it so far, there was not much that you had to lose.

“Your safe word is: CINNAMON. Confirm?”

Yes.

“Please, ROSE, review your data before we begin. Thank you for choosing Paradise 17, and we hope you enjoy your experience.”

With a tranquil suspire, you did as the program requested, and looked the list of your preferences. Besides your name, your safe word, and your partner’s data, you received the kinks that had resulted from your long session of quiz-answering — besides a dominating companion, you apparently enjoyed overstimulation, praising, voyeurism, cock worship, spanking and, as the cherry on top, vibrators. That was quite something, and you could tell you were in for a treat.

You chuckled, impressed at the agglomeration of kinks; some of which you had never even considered in depth before. “Seems about right,” you mumbled to yourself, then clicked the next page. Suddenly, you were looking forward to that “overwhelming new experience” a lot more.

“Check-in successfully finished. You may now place your IMVIT helmet.”

Oh. It was done.

Anxiety hit you like a punch in the gut, but you forced yourself to keep your movements under a clear veil of control. Like you did for other simulations, you picked up your IMVIT device, making sure that the long cable that connected it to the computer would not get stuck anywhere, and walked towards your bed. You made yourself comfortable, placing your back against the headboard, and took a look around to see if there were any objects to take care of — it wasn’t common, but sometimes users would report some muscular action in real life, and the last thing you needed was to slap a lamp mid virtual intercourse. When every particularity was revised, you moved your hair behind your ears, and placed the helmet on your head. Your vision went immediately dark, and your fingers promptly started searching for the button on the right side of the large equipment. Once you found it, you pressed it, and the small screen before your eyes turned on. The brightness induced you to blink a few times, making the clear cyan letters almost impossible to read at first.

Initiating program. You will feel a numbness in your limbs as you get into the simulation. Do not turn off your IMVIT helmet during the immersion phasis.

You inhaled profoundly, trying to calm down your nerves. Progressively, you started to be deprived of sensation through your body, almost as if you were starting to fall asleep — starting from your toes, and then working its way up.

The pixelated screen withered into obscurity, and the sound was activated. First, there was only static, then the auditory commands begun to resound inside your head.

“Welcome to Paradise 17,” the previous robotic voice echoed all around you, sending waves of excitability through your figure — or, at least, what hadn’t been numbed by the system. You knew these steps were necessary to fully submerge you in the simulation, but you couldn’t help but feel as if they were a bit more creepy then they should be. Morbid, almost. “You will be taken to your room shortly. Please, enjoy your stay.”

Your eyelids were heavy and, even against your best attempts, they closed. Sensation only lingered in the line above your neck, and it was rapidly diminishing, morphing into a vague trembling against your skin before, at last, disappearing completely. You always compared that part of the process to a bathtub full of anesthesia, in which you gradually slipped down into — submerging your abdomen, shoulders, jaw; and then all the way to the top of your head.

For the last time, you heard the rhythm of your breathing, and then there was only silence. The next inhale you took was already inside the program.

Abruptly, your eyes opened, and you found yourself inside the wonders of Paradise 17. The brusque change of atmosphere was always the most intimidating part of the process — in the breviloquent space between two heartbeats, you went from feeling nothing to absolutely everything. The sensation of your body was as realistic as ever and, if it wasn’t for the change of wardrobe, you could have claimed that you were still out of the virtual world.

Looking down, you noticed you had been wearing a silk robe — nothing beyond a thin, translucent veil of crimson — and, underneath it, a pair of lingerie that probably would’ve coasted your entire salary to acquire in real life. With a quick running of your hands through your hair, you noticed that the makeover had been complete, and you could only guess that your simulated self was also wearing a full-face of makeup. You knew that the system would go the extra mile to make you feel sexier than usual, but that just felt a bit weird to experience, if you were going to be frank.

Then again, it was probably your anxiety speaking.

You had been transported to a long, dimly-lit hallway. The forums were right about something: it felt like every hotel you had ever been to, and that only made the experience much more engaging. From the ugly carpet beneath your feet to the way that the corridor seemed to go on forever, bleeding into the darkness of the night; to the numerous doors that stood shut on either side of the walls — all of them the same: painted in an ivory shade, with beautifully-crafted golden handles — you found yourself in a flawless replication of reality.

The only passage that was accessible to you had been the one in front of your flabbergasted silhouette. From the parted door came a blast of the most profound tinge of magenta you had ever seen, casting its hypnotic, triangle-shaped glow all over the floor; and bathing your flesh with its phosphorescence. You could hear vague shuffles beyond it, and the distant sound of music and cars, many meters beyond your floor. Other than that, absolute silence.

From the other end of the hall, came the exclamation of a bell, signaling that the elevator — that you had barely noticed before — had arrived at your floor. Its golden lambency sliced through the thickness of the stygian atmosphere, and a person entered the hallway with hurried footsteps. Instead of what you expected, the stranger that came from it wasn’t your partner, but a short, middle-aged woman.

In the midst of the corredor’s shadows, you could see that she was wearing a maid’s outfit, and didn’t seem very thrilled about it. She walked hastily towards you, expression neutral — which, for her, made her seem as if she was pissed off at something. Not that you could judge: you, too, suffered from Resting Bitchface Syndrome.

Her voice was high-pitched as slightly nasaled as she spoke out. “Rose?” she asked as she stopped a few meters away from where you stood, placing her hands behind her back. Thin, rectangular-shaped glasses slid from the bridge of her nose, and her image seemed to be the most off-putting fragment of that world.

You didn’t know if she was part of the simulation, or if she was an administrator logged in the system. Either there was a woman like that laying in a dark room and guiding people through their off-putting sexual fantasies, or the programmers had willingly coded that character into a bitter person. Frankly, both options were equally bizarre, and you chose not to dive deeper into that inner debate.

Also, the fact that you were in full-lingerie in the middle of a dark hallway didn’t make you feel any more at ease. “Yes, that’s— That’s me,” you responded, a bit startled. The fake name sounded so off-putting coming from her lips, and you hoped that it would not be constantly used during the simulation.

“At your service.” She nodded. Her movements seemed a bit too unnatural for your taste, so perhaps she wasn’t a real person. You didn’t really want to find out. “Welcome to Paradise 17. Is this your first time using the server?”

“Yes,” you replied, expectant.

Once again, she agreed with a movement of her head. “Understood.” She signaled towards the half-open door. “This is your room, as you might have guessed. Remember: this is a roleplaying simulator, so play your part accordingly. Do you have your safe word in mind?”

Her speech caught you a bit off guard, but you managed to answer rather expeditiously. “Yes, I remember it.”

“Understood,” she repeated, then took a step behind. The purple light did her no good: it only made her eyes seem even more sulken, thin lips being pierced together in an instant of thought. “Your chosen partner, Taehyung, is ready and waiting for you,” she continued, “and you may start whenever you deem comfortable, simply open the door and the simulation will resume. Enjoy your stay.”

“Thank you,” you spoke, those two words feeling heavy against your tongue. Not that you had the time to add anything else.

As quickly as the mysterious maid appeared, she vanished into the twilight of the corridor, walking rapidly toward the elevator’s open doors. You stood there, somewhat stupefied at the odd interaction, and watched as the metallic cubicle closed with a low purring of its motor, then moved up to the following floor.

Well, that was... unexpected. Surely not something you wished to think about for any longer than necessary.

You shook your head, trying to ignore the confused thoughts that surrounded your mind, and reached out for the golden handle. The metal was cool beneath your touch, and you had to recognize the perfection that the simulation provided — according to some programmers, the physical sensation of objects was the harder one to evoke, but Paradise 17 seemed to have no issue in regards to that. Which was good, because, honestly, the experiences of the flesh were the majority of its offers.

In a brusque decision, you made the call that you would not allow for your performance anxiety to get the best of your actions — it was just a simulation, and you had nothing to worry about. Paradise 17 was just another parallel universe, and Taehyung was just another pre-programmed character. You were there to have fun, and not have an existential crisis. You’d be okay. You’d live.

You hoped.

So, with that in mind, you opened the door.

Your room was both what you had expected — based on the few preview pictures on the Paradise 17 website — and a bit more. It was by no means ostentatious, but it had enough details that it would feel much fancier than it was; certainly something you would not be able to afford in real life.

In the very centre of it, stood a large, round, king-sized bed and; by each side, white nightstands held the weight of frail lights. Crepuscular silk sheets enveloped the mattress, bathed by the vague lambency of neon; and you could sense the vague aroma of something sweet dancing in the atmosphere.

Nevertheless, those were not the important aspects of that space. You did not care for the deep purple curtains that ornamented the walls, nor for the mirror by your side that made you catch a glimpse of your own barely-covered figure. Your attention had been funneled to the large window that practically covered the wall opposite from where you stood — and the man that looked at the city below.

Behind his figure, the prismatic city lights scintillated like a million constellations. There was a thin line of turquoise phosphorescence that delineated his body, but, other than that, he was pure shadow — a black hole amidst a vivacious galaxy. Many meters beneath your secluded room, the muffled symphony of cars and effervescent conversations attempted to reach for your senses, but barely made through the silence that bloomed within that structure. It was far too perfect to be real and, yet, it immersed you so fully that you forgot, even for an instant, that you were inside an manmade world.

With the pushing of your fingertips, the door closed behind you. The man — Taehyung — appeared to get startled at the clicking noise, for his head quickly snapped away from the image of the kaleidoscopic city, and towards you. Taehyung had his hands deep in the pockets of his cream-colored suit once he turned around, his eyebrows slightly elevated in a muted inquisition, barely visible past the cascades of his soft hair strands. Once you saw his face, you could swear your heart forgot how to beat for an instant — he was absolutely handsome, ethereal almost, and his picture did him no justice.

Nervousness forgotten, you allowed for a dim smile to germinate upon your lips. “Hey,” you almost whispered, voice a lot softer than your usual timbre. You felt a bit stupid saying that, but it wasn’t as if you had a long line of groundbreaking introductions to choose from.

Taehyung’s eyes were wide in a mixture of surprise and nostalgia. “Rose,” he called your fake name with so much fluidity that you wished you could change it to your real one. The system had forgotten to notify you that the man had just enchantingly deep timbre, and that could be a problem — you would not respond for your own actions. “You showed up.”

You nodded, pushing your legs to move in his direction. The atmosphere felt thick, your lungs were barely able to suck the dense air in. “I did, Taehyung.”

The man suspired. “You look beautiful, my love,” he spoke underneath his breath, eyes glued to the movements of your figure. Against the blazing, yet scarce, lights of your room, his blonde strands of hair had decayed into a shade of pallid pink, and you loved it even more. Taehyung looked angelic, in the most demonic of ways. “I didn’t think you’d find me here.” He paused. “I didn’t think you wanted to.”

Dry — your throat felt so damn dry. If you could, you would skip that roleplaying part and jump straight to the action; especially now that you had seen him in “flesh”, and all the eroticism that encompassed his figure had completely asphyxiated you. Next time, you made a mental note to not go for any sort of roleplaying. “I did. I wanted — I want — it,” you responded slowly, walking in his direction. Your thoughts were disorganized, anarchic. “I... want you.”

Talk about being direct. Well, you had never been the most subtle person ever, anyways. It’s not as if you should get self-conscious about a simulation judging your eagerness to get inside his pants.

Taehyung smirked, pleased by your reaction. There was no way that man had been generated by a computer: he was so alluring that you could swear you had seen him somewhere before — perhaps in a renaissance painting, where diaphanous brushstrokes could ever so precisely construct the symmetry of features and actions. “I know that,” he verbalized — and of course he would be cocky too, because that was the essential ingredient when it came to cooking the Ruin-You recipe. “This is all for me, isn’t it?”

And of course, he was talking about your clothing — or lack thereof. “Yes,” you agreed. With a final step, you found yourself standing right before him — so close that, at every new inhale, you thought your chest would hit his. You placed your hands on his broad shoulders, and felt as he placed his own on your hips. His skin was warm and, against yours, it felt like it was burning, setting your soul aflame. “All for you, Taehyung,” you repeated.

Taehyung seemed to take a moment to dwell in your words, caliginous eyes continuously flickering downwards, attempting to catch glimpses of your body; explore the valley between your breasts. “Well, as much as you know I adore to see you like this...” he started, voice barely above a suspire. Beneath the fabric of his suit, you could feel his defined muscles moving as he massaged your body; squeezing your ass lightly. “I prefer when you’re wearing nothing.”

You looked up, meeting his tenebrous irises — vortexes of greed and lust, sucking you into a world you could not comprehend. As the words left you mouth, they did not feel like your own. “We can change that,” you proposed.

He hesitated. Just as you thought that Taehyung would respond, with his reddish lips opening to form a silent syllable, the darkness of his gaze deepened into a level that you could not fully grasp. The man’s eyelashes quivered lightly as his eyes met the delineation of your lips, and there they stayed. He leaned in.

Taehyung’s answer, instead, came in the form of a passionate kiss, and a subdued groan against your mouth.

His large hands departed from your lower body and, subsequently, cupped your cheeks as his lips parted in a warm welcome, a soft sigh coming from his throat once he felt your immediate reciprocation. Air was stuck inside your lungs as Taehyung kissed you with all he had, tasting the nectar of your lips, succumbing into you. His kiss passed a clear, palpable message: I want to have you all for myself. And I don’t want excuses.

And, fuck, you wanted him too.

That was why you didn’t stop him when his hands started trailing towards your clavicles, just to hook around the hem of your robe and pull it down your shoulders — a second later, it was merely a pool of translucent silk around your ankles. The fresh air embraced your figure then, and you could fully feel the asperous sensation of the man’s suit against your body.

Annoyed at the abundance of fabric in between you, you were quick to move your fingers to take off his own clothing. In due time, his suit jacket was already accompanying your robe on the hardwood floor, and your hands were using his blood-red tie to pull him closer to you, silently begging for more.

You knew that the hotel room was fake, but your experiences were very, very real. There was no way to mask the excitement that had taken over your limbs, nor the lewd expectation that had started to accumulate at the bottom of your abdomen. Taehyung knew exactly how to kiss you — he knew which pacing to follow, when to caress your tongue with his own; when to depart from your lips so he could meet the luscious skin of your exposed neck. He had been, quite literally, handmade for you, and you adored every second of it.

The man departed from your mouth, and navigated his lips towards your cheek, kissing the spot with unbearable softness. Taehyung suspired frequently, drowning in his own reverence at your form, as he trailed a path down your neck; biting as sucking your flesh in-between the wet touches of his mouth. “Love,” he called, his hoarse voice sending vibrations through your body, “Let’s be patient, we have the entire night for ourselves.”

Your only response had been a sigh, for you were aware that you could not speak anything else, even less play your part well. Many years before, you had been removed from the theater club for a reason — you could not act to save your life. And, frankly, you were in no position to do so.

As you would soon understand, though, Taehyung was everything but patient.

Sooner than you would admit, his dahlia-colored tie was on the ground, and your hands were fumbling to open the buttons of his white cotton shirt. Taehyung wasted no time either — his slender fingers were quick to undo the clasp of your bra, and throw it somewhere else as they moved to cup your breasts, to press them together. You whined at the contact, feeling as your arousal begun to present itself between your thighs.

In an unexpected action, Taehyung wrapped his arms around your waist and pulled your body closer to his, grunting in delight as soon as your nude chest met his own, and the hardness of his cock was felt at the bottom of your abdomen; poking against the light fabric of your underwear. The mere sensation was enough to make you sigh, your hands trailing downwards to meet the hem of his trousers in a blind search for his member.

The tingle of his kiss still lingered on your lips when his mouth, once again, came crashing down against yours; taking your breath away and making your legs weaken at the brusque, hunger-filled contact. That kiss was dramatically different, for his movements had turned much harsher, filled with impatience and lasciviousness. You couldn’t say that you disliked it — in fact, you probably liked it a bit more than you should.

The separation of your mouths pushed a frustrated exclamation out of your throat. With firm hands, Taehyung guided you downwards, sitting you on the edge of the spacious bed — your hips bounced as you met the velvety mattress; your eyes darting up to look at him once again.

Whatever complaint that you had started to construct within your mind came crumbling down once you met his expression. The picture the program had presented could never do any justice to the ethereal beauty that stood before you; the redness of his tongue as it came out to wet his plump lips, the thickness of his eyelashes as he lethargically blinked, taking in the desire of your form. His white shirt had been opened halfway through, and you instantly met the outline of his muscles through the thin fabric; his golden-kissed skin shining alongside the colorful phosphorescence of the room.

Taehyung could have been just a product of your digitally-enhanced imagination for all you cared, but, then and there, he was made of flesh and blood; wrapped around the purest curtain of ravenousness. Furthermore, with the new angle, so came the image of his own throbbing member, now much closer to you.

Your eyes fell to his erection, mouth watering— he was already hard, as you had felt aforetime, and the outline of his cock pressed strongly against his pants. As ephemeral as that instant of amazement was, it showed you just how wise you had been to base your decision on the size difference.

Ephemeral because, as you soon noticed, Taehyung seemed to have the same focus as you did, and was quick to cover your view. Before you could even construct a basic thought about what was given to you, the man cupped himself over his clear pants, groaning once he experienced the sensation his hand provided. “You’re making me so horny, baby,” he moaned out, biting down on his lower lip. “I can barely hold myself back.”

With exhausted limbs and parted eyes, you stared up as he started to stroke himself over his cream-colored trousers, hissing at his own neediness. The image was so erotic that you swore you could faint at the spot — luckily, though, your simulated version had a bit more endurance than that. “Then don’t,” you vocalized, your own tone muffled by your concupiscence.

Your actions — from the movement of your fingers to the words that left you — felt alien to you. Not because the simulation was bad, god knows it was amazing, but because you felt as if you had reached for a level of freedom that real life could never give you. Perhaps that was why Paradise 17 was so popular: besides your fantasies, it was also permeated with the possibility of acting out without fear of social consequences. You had full control of the scene, and it molded itself to fit your wishes. It was far too tempting for you to overlook it.

Regardless, those philosophical meditations could wait. There were far more important elements taking shape before you.

Taehyung’s nostrils flared up as his digits started to tease his crown through the fabric, permitting a ponderous exhale to depart from his chest — the sensation was numbed and, yet, it made his eyelids grow heavy as he stared down at your form. “I don’t plan to,” he spoke in a hushed tone, appearing as if he had utilized every ounce of his self-control to do so. “Want to feel it? How hard I am for you?”

The aching between your legs was getting intolerable, at it filled your mind with hazy clouds of craving. As your stare oscillated down to his pants — where you could notice a small wet spot of pre-cum starting to accumulate amongst the material — you swore all the remnants of your apprehension had left you behind. “Yes.” You swallowed dry, sitting up straight. You were out of your senses, but not enough to disregard such tempting proposal, especially when his velvety tone felt so deliciously inviting.

You had to battle against a moan that started to form at the tip of your tongue when your fingers met the textile of his pants — and, right underneath it, the hardness of his cock. Delicately, you started to stroke its sides, feeling as his member twitched in your hands; then the wetness of his pre-cum when you dared to tease his slit. From miles underneath the sea, you heard Taehyung’s breath being caught in his throat, his abs clenching as he drowned in your feather-like movements. “Can I cum in your pretty mouth, baby?” he asked, rather suddenly. You heart almost jumped out of your chest. “Do you want to suck me off?”

“Yes,” you responded just as rapidly. Once again, the proposal was too good to be neglected. “I do.”

Above you, the sound of Taehyung’s chuckle reverberated throughout the consolidated air. He seemed to find some sort of diversion amongst your dissimulated distress, the eagerness you tried to mask as you fumbled to open his buttons. “You love my cock, don’t you?” his voice was dangerously deeper as he asked, clearly amused. And there it was: your first of many kink choices for the night. Cock worship. You could do that. “You can tell me, love, you know how much I like to hear it.”

However, your response did not come so fast. With measured movements, you slided his trousers — and boxers — down his legs, your arousal only increasing as his erection was freed from its confinements. Slightly flabbergasted at the perfection of his form, you observed attentively every particularity that surrounded Taehyung: the shaky breath that left him as his member touched the cool air of the room, already soaked by its own nectar; the flinching of his limbs as you dared to move closer to him, magnetized by the frail neon aura that bathed his flesh. It was a heavenly picture, to say the least, and it was yours to have a taste of.

Still, you reminded yourself that he needed an answer, and your inner conflicts would have to be put on hold, at least for the time being. “Yes, I do…” You trailed off, placing one of your hands around his base. It felt so heavy against your palm, so thick. You bit back a moan once you thought about how good his cock would feel inside you, how amazingly it could fill you up. God bless impromptu decisions, and god bless the cravings of the flesh. “I love it so much.”

Nonchalantly, you tilted your head closer to his center, and your tongue met his crown, flat, then started to draw circular movements against his reddened skin; teasing his opening just enough to earn a muffled cry for more. As you would soon learn, Taehyung was sensitive to even the most timid of caresses, and even his dominating aura could not disguise the need that overruled his mind.

You felt as his fingers intertwined with the strands of your hair, pushing at the top of your head, wordlessly imploring for more. Above you, the boy grunted and cursed, closing his eyes to savor that moment the best he could. “That’s it, baby,” Taehyung eagerly praised, almost as if talking to himself. “Just take it all.”

He didn’t have to ask twice, for every other option was outrageous to even consider.

With a sigh, you placed your lips, rather tenderly, around the head of his cock, and suckled lightly, barely teasing him. You leaned back enough so you could speak, your breath hitting his member in thin clouds of heat. “You’re so hard,” you spoke, angling your head slightly to the right. You licked your path from his base to his top, and heard as a dragged-out grunt broke just behind his clenched teeth. Even the salty taste of his precum felt awfully realistic, you though in a moment of surprise; the texture of his swollen skin was perfect. “So big, Taehyung.”

“All yours, love.” He exhaled. As much as his timbre was somewhat controlled, his actions were not, and the roughness of which he held to your hair only presented his hunger further. “I’m so close already, just looking you is enough to make me cum.”

Now, there were some things that you didn’t precisely think about, but that would appear in the midst of your thoughts regardless. At that instant, the mental depiction of Taehyung coming all over your lips, untouched and trembling at his own release, hit you like a tidal wave, washing away all traces of logic that still lingered inside you. You could see it, in a way, hanging like a sword over his head, reflecting at the bottom of his parted eyes — the man was reaching closer to the edges of his self-control and, between your fingers, his member was painfully enlarged, begging to be caressed.

And that was all you needed to stop teasing him. Go figure, you weren’t that patient either.

Taehyung’s body jolted forward when your mouth wrapped around his cock, and you pushed yourself closer to it, sinking it inside your mouth. He, too, lost the ability to hold back his actions, for the hand that held to your hair closed around your strands with even more force, marking the rhythm of your movements, fighting to pull your head closer to his hips. You hummed at how good it felt, regardless of the sudden rush of pain. You loved it rough, and that had been precisely what you had went for.

“Oh, that’s it. You feel so fucking good,” he cried out in an astounding instant of adoration, every small movement of your tongue against his member made him buckle his lower body towards you; a groan bubbling on his throat. “Take me deeper, baby,” he pleaded.

Obedient, you leaned your body forwards, causing for his cock to hit even deeper inside your mouth. Progressively, you relaxed your throat so you could take even more of his large member in, and grew surprised at how easy it was — apparently your simulated self had no notion of a gag reflex, and that could be used in your favor. All hail the horny programmers that had made that moment possible.

You hummed around his member, taking him whole — or, as much as you could, while your other hand worked massaging his base. Even if it was slightly bothersome the way it ached the back of your throat, you could ignore it; instead focusing on the way his voice resounded around the room; moans and cries echoing around you as he thrusted inside your mouth, delighting in the amazing way you felt around him; chest rising and falling in heavy pants. “Fuck yeah,” Taehyung sobbed, thrusting his hips against your mouth in pure jubilation. “Just like th— shit, your mouth feels so fucking amazing—”

There had been failed attempts to find some sort of relief by slightly thrusting your center against the silky bed sheets, but that was clearly not even close to being sufficient, and it only served to make you even hornier, teasing your clit lightly. You had guessed that such part of the simulation wouldn’t last for long, since your pleasure was the main one to be taken into consideration by the program, and you had completely soaked your underwear by the point that Taehyung’s words were completely lost amongst a tide of broken moans.

Much to your delight, you were correct.

“I'm gonna cum, baby,” Taehyung warned, his member throbbing and twitching between your lips. His every action was a silent bargain for more of your mouth — to take him deeper, faster, to allow him to fuck himself against your soft tongue as you sucked him. Since you weren’t a fan of prolonging his — and by consequence, your — suffering, you did as he expected, and the reaction was instantaneous. “Oh, fuck—”

With a last, breathless whimper, he released inside your mouth; fingers grasping to your hair as you moaned around him, allowing for him to fill you with his cum. Only then, when his amazingly deep voice cried out the shattered syllables of your (fake) name and his thighs begun to tremble underneath the weight of his satisfaction, did you fully notice that you could move away from his cock, for he was already flinching with overstimulation.

After you had swallowed his release, you looked up at him. A dim, fucked-out smirk decorated his lips as his eyes found your own, presenting you with the felicity that had took over him.

Taehyung was still inhaling heavily as he took his thumb to clean one of the corners of your mouth, unhurriedly guiding it to part your red-bitten lips. “You look so pretty like this…” he praised, watching as you sucked on his thumb, swallowing the remnants of his cum. He sighed. “Love, you’re driving me crazy. Lay down for me, let me take care of you.”

You swore you almost cried out in relief as he said so, mind completely focused on the wetness that had pooled in-between your legs. Regardless, your only form of agreement was a long, drawn-out sigh as you moved away from his figure and did as he ever so pleasantly requested.

With fluid movements that did not show your overwhelming craving for his touches, you leaned your torso back, and threw yourself on the mattress, amongst the mountains of the silk sheets, and slightly pushed your body towards the center of the circular bed. As you did so, however, your eyes promptly met… you own.

God have mercy, of course there would be a mirror on the ceiling.

There was a short-lived moment of surprise as you followed the cascade of your hair on the mirror, irradiating around your head; the iridescent lights that contoured your exposed breasts; and the red marks that delineated your mouth. The person on the mirror looked both like yourself and a different version of if, barely a lost phantasm living amongst the shadows of that hotel. It was a paradoxical position: it felt like an hallucination, and yet a vivid part of reality.

Before you could ruminate on that piece of information any further, though, another figure came into focus on the reflection. Taehyung had taken off his last piece of clothing — his shirt — and had kneeled before you, fingertips landing on your thighs and pushing your legs apart. “Keep’em open for me, baby,” he whispered, overtaken by devotion. His voice was husky, enthralling. “Let me see what you’re giving me tonight.”

Your eyes darted away from the mirror, and towards him. “Taehyung,” you called out, shame long forgotten. The flame of carnality that burned at the bottom of your abdomen was overbearing, scorching your skin and turning your contemplations into ashes. There was nothing else that you needed but to feel him. “Please, just hurry.”

He placed his hands on either side of your head, finding support on the malleable fabric, and placing himself between your legs. Taehyung’s figure blocked out the obfuscus luminescence that came from the outside world, and the heat of his skin managed to be overwhelming, as bright as the lambency that shone within his gaze.

Against your expectations, though, the man didn’t laugh at the vocalization of your painful needs. Instead, Taehyung steadily lowered his body to your level, placed a prolonged kiss on your lips, and then moved down to your collarbones, his tongue writing poetry against your skin. He maintained his sluggish path as his large hands caressed your tits, pressing them together and grunting as he felt your nipples hardening underneath his touch.

“Taehyung,” you called out his name like it was a prayer — it was no time to tease you like that. “I want more.”

He hummed and departed from your bosom, kissing and licking down your stomach, your waist, your hips. Pushing your legs apart — which had once again closed in a natural defense against his erotic touches — Taehyung trailed up the invisible course on the inner part of your thigh, moving nearer to where you needed him the most. His lips were soft as feathers, warm as the flames of hell, and his tongue marked ancient spells on your skin.

God, you were doomed.

“Ah, love, you're dripping for me,” the boy complimented in awe, moving his palms towards your oversensitive center. With lustful appetite scintillating behind his eyes, Taehyung took two of his fingers back to your folds; but, instead of entering you, they simply dwelled at your wetness, earning a low groan from him as he pushed them apart.

The heath of his mouth met the cotton of your underwear, his lips circling your covered clit just right. He wanted to tease you further, but he knew you were in no position to endure it. “I just want to have a taste of you, love…” Taehyung trailed off, two of his slender fingers curling around the hem of your panties, pulling them down with umberable patience. The brush of his skin against yours was gentle, but enough to have a sigh leave your mouth — his voice was something you just fucking loved to hear, sweet as honey and deep as the libido the bloomed within your chest. “Fuck, look at you…”

Licking his plump lips in expectation, the boy stared in hidden fascination as he uncovered your soaked center, presenting him with a luscious view of your dripping sex. With a reverberating, satisfied groan, Taehyung placed one of his fingers on your entrance, playing with your wetness, barely teasing his way in. “You're all ready for me, babe,” he praised in a suspire, lowering his head to take a closer look at you. When he spoke, his hot breath hit the skin of your inner thighs. “God, you'll make me go crazy. I can't wait to make you cum around my cock.”

Your pulse quickened at the idea, causing for you to raise your hips against the motions of his expert digits. Through your parted lids, your gaze met his cock — already hard and throbbing against his abdomen, ready for another round. In real life, that would have taken a bit longer than a couple minutes, but, then again, Paradise 17 knew what it was doing.

Taehyung hummed once again, content with your physical response — the whines that broke upon your tongue, and the trembling breaths that got trapped in your fast-beating chest. His nose brushed its path along your thigh, moving dangerously close to your heat, while his fingers moved to rub your clit at a slow pace, coating it with your own moisture. “Will you be a good girl for me?” Taehyung questioned in a mumble — God, that voice was going to be the end of you. “Will you do what I ask you to?”

“Yeah…” you agreed in a whimper, respiration getting heavier by each torturous second. It was awfully annoying the way he grew confident at your distress — Taehyung’s gaze was one of pure cockiness, making you clench your teeth as you attempted to get more friction from his touches; the ghost of his plump lips against your sensitive skin. “Yes, just let me…oh fuck—”

Before you could even prepare yourself for it, Taehyung had moved his hand down, and entered one finger inside you, delighting in the way you clenched around him. “Just let you what?” the boy provoked, raising his head away from your heat, watching as your fingers dug to the sheets by your side. It was no fantastic discovery the fact that Taehyung had deliciously long fingers, but, once he added the second one, you were already starting to lose the terminal remnants of your self-control. “I couldn’t hear you, baby.”

Outside the concupiscent walls of Paradise 17, you would have never seen yourself as much of a submissive person, but Taehyung managed to turn that around rather quickly. And, as his movements grew more frantic, you lost yourself. “Taehyung, please,” you cried out, closing your eyes in absolute bliss. You could feel yourself getting lighter as your orgasm approached, chest rising and falling as you seeked your release. “Please, let me cum.”

Taehyung inhaled sharply at the inflections of your needy speech, groaning once he felt the throbbing of his own hard member against the bed. Around his fingers, you clenched and released, signaling that you weren’t far from your high. “Good girl,” he praised, repositioning himself to get closer to you.

In an action that was a bit too mercurial for your foggy mind to follow, his mouth was working on your clit with an unprecedented hunger, fingers completely sinking inside you. Taehyung grunted as he sucked on your sensitive spot, feeling as your walls tightened around his fingers, your juices soaking the path down his digits, and onto his hand. Hard and heavy, his cock twitched and rubbed against the bed every time you whined out his name, at every new, needy moan that dares to reverberate past your tongue.

When moved back, you could sense his shallow breaths reaching for your clit in small puffs of air. “Will you cum on my tongue? You know I love how you taste.” His charges got a bit faster, reaching deep inside you. Every once in a while, he would part his fingers ever so slightly, which you were sure it was a way to prepare you for his big member.

You could not be in the best state of mind then, but you could remember perfectly how thick he was as he was pressed against you, or as he filled your mouth, and the recalling was more than sufficient to push an answer out of your arid throat.

“Yes, yes, please,” you struggled to speak out, the right words flying away from your grasp. Your mind was already getting overwhelmed by the constant stimulation, the eminent arrival of your release turning your thoughts into absolute pandemonium — something that only worsened once you felt his tongue flat against your clit, losing no time in massaging it in gradual, deliciously circular motions. “Oh my god,” you gasped, hands flying to grip his soft strands of hair.

His digits curved upwards, hitting your sweet spot with no effort. You threw your head back, feeling as your pleasure expanded by the second, “Taehyung,” you called out in a whimper, rolling your hips against his hand. Weak, your knees felt like they were made of jello as he continued his movements, using his fingers to open your entrance wider, hitting you deeper. You were hanging just over the edge, and one last push was all you needed. “Right there, fuck. I’m going to—”

And the last push arrived in the form of a low, guttural moan against your heat. Just like Taehyung had requested, you came on his tongue, and gladly so. As your legs trembled under the hit of your first orgasm, your fingers held tightly to the roots of his hair, riding out your high against the intoxicating movements of his tongue against your clitoris. You cried out what resembled the pieces of his name in an exasperated exhale, drowning in the intercalated waves of heat and iceness that ran up and down your spine.

When Taehyung departed from in-between your legs and sat back on the bed, his roseate tongue came out, licking the remnants of your liquids on his plump lips, and taking his fingers to his mouth to do the same. “You taste so good…” the boy trailed off, the mere image turning into the hottest thing you had ever seen. As he looked at you, however, you observed that his eyes were a bit emptier than before. “Do you want to continue?” he inquired.

As soon as those words left his swollen, wet lips, you noticed that his timbre had decayed into a neutral one, and instantly noticed that it was the simulation asking for your consent. Better safe than sorry, you guessed.

Then again, if you were there, you might as well go all out.

You licked your lips, looking down at his own — his mouth was completely covered by your juices, shining against the dim magenta lights like small diamonds. “Yes,” you responded. That simple sentence took all of your spiritual strength; even the steadiness of your voice was hanging by a thread. “I want more.”

Much to your delight, that appeared to be all that he necessitated to keep your night moving along, for his gaze drew back to the same fathomless expansion that had been ruling over your thoughts. If there were any fragments of his robotic, pre-programming self still living within that hotel room, they soon vanished as he began to speak again.

“Ah, love, you're still dripping for me,” the boy complimented in awe. With lustful appetite scintillating behind his eyes, Taehyung took two of his fingers back to your folds; but, instead of entering you, they simply dwelled at your wetness, earning a low groan from him as he pushed them apart, then trailed softly towards your clit. The contact made you shake, air stuck in your lungs. “Fuck, you're soaking the bed, baby. Is that how much you want me to fuck you?”

“Yes, Taehyung, please,” you whined out, trying to move your core against him. However, to your frustration, his other hand moved quicker than your intentions, and it held your hips in place. Such an annoying little tease you had gotten for yourself. “Stop with this and just fuck me.”

Again, so much for being subtle. Then again, as much as Taehyung was playing the dominating part in that piece of virtual heaven, your wishes were the ones to be taken into consideration, especially when they were worded in such urgent manner. Quite literally, it bottomed down to the fact that you wished for him to fuck you, and so he would.

Without warning, as he often liked to act, the boy positioned himself between your legs. Taehyung took his hand away from your core and wrapped it around his member, using it to guide himself past your folds. He started by teasing his head in, making you get used to his size, before, at last, sinking the rest of his length inside; the delicious way of your walls stretched open to accommodate his cock making you to fall back against the mattress in a silent plea.

Taehyung was a quivering mess as he breathed out, fighting back a groan of satisfaction. His hands returned to rest on each side of your head, and his chest lowered, getting closer to your own. “Shit, I could just slip right in,” he told you, slowly pulling his hips back, leaving only the tip of his member in, just to shove himself back inside you. Once again, he repeated the action, starting with a slower rhythm, filling you to the brim. “You feel so fucking good, babe, fuck…”

Your only reply had been a restrained moan, and the wrapping of your legs around his waist. Taehyung was thick, reaching every possible spot inside you and leaving you in a storm of moans and torn supplications; fingers holding to the bed sheets in a shallow, frustrated attempt to hold yourself back to rationality.

With furrowed brows, Taehyung closed his eyes in concentration. Gradually, his hips started to lose precision in their pushes, and his rhythm was a scattered combination of movements; following the symphony of his constant groans and moans, fucking you much faster — rougher — than before. “You like this?” he panted.

“Yeah,” you said. He rolled his hips against you, fucking you so well that you saw stars forming constellations before your eyes. “Go deeper, ple—”

But he had already understood your request, and loud exclamation of delight dropped from your bruised lips, interrupting your sentence. You felt as his member, thick and throbbing, entered you deeper, stretching you wide and hitting all the lovely spots. “Like this?” he whispered in a hoarse voice, unable to hold back his own cries of delectation. His pouty lips wrote your fate on the surface of your soft cheeks, moving towards your neck once again. “Is this okay?”

“Oh fuck, yeah, just like this,” you cried out, closing your eyes in utter ecstasy as he did what you requested. Taehyung made sure to bring his hips back — his tip almost leaving your heat — before slamming himself back in, rolling his hips slightly so he could reach the all the places you loved so much with each feral thrust. The heat of his breaths against your skin was constant, but it could never win against the sensations that spreaded throughout your body. “Don’t stop, oh my god.”

Sooner than you would like, your second orgasm of the night hit you like a tidal wave, making you cry out his name again and again; your previous line of thought forgotten. You closed your eyes in endless, euphoric bliss, dwelling in the way he continued to fuck you through your high; knees shaking and arms far too weak to hold down to the bed.

Still, he fulfilled your request, and didn’t stop even after you had come undone.

“Taehyung,” you called, voice no more than a frail exclamation floating around the air. Your body was thrown up and down as he fucked you hard, the sound of sheets beneath of skin combining perfectly with the deep moans that left the boy. Taehyung was so strong in his thrusts that even the sensation of your boobs bouncing turned into a ocean of jubilation. “I already c-came.”

He inhaled sharply, hands meeting the curvature of your waist. The heat of his palms sent shivers down your spine; the frown of pleasure that overtook his features was enough to erase all your flabbergasted contemplations. “But you feel so perfect,” the boy praised, his storm-like advances becoming more and more inconsistent by the second; fingers holding to your flesh almost possessively. “Do one more for me, baby, come on. Cum for me.”

If it had been in real life, you were sure you wouldn’t be able to pull that off, but, since the context was different, the task did not feel as impossible as it seemed. “O-Okay,” you agreed in a stutter, reality seeming to be eons away. You were too weak to even protest, not that you really wanted to. “For you.”

And bless Paradise 17 for making your simulated body recover faster than your real one ever could, because it didn’t take much longer until your oversensibility gave way to a new wave of euphoria.

You bit your lip then, hard, trapping a whimper behind your teeth as you felt Taehyung maintain his strong actions, his eyes glued to the soft bouncing of your boobs; lips vaguely parted to form a silent syllable. Everything was becoming too much: his moans were too constant, yet so muffled; the pigmentation of the room contrasted with the bright lights from outside. The world was coming to a sudden halt, and your focus could barely hold itself to one single fragment of that room — the buildings that tried to reach the skyline beyond the window glass; then back to the sweat that accumulated between your bodies; then flickering to the clenching of Taehyung’s jaw as he felt your walls tightening around him.

But then, when you started to believe you were going to cum for another time, the man ceased his movements, and drew away from your body.

The absence of his touch — and subsequently, of his member inside you — was like a shock that ran through your limbs, making your eyes immediately dart open. You found your own discombobulated gaze on the mirror above and, besides that, the retrieving of his figure as he moved away from your own.

You pushed yourself to seat up. “Taehyung, what—”

“Hold on, baby, it won’t take long,” he requested, interrupting your ‘what the fuck are you doing?’, and leaning over the bed’s edge, reaching for the crepuscular nightstand. Taehyung opened the drawer in a swift movement and you heard something roll inside it, meeting the wood. “I want you to feel even better. You can lay down.”

Fighting back against your true desires, you did as he requested. Above you, your reflected body was covered in cherry-covered marks — all the way to the deep colors on your neck, to the ghostly pressing of his hands on your breasts and hips. The realization of Taehyung’s true roughness only made your craving reach further, rupturing upon your tongue in the form of a breathless suspire. “Tae, please.”

Taehyung lived up to his promise and, within a second, he was already crawling back towards you. “I’m here, love.” He smirked rather amicably — though, in his eyes, shone the flame of his prolonged self-indulgence. “I have something for you.”

You were about to ask what he was talking about when you saw the small, pink-colored object in his hands, and you understood where he was getting at. Of course: you did select vibrators after all. Cheers for stupid decisions.

And cheers for Taehyung for acting before you could even construct a response.

The contact of the vibrator against your clit made you cry out instantly — your body was unaware of the small period that it had been privated from his touches, for you were right back where you stopped, and lust, once again, ran through your veins.

You clenched around nothing and, in an automatic movement, you looked down at his throbbing member. Promptly, you observed how his cock was swollen, ready to cum once again, begging to be touched, to fill you up just the way you loved it. The mere sight of him made you whimper in expectation, your abdomen flinching as the vibrations continued to spread. “Taehyung, p-please,” you begged again. The pressure inside your core was too intense, you just needed to release it. You couldn’t hold back for much longer. “I’m gonna cum like t-this if you don’t hurry.”

Luckily, Taehyung, as you had noted, wasn’t the biggest fan of holding back either. With the fluid movements of a running river, he moved back in between your legs, and placed them over his thighs, angling you perfectly to receive him once again.

One second later, he had already slipped back inside you, and his rough advances resumed.

Sweat had accumulated at the bottom of your spine, and the world just felt too dense to even breathe properly; even less to construct abstract sentences. You begged for your body to just made you cum at once, because you didn’t know how long you could endure that torture for.

Yet, Taehyung wasn’t completely satisfied with your position. With a strong motion, he took one of your hands and placed it over the vibrator, making you hold it firmly against your sensitive spot. The pressure became more intense, and you felt as if your lungs were on fire. “Keep it there, baby,” Taehyung instructed with a hoarse voice, his hips beginning to take a more violent pace. The vibrations against your clit were becoming too much, and you felt as if you could reach your high again at any time now. “Yeah, that’s right. Feels good?”

You bit down on your lower lip, fingertips trembling against the vibrator. “T-Taehyung,” you called in a whimper, looking up to meet the mirror on the ceiling. You could see the motions of his back muscles with perfection, his hips advancing against yours repetitively; your own, needy eyes staring back at you in an unspoken bargain. God, the man fucked you like a machine and, in a way, he was one. “Taehyung, it’s too much…”

Like a whisper inside your mind, your safe word came in a silent proposal — but you quickly overlooked it. You didn’t want it to stop. Not yet.

“Yes, baby, fuck,” he groaned, making sure to add more and more force to his eager thrusts. Shit, you could feel him throbbing inside you, fucking you raw. You moaned and cried, knees shaking as you pressed down the pink vibratior to your clit, the contact adding to the hypnotic, harsh thrusts of his cock in and out of you. The scorching, frenzied waves in your lower body were becoming unbearable, ready to come crumbling down at any given instant. “Cum on my cock, please, baby…”

And that was the final drop. You didn’t know if it was his stupidly corny pet names or the overwhelming movement of his large member inside you, but, honestly, you didn’t care. It could have been a combination of those factors, or perhaps something entirely different. The point was that you had reached your breaking point, and your body could not take it any longer.

You wanted to beg for him to go on, to fuck you harder, deeper, faster; but you couldn’t find the words to do so. You reached for the stars, and there you stayed. As your lips opened, only a choked moan came out, eyes closing as your climax washed like currents throughout your body — making your knees tremble and your stomach clench up. Your nails dug to the skin of his back as you called out his name, your weak voice coming in fragments because of the force of his thrusts.

He, too, could not take much longer. “I’m gonna cum,” Taehyung said in a groan, hitting impossibly deep inside you. Though your climax, you really felt how big he was, keeping you in your place as you tightened around him. “Fuck, baby, you’re so perfect, so tight, I’m— oh, shit.“

You felt as his cock throbbed inside you as he came undone, his thrusts getting more erratic as his voice was sliced by moans and grunts, your name being thrown in the form of disconnected sounds. He fucked you through his high like he had promised: roughly, giving you no space to recover, and only stopped when you complained at the oversensibility.

Taehyung, at last, let out a final, exhausted curse before he moved away from your body, rolling next to you on that king-sized bed. For an instant, silence filled the space between the two of you. Then, the forsaken inquiry resounded once again. “Do you want to continue?” he asked, his throaty voice navigating the air like disembodied sin.

The vibrator was turned off, and you placed it in between the two of you — quivering fingers and sliced breaths echoing in between your sweaty bodies. You swallowed dry, taking an instant to fully organize your thoughts. The sensation of your orgasm still lingered within your bones, and you could swear your centre still felt the vibrations of the object.

“Yes,” you said in a blunt, reckless decision. “Yes please, I want more. Just one more.”

“Are you sure? There’s no need to be greedy.” Taehyung smirked at the eagerness that lingered behind your lips, barely vocalized within your fragmented syllables. As the man lethargically turned his chest towards you, your gaze followed the movement of his cock — still so deliciously swollen, vaguely coated by the whiteness of his release — as thumped against the softness of the mattress, begging to be caressed once again. “I’ll understand if you want to stop for today, love.”

You licked your lips, attention oscillating between his dark charcoal eyes and the throbbing of his member. There was something terribly hot about the way that Taehyung was still hard, and traces of hornyness could still be found lingering just at the back of his smile.

The man, just like every other computer-generated personality in that simulation, had been perfectly coded to be the best partner you would ever have, and he certainly lived up — and surpassed — your expectations. And, to top all of that, the atmosphere of Paradise 17 was, on itself, aphrodisiac. It consumed you from the inside out, making you base your decisions on the desires of the flesh, and not your rational impulses. Outside the simulation, you would have never agreed to another round of that cardio exercise, but, then and there, any other option seemed far too preposterous to even consider.

So, when your answer left your lips, you were not precisely left surprised.

“I can do one more.”

A deep chuckle reverberated within his chest, and he moved slowly to sit up on the bed, back pressed against the headboard. Manners forgotten, one of his hands curled around his aching cock, fingers teasing his slit as he took in your fucked-out image. Taehyung hissed at the sensitivity of his member, twitching painfully at the absence of your heat; a long, guttural moan breaking upon his lips as he spoke again. “Look what you do to me,” his chest quivered as his spoke, panting breaking his words into breathless pleas. “I’m still so horny.”

The image of him jerking off was just too hot to handle, and certainly not something you had been psychologically ready to endure. Taehyung moaned, his own eyes falling to the rapid movements of his fingers against his pulsating length; droplets of sweat glistening on his forehead, shining over the roseate hue of his cheeks. From the clenching of his abs and the rise and fall of his hips, you could tell that he was working his way past the painful sensitivity of his last two orgasms. You desperately wanted to watch him cum like that, but you knew that he was just teasing you further.

Which, by the way, really fucking worked.

Taehyung grunted as his hand continued its movements, eyes falling shut as the delightful sensation of his actions started to work its way around his body. “I can’t hold myself back when I’m around you, baby, you make me so hard.” He threw his head back against the soft headboard, his adam’s apple bobbing up and down as he swallowed hard, attempting to hold back a whine. You didn’t even care that you were in a simulation then, you just wanted to have him again. “Will you take me well, babe?”

“So well.” You breathed out, biting your lower lip as his actions increased in speed. Taehyung was starting to lose himself in his own bliss, enchanted by the sinful images you presented him. The view he gifted you — sweaty hair and closed eyes; parted lips coated by your nectar; and constant, needy moans — was driving you insane, eagerness taking over you once again. “Taehyung, please, I need to feel you… I’ll take you well, please…”

“Ah, babe.” Taehyung sighed, opening his eyes just enough so you could notice the way his irises shone in absolute lust — he looked like a piece of inferno wrapped in the ethereality of paradise, from the way his hair was gleaming in droplets sweat to the clenching of his abs. “You’re such a good girl for me, fuck… Get up.”

And that request was all you necessitated. With expeditious movements, you stood up besides the bed and, instantaneously, felt as his cum began to drip in between your legs, running down your thighs. What a fucking mess, you thought. If it hadn't been a simulation, you would have definitely cleaned yourself up before anything else — not that you thought your real body could have endured all of that, plus what was coming, but still.

“Move closer to the window, let me see you.” Taehyung delicately requested, as he leisurely let go of his member and watched it bounce against his abdomen, aching for you. As you did as you were told, you felt the weakness of your legs beneath you, and the unspoken promise that they would give out at any instant.

You didn’t know what it was, but you just loved the way that Taehyung seemed so horny to have you again and again, unable to keep his hands off himself as he watched you — from the movement of your wet thighs to the suave bouncing of your breasts — as you moved towards the kaleidoscopic glass, momentaneously hesitant, waiting for more of his orders.

Soon enough, they came.

Taehyung got up, and ran one hand through his sweaty strands of hair, pushing it back and showing you his furrowed brows. He looked like lucifer then, owner of such enveloping aura that you could lose yourself in the labyrinth of his fathomless gaze. “Love,” he began, “Tell me what you want.”

As he took one step toward you, you took one behind, and your back me the gelid window. Air was trapped within the walls of your throat, both from the contact of the surface and the tension that lingered between the two of you. “I just want to have you,” you spoke out. And that was the pure truth. “I don’t care how.”

He smiled. “Whatever my girl wants, she gets,” Taehyung told you with uncharacteristic kindness, gaze falling to the alluring forms of your body, the vague trembling of your knees. Two of his fingers traced down the path between your breasts, his voice coming out lower as an order came out of his lips. “Turn your back to me.”

Eager, you followed Taehyung’s command immediately. Before you, in his phantasm-like reflection, you saw the way he bit down on his lower lip, groaning as he noticed your growing wetness.

“Ass up for me, love,” Taehyung murmured from behind you, his hoarse timbre sending shivers down your spine. Once again, you did as he said, perking up your hips and finding support with your palms against the window. “That's it, baby.” Lackadaisically, his digits contoured the curvature of your ass, groping at your flesh tightly. He knew about your desire, and took his time to tease you — next time, you would make sure to get the most impatient partner you could find. “Just look at you, all ready for me.”

You whined at the sensation of his big cock bumping against your heat as he stepped even closer, your core clenching around nothing. “Taehyung, please—” Heavy breaths painted pictures of diaphanous clouds against the window, and the polychromatic city lights became foggy underneath it. Outside, you could see the outline of other people passing in front of windows, and something fell at the pit of your stomach — were you on online mode? Were those real people using the system?

Did you even care?

Not really.

Behind you, Taehyung chuckled at your distress, and the sound reverberated through your breastbone. “Look at that,” he provoked. Against your clit, you felt the tip of his cock, and the mere contact made you gasp in anticipation — you felt so empty, you needed him again, just one last time. “All those people are watching you get fucked. Isn’t that lovely?”

Lost amongst your blurred thought, you closed your eyes as you felt the sensation of his member rubbing itself in-between your folds. Taehyung was still vaguely covered by his own pre-cum, and your wetness lubed his way perfectly. If you angled your lower body just enough, you’d be able to feel the slow, dragged-out grinding of his throbbing ache against your entrance and convince yourself, even if for an instant, that his grinding would cease, and he would end your torture by spreading you open.

Nevertheless, that illusion of pleasure was short-lived.

A sharp, burning pain spread across your asscheek as it came in contact with his palm, making you jolt your body forward in a mixture of surprise and delectation. And there it was: spanking. You knew there was something still missing from your checklist of kinks.

“Answer me, love,” Taehyung almost hissed against the skin of your neck. “I asked you a question.”

You took a second to even remember what question he was referring to, and three more to conjure an answer — or something even remotely close to that. “Yes, yes it is,” you said. You had no idea what he wanted you to respond, and the grinding of his cock against your folds didn’t make your mind any less fogged.

Once again, he laughed at your distressed words. This time however, the softness of his deep chuckles was accompanied by the tenderness of his palm against the same area he had hit. “Well.” Taehyung breathed out, pushing your hair away from your neck. He planted a kiss on your skin, and his hands found the curvature of your waist. “We should put on a show, then. Don’t you think so?”

As much as you would adore the idea of him forcing another answer out of you, you pushed your tired vocal chords to formulate the words of your agreement. “I do, yeah.”

He hummed, and took one of his hands to guide himself to your entrance. “Let’s start, then,” Taehyung mumbled. With the heavy breaths that departed from his lips, and the hunger that was reflecting in his eyes, you could tell that he did not want to prolong that instant for longer than necessary.

Taehyung entered you with one long, swift motion, allowing for you to get, once again, used to his size. In the phantasmagorical reflection of the foggy window, you catched glimpses of his own face, contorted by fervorous hunger, as he felt the way you opened himself to him.

You pressed your forehead against the glass as he held tighter to your flesh, gasping at the feeling. This time, he wasn’t really focusing on thrusting inside you, but on pushing and pulling your body against his cock, making you do most of the job. “Taehyung, you’re so big,” you choked out without much thought, back arching as his hips begun to move, sliding in and out of you, then starting to take on a more violent, rapid rhythm. “It feels so good, fuck.”

Mindlessly, your hips perked up, seeking for a new angle. It was probably the amount of times you had come already — two? three? You couldn’t even remember — but you could tell that your body was not going to be able to endure that sensation for much longer. That certainty, however, presented itself once Taehyung moved to pull your ass up, while fucking you deeper, and happened to hit your sweet spot.

“Oh my god, Taehyung, right there. Don’t stop,” you begged. Against the glass, your fingers slid down, leaving behind the marks of your hand. The world outside was nothing but a blur, and you did not care for anyone else that could catch a glimpse of your decay into perdition. “I’m so close already.”

“Me too,” Taehyung responded in a whisper. Inside you, his member throbbed and twisted in need, signaling that the man wouldn’t be able to take it for much longer either. “Fuck, baby, just take me, I know you can do it.”

The tingling in your lower belly was spreading throughout your hips and stomach, traveling to infest your entire body. It felt dangerously good, and you were sure you were about to reach your breaking point — a part of you wished for him to go slower just so you could prolong that sensation, but that was just too much for you to ask. You loved the way he filled you up, his thick cock twitching inside you as he fucked you into oblivion, too harsh, too rough for you to follow.

So, you found your relief for the final time that night, crying out his name as he continued to drill into you, pushing your breasts against the glass, holding to your hips with the same force he has smacked you aforetime. In a way, you didn’t expect to end it any other way. It was almost poetic, if you thought about it.

“That’s right, love,” Taehyung murmured against the skin of your back, closing his eyes. You could tell he was close too, for the his abdomen had started clenching. He was a greek god then, making you his in every right way, his muscles outlined by the neon illumination that came from outside. “You’re such a good girl, aren't you? You just love it when I have you like this, you take my cock so well.”

You felt as if you were about to explode, pleasure overtaking every cell of your body. Trembling, your knees fought to keep you steady as Taehyung used your body to get himself off.

His teeth found the skin of your neck, biting down lightly. Taehyung seemed as if he wanted to claw his way into your body, for even his thrusts got impossibly harder, raising your hips with the impact. “You’re so tight, love, so fucking perfect,” he spoke against your skin, one of his arms wrapping around your waist, and the other seeking support on the window. “I’m… I’m going to cum, baby.”

And, of course, he was a man of his word. Taehyung came inside you with a profound groan against your wet skin, and you could feel as he filled you up with his cum; still thrusting in and out of you as it began to drip in between your legs. You whimpered at the sensitivity, and your legs almost gave out beneath you as he continued to fuck himself through his relief.

Alright, truth be told. You may have exaggerated a bit, but, god, it was worth every second.

He ceased his movements and, for an instant, there was only serenity. Then, for the final time that night, the same question resounded throughout the consolidated room. “Do you want to continue?” Taehyung inquired, his lips mere centimeters away from your ear, and his cock still buried deep inside you.

You sighed at the contact of his warm breath, attempting to organize your ponderations. “No, not anymore,” you answered, a bit sad. “I should go now.”

Frankly, you didn’t want to leave: the sex was too good and, from your glimpse at the clock at the wall, you could tell that you still had two hours before the constant virtual immersion reached the margins of dangerousness. Still, you were fucking exhausted. There was no way that you could endure another round, even if your simulated self already had much more stamina then you would ever achieve in real life. Paradise 17 was, after all, also reaching for the realistic side, and the tragic truth was that you were never the most athletic person around.

On the reflection, you saw that Taehyung pouted at your answer. “I will miss you, love,” he whispered against your neck, his fingertips caressing the curvature of your waist. Oh, you would really fucking miss him, and would make sure to come back as soon as you had your energy back on track. “I’ll be here for you, alright?”

That was a low hit, you thought, but you forced yourself to maintain your call. “Alright,” you mumbled back, closing your eyes in a moment of concentration. That was going to hurt — spiritually, psychologically, perhaps even physically, but it had to be done. “Cinnamon.”

Upon the soft-spoken verbalization of your safe word, the universe came to a sudden halt, and the simulation was paused. On the window before you, a diminutive, square-shaped screen appeared, shining in bright niveous colors. Do you wish to cease the simulation? It inquired.

“Yes.” You breathed out. The most difficult of decisions require the hardest of wills, after all — or at least that was how you thought the saying went.

Before you, the screen flickered into a brand new message. Please hold. You will be unplugged from the online interface, and your progress will be saved.

Increasingly, the hotel morphed into a darker shade of itself, like the flower that withered at the corner of your bedroom. The lights were turned off, and the world succumbed into penumbra. The fabric of the artificial reality shivered then, similar to how a small rock induces waves in a puddle, preparing itself to send you back to the world of the living — away from Paradise 17, and from the hellish magnificence that was Taehyung.

The steps were the same as when you entered the simulation: all physical sensation ceased for a prolonged instant, only to come crashing back as you were transported to a completely different position. Abruptly, you could feel the weight of your IMVIT helmet all around you, and the softness of your mattress was, once again, beneath your thighs — the touch so paradisiacal when compared to the roughness you had just endured.

You blinked a few times, trying to grow used to your body, and the tenebrosity that expanded all around you; your features barely illuminated by the small visor inside the object. On the screen before you, blue, pixelated letters read: Thank you for using Paradise 17. We hope you had a pleasurable experience. Come back soon.

And oh, damn right you would.

You can now remove your IMVIT helmet. Idol thanks you for your preference.

Supiring, you did as it requested.

The muffled atmosphere of your room hit you all at once, in clear dissonance with the sweet, cool air of Paradise 17. You waited a few seconds before your eyesight had adapted to the dim illumination and, with a heavy heart, you placed your helmet by your side, and threw your legs over the bed’s edge. Between your thighs, you could feel the effect of the simulation, for you had completely soaked your underwear.

Within a minute, you had already sat down in front of your computer and closed all open programs, feeling the ponderousness of sleep hanging over your shoulders. Still, there was something you needed to check before you allowed for your slumber to overtake you. For science, of course, just a bit of research.

Without much thought, you opened one of your go-to forums, and typed “Paradise 17” on the search bar. After a few seconds of scrolling through high star reviews and awfully personal descriptions of the user’s experiences, you found the piece of information you were searching for.

“The developers of the infamously popular simulation, Paradise 17, came out this last Sunday with great news for its devoted users. Its newest version, which is expected to hit the markets next month, will have, amongst other updates, the possibility of multiple partners. Oh Sehun, the spokesperson for Idol, told us in an exclusive interview that, so far, the number of participants is limited, ranging from the usual two, all the way up to five. Other than that, Idol promised to add new scenarios to the simulation, while still following the hotel theme — such as a hot tub and a public pool, for the ones who enjoy the thrill of being seen in public (...)”

You elevated one of your eyebrows in clear interest — a threesome? Now, that was something you could look forward to. The new update couldn’t come soon enough.

3K notes · View notes

dominicesquire · 4 years

Text

TRASH PLANET UPDATE: End Game Time

What’s up loyal Trash Fans. It’s ya boy Adrian here, bringing you a new update. This time, I come with great news: I have reached the end game!

Using the power of working to prevent myself from going insane quarantine life, I have powered through several big missions in the game and have reached the very last stretch. All that’s left to do is the final (and biggest) passage of time sequence, and then the final dungeon and the last 2 boss fights. After that, cleaning and post-game work! Then, Trash Planet will be delivered hot and ready to your computer.

Here’s a short list of everything that I’ve got done recently, thanks to not being able to leave my house without threat of catching a deadly virus:

The entire Mall of America dungeon and the accompanying boss fight

The entire Mega-Prison dungeon and the accompanying boss fight.

The fourth (of five) Passage of Time sequence

Designing and programming Sunshine City

The entire Carnival dungeon and the accompanying boss fight

The big ass cutscene that goes along with #5 and after it.

Wow! That’s a lot of stuff! I’m so happy that I’ve been in lockdown for over two months! It’s great! I’m having a great time! please help me

As for the context for all that, you’ll have to wait for the game to be done. I’ll be doing a big big replay of the game (along with my testers) once the game is initially finished. Expect a lot more screen shots when this happens! I don’t really wanna go through the game right now, since I’m so close to finishing it.

Anyway, thanks for checking in on Trash Planet. Stay safe out there, Trash Fans.

#Trash planet #game development #rpg maker

7 notes · View notes

centrifuge-politics · 5 years

Text

Brick Club 5.4.1

Late late late! I would say something about this compelling illustration but it feels in bad taste. This maybe goes without saying, but TW for suicide and suicidal thoughts. I don’t talk in detail about that aspect, but it very much is the lens this chapter is presented through.

To start off with a mild observation, I don’t particularly picture the Seine as a rapidly flowing river, so I’m wondering what the geography of this area must have been like to create deadly rapids in the Seine.

“There had been a new thing, a revolution, a catastrophe in the depths of his being.” I just watched Hello Future Me’s very good video on redemption arcs and Javert is absolutely primed for the start of a redemption arc that we are tragically deprived of. (The video also just provides really good frameworks for thinking about contextual character growth from any starting point). In the video, Future Me identifies three interconnected aspects of a character’s being that, when altered, create the tension that drives a character to change. These are stakes, views of self, and views of the world. For Javert, these have been in harmony thus far; he must maintain order, he is irreproachable in his duty, and people will always act according to their roles, respectively. But one of these points changes when Valjean spares him; his view of the world is challenged. As a result, his view of himself is no longer compatible with how he sees the world. If this had happened halfway through the book we would possibly see all of these aspects change one after the other as Javert struggled with the new tension between these factors and subsequently changed as a character. But, alas.

Javert has blown past rigid morals and entered into complete prescriptive essentialism. “One thing had astonished him, that Jean Valjean had spared him,” not even because Valjean is ‘bad’ and therefore does ‘bad’ actions, but that taking revenge against Javert would have been justified and even right in Javert’s eyes. It’s a startling view into Javert’s thought process, that every person is so inherently defined by their social positions that they their actions should be 100% predictable at all times, like rational choice theory on steroids.

However, there’s also a really interesting individual element that complicates things. Javert has a personal sense of honor that he has seemingly developed entirely based on his assumptions about society which dictates his response to this situation. It’s like he’s a computer program that hasn’t coded for any exceptions and assumes that every other person is the very same. It has such a twisted Hegelian flair, “the rational alone is real.”

“One of his causes of anxiety was, that he was compelled to think.” Honestly, it’s likely Javert would have never been able to comprehend that he even had an individual sense of honor had it not, at this moment, diverged from the one straight line he’s been following his whole life. There’s suddenly a divide between societal regulations and individual morals that he didn’t even know existed. Of course, the purely rational course of action is to turn Valjean in; a good act doesn’t absolve you of past crimes (legally speaking, because only state sanctioned penalty can exonerate a violation against state law). But Javert has made the mistake of making this personal, he’s no longer objective! Or he never was and is only just now realizing it. Instead, he’s suddenly developing subject/object awareness. Mmm, yes, Hegel. “He had, he, Javert, thought good to decide, against all the regulations of the police, against the whole social and judicial organisation, against the entire code, in favour of a release; that had pleased him; he had substituted his own affairs for the public affairs; could this be characterised?” Yes, sometimes we aren’t mindless cogs in the machine. Imagine if the world were actually imperfect and imprecise. “Terrible situation! to be moved…to be obliged to acknowledge this: infallibility is not infallible.”

The most surprising thing about this crisis is that it took this long for Javert to have it. I would have thought his continual dealings with corrupt individuals with the police would have triggered this crossroads ages ago. In the musical, this maybe works better because Valjean is Javert’s personal obsession. In the book, he’s really just a particular felon that Javert happens to run into every decade or so. He’s not hunting Valjean, he’s not even overly fixated on him until the moment when Valjean does him, personally, an unexpected good turn by not killing Javert as expected. Ignoring the fact that, by everything Javert knows, Valjean has never ever been a violent criminal and his worst crime is breaking parole, this is merely the ‘good’ reversal of the corrupt cop.

Below the cut, more discussion about Javert and rationality.

It’s also notable that this is not a moral awakening, it’s entirely a dilemma of moral logic. “Javert’s ideal was not to be humane, not to be great, not to be sublime; it was to be irreproachable.” And also, something not identical but similar to this has happened to him before! “But how manage to send in his resignation to God?” What a fascinating way of thinking about this. Javert’s mindset truly exemplifies the concept of anomic suicide—which I’ve often linked Marius to as well—which, to review, is characterized by an intense disillusionment and disappointment due to an abrupt shift in circumstances. In Javert’s case, the norms and values he has predicated his entire life on have been violently contested. He no longer feels able to fit into the societal niche he filled, he can’t be a police officer, he can’t be an agent of order, he can’t be a just man. Unlike Marius, Javert’s dilemma has very little to do with emotion and interpersonal conflict and everything to do with established rules and logic.

Javert is an interesting study of how macro structures perpetuate in micro cases, because it’s clear that he’s internalized the strictures of society into a personal ethic, but without any of the context that those strictures were created within. Society says ‘justice’ but what they actually mean is ‘rule of law.’ If Javert simply followed the letter of the law, he could turn Valjean in without reservation, but Javert genuinely believes in the spirit of the law and, well, the two are simply inherently incompatible in a corrupt system. Not to say Javert is a secret advocate of social justice, he definitely still has some screwed up ideas about the worth of poor people and oppressed ethnic groups and, I’m sure, women that definitely influence his idea of what is punishable. But his priorities show in what is functionally his last will and testament. He doesn’t show anything that could be called compassion or empathy for the prisoners he mentions—remember, he isn’t humane—but many of his observations would be a benefit to the prison population and restrictive for the guards. He’s a creature motivated by impartial reason and just exchange built on a questionable moral foundation.

So much of the imagery on the last page is adapted really beautifully in ‘Javert’s Suicide’ and this scene recalls Valjean’s initial epiphany years ago in Digne just as Javert’s melody is reprised from ‘Valjean’s Soliloquy,’ “Immensity seemed open there. What was beneath was not water, it was chasm. The wall of the quai, abrupt, confused, mingled with vapour, suddenly lost to sight, seemed like an escarpment of the infinite…the swollen river guessed at rather than perceived, the tragical whispering of the flood, the dismal vastness of the arches of the bridge, the imaginable fall into that gloomy void, all that shadow full of horror.” Javert, in the end, chose the unknown of death over the unknown of life which, in my opinion, if the core tragedy of his character.

#brickclub #les mis #les miserables #5.4.1 #i cannot get into hegel bc itll become obvious how little i understand hegel #we (subjects) live in a society (object)#i just want to tell javert...one thing is not like every other thing #long post

17 notes · View notes

bluewatsons · 4 years

Conversation

Ivan Illich with Jerry Brown, We the People, KPFA (March 22, 1996)

Brown: This hour we have a very special privilege and opportunity. We have here in the studio in Los Angeles Ivan Illich and Carl Mitchum, two friends of mine who I hope you'll enjoy our conversation. Listen in. You'll find it instructive. Ivan Illich is the author of a book, very famous in the 1970s, called Deschooling Society, another book called Medical Nemesis. He's also the author of Celebration of Awareness, Tools for Conviviality, Gender, and now his most recent book called In the Vineyard of the Text, a commentary on a 12th century scholar and saint, Hugh of St. Victor. Along with us here in the studio is Carl Mitchum, a professor of humanities, presently Visiting Scholar at the Colorado School of Mines and on a more permanent basis a professor at Penn State where Ivan Illich and his friends and fellow scholars meet every year for a few months to study these ideas that over the next hour we're going to do our best to elucidate and share. Ivan, why don't we just start with the book that I first encountered when I became aware of you, and that is the book Deschooling. Can you reflect on what you were thinking about when you wrote it and how you might see that reality today because we're still struggling with schools in this society. There's still a dependency on professionals that seems to have control of how we learn or don't learn and I just have to wonder have we made any progress in creating the context where people get the sense that they are in charge of their own learning?

Illich: During the later 60s I had a chance in a year and a half to give a dozen different addresses to people who were concerned with education and schooling at which I had looked as a historian. I asked myself, since when are people born needy? In need for instance of education. Since when do we have to learn the language we speak by being taught by somebody. I stood in front of a group and asked, who of you remembers from whom your child has learned walking? Among a hundred people certainly thirty would raise their hands and I would say, I guarantee you are all graduates of education schools. I wanted to find out where the idea came from that all over the world people have to be assembled in specific groups of not less than fifteen, otherwise it's not a class, not more than forty, otherwise they are underprivileged, for yearly, not less than 800 hours, otherwise they don't get enough, not more than a 1,100 hours, otherwise it's considered a prison, for four year periods by somebody else who has undergone this for a longer time. How did it come about that such a crazy process like schooling would become necessary? Then I realized that it was something like engineering people, that our society doesn't only produce artifact things but artifact people. And that it doesn't do that by the content of the curriculum, by what we are taught, but by getting them through this ritual which makes them believe that learning happens as a result of being taught. That learning can be divided into separate tasks. That learning can be measured and pieces can be added one to the other. That learning provides value for the objects which then sell in the market. And it's true. The more expensive the schooling of a person the more money he will make in the course of his life. This in spite of the certainty from a social science point of view that there's absolutely no relationship between the curriculum content and what people actually do satisfactory for themselves or society in life. That we know since that beautiful book by Ivar Birg [?], The Great Training Robbery. In the meantime there are least thirty or forty other studies, all of which show the same thing. The curricular content has absolutely no effect on how people perform. The latent functions of schooling, that is the hidden curriculum, which forms individuals into needy people who know that they have now satisfied a little bit of their needs for education is much more important. So that was the reason why I went into it.

Brown: So Deschooling was based on the insight that the school industry teaches people, not teaches them but manipulates them, into thinking that they have certain needs that the school itself alone can satisfy?

Illich: That they have needs. Not all people whom I knew as a young man had needs. We were hungry but we couldn't translate the hunger into a need for food stuff. They were hungry for a tortilla, for comida, not calories. The idea that people are born with needs, that needs can be translated into rights, that these rights can be translated into entitlements, is a development of the modern world and it's reasonable, it's acceptable, it's obvious only for people who have had some of their educational needs awakened or created, then satisfied and then learned that we have less than others. Schooling, which we engage in and supposedly creates equal opportunities, has become the unique, never before attempted way of dividing the whole society into classes. Everybody knows in which level of his twelve or sixteen years of schooling he has dropped out, and in addition knows what price tag is attached to the higher schooling he has gotten.

Brown: So you get a precise definition of where you are in the social hierarchy by how much schooling your had or how much schooling you don't have, so you didn't know you needed fourteen years and a postgraduate degree or to get out of high school depending upon where you lived.

Illich: It's a history of degrading the majority of people.

Brown: So you take somebody who's poor and you modernize the poverty by not only having a person that doesn't have a lot of material goods but now lacks the mental self-confidence that his father or grandfather had before that.

Illich: And I can create a world for him in which he needs constantly something which--at that time I searched for a word I didn't findd, context sensitive help. You know, when you are in front of a computer and when you are in that program and put in Word Perfect it tells you what help you need at that point at which you are. This is instructions for use. This is incorporation of teaching into the object with which you encounter at its high point. We have created a world in which people constantly are grateful if they are taken by the hand to know how to use a knife or to use the coffee maker or how to go on from here in text composing.

Brown: So basically what you have is we're getting a world that more and more makes people dependent and the dependency isn't on nature or on their friends but on those who run the institution, whether it's a school or a ...

Illich: I don't want to go that far in my paranoia. To say the ones who run the institution, that is exactly what Mitchum there intensely explored over the years. It is that increasingly people live in an artifact and become artifacts themselves, feel satisfied, feel fit for that artifact insofar as they themselves have been manipulated. That is the reason why the two of us in several dozen of our closer flings [?], our invisible table--I don't like college--concern themselves with the things in the world as it is today as determinants of the possibility of friendship, of being really face to face to each other. Usually the people who do the philosophy of things, of artifacts, of technology, are concerned about what technology does to society for instance. Inevitably modern technology has polarized society. It has polluted the environment. It has disabled very simple native abilities and made them dependent on objects.

Brown: Like an automobile.

Illich: An automobile which cuts out the use value from your feet. Like an automobile which makes the world inaccessible when actually that means in Latin using your feet to get somewhere. The automobile makes it unthinkable. I recently had the question, "You're a liar!" when I said to somebody I walked down the spine of the Andes. Every Spaniard in the 16th, 17th century did that. The idea that somebody could just walk! He can jog perhaps in the morning but he can't walk anywhere! The world has become inaccessible because we drive there.

Brown: So the objects, like a car or even like a school, change who we are.

Illich: Who you are and even more deeply they change the way your senses work. Traditionally the gaze was conceived as a way of fingering, of touching. The old Greeks spoke about looking as a way of sending out my psychopodia [?], my soul's limbs, to touch your face and establish a relationship between the two of us which is this relationship, and this relationship was called vision. Then, after Galileo at the time of Kepler, the idea developed that the eyes are receptors into which light brings something from the outside, keeping you separate from me even when I look at you. Even if I gaze at you. Even if I enjoy your face. People began to conceive of their eyes as some kind of camera obscura. In our age people conceive of their eyes and actually use them as if they were part of a machinery. They speak about interface. Anybody who says to me, I want to have an interface with you, I say please go somewhere else, to a toilet or wherever you want, to a mirror. Anybody who says, I want to communicate with you, I say can't you talk? Can't you speak? Can't you recognize that there's a deep otherness between me and you, so deep that it would be offensive for me to be programmed in the same way you are.

Brown: Carl, were you going to jump in here?

Mitchum: I think that when Ivan talks about the importance of artifacts, or objects, and how they influence the way we experience ourselves and relate to others that's the thing in Ivan's work that has been continually most challenging to me because as I've tried to reflect and think about the world in which I live, a world in which a hundred years ago, even fifty years ago, when I was growing up there was a predominance of natural objects around. Rocks, trees, animals, chickens. Even in the city there was a predominance of natural vegetation and that's all changed. We live in a world in which the artifice of our environment overwhelms the natural foundation or context of the past. As Ivan has pointed out, that artifice is undergoing a fundamental transformation in what he referred to as context sensitive help screens. We spend more time now in front of a screen of one kind or another than we used to spend face to face with other humans beings--either the screen of the television set, the screen of the computer, the screen of my little digital clock right here in front of me.

Brown: And then even the city that we see is some kind of a screen with the billboards, the buildings. It's a mirror of the technological change and manipulation of nature. We're seeing this--what is this thing that we're seeing?

Mitchum: And we begin to experience the world, like when we're driving in a car the windshield becomes a kind of screen. The world becomes flattened to that screen. What was the term that Barbara used, Ivan?

Illich: The windshield gaze, but I found at the Penn State Library a report on the Texas meeting of windshield technicians. Last year we had three volumes with some 870 contributions about how to engineer the windshield view which always makes you be where you're not yet.

Brown: So you're looking ahead.

Illich: You're looking at what lies ahead, where we are not yet, which of course makes us with terrible feeling like when you are with somebody and he always wants to know where we will be next week, where we will be the next hour, instead of being right here. It makes facing each other increasingly more difficult because people can't detach themselves anymore from the idea that what we look at has been manipulated and programmed by somebody.

Brown: But people have always been subject to domination in one form or another in society. Now this is a different form of this kind of control.

Mitchum: It's not domination. It's transformation.

Illich: Let's stop for a moment and take that seriously because you give me some idea of who's listening to us. Definitely what I ought to do was until quite recently in all cultures which we know of determined by the idea of hierarchy being natural, being a given. The human condition, which can be that of the tropics or that of cold climate, which can be that of a very highly sophisticated Greek politea [?], with slavery or God know what horrors, or which can be that of a monastery in the 12th century. Being something given in which I live, which I have to learn to suffer. People didn't speak of a culture. The word didn't exist. But they spoke about the style of the art of suffering which we have here and not somewhere else. Somewhere else knows how to suffer his human condition. All this has been blown away, but what was common to all these forms of suffering the human condition was some kind of hierarchy which led them to the idea. The two of us, we haven't seen each other for a year now, and when we saw each other we bowed in front of each other and I had this clear feeling just as I was deeply impressed by some of the things which recently I have read of you. You also had a similar bow. This very idea of bowing. Don't bow in front of a screen. It's made impossible for people, or very difficult, who constantly see non-persons on the screen. I remember the day when that kid told me, "Yes, but I did see this evening Kennedy and then President Bush and then also E.T." For goodness sake, I am not something like them. I am somebody who wants to respect you, who wants to look up to you. This has been deeply undermined. That's the reason why I am saying that thing with the domination is important. Abuse of this leads to domination.

Mitchum: The abuse of the screen leads to domination?

Illich: Domination ought to be distinguished.

Brown: That was really hierarchy. I was speaking of more hierarchy. You think of the medieval period, the kings and the clerics and the peasants, and then we have this world of democracy where supposedly we're all equal and yet it turns out quite different from that.

Illich: But domination, let's say superiority, manipulation. With equality, dealing with the other, from above becomes manipulation.

Brown: So you're saying in a context of equality if you bow to someone that's already wrong.

Illich: It is already wrong and probably he will manipulate you. He will use devices and tools. He will manage you. There's a tremendous difference between managing somebody under the assumptions of equality and being able to exploit, to command, to deny another persons under conditions of hierarchy. The very idea of power is something literate, like money or watts [?] which can be loaded anywhere, is a very modern idea. It makes you believe that women and men can fight for power. In traditional society where human was Adam and Eve, where their relationship was a proportion like in music. A quint [?]. You hear a quint. You don't hear two sounds which combine to a quint.

Brown: What's a quint? A note?

Illich: A note, yes.

Mitchum: Two notes that harmonize.

Brown: A chord.

Illich: If you take a chord, divide it two to three and then listen to it you get that which people all through history have enjoyed as beauty, as music. Until Bach. That's the only thing which we can enjoy is music. And then from 1730 to 1890 modern music reflects a completely new view which you can make something they called music out of tempet [?] tones, that is tones which are artificially, using logarithms, defined in such a way that they are all slightly off proportion but provide the possibility of symphonic arrangements of international usage. I'm really addicted to precisely this horrible, impure noise which is modern music but I know that it is nothing to do with traditional Gregorian, with traditional Greek, with any kind of past music where people didn't hear individual tones which together give a proper arrangement. But they only could hear the relationship between the two sides of a chord. The loss of the sense of proportionality, the loss of the sense that our friendship is not Jerry plus Ivan and some interaction between them as if they were two screens, two programs, two machines, but an irreality [?] which is beautiful in itself. That sense seems to me that which I would like to save. I can't do that in politics. I can't do that in public life. I can do that only cultivating, we get together around spaghetti and a glass of wine.

Brown: So now in your earlier period you were more engaged in thinking about and writing about things like medicine or the medical world or the schools or tools or energy or transportation and now what you're just saying that you really have to focus on friendship, on people, around a table. Is there something that changed in you or something that changed in the world that brought you to that perspective?

Illich: I guess both. I am surrounded for the first time in my life with people above 25 who were born in the year, or shortly after the year, during which I had one experience of what they call medically in America depression of two weeks. I called it melancholia. I called it acedia.

Brown: Acedia being one of the seven deadly sins.

Illich: Which is the inactivity which results from a man seeing how enormously difficult it is for a man to do the right thing.

Brown: Also called sloth in some translations.

Illich: In good English. Sloth. I had a period of very black sloth and didn't want to continue writing on that book Tools for Conviviality. I said to myself, you don't have kids yourself. If you had kids now probably you wouldn't do it because you couldn't imagine your own kids. But you'll go on and finish this. I understood what ashes [?] were, what it meant to have to move into a world of the technological shell of which we spoke before. And now these people are born in that age. I can speak differently to these people than I could speak to people of the sixties. In '68 when I made people aware of the horrors implicitly inevitably affected by sickening medicine because it creates more sick people than it can help, stupefying education of which we just spoke, time-consuming acceleration of traffic so that the majority of people have to spend many more hours in traffic jams in order to make a few people like you and me and perhaps even Mitchum omnipresent, that was our main concern. Today my main concern is in which way, and these people understand it, technology has devastated the road from one to the other, to friendship, and yet therefore it is not our task to run out into the world to help others who are less privileged than we are. Some people must do this and I must collaborate with it. The real task is to remove from my own mind that screen. You and Mitchum spoke just a few minutes ago which makes your face inaccessible to me, which removes the thou which you are and from whose gaze, whose pupilla in the eye, I receive myself inaccessible to me.

...

Brown: Ivan just mentioned you had a focus on these larger societal issues and now you're coming to focus in recent years on the more immediate friendship. I'm very struck by the fact that you've always when I've used the word communication and then you say computers communicate but people talk, people have a conversation. I think the same thing is also true of the word relationship. You can have a relationship among instruments or between instruments, but you can only have a friendship between two people or among human beings. I guess one of the obvious points about the modern sophisticated world would be the technological terms that invade our own understanding of ourselves and our immediate life. In this book that Ivan has written called In the Vineyard of the Text he called my attention to footnote 53 which is from the Latin. Who is the author?

Illich: This is Hugh of St. Victor who writes to a friend of his.

Brown: OK, this is Hugh of St. Victor, a man who lived in the 12th century, and here is what he says. He says, "Charity." Now when he says charity does he mean love?

Illich: Yes.

Brown: OK, so I'm going to use that. When he says love never ends. "To my dear brother Ronolfe from Hugh, a sinner. Love never ends. When I first heard this I knew it was true. But now, dearest brother, I have the personal experience of fully knowing that love never ends. For I was a foreigner. I met you in a strange land. But that land was not really strange for I found friends there." And it goes on. You want me to go on some more?

Illich: It's so beautiful.

Brown: "But the land was not really strange for I found friends there. I don't know whether I first made friends or was made one, but I found love there and I loved it and I could not tire of it for it was sweet to me and I filled my heart with it and was sad that my heart could hold so little. I could not take in all that there was but I took in as much as I could. I filled up all the space I had but I could not fit in all I found so I accepted what I could and weighed down with this precious gift I didn't feel any burden because my full heart sustained me. And now having made a long journey I find my heart still warmed and none of the gift has been lost for love never ends."

Illich: Isn't that a marvelous little letter?

Brown: It's wonderful.

Illich: Today we would immediately say if a man writes to a man like that he must be a gay. Why not? But anyway if he writes to a woman they would say what a marvelous sexual relationship. But do I need these alienating concepts? I want to just go back to a great rabbinical and also as you see, monastic, Christian development beyond what the Greeks like Plato or Cicero already knew about friendship. That it is from your eye that I find myself. There's a little thing there. They called it pupilla, puppet, which I can see in your eye. The black thing in your eye.

Brown: That's the pupil.

Illich: Pupil, puppet, person, eye. It is not my mirror. Libby [?] spoke that way about it. It is you making me the gift of that which Ivan is for you. That's the one who says "I" here. I'm purposely not saying, this is my person, this is my individuality, this is my ego. No. I'm saying this is the one who answers you here, whom you have given to him. This is how Hugh explains it here. This is how the rabbinical traditional explains it. That I cannot come to be fully human unless I have received myself as a gift and accepted myself as a gift of somebody who has, well today we say distorted me the way you distorted me by loving me. Now, friendship in the Greek tradition, in the Roman tradition, in the old tradition, was always viewed as the highest point which virtue can reach. Virtue meaning here the habitual facility of doing the good thing which is fostered by what the Greeks called politaea, political life, community life. I know it was a political life in which I wouldn't have liked to participate, with the slaves around and with the women excluded, but I still have to go to Plato or to Cicero. They conceived of friendship as a flowering, a supreme flowering of the interaction which happens in a good political society. This is what makes long experience so painful with you that every time we are together you make me feel most uncomfortable about my not being like you. I know it's not my vocation. It's your vocation. Structuring community and society in a political way. But I do not believe that friendship today can flower out, can come out, of political life. I do believe that if there is something like a political life to be, to remain for us, in this world of technology, then it begins with friendship. Therefore my task is to cultivate disciplined, self-denying, careful, tasteful friendships. Mutual friendships always. I and you and I hope a third one, out of which perhaps community can grow. Because perhaps here we can find what the good is. To make it short, while once friendship in our western tradition was the supreme flower of politics I do think that if community life if it exists at all today it is in some way the consequence of friendship cultivated by each one who initiates it. This is of course a challenge to the idea of democracy which goes beyond anything which people usually talk about, saying each one of you is responsible for the friendships he can develop because society will be as good as the political result of these friendships will be.

Brown: So we start with a world where the good society creates the virtue and the virtue is the basis of friendship. Now it's reversed. Now it seems we have to create the friendship and in the context of the friendship virtue is practiced and that might lead to a community which might lead to a society which might be a whole other kind of politics.

Illich: Yes.

Mitchum: Let me venture a commentary on that because it seems to me...

Brown: Would you say we understood each other?

Illich: We understood each other.

Mitchum: In some sense that's what you're trying to do, Jerry, with We the People. As I visited your place in Oakland you've created a context in which what comes first is your friendship with other people and the friendship, the relations, between the people at that community. And out of that may grow some politics but what I experienced when I visited We the People in Oakland is primarily your hospitality and the hospitality of others there with you.

Illich: Here is the right word. Hospitality was a condition consequent on a good society in politics, politaea, and by now might be the starting point of politaea, of politics. But this is difficult because hospitality requires a threshold over which I can lead you and TV, internet, newspaper, the idea of communication, abolished the walls and therefore also the friendship, the possibility of leading somebody over the door. Hospitality requires a table around which you can sit and if people get tired they can sleep. You have to belong to a subculture to say, we have a few mattresses here. It's still considered highly improper to conceive of this as the ideal moments in a day or a year. Hospitality is deeply threatened by the idea of personality, of scholastic status. I do think that if I had to choose one word to which hope can be tied it is hospitality. A practice of hospitality recovering threshold, table, patience, listening, and from there generating seedbeds for virtue and friendship on the one hand. On the other hand radiating out for possible community, for rebirth of community.

...

Brown: Let me ask you about the institutionalization of hospitality. I remember a phrase once, "hospitalization has replaced hospitality" and this business of institutionalizing values. I know you've written about the story of the Good Samaritan who is my neighbor and now we come up to this world of the needs, the rights, and the institution to take care of all that. Based on what we were just saying can you say a little bit about what institutionalization does, and in my mind I identify this with the image of progress, and then this reality that we're discussing of friendship, of love, of basing anything we might want to call community on that very immediate unconstrained, uninstitutionalized way of being together.

Illich: All right. I'll come to progress before I come to the last point at which we are now where progress is smiled about a little bit.

...

Illich: Let me being somewhere else. Hospitality, that is the readiness to accept somebody who is not from our hut, this side our threshold, this bed in here, seems to be among the characteristics which anthropologists can identify, one of the most universal if the not the most universal. But hospitality, I'm going again to the Greeks I know, Xenia [?], Xenos, is the word for hospitality also.

Brown: Xenos, the word for stranger, hospitality.

Illich: Xenos was Zeus insofar as he is the god of hospitality.

Brown: And also the same root of xenophobia, fear of the stranger. So you can have love of the stranger or fear of the stranger.

Illich: Yes. Xenophobia means hospitality. But hospitality wherever it appeared distinguishes between those who are not necessarily yonons [?], or pamphilions [?], Greek areas, but Hellenes and those who are blabberous [?], barbarians. Hospitality primarily refers to Hellenes. It's a behavior which knows there is an outside and an inside. It is not for humans in general. Then comes that most upsetting guy, Jesus of Nazareth, and by speaking about something extraordinarily great and showing it in example destroys something basic. When they ask him, who is my neighbor? He tells about a Jew beaten up in a holdup and a Palestinian being called a Samaritan, it came from Samaria [?], it's a Palestinian. First two Jews walk by and don't notice him. Then the Palestinian walks by, sees that Jew, takes him into his own arms, does therefore what hospitality does not obligate to, and treats him as a brother. This breaking of the limitation of hospitality to the ingroup, to the broadest possible ingroup, and saying, you determine who your guest is, might be taken as the key message of Christianity. Then, in 300 and something, finally the Church got recognition. The bishops were made into something like magistrates. The first things those guys do, these new bishops, is creating houses of hospitality, institutionalizing what can be only what was given to us as a vocation by Jesus, as a personal vocation, institutionalizing it, creating xenodocaea [?], roofs, refuges, for foreigners. Immediately, very interesting, quite a few of the great Christian thinkers of that time, the year 300, 1600 years ago, John Krezostamos [?] is one, shout, if you do that, if you institutionalize charity, if you make charity or hospitality into an act of a non person, a community, Christians will cease to remain famous for what we are now famous for, for having always an extra mattress, a crust of old bread and a candle, for him who might knock at their door. But, for political reasons, the Church became, from the year 400, 500 on, the main device for a thousand years roughly of proving that the State can be Christian by paying the Church to take care institutionally of small fractions of those who had needs, relieving the ordinary Christian household of the most uncomfortable duty of having a door, having a threshold, but being open for him who might knock and whom I might choose. This is what I speak about as institutionalization of charity. Historical root of the idea of services, of the service economy. Now, I cannot imagine such a system being reformable even though it might be your task and the task of courageous people whom I greatly admire for the impossible task they take on to work at its reform, at making the evils the service system carries with it as small as possible. What I would have chosen and as Mitchum and other friends have chosen together as our task is to awaken in us the sense of what this Palestinian, I say always instead of saying Samaritan, example meant. I can choose. I have to choose. I have to make my mind up whom I will take into my arms, to whom I will lose myself, whom I will treat as that vis-a-vis that face into which I look which I lovingly touch with my fingering gaze, from whom I accept being who I am as a gift.

Brown: It's very hard to add to that. Let me just step back a bit and just put this question back. This whole world of services, the schools, the hospitals, the welfare, the servicing of needs. And service is not just that. There's entertainment. There's all sorts of things that define the modern economy and that's what you're saying is smothering the individual and only alive possibility of being a human being in response, in the I-thou, in the I am here now, loving, being with. That reality is destroyed by what proports to be the good of serving people through the institutions of modern society.

Illich: But there is this, for me, most uncomfortable, painful--at moments I feel this hateful obligation to be also in the midst of schools, hospitals, the transportation systems, radio!

Brown: This isn't exactly a service.

Illich: I leave it up to you. I am not for one moment suggesting, none of us is suggesting, that you can... We formerly spoke about Manichaeans in a Puritan way, withdrawing to the comfort of friendship. But it is only there that you can become in the I-thou relationship, which has mutual respect and bowing, that person who knows, who has a sense for the good. Not for values. Values are totally different. For the good, what is proportionate. And therefore know where you stand when you move into criticism of service systems, of economy, of economic relations of class structure.

Brown: So friendship is the soil out of which one has to walk in the larger world.

Illich: I wish it were the soil. I wish there were still soil to it. And it is not friendship unless there is something a little bit dirty to it. Dirty you don't say in English. You know, dirt in the good sense. Earthy.

Brown: Fleshy.

Illich: Because the eyes are fleshy. That image in there, in your pupilla, of me is fleshy.

Brown: So when you said Manichaean, and maybe people listening won't know what Manichaean is, but this idea that this idea that there's an evil spirit and a good spirit and your looking at the world of services is certainly the product of some evil spirit. You're rejecting that and saying, yes, friendship is the pure spring of creativity or being fully human and yet we're in the world.

Illich: I use the word dirty because dirt is a good word.

Brown: It's the source of what's real and from that source we still have to be in the world and do something to the world..

Illich: It's a reembodiment of our judgments and of our experience. By reembodiment I mean the country [?] of what, radio too, does. People had to listen to us without seeing our faces.

Brown: And while that's limited it's a wonderful thing that we're able to do it. And Ivan thank you very much for doing it. Folks, now that you've heard us talk I hope you'll be talking with your own friends.

#interviews #ivan illich #jerry brown #radio #education #judgment #christianity #Manichaean #xenophobia #friendship #sin #acedia #deadly sins

1 note · View note

alexsmitposts · 5 years

Photo

From Orwell to Huxley: Grim Prospects of Truth-Telling Scroll through NEO’s website and you will realize that we have been honest in reporting the problems the world faces on a daily basis. The articles are straightforward: real issues, real people, and real insight. While we are steadfast in our reporting, more and more journalists are being subject to the most severe form of censorship, some have taken to – self-censorship in order to avoid the wrath of the powers that be. Such arm twisting by the authorities is nothing but a frontal attack on any semblance of a free media. It is even worse than that—people, in general, are so skeptical of anything written or reported by the mainstream news nowadays. Things have gotten to the point where they don’t believe anything that the MSM says, however, the unfortunate part is that now the lines between mainstream and independent media has also started blurring, with more and more independent media also falling in step with the official government line. I have a distant relative who now says that she refuses to watch or read any news from any source since it is all propaganda, and this feeling of discontent is becoming widespread. Mark Twain once said, “If you don’t read the newspaper, you’re uninformed. If you read the newspaper, you’re mis-informed.” But the wise Mark Twain could also not imagine the dystopian world we live in today, where the only alternative is not to read anything and not to trust anything, as much of news has been turned into mindless entertainment. We know what is happening to Julian Assange, and that is no longer real news, at least for most viewers and the MSM. His ordeal, first at his Embassy holdup after jumping bail, and then being turned over to UK authorities is just the start of another horror story. Given his deteriorating health his stay at the prison is putting his life at risk, and even UN Human Rights experts have warned of his health complications. All that is happening now was predicated by earlier writers. Hence it is time to revisit a bit of ominous literature, as it is not as if we were not warned about what to look forward to in the future. “Brave New World” vs. “1984” – which won? The BBC did an excellent adaptation of “Brave New World” many years ago. I don’t think it survived on tape (it was a few years before the VCRs became ubiquitous). I was able to find one that is close, with Aldous Huxley, an interview with Mike Wallace back in the late ’50s which describes the enemies of freedom in the United States. My first reaction was that of surprise as all that was described seemed so true even in today’s context. He had been able to accurately describe how various bureaucracies, technology, and propaganda methods work in tandem to create a false narrative and distract the people from more real and pressing issues. From his description it becomes clear that the methods being used today to distract us are the same that Hitler used, only now they have become more effective. To compare and contrast, George Orwell’s “1984”, and Alex Huxley’s “Brave New World”—they both predicted different visions of a dystopian future. What has emerged now is a combination of the two takes on what the future holds, or at least that is what the situation looks like as of now. People say we are more Huxley than Orwell, but there are some Orwellian methods too, at least for journalists and whistleblowers. Orwell saw a world where fear was used whereas Huxley perceived a world where we will be manipulated in other ways—more effectively and willingly! It is so very true that Truth has become Treason with the torture of Julian Assange. The powers to be would like us not to consider him a journalist. Truth has never been well received by governments who want to hide it, at any cost, even at the expense of fundamental principles of the founding fathers. But the situation is getting grim day-by-day now. So, where does that leave us? The lesson to others is clear: challenge the global US military empire and you will be destroyed. Politicians are acting as bullies like George Orwell predicted… perhaps. Huxley’s “Soma” drug is allegorical to how people are drugged by devices and perhaps some actual drugs. In Enemies of Freedom Huxley is exposing how free choice, the rational side of man are bypassed – and how the democratic process is circumvented and efforts made to eliminate what would be informed and free choice. Huxley dives deep into the forces that are taking away freedom, including electronic devices, overpopulation, and materialism. However, the greatest threat is over the organization of society and the lack of “thinking beings.” The system, including how education is allocated makes sure that those who question the most are afforded the least conducive environment for learning. Madness in Method But there are better ways, for instance, aversion conditioning is how “Brave New World” has prevailed over “1984.” Low levels of education, distractions caused by cellphones and mindless computer games, and various forms of modern-day “Soma” are all tools in the hands of governments to keep the minds of the and people distracted and to keep them calm and mindless. What Huxley feared was that there would be no reason to ban a book, for there would be only a few left who would want to read one, or at least have the inclination and time. Younger folk have been manipulated into relinquishing virtually any right or privilege as long as they can still keep their video games and smartphones. “Brave New World” depicts a society that bears more than coincidental resemblance to our society today (watch CNN and Anderson Cooper to get a better idea). But the “Powers That Be” would also prefer that we live in the “1984” society, and they are trying their best to plunge us into that darkness by attacking journalists who describe inconvenient truths. Huxley summed it up best: “By means of ever more effective methods of mind-manipulation, the democracies will change their nature; the quaint old forms— elections, parliaments, Supreme Courts and all the rest—will remain. … Democracy and freedom will be the theme of every broadcast and editorial. … Meanwhile, the ruling oligarchy and its highly trained elite of soldiers, policemen, thought-manufacturers and mind-manipulators will quietly run the show as they see fit.” The comparison is made to radio and television fodder “new devices” and now all that he predicted – subliminal projections contained within films. Once you establish the utility of something that is known to work, you can be certain that the technology of it will steadily improve. How can we preserve the integrity of humans in an age when we are being persuaded below the level of “choice and reason” – not only in how we think but even in our choices for political office. It is no longer a matter of making an intelligent choice for one’s self interests, but falling prey to the manipulations of [MSM] and the manipulations of consumers by Madison Avenue. A democracy depends on the individual voter making an intelligent and rational choice for what he regards as his enlightened self-interest in any given circumstance. But attempts are being made to bypass that “rational choice” by appealing to unconscious forces below the surface – below the level of choice and reason. But that is not happening anytime soon but at least we have a modern version of soma with PR, mind control and a new generation of prescription drugs. Soma can even compete with religion; it takes away bad experiences and makes us all happy and content. All that was written as fiction is now a reality, even genetically engineered babies and a society driving by never-ending consumption. In the quest for the most modern devices, people have become hooked to a reality that does not exist. It is this generation of low castes who are proven to be clueless and preoccupied with promiscuity that paints anyone who speaks in disapproval as intolerant. Society has been transformed into “a pre-ordained caste system ranging from a highly intelligent managerial class to a subgroup of dim-witted serfs programmed to love their menial work; and of soma, a drug that confers instant bliss with no side effects.” That drug comes in many different forms – mostly ignorance and is distributed by the manipulated media and corrupt advertisers. And let us also not forget why it is no longer even necessary to burn or restrict books. As we learned from the newest release, at the movies, of Ray Bradbury’s Fahrenheit 451 –very few among us are actually interested in reading book or truthful news anymore and fewer, in any case, have the critical thinking abilities to understand their true meaning. “We are not born equal but must be made equal by the fire!”

1 note · View note

hope-for-olicity · 6 years

Text

Fabulous Olicity Fanfic Friday - September 28th, 2018

Happy Friday! So this is my attempt to both thank awesome fanfic writers for their amazing work and offer my recommendations to anyone who is interested. Here are the fantastic fanfic stories I read this week! They are posted in the order I read them.

A Novel Beginning multi-chapter WIP by @vaelisamaza - Olicity AU, Felicity runs her own Tech shop and writes romance novel reviews for her sister's website, Oliver comes in for computer help and it's all getting very exciting!! SQUEE!!!! https://archiveofourown.org/works/15800145/chapters/36771384

Angel multi-chapter WIP by @it-was-a-red-heeler - Oliver encounters a stripper by the name of Angel and is blown away. https://archiveofourown.org/works/15961898/chapters/37227686#workskin

The Paths We Take multi-chapter Complete by griever11 - Rival CEOs AU. Felicity Smoak, CEO and founder of her own company, is trying to prove herself in the cutthroat world of the technology industry among the other bigwigs in the game. Oliver Queen, recently back from the dead is trying to prove to the world that he's no longer the same man-child who went down on the Queen's Gambit and is finally worthy of his family's legacy. Both equally formidable names in the corporate world. And both with a long, complicated history with each other that no one but themselves are privy to. https://archiveofourown.org/works/15314133/chapters/35530296

From Somewhere Within multi-chapter WIP by @smoaking-greenarrow - Their connection has always felt natural to them, safe and secure. But others tend to fear what they don’t understand, and as far as their enemies are concerned, the world isn’t ready to accept two people who can know each other the way that Oliver and Felicity do. https://archiveofourown.org/works/16009244/chapters/37356257

I Have a Right by who_seeks_shall_find - William's friends defend William when a group of older kids harass him in a cafe. https://archiveofourown.org/works/16011746

The Hardest Target multi-chapter by @laurabelle2930 - When Felicity was a child her father developed an AI program that eventually brought their family fame and fortune. As she grew her father faded away his business grew and their bond shattered. After a car accident almost got her best friend Sara Lance killed Felicity's father made a choice...this choice would radically alter the course of her life. Now 5 years after the plane crash that killed her father and left her stranded she's come home to defeat the enemies her father's work created. The target is H.I.V.E's gun for hire, his name is unknown but his skills are deadly. He works for Damian Darkh who's allied with the one and only Quentin Lance Starlings chief of police. The only problem with her brand new life is Oliver Queen. He feels foreign yet familiar at the same time. She's drawn to him as he is to her but the question is why? What brings them together and what could potentially tear them apart? AMAZING!! http://archiveofourown.org/works/5745787/chapters/13240654

The Proposal multi-chapter WIP by @sunshineolicity - When Felicity is threatened with deportation, she lies about being engaged to her boss, Oliver Queen. She doesn't expect him to agree to marry her but they're caught up in family parties and wedding plans before she knows it. https://archiveofourown.org/works/11301480/chapters/25287291

P.S. Hong Kong: Was it Real?!? multi-chapter WIP by @cruzrogue for Olicity trope-tastic award: Fake Marriage - This is off season 3 Flashbacks. When Tommy goes to Hong Kong he doesn’t go alone he takes his friend Felicity as the best information system being to help him locate Oliver Queen. Tommy may leave empty handed but Felicity gets to be a bride… https://archiveofourown.org/works/15025697/chapters/34832747

Rebels Connected multi-chapter WIP by @mindramblingsfics - Felicity Smoak is an escaped mutant on the run. Oliver Queen, leader of an underground safe house for mutants to call home comes to her rescue. Everything changes once he brings her into the organization and his life. https://archiveofourown.org/works/16014089/chapters/37369784

If I Tremble multi-chapter WIP by @smoaking-greenarrow - A collection of prompts and ficlets, with all the smut! Olicity sexy times are the best times. https://archiveofourown.org/works/15409122/chapters/35762643

Life's All About Changes multi-chapter WIP by Crazyreader2468 - After agreeing to plead guilty to being the Green Arrow in order to get FBI assistance in capturing Diaz, Oliver finds himself in a supermax, a maximum security federal prison, serving a life sentence. As he struggles to become accustomed to life in prison, his family, friends, and teammates struggle to live without him, as well as continually attempting to find a way to get him pardoned. Will they succeed in obtaining a pardon and will Oliver survive until they do? Mostly AU from right before the ending of episode 6 x 22 and after most of 6 x 23. https://archiveofourown.org/works/14936172

Pieces of Always multi-chapter WIP by @so-caffeinated and @dust2dust34 - Life continues after Forever is Composed of Nows. Ongoing non-linear collection of family moments for the Queens. http://archiveofourown.org/works/8220479/chapters/18840356

The Reason multi-chapter WIP by flipflops - Oliver is an Alpha and Felicity is an Omega....circumstances lead Oliver to find this out and a very bad time or maybe very good time... https://archiveofourown.org/works/15012431

Re-Airrow Episode 2x04 by @lostolicityscenes - Three fill in the blank scenes for the episode. The first one takes place before the episode events basically deepening the bond between Oliver and Felicity and setting up the flirty flirt at the end of the episode. The second scene is a Delicity scene that takes place after the revelation that Sara is alive, expanding on Felicity’s feelings of hurt and confusion. The last scene takes place before the flirty Olicity scene in the episode. I wanted to show they talked before that scene to explain her change in attitude as well as an excuse to show Oliver’s increasing reliance on her advice. https://lostolicityscenes.tumblr.com/post/178194053416/re-airrow-episode-2x04

10 Rules of Rebounding multi-chapter WIP by @smkkbert - Oliver and Felicity start a sex relationship as rebounds for each other. What’s supposed to be just fun, soon gets complicated when it turns out that their work lives collide, Robert Queen fears their sexual relationship could threaten his company and an ex comes back into the play. https://archiveofourown.org/works/15403404/chapters/35749620

Home To You multi-chapter WIP by @the-shy-and-anxious-fangirl - Oliver Queen has never done what his family expected of him. He took a gap year after high school instead of going to college right away. He quit his fraternity sophomore year to join the student newspaper, switching his major from business to journalism. He became a photojournalist for a wire service instead of taking a place at Queen Consolidated. He went missing after six months instead of coming home for his sister’s twenty-first birthday. He survived five years of captivity in a war zone when everyone thought he was dead. He came home. But home didn’t have a place for him in it anymore. His parents were both dead, casualties of their own mistakes and a city they had turned against them. His sister was all grown up, the CEO of Queen Consolidated with a fiancé and a dog and a life of her own. Oliver didn’t belong in his old life, but there was nowhere else for him to go. He was a man without a home, without any way of finding one, until he stopped by the IT department of his sister’s company to get files off an old, battered memory card, and found a woman with curly blonde hair and bright, intelligent eyes chewing on a bright red pen and swearing at a computer screen. https://archiveofourown.org/works/12613188/chapters/28734552

Arrow Out of Context: "You can call me nothing" Buried Alive Part 1 multi-chapter WIP by @smoaking-greenarrow - "John" and "My friends call me Dig, you should call me nothing."https://archiveofourown.org/works/14957309/chapters/37421213

Arrow Out of Context multi-chapter WIP by @smoaking-greenarrow - "I've already seen you shirtless. Multiple times. Shirtless all the time" https://archiveofourown.org/works/14957309/chapters/37541849#workskin

Queen vs Queen multi-chapter WIP by @muslimsmoak - Felicity Mignonette Renaldi Smoak has been handling being a princess pretty well so far. After all, she did only find out at the ripe young age of 15. Now, she is 21 and ready to take the throne of Genovia after being under the tutelage of her aunt. But there’s only one thing in her way, wait, actually two. Two things in her way: Oliver Queen, the hot young bachelor she danced with the night of her homecoming ball, who neglected to mention that he’s after her crown alongside his uncle Malcolm Merlyn, and the fact that she has to marry within 30 days if she wants to be Queen. Ray Palmer, Duke of Keystone is sweet, sensitive, intelligent and kind and seems like the perfect choice. But marrying and falling in love are two different things. A Princess Diaries AU https://archiveofourown.org/works/15808065/chapters/36794172

Back to Start multi-chapter WIP by @laurabelle2930 - Felicity left home almost ten years ago. She missed her family, the land that she'd always felt bonded to and, the boy who was not only her best friend but, also her true love. Now with the help of her family she's about to see if the boy she left behind is still just as in love with as she still is with him. https://archiveofourown.org/works/16043321/chapters/37451873

Fragments multi-chapter WIP by @alexiablackbriar13 - A collection of various arrow and olicity ficlets from my drafts folder, partially completed. some AU, some canon related. many related to established verses I've created, although do not need to read those verses to read these fics. https://archiveofourown.org/works/15906561/chapters/37075926

Unexpected Meeting or Fate? multi-chapter WIP by CaptainSammyAngel - Since she was a little girl, Felicity Smoak has been apart of the League of Assassins. While Oliver Queen for the past six months has been the CEO of Queen Consolidated and trying to keep it afloat. When the League decides to start the hunt of Malcolm Merlyn in the last place he was located, two people will meet but circumstances and pasts will make it difficult for them to be together. Will they find a way or will they be torn apart? https://archiveofourown.org/works/15007139/chapters/34783916

The Queen's Mage multi-chapter WIP by @the-shy-and-anxious-fangirl - Words have power, and mages, those with the aptitude to draw on that power, are few in number. Thus, their services are highly sought after by anyone who has exhausted all mundane means of solving whatever problem is plaguing them. Felicity is reminded of this fact the hard way when she is hired by Moira Queen, the Lady Starling, to find and return to her son Oliver, who fled his family home five years ago following the death of his father. With a threat hanging over her should she return without Robert Queen's heir, Felicity begins her search. When she finds Oliver, and ends up joining his vigilante crusade while she waits for him to decide whether to return home, the last thing she expects to do is fall in love with him. https://archiveofourown.org/works/14617068/chapters/33781269

Re-airrow: Episode 2x05 by @lostolicityscenes - This scene takes place right before the above scene at the top of the episode. I think it’s pretty self-explanatory, dialogue that appears side by side takes place at the same time. Rest is below the cut. https://lostolicityscenes.tumblr.com/post/178325265428/re-airrow-episode-2x05

Fear Wakes You Up multi-chapter WIP by @smoakmonster - In a world divided into factions, being Divergent means certain death. For years, Oliver has hidden his terrible secrets–masking his own Divergence within the chaos of Dauntless, covering up the sins of his father’s past that mark his body beneath tattoos, and pushing himself to overcome his nightmares through endless simulations. He’s biding his time until he can somehow save his sister back in Abnegation. But everything changes the day a new batch of transfers arrive. The day he meets her. https://archiveofourown.org/works/16058117/chapters/37490819

Deep Water multi-chapter WIP by @it-was-a-red-heeler - A Season 7 Speculation fic. https://archiveofourown.org/works/15081917/chapters/34968092

Hard To Find Love multi-chapter WIP by Mellowyellowdiamonds - Through a tragic twist of fate Felicity finds herself left with an orphaned young William Clayton. Keeping her promise to her friend, Felicity raises William diligently, loving him as if he were her own child, only to have Moira Queen storm into their lives several years later demanding custody of her grandson. Locked in a war with Moira Queen, things get complicated when Felicity finds herself developing unwanted feelings for William's biological father, Oliver Queen. At the same time she must try to manage her meddling 13 year old son, who has it in his head that if Felicity would just cooperate and fall for his father, everything would be right in the world. https://archiveofourown.org/works/15941786/chapters/37173917

A Series of Dates multi-chapter Complete by @alexiablackbriar13 - Oliver Queen is in love with Felicity Smoak. Felicity Smoak is in love with Oliver Queen. It takes four dates, and the help of Oliver's loyal service dog, Hunter, for them to realise that they're forever destined to be something more than just friends. https://archiveofourown.org/works/13130304/chapters/30036912

Time for a Story multi-chapter WIP by @smkkbert - This fic shows Olicity and their life as a (married) couple with family. Although Olicity (and their kids) are the protagonists, other characters of Arrow and Flash make appearances. YOU NEED THIS STORY IN YOUR LIFE. http://archiveofourown.org/works/3912157/chapters/8757172

// @emmaamelia95 // @mel-loves-all // @oliverfel4 // @green-arrows-of-karamel // @coal000 // @miriam1779 // @memcjo// @captainolicitysbedroom // @tdgal1 // @spaztronautwriter // @lalawo1// @quiveringbunny // @wrongshipper // @thebookjumper // @vaelisamaza // @myhauntedblacksoul // @lovelycssefan // @laurabelle2930 //

#FabulousOlicityFanficFriday #olicity fanfiction #fic recs

95 notes · View notes

canmom · 6 years

Text

a stream of consciousness boxes

by making a post, i’m seizing control of your thoughts, or part of them, if only for a second

but we consented to this, didn’t we? this is why we are here. to suppress our own thoughts and put other peoples’ in there, when we need that, one after another, gone as quickly as they arrived. and to expel our thoughts onto others, when we can’t bear to contain them. to be known, if only for a second. to force other people to acknowledge us, safely knowing that it’s fleeting.

of course it has to fit in a box. i make you think anything i can think to put in a box. I try to make the contents of the box “truthful”, and “say something” of me. whatever that means, for the content of boxes.

there are 1605 words in this box. there’s only finitely many combinations of 1605 words. but also there’s enough that never more than a tiny proportion will be said by anyone ever.

perhaps anything post expresses at least some truth, tautologically. whatever I put in the box is what I felt I should put in the box at that time.

the more it is copied, the more fake a post seems. no matter how many hours I spend trying to make the box right before I tell this machine to put it in front of people. the more remote that moment seems, the more people who take the box to their own contexts, the more alien(?) that box feels to me. my box has fit a pattern that propagates. what did I not know that I was saying?

yet I copy boxes every day, and make other people suffer the same - or perhaps enjoy the same. “here are two sentences in the tags. they somehow are supposed to capture all the things I cannot think how to say.” I always suspect that I am annoying people. perhaps that’s just easier to deal with.

I want to be alien, don’t I? my dream is to send a stream of data that will crash the website, and the internet, and end the stream of boxes to make way for things that can’t fit in a stream of boxes. I want to make something that can’t be recuperated or subsumed.

some boxes: a post. a message. an image. a video. a game. a book. a program. a shipping container. a prison cell. a cell membrane. an allele.

the best program that was ever written was the Morris worm. or was it the worst program? it imposed itself everywhere, made more things in the world the same as each other. many people who would not have thought about the Morris worm, thought about the Morris worm. but in doing so, it broke the system down, and stopped a flow of boxes, if only briefly. some thoughts were not copied.

but then, is that good? is that what I want? a thought that is not copied is gone. do I really wish that people’s thoughts are just gone?

now the Morris worm has some new boxes. literal boxes. a file. a file system. a floppy disc. a glass case. a room. a photograph. a <div>, a <p> describing it.

we can spend a few minutes thinking about the Morris worm. the context that produced it. were you going to think about the Morris worm today? now you have thought about the Morris worm! I decided to put words in order about the Morris worm, and a router, a data centre, a server, your computer reproduced it. the words that were on my screen are on your dash, in your head. maybe you will also reproduce them. or maybe this offshoot of thought about the Morris worm will die.

reproduction is everything. reproduce the organism. reproduce the allele. reproduce the class relation. reproduce the socialisation. reproduce gender. reproduce capital. reproduce Humanity. reproduce everything you are, or are told you are, if that’s a different thing at all.

“evolution” is tautological. what reproduces itself, reproduces itself. the things that weren’t reproduced are gone.

boxes are very useful for reproduction. they fit together nicely. it doesn’t matter what’s in them. click to reblog and to register a like. move the container onto the ship.

every thought I have ever had is a slight modification of a thought someone else had. my life is a slight modification of someone else’s life.

when “I” die “I” will be forgotten. the timescale is, with overwhelming likelyhood of the order of a hundred years. but “my” pattern will be copied, if not directly by “me”. something like “me” will exist, but different. and different again.

information cannot be erased. but it can be diffused. entropy wins.

but the process that made this box is much bigger than the thing in the clothes on the chair. that can be resilient.

what is left if the boxes are broken?

somehow I have an “individual experience”. a specific set of memories that are “mine”. there is something that has access to those memories, and other somethings that do not. that chain of memories stretches back into a fuzzy point. some memories are not so easy to recall, and will come to me at odd times. every time they are recalled, they are rewritten, perhaps changed. there is no definite horizon, just a gradient of doubt.

if I am my memories, and I can recall different things at different times, what is the connecting thread? a pattern, perhaps. or a physical connection. the worldline of my skin.

I am thinking about death tonight, perhaps because I just reread porpentine’s psycho nymph exile. people die a lot in this society and also every society that has ever existed.

this morning, a neural network algorithm at a data centre owned by an abstract entity called “Google” was processed in a fraction of a second. this process resulted in me being shown a video by a group of people who make videos about ancient military history. someone wrote that algorithm, and someone made that video, and yet my connection with those people is so tenuous that they will never have the slightest awareness of me.

the person who made the video said that some time many thousands of years ago, two armies were fighting over the control of the city. two names are given: Caesar, and Vercingetorix. their nations also get names: Rome, the Gauls. and a city, called Alesia.

the Romans built a wall around the city, starving the Gauls. Vercingetorix and the Gauls concluded the military necessity was that the people in the city who could not fight - too old, too sick, too female - be sent away to Caesar’s mercy, and many other people accepted and enforced this verdict. Caesar and the Romans concluded the military necessity was that none of these people could leave his wall, and many other people enforced this verdict. the people who could not fight starved to death in between the two walls. (eventually, Caesar won. the people who died between the walls are now a historical footnote in the story of how Ceasar defeated the Gauls and created an Empire.)

it is a story and it was placed in my head. the creator of the video speculated about what might have happened in those peoples’ last months. his speculations are plausible. I considered them.

but am I really “thinking about those people”? I know nothing about their circumstances, how they lived, who they cared for, what language they spoke. even if I did know those things, I wouldn’t know them at all. I can’t imagine if someone told them, as they were starving under the gaze of two armies who valued very abstract things much more than their lives, that impossibly remote people would communicate in ways they don’t have any references to understand, that in some sense loosely relates to the way they died... they would take much comfort in it.

there is a chain of connections - from people starving in between two walls, to historians writing, scribes copying their work, scholars discussing the events, societies changing, people dying and new people taking up the work, all the way to someone called Invictus making a video, and now, me making these words.

the process, the “evolving system”, is too large to imagine. but also there are components of the process that stopped in between the walls at Alesia, and at many other places and times.

how do you think about death? how do you think about a world whose reproduction makes things like what happened at Alesia happen, again, and again, and again?

(”what happened at Alesia” is long enough ago that I can speak about it in these abstract terms, like a rhetorical device. but is it ever “long enough ago”?)

this is just words in a box. words in a box are inadequate. they get their power only by connecting to things outside the box. but all you get is the limited sort of reflection that can be achieved in a string of UTF-8 characters.

but the words in a box are the only means I have. I am given a box that can take words. someone else had a “big character poster”.

I didn’t have a specific purpose when I began writing this post. I have awkwardly sutured two topics together. I am making a mess of philosophical categories, and the careful delineations of prior thinkers. no doubt Wittgenstein, perhaps, has said it better. well, so much the better!, says part of me. and I’m sorry, says another.

in any case, you are here on tumblr, reading me, instead of Wittgenstein, for some reason. I hope it’s fulfilling, somehow. I hope things I can’t think how to encode in patterns in a box.

this is an inadequate conclusion to an inadequate post, but I guess it has good company there.

send post

#death cw

25 notes · View notes

doomonfilm · 3 years

Text

Shorts : The 93rd Academy Awards (2020 Nominees)

Even before my days as a film blogger, I always made a concentrated effort to try and see as many films nominated during awards season as I could... I would hope to have seen them throughout the course of the year in the natural flow of of my viewing, but inevitably I end up playing catch-up in the span of time between the Golden Globe nominations and the Academy Awards ceremony. One unfortunate consistency, however, is the fact that I often fall short (no pun intended) in my coverage of short live-action, animated and documentary films that receive recognition from the Oscars.

With streaming ruling more than ever in the wake of COVID-19 and the pandemic, and more access to films regardless of the current state of world affairs, I wanted to make sure that my attempt to cover as much ground in the Oscar nomination pool as possible included shorts, and thanks to a bit of sleuth work, I was able to see a large slice of the nominated material. This article will focus solely on my thoughts about what I was able to see, but more importantly, it will allow me to include these categories in my prediction post, as they are often overlooked.

Editor’s note - Due to a lack of access, the following films will be excluded from this list : - Oprea (Best Animated Short nominee) - White Eye (Best Live-Action nominee)

Burrow (SparkShorts/Pixar, dir. Madeline Sharafian) Best Animated Short nominee

It’s easy to see why Burrow was paired with the wildly successful and stellar animated feature Soul, as both tell a similar tale about independence in the face of community, albeit one is much more layered and textured than the other. That being said, Burrow is able to transmit its message without the use of dialogue, instead utilizing a bouncy soundtrack and sound design to match both the underground and animal-based aspects of the short. The lighting techniques in particular stand out, especially when the bunny finds himself digging tunnels. The menagerie of animal characters are each given unique design to reflect the vast number of subterranean dwellers in the wild, but the designs also share enough similarity to keep the overall world aesthetic uniform and enjoyable. This one is definitely highly recommended for children, although its extremely short runtime may leave them demanding more. Major props to Madeline Sharafian for making such a dynamic piece of traditional animation in a company known for pushing the realms of digital animation and 3-D character rendering.

Genius Loci (UniFrance, dir. Adrien Merigeau) Best Animated Short nominee

Genius Loci should be framed and presented to the masses a motion-based art. The way in which each sequence is laid out like some sort of abstract piece of artwork is stunning, and as the narrative unfolds in its powerful minimalist take on surrealism, we are given a creatively intriguing blend of symbolism and stimuli that is nothing short of breathtaking. Genius Loci harkens me back to the days of programs like MTv’s Liquid Television, where I wasn’t even registering how much the lines between entertainment and artwork were being blurred. Even in its abstraction and heavy symbolism, it is extremely easy to recognize the variety of human interactions that Merigauh parades in her dreamlike animated sonnet. In all honesty, words do not do this modern masterpiece justice… it simply must be seen to be believed, especially for anyone who was a fan of any aspect of Waking Life.

If Anything Happens I Love You (Netflix, dir. Will McCormack and Michael Govier) Best Animated Short nominee

If Anything Happens I Love You is an incredibly artistic (and seemingly deeply personal) rumination on grief in the wake of sudden and tragic loss. Aesthetically, the film has an elevated Plymptoons style to it, with an excellent use of minimalism and abstraction that simplifies ideas of memory, personal regret and reconciliation with grace, thoughtfulness and nuance. While absent of dialogue, the use of sound design, illustration and a well-placed King Princess song says more than any dialogue or exposition could ever manage in a package like this. The way that memories blend together and introduce color in a world where the presence is absent of it leaves a lasting impression. Short projects like this show animation’s capacity to elicit a deep emotional reaction and touch upon topics that may seem to step into the realms of exploitation if done traditionally. The emotional gut punch delivered by If Anything Happens I Love You in its waning moments is as touching as it is heartbreaking, and is likely to pull tears out of even the most hardened moviegoer.

Yes-People (The New Yorker, dir. Gísli Darri Halldórsson)

One thing about Yes-People that immediately stands out is the character design... I am unsure of whether it is a stop-motion film, a computer-generated animation, or some other technique made to emulate these others. There is a minimalist aspect to the film similar to that of Aardman Animations, particularly in terms of the narrative hook involving the use of a single word : “Yes”. We are shown a wide range of individuals with distinct looks and seemingly distinct purposes in life, and although all characters use the same word (and are tied to the same use of a single song throughout the film), it is the way in which these particular elements are displayed and presented that gives the world a sense of variety and distinction amongst its participants. The look seems geared towards children, but the subject matter and tone seem to be geared more so towards adults, especially in the way it deals with finding joy and pleasure in the mundane nature of living. While not the most moving piece of animation for me out of the bunch, I can certainly recognize art when I see it, and Yes-People deserves all of the recognition and accolades it is currently attaining.

Colette (The Guardian, dir. Anthony Giacchino) Best Documentary Short nominee

While not the first documentary on the impact of the Nazi party during World War II, Colette does more to humanize the tragedy than any other piece of media I can recall. To clarify, many documentaries have shown images and footage of prisoners, but Colette does so without taking a morbid tourist, exploitation or self-gratifying stance. In contrast, we are taken to a World War II museum prior to visiting the concentration camp where Jean-Pierre (brother of documentary subject Colette Marin-Catherine) was held, where we see items, portraits and registration cards meant to contextualize the scale of the Nazi atrocities. Rather than utilize shock and despair, we are given a very welcoming presentation, which makes it easier to understand and accept how recognizing and understanding our past downfalls can help avoid them in the future. Colette Marin-Catherine and Lucie Fouble have a wonderful synergy together, and their conversations serve to further illustrate the nuance that comes with recognizing the past, based on your personal past and point of view. Colette Marin-Catherine is not only extremely honest about herself, but she is quick to hold up a mirror to those who exploit the tragedies Germany committed during World War II, and it’s this ability to be forthright and unwavering that makes her a fascinating subject.

A Concerto Is a Conversation (The New York Times, dir. Ben Proudfoot and Kris Bowers) Best Documentary Short nominee

This short documentary uses the hook of music and its ability to communicate the unspoken as an introduction for a story surrounding up and coming composer Kris Bowers (who co-directs the documentary with Ben Proudfoot) and the historical significance of his current rising star. Framed as a conversation between Bowers and his grandfather Horace Bowers, A Concerto Is a Conversation allows the elder Bowers to break down for his grandson the reason why his past drive has allowed his grandson to achieve. Horace Bowers recounts the story of his early life on a plantation in Florida, his literal escape across the country to California, his search for employment that turned into business ownership, and how all of this inspired Kris to chase his dreams. As an inspirational story and an opportunity for personal testimony in a historical context, the documentary certainly has value and impact, but may find itself happy to just be in the conversation among the likes of such heavy and emotional content.

Do Not Split (Field of Vision, dir. Anders Hammer) Best Documentary Short nominee

No matter what happens for Do Not Split in terms of award season success, this is a film that should not be ignored due to its current relevance on numerous levels. First and foremost, we are given a glimpse into both modern protesting and modern policing, and how protestors have attempted to counter the militarization of police forces via the implementation of technology and guerilla tactics, which in turn shows viewers how chaos is formed when antiquated tactics are used in the information age. We are also given a glimpse into how divided the world is becoming socio-politically, with this particular lens turned on the struggles of Hongkongers in China fighting to keep some sort of independence from the mainland while maintaining a true freedom of expression. Based on political and power shifts surround China, Hong Kong and Great Britain, the common ground is already unstable, and Do Not Split gives insight into how the aforementioned freedom of speech is slowly being turned into a privilege based on class or ideology, rather than a universal right. Viewers are also given education and context surrounding the 5 Demands, calls for political reformation, and the eventual National Security Law implemented during the early stages of the COVID-19 pandemic. While the score does teeter a bit on the overly-cinematic side, it does sell how drastic the situation is in Hong Kong. Director Anders Hammer presents us with a documentary saturated in brutal truth that is captured in an intimate and unflinching manner.

Hunger Ward (MTv, dir. Skye Fitzgerald) Best Documentary Short nominee

The juxtaposition of aesthetic creative beauty and true life human tragedy never ceases to amaze me in terms of how compelling it can be, and Hunger Ward continues this tradition in terms of both technical prowess and subject matter. The film is possibly the most traditional documentary of the bunch outside of Do Not Split, and while I doubt it had the budget of A Song for Latasha (which is my guess based solely on it being a Netflix project), it cannot be ignored how well composed and visceral nearly every shot is. When it comes to the subject matter, the topic of malnutrition in Yemen is certainly jarring for the uninformed, and with the lack of resources available in the war-torn region due to the nearly decade long civil conflict, the stress and emotional wear and tear the volunteers is truly unimaginable. Skye Fitzgerald steps back and takes a hard look at the situation in an observational manner, allowing the state of the malnourished victims and the stress of those attempting to care for them speak volumes. The documentary is not an easy watch, but for anyone unaware of what life is like in a Third World country, it may be necessary in order to allow the broadening of world perspective to occur on a viewer by viewer basis.

A Love Song for Latasha (Netflix, dir. Sophia Nahli Allison) Best Documentary Short nominee

Lately, Netflix has been establishing itself as a force in the documentary world, and I believe part of this dominance has to do with the extremely cinematic recreations these documentaries use to depict events from the past. Based on this observation, it makes total sense that Netflix would pick up A Love Song for Latasha, an ode to former South Central Los Angeles resident and race-based violence victim Latasha Harlins directed by Sophia Nahli Allison. The death of Harlins, who was killed in the Empire Liquor Market just under two weeks after the beating of Rodney King, was a key element in the buildup to the L.A. riots, and normally when she is mentioned it is in this light. What is great about Nahli Allison’s memorial documentary, however, is that we are given recollections and memories that not only humanize Latasha Harlins, but recontextualize the environment and interactions leading up to the riots in a way that can give outsiders a deeper understanding of why the race-based violence erupted on such a massive scale. The stories are told in a testimonial manner rather than an interview style, very similar to the This Is Actually Happening podcast, and the method is a powerful companion to the artistic footage and animations that make up the visual stimulus. The competition in this category is some of the fiercest of the night, but A Love Song for Latasha is a strong contender to bring an Oscar back home.

Feeling Through (Omeleto, dir. Doug Roland) Best Live-Action Short nominee

What a thought-provoking and compelling film, not to mention groundbreaking in ways that many possibly wouldn’t recognize, specifically the fact that casting DeafBlind actor Robert Tarango may mark the first occurrence of a DeafBlind actor in a leading role. His extremely natural presence, physicality and innate spatial awareness would give one the sense that he is an actor simulating deafness and blindness well, and his chemistry with co-lead Steven Prescod is impossible to ignore. Prescod’s Tereek characterization gives a tale of a homeless young man attempting to find a safe place to sleep for the night, which could make a compelling short film in itself, but his journey of discovery via his intense immersion and understanding into the world of Tarango’s Artie opens up avenues of sacrifice, self-discovery and humanitarian understanding that make accepting viewers better people at the completion of the short film than when they began it. If we start to see the name of writer and director Doug Roland attached to major projects in the next few years, don’t be surprised, because if he has any ability to transition his knack for storytelling into the realm of the feature length film, we are all in for possible treats in the future. For a deeper look into the process of making Feeling Through, and the real-life events that inspired the film, seek out the short behind the scenes documentary Connecting the Dots.

The Letter Room (Salaud Morisset, dir. Elvira Lind) Best Live-Action Short nominee

The Letter Room has a number of things going for it that make it crystal clear why it finds itself nominated for an Oscar. First and foremost, to address the obvious, the inclusion of Oscar Isaac in anything immediately gives you a quality boost across the board, and Isaac is doing some of his nuanced best work in this short. The film also looks absolutely great, with its cold and institutionalized look that is further hardened by the cold color temperature applied. The character building done for Richard is immediate but impactful, as we learn he is observant, pensive, kind-hearted and motivated in relatively short order and in the natural flow of events. The story is an engaging one that manages to present a number of emotional tones without having to resort to standard prison fare such as violence, sexual tension, terrorism, the exploitation of human labor and so on. The score, in tandem with the vocal performances that accompany the letter text, transitions viewers into another world within the world of the film without us even realizing it.

The Present (Netflix, dir. Farah Nabulsi) Best Live-Action Short nominee

If one were pressed to find a palatable illustration of how trauma is formed by negative experiences that occur when young minds are most impressionable, I’d point them in the direction of The Present, a Palestinian short from from director Farah Nabulsi. While crossing an Israeli border in hopes of finding his wife an anniversary present in Bethlehem, Yusef finds himself searched and detained, all in front of the eyes of his daughter Yasmine. In the wake of the stressful event, Yusef attempts to complete his romantic gesture (not to mention supply his family with a much needed appliance upgrade) while continuing to be aware of his daughter’s extremely fragile emotional state. In a short and efficient span of time, the narrative presented brings up thought-provoking reflections on humanity, authority and sensitivity with style and grace, which is all the more impressive when one realizes that the checkpoint scenes were shot verite’, guerilla style. Like the other nominees in the Live-Action Short category, the appeal to humanity is extremely powerful, and it sticks with you long after the film is completed.

Two Distant Strangers (Netflix, dir. Travon Free, Martin Desmond Roe) Best Live-Action Short nominee

Of all the nominees for Best Live-Action Short, I can confidently say that Two Distant Strangers had the biggest direct impact on me. Tension between the Police and Black Americans is certainly nothing new, with much of that tension having been baked into the origins of Police as a national institution created in response to newly freed slaves, but what really makes this film poignant is the timing, with 2020 showing absolutely no let-up in the occurrence of these incidents despite an on-going pandemic and shelter-in-place orders. Using the formula made iconic by Groundhog Day, directors Travon Free and Martin Desmond Roe are able to make some striking points on how frustratingly impossible curbing these killings seems, no matter what one does on a personal or neighborly level to change things. In displaying how fruitless the venture seems, we are indirectly reminded of the many, many incidents that have claimed the lives of Black Americans unjustly, only to be directly reminded by a credit crawl prior to the acting and production credits rolling. If you find yourself struggling to understand the perspective of #BlackLivesMatter supporters, or even those who may not wholly agree with that specific movement but voice their very real concerns about being Black in America, a film like Two Distant Strangers can help put one into the state of mind that Black America finds so hard to make real for others.

#ChiefDoomsday #DOOMonFILM #Burrow #GeniusLoci #IfAnythingHappensILoveYou #Colette #AConcertoIsAConversation #DoNotSplit #HungerWard #ALoveSongForLatasha #FeelingThrough #TheLetterROom #ThePresent #TwoDistantStrangers

1 note · View note