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jackalmeat · 11 months

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@letters-to-rosie said: okay so let's say Viktor has an s/o or just really good friend. how does he navigate things around questions of ability? how does he feel about disclosing things like pain, how long he can comfortably walk, etc? how does he feel about asking someone for help with certain tasks? how would this change as a relationship would evolve? are there some approaches that would totally just frustrate him and maybe even ruin a relationship?

You're so good to me, Rosie. I broke this line of questioning into three parts--

🫀 How does Viktor navigate questions of ability? How does he feel about disclosing things like pain, how far he can comfortably walk, etc.?

Viktor tends to play his hand fairly close to his chest in this respect. He'll acknowledge the factual existence of his limits or points of difficulty, of course; and he's apt to be quite tongue-in-cheek or sardonic about it to boot -- (imagine a flat look and a pointedly understated little quip when you find yourselves faced with a long, steep staircase, for example) -- but he's not inclined to disclose much about the exact scope of those limits willy-nilly if there's not a clear reason for more detailed information to be needed/relevant at that particular moment**. He'll be more forthcoming about himself with people that have done enough legwork to earn a more authentic relationship with him; but by and large there are many pieces of himself he's not quick to share. This, indeed, is often one of them.

He also, as an aside, is disinclined to apologize for his limits or ask if they'll be a problem for someone else (unless he's in a more fragile mental state and isn't as equipped to guard himself as usual). They're his to navigate; not yours. You don't get to act like his issues are your cross to bear.

(**In truth, one of the ways in which this matter tends to get broached most plainly and readily is through the medium of sex. It's important for partners, even casual ones, to understand how to interact with his body in ways that will be both pleasing and safe for him.)

🫀 How does he feel about asking for help with certain tasks? How would this change as the relationship evolved?

The short answer is that Viktor isn't an 'ask for help' kind of guy if he can at all avoid it.

The longer answer is that he isn't an 'ask for help' kind of guy precisely because he spends his life navigating a world in which people draw all kinds of conclusions about him (as a scholar, as a man, as a competent adult, and so on) the instant they so much as look at him, regardless of whether they ultimately mean well toward him or not. At this point he's more accustomed to being treated as an object (onto which others project a vision of what they expect him to be, based on preconceived judgements) than he is to being understood as the actual sum of his parts and being.

To loosely quote my own tags from this post about Viktor's tendency to hold others at arms' length when he's struggling in any way: he can't control whether or not people know about his disability (it's visible; of course they know), but he can attempt to control the flavor of the narrative people build around him in their own heads. His competence and general worthiness for respect are already under constant scrutiny by others, simply by virtue of his being a disabled man. As far as he's concerned, asking for help with anything simply reinforces the likelihood that others will find him lacking in some way, and subsequently treat him as such. Asking for help is a show of weakness he feels he's not 'allowed' to demonstrate without essentially cosigning others' right to judge him for needing it.

In sum, refusing to ask for help (or let others see him needing/wanting help) is one of the small handful of tools he has for maintaining a sense of control over both his own body as well as how he ultimately gets perceived by others. Likewise, he's not going to give up that tool quickly or comfortably, even if the person in question is a close friend or lover.

(Consider Jayce, for example. Even after approximately 7(?) years of developing a presumably close working and companionable relationship with each other, Viktor still withholds himself and the full scope of his issues from Jayce as a matter of habit when he's struggling. Viktor takes a massive, impulsive risk with Jayce based on the merits merely of a sheaf of research notes and a shared dream; yet balks at the prospect of letting Jayce witness him in a truly vulnerable state.)

Point being: it's not impossible for Viktor to arrive eventually at a point of being willing to risk that kind of vulnerability with someone, ask for help, let them see him in his 'weakest' moments and trust that they won't consciously or unconsciously think less of him in the wake of it, etc. However, the fact remains that that particular variety of trust doesn't come naturally to him, and having a friend or even a lover wouldn't change that.

🫀 Are there some approaches that would frustrate him and maybe even ruin a relationship?

Absolutely. It's worth noting too that, for as much as he wants to be seen (known, meaningfully) and valued by others, Viktor is not an easy person to get truly, lastingly close to even at the best of times. He has a lot of behaviors and defense mechanisms that can engage on a dime and perpetuate patterns which tend ultimately to lead back to him being alone in the ways that matter. While there are some circumstances beyond his control which have contributed to his overall lack of emotionally intimate connections with others, there are others that he could control, but hasn't. He isn't entirely blameless in his own emotional isolation.

That having been said though, when it comes to the things that others do which might be responsible for driving him away, it's largely a matter of balance. Keeping our scope here narrowed down to the matter of his disability, he doesn't expect anyone -- (especially not able-bodied people, no matter how conscientious they are) -- to be perfect. It's not automatically the end of the world if someone missteps a little out of ignorance but is ultimately well-intentioned. However, there are particular patterns of behavior that rub him very, very wrong when it comes to how people interact with his disability or overall health situation. Some examples of those patterns are:

❌ Second-guessing him all the time, as if he can't be trusted to make choices for himself. It's one thing to periodically check in with him or make suggestions; but if you act like you know his body, his limits, his comforts, his needs, and so on better than he himself does and treat him like he needs you to peer-review his decisions, then that says a lot to him about how you perceive him, and none of it is positive. It's not a cute show of affection to force your own idea of what he needs onto him 'for his own good' when he's made a choice you don't strictly agree with. He does not want a caretaker.

❌ Being overly skittish of acknowledging his disability or touching the affected parts of his body, as if you're afraid that 'reminding' him of his condition is inherently offensive or hurtful. He knows he's disabled; and he knows everyone around him knows it too. He doesn't like for others to fixate on that aspect of his existence, but it's just as offputting when people try too hard to skirt around his disability and act like it doesn't exist even though it obviously does. Shying away from it won't earn you any points with him.

❌ Telling him how to talk or think about his own disability, body, or life. He uses words like 'cripple' and 'gimpy' for himself sometimes (similar to how some people like to claim 'queer' or 'faggot', which he also has been known to do), and is prone to dry, irreverent, occasionally quite dark humor on the subject. You don't have to strictly like it, but he does expect you to know better than to micromanage his language.

❌ Treating him like inspiration porn. It's one matter to be aware of the fact that many things that able-bodied people take for granted are out of reach or difficult/painful/frustrating for Viktor, but it's another to focus excessively on his disability and act as if every single thing he does is some kind of courageous, statement-making triumph over the ~inherent, burdensome misery of his very existence~.

❌ Expecting him to be "innocent" in a way that's disproportionate to what you expect from other men. Acting shocked and appalled if he swears or makes a dark/raunchy joke--? Being overly surprised to find out that he flirts and has sex--? Assuming he's 'endearingly' clueless about all things worldly--? Halt, villain.

❌ (Something of a footnote related in various ways to many of the above, but when it comes to any kind of dynamic which involves a physical component: don't be weird about his relationship with sex. Viktor has had his fair share of sexual partners over the years, the overwhelming majority of whom have been entirely casual. If you're too interested in the idea of Viktor being inexperienced, needing you to ~coax his repressed sexual side out~ or ~teach him how to enjoy his body~, etc., then not only are you likely to be disappointed by the reality, but Viktor himself is going to question why exactly you made those assumptions about him in the first place.)

#Arcane #Viktor #always delighted to chew on headcanon questions like these!#thank you for humoring me and giving me the chance to spin Viktor around for awhile inside my thinkmeats

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coulson-is-an-avenger · 3 years

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kisses 21 jm!

For the prompt “we’ll face this together” kiss. TY SAHAR!!! OKAY I accidentally had one (1) jonbinary idea and then it ended up being SO FUCKING LONG (like 2.5k long) so uh. yeah. Warnings for descriptions of dysphoria, mentions of kidnapping and self loathing, and Jon getting pretty close to a panic attack. Also disclaimer, although I am nonbinary, I’m not transfem, so if there’s any critiques surrounding that, don’t hesitate to let me know. Stay safe y’all!

Jon’s face itches as he faces the mirror like an old foe. It’s long held an image that hurts him to see; aged by unfathomable horrors and dotted with marks like a canvas before a child’s paint tipped fingers, and these days he can’t even be sure that his reflection looks away from him when he turns his head. But, the devil it holds at the moment is the simple reflection of his short beard, and his face itches at the reminder of it.

It isn’t a physical itch. It lurks under the skin, poking and prodding at his senses, rubbing him the wrong way as he lays his cheek on his pillow, leaving a distracting echo when his chin brushes against Martin’s during a kiss, scraping at the inside of his skin as he stares at himself and takes in the sight of it covering his chin.

He scrubs his fingers over his eyelids. He isn’t ignorant, he realizes the discomfort he feels is most likely somewhat gender-related, but it’s… his relationship with his gender is complicated. In a lot of ways, it’s been such a mundane concern recently that he’s somewhat lost track of where he stands with it, but he remembers how it felt to first wear a skirt into the archives, all those long years ago. How gentle Sasha had been with him back then, even if the memory pinches the back of his head and grins with too many teeth and a short haircut that he knows now was wrong. But the Stranger cannot take that act of kindness away from her, even if it took away the face he remembers sharing it with.

He had felt like he was becoming something new, then, staring at a new path, freshly paved in his life, open to the possibilities of self discovery and certainty. Then his life had been riddled with worms and his friends had been carved out, one by screaming one, and he was on the run and set alight and kidnapped and disabled and nearly killed and kidnapped again and nearly killed and—

Jon remembers, vaguely, a flash of what had happened in the month he was… gone. He doesn’t remember most of what happened in that place. Probably for the better, he tells himself, but he does recall one thing. One very simple thing, really; that he hadn’t been able to shave, and he remembers the itch being all he could focus on for days at a time.

One of the first things he had done after stumbling through Michael-now-Helen’s door-not-deathtrap was drag himself to a sink and shave his face raw, burned hand be damned. His skin had suffered afterwards, nicked and irritated beneath its smoothness, and he had taken some strange, morbid comfort in the blemish he was able to inflict, after so many days of hearing hollow voices sing of its beauty.

This is a dangerous line of thought, he realizes, hands pressed against the bathroom sink, his heartbeat starting to pound in his ears. He desperately does not want to think about that, not here, and preferably not ever again, if he can help it.

He tries to bring himself back to the here and now, grounding himself in the feeling of porcelain under his palms, but the victory over his mind is a hollow one, unfortunately, as it brings him right back to the itching under his skin.

He’s not sure if this itch is exasperated by his own self consciousness, or by the lingering sting of the Lonely that threatened to separate him from himself, but it builds until its all he can feel in his skin, on his face, and he finds himself lunging across the counter, knocking things over in an attempt to hunt down Martin’s razor.

Jon had lost his own somewhere in the chaos of living in the archives, but he’s sure he saw Martin trim his own short beard when they first arrived at the safehouse, so it must be here, he thinks, ripping open drawers, it must— aha!

His fist closes around the razor, hidden under the sink next to a small bottle of shaving cream and Martin’s testosterone shots, and he barely gives a thought to what he’s doing before raising it to his dry cheek, just needing this thing off, and—

“Jon? You know that’s not how to do that, right?”

Jon whips around like lightning, his back to the sink and the razor clenched in his fist against his chest like a talisman, breathing heavily.

Martin had been smiling slightly as he entered the bathroom, but the expression quickly falls from his face as he takes in the panicked look on Jon’s face, and the erratic motion of his free hand, clenched into a fist at his side and twitching in an attempt to calm himself. Martin steps forward quickly, outstretching a hand.

“Jon, love? Are you alright?”

Jon fixes his eyes on Martin; kind, beautiful Martin who still goes a bit grey at the fingertips and the eyes when anxiety seizes him, Martin who has always been there, always been there, ever since the beginning. Jon anchors himself as he looks at that familiar, beloved face, and tries to take a breath.

“I-I don’t know,” He manages, because this all feels very silly now. He’s a grown person standing in the center of a bathroom, clutching his boyfriend’s shaving razor like it’s a weapon, for God’s sake, all because of what? Some facial hair? Good Lord, he’s being ridiculous. “Probably, I just… um.” He trails off, gut sinking as emotions spiral through him, too fast to pin down and name.

“Okay,” Martin says gently, shuffling a step closer. “Why do you have that?” He gestures to the razor in Jon’s hand, and Jon twitches, holding it closer.

“I need to borrow it,” He explains, stumbling. “I can’t- I need-“ He makes a frustrated noise and tries to get his thoughts to align. He inhales deeply and tries again. “I need to …shave. This-“ he gestures jerkily towards his face. “This is too much.”

Martin nods carefully, eyes glued to Jon’s face. “Too much?” His question is as gentle as his eyes, and Jon has to glance away for a moment, overwhelmed by being seen.

“It’s… complicated,” He begins, the fist pressed to his chest beginning to lighten up. “It… it just itches, all the time. Like- like a thousand ants under my skin, w-which is ridiculous because it doesn’t actually hurt or itch or- or anything, it just…” he glances back to Martin’s eyes, furtive and desperate for him to understand. “I need it to stop.”

“Oh,” Martin softens even more before Jon’s eyes, his face melting with understanding and sadness. “Oh, Jon. I didn’t realize you were having dysphoria.”

At the word dysphoria Jon glances sharply up, uncertainty fraught on his face, and Martin backtracks quickly.

“Or- s-sorry, I didn’t mean to assume. Is it-”

“N-no, Martin, it-it’s fine.” Jon waves Martin’s nerves aside and finds that he finally has a decent enough hold on his own to lower the hand that had been pressed against his chest. He turns around in the bathroom and sits down on the edge of the bathtub, sighing heavily. “It might be dysphoria, I don’t…” He hesitates, chuckling slightly. “I’m not quite sure I know it well enough to place it. Gender hasn’t exactly been… a priority these days.”

Martin nods and follows him deeper into the bathroom, setting down the lid of the toilet so he can sit on it and listen to Jon blunder through his feelings.

“It might be? I mean… I know I’m not a man, per say, but it… I mean, it could also be so many other things at this point. It’s just- I know it’s stupid to overthink, but—“

“Hey, hey,” Martin cuts him off, extending a hand to brush against the side of his knee. “It isn’t stupid, Jon. You don’t have to have a label or a reason in order to be uncomfortable. It’s- you’re allowed to call it just that; uncomfortable.”

Jon nods, looking down at the hands clasped in his lap.

“I know. It just hit me so suddenly, I-” He sighs, rubbing a hand over his forehead, careful to avoid brushing any of the hairs on his face. “I’m sorry.”

“You don’t need to apologize,” Martin murmurs, and his hand rests more solidly on Jon’s knee. “Is this alright?”

Jon nods mutely, and lets himself expel some more of the tension in his shoulders as he focuses on the motion of Martin’s thumb sweeping softly over his knee.

“It reminds me of the circus,” Jon breathes after a moment of silence, and Martin’s hand stills against him, attentive and horrified. “When- when they…” He inhales sharply, willing his voice not to break. “Well, I couldn’t very well shave it,” He clenches his hands into fists again, still holding the razor tightly in his right. “Got it off as quickly as possible once I could.”

Martin exhales. “I remember that. I thought you just… I dunno, just really nicked yourself. I didn’t think about… yeah.”

“Yes,” Jon agrees, keeping his gaze on the hand on his knee. “I-I mean, I definitely did, nick myself that is. I wasn’t really thinking about doing it properly, I suppose.”

“Like just now?” Martin asks, kindly, gently, not judging. Jon feels his chest pinch anyways.

“Yes.” He admits quietly. Martin leans down to press a careful kiss to Jon’s knee.

“Okay, well, this time we’ll do it properly,” Martin raises himself from the toilet seat, reaching down into the cupboards to pull forth the shaving cream and a towel, and holds them out towards Jon.

Jon blinks, looks at the objects and then up at Martin, unsure of what’s being offered. “Sorry?”

“You still want the beard off, right? Let’s just make sure you don’t upset your skin,” He cracks a humorous smile. “Then it’ll actually start itching.”

Jon takes the can from his hand, but still frowns. “Us?”

“I- yeah,” Martin shifts his weight, fidgeting with the towel. “I can help, if that’s alright with you. You don’t… always seem to handle mirrors the best? And I’ve helped shave another person before so… yeah. If you want.”

Jon’s world stutters to a blushing halt. Martin’s right, he doesn’t like to linger on his face in mirrors even on the best days (of which today is certainly not one) and as much as he’s accustomed to doing this himself, what Martin is promising is intimate; an extension of vulnerability and the promise of a care that he hardly takes with himself. The more he considers it, the more finds himself tentatively wanting it, and he nods carefully. He trusts Martin, he’s decided a thousand times by now.

“Alright,” He agrees, and smiles.

Martin smiles in response. “Alright. Do you want me to um-” He gestures with the towel in his hand, and Jon nods.

Martin makes quick work of running the towel under the tap until it’s warm, and then wringing it out so it’s ready to actually use. He takes his seat again and tips Jon’s head back with a hand to lay the towel gently overtop, letting the warmth seep into his skin. It’s more effort than Jon usually puts in, or used to, when he did this more regularly, but he finds it’s a nice feeling, and he almost misses it when Martin takes the towel away again.

“Right,” Martin continues, looks pointedly to the can of shaving cream in Jon’s hand and Jon hesitates.

“Ah. Maybe not that part? Th-the actual shaving is fine, but-”

“Oh! Yeah, of course,” Martin nods, not questioning, and reaches forward instead to gently take the razor itself from Jon’s fist so he can use both hands to get the shaving cream on his face. Jon surrenders the razor, forcing himself to trust it in Martin’s hands, to trust that Martin won’t just leave him hanging.

He tries not to think too hard about the feeling of the cream on his skin. It’s a far cry from lotion, so it doesn’t bring up any sense memories, thankfully, but it’s still an uncomfortable texture, and he focuses on the sound of Martin’s breathing to keep himself from slipping.

Fortunately it doesn’t take long; soon enough Jon’s finished, wiping his hands on his trousers, and then Martin’s shifting closer, taking Jon’s face in his hands like it’s something precious, something to be loved and cared for. He is very close, his dark brown eyes nearly black with focus as he gently reaffirms that Jon’s sure about this, and then the cool razor swipes across Jon’s cheek.

Jon’s heart lurches in his chest, a messy combination of nerves and gratefulness, but he doesn’t flinch, doesn’t move at all, and just watches Martin focus with gentle certaintly as the blade passes over his cheeks again and again in careful, confident strokes. His fingers whisper at Jon’s chin when he tilts up his head and swipes the blade carefully up the top of his throat, brow furrowed and tongue poking out of his lips in concentration.

Jon holds his breath, wills his heart to still, but it’s alright, with Martin it’s always alright. His hands are warm as they cup his cheeks, tilt him this way and that, thorough in their task, and his fingertips are gentle as they lift his chin and brush away foam and ghost over his throat. He never even comes close to nicking him, and Jon feels a great warmth unspooling in his chest, stinging his eyes.

“All done,” Martin finishes triumphantly, his face breaking into a grin as he hands Jon the towel again, lets him wipe off his own face.

There’s no coarse texture as the fabric touches his face, no itching or discomfort as it drags over his chin, and the steady drumbeat of wrongness that had pervaded him for weeks finally, finally dissipates, unblocking his lungs and releasing the tightness from his shoulders. He runs a hand over his chin, and finds a shy smile quickly taking over his face, affection and relief filling him up from the inside out and spilling onto his features.

“Thank you,” He breathes, and Martin matches his smile with one of his own, and nods, nothing but respect and affection in his eyes.

“Any time,” Martin says seriously, before reaching out to take Jon’s hand and slowly bringing it to his lips, giving Jon ample time to pull away. “You don’t have to struggle with this stuff alone,” He murmurs against Jon’s knuckles. “It’s easier together.”

“I suppose you’re right,” Jon’s response is quiet, and Martin kisses his hand then; gentle, and full of reverence. Jon finds that he could melt right into the floor and be happy for the rest of his life.

He reaches up to pull Martin down into a kiss, gentle and insistent and grateful, lacing his hands in his hair and sighing against his lips at the sensation, noting how nice it feels to kiss his boyfriend without his itching skin pressing at his thoughts.

The kiss stays chaste, and eventually Jon pulls back just enough to press their foreheads together, keeping his eyes closed, reveling in it. “Together, then.” He affirms, and Martin smiles.

“One way or another.”

#sorry this took forever but in my defense im insane so here we are #the magnus archives #tma #jonmartin #tma fic #jonmartin fic #jonbinary #nonbinary jonathan sims #gender dysphoria #YES it’s a shaving fic ok listen. listen. im 🥺#my writing #answered #set in the safehouse!!

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crippleprophet · 3 years

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hi, just wondering if you'd be willing to break down that quote you liked from biopolitics of disability? I felt like I understood the first half (ish) but I'm not really sure about the second.

Is the idea that research on disabled bodies is profitable, or that disabled people will become nondisabled and join the workforce, or is it arguing that like this research is done out of genuine care and concern for disabled people? I can't quite grasp it. obvs if you don't feel like answering I won't be a dick, just thought since your tags seemed enthusiastic you might have things you might wanna say about it.

absolutely, thank you for asking! it’s a somewhat dense quote that could easily be confusing if you don’t have familiarity with certain texts & concepts. i’ll just take it in sections, but i totally invite other commentary & insight! any emphasis is my own.

Rather than social pariahs, disabled people increasingly represent “research opportunities” in the sense that medical race sociologist Aihwa Ong means when she argues that “treating” ill and disabled Cambodian refugees in the United States increasingly “became the justification for state and local clinics to obtain much-needed funding from the federal government” (96).

historically, the goal of biomedical interventions in disability has been to eliminate non-normative bodies. the concept that all disabilities require medical intervention (often framed as an approach that is in opposition to creating an accessible society) is referred to as the medical model of disability. it argues that our bodies (i use the term broadly, inclusive of minds) need to be fixed and that eradicating disability is a good thing.

this quote expands on that prior scholarship and argues that biomedical research into disability exists not only to bring disabled bodies into the sphere of normalcy but also as a way for clinics to obtain funding—funding which only exists because of the government’s panic that people, especially immigrants, may become recipients of services like SSI and Medicaid due to disability.

Rather than a former era’s economic “burden,” disabled people have become objects of care in which enormous sectors of postcapitalist service economies are invested. In the terms of recent political economy, disability has been transformed into a target of neoliberal intervention strategies—a “hot” ticket item for potential research and policy funding schemes. Disabled people, once thrown out of the labor system on the basis of their lack of normative productivity in a competitive labor market, now find themselves “at hand for [the] purposes of accumulation at a later point in time.

to rephrase this in a very bitter and sarcastic way, disabled people used to be rejected from society because we aren’t as productive as abled people, but under neoliberal capitalism, we can be good little consumers just like everybody else! even initiatives that aim to increase disabled people’s autonomy and independence focus on us as consumers of disability-related services and our right to make financial decisions in a capitalist marketplace (link to a bit more on that here).

i’m not saying financial autonomy isn’t important—for many people, it’s the difference between life and death, and i’ll include a quote below with more perspective on that than i can provide. but under the current system, it results in corporations vying for disabled people’s money and watered-down activism arguing that businesses for which we are “objects of care” shouldn’t abuse us because then we won’t pay them.

in a broad political sense, it’s a reactionary rather than revolutionary mindset; sort of like how modern gay rights organizations in the US & other countries push for threatening politicians that they’ll lose the “gay vote” if they support a dangerous homophobic policy. it gives us a sort of power, but one that we only need because we’re living under a deeply broken system. but again, that’s not to say that financial independence isn’t vital for disabled people in the here and now, it just shouldn’t be the biggest we can dream. my goal for our people is liberation, not increased consumption.

“It is about time for revolution. We, people with disabilities, have to claim the decision making power and the financial means that are set aside by the taxpayer for disability policies. We have to gain control of our own lives, our own physical rehabilitation, our own personal assistance. We are the experts, we have to build up our own expertise and know-how. We don't need medical doctors, bureaucrats and social workers to decide what our needs are. We know what our needs are and how they can be fulfilled. We ask services that respond to our needs. We don't want to be the object, but the subject of these services.” —Huys Jos, “From Object of Care to Subject of Services,” Rethinking Care—From the Perspective of Disabled People (link to source pdf)

Put in the language of contemporary postmodern political theory, we might say that capitalism necessarily and always creates its own ‘other’” (Harvey, Neoliberalism 141). The historical production of others situates bodies in a position tantamount to un(der)explored geographies: they come to be recognized as formerly neglected sites now available for new opportunities of market extraction that fuels so much of the production end of neoliberal capitalism.

essentially, disabled bodies are Antarctica: left alone by the capitalist marketplace for a long time out of a vague fear and repulsion, but now everyone’s eying us, wondering what profit they can extract, and we aren’t protected nearly as much under global treaties. neoliberal capitalism demands constant expansion, constant profit growth, so instead of being rejected from the (literal and proverbial) marketplace, we’re catered to in a flimsy way that risks hiding the true state of discrimination we experience.

think of the recent erupting discussions around pride month merchandising and advertising; incredibly discriminatory, oppressive companies change their logos rainbow because they’ve realized lgbtq+ people are profitable. similarly, entire sectors of the market start salivating when you mention the US’s aging population because of all the assistive technology people will need. it’s not access as a human right, it’s access for a profit.

Such developments arrive, inevitably, with their own contradictions intact, but they also provide opportunities for rethinking disability as not only alternatively social, but also nonnormatively material, subject.

the social model of disability argues that disability is created by an inaccessible society; what is disabling is not, for example, someone’s paralysis which requires them to use a wheelchair but rather the fact that the apartment buildings in their area don’t have elevators, the streets don’t have curb cuts, and the stores don’t have automatic doors. this excerpt argues that not only is disability constructed through these social means, it also has a nonnormative materiality, in the sense of dialectical materialism; disabled people are uniquely affected by socioeconomic interactions in ways that affect the conditions of our lives.

#leftism #the biopolitics of disability #disability theory #disability studies #asks #long post

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rotationalsymmetry · 2 years

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Re: the c-punk discourse going around

Ok but also: when I say “healthy people don’t experience the same intensity of fatigue as chronically ill people do” that is a factual statement and it is based on my experience as a chronically ill spoonie who used to not be chronically ill.

When a person with physical disabilities and mental illness talks about a higher level of stigma and dismissal around mental illness — and people with both have talked about this, even if there’s also people with only mental illness who talk about it as well — that’s also coming from a place of personal experience and is also true.

I kind of feel like that’s being tossed aside here. That — this is not a statement of who overall has it worse — that this specific thing is actually different and not a thing people with all forms of disability experience to the same degree.

I kinda suspect what’s going on, because I’ve seen this in other contexts (specifically lesbians losing their shit over a study that shows bisexuals have it worse off in certain specific, measurable ways), is that some physically disabled people consciously or not have a mental oppression hierarchy where they have it strictly worse, or at least never less bad, in all respects compared to mentally ill people, and do not like that already existing hierarchy challenged. So they conflate “that hierarchy doesn’t exist” with “the exact opposite hierarchy also exists.” You also see that with people talking about gay or trans “ideologies” (as though heterosexuality and the gender binary aren’t indoctrinated into kids) and monogamous people flipping out at the possibility of polyamory completely replacing monogamy just because polyamorous people exist. As though both coexisting is impossible.

But maybe that’s uncharitable and what I’m seeing as “mentally ill people experience a higher level of dismissal and positive-thinking-ism from abled people” (a true and reasonable statement) gets read by some as “physically disabled people never experience this at all,” which is a reasonable thing to object to, I just think it’s not the most natural interpretation of the post in question. Given the absolutely overwhelming and pervasive degree to which mental illness is dismissed and minimized and treated as a choice or a character flaw by almost everyone, including many people who are themselves mentally ill. (Possibly more so for relatively common mental illnesses like depression, anxiety, and bipolar than idk schizophrenia or whatever, I’ve been trying to learn more but I’m still pretty ignorant about many of the more heavily stigmatized mental illnesses.) (goodness knows the personality disorders and addictions are treated primarily as character flaws.)

When I was seeking diagnosis for what I now understand to be CFS, I got a referral to a therapist for “depression” and when I said I was too tired to keep a weekly therapy appointment I got flat out ignored. Like “I’m your doctor, I found the solution, what are you complaining about?” Now granted the way doctors deal with my CFS post diagnosis isn’t optimal either, but CFS is kind of notorious for that, because it’s sort of double invisible: there generally aren’t signs the doctors (and the general public) can see with their own eyes, and there aren’t abnormal test results either. And to a large degree, when CFS patients get treated badly it’s precisely because doctors mistake our condition for being psychological in nature. And assume “psychological in nature” and “the only barrier is how you’re thinking about it, so you could do all those things you’re currently not doing if you just decided you could” are 100% the same thing.

I’m inclined to assume a lot of physically disabled people are just as prone to being dismissive of mental illness as the general population, because why wouldn’t they be? So are a lot of people who are themselves mentally ill. People kind of suck at believing in things we can’t see.

fundamentally this argument should be about “is mental illness stigmatized and minimized and indeed marginalized within the disability community as a whole and what do we do about it” and not, essentially, “are mentally ill people really disabled though?” which is what “does c-punk include mentally ill people?” is functionally code for.

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secretlyatargaryen · 4 years

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I’ve seen some posts about Toph’s “internalized misogyny” and zero acknowledgements that Toph is a disabled girl and that that entirely informs her performance of gender. Toph’s relationship to femininity is also informed by her parents’ emotional abuse, because as a wealthy girl whose parents saw her as helpless because of her disability, she was expected to be delicate and feminine and a “lady” and seen as capable of little else. She specifically says that she chose to leave polite society and “proper” behavior behind, not because she thinks being a girl is weak or stupid but because she was stifled by the life her parents wanted her to lead, a life where she had no say. She does clash with Katara, one of the most feminine characters, and often seems more comfortable with the boys in the group, but her conflict with Katara is over her difficulty in accepting help from others more than anything, not about a disdain for femininity. She chafes at Katara’s mothering behavior but also clearly misses her own mother, and wishes that her mother, in particular, could see and appreciate her for who she truly is.

If we want to see how Toph views femininity, the best place to look is in the episode “Tales of Ba Sing Se.” Katara and Toph’s segment is short and exists mostly as a fun little filler, but it does tell us some very interesting things about how Toph views herself as a disabled girl. This segment spoke to me in particular as a woman with a visual impairment who struggled similarly with performative femininity as a girl. My aunt also went blind young and I see a lot of her in Toph as well.

The segment begins by poking fun at Toph as a “one of the boys” type of girl who doesn’t think she needs to clean herself up, and Katara is positioned as the “girly girl” whose idea of fun is a spa day. Toph doesn’t think that sounds like fun and it’s easy to dismiss this as internalized misogyny, but putting aside the fact that disliking things associated with compulsory femininity is not the same thing as disliking women - women (and girls) should be allowed to not want to do certain things without being accused of internalized misogyny - Toph’s objection to this becomes less about the fact that it’s feminine when you actually pay attention to what she says.

Toph: The Fancy Lady Day Spa? [Sarcastically.] Sounds like my kinda place.

Katara: Are you ready for some serious pampering?

Toph: Sure, Katara, whatever you say. As long as they don't touch my feet.

The very next scene is Toph looking incredibly uncomfortable as the spa attendants touch her feet. This is played for laughs, because Toph is a girl who doesn’t care about getting her feet dirty, but remember that Toph’s feet are her way of interacting with the world. She specifically said that she didn’t want her feet touched, and was ignored. I’m not saying that Katara or anyone is awful for forcing this on her, I’m saying that this is simply just not something she is going to enjoy. She consents to it anyway because Katara is her friend, and she does genuinely end up enjoying the rest of the spa day and makes an effort because Katara wants her to.

Toph: Well, that wasn't so bad. I'm not usually into that stuff but I actually feel ... girly.

Katara: I'm glad. It's about time we did something fun together.

Cut to a shot of the two crossing a bridge over a creek. As they do, they pass three girls going the other direction. Shot cuts to Katara and Toph from behind the girls.

Girl with umbrella: Wow, great make-up.

Toph: Thanks.

Girl with umbrella: For a clown!

The three girls laugh, Toph's smile is replaced by a frown as she and Katara stop walking. Katara puts her arm over Toph's shoulder, attempting to console her.

This scene actually made me go still when I watched it because I don’t think I’ve ever seen my experience with makeup addressed in a show like this. Toph admits that this is not something she is used to but she does enjoy feeling “girly” for once, and she also enjoys being complemented on her appearance, until she realizes that she’s being made fun of. This is when we see a side of Toph that we are rarely privy to, the more vulnerable side of her who can be hurt by the words of others. Specifically, a group of older girls. This tells us that despite Toph’s choice to discard compulsory femininity, underneath there is a deep insecurity at her ability to measure up.

And maybe you can’t realize this unless you actually have lived with a visual impairment, but what this scene highlights is that Toph can’t actually see what she looks like, with or without makeup. Being made up like this is a privilege for her, and one she can only experience through other people. So she can be happy about it when she’s with her friend, or when other girls compliment her, but when other girls insult her, she feels deeply the rejection. She can’t feel empowered the way that I see people talk about makeup culture being empowering, because she can only view herself through the eyes of others. I’m not saying that people with visual impairments can’t ever enjoy makeup or can’t wear it for themselves, and I myself enjoy makeup, but I also specifically relate to Toph’s feelings about it and how hard it is for her.

Katara: Don't listen to them, let's just keep walking.

Shot cuts to the face of Star, who is one of the three girls.

Star: I think she looks cute. Like that time we put a sweater on your pet poodle monkey.

Third girl: Good one, Star.

Katara: [Angrily.] Let's go, Toph.

This is just...so awfully dehumanizing. Anyone who sees Toph can immediately tell that she is visibly disabled, that she’s different. She can’t pass as able bodied and her performance of femininity reflects that. Even when she is made up and looking hyper-feminine, it’s obvious that this isn’t how she looks all the time. It’s also obvious that she didn’t do her own makeup as she has a very “professionally done” look in this scene. The girls who pick on Toph do so because she’s a very obvious target, a disabled girl who is clearly uncertain about her performance of femininity.

Katara: Those girls don't know what they're talking about.

Toph: It's okay. One of the good things about being blind is I don't have to waste my time worrying about appearance. [Cut to a close-up of Toph's face.] I don't care what I look like. I'm not looking for anyone's approval. I know who I am. [She stops walking, and she cries a bit.]

Katara: That's what I really admire about you, Toph. You're so strong, and confident, and self-assured. [Toph sniffs.] And I know it doesn't matter, but ... [Keeps her palm on Toph's shoulder.] You're really pretty.

Toph: [Turning to Katara, smiling.] I am?

Katara: Yeah, you are.

Toph: I'd return the compliment, but I have no idea what you look like. [Katara laughs.] Thank you, Katara.

The segment ends not with Toph rejecting the spa day or femininity, but an acknowledgment of both her strength in choosing to be her own person and her vulnerability because Toph is, at the end of the day, a girl, who has lived all her life with the pressures of compulsory femininity, pressures that for most of her life were imposed upon her without any say, because her parents treated her like she had no say in her own life. Toph also is happy to be called pretty by Katara, and makes a joke about not being able to return the compliment, a reminder that “pretty” is something that can’t mean the same thing to Toph as it does to other people because she can’t see. Toph isn’t going to experience being a girl the same way that other people do. And that’s okay.

#avatar the last airbender #atla #toph #atla meta #toph beifong #ableism #misogyny #tales of ba sing se #katara

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whyqueerbaitingisbad · 3 years

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movies & shows

cracks knuckles* alright this is going to be more of a rant than an analysis because i’m basing this on both my research, but also how it felt to personally be baited by these shows. there are obviously more pieces of bad (almost every horror movie) and good ones but these are the ones i’ve watched.

please keep in mind that i am but one queer and everyone has different opinions.

Supernatural (CW) 2005

This show is 15 years old and just ended. From season 5 till 15, there has been tension between two of the lead characters. They were constantly shipped together and not only did the entire fandom know about this ship but so did almost all of Tumblr. On top of that, the actors and show runners knew about it as well. Which is why it makes it ridiculous that it was constantly pushed aside while the romantic coding kept happening, even after show runners dismissed it as being intentional. The Destiel (Dean x Cas) case has been going on for years, and as the show came to its end, many fans had hope. But N O P E. Instead, we got a love confession from Cas where Dean looked like he was near constipated and the Cas was killed and sent into a fiery place that was not hell but s u p e r h e l l.

… w hy.

Sherlock (BBC) 2010

Just like Supernatural, this show was renown on Tumblr for not only how good it was, but its hinting at a potential relationship between Sherlock Holmes and John Watson. But again, like Supernatural, the intentional tension between the two characters was denied by producers. This caused an uproar within the fandom, and even left some people believing that, after the last season aired, it had been a joke and the producers were hiding a “secret, unaired season” because they had felt so robbed by this show that had implied something and denied it.

The 100 (CW) 2014

We got lesbians. We got background gays. We were happy. Then, all of a sudden, one of them is killed for no reason. Did it advance the plot? No. Was she fighting and died in battle? lol no. She was doing literally nothing and got shot and died. And then the producers kept bringing her back once a season in the form of a ghost or illusion because why? Because she was a fan favourite queer character. ✨bury your gays and sparingly bring them back for profit anyone?✨

Voltron: Legendary Defender (Netflix) 2016

*deep breathe* This one is a special disaster. Not only was there romantic tension and romantically coded scenes for 7 seasons, but producers, voice actors and artists working on the show repeatedly said “don’t worry klance (Keith x Lance) shippers, you’ll be happy”

. … w h e r e??? You code one of their scenes with a sunset in the background while they talk about love and then one of them goes on a date with someone who has declined his advances for 7 seasons but now in season 8 decides to do a full 180. Not only that, but you announce at a Comic Con (a convention) that a character is gay and has a fiancé, only to kill off the fiancé and never make it explicit in the show except at the last second of the last episode where he marries a no name character.

Personally, i’d like to say a big fuck you to the show that strung me along for 2 years and never stopped saying we’d be happy to then pull the rug out from under us and call us crazy for thinking anything from the past 8 seasons was intentional.

Scooby-Doo (2002)

While not being outwardly queerbaiting, this movie’s filmmaker has just revealed some shocking news, which wasn’t at all shocking to the gays who had watched this movie over the years. In July of 2020, James Gunn, the filmmaker of Scooby-Doo, revealed in a podcast that, initially, Velma was explicitly gay in his script, but then the studio watered it down until it became nothing. This isn’t an example of baiting as much as it is changing a character’s initial design to “better fit an audience”. The worst part of all this is that with Velma’s character having been written with a l i t t l e queer subtext, people had been theorizing about if since the movie came out, but were always yelled at by the internet for “imagining something that isn’t there”. But now, even with it being said that the initial point was for her to be gay, people have no objections to still refusing to accept it. Why?? So we can’t get the subtext gays OR the confirmed gays?? Make it make sense.

Brooklyn 99 (NBC) 2013

To have the queer characters firstly introduced without mentioning their sexualities and have it brought up naturally was so goddamn nice to see, because no one does a big deal about it unless they ask for that. This show is amazing in general but the way they show their queer characters is *chefs kiss*.

She-ra and the Princesses of Power (Netflix) 2018

This. Show. My heart SOARS. It's just a remake of an old show so absolutely nothing was ever expected, but then it was sprinkled in and ENDED WITH A BANG. And it was so beautiful and real to see the struggle of two friends who care for each other and want to be together but have different visions of the world fall in love. And they also had characters with disabilities, a non-binary character and jUST SUCH A GOOD SHOW.

Kipo and The Age of Wonderbeasts (Netflix) 2020

This is a case where you go into it not expecting anything and are BLOWN AWAY by the bare minimum. And not because it’s bad!! It's mind blowing because this is the simple representation we need!! Not something over the top, but an every day relationship. It’s just two boys falling in love and going on dates and being nervous around each other, yet i was so stunned. Because it’s not shown enough. I should not be this excited over something that should be this normal. 10/10 though this show is so good for all kinds of representation.

Steven Universe (Cartoon Network) 2013

This show did so much for queer representation with its general message of loving everyone and loving who you want. Especially since it was aired on Cartoon Network, a channel for kids, it was able to help normalize something so looked down upon in some circles. It made it easy to watch for s o m e people because it's a cartoon but it's so beautiful to see these ladies so in love with each other, both platonically and romantically and we see them have a family dynamic that isn’t a “nuclear family”. Rebecca Sugar (creator) really said “lemme just break all stereotypes real quick”.

Adventure Time (Cartoon Network) 2010

It's the “knowing a fanbase shipped something so hard that the creators made it canon” for me. This relationship had been theorized by fans for years, but it had never been explicit in the show. When the finale episode came out and the two shared a kiss, it was a moment of celebration. The producer of the show said that it had not really been planned but when the episode was being made, the choice of what happened was given to one of the artists (bless your soul Hanna K. Nyströmthe). And as the show releases little bonus episodes, its latest was centered around Marceline and Bubblegum and their relationship. AND WE LOVE TO SEE OUR DOMESTIC LESBIANS BEING HAPPY AND IN LOVE.

Yuri on Ice!!! (anime) 2016

The fact that an A N I M E gave us a love story between two men is mind boggling and it makes me so happy!! Especially because it's a Japanese show and they’re very conservative about these things just makes it more emotional. The creators said they wanted to make the anime take place in a world where gay/straight isn’t a thing, it’s just love (ladies, you’re going to make me cry). So as the weekly episodes came out and fans start speculating, THEY GAVE US THE LAST FEW EPISODES FULL OF ROMANCE AND EMOTIONAL SCENES BETWEEN THE TWO AND THEN THEY GET R I N GS?!???!! You watch for the figure skating, you stay for the figure skaters that are in love.

Shadowhunters (Freeform) 2016

*insert me being frustrated that the actors are straight so we can move on from that disappointment*

This show really said “let’s name a whole episode after this couple because they deserve it”. But seriously, they gave us two characters whose entire plot does not center around their sexualities while still showing us the differences in a relationship between someone experienced and someone new at this. They were both powerful and amazing characters apart from each other, with their own story lines and goals but they loved each other so much omgs. SO MUCH.

It was so great to watch.

Love, Simon (2018)

There’s a lot of disagreement on whether this movie is good representation or not. However, we need to take into consideration that this was Hollywood’s first movie with a main character that was gay, where the story’s focus was on Simon’s love story. The biggest problem, for me at least, was that the actor playing Simon is a straight man and not queer. My problem is not with him, but the fact that there are other actors that are gay and that could have played Simon just as well. (the love interested was however played by a queer actor so ✨progress✨)

All in all, this movie does represent what a lot of queer kids have to go through: being outed at school, how they then come out, the bullying and doubt they go through.

The book is also really good.

Call Me By Your Name (2018)

This movie is so aesthetically pleasing and was able to capture the confusion and heartbreak felt by a boy who’s struggling with his own feelings towards a man. His inner conflict and joy and l o v e he feels but doesn’t know how to deal with is so well communicated through the screen and just breaks your heart because it feels so real.

But again, they could’ve gotten gay actors to play gay characters…

through having this list here, i want to show you that it’s not hard for creators to give good queer representation. the LGBTQ+ community isn’t asking for much, we just want to be well represented on screen as just a regular character, not some token queer kid there for the diversity points. having been exposed to so much queerbaiting and just not seeing any representation on screen, i always get over-excited when i see a queer character, and that’s not how it should be. it should be a normal thing, something you can find in most pieces of media, just like there’s a straight white cisgender person in everything.

and they seriously need to start casting queer actors for queer characters...

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thecagedsong · 3 years

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Forgotten Light: Chapter 11: Bonding

A/N Eight days until doomsday for me. Enjoy this. Mostly character building. Probably longer than it should be, but I think this is the most time they spend together the whole story. It had to happen somewhere.

1 / 2 / 3 / 4 / 5 / 6 / 7 / 8 / 9 / 10 / 11

Chapter 11: Bonding

Kendra woke to someone picking her up gently.

“Shh, you fell asleep. I’m just taking you to your bed so you don’t wake up sore.” Ronodin said as she blinked her eyes open. She was cradled securely in his arms.

“No, I can walk,” Kendra insisted, starting to wiggle free.

“You’re so stubborn, just go back to sleep,” he encouraged gripping her tighter.

“Put me down,” she demanded.

Ronodin smiled cheekily, “What if I like holding my fiancée? Putting her down sounds like a favor.”

Kendra flushed and folded her arms, looking away from him. As much as she didn’t want to be carried, she didn’t want any part of Ronodin’s favors either. She wanted to protest more, but there wasn’t a point, he was too strong and wasn’t letting go of her.

Unless…Kendra rapidly unclenched the mental fist she had over her brightness. Ronodin stumbled and dropped her on her rump.

“You did that to yourself,” Ronodin said.

“I would have been standing on my own if someone had let me go when I asked,” she said, standing up and stretching. “Good thing I put carpets in this place.” Because it was impolite to blind people, she dimmed her light once again, pulling back the showcase of her magic. She felt a pang inside, like a muscle that didn’t want to flex, but she did it anyway, and the feeling disappeared.

“I’m guessing you don’t feel tired anymore?”

Kendra shook her head, “That was a good wakeup call. How did your errand go?”

“It went —what is that thing you’re wearing?” he asked. The look of horror she had been imagining was better than she imagined. His nose scrunched!

“I don’t like my wardrobe,” she declared, “I wanted to be more covered up and add a bit of color. Do you like it?”

He went deadpan, “So, I’m guessing your sewing skills were forgotten along with everything else.”

“Yep,” she said, leading the way to the kitchen, “So now you have to take me shopping. In fact, I’ve decided you aren’t leaving again without me. I tried to draw the outside today, and I couldn’t. I haven’t seen the sky, or the sun, or the ocean, or the stars in my entire life. That needs to change, now.”

“All I hear is another favor,” he teased.

“Ronodin,” she warned, looking over her shoulder.

“Then I guess we’re just going to have to stay put a little longer.”

Kendra turned at the kitchen doorway and folded her arms, “Leaving this place is only a favor if I’m a prisoner. I know you’re trying to protect me, but I refuse to believe that out of everywhere in the world I could have hidden, I chose the one place that I would never breath fresh air.”

Ronodin studied her before sighing and massaging his forehead, “I wasn’t going to tell you this, but I couldn’t do what our host wanted. Your brother got in the way. He’s tracking me, trying to find you. I must have let too much of our relationship slip after you lost your memory. Out of everyone in your family, he’s the only one blaming me for your kidnapping. The rest are blaming your family’s usual enemies: dragons, sphinxes, and demons. It’s not only dangerous for you to go out, but I’m going to have to lay low for a while as well.”

“I’m not budging on this,” Kendra said forcing her chin up. “You will not leave me trapped in here again. It’s a prison cell, a nice one, but you said we bonded over the fact that my family was imprisoning innocent creatures. Why am I different than them?”

“It isn’t a prison,” Ronodin said, “For two reasons. One, you volunteered to come here. Two, it’s temporary. Like…quarantine. You just need to be kept apart from the world for a little while, and then you’ll get released and everything will be fine.”

“And when will the quarantine be over?” she asked.

“I’m working on faking your death,” Ronodin admitted, “Once we’re sure everyone believes you’re dead, we’ll be able to get out of here,” he snapped his fingers, “An idea. I’ll negotiate with you. We can also go out, once you craft an item strong enough to protect yourself.”

That reminded her. Her hand went to her neck, but she only felt the ruby pendant. She pulled the amulet forward, where it had fallen down her back.

“Like this?” Kendra asked. “I looked through the books for something protection based, but the closest thing was making your enemies weaken so you can escape.”

Ronodin took it into his hand, “Hmm, it’s very beginner. You really are back to the start. It’s a good start, certainly better than that nonsense sweater you’re wearing. Make something with this effect, but a hundred times stronger, and we can go anywhere you like.”

“Great,” she grumbled, taking the amulet back, then taking it off and tossing it on the counter. “It’s not doing anything, why bother?”

“It’s not doing anything because I’m not your enemy,” Ronodin teased. “You keyed it into those who wish to harm you in the immediate vicinity. That’s an extremely vague idea of enemies.”

“How should I define enemies?” Kendra asked.

Ronodin smiled, “Anyone who prevents you from achieving your goal.”

“And if my goal is to go outside?”

His smiled turned sharper, somehow more genuine and far more dangerous, “Make something you can wear that will disable me, then we can talk.”

“Break the kneecaps, got it.”

Ronodin laughed. Kendra glared.

“Keep laughing like that and I won’t wait to create a magical object to do it for me,” she threatened. “You literally asked for it.”

“No, it’s nothing,” Ronodin gave a half smile, “But we really are back to square one. It seems you really do use threats of violence as flirting at the start of every courtship.”

“Must be difficult for you, since as far as I know, that’s also how I start off all relationships with my mortal enemies,” she said, getting up and making tea. He was being ridiculous again, the only thing to do was walk away.

“You are quite the trial,” Ronodin said, quietly, and her ears strained to pick it up, “But worth every second of it.”

When the kettle rang, he got up and made his own tea. On the one hand, she was glad he didn’t expect her to serve him, on the other hand, the kitchen was small. They kept brushing hands and sides, and there wasn’t really anything Kendra could do. His hands settled on her hips to move her aside, and she jumped.

“Just getting the honey,” he said innocently. She glared, and he held up his hands, “I’m done messing with you for now. I saw you were reading a different book in the library, what was this one about?”

“Well, the library is rather limited,” Kendra said, settling back with her tea. “I can’t read most of the books. But while the first one was about the Fair Folk, this one is an autobiography of a woman hiding her life as a shadow charmer from her husband and children. I only got through the first couple of chapters, where she destroys wraiths with sea salt, removes the cursed talisman poisoning their village’s water, and a demon inducts her as a shadow charmer.”

“Lady Kuychia,” Ronodin said, nodding, “She convinced a High Fairy to enchant that amulet you’re wearing so that her husband could have protection while she was still learning her skills.”

“Shhush!” she said, “Don’t spoil anything.”

He then talked to her about some of her old favorite books she had forgotten to pack, and pointed out that it was Lady Kuychia’s family portrait that hung over the library fireplace.

Despite enjoying the company, she started to grow tired again.

“You better head to your room if you really don’t want me to carry you,” Ronodin said, picking up her teacup and taking it to the sink.

Kendra nodded and went to her room, motioning for Mendigo to follow her.

“Mendigo,” Kendra said, once she was in the silk robe she apparently liked to sleep in, “Don’t let Ronodin leave out the front door. Stop him and hold him until I get there. I meant it when I said I wasn’t going to be part of a cage anymore.”

Mendigo nodded.

“Go stand guard by the front door, the one I tried to have you open earlier today.”

Mendigo left, and Kendra sighed into her pillow. It wasn’t hard to understand what Old Kendra liked about Ronodin. Absolutely gorgeous, an edge of excitement, intelligence, and he’s crazy about her. But he was missing a lot of things too, respect for personal boundaries being the top of the list. Did she keep trying to find what Old Kendra had loved about him? Reclaim that part of her life that Old Kendra had valued beyond even her family?

There was a shout and some grumbling from Ronodin’s room. Wrapping herself tightly in her blanket, she pulled it free and went to her door, opening it and grinning at the irritated unicorn outside her door.

“Really hilarious,” Ronodin grumbled. He relaxed at her grin, “aside from the surprise psychic insanity attack, this was actually really well made. And pretty powerful. You might be closer to creating something to protect yourself than I thought.”

“I was pretty angry at everything when I painted it,” Kendra said, “Like I said, you aren’t allowed to leave me alone here again. I thought having this in your room would be a good reminder.”

“Not if I want to sleep without having an existential crisis and accompanying panic attack,” he said drily. “It’s covered now, and hidden. I wish you wouldn’t take it out on me when you’re the one that set it up this way.”

Kendra felt the familiar pang of guilt. She hadn’t thought the painting was that powerful. Ronodin seemed so good at magic, and she wasn’t even sure it worked. Panic attacks were serious and something she shouldn’t wish on anyone, much less her former fiancée trying to make the best of a terrible situation.

“Sorry,” she said, “I guess that was a little uncalled for. It didn’t seem that powerful to me. Why do you think I’m so much better at painting than the other things I used to craft?”

Ronodin shrugged, “Painting is a little more straightforward. You don’t have to worry about needles or knives, you were probably just able to focus better on the magic aspect than you were on your other projects. We’ll paint something together tomorrow. And you can give sewing and whittling another shot. Is there a reason Mendigo is at the front door?”

“Um, I told him to make sure no one bothered me in the night,” Kendra lied, “I guess he took that to mean guard the front door.”

“You’re lying,” Ronodin stated. “Want to try again?”

Kendra huffed, “Fine, I meant it when I said you aren’t leaving here without me again. He won’t let you leave without me, so don’t bother thinking about it.”

“Kendra,” Ronodin said, groaning, “If our host calls for me, I have to go.”

“Then I’ll go with you.”

“He doesn’t want to see you,” Ronodin shot back.

“Why not? I was fine when we negotiated this place, right?”

Ronodin shook his head, “Even when you dim yourself, your light is way to bright for him. He will either swallow your light, or you’ll make him angry. Call your puppet off.”

“No,” she said. “If I’m going to be a prisoner, so are you. I’ll wait outside the door or whatever, but I’m sick of being trapped.”

Ronodin’s face went blank, there was nothing in his eyes as he looked at her, mouth still, and Kendra drew back half a step. Ronodin took a deep breath and motion returned to his face, leaving Kendra unsure what she had just seen. “We’re both tired, and I don’t plan on being called away for a while yet. We will talk about this more later. Goodnight.”

Ronodin leaned forward, and Kendra hiked her blankets up over her mouth, glaring.

His lips pressed gently to her forehead, lingering, as she glared at him. Ronodin stepped back.

“Goodnight, my little caterpillar,” he teased, then walked back to his room.

Did other people with amnesia have this confusing a time with their boyfriends? How long before Ronodin gave up on her? Looking in the mirror, even with the sexy clothes, Kendra knew she wasn’t anywhere near the same league as Ronodin in the looks department. Did she want Ronodin to give up on her? From the sound of it, her family wanted her back, and her brother seemed like a pretty cool kid.

What did she owe a past she couldn’t remember?

The questions circled her mind like fluttering butterflies until she fell asleep.

“Okay, so what do you want to paint?” Ronodin asked.

“We can’t peek outside so I can figure out what the sky looks like?” Kendra checked. They were standing in front of their easels in the craft room.

Ronodin shook his head, “We’re laying low for the moment. We can visit a grotto after lunch, but that’s still enclosed in a cave.”

“Wait, really?” Kendra asked, beaming.

Ronodin nodded, “I’ve been thinking about it, and I think I can convince our host to let us out that far, and we’ll still be on their property, so your family won’t find us. If that’s what it takes for you to get your puppet to stand down, then we’ll do it.”

Kendra pounced on him with a hug, surprising both of them. She let go just as quickly, blushing, “Uh, thanks. Don’t read into that. I just really want to get out of here.”

“I wouldn’t dream of it,” Ronodin said with a smirk, “How about I paint an outside landscape? I remember what your home looks like. Then at least it will be a full picture for you to put together for your next painting.”

“I’d really like that,” Kendra said. “If you’re painting something for me, how about I paint something for you? An apology for the panic attack.”

“You are being quite generous this morning, dream of anything good?” Ronodin asked, getting in her face again. “Because if we’re taking requests, and you’re firm on only being able to paint things you’ve already seen. I want you to paint us.”

“Us?” Kendra asked, eyebrows drawing together.

Ronodin nodded, taking her hand still holding the pencil. Kendra tried not to wince. Even through her protective amulet, his hands still felt cold. She wanted to pull it back, but she was trying to be nice.

“How you see me, how you see yourself,” Ronodin said, “Paint it.”

“I’ll try,” she said doubtfully. She tried to tug her hand free, but he wouldn’t let it go, “Any requests on what effect or emotion I should try to work into it?” If she had to be able to create something strong enough to protect herself, it looked like her best bet would be painting the biggest ‘do not bother me’ spell she could on the back of a jacket. Which meant she had to get good.

He pulled her hand towards his mouth, and when he spoke, his lips brushed the backs of her fingers. “Uncontrollable lust.”

“What!” she yelled, yanking her hand back.

He laughed, “Poor, innocent caterpillar.”

“That’s it, you missed your chance,” Kendra said, turning her back on him, “I’m painting Mendigo, and this painting is going to fill the viewer with the insatiable desire to strangle unicorns named Ronodin.”

She already had her magic flowing into her pencil. Threading? It was kind of like threading a needle, and drawing it through the work, and she could thicken the thread with concentration.

“Can’t wait,” Ronodin said, putting his own pencil to canvas. It didn’t feel as satisfying, knowing he approved of her project. The desire to kill seemed a little extreme anyway, and she flinched away from it remembering her actual almost murder of her kinda boyfriend. Irritation with Ronodin it was then.

She started to sketch Mendigo, but ran into the issue of creation/affect dichotomy that the book warned her about. Looking at Mendigo wouldn’t inspire anyone to be irritated with Ronodin. Glancing sideways, she decided to stick to irritation, but she would have to paint him. Half body, because with the robe it was just more interesting to be able to focus on his face and torso. Arms folded, because hands were hard to draw.

“How about some music?” Ronodin offered. “Anything you’d like?”

She focused on her canvas, “I have literally never heard music before. Play anything.”

“Very well,” he said, pulling out a cell phone. Kendra first heard the click of a camera going off, and decided against saying something. If he wanted a picture, maybe they could print it out and hang it, add a little more personality to the room. A moment later, piano notes filled the air, something a little frenzied, and the violin joined in. She didn’t dislike it, but as the first song she ever heard, she didn’t have much to compare it to.

Threading her magic through her pencil, she drew the outlines she wanted. His know-it-all smirk, perfect hair, eyes. Was it weird to use unicorn blood for the eyes and teeth? It might be his own.

No, she had to focus, she had to get good at this. The black of his robe was the hardest part, and she ended up mixing it with reds and blues to get the full effect of how Kendra saw him. His skin tone was also difficult to mix with the limited colors, but she did it. Using one of her whittling knives, she made a pretty cool effect for the scar over his eyebrow.

Surprisingly, Ronodin stayed quiet the whole time. He didn’t tease her or try to mess with her. When she had to step back to let a layer dry, or go to the bathroom, he just smirked at her. Her eyes would drift to him for reference, and he would occasionally strike a pose, but he never said anything.

Maybe this was how they had bonded the first time, painting quietly to music. It didn’t help too much in this case because she painted with a thousand irritations in her brush, but if they were ever able to do this outside her prison cell, in the open air, it would probably be a different experience. Maybe next time she could try for companionship when she painted.

She thought she’d like that painting a lot more. Luckily, irritation with her lack of skill and being stuck with only negative emotions helped feed into the current project.

By the end, it wasn’t perfect, or even particularly good. People were hard, but she liked it. His smug smile said ‘kill me’, enough for her.

“You ready for the great reveal?” Ronodin asked, turning off the music.

“Sure,” Kendra said, “You probably figured it out, but it’s a lot easier to want to kill you while looking at your stupid face.” She took her canvas and showed it to him.

Ronodin scrutinized himself through her painting. “My ears look a little misshapen, and all I’m sensing is vague irritation with myself. Have a problem with killing intent?”

“Despite various actions to the contrary,” Kendra said, “I don’t actually want to kill you. So yeah, irritation. Can I see yours now?”

“It’s not my best work,” he said, picking up his own canvas, “You wouldn’t believe how long it’s been since I painted,” so that means they didn’t bond over painting, “but I hope this helps you put together what outside looks like.”

He turned it over and showed her a castle rising above a forest. The sky was a heart wrenching blue, and there had to be forty different shades of green in the trees. A couple of deer with wings glided over the treetops, beneath a sun that was paler than she imagined, its light fell gently. Two clouds gave variety to the sky, and the castle was done in blacks and grays that blended so well together, she couldn’t begin figuring out the shades. The stones and towers, the gate, and just barely she could make out a road that vanished under distant trees, horses racing across it. Two mountains rose in the distance, and a ravine far to the right.

“It’s beautiful,” she said reverently, going closer to the picture. “It’s absolutely beautiful. You’re amazing.”

“Yes, well, I try,” he said. Kendra looked, and he seemed flustered for a moment, then smirked, “I take it you like my gift?”

“A real gift this time?” Kendra asked dubiously.

She was expecting it, and was able to turn her cheek at the last moment as he pulled her close.

He pulled back, “Never.” And let her go.

“Try again after I’m out of this prison.”

“Quarantine,” he corrected.

“What am I infected with?” Kendra countered.

He shook his head, “We’re doing this so you don’t loose the self you found and were so proud of.”

Kendra didn’t know what to say to that.

Sorry I’m not me enough for you at the moment?

I’m sure I’ll be myself again eventually, don’t give up.

The only version of me I care about is the one that gets to sit in the sunlight.

She kept staring at the castle instead, her former home. The place where the other Kendra first became the person Ronodin loved.

Quietly, she asked, “I can really keep this?”

“Of course, Love,” Ronodin said, “I even left out the caged dragons for you, so you can remember the good parts more than the bad.”

Her head swiveled towards him, “This isn’t what it actually looks like?”

He blinked, “No, that’s what it looks like. But Dragons are a pain to draw, and most of them stay out of that particular direction anyway. They generally don’t like to be near the keep, nor the giant’s mountain behind it. I was just joking.”

“Oh,” she said, “That’s…okay. Mind if I take it to my room?”

“Be sure to let it finish drying,” Ronodin said, stepping aside.

Kendra hesitated at the door, “I’m not the Kendra you know. I don’t know how to be that Kendra. Are you sure it wouldn’t be better to just drop me off back home so I can figure things out from the beginning?”

“This is a beginning of sorts,” Ronodin mused. “But I know the truth of you. I know how confused you are right now, and how much trust you are putting in me. I am deeply aware of that.” He said. The sheer intensity of his gaze made her blush. “The day you understand truth of who you are in your bones, and who I am, that day will change everything. That day is worth waiting for. You are worth waiting for, whether you become exactly the woman I remember or not.”

Kendra blushed and fled. She went to her room, put the landscape against the wall, and put her hands over her flushing cheeks. Smoldering intensity was not a fair superpower! Did all unicorns have that? No, she didn’t really love him yet; he was just distracting! This was desperation, and loneliness, and—and she didn’t even know the names of her parents! She didn’t know what love was. Had she ever been in love before? When you loved someone, was Ronodin what it looked like?

They still had to go the grotto that afternoon.

She pulled back on the clothes she had arrived in, jeans, shirt, and added her poorly made cardigan. Feeling nice and covered up, she made her way to the kitchen for lunch.

“I changed my mind, let’s have lunch in the grotto,” Ronodin said, waving a basket full of sandwiches and chips in her direction as he filled up water bottles, “Remember to keep your light dim.”

Kendra frowned, but it wasn’t like she was going to complain about leaving this place.

He frowned at her, “Those clothes again?”

“You could always take me shopping,” she said, folding her arms. “Or let me use your phone for some online shopping.”

Ronodin chuckled, walking up to her, “Our host doesn’t exactly have a listed address. Come on,” he held out an arm, and Kendra weighed the pros and cons of accepting it. Pro: get out of here faster. Con: Ronodin being a jerk and violating her personal space.

“I’ll be on my best behavior,” Ronodin said, rolling his eyes.

Kendra took his arm, and watched him carefully as they approached the door. Mendigo moved to stop him, but Kendra said, “It’s alright. He’s allowed to leave with me. Watch our stuff, kay.” The puppet snapped back into guard position.

Ronodin took out a key from his pocket. A big, rusty thing, and fit it into the lock at the same time that he said something in language she didn’t understand.

“That’s not fair,” Kendra said as he turned the key. He didn’t respond, just opened the door and led her out into a hallway.

This part of the property was much less polished than her apartment. The stone was rougher, smoothed by time rather than professionally. She also knew instinctively that she would be frozen if it wasn’t for the ruby necklace. The corridor narrowed and widened randomly, and it was dark.

Of course, she probably could have brightened things by letting her own light shine, but out here it wouldn’t only be rude to Ronodin, it would also be rude to anyone else in the hallway. They passed by one person, who looked extremely gaunt and old, and he still flinched a little at her dim shining.

Ronodin led her up through twisty corridors with lots of forks. She tried to keep track, but would undoubtably be lost within minutes if Ronodin wasn’t here. Kendra started to smell saltwater, and pulled Ronodin along faster.

It was strange. If ten minutes ago you had asked her to describe and know the smell of saltwater, she wouldn’t have been able to. As soon as she smelled it though, it was like that synapse reconnected. Of course that was what saltwater smelled like.

“Watch the brightness,” Ronodin warned, but sped up with her. In her excitement, she had let her control slip. Kendra forced herself to slow down and keep her magic to herself.

They reached a rocky shore, the tide lapping in tiny waves. There was seaweed scattered below the waterline, a drum in the corner, and a bunch of random animal bones.

She put her hand into the water and sighed. Feeling it push and pull against her hand was amazing. Ronodin set up lunch behind her, but she focused on the sensations of right now. The feel of water, the look of the rounded grotto, the…dead fish. And now she had memorized what rotting fish smelled like.

Grossed out, she went back to Ronodin who offered her a napkin to dry her hands and some hand sanitizer. Then he snapped another photo of them on their picnic blanket.

“Why didn’t you set up closer to the drum?” Kendra asked. It looked much flatter and less rocky over there.

“Didn’t want to risk accidentally sounding it,” he said simply. He handed her a sandwich.

“What happens?”

“The sound would summon a dragon that would more than love to eat you.”

“Romantic.”

Ronodin looked amused. “You wanted elsewhere, I got you elsewhere. You’re going to have to be a little clearer when you want me to court you and when you don’t.”

Kendra blushed, “It’s complicated. I don’t know when I want you to court me either. I don’t think I want to be courted right now. There’s still so much I don’t know about myself.”

“Well, let’s find out a little more,” Ronodin said “What would make this romantic?”

Kendra blushed and looked at her food, “I don’t know, I’ve never been courted before. That’s the problem.” She took a bite.

“You knew enough to know that this place isn’t romantic, give it a try,” Ronodin encouraged.

“Give me a second to think then,” she said, then took another bite.

She finished her sandwich half, took a drink, and said. “Well, the rotting fish in the water wasn’t pleasant, that would need to go. So would the animal bones, and the threat of a deadly sea dragon eating me. Umm, fairy lights I guess? Something soft to help light this place. This blanket is okay, but having some pillows set up too would help.”

“Music?” Ronodin asked.

Kendra shook her head, “Not necessarily, the sound of the waves is calming and new. I’d be a little sad to have that drowned out by music. Of course, this place would be immediately topped by anyplace with sunlight. Like a mall.”

“A mall,” Ronodin deadpanned. “Do you even remember what a mall looks like? Secluded grotto beats mall every time, even with dragons and dead fish.”

“But we could buy clothes,” Kendra emphasized. “And knowing what I want and need, and spending time with me? Most romantic thing ever.” She had agreed with Lady Kuychia in that aspect. She thought she did, at least. Everything Kendra agreed with currently was subject to change.

“Noted,” Ronodin said drily. “A bit contradictory, but noted.”

“Prison cells make everything unromantic,” she declared.

“On that,” Ronodin said, “We agree completely. I’m glad that viewpoint hasn’t changed with your memory loss.”

Kendra hesitated, “Was my family really a bunch of jailers?”

Ronodin nodded, “They thought they had their reasons, but the reasons were nonsense and broke down once a reasonably intelligent teenager looked at them. They justified them by saying that the inhabitants were happier in cages than in the mortal world, while the continuous, active rebellion suggested that they aren’t. The prisons protected mortals from dangerous creatures. But mortals have their own protections, and who said that humans should be the ones in charge of everything? They’re doing a terrible job of it.

“And my favorite: keep them locked up because their nature is to harm. Humans have killed more things than all the dragons combined since the prisons were put up. You don’t hate the wolf for eating the deer. You don’t hate the ocean for crumbling the shore. Is the day better than the night? For somethings, like sunbathing and growing plants, but the night is better for seeing stars and sleeping. Not only is it morally wrong to keep sentient things in prison without hope of freedom, it throws the world out of balance.”

Kendra was quiet.

Ronodin looked at her, “Oh, your family isn’t terrible. Your brother is a nuisance, as most brothers are, but he believes he is doing the right thing and goes out of his way to cause as little harm as possible. They all do. It’s what their parents did, and their parents, for a very long time. They are wrong, not bad. Clearly, otherwise you wouldn’t have turned out the way you did.”

“What happens when you open all the prison cells?” Kendra asked. “You said the dragon here would love to eat me. I haven’t done anything at all to it. Could I convince the dragon not to eat me?”

“If you were skilled, and you were clever,” Ronodin said. “And by the Jirbarro’s standards, we did do something wrong: we entered his territory. By entering the hunting ground of a bear, you invite the bear to attack.”

“How many jails are there? Would the whole world become a hunting ground?”

Ronodin shrugged, “Don’t know. But I think it would be interesting and fair to find out.”

Kendra frowned, and was about to say something else, when the water in the grotto started splashing.

“Ah,” Ronodin said. He glanced at Kendra. “Be ready to be skilled and clever.”

“What!”

A dragon rose out of the water. Huge. Impossibly huge. Ridiculously large. Things that size shouldn’t be allowed, some law of biology had to be crying over this creature’s existence. Kendra’s muscles locked into place with fear.

“Ah, Ronodin, have you brought me a snack?” asked the dragon. It was like Kendra was hearing three voices, the dragon’s main voice, a voice that came as though from underwater, and its echo.

“No, just enjoying the scenery,” Ronodin said.

“Oh my,” Jirbarro said, completely ignoring Ronodin, “And such a unique snack too! Slayer of the Demon King, caretaker of wyrmroost, and handmaiden to the fairy queen herself. Rumor has it that she sent Celebrant back to his hole like wyrmling.” The dragon lowered its head to better look at her. “Tell me child, can you speak?”

Kendra focused on the ground infront of the dragon, “Please…back away.” It took will power, but she was able to grind out a single sentence. She was rather proud of it.

Jibarro shook his head, “Barely, and your reputation was growing so well. Eating you will be doing you a service. You can die with your legends, and no one has to know you were speechless.”

“I need her, our host has a special task for her,” Ronodin lied, “No feasting now.”

Kendra tried to pull her magic forward, massage it through her muscles, anything, but nothing worked. Ronodin needed her, he loved her, she wouldn’t make him watch her get eaten by a dragon.

Still her muscles refused to move.

Kendra thought about the picture Ronodin had painted of her childhood home. Thought of her brother. But it was remembering that pale orb that stuck in in her mind. She was not going to die without feeling sunlight.

There was a snap, and all the bindings holding her in place fell apart.

“Excuse me,” she said, “I am nobody’s dinner.”

Their attention riveted on her again.

“Does the kelp speak?” Jibarro asked.

“The human does,” Kendra said, and she let go of the hold she had on her light. She felt better as the grotto brightened to a dim room. “And I would like to request the curtesy of asking me to leave before eating for an imagined slight or because you think it would make yourself more important. We are both intelligent, let’s respect that.”

This time Ronodin’s mouth really did drop open, but she didn’t need to laugh at it, Jibarro was doing it for her.

“Such an entertaining mouse!” Jibarro said. He looked down at Ronodin, “Very well, now that her fear is gone, humans make far too paltry a snack. And as the mouse demands, you should leave before I change my mind. I can’t wait to see what insults she and her brother serve the mighty Celebrant next.”

Ronodin nodded, “We will accept your offer of leave.” Ronodin rolled up everything into the blanket he brought and together they left, hearing the splash of water behind them of Jibarro leaving as well.

Once they were back in the corridor, Kendra collapsed against the wall.

“I see your point,” Ronodin said casually, “The threat of being eaten by a dragon is a downer.”

“What was that?” Kendra asked.

“Dragon fear,” Ronodin said, “All dragons exude it, though some don’t by choice. It gets paired with their general mesmerizing ability, but your status as Fairy Kind protects your mind from that part. The resistance to fear seems to be something you needed to overcome on your own. Congrats are in order, I suppose.”

“He called me a lot of titles,” Kendra said. “How did he know? I don’t even know most of those.”

Ronodin shrugged, “Certain experiences and acts leave marks that those with eyes to see can perceive. You read about the Thrones of Power right?” Kendra nodded, “One of the prisons your family supported was the greater demon prison, Zzyzx. With a powerful sword and a hefty bit of absolute rage, you slew the previous holder of the Demon Crown. I wasn’t invited to that party, my family likely concerned I would side with the demons, but even I can see the mark on you from the experience.”

“I did that?” she asked, standing up. A whole four pages of the book had been devoted to the crowns as the pillars of magic that are virtually unlimited, held in check only by each other. “Wait, would you have sided with the demons?”

Ronodin shrugged, “I would have heard them out, I suppose. I didn’t have a preference one way or another how it turned out. I would have been fine.”

But would the rest of humanity? She didn’t know much about demons, but they seemed worse than the undead. The destruction of the undead seemed predicated on their nature, they have nothing but wanting, so even a sliver of life seems the greatest feast. Created by the weakness of living beings. Demons did it because it was fun, they wanted to, and because of a personal conviction that everyone is terrible and deserves to die if they aren’t strong enough to live. That’s why demons were on the morality triangle, and the undead on the creature triangle.

It was a silent walk back to her apartment.

They entered and Ronodin looked at her. “See what I mean about this place being dangerous? I have connections and favors down here that let me go without harm, but you don’t.” Mendigo was standing beside him.

Kendra thought about it, but that orb of sun stuck fast in her mind. “Yes, it is dangerous, but even with the danger and dead things, it was more than I’ve gotten in my life. Mendigo? My orders stand. Ronodin isn’t allowed to leave without me.”

Ronodin was livid. “Rather than let me go out and secure your freedom, you would trap us both here? Foolish doesn’t begin to cover you. Insane? Senile? Self-destructive? Call off your puppet.”

“No,” Kendra said, raising her chin, “You leave, you take me with you. I’ll do what I have to to stay alive. You said that everyone who got in the way of my goals was my enemy. Being faced with Dragon fear taught me that seeing the sunlight is a more important goal to me than just about anything else.”

The ‘even you’ went unsaid, and she wondered if Ronodin heard it as clearly as she meant it.

Ronodin closed his eyes and breathed. He seemed to be counting, and Kendra waited. He opened his eyes and was much calmer, “You have no idea what it means to have a goal more important than anything else,” he said, “You are acting like a child, but I am going to give us both one more chance to act reasonably. For every time you come with me, I obtain the right to leave by myself twice. Considering how infuriating you are making everything, this is an extremely generous offer.”

Kendra thought it over, “A one to one ratio, and you don’t have to take me above ground. A two-to-one ratio, and you have to take me above ground for it to count.”

“Fine,” he said, “One to one. But I’m tired after dealing with you, so please entertain yourself.”

“Mendigo,” Kendra said, “Ronodin may leave once without me. Come, we’re going to the library.”

She took five steps away, then stopped, “I’m sorry, but while I’m negotiating with the power to stop you from leaving, you’re negotiating with the power to leave me here forever. I can’t risk that.”

“Then maybe you should stop being such a brat, and I’d more inclined not to leave you here forever,” Ronodin said.

Kendra glanced back at him, but he wasn’t looking at her, instead doing something on his phone.

He doesn’t mean that. She made herself think, over and over. If only she believed it.

#Forgotten light #Kendra Sorenson #Ronodin #they go on a date of sorts #Fablehaven #Dragonwatch

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cyclopstm · 3 years

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DISABILITY && MENTAL HEALTH

This post will cover items such as disabilities, mental health, PTSD and trauma in relation to Scott. These are things which are either canon for him, or headcanons I want to pay more attention to on my blog.

I do not have any personal experience with any of the items I will address in this post, which means that most (if not all) of my information is gained through reading and research online. If there are items I missed out on or have described incorrectly, you may contact me about this to kindly help me figure out a new/better way to put things into words. It’s in no way my intention to upset anyone, or bring forth wrong information.

To me, it just feels like Scott is a good opportunity to improve the representation of characters and people who deal with visual impairment because the narrative that disability is binary caused that most blind characters in popular media have no vision at all. Blind characters in heroic roles like Daredevil, have powers that completely compensate for their blindness while blind people who don’t have these compensations are usually portrayed as helpless.

As a team leader and a superhero, Scott offers a good opportunity to include people who are visually impaired, yet often ignored or left out of the heroic narrative.

Needless to say, do NOT reblog this post && don’t interact with it if you’re not a RP blog.

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TABLE OF CONTENTS : 1. Scott’s brain trauma and injury 2. Scott’s PTSD during his youth 3. Symptoms and signs of PTSD for Scott 4. Scott is (legally) blind 5. Scott cannot distinguish colours 6. How Scott deals with his visual impairment 7. The X-Mansion and dealing with trauma 8. Additional notes

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1. SCOTT’S BRAIN TRAUMA AND INJURY When Scott was a young boy, he went on a travel with his parents and his little brother Alex. The family’s private jet was ambushed by an alien Shi’ar scouting ship. The boys lost their parents on that unfortunate day and in the crash, Scott took a hit to the head after his mutant powers manifested for the first time and allowed Scott to break his fall and allow him and Alex to survive. The head injury Scott suffered on that day would permanently disable the part of Scott’s brain which would have enabled him to control his optic blasts. Additionally, Scott (as well as Alex) suffered traumatic amnesia regarding the accident. Unlike his brother, Scott was forced to remain hospitalized for up to a year.

As a teenager, Scott began to suffer from severe headaches and he was sent to a specialist (Mr. Sinister in disguise) who provided him with lenses made of ruby-quartz. Scott’s mutant power erupted from his eyes as an uncontrollable blast of optic force and the only means to control it ever since have been the ruby-quartz lenses Sinister gave him. Sinister knew the lenses would help due to experiments and research he had been doing on the boy while Scott lived at the orphanage where Sinister had feigned being the owner.

2. SCOTT’S POST-TRAUMATIC STRESS DISORDER DURING HIS YOUTH After losing his parents and waking up alone at the hospital after the plane crash, Scott was placed in the State Home for Foundlings, an orphanage in Omaha (Nebraska) where he was subjected to batteries of tests and experiments by the orphanage’s owner, Mr. Milbury (alias, Mr. Sinister). He placed mental blocks on Scott and took on the role of ‘Lefty’, who was Scott’s roommate and bully at the orphanage. During his time spent at the orphanage, Scott was subjected to several occasions which would leave him traumatized — such as the attempt of one of the other orphaned boys at taking his own life, and Scott’s failed attempt at saving him. Any time anyone came close to adopting Scott, Sinister intervened.

At some point, Scott demolished a crane with his optic blast, by accident. He had saved a crowd of people by using his blast again to destroy the crane before it would crush the people, but they believed he was out to kill them and chased the young mutant boy. Scott woke the attention of a mutant criminal who sought to use Scott’s powers in his crimes, but abused the kid when Summers refused. At that time, he had also attracted the attention of Charles Xavier who tracked down Scott and took him in as the first of his team of X-Men...

3. SYMPTOMS OF SCOTT’S PTSD — Reliving the traumatic event (during his childhood) :: as a boy, Scott was fond of airplanes and dreamed of becoming a pilot himself one day. But when he was taken to an air show by one of the orphanage’s nurses, he had a violent traumatic reaction in the middle of the show, reciting things he otherwise doesn’t consciously remember. — Negative Thoughts and Feelings :: Scott often deals with feelings of anger, guilt, fear or numbness. He’s prone to blame himself for things going wrong on missions with the X-Men. When someone comes to pass, he’s quick to take up responsibility and the blame for it, and occasionally even deals with survivor’s guilt. Scott also feels cut off from his friends and family and hardly keeps much interest for day-to-day activities. He hardly does them to relax, but rather only when they become necessary. — Avoidance :: Scott feels like he has to keep busy at all times, he doesn’t want to think or talk about anything in relation to his past, feels emotionally cut off from his feelings, struggles to express his emotions or affection towards others and thus comes across as numb and cold and very serious and occasionally does risky things which could be self-destructive or reckless. He’s often the first in line to sacrifice himself for the X-Men not only because he’s their leader, but also because he has little to no value for his own life. — Disturbed sleep and lack of sleep. — Taking risks and hypervigilance. — Intrusive thoughts. — Nightmares. — Trust issues. — “No one understands.”-mentality. — The sense of never being at peace.

4. SCOTT IS (LEGALLY) BLIND While Scott was born with perfectly normal eyesight, and perfect vision, he no longer has the ability to see without his ruby-quartz lenses ever since his optic blasts came to manifest. Only ruby-quartz can keep the optic blasts under control, meaning that any other means of vision such as regular glasses or lenses would not be of help for Scott. Scott literally can’t see without his ruby-quartz shades. Opening his eyes would prove incredibly destructive to his nearest surroundings.

Someone who is completely blind can’t see any light or form. Of the people with eye disorders, only about 15% can see nothing at all. If you’re legally blind, you can still see, just not that clearly. Normal vision is 20/20. That means you can clearly see an object 20 feet away. If you’re legally blind, your vision is 20/200 or less in your beter eye or your field of vision is less than 20 degrees.

In addition to being unable to distinguish colors due to the red tint in his glasses, they also reduce his low-light vision, which means Scott deals with low vision.

5. SCOTT CANNOT DISTINGUISH COLOURS I’m not using the term colorblindless in this post for the main reason that Google gives me too many search results in relation to racism, and I do not intend to use a term that has a double meaning that could be taken the wrong way.

Scott’s ruby-quartz lenses cause him to see the world through a veil of red. The lenses are tinted in red which alters Scott’s general, every day perception of the world. He sees the world in shades of grey, white, black and red and can no longer distinguish any other colours. Maybe rather than ‘colourblindness’, Scott deals with something alike to monochromacy. Though, Scott’s monochromacy is perhaps not of a kind that has been officially diagnosed in real life cases before.

The comics and movies rarely acknowledge Scott’s eyesight aside from him claiming to have an ‘eye condition’ as an excuse for him to wear sunglasses all the time. Scott’s adaptations to being unable to distinguish different colours would be mostly rather subtle and maybe it doesn’t inherently add onto the story a comic book or movie wants to tell, but they shouldn’t be ignored in how I wish to bring Scott in my writing...

6. HOW SCOTT DEALS WITH HIS VISUAL IMPAIRMENT — High contrast text and browser extensions for reading. — Color coding his outfits. He labels them with what color they are and organizes his closet by items that go together. — As a prodigy at billiards, Scott has a special billiards set adjusted to his specific needs. — Large prints for letters, books, digital fonts, etc. — Increased brightness on any of his devices’ screens. — Assistance from ‘self-driving’ tech when flying the Blackbird or riding his motorcycle. He knows the majority of controls through muscle memory by now. — Assistive technology to improve contrast, especially at night. — Scott owns a touch-based Rubik’s Cube. — Help from his closest friends.

7. THE X-MANSION AND DEALING WITH TRAUMA Scott and Ororo both (among others), are hyper aware of the traumas some of their students have experienced. They recognize behaviours and reactions in trauma survivors because they have been in such a position themselves as well. They made sure the school has a clear set of rules and policies on the safety and comfort of students. The school faculty received training in mental health first aid, there’s places students can retreat to when they feel anxious or suffer from power meltdown.

People like Scott, Jean and Rogue would know how to handle students who have gone through different types of abuse. As trauma survivors themselves, they’d take extra steps to reassure students who have every reason to distrust adults. They would announce themselves when approaching students from behind, maintain wide personal space bubbles and refrain from initiating physical contact such as hugs or touching students without asking them first. They see there’s no use in raising your voice to the kids, and won’t tollerate any kind of jokes about trauma. Scott is rumoured to be very strict on the rules of the house concerning mental health.

8. ADDITIONAL NOTES While Scott is aware that there is no shame in any of what he deals with every day, he still keeps it under wraps a lot. He doesn’t ever want for his visual impairment or his trauma to become his only and main personality trait other people associate with him. This is why a lot of people may not even know that he is dealing with these things on the daily. He’s very subtle about everything and only those who get to know him better may begin to see and notice things which indicate that he’s disabled. Scott has grown so adjusted to living with his disabilities that they commonly no longer cause him trouble.

The only people who know Scott is visually impaired because he told them himself are Charles (confidant and father-figure), Jean (lover, the person he maybe trusts more than anyone else), Hank (as the resident scientist), Ororo (as his fellow team leader) and Emma Frost (as his therapist).

Scott has been able to take therapy sessions with Charles during his early years, and later on with Emma Frost. Jean has also helped him an incredibly great deal on coping with his trauma and PTSD, lack of self-esteem and dealing with his emotions and expressing them more openly.

To this day, Scott still suffers from migraines and occasional moments of memory loss. His brain injury does not always allow him to maintain or store knowledge accurately. His migraines are a result of his optic blast building up surplus energy. When Scott can’t use his optic blast regularly, he will build up a surplus energy which manifests into migraines.

#( META. )#( SAVED. )#tw ptsd #tw mental health #tw disability #tw trauma #tw abuse

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sirloozelite · 3 years

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A Review of SWTOR

So, not too long ago, a pair of friends (frenemies more like) of mine were playing SWTOR... and suffice to say they would not shut up about it. I’d always been aware of the game in the back of my mind, but it had never really appealed to me. MMO’s don’t really, as I would always be worried about random players sticking their nose in whilst I was trying to keep to myself.

Still, my friends would not shut up about it, and they kept recommending it to me, despite my internal aversion to it. Now, considering that they had both foolishly taken my advice on games to play in the past, I decided to return the favour and give SWTOR a chance.

And boy was I glad I did. Is SWTOR a good game? Yes... and no... and yes. It’s not perfect, it’s got problems, but it’s still a lot of fun, and I’m glad I’ve done at least one playthrough of the game.

Upon loading up I of course had to choose what storyline I wanted to follow. Since both of my buddies had gone Jedi Knight, (though I’d argue that a certain someone made their Jedi about as deplorable as Anakin) I decided to be the awkward one and went Sith Inquisitor instead, and honestly... I think I chose perfectly!

Oh and... for those interested... here is my Inquisitor:

His name is the Sixteenth Brother! What’s his backstory? Well... that depends on who you ask! Some say he’s the 16th sibling of a Zabrak family... others say he chose the name to hide his true one. Some even say he’s a time traveller from a distant future sent back in time after accidentally finding a Sith relic in his time. Whatever the truth is matters little. All that matters is that he was great fun to play as.

Oh and for the record, this review is based on a Free To Play experience and completion of the class storyline only. I’ve not touched the expansions yet, but intend to at some point. Any criticisms I have that are solved by subscribing are a moot point. Furthermore, it goes without saying but all of the below is my own opinions of the game. Doesn’t make them right or wrong.

The Good

There are many good things about SWTOR, almost too many to name. That said, there are some things I’d like to highlight.

The Story

The first and foremost best thing about the game is of course, the story. Being a Bioware written game created at the same time as the Mass Effect trilogy, I expected a good story... and I was not disappointed by the tale of the Sith Inquisitor. It was the standard tale of a protagonist coming from lowly origins, in this case a slave, and advancing up the ladder of society. Nothing too revolutionary, but add in the Sith and the Empire and it was made all the more better. Frequently, poor 16th Bro would get hounded for being an alien, and each and every time he’d beat the odds, and then usually show mercy to those who had insulted him. (I played him mostly light side... though there were a few times I surrendered to the dark and zapped people)

The world building within the story was also top notch. Plenty of detail is hidden away in the codex, much like Mass Effect, but that didn’t mean there wasn’t stuff in the actual gameplay and story as well. I’d never really been a legends fan, and whilst I’m still not, I do see why a lot of people love these sorts of stories. I was invested, and that’s what mattered.

Outside of the Sith Inquisitor, the very fact that there are seven other unique storylines and classes to play, as well as heavy character customization and role play more than make the game worthy of revisiting. There is a little bit of something for everyone it seems.

The Characters

Another great strength of Bioware games is usually it’s characters, especially the protagonists companions. I can happily report that, at least for the Sith Inquisitor, the vast majority of the characters in the story were great.

The three standout characters outside of the Inquisitor to me were Khem Val, Ashara Zavros and Talos Drellik.

That’s not to say that Andronikos, Xalek, Zash and Thanaton weren’t good characters either, I just didn’t enjoy them as much as Khem, Ashara and Talos.

Each character felt like they had their own arc. Khem Val growing to accept you as a Master and true successor to Tulak Hord was great, even if he and 16th Bro were constantly disagreeing about 16th’s methods. Despite his dislike of the decisions, I still sided with him when the time came to choose who got to control his body for good.

Ashara going from “I’m a Jedi and I won’t go against my teachings!” to “Peace is a lie!” was good development as well. I understand that some people don’t like this character much, but she was my go to companion most of the time. She’s not quite a Sith, but not quite a Jedi either, and that made for a perfect companion for the 16th Brother, as he was hardly a model Sith either.

As for Talos... well... he’s an archaeologist and a historian... and I’ve got a degree in history... so of course I was going to love him! Plus he was eccentric as all hell and added a nice voice of humour to the crew. His personal story about him trying to find his old mentor and carry on his legacy was heartfelt too.

As for everyone else, I was invested in their characters, don’t get me wrong, just not as much as the others. Both Zash and Thanaton were good villains that I took pleasure in ending, and Andronikos and Xalek got their fair amount of use on the field and in the ship. Everyone was friends at the end after all.

The Voice Acting

The other good point I’d like to highlight is the voice acting, particularly that of the male Sith Inquisitor. I’ve heard people say the female voice is better, but for my experience the male Inquisitor was the perfect match of sass and sarcasm. It made every scene with him in enjoyable to watch. RPG games were a single protagonist can get a bit boring sometimes. Commander Shepard suffers from this in Mass Effect at times. I never got that feeling with the Inquisitor though. He was hilarious from the second he stepped off the shuttle on Korriban and sassed Overseer Harkun (who I totally zapped to death) to the moment he took his seat on the dark council with a surprised Pikachu look on his face.

So yeah... super credit to Euan Morton for making the Inquisitor the dark master of sass and sarcasm!

Outside of the Inquisitor, I can say that all the other VA’s did a great job too. I can’t think of any character that had particularly bad voice acting off the top of my head.

Other Good Stuff

Outside of the three things I mentioned, SWTOR also has plenty of content to offer for everyone. If you want to do main missions, sure! Side quests? Sure! Space combat missions? Yep! Whatever you fancy, it’s there. There is no shortage of content to enjoy for hours on end, even as a Free To Play player like I was.

The Bad

And now to most likely upset some people... sorry about that, but no game is perfect, and SWTOR has some flaws that could put people off playing it. This stuff is by no means a game breaking deal for me, but it did annoy me and I felt like it needed addressing.

The Game is Tedious

My biggest complaint is that at times, usually after an hour of playing, the game can become tedious and boring to play! There were times it felt like a chore honestly, and I hate saying that because SWTOR is a good game.

The main reason for it feeling so tedious though comes down to how you move around the maps. When you can, fast travel is your best friend and can save a lot of time, however, not everywhere has a fast travel point near it.

This is where speeders come into play. You can buy one for a reasonable amount of credits, and they are faster than walking for sure, but not by much.

The problem with the speeders is that it is so easy to get shot off of one by one of the random enemies you are trying to drive past (and believe me there are hundreds of them!) that is becomes aggravating to move around the map from objective to objective. Avoiding enemies isn’t hard for sure, but sometimes you have to go right past them, and after hours of fighting enemies it can get a bit tedious being shot off your speeder in one shot just because you didn’t want to waste time fighting an enemy. Once you hit your level cap, fighting random enemies is pointless after all.

Maybe that’s just me though. I’d personally make the speeders a bit more durable. One tiny shot shouldn’t disable your speeder. Heavy fire... sure! Doesn’t help that sometimes you can tank a bunch of shots on your speeder and escape without being knocked off, but then on another occasion you’ll be knocked off by a sneeze.

Either way, movement around the maps can get annoying as all hell, but at least the scenery is pretty.

The Planets

Now don’t get me wrong, I like all the planets I went to... mostly... and my issue isn’t with the planets in general.

It’s with how bloody long it takes to complete them all.

The Story Arc quest lines for each planet can take forever sometimes and they end up going on a bit too long if you ask me. Alderaan and Hoth are the two that come to my mind the most. It felt like I spent weeks on those planets driving back and forth between areas to do simple tasks for little reward. Plus the sheer number of side quests didn’t help. I stopped doing everything that wasn’t a story or Arc quest once I hit Hoth!

Don’t get me wrong, I like side quests for sure... I just don’t like them to drag on forever! In a lot of ways, SWTOR reminds me of Mass Effect Andromeda. That game too also had side quests that went on forever.

My one piece of advice to nay new players for SWTOR would be to ignore the side quests and focus solely on your class story quests and planet Arc quests instead. If you try and do everything, you’ll burn yourself out quickly. Unless you are a completionist of course. In that case go nuts! XD

Other Bad Stuff

Aside from my two big gripes above, which are honestly minor in reality, the only other issues I really have with the game are the boring side objectives in some missions. Nine times out of ten they equate to ‘kill a bunch of dudes’. They are easy enough to complete, as you’ll be killing things anyways, so you don’t really need to put any real thought into completing most of them. They just feel tacked on and rather pointless honestly.

The Ugly

And now the ugly stuff. This is stuff that is between good and bad. Bad as in they annoyed me, but good as in I understand why others like them or they improved over time.

The User Interface

Oh god the UI! When I first started the game it was so overwhelming! Pop-ups everywhere! Hundreds of tabs and side bars and tutorial boxes being spammed my way. It was not friendly to a new player who had literally just jumped in. If I hadn’t played games like Civ or XCOM in the past I might not have been able to cope with how much stuff was going on at once.

Luckily, after a few hours of play, I began to understand the UI a bit more and became comfortable with it. I knew what was where and what did what, as well as what I didn’t need. (any PvP stuff for example) Plus the ability to edit the interface to your own liking helped a lot as well, so it wasn’t a complete lost cause, just overwhelming at first.

Flashpoints and Heroic Missions

So, these missions are designed to be played with other players online, clearly. They can be done solo, but they take forever to do so. Endless hordes of high HP enemies, including even higher HP boss fights is not that entertaining to me, and thus very quickly became boring to me. Artificial difficulty in a way. Plus if you do die, it ain’t half a pain in the ass to get back to where you were, only to find that boss that had 5% health left when it killed you is now back to 100%.

I gave up doing these sorts of missions and have no intention of returning to them unfortunately, which is a shame as some of the flashpoints have actual important story content in them.

Still, if unlike me you actually have friends to help you with these, then I get why you like them, and more power to you. I just don’t enjoy them much.

The Soundtrack

And now to really upset some people. Look... I like John Williams music scores as much as the rest of the fandom does. That said, there were places in SWTOR where it showed up and really really did not work! It almost felt like the game was just spamming random iconic tracks that sort of fit the scene, but really didn’t.

The biggest one for me that didn’t work was the final duel against Darth Thanaton in the Dark Council Chambers. During the cutscene between the two fighting, the music started on ‘The Final Duel’ from ROTJ when they were fighting, and they suddenly it shifted to the theme from Padmés funeral when Thanaton was overpowered! I mean, I get what they were going for with the music, but the sudden shift between tracks was unceremonious and didn’t work. If they were going to use licensed movie music then they should have just chosen one track and stuck with it rather than jumping between two!

Furthermore, to me those themes were written for specific scenes in their respective movies, and thus were created to fit those scenes, not random SWTOR scenes. If anything, the entire scene should have had it’s own score written for it rather than just reuse movie tracks instead!

That said, whenever the game does use original music that isn’t from the movies, it’s fine! The ambient background for the planets is great, Alderaan’s especially, and I hated that planet! They clearly had the talent of music directors to write Star Wars sounding music, so I don’t fully get why they didn’t just go with original music all the way rather than just reuse John Williams music instead. I don’t know if they didn’t have enough money or something. If that was the case then I’d understand.

So yeah, the music is a 50/50 for me. The original music is great. The movie music is still great, it’s just not used right.

Other Ugly Stuff

WASD controls. They aren’t game breaking, but I’m not a great fan of them. They make my wrist hurt. I adapted, like I did with the UI, so it’s not really a big issue, but I know it could put one or two people off playing it.

Another minor gripe is a consequence of the game being an RPG within an MMO. Other players are running around, often doing the same objectives as you. They can steal your objectives before you, forcing you to wait around for them to respawn so you can do them yourselves. Luckily there is usually other stuff to do in the meantime, and the re-spawn timer is smallish, so it’s not a huge problem. Just an unfortunate consequence.

Conclusion

So... would I recommend playing SWTOR to people? Yes! I would. It’s a good game, even with it’s flaws. I had a lot of fun running through the Sith Inquisitor’s storyline, and I learnt a lot about the game for any future playthroughs I do. I know what to expect now and what to stay away from, so hopefully whatever class I choose to do next will be full of less annoying little things.

That said, considering how long it took me to do the Inquisitor’s story, I feel like I’m gonna need a serious break before I can play another class. I was almost burnt out when I finished the Inquisitor, and I’ve still got the two free expansions to go!

So yeah... all in all, SWTOR is a good game,. I’d recommend it, and I’m glad I gave it a fair chance. It’s not in my top 10, but it’s one to return to. :)

So, if you’ve ever thought about trying out SWTOR before but were apprehensive about it, then I’d encourage you to give it a shot. It is free after all! Unless you subscribe. But you can at least try it for free! Bonus I say! XD

#swtor

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writer-and-artist27 · 3 years

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An Unbent Person

Note: Even though I haven’t finished the movie Remaining Sense of Pain from Kara no Kyoukai as a result of my being triggered by the intro, Asagami Fujino has been lingering in my head lately. And since it’s your birthday, @withanina / Aqui, I wanted to revisit her in a way that both honors you as one of my best friends and that helps me process the complex character that Fujinon is.

I just hope I did Fujinon justice with this oneshot. I’m still trying to figure her out, even when she’s one of my best Archers in my Chaldea and I’ve been in a writing slump to the point of defaulting to S&S verse to try to get back something. But we’re still here and I’m rambling, so enough of that. I’ll just insert this song as a theme since Yuki Kaijura also composed Credens Justitiam for Madoka Magica after working with Type: MOON, and let’s go. The lyrics used for the song are taken from lyricstranslate.com. This story canonically takes place, I think, after the aforementioned Remaining Sense of Pain (possibly around Extra Chorus) and S&S 24, before Kannabi.

Happy Birthday, Aqui. Thank you for sticking with all my stories. I hope we’ll keep being friends for years to come.

---------------------

Growing up in Nagareboshi Café meant getting used to what other civilians would call “abnormal behaviors.” Or, maybe the better phrase was simply “not minding things out of the ordinary.” Whether it was the shinobi coming into the café with nothing but a few flicked fingers in my direction to ask for an order or the occasional call for a song by a tired voice from the bar area, I learned very quickly to take things as they were. After all, it was still the Narutoverse — a place where child soldiers were considered “common” of all things. Papa had lived in that very same scenario for years, and now my best friends were growing up in it.

It felt like death was inevitable, no matter where you were in this world, because it was made a “norm.” Ugh.

Thus, the least I could do was not judge and instead be as welcoming as possible. It was all I could do just to provide some levity in a world that couldn’t offer any.

It was with this mindset that I met her.

She could’ve blended into the crowd with her unassuming black and red spider lily-patterned kimono and long purple hair, but once she was gently walking past Mama’s figure in the front of the café and carefully making her way to a table in the corner of the building with her cane, I did my best to not stare. It wasn’t every day that someone came in with a cane in hand, and once she started gently tapping the cane against every object she came across while walking, it automatically clued me in that it was not my business to ask.

Someone with an apparent disability didn’t need extra attention drawn to them unless they needed it for a helping hand. Internally, I was very grateful, though, to see how some clientele and our own café servers stepped out of the way to let the lady slowly maneuver through the crowd with her cane, a few people even quietly moving their chairs out of the way to give her a clear path. It was such a stark contrast to how Vy’s old family at times gave one of my aunts far too much space, simply because of how emotionally stubborn and physically weak she was for reasons I never did understand even after being reborn. Family issues were family issues.

But for a second, my thoughts wandered to how things would have happened for the lady to come in the way she did. Anyone, of course, could use a cane. Everyone had their own reasons. But the cloudiness in her eyes — it said something about her cane usage. Aside from looking straight up at the sun for that direct UV light exposure, possibly impaired vision wasn’t something that just happened unless we were getting into the possibility of genetics, lifestyle choices, and/or eye strain and how eyes related to anime powers. The Sharingan was a notable example of the latter, where Canon Sauce went blind thanks to overusing his Mangekyo after fighting Danzo, and I did not want to think about Obi possibly dealing with the same consequences once his Sharingan activated.

Wait. No no no. I shook my head vigorously, clamping down on the urge to slap my cheeks as punishment. It wasn’t my place to speculate what happened to Nagareboshi Café’s newest customer, even if she was pretty and the empathy in me was screaming to help her. The right thing to do is give distance and let her come to me if she wants to, I mentally knocked my head against a library wall, much to Hisako’s raised eyebrow. Remember that, me.

How about a song to break the ice, then? Hisako suggested, eerily quiet with her arms crossed over her chest. Tomoe Mami’s theme? To stop the library knocking.

Oops. I glanced at the black and white keys underneath my fingertips and nodded to myself. You know, why not?

My Nobody beamed with pride. Much better!

I couldn’t help but agree. There was something about seeing that lady with her walking cane and cloudy red eyes sitting by herself at a table that reminded me of a yellow magical girl. A single yellow-themed, gun-wielding magical girl who went about fighting alone just to ensure some kind of future for herself. It was honestly sad to think about because her wish was “to live” and that was where it had landed her.

But the concept of “loneliness” was not one I could entertain forever. I knew I didn’t want to when I couldn’t unsee the white myself.

Thus, humming the first few lyrics to myself was a good distraction while it lasted. Plus it was a good starter for tapping my foot to get the rhythm before letting my hands play out the rest. The piano crooned softly with my thoughts, echoing the chords I wanted, and for once, I didn’t mind feeling my chakra start to float from the interaction. It felt like I didn’t have to hold my chakra back. This time, I let the music take me away in the hopes of letting my chakra play out as it should’ve been. Free, empathetic, and open.

The Sage of Six Paths might’ve been happy with the performance. I wanted to think that, at least, when playing the piano at that moment.

Solti ola i Amaliche cantia masa Estia…

E sonti tolda i Emalita cantia mia Distia…

A litia dista Somelite esta dia A ditto i della Filioche mio Solti tola Solti ola i Amaliche cantia masa estia E sonti tolda i Emalita cantia mia distia…

Alita della Maliche sonta dia Mia sonta della I testa mia Testi ola Solti ola…

Solti ola i Amaliche cantia mia Dia, dia...

By the time the last few keys faded into the air, I knew without opening my eyes that someone was sitting next to me on the piano bench. Miyako-bachan’s teachings were close to becoming second-hand nature to a point, but it didn’t stop me from squeaking a little when glancing over to find the very same lady I was thinking of at my right side.

Maybe I was too invested in remembering the first Heroine of Justice…

Even up close, it was obvious my newest visitor had gone through a lot at her age, with the little creases on her cheeks and the occasional white line of scarring crossing along what skin her kimono showed past the collar. Once she wrapped her red shawl tighter around her shoulders, hiding the scars with one hand while clutching the handle of her cane with the other, she slowly blinked in the vague direction of the piano. It took a moment before she went about turning her head towards me. Her gaze was unfocused, but still pointed my way. “Hello,” she said very quietly, her long purple hair brushing her shoulders with the greeting. “Are you the one who played the song just now?”

“Y-Yes,” I replied gently, nodding my head. “I am Hoshino Tomoko, your pianist for the day. Welcome to Nagareboshi Café, um…”

“Asagami,” the lady said, bowing her head in return. Her red eyes blinked again, as if focusing past the clouds in the irises, before she added, “Asagami Fujino,” with a small smile. “It was a beautiful song, Hoshino-san.”

“Thank you, Asagami-san,” I said respectfully in return. “Is there another song you would like me to play for you while you’re here?”

To my surprise, Asagami-san shook her head, her long purple hair swishing against her clothes enough to reflect the café lighting. It took an extra moment for me to realize she was wearing a black ribbon in her hair. “Not a song,” she said, voice all the more quiet in spite of her closeness. “I wanted to ask you something.” She blinked for a moment, her eyes narrowing in my direction in that small interval of time before widening minutely. “What were you thinking of when playing it? It was…” Asagami-san trailed off, turning her head back to looking at her lap as she gripped her cane. “It felt different. I never heard such a song like yours before.”

Oh. Uh. Just in case, I turned to the other person in the room. Hisako?

It didn’t even take a second for my Nobody to answer. Reliable as always. Yes, dear?

Chakra or no chakra explanation?

Hm. Hisako thoughtfully pushed her glasses up the bridge of her nose. Keep it simple. No chakra. Best to not add any confusing elements.

Alrighty. Simple and no chakra it is.

To Asagami-san, I admitted honestly, “I was actually thinking of you.”

Asagami-san raised her head in my direction so quickly, I would’ve thought she’d have given herself whiplash with how her neck turned. Her red eyes were still cloudy-looking, but they seemed to be shining with a newfound light of some sorts now. It felt like she was shocked. “Eh?” With that said, Asagami-san then lowered her head, no longer gazing in my direction but still exuding that same aura of surprise. “…Me?”

“Yes,” I continued, in spite of the growing blush no thanks to anxiety and embarrassment. “I-It looked like today is your first day here, so I just wanted to play something that made you feel welcomed—”

“No one has ever done that for me before,” Asagami-san interrupted, her voice one octave louder than before. Her knuckles were turning white against her already pale skin as she gripped her cane. “Not after…” She inhaled one long deep breath. “It was not painful.”

I took a deep breath too. “I didn’t mean for it to be,” I said softly.

Asagami-san gave me a small smile past the shoulder of her red shawl. “You seem to be a kind person, Hoshino-san.”

“I try to be, every day,” I said, doing my best to keep my voice from wobbling. This conversation was definitely starting to hit something heavy, and for once, it felt like I was doing something right and stepping into territory I couldn’t exactly parse out on my own. After all, it wasn’t every day a grown woman was relying on a teenager of all people. But the situation was happening, and there was no stopping it. “It’s what I was taught to do, and I want to keep doing it.” For the people I care for, for the people I lost, for myself, was left unsaid. “Everyone deserves a chance to feel safe and be themselves. I just help make the space for that, without pain and with as much kindness I can muster.”

Asagami-san said nothing for a while after that, merely tapping her cane against the pedals of the piano for a small moment. I did my best not to wince when one such tap happened on my foot, but by then, it seemed like Asagami-san was in her own thoughts. My bit of pain didn’t matter. Right now, something was up.

Did I say something wrong?

“…You can see,” Asagami-san said finally, her voice a bare wisp in the air, “life even without pain?”

As expected from a moment of silence — it sounded and felt like a loaded question. Still, I lifted my hands from the piano keys to place them into my lap, taking a breath to formulate my answer. There was no way I could leave this standing. “Maybe. Maybe not. I just know that life is full of many things, Asagami-san. Pain can be a part of it, but that’s not all there is to it. There’s the trees outside, the bright blue sky, the warm air, the food in the café, and the people that live here.” With the warmest smile I could make, I turned to her, even if a part of me could guess she wouldn’t fully see it. “It’s because of what happens in this life that I got to meet you, right?”

Asagami-san looked up in my direction again. Her red eyes were wider than before, letting in enough light to expose my reflection in the cloudy irises before the first visages of tears dotted the edges. “You…” her bottom lip quivered. “How can you say that, Hoshino-san? I-I…” Asagami-san shook her head vigorously, enough to jostle the black ribbon in her hair, making it crooked. “I’m not—”

Maybe I shouldn’t have shared. Maybe I was going too far, considering we were in the middle of the café and the privacy seals weren’t turned on and I needed to turn them on. But the words were leaving my lips before I could stop them, interrupting whatever thought Asagami-san was about to voice. “You’re fine, Asagami-san. I just wanted to play the song for you because I’ve been hurt before, and I don’t want anyone else to feel the same way when there’s so much more in the world to discover and enjoy.”

Asagami-san’s shoulders shook against her shawl, causing the red cloth to fall back and expose the barely hidden scars against the black collar of her kimono. “…I thought I couldn’t feel anything outside of pain. Not after Keita-san a-and Shiki-san.” Keita-san? Shiki-san? “But you—”

“I’m sorry if I overwhelmed you,” I said honestly, raising my hand for a moment before lowering it. Even if I was tempted to pat her back as a form of sympathy, from the way Asagami-san was hunching into herself, it wasn’t the best time to intrude on her personal space bubble. I made this bed, and I was going to lie in it even if I wasn’t sure of what was going on. “I put a lot in what I do. But I meant everything I said. And what I felt when I played the piano.”

It was at that very moment I saw a small droplet hit the edge of Asagami-san’s kimono sleeve. Oh. Oh dear. “Wh-why…” there was a dainty sniffle, “why didn’t I meet you sooner? If I knew you before, then—”

Screw it.

I reached over to gently rest my palm against the hand Asagami-san was using to grip her cane. “But you’re here, Asagami-san,” I said, feeling my smile wobble all the more at seeing more droplets fall onto Asagami-san’s kimono, creating dark wet circles in the black cloth. “You’re still here now. And I’m glad that you are.”

Asagami-san shuddered, her shawl barely covering her back with the gesture tilting her center of balance. “I-I feel like crying. It hurts. I-It all hurts. C-Can I… Can I cry?” For a grown woman, I was not expecting the childlike tone of wonder in her voice. “Hoshino-san, can I cry?”

My heart hurt. Something must’ve happened for her to react so much. Even then, I still curled my fingers so that they could brush against Asagami-san’s hand and hopefully relax her grip on her cane. Physical comfort was the least I could give after unearthing something so heavy. “Of course you can. That’s a part of what makes you human, Asagami-san. Crying is a part of what helps all of us be alive.”

The first sob I heard from her then sounded more like a relieved laugh than a cry for help. Even then, Asagami-san shrunk into her seat at the piano bench, purple hair shrouding her face all the while. I simply kept my palm against her knuckles, controlling my own breathing to not cry myself from the shared emotion.

“M-May I—” Asagami-san choked around another sob as her hand relaxed minutely under my grip, “May I come here again, Hoshino-san?”

“Yes,” I said faintly. “Of course. I wouldn’t say ‘no,’ Asagami-san. Feel free to visit Nagareboshi Café whenever you’d like. I’ll be here.”

It felt like a promise I couldn’t turn my back on. I wouldn’t.

---------------------

Long after Asagami-san left from the café closing for the day, I found myself letting go of the breath I was holding. Then a hand gently fell onto my hair.

“You okay, hime?” Papa whispered, patting my head for a moment before pulling me in for a side-hug. “Need anything?”

My lip quivered before I let go of my current inhibitions and wrapped my arms around his waist, converting the side-hug into a full-on hug. The fact that I was getting a faceful of his waist apron didn’t matter. Nor did the smell of what reminded me of day-old soda. No matter what, it was still Papa, and work was done. I could be selfish around him and it was okay. “M-More hugs, please, Papa.”

Papa laughed softly before resting a hand against my back and patting there too. “Alright. You did well, hime.”

“I-I followed your example, daddy,” I whispered back, finding my voice going back to Vy’s for just that moment. “Help others when you have the ability to.”

“And that, hime,” Papa replied wistfully and proudly, “is what makes your heart a good one. Just let me and Mama help you next time. You can’t do everything alone and we’re still here. We’ll play a full concert together when Asagami-san comes back.”

“Aye. Th-That’ll be nice.” If it meant one more wounded person could smile, that was enough for me. I didn’t have to shoulder everything. And one concert could possibly make one more day won from the dirty clutches of war. I’d just have to settle for that.

Maybe next time, Asagami-san could smile without tears in her eyes.

#birthday gift #writing #hoshino tomoko #asagami fujino #oneshot #happy birthday friend #happy birthday Aqui #withanina #friend things #long post #tw: trigger mention #implied blindness #kara no kyoukai #tw: long post #the sea and stars #hisako #yuki judai

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silvershears · 3 years

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Alright, listen. This book honks. And I want to talk about why. No, I'm not getting into the book review scene, but please indulge me.

I never had any intention of reading this book. I'll be up front with that.

A new coworker is a newish fantasy reader who, upon discovering that I am a long-time fantasy reader who also writes and has some vague publishing background, asked, "Would you read this book and tell me what you think? I haven't read it yet, but I'm curious to hear your opinion."

Sure. Why not. I was only 50 pages into the book I was reading at the time, so why not put that on pause and give this a go? This became infinitely more complicated by the fact that my new coworker is acquaintances with his wife, and then add in that I've met this author, had a bad interaction, and decided I never wanted to read his books. Nevertheless, I was determined to give it a go anyway, and I wavered for a while on whether to even include that background here.

Wasn't I already predisposed to not like this book? Perhaps. But this book was an excellent learning opportunity, if not a good story, and I think it's important for us all to approach books we don't like this way: Each time I ran hard up against my own disgust, I paused to ask myself why I felt that way. What was it about the story, the writing, the character, the plot, the world that made me react this way, and how did that interact with the author's intent?

First of all, a disclaimer: This will have spoilers. If you intended to check this book out, perhaps don't continue further until you've read it yourself. Maybe then come back and compare your experience to mine.

> The worldbuilding is based on two-dimensional lore.

The world is comprised of what appears to be three human races split along religious lines. The three sibling gods each have their own race of followers with some individuals inheriting the magical power of their god. One is a magic associated with air and water with a father/older brother god figure; the next is a mother/middle sister associated with fire and light; the third is a little brother associated with... the hard labor of forging? It's unclear what he originally stood for, but by the time the immense lore dumps are complete, we see the little brother's transformation from a highly skilled craftsperson who takes immense pleasure in crafting gifts to his siblings into a petty, angry god bent on chaos and destruction of his siblings' domains.

What brings on this transformation? The gift of a song.

He is so enraged that his siblings gave him a song instead of a physical item like he gave them that he goes into a rage, evicts himself from the metaphorical house, and goes to live in the bowels of the world where he can forge in peace. He goes on to create all the various fantasy creature races in the world like dragons, fae, constructs, shadow demons, etc.

And his name? Keos. He's the chaos god and his name is Keos. I can forgive a poor name here an there—perhaps he never said them out loud—but add in that the sister's light/fire magic is called lumen—y'know, like what lightbulbs are measured in—and I have concerns.

Naming problems aside, the entire world's history and the racial relations all stem from a god's immensely childish reaction to a gift. I am well aware that many deity lore can be goofy or based on overblown reactions to things, but it feels so thin and flimsy that to prop the whole world and its cultures on top of it could not stand.

> Ableism is pervasive in the culture.

The story starts off with a prologue, which, as a concept, is not inherently a problem, but it was my first clue that this was not the story for me. In this world, being disfigured in any way physically marks you as an agent of the chaos god. Either these agents are killed or ostracized in order to better mitigate any mischief and evil they may commit or bring to their community. We are immediately thrust into this intensely ableist world with the birth of a child missing a hand and part of a forearm. The parents are killed and the baby taken to the woods to die.

I hate it already.

The author, being the sort of person to review their own book, states in his lengthy review: "Whatever you do, don't think for a moment that I'm blind to the tropes I've chosen to use. They serve a purpose and are conscious choices."

If this is the case—that he's aware of his tropes and they are purposeful—he must also be aware of the statement he's making by having all disabled and disfigured be labeled as evil ne'er-do-wells. Because this story takes place almost entirely within the small town of Chaenbalu where these beliefs are rampant, we're lead to believe that this is the way the whole world works. We get one glimpse of the outside world where it mentions a larger prevalence of disabled and disfigured individuals, but it's so brief and not at all explored that our understanding of the world goes mostly unchanged.

Is this part of Call's subversion of tropes? Perhaps Chaenbalu is indeed a backwards town, holding on to old traditions that the rest of the world has left behind, but the characters are so isolated they wouldn't know—and therefore we don't know whether that's the case. Bad news: It's so distasteful that I'm not interested in reading more to find out if it's just Chaenbalu that's the issue. I'm so put off by the whole concept.

> Every female character is cardboard, and they all die.

Centered in Chaenbalu is the Academy, a school with two gendered factions: the witwomen and the Master Avatars. (You'll notice that the sexism starts right off the bat with the fact that Masters get capitalized but witwoman does not.) The witwomen are trained midwives and kidnappers, sent out into the world to collect children and bring them back to the Academy as a "reap" or class of new students. The students are told that their parents submitted them to the Academy's care in a boarding-school-type thing, but that's spoiled in the prologue as being untrue.

Unfortunately, we don’t get a chance to really explore what it is the witwomen are up to, or what any of the women are like. There is only one female character with any amount of on-screen time, and even that is negligible. She acts as nothing more than a plot device, which I’ll talk about later, functioning only as an object for the main character to lust after. Anytime she is described, it is with delicate detail paid to her soft, plump, pink lips, the breasts, the hips. At every turn, she’s sexualized—and perhaps that’s due to the main character’s gaze being the narration we receive, but even in the epilogue scene when our main character is not present, the author continues to describe her this way, so perhaps it’s not a function of the main character at all. She receives no further development than who her father is, what her body is like, and how much she dislikes those marked by Keos, aka, the disabled and disfigured.

The other witapprentices and witwomen appear for two scenes, and by the end of the book, they are all dead in the midst of an attack on the Academy that serves only to move the main character's story forward. Without this attack, he would never have a story worth telling in a book. Without their deaths, the attack would not have happened. And even the romantic interest is faux-killed in order to provoke a specific emotional reaction in the main character to move the character's development forward.

> The characters are shallow.

While I can't guarantee that this problem is due to the two-dimensional worldbuilding, I personally feel they're probably related. There are a couple of friend characters around and a mentor that are all lacking in development, but let me focus on the main character.

The male students train at the Academy with the goal of becoming avatars, and then later, Master Avatars. As avatars, they are expected to go out on secret missions to retrieve magical artifacts and, if the artifact is a "dark artifact,"—that is, if it's built to do harm to another person, and by lore belongs to Keos—murder its owner.

The main character is one such student, testing to become an avatar, and worse yet, if he doesn't pass his test this go-around, he'll never be able to become an avatar and he'll instead be relegated to steward status, taking care of the upkeep of the Academy. And of course, no one wants to be a steward! You'd be a servant to everyone, and where's the action-packed fun in that?

But our main character has a motivation even more powerful than the dread of being a steward: a girl. Not just any girl. The headmaster's daughter.

To be fair, this book is not advertised as a romance. Which is good, because it's not a romance. The main character has a deadly crush. He even has a promise ring forged, ready to give it to her when he passes his test and becomes an avatar. His love for this girl is so powerful for him that it's quite literally all he thinks about, but because she's the headmaster's daughter and is also a witapprentice, he hardly ever sees her, and the times we do get them in the same scene, it's plain this relationship will literally never work out.

She may not know about his missing half an arm thanks to a magical prosthetic, but it's clear she holds on to the old ableist traditions with positive glee and with the same strength as a hippo's jaw. While our main character pines after her and even eventually when they are engaged, we are telegraphed again and again that it will never last, that she is a horrible person, and that she will never accept him with his missing hand. We know this and we watch the main character acknowledge this so many times that it is a failing of the plot that there is even a chance for her to betray him.

Which she does, of course.

This goes back to the author's assertion that he's aware of his tropes and to trust him in his plan. He sets up a male lead and throws the only female character at him, establishing the possibility for a romance—a common trope—and molds that romance into the core motivation for the male lead. She is his reason for wanting to succeed, and he waxes poetical about how terrible it would be if A) someone else got her first, or B) he didn't pass the test and he couldn't be with her. They must fall in love, yes? The author also tries to convince us that she is a likeable person, a person worthy of his devotion, all the while foreshadowing with a heavy hand that she's, frankly, ableist, racist, and a terrible person who is not at all worthy of his devotion. Ah-hah, a subversion! They are not at all meant to be together!

The problem is that she repeatedly shows her hand as a garbage human in front of him an innumerable amount. We the audience dislike her so intensely that to have her as the main character’s sole motivation is laughable. Perfectly inconceivable. A true weakness in the foundation of the plot that’s so profound that if the story struggled to stand on its weak worldbuilding, it almost certainly cannot stand on this. Her betrayal is so blatantly obvious and inevitable that his surprise is outrageous, and his hurt comes not with sympathy from us but absolute incredulity.

> The author’s prejudices taint the writing, and the writing needs editing.

I won’t talk too much in depth about a scene in which the romantic interest is stunned and the main character performs a grossly sexualized search of her body, but I will point out that later, the author writes, “he relived the seconds they had shared in the shadows...” There was no sharing of moments. She was stunned. There was nothing romantic about it.

Later, the main character is sent out on an assassination mission. The author writes, “He wondered what kind of a man he was about to kill - good or evil, father or bachelor - and whether the man would struggle.” Ah yes, an unmarried man. The opposite of having children. Of course, how silly of me to consider that being unmarried precludes me from having children, or that being married means I must have children.

At another time, a character who is well known to wear an eyepatch is described as “winking at him with his one eye.” I’m sorry, author, but that’s just blinking. I could have given him the benefit of the doubt that perhaps he’d forgotten this character is missing an eye and wears an eyepatch if not for the “with his one eye.” The author knew what he was doing.

These moments aside, many scenes dwell in the melodramatic, letting emotion set the scenes awash in a horribly garish light that fails to give the scenes their weight. The point of view was pretty tight to the main character, but with odd moments where it split away to document events that happened outside of that character’s view, even within scenes where the main character is present. It felt a bit sloppy. Passive voice is rampant, with sentences and whole scenes in dire need of better editing. “Myjun was walking in step with her father...” “His flyssa was caught by Annev’s flamberge...” It made the writing dull—hobbled by too many words that meant too little, and too specific of words amidst their plain neighbors that made it dissonant.

> The plot is overstretched.

This book is 576 pages. At page 250, something occurred that made me think that perhaps I’d just witnessed the inciting incident and that now the plot would begin. At page 330, I thought the same thing. At page 400, I thought the same thing. At page 525, I realized with a jolt that I was witnessing what this book would consider the climax, and I could put what happened at page 400 the inciting incident. Until that point, there was no clear indication of what the plot actually was, and there were at least 300 pages of unnecessary story.

I understand from a bit of research that this is intended to be the first of a four part series. Realizing that puts the entire plot of this book into perspective. This climax is the point of no return for the series, with a 500-page lead up. With a bit better editing and a cleaner line, this book could have been immensely less frustrating. Perhaps all these things that bother me are the point of the book—perhaps the next books in the series will overthrow some of these expectations as the main character ventures outside Chaenbalu and sees what the rest of the world is really like. Perhaps.

Do I trust that the author will do that? No.

Am I interested enough to continue reading this series to see if it gets better? No. Do I hope it does? Sincerely. I may not like the author, and I may not have liked this book, but there are people who do and I respect that. I hope it meets their satisfaction. It’s not for me.

Do I regret reading this over the last month instead of the book I was reading and will go back to reading? Surprisingly, no. I hated it, don’t get me wrong, but I also learned a lot about why I hate it—what made it not work—and I think there’s value there, too.

#master of sorrows #books #i didn't want to put this on goodreads because i do know the guy but i also wanted to document my exploration into hating this book

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flying-elliska · 4 years

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S5 Review pt.1 : the Good

Arthur season is over, time to analyze it as a finished story ! This meta in 3 parts will go over the good, the bad and the mindboggling. My general impression of the season : excellent beginning, very meh middle, interesting ending. In short : flawed but I feel people calling it a total disaster really are not making any effort to see it objectively. So ; let's dig into the why and how.

What I liked about this season :

A story made with and for Deaf people : It’s pretty evident when watching the interviews that Winona and Lucas really really enjoyed making the season and that it offered them an unprecedented level of representation. The creators obviously did their research, working with the people of the IVT. Personally I feel like I learned so much and the clips showing aspects of Deaf culture were among my favorites. It felt like a nuanced, rich, in-depth perspective, with details like choosing to get a cochlear implant or not, the testimony evening, the sign language class, Noee’s sign dance, the different ways to enjoy music, how to speak to someone who is Deaf, etc...showing that not everyone within that community has the same story or opinion, that they’re just people with their unique challenges but shared needs, as well as the really awesome culture that is part of being Deaf. It felt really respectful and a thousand miles away from the usual miserabilistic clichés - it brought up some concern about how difficult it is to be rejected/invisible in today’s society, but it was balanced with emotions like curiosity, admiration, and awe. I came to SKAM for the representation but I absolutely love getting educated about groups I’m not part of and I feel this is truly where the season shines. Learning from Deaf fans was also hella interesting.

A complex discussion about disability : A central plot point, and one of my favorites, was Arthur learning to overcome his (now internalized) ableism. We see that Arthur is an overachiever and this change in his life upsets this idea of the perfect life he has in mind. He repeadedly lashes out at the other Deaf people he meets, makes fun of sign language, underlines how he is ‘not like them’ at the beginning because he is still clinging to his own self image. We can understand where this comes from when we see how condescending towards any sort of weakness, and focused on performance over empathy his father is. But as he learns to meet actual Deaf people and see the diversity and beauty of the community, he learns there is no shame in that sort of difference and learns to stand up for himself and that was amazing to see. Another important part was Laura and Melchior’s inclusion and beyond being very funny, they highlighted the idea that although disabled people have different, sometimes competing needs, they also have things in common, and that deep wish of not being discounted/othered/excluded. All the disabled characters this season were complex, real people, not there just to teach others a lesson or inspire them or be pitied or the butt of a joke, and that is so sadly rare nowadays. Even though some bits did feel a bit like a PSA, I feel like overall it was very well done.

The politics of desirability : A theme running through the season is the idea that who we are attracted to is socially constructed and can really be biased by our prejudices. Alexia expressed this idea (albeit clumsily) in the bar scene early on, and this came back when she talked about her insecurities. This was also present in Laura’s insistence that disabled people have certain needs like everybody else. And finally, it’s present in Arthur’s own struggles - his fear of not being able to sleep with his girlfriend with his hearing aids, and his own difficulties in seeing what is happening with Noee and him saying ‘she’s deaf’ to the question ‘is she beautiful’ even as he is obviously into her. Our society gives us this incredibly narrow set of criteria for who is considered attractive - thin, white, able bodied, etc - but people’s actual real patterns of attraction and finding beauty are, when you set those prejudices aside, and see the beauty of people for who they are and not how well they fit a box, so much more broad and generous and diverse and I loved how this season highlighted that.

Technical excellence : God, the cinematography this season was absolutely off the charts, it makes me wish they could redo previous seasons with this amount of style. Shots like Arthur under the shower, or that party at the Asso with the blurry dancing, the shots in the pool, or the ones from the farm episode...INCREDIBLE. The sound editing was used sooooo well to put us in Arthur’s shoes, it was a wonder and I really felt how intense the change must have been for him because of that. And the acting is impeccable. You can really feel how well these actors know their characters by now, they have total mastery of their portrayal. Robin did an awesome job with tough scenes, but just...everyone was on their best game really.

A nuanced portrayal of abuse : Arthur’s relationship with his father was thouroughly heartbreaking, and it felt very real. I am very grateful that they didn’t try to redeem him - it’s important to show that even if you are trying your best, some people are toxic abusers and the best thing you can do is take your distance. I felt it right away, in the subtle way he was dismissing and belittling his wife and son, in the ways he was asserting his control over them, and I wasn’t surprised at all when more came out. It surprised me in the beginning that so many people were arguing that the father was caring, just strict - I feel like the signs were so obvious but I guess that’s the point. Abuse is a pattern that becomes visible over time and abusers can be perfectly charming and reasonable to people who don’t know what it’s like. Growing up with that is isolating and terrifying and it does awful things to your self esteem and your capacity to be in tune with your feelings. We can see that when Arthur basically defends his father’s actions because he is still so eager to have his love and placate him. Arthur’s behavior did not come from nowhere and it was inspiring to see him grow past that and realize he did not have to perpetuate the pattern and make his own choices. Also, his relationship with his mom was very sweet, supportive (her smoking weed with him was awesome) but complex - the way he was mean to her sometimes, condescending bc of her lack of studies ; the way she blamed herself for not seeing sooner - she must have been subjected to Patrick’s more emotional abuse, and so she will probably feel like she should have reacted sooner or known and that’s like...painful ugh. This whole thing was so raw and real. And it was incredibly important to see the nurse and her Jerome - adults, with medical knowledge - see Arthur’s situation and tell him that sometimes you just have to leave.

Highs and lows of friendship : Basile !!!! I was not a fan in s3 but the great aspect of POV shift is allowing us to see some characters through a different angle - even though I think Basile went through a lot of growth too. In Lucas’s season he was meant to be the annoying gross overly straight guy as a contrast - but for Arthur he is this devoted friend that is so open and sincere in his affection that his awkwardness comes off as endearing instead. You really understand why those two are friends : Arthur is smart, sarcastic, he can help Basile with social awareness and hype him up, but he’s also so painfully guarded and finds it hard to express emotion, I think, and it makes sense he loves Basile’s spontaneity and big heart. Meeting his grandfather was also so funny and endearing, as were all the marks of more physical affection he wasn’t afraid to show Arthur. I think having a friend like that is part of what allows Arthur to finally stand up on his own - whether against his father or deciding he needs to be single to figure himself out. As for the Gang in general, I loved the moments where they were all happy together (the early graffiti clip is truly one of the shining moments of the season for me) but their later spat is also quite understandable to me. I find it very realistic that although they are trying their best to accomodate their new friend’s disability, they’re going to mess up, that’s part of the process. The most important thing, I think, when faced with someone who is different from you, is to engage with it (respectfully) - ask questions, not assume. And communicate ffs. I also really liked those moments where the Crew and Gang came together, it gave this big end of high school vibe where all the squads merge and there is this feeling of having gone through an ordeal together that makes everyone closer. There were also so many funny moments that were absolute gold (the wheelbarrow ! the dinosaur balloons ! Imane getting attacked by chickens ! Emma and her horse! ).

Arthur on his own : I liked the more introspective moments we got this season. The successive alarms while he was angsting about his hearing coming back were such a clever way to put us in his perspective - there is already a lot of stress linked to a morning alarm, isn’t there ? We all know that moment in the morning where we don’t want to get out of bed and face the world, and taking that emotion and adding Arthur’s absolute stress at realizing that this change is lasting, it was really effective. Arthur’s link to water, as a symbol of another world where sound is much more diffuse, is quite interesting too. And the moment in last episode where he puts his glasses back on, too, as a more obvious sign of a disability that is very socially accepted and that is just part of who he is, just as his hearing loss is. We also got a moment with the bench of loneliness that was an interesting parallel with s3. (I love how the Buttes-Chaumont parc has become this double symbol in Skam France of both loneliness/alienation/putting on a mask and growth/return to authenticity.) And I like that he ended up the season single and deciding to figure himself out. It’s a big aspect of his character that he has spent too much time trying to conform to expectations and that he was super walled off as a result, that he hurt others without realizing, that he found himself boring, that he didn’t seem to open up to his friends, etc...and in the end he is a lot more open but he also knows there is a part of growth that being in a relationship cannot bring him. He can’t use women the way his father did. I respect that a lot, honestly, it’s what saved the end of the season for me, that they didn’t end up putting one girl above the other and made it about Arthur being lost and needing to find his way on his own.

The tornado and the sunshine : The new characters were awesome. Her role in the plot set aside, I really liked Noée as a character concept. I think Winona was awesome, and I liked Noée’s mix of warmth and feistiness. I like that they let her be angry at the way the world treated her, and compassionate at the same time. Also her headbutting that guy in the club that didn’t want to listen to her was !!! iconic. I loved her style, too, and that dance was so beautiful. Camille was a great addition to the team too, Arthur was lucky to find someone that patient and his dry humor but sunny disposition were great too. It was cute to see him with Mika as a couple of gurus - that we did get a Deaf/hearing couple was a good addition to the season, I think - and I hope we’ll see both of those new characters next season, too.

Queen Alexia : She was definitely one of the characters I had the most emotions for this season. She’s just so cool and her perspective on life is just so mature and interesting, her acceptance of herself and others so inspiring - a lot of the early clips with her were adorable. I loved how supportive she was in such a creative, playful way - that game she made for Arthur, the boards she brought, etc. The moments she talked about her insecurities, if bittersweet because of what happened later, remains one of my faves from the season. She was so beautiful framed by rainbows (also apparently that’s her sign name ? Amazing.) And the moment where she sings was just...oof. She was really brave and strong to be able to do that, to express her emotions and hurt in such a public, dignified and creative way. It was a moment of reckoning for Arthur, putting him on the spot and recognizing how much he hurt her, but it was done in such a graceful way - the way she signed to signal her acceptance of his Deafness, the reminder that she loves him and won’t be able to forget that immediately, and a rejoinder to recognize his feelings towards Noee, etc. She wasn’t perfect (organizing that meeting without asking really pushed it a bit too far - you can’t rush someone else’s self acceptance) but she was just ...really good.

Elu as an established couple : One of my biggest reproaches to s3 is that they didn’t give us enough fluff after all the drama (time constraints, I know, etc.) But this season they really delivered. And listen I know some fans love to blather about fanservice but fuck it, I just love seeing a healthy domestic queer couple on screen !!!! It’s just so bloody healing, because they feel real and in love like nothing I have ever seen on screen before. Maybe because so often straight actors are so awkward at playing queer intimacy and they’re really not. Seeing them in their new appartment was like a pure shot of serotonin - morning croissants ! fairylights everywhere ! but I also liked that it wasn’t too fluffy one note. We can still see that Eliott struggles with MI, that Lucas has some insecurities, but yet their devotion to each other is still as strong, as in “he’s my boyfriend and I love him.” It was a hopeful note throughout the season, Lucas being persistent and devoted all through the challenges of being with someone who is mentally ill. Also, I really liked Eliott’s role this season, as a sort of...provider for the Gang ? Getting them a van, bringing them to the cool graffiti place, making this fresque for them...you can feel he’s not 100% part of the gang because he’s older, already in college, etc, but at the same time he has sort of an observer role that can give them things no one else can. I feel like Lucas confided in him about the troubles they were going through and Eliott can empathize with being treated different, the fear of losing your friends...so Eliott helped them in his unique way, through art. And him having this new secret place he can bring more people to, and so full of color and sharing his art with people and !!!! God I’m emo he’s just my fave character ever really.

The pressure of the future : Listen the last year of high school in France is horrible, there is the pressure from the BAC + half the people are passing entrance exams and doing interviews for the stuff you want to do later and it’s so stressful and I’m glad they touched on that at least a little. Emma really embodied this theme this season, of the pressure of not wanting to know what you want to do later. It’s really when you realize that they’re all so young and being asked to make such big decisions for their entire lives is really sort of fucked up, and I think her being there is a way to dedramatize not knowing, and gives Arthur the freedom to see he doesn’t want to be a doctor ; I liked the apt comparison with Imane’s passion for medecine. I wish we’d seen more of Arthur figuring out his real passion (did he make that painting or what ?) but I appreciated this storyline.

Overall, I think this season was full of excellent moments - either funny, heartwarming, heartbreaking, or edifying - and it provided some much needed quality representation for the Deaf community. In that, and having educated a lot of people, it is at least somewhat a success. However, as a whole, it did not quite come together for me, which is what I will analyze in my next post.

#skam france #skamfr s5 #skam france meta #my meta #arthur broussard

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frankpanioncube · 4 years

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obey me 60 Questions pt 1

The questions come from: here

First Part (Second Part)

1 • What is your MC’s name? What is their name origin? What does it mean (if it ever has a meaning).

- Winter, but (Do I call her an ‘OC’ instead of an MC?). It’s my name, but in story, there’s speculation. The favourite version of events is that it’s based on the extremely pale skin she has, but that version doesn’t really track all that well - since Diavolo gave her her present form (because y’know flaming wheels with eyes is not exactly great for an exchange program). More likely Diavolo went ahead with that for the lulz. She has another name but it’s the ‘would need to remove your tongue probably and possibly uttering it would do horrible things to other organs as well’, so y’know she needed a ‘be not afraid’ form. Winter’s easy enough to remember anyway without diving into the rest of it.

2 • When is their birthday? How old are they? What about their zodiac sign? (bonus point if you give their rising or even their birth/natal chart)

- Birthday is September 6, Virgo, for all that it means. Sun rising in Virgo. Winter is much, MUCH older than Luke, but not old enough to remember the Celestial War.

3 • What is your MC’s gender? And what are their sexual/romantic preferences?

- Being an Angel, Winter is supposed to platonically love ever living creature (and does) and Heavenly Father above all else. However she seems to have a little bit of an issue keeping things that way....

Overall, Winter seems to be pansexual with strong shades of Demisexual/Demiromantic - those she has become close to seem to have relationships that are much, MUCH more nuanced than what would seem appropriate for an Angel.

Winter identifies as female and uses she/her pronouns. In her natural form it’s a ‘They/Them’ situation but in her humanesque guise, she/her seems more organic.

4 • What is your MC’s race? (human, demon, angel, other). If human, what are their nationality and origins?

- Angel...and remains so so far.... She is an ophanim and so was given a more appropriate, non-fear inducing humanesque form for use with the exchange program. So far she looks like a very-very-very-VERY pale skinned feminine presenting individual with black hair and blue eyes. She could ALMOST pass for a white person in the Human Realm...but she’s maybe just a little -too- white (not White, though perhaps a little of that too) for even a very light skinned person, and maybe her eyes are a little TOO blue (but contacts?).

5 • Before coming to Devildom, what was their occupation? (job, studies…)

- Ophanim, pulling Heavenly Father’s chariot across the Celestial Realm.

6 • Height? Weight? Describe their body type.

- QUITE short and very slight, perhaps just barely pushing 157cm and maybe looks to be somewhere in the 100-110 lb range, but this said, it’s always a shock when the little waif type can merrily scrimmage with Beel and the rest of the Fangol team.

Beel -struggles- with this; every instinct is telling him to help her put on some bulk, but on the other hand he has been on the receiving end of her tackles enough times to know she’s absolutely fully capable the way she is.

Going quite along with the ‘Demons and Angels are seriously attractive’ it wouldn’t be out of place to say Winter’s quite as attractive as any of them. Just a little -too- attractive to be human.

7 • Who is/are your MC’s love interest(s) (if they ever have one). Summarise their dynamic.

- Depending on the version of events, Beel is her main love interest and their dynamic started (and does continue) as Captain and - eventually - Co-Captain. Winter’s able to keep up with Beel physically too and he appreciates having someone he doesn’t have to hold back with his strength on. Winter can hold her own and even take him down if need be (Beel’s still stronger, but an unfocused rampaging Beel can be subdued by Winter’s strategic calm). They can get competitive for fun but ultimately are pretty cuddly and happy.

They make an even better team and Winter’s pretty ballsy for an Angel and rather willing to take part in what the Devildom has to offer - so she’s more than happy to go on little adventures (mostly food related). In addition, Winter respects the place of Belphie in their relationship and is more than happy to include him (Not in THAT way)

They really both care a great deal about one another but where their relationship falters is that Beel feels Winter does not understand what it would ultimately mean for them to stay together - they want to stay together but also Beel knows what it means to fall...

- Mammon and Winter are close (some would say ‘very close’ or ‘too close’) of friends. Winter does NOT like how Mammon’s treated (particularly by Lucifer) and defends him to the death.

Winter can temper Mammon’s wildness and impulsiveness and will put an end to schemes that go too far.

The duo is very cuddly - Beel tends not to mind all that much for two reasons - the first being that Winter is an Angel and for all that she can push the envelope of that a little, there’s certain things she won’t do - ‘cheat’ is one major one. The other is that unlike with MC, Mammon has no blushy tsundere tendencies around Winter. On the other hand, if one didn’t know the two, it would likely be a first reaction to assume that Winter and Mammon are the couple and Beel and Winter are the good friends.

In all seriousness if Beel wasn’t interested, Mammon and Winter would end up together - and it would happen the same way as their friendship. Just a very natural progression and one day everyone wakes up and they’re in a relationship.

8 • Does your MC have any specific appearance features? (Scars, marks, anything else)

- Winter has a big pair of fluffy white wings that, unlike the Demon bros. are constantly on display. They used to bother her but she’s made them work for her. Has been widely speculated (and is almost DEFINITELY probably true) that Diavolo made her look something like a storybook angel.

9 • Does your MC have any disabilities? (physical, mental health, etc). How do they deal with it?

- Winter can get severely depressed and will try to the best of her ability to hide it. She doesn’t do a good job, so she has a pretty good support network; particularly in Siemon who has had experience dealing with some of the things that can shake her generally cheerful nature.

10 • How do you imagine your MC’s voice? Describe it.

- Winter is LOUD. Justified as she is usually screaming on a Fangol field - or needing to talk over Mammon. Accent wouldn’t be terribly out of place in Northern England.

- In quieter moments where she is focused she comes across as far more stern and serious, but will change her tune pretty quickly - particularly since everyone’s favourite go-to way of teasing her is telling her she’s behaving like Lucifer (They’re not wrong actually - the two are very similar...just...don’t ever mention it to either)

11 • Does your MC have any tattoos or piercings? Just tell us more about it!

- Not a one, though she does manifest extra eyes when she’s excited or agitated. Mammon has TRIED to get her ears (her EARS!) pierced - however she just won’t.

12 • Describe their clothing style (if they have a favorite style). Do they have specific accessories Bonus question: how do they wear RAD uniform?

- Winter wears her RAD Uniform like it’s supposed to go

- Lots of sports clothes - track pants, shorts, jerseys in RAD colours

- Siemon has joked she doesn’t own a raiment.

- Asmo has PLANS to steal her for the day

- Does clean up nicely however. Goes a little pastel goth when dressed up

13 • Is your MC able to use magic? If so, are they skilled? How do they learn? Were they able to use it before coming to Devildom?

- Winter has magic being an Angel, but she, like Beel prefers to rely on her strength and presence to make her way.

- She can perform minor miracles - such include restocking the fridge when Beel empties it before MC can get to him, or putting back objects Mammon has taken. However these things come with a price (eg: Winter can replace food but would have to go without)

14 • Describe your MC’s parents (names, jobs, personalities). Do they have any siblings? What is their relationship with their family?

- Heavenly Father. We know what that guy’s about.

15 • How many language do they speak? Which ones?

- Winter’s a polyglot + Angel = knows all languages across all realms.

16 • What is their relationship with each brother?

- Lucifer: Very high suspicion and disdain where his treatment of Mammon is concerned. Does not like to admit that Lucifer’s (objectively) better qualities are also some of hers. When they do admit any grudging respect for eachother - it is in regards to their loyalty and hard work ethic. (They’ll also set aside a little time at parties - both Lucifer (for reasons of state and appearance) and Winter (she learned how to improve agility in sports) are excellent dancers.

- Mammon as above - best friends. Certainly Mammon was pretty impressed the little lower angel was intervening on behalf of his punishment, but really they just got to talking later and found they get on very well. Winter’s able to hold Mammon back a bit - but it’s no big secret - they go out somewhere and wind up talking for hours instead of whatever crazy scheme Mammon was originally planning. Have a 1001 inside jokes and also get really cuddly (Mammon won’t admit but Winter’s ‘big stupid fake wings’ are snuggly and he will find ways to comandeer them. (”Say, Asmo and Belphie were weights for Beel, how about I be yours.)

- Levi’s the Otaku, Winter’s a jock and so she doesn’t get the appeal of staying in all day. She can get a little at odds with him - as he’s one of Mammon’s prime tormentors. She also can argue with him over the realism of sports anime. Utlimately they don’t have much of a reason to talk and if Levi does show up to a group setting, it’s not in Winter’s nature to antagonize him without cause. She does however like a couple of his idol groups or at least is able to mention the songs that are on her workout playlist.

- Satan and Winter don’t ACTIVELY seek eachother out but when they do, they can get going pretty good on literature. Winter’s a decent student - but not decent enough to surpass Satan, so there’s not too much jealousy and competitiveness. What Satan DOES like about Winter is that ability to speak everything and her excellent keynote memory. If he can’t remember where something is in a book they were reading he can always ask her. Plus it doesn’t hurt that it’s no big secret she has about as much contempt for Lucifer as he does.

- Asmo and Winter - Asmo would love to take Winter shopping, get her a manicure, take her to the beauty parlor. Winter doesn’t mind the teasing (though as with Levi she will shut down the moment he starts talking smack about Mammon). She can get a little frustrated with Asmo’s incessant questions about Beel - what does he look like in the shower. What have they done together. Random advice about what their first time should be like. And pretty sure Winter’s soul left her body the day she found out he asked Beel if she had any extra eyes...er...in...-intimate places-.

Beel and Winter - See Relationship Status. In the early stages of their relationship, Winter liked Beel right away as Beel wasn’t dismissive of her showing up to Fangol tryouts. Beel was at least intrigued that this random Angel seemed as interested in it as he was - and better yet was good! He was also excited from the get go to have a friend he could roughhouse with without hurting them. Even his own brothers can’t deal with his full strength.

- Belphie and Winter - Winter’s never really -got- Belphie and his sarcasm. She understands how important a part of Beel’s life he is and very much wants him to like her personally. He does - he of course trusts his brother but it’s the fact that Winter is accepting of Beel’s presence. Even if Beel were to wind up with MC or with another individual, he’d always be a major part of Beel’s life and he wouldn’t be able to accept someone who didn’t accept him that way. If he starts treating Winter the same way he does Beel, they’ll probably really get along in the end.

17 • What is their relationship with each side characters?

- Luke and Winter - Winter is the cool older Sister to Luke so to speak. She’s a little younger than Siemon (or Lucifer or Michael for that matter) and he tends to listen to her (though is still not sure why exactly she’s so interested in those demons. She will tell Mammon off on his behalf too - (He’s not a chihuahua, stop that! You don’t like it much when people call you scummy, do you?). Beel is, however...well...it’s not like he SUPPORTS that relationship (but he does support that relationship.)

Siemon and Winter - Siemon is a mentor in the Devildom and he understands some of what Winter is going through. He after all has a relationship with a dear friend (once a brother) and it makes things harder when that dear friend is a fallen former angel. Siemon is pretty good - he doesn’t have to ‘parent’ Winter the way he does Luke but he cares for her well being.

- Solomon and Winter - Oh GOODNESS SOLOMON WHAT ARE YOU DOING?! That many pacts can’t be good for---Are you pacting demons to cook for us? (Cue the very sympathetically received texts fo/from Beel or Mammon every night Solomon’s on cooking duty at Purgatory Hall.) Winter’s somewhere in between blank horror and worry over the Sorcerer’s soul. Solomon is VERY aware of this and cue the subtle teasing. Winter gets frustrated with Solomon - who is cool as a cucumber about this.

Barbatos and Winter - Likely very chill - Winter doesn’t mess with the timeline and Barbatos doesn’t have any reason to get up her bum. Definitely does appreciate her relationship with Beel and Mammon both and offers foodstuffs for the both of them.Has a minor side bet going with Lord Diavolo - in .9 /10 timelines she winds up with Beel, but sometimes she winds up with Mammon. If you don’t let me look into the future let me try to guess?

Diavolo and Winter: Everyone how fucking hilarious would it be: Angel and the future/defaco ruler of the devildom dancing together? Cause that is what happens. And there is mass joy there. Winter believes he likes MC and is a bit of a shipper on deck. Winter lets Diavolo play his pranks and is happy to see the results.

18 • What is your MC’s main hobbies and passions?

- Winter is a jock and likes watching sports as well. She’s also a clever strategist, She’s actually an excellent dancer - she did it in the first place to improve her agility on the field, but she wound up enjoying it. Funnily enough it’s one of the rare and few places she actually enjoys spending time with Lucifer - he’s actually really good...and YOU try prying Beel away from the buffet table at a party. Mammon will dance...and then piss and moan about trying to work up to dancing with MC all night.

19 • Why did they end up in Devildom in the first place? What happened to them?

- Winter is deemed a little TOO rebellious for an angel, so Heavenly Father decided she should go and see what the Devildom was actually like - in the hopes of scaring her straight. Er...she um...liked it. A lot. And found a Demon she wants to stay for so THAT was a fail and a half.

20 • What is your MC’s MBTI type?

- Winter’s a definite ESTJ.

21 • Do they have pact with each bro? Do they often use their pacts? In which situations?

- Being an angel, she holds no pacts for obvious reasons.

22 • What is their favorite place in Devildom?

- The middle of the Fangol field, but sometimes when there’s no one there, or just to look at it when it’s quiet with the stadium lights on

23 • Which sin fit them the most?

- Pride. And NEVER mention it. Ever.

24 • Describe their personality.

- Loyal to a fault, generally cheerful and a dedicated friend. But that said she’s also a stickler for the rules, doesn’t bend for much and can be prejudiced. She can be easily swayed by a kind attitude (Hey it’s how she fell for Beel and became friends with Mammon)

That said the two whom she came to love are both her greatest strength of personality and her biggest downfall. It’s not that she doesn’t recognize an opportunity to punish their sins It’s simply she loves them too much and is too loyal to actually want to - hence ‘to a fault’.

Winter’s greatest sin is pride and she prides herself on keeping MC away from the temptations in the Devldom, but she doesn’t quite see her own sins in the process. In some ways, not bad but also she has her lover as a glutton and her best mate as a greedy arsrehole and she can’t see how it’s affecting her even though she’s trying.

basically a good bean but see above as well...good but trying waaaay too hard She wants to be good and the Angel everyone expects but really her real personality is defiant and still kind and cheerful but rather more attuned with Mammon.

25 • What is their moral alignment?

- It’s either Chaotic Good or Lawful Evil.

26 • Does your MC possess an object/something especially dear to their heart?

- To date there is nothing they’d not give up for another being.And if Beel or Mammon asked for it they could have an Angel’s soul....but....neither would ask.

27 • Which character(s) do they consider as their best friend(s)?

- Mammon is Winter’s best friend and if Beel didn’t want them then well, Mammon would. End of story do not pass go do not collect 200 quid.

28 • Choose a song that fits your MC.

- It’d be some kind a weird hybrid between SMF by Twisted Sister and Angel in Blue Jeans by Train.

29 • What are your MC’s religious beliefs?

- Angel’s heart is pounding right out of her over Beel.But she’s trying to keep it up. Too bad she can’t. might pound right out of her.

60 questions obey me,

#30 of my 60 questions #still love th song idea #1/2 of an idea #obey me #obey me original character

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notcanoncompliant · 5 years

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Finely Tuned

So I read this fluffy-ass prompt a while back:

“Person A was waiting for Person B to arrive for their first date, and when Person B doesn’t show up, Person A’s afraid they’ve been stood up. As Person A is about to leave, they get a phone call from an unknown number. It’s Person B, apologizing and telling Person A they’re in the emergency room for [[insert various stupid reasons here]]. Person A shows up to the hospital with take out, and A & B have their first date in a hospital room.”

….and my brain did this: ****************************************

Peter’s been way too lucky, lately.

His last bad night on patrol was over a month ago, resulting in a pretty minor bullet-grazing. Fixing his suit had been the worst part of that encounter.

This time, though, Peter’s sure there will be significantly worse consequences as he takes in what he can see of the spotless, sanitarium-style room he’s woken up in, the impossibly strong cuffs strapping him down spread-eagle on a hospital bed…and the whole ‘naked except for his mask’ deal.

He’s laying face-up and his head’s not strapped down, but he doesn’t bother looking around long for any objects he could use in an escape, weapons or otherwise. It only takes a few tugs against his restraints to realize he won’t be breaking out of them on his own, and he feels a rush of nerves; the strength of those cuffs means there’s a good chance he knows where he is, or at least, who has him.

A crackling sound emits from a small black circle at the center of the un-textured white ceiling.

“Hey, Charlotte’s Web.”

Peter stiffens at the familiar voice.

There’s a soft chuckle. “How do you feel about playing doctor?”

"Will she record…everything?”

Tony nods absently, flicking away another holo-screen of stats.

“Yeah, kid. Everything. That’s the point of the study. If FRIDAY knows everything, I know everything, and the suit’ll be ready for anything.”

It makes sense, but Peter still feels a little nervous about it. None of the tests so far have been anything close to invasive–mostly just wearing stick-on sensors while he does active things; runs on a treadmill or climbs walls–and he does trust the billionaire. Tony’s been nothing but good to him since they officially met on the MIT campus those few weeks ago.

Peter catches the words 'Tactile Sensitivity’ before the new screen gets flipped away.

Peter makes a sound, something he refuses to acknowledge as a whimper, and his face flares hot behind his mask. Another quiet laugh drifts down from the ceiling.

“Pulse up, temp rising…Are you afraid?”

The smirk is obvious, even if he can’t see the owner.

“No,” the voice continues, “I don’t think you are.”

“FRIDAY, can you–can you disable the recording? For, like, fifteen minutes? Please?”

He’s sitting at the foot of the bed, gripping two handfuls of the down comforter at the edge of the mattress.

The room Tony gave him to stay in for the overnight portion of the study is as cozy and welcoming as a hotel room (which is to say, not very much). It definitely feels as anonymous as one, and that illusion of privacy and alone-ness isn’t really helping him resist.

“I’m sorry, Peter; you’re not authorized to override or pause the recording.”

Peter squeezes his eyes shut. He can ignore it. He can. He does.

…He caves. The need’s too strong.

His pants and boxers end up shoved halfway down his thighs, and he wraps a hand around himself.

The door opens, and Peter hears someone step inside and shut it behind them. Footsteps tap across linoleum, stopping at the end of the bed.

“Oh,” Tony says lowly, “you’re definitely not.”

Eyes facing resolutely upward, Peter listens as the genius make his way around to stand beside him.

Something brushes feather-light across the tip of his erection, and Peter gasps involuntarily. The gasp turns into a quiet moan when that something begins paying deliberate but gentle attention to his leaking slit. Shutting his eyes, he bites down on his lower lip and struggles not to arch his hips into the contact.

Tony hums in interest.

“Love seeing how far down that blush goes.”

“Fuck, Mr. Stark–Tony–”

Peter gasps the name out as quietly as he can, imagines it’s Tony’s hand he’s fucking instead of his own.

Imagines Tony crooning filthy, sweet nothings into his ear as Peter slides his cock in and out of the slicked channel of the genius’ hand.

–You’re a slut for this, Pete, I knew you would be.

–Say it. Say you’re a slut for me.

“I’m–I’m a slut for this–for you,” he groans out into the silent guest room.

–Good boy. Make yourself cum, sweetheart. Make a mess.

He gasps Tony’s name again as he tenses up and spills over his own fist.

“I did some research after you left,” Tony says, casually.

The something–a fingertip, Peter’s 99% sure–does a few more small sweeps over the head of his dick and then stops, pulling away entirely. Peter whines at the loss, but he still doesn’t tilt his head to look.

“Did you know,” the genius says over a dull clicking sound, a case being opened, “that spiders have heightened sensitivity to touch?”

Peter wonders if this is how a heart-attack might feel.

“It’s an oversimplification,” Tony continues, “See, Pete, a spider’s touch sensitivity is fine-tuned–”

There’s a short, plastic click, and then buzzing.

“–to pick up vibrations.”

Tony clears his throat.

Peter pauses as he’s reaching for a cereal box.

“I watched the recordings,” Tony says.

Grabbing the box down from the shelf, Peter pours himself a bowl. It’s Frosted Mini Wheats, his favorite. The billionaire started stocking it in his personal kitchen after the first few times Peter’d slipped into the penthouse and crashed on the couch after patrol.

“Did you,” Peter says mildly, taking a bite of cereal. He still doesn’t turn around, doesn’t want Tony to see the pink that’s surely bloomed across most of his face.

When Tony doesn’t say anything immediately, Peter nearly looks over at him, nearly loses this game of chicken they’ve been playing for weeks.

Neither of them speak. Peter stubbornly eats his cereal at the counter, listens to the tapping of the billionaire’s fingers on his tablet.

Eventually, the tapping stops.

“Do you trust me, Pete?”

“Oh, God–”

“Thank you, but 'Mr. Stark’ is fine.”

Peter struggles a little, puts pressure on the restraints. Whines at the lack of give.

Tony tuts at him.

“Save your breath, sweetheart.”

He does trust Tony. Trusts the forty-year-old genius to take care of him. Of his secrets. Doesn’t matter that there was a little hero worship mixed in there, too, at first; Tony never took advantage. After his guest lecture, when Peter had come to him at the tail end of all the other student admirers, the older man had been warm and professional. Talked to Peter like an equal, despite the nearly twenty-year age difference.

And when Peter took a chance and called him after a particularly rough patrol, Tony collected him and brought him to the tower, no questions asked. Aside from whether or not he needed serious medical attention.

Tony Stark was the second person he’d trusted with his secret identity, and the genius had done nothing but provide him access to his lab and give him a safe place to crash when Peter needed it.

“Yeah,” Peter says, putting his spoon down, turning to face Tony.

“Yeah?”

“Yes, Tony. I trust you.”

The billionaire smirks at him, eyes dark, and heat pools low in Peter’s stomach.

“Then I have a proposal.”

Peter’s outright trembling as the end of the toy drags torturously light and slow up the inside of his left thigh. Closer…closer…it’s so close, feels like it’s a hairsbreadth away from where he wants it, needs it–

He almost sobs when it’s removed completely.

“Oh, Pete,” Tony says, almost reverently, “Barely anything and you’re already soaked. You slut.”

A shiver rolls through Peter’s body at the word, and he bites down on his lip again desperately to hold back another whine.

The vibrator returns to touch down on the inside of his right knee. He groans.

As Tony slides it back up along a path that mirrors the first on his opposite thigh–just as lightly, just as slow–Peter thinks he might actually cry. Tony’s right; hardly anything and he’s already about to fall apart, a pathetic mess under Tony’s hands.

This time, the toy stops at the end of its trail, but doesn’t pull away. Peter pulls against his wrist restraints in an effort to distract himself from the urge to shift his hips.

So close.

“What–uh, what exactly do you have in mind?” Peter asks. His mouth is so dry it’s hard to get the words out.

“A surprise. For you. In the vein of the study.”

Peter nods slowly. “Okay…”

“No impact play,” Tony says calmly. He’s not even looking at Peter now, just scrolling through something on his tablet. “Nothing extreme, nothing dangerous. You’ll have a safeword; that’s non-negotiable.”

The billionaire finally glances up. “In the interest of full–” he pauses, “–of enough disclosure, it would be…intimate.”

“I–I figured,” Peter manages.

At the first sense of vibration under the head of his swollen cock, Peter cums abruptly, three warm jets along his stomach, up to his chest. Through his rushing heart beat and ragged breathing, he hears the buzzing stop, and Tony’s low, impressed whistle.

Gentle fingers brush the edge of Peter’s mask, and Peter lifts his head so Tony can pull it all the way off. When he lays back down, Tony’s leaning just slightly over him, smirking.

“Comfy, Pete?”

Peter shuts his eyes, swallows thickly. Nods.

“Remember your words?”

He nods again.

Tony tsks quietly.

“Words, kid,” he says, amused, “I need to hear you say them.”

“Red for stop…green for good…yellow to slow down,” Peter rasps out. His breathing is just beginning to steady, but he still feels like he’s been running.

A calloused hand cards through his hair, massages his scalp. Peter shuts his eyes as a moan slips out without his permission.

Tony huffs a quiet, affectionate laugh.

“Good boy.”

The hand slips from Peter’s hair, and Peter hears and feels the older man shift back to stand in line with his hips. There’s another click, and the buzzing starts again.

“FRI, darling,” the inventor says, nonchalantly, “be a doll and start the counter, for me, please.”

Peter tenses, lifting his head sharply.

It’s been almost a month since he’s seen Tony, and Peter’s beginning to think nothing’s going to happen. All the texts they’ve exchanged–and they’ve been few and far between, a sharp contrast to the weeks prior to their last meeting–have been short and perfunctory on Tony’s end.

He tries not to be disappointed; it’s Tony Stark. The guy could have literally anyone he wanted. Maybe he just didn’t feel the need to follow through on an encounter with a semi-experienced twenty-two year old kid. Just because he’d looked at Peter like he wanted to completely devour him the one time doesn’t necessarily mean anything.

Mid-swing, Peter hears a cry from below, changes direction.

Tony’s probably busy, Peter reasons as he drops down into an alley and what sounds like a garden-variety mugging, and it’s not like the billionaire owes Peter an explanation, anyway–

The alley’s empty, except for a small radio on the ground, still pumping out high-definition, very realistic sounds of a violent physical confrontation.

Something stings his neck, and he barely manages to sling a directionless strand of webbing before he drops and everything goes dark.

“I can’t, Tony, please…” Peter begs.

He knows he’s a mess, in his mind–everything is hot and overwhelming but so fucking amazing in a terrible kind of way–and on the outside–tears down his face, sticky all over his chest and stomach and thighs.

“Shh, Pete; you can, sweetheart. One more. Come on. Just one more.”

Tony’s voice is comforting and infuriating and grounding all at once. The genius had ceased the excess touches ages ago (only because Peter had begged him to stop when even fingers carding through his hair or trailing lightly down his limbs became too much to handle), but the older man hasn’t stopped talking. Sweet, encouraging, filthy words; warm endearments and oh so satisfying degradation.

Peter makes a desperate, wordless sound, tries fruitlessly to twist away as Tony draws the vibrator up from the base of Peter’s shaft back to the head.

For a moment it’s a continuation of the same torture of the last however-long-its-been, and then Tony moves away.

Struggling to lift his head, Peter stares down the sticky wreck of his torso in time to see Tony lean down and sweep his tongue over the head of his cock at the same time the vibrations crank up to a frankly unholy level.

“How’re you feeling, kid?” Tony asks.

It’s kind of a big question, Peter thinks.

He’s in the vee of Tony’s legs, reclined against that broad chest while they lounge together on Tony’s obscenely large bed. There’s no tension whatsoever in his muscles, he had the most satisfying nap he’s had in maybe years, and he’s absolutely stuffed from the veritable buffet of aftercare-appropriate food. Tony’s been checking and gently massaging his wrists and ankles, even after his healing factor made quick work of the faint red marks left by the restraints.

He feels loved.

…Or like he’s still coasting on the oxytocin rush of eight consecutive orgasms.

“Um. Good. Great,” Peter says finally, flushing slightly.

Tony hums, and a hand slides into Peter’s hair, calloused fingers scritching lightly at his scalp.

“We’ll try for nine, next time.”

Peter chokes.

#starker #dom!tony #sub!peter #tony x peter #tony stark x peter parker #fic prompt #starker fic #nff #nff starker #tw: dubious consent #dom/sub #unreliable narrator

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