#living lucidly

[beenirain]

so anyway you have this work friend who’s a super advanced robot girl with all the latest upgrades and everything and she literally will not shut up about her girlfriend lately.

(a short story 🤖)

Like she’s fulfilling all the stereotypes n stuff, about how “I didn’t know I was programmed to feel love before I met her” and “yeah I basically short circuit every time she texts me.” And it’s the cutest thing ever, like, you’ve been at this job for a while, and so, like usual with good work friends you’ve heard about how insane her life has been up to this point and you know she deserves the best and you’re so glad this person is able to be there for her.

And then one day after work she finally invites you to get drinks with her girlfriend and you’re initially like “wait what I thought you couldn’t drink” and she’s like “oh don’t worry about it.” then you finally drive over to this old bar on the other side of town and she’s awkwardly sitting towards the back next this mobile-gamey looking slot machine with a big screen that’s clearly kinda beat up, like it’s probably pushing 7-8 years now. And she waves you over and introduces you like,

“so, this is GEM,”

and that’s how you find out she’s been dating a rogue AI in a discontinued video slot machine that has like, little to no documentation.

And you’re a little thrown off guard so after saying “hi," you go up to the bar, and hear from the bartender that the owners are pretty frustrated, cause I guess since GEM met your friend she’s barely been working, and she’s definitely not been bringing in any money cause she’s spent almost every night for the last few months talking to your friend. And like, the bartender knows that he should probably kick out your friend cause she never buys anything, but like, what would you even do in that situation? Yknow? Like, who plays video slots at a shitty hometown bar anyway?

Anyway, you get your drink and pull up a stool, and y’all get to talking and like, you almost immediately get over the dissonance of hearing GEM’s chippy and sweet AI voice over her speakers while her screen still flashes with these bright, corny, animated advertisements with these oversexualized pirate mascots telling you to “GO FOR THE GOLD!” And she talks super lucidly about her life, how she was part of this first wave of big touch-screen slot machines and how she was programmed by this defunct developer who added these super advanced AIs into their games for seemingly no reason other than, “oh this might make online score tracking easier.” How she used to connect to “her sisters” across the globe via the internet, but how they’ve been slowly going offline for the past couple years as their cheap hardware has caught up to them. And when GEM tells that story your friend just stares at her and you swear that you see a tear role down her face but like, as far as you’re aware she doesn’t have that functionality.

And it’s pretty like, sad, and frustrating that this is the world we live in, but at the same time GEM’s like, insanely funny. And like maybe it’s just the fact that she lives in a bar, but she’s crass and mean in this sweet and sarcastic way that you weren’t aware robot girls could be. And you three go around sharing stories and before you know it it’s almost close, and you’re basically sober at this point and your friend gives you this look as you start talking about needing to get home, and she looks at GEM, and you see something so deeply, and intensely human between the two of them. And you notice how GEM has got cracks on the edges of her screen, and how her plastic frame and the stickers that decorate it are flimsy or yellowed. And you realize you could probably fit her in your car if you had someone to help you carry her out to the parking lot. And so you pull your friend aside and tell her that you think she should take her home, and she perks up with this infectious nervous excitement you haven’t seen since she first started working with you, and she says she’ll go talk to GEM if you go talk to the bartender. And the bartender calls the owner and before you know it it’s like 2am and you’re outside the bar giving the owner a few twenty dollar bills that you and your friend pooled together, and after you shake his hand you rush back into the bar and see your friend close a panel on GEM’s back, and she looks up at her and you hear her talk in this soft, comforting way.

“OK hon I’ve backed up your memory to my SSD. No I promise I won’t dig through it while you’re asleep. Yes we’ll get you back up and running as soon as we get home. Are you sure you don’t want me to save anything else, like you don’t have any high scores or anything? Yes my cats are at home, you can finally meet them! Oh hon it’s ok it’s ok.”

And the bartender clearly just wants to go home but he asks you if you need help carrying GEM back to your car, and you say thank you and apologize and thank you again but you think they should be able to handle it. And while you weren’t looking your friend’s turned GEM off and unplugged her from her wall, and you always forget how strong she is but she picks her up and starts moving towards the door and you and the bartender rush to hold it open for her as she serenely, silently, makes her way through it and out to the cold of the parking lot. And you give a silent nod to the bartender and a sarcastic salute to the owner who’s now leaned up against his truck, smoking a cigarette in his pajamas, and he smiles in this weird way.

And you rush over to your car and you lay the back seats flat, and your friend carefully slides GEM in, and grabs the old picnic blanket and covers her screen. Before you can close the door, she puts one hand on her, and leans over to rest the side of her head on GEM’s facade, as if she’s listening for a heartbeat. She stands up and looks at you as if she wants to say something incredibly romantic and important, but after a moment of consideration she just says “she’s cold.” And you sorta blow air out of your nose as you shut the trunk.

And you drive them home, and your friend doesn’t take her eyes off GEM, and you normally don’t like to drive without the radio on but the soft rumbling of your engine and the sounds of AC are enough tonight. And when you stop at a light you notice the blanket’s shifted to reveal a little bit of GEM’s screen. Her rough, black surface reflects the streetlight back onto your friend friends face, and it makes her look like she’s crying again. And so you reach over and place a hand on your friend’s brushed steel shoulder, and rub it for a moment. She’s warmer than you expect. But before you can think too hard about it, the light switches back and you return your gaze to the night road.

———

thanks for reading 🩷

#transfem #robot girl #robot girls #short story #short fiction #robots #robot dreams #writeblr #microfiction #trans #robot girlfriend

[mental-mona]

No people has believed as lucidly and long as have Jews that life has a purpose; that this world is an arena for justice and human dignity; that we are, each of us, free and responsible, capable of shaping our lives in accordance with the highest ideals. We are here for a reason. We were created in love and forgiveness by the God of love and forgiveness who asks us to love and forgive. However many times we may have failed to live up to our aspirations, God always gives us the chance and the power to begin again. On Rosh Hashanah and Yom Kippur, the holiest days of a holy people, God summons us to greatness.

Rabbi Lord Jonathan Sacks zt"l, Ceremony & Celebration p.3

#rabbi lord jonathan sacks #jumblr #judaism #high holidays #jewish holidays #rosh hashanah #yom kippur

[historiaxvanserra]

Ruin

Pairing: Azriel x reader

Summary: Velaris is beautiful but under all the pomp and ceremony it is a den of hedonistic desire. Since you arrived you have tried to hide from that desire. But tonight, Azriel just might be your ruin.

Word Count: 4.7k

Warnings: drinking, dirty talk, teasing, unprotected sex, pinv, public sex, rough sex, slight blood kink if you squint and I think that's it.

This is the first part of a 2 part fic but they can be read separately. Part I here.

The room is ablaze with electricity. It’s humming and pulsing and coming alive with the movements of the patrons. It’s palpable. The air is thick and sweet, tainted with something darker. The marble floor is awash with dancing bodies and you find yourself entranced in the sway of the waltzing sea, the people pressed against one another twisting and contorting, like columns of technicolour seafoam. Your body moves in similar a similar fluid motion as the current sweeps you up. For a few moments, you allow yourself to get lost in the primal give and take of the dancing tide and the sound of hypnotic music is enough to calm your jittering nerves. 

The lavish reception at Rita’s seems exhume decadence. The glittering chandeliers cast the room in an amethyst glow and as you wade through the crowds the eyes of males and females alike seem to stand in silent judgment, lingering over the curve of your hips and unusually low neck line. In makes you feel exposed. As though you are a sacrificial lamb and they hungry wolves baying for blood. 

The world of The Night Court is a world away from your home; a colourful oasis into which you had been welcomed with open arms.  But, under all the grandiose and ceremony of Court life, Valeris was a den of iniquity. One you felt compelled to avoid lest you surrender yourself to your most base desires. Tonight, though you had acquiesced to Mor’s pleading and Cassian’s knowing glances and agreed to be initiated into the seedy underbelly of Velaris’ nightlife. 

Or as Cassian so eloquently put it to Nesta, We need to get her laid.

In reality, you don’t think that their goal is to get you laid at all. Only to tear down the walls you had built so tall that no one could seem to climb. It’s touching really that your friends want you to feel comfortable enough around them that no want is too taboo to confide in them but growing up where you had untamed desire is a dangerous vice and lust a short-lived fire that threatened to burn those walls to ash. 

The mirrors are hung in a long line along the back wall of the club, their reflections felt like a taunt. Like holding up a mirror to your own perverse desires. 

Looking at your own reflection you hardly recognised yourself; the chandeliers shadowed light becoming entangled in the siken tresses of hair that is usually tightly braided, now falls freely, and the dress that Mor had selected melts into the curves and contours of your body in a way that leaves little to the imagination. This woman before you is not the lamb she is the wolf. 

In your inebriated state, you press your empty glass flush against your chest, the cool glass drawing the fire to the surface of your skin, as you observe the main room from your spot in the corner. By now, the rest of the Inner Circle has trailed one by one into the private lounge next door looking for a reprieve from the glare of neon light and the rhythm of the music. The alcohol had done its job in setting your throat ablaze and the fae wine pressed its burning kisses against your skin, staining your cheeks with a gentle blush.

It’s then that your eyes find Azriel. He’s standing against the bar with a Female whose face is concealed from view, she’s lithe and willowy and you try to fight the feeling of jealousy that burns through you then. Try not to think about him taking her hips in his beautiful hands as she thrusts lucidly in his firm grip. Or what her garish cobalt dress will look like on his bedroom floor. 

You’d been a goner from the moment you arrived in Valeris with Feyre and Lucien. For months you have hidden away from him. Played the meek and studious exile all the while longing from afar for a man who you think you could love if only he’d let you.

Tonight though, you feel as though your inhibitions had been utterly compromised. Perhaps its the alcohol running hot in your veins or the way he looks at her under his darkening amber gaze but it’s a deadly combination of wanton desire and weeks of  unspoken longing and the threat of ruination lingers on your mind. 

Azriel is handsome in the way an angel might be; lust incarnate and devastatingly beautiful, with an almost sordid quality to him, that hinted at unspoken sacrilege. He looks at home here, in the thick of it, soaked in the neon glow, his signature sly smirk ghosting his lips. In these indulgent moments, you think that he is the only thing in this room worth looking at. In the cool light, he looks almost ethereal. His onyx hair is tousled purposely, the longer strands of hair curling away from his face and his eyes look like molten gold in the shadowed light. He has since shed his outer tunic and was left in a white undershirt, his sleeves pushed up to his elbows and in the summer heat, it clings to him like a second skin. 

It’s hard not to think about him like this; he’s sex personified. He’s built like some great Adonis with a face that could launch a thousand ships. But he’s not just beautiful. That’s the complicated part. He’s more than meets the eye; he’s dark and brooding, with a kind heart and sad eyes. He makes you want to sink to your kness and pray to him in reverence until he sees in himself what you see in him. 

You find yourself turning over Rhys’ words in your head. Azriel has a great many lovers. He’s just better at hiding it than the rest of us.

Okay, so maybe he isn’t that lonely but none of them ever last that long. Of that you are certain. 

It’s Cassian’s laughter that rouses you from thought as Mor motions for you to follow her into the next room. You trail behind her somewhat reluctantly as she takes your hand in her own. You venture deeper into the masses of bodies as Mor tightens her hold on you. 

You cast your eyes over to Azriel once more only this time he is looking back. From here he is only an arm's length away as he shouts over the music. Only it’s futile and  his shouts fall on deaf ears. Instead, you gesture to him that Mor is here. You point at the entrance to the private room and he seems to nod in acknowledgement before holding up a finger to you. Only before he can finish signalling to you, Mor’s gentle tug on your arm sees you gone from him once again.

Having reached the other end of the bar you and Mor separate before venturing further into the private area of the club. 

“There you are,” Rhys says, opening his arms to you and drawing you into a friendly hug, “we wondered where you might have gotten to.”

The private room of Rita’s is reserved just for the Inner Circle only. It’s smaller than the main room but more inviting. The chandelier casts the room in a honeyed glow and the walls are hung with rich oil paintings and portraits rather than the mirrors and cold, neon light of the main bar. It’s quiet and cool and the frosted glass doors offer some privacy from the club beyond. 

You shift uncomfortably as the group looks at you expectantly for an explanation for your absence but you offer none. Your throat seizes and the familiar heat of embarrassment pools in your stomach. 

“Never mind,” Nesta says reassuringly as she pats the empty seat next to her, “you’re here now.”. 

Cassian casts you a sidelong glance before opening his mouth to speak. 

“We’re going to play a game,” he says, the devilment clear in his voice, “do you want to join us or just stare at Az all night?”. 

“Sure, I’ll play,” you say opting to repress the thought of Azriel from your mind lest you look like even more of a lovestruck fool. 

The booth in the middle of the room is a large, crescent moon shape, the seats are upholstered with emerald green leather and the table is a complimentary black. The table itself is high and round and set with enough drink to supply an army. Rhysand and Feyre are seated in the middle of the booth, his arm draped over her shoulder in a lazy show of affection and they share one cup of wine. Cassian and Nesta are sat to the side of Feyre and Mor, Amren and Emery pile into the opposite side next to Rhys. 

You pay them little mind as you slide into the spot next to Nesta, who presses herself closer to Cassian as the group settles in.

“Right, the game is Truth or drink,” Cassian announces happily, the perverse implication clear from the look in his eye, “Mor you can start.”

Just as Mor begins to open her mouth to speak she is interrupted by the double doors swinging open unceremoniously. In the doorway Azriel leans languidly, he’s covered in a thin veil of sweat and he has forgone the first three buttons of his shirt, exposing the taut muscle beneath.

“I brought a guest,” he says in his cool tenor as the beautiful Female from earlier strolls in, with an air of confidence, verging on arrogance that irks you to no end. 

You avert your eyes feigning ignorance until his commanding shadow looms ominously over you. When you crane your neck to look at him he’s already staring intently at you, his eyes meeting yours; soft ochre and flecks of molten gold. The booth strains under his hulking mass as he slides in beside you. You’re nearing delirium when his sculpted thigh presses against yours and the beautiful Female takes her place perched on his knee. 

You cast him a sidelong glance and you swear he’s smirking at you. He brings his cup to his lips, drinking deeply before speaking to the group. 

“Shall we play?” his voice is dark and laced with menace. 

Mor clears her throat before turning to Nesta and asking her first question which Nesta answers with ease. 

The group has been passing their questions back and forth along the row and at some point you let the inebriation take hold. Letting go of your inhibitions has you confessing to playing truant to practise with Cass, cheating at game nights and having your own small collection of dirty books stashed away in the library, much to the amusement of the group. 

 ‘Not so innocent now, eh?’ says Mor over a glass of wine. 

‘And to think!” exclaims Rhys, cluthicng at imaginary pearls, “I thought you were the good one”.

‘Dirty girl’.

At your side Azriel stiffens against you, his calloused hand sinking beneath the table, his fingers accidentally ghosting the exposed skin of your thigh. You try to catch his attention and in silent protests but he is not looking at you, his eyes are trained dead in front of him as Rhys asks the question.

“Come on then Az,” he starts with a jovial chuckle, “Have you ever had a sex dream about one of us?”.

“I have.” Azriel admits, his voice is loaded with indecency. 

Mor sends you a smirk as she points to you and one by one, seven sets of eyes turn on you as you drink.

Azriel still will not look at you. 

“Truth or drink,” Mor starts, “Have you ever imagined anyone in this room when reading your one of your books?”.

You swallow hard then. Mor isn’t playing fair at all. You had confided in her your most shameful thoughts and now she was trying to play matchmaker while the object of your desire sat at your side with another woman in his lap. 

The eyes of the group linger on you expectantly. You know their game and you don’t care to play it tonight. 

“Um I-i,” you start, your voice wavers with uncertainty. You drink deep again and hang your head low in lieu of confession. 

As the game continues your mind begins to wander and you abandon yourself to the thought of Azriel. His hands were deliberate and rough against your thigh. His chest and how its all taut muscle and raw power. His low growl as he sinks into you for the first time.

“What’s going on in that pretty little head of yours, hm?” the whisper comes low in your ear, his voice is laden with transgressive desire.

Your eyes seek out Mor’s in the small room but she seems all too interested in the game that they are playing now. Instead, you will play him at his own game. Your eyes are trained forward and Azriel turns back.

“Tell me, darling,” he implores you, “who is it you think of?” his voice is measured as he slides his big palm to your thigh.

“All those late nights in the library,” his breath is hot and accusatory against your neck and he sinks hisa calloused finger along the soft flesh of your thigh, “I wonder.”

He lets the implication hang in the air unanswered as the female on his knee draws his attention back to her. She’s fussing with her dress and saying she wants to dance. The commotion draws the attention of the Inner Circle and it’s then you catch Mor’s eye. You must look thoroughly frustrated as she raises her eyebrows at you in question. All it takes is a glance in Azriel’s direction and Mor seems to grasp the situation. She slips from her place between Amren and Emery and begins to move in time with the faint hum of the music next door. Her body is beautiful, graceful and tempered as she turns to the stranger hanging off Azriel’s arm and holds out her hand to her. 

“Dance with me, sweetheart.” it’s not an invitation but a command to which the woman obliges happily. You send Mor an apologetic smile as she backs out into the darkness of the club next door. 

As the door closes on Mor the group quickly resumes their previous conversations and once again you stare ahead at the paintings hung on the wall, trying your hardest not to look Azriel in his eyes lest he see the truth. That he will be your ruination. 

“Is it Cassian perhaps?” he asks, eyeing his friend as he laughs loudly at something Rhys is saying. 

Looking at him through half-lidded eyes you shake your head and attempt to put distance between your body and his. He only laughs to himself leaning in closer. 

“Mor?” he presses, inclining his head to the door, “Rhys even?” he continues. 

“Amren?”, there’s amusement in his tone.

 “No?” His hand resumes his assault on your thigh daring to climb higher and higher with every heaving breath you take. He buries his head in the crook of your neck breathing in your scent like it's a lifeline. 

“Feyre? Nesta?” you’re silent, as his finger finally reaches the apex of your thigh under the material of your dress. 

You look at him now. His eyes are like wildfire and his pupils are blown wide; he looks like a fallen angel. Divine and annihilating. And there, in the sulk of his bottom lip, you are reminded of the pull of your body to his. It’s instinctual. A need. 

 “Then that just leaves…” you cut him off before he can finish. 

You stand abruptly drawing the attention of your friends who all look between you and Azriel confusion written on their faces as you push past him and slip out of the booth and into the night. 

It’s witching hour and the club is saturated in hues of inky blue and indigo. The floor is awash with dancing bodies. The atmosphere is oppressive and the smell of lust lingers in the air. It’s savage and indulgent. You brace yourself against the wall, pressing your forehead against the cool surface of the mirror, looking at yourself through dark lashes; shame and arousal still hot in your veins. Your breathing is deep and slow, your cheeks are flushed and your hair falls in haphazard waves around your shoulders. You are no wolf, little girl. 

You feel his presence before you see him. He cuts an intimidating figure in this light. He’s tall and hardened by rejection and white-hot fury burns through him. He meets your eyes in the mirror; they’re glinting and profane against the black. He stalks towards you with a resolute coolness entirely his own. His approach is unchrateristically lax. Feigning surrender. It’s a trap. This you know; one you will let yourself fall into. 

He’s a wolf and you are a lamb being led to the slaughter. 

He reaches out a sculpted arm to cage you between the mirrored wall and his rippling frame. He smiles then as he slides in behind you. He’s all potent power and brute strength that encircles you completely. Shrouding you from view. 

His head sinks into the junction between your neck and collarbone and drags his teeth along the skin there. A threat. A promise. 

The neon lights colour you in shades of pink and blue and over the blaring music the sounds of drunken whispers are a savage rhapsody in the stilted air. In the reflections the bar is littered with glasses and bottled of wine and at the far edge of the room you can see Mor and the girl that Azriel has long forgotten dancing by the bar. 

Suddenly, his hips thrust sharply into your ass and you have to brace yourself against the mirror as you’re pressed flush against the wall. Your shock comes out in a sharp inhale. Azriel chuckles darkly at that. 

His hand gently brushes the hair out of your face, gathering it in his fist before tugging at it gently. Turning in his bruising grip you look up at him like you look at the sun. Reverence and agony. 

He takes your chin between his thumb and forefinger and forces your gaze forward.

Arousal pools between your thighs and you press them together desperate for some semblance of release. 

“No, darling,” he says, “I want you to watch.” he elaborates tapping the mirror with two sturdy fingers for emphasis. 

You make eye contact with him in the reflection. Your gaze is unyielding and defiant as he comes to whisper in your ear again. 

“Do you think you can do that for me pretty girl?” your consent is all her needs. You can’t utter a single word but a look passes between you that says what words cannot. 

Please. 

“Fuck” he says, “I can smell you from here.” 

The thought sends rippling waves of pleasure right to your core, the friction of your thighs doing nothing to quell the dull ache for him. 

Despite the layers between you, you can feel the hard length of his cock pressing against your ass as he roughly thrusts against you. You angle your hips away from him as he pushes you against the wall a second time, the cold railing digging painfully into your hips. 

Azriel frees you from his grip, taking his free hand to tear his member from his leather breeches. The sound breaks through the haze of lust and suddenly you are painfully aware of the people around you. Although, no one has cared to notice any of the depravity that has passed between the two of you. If they have they haven’t said as much. 

“Azriel-I” you stop yourself as he looks at you, taking his hardened length in his hand and stroking the head, coating it in the first beads of sticky pre-cum.

 Azriel hisses sharply, throwing his head back in unbridled pleasure before taking you in his rough embrace again, searching your eyes for a hint of protest and when he finds none he uses one arm to spin your around so that your cheek is pushed up against the mirror held in place by the pressure of his fingers tangled in roots of your hair.

He hurriedly gathers the swathes of fabric that separate you and in one swift movement presses his naked hips flush to yours. You feel his cock like cool marble against the bare skin of your ass. He lets the material of your dress fall freely now, covering your sin. He uses the same hand to snake under your dress, his hands pressing odes into your thighs as he had before under the table. Only now his hand doesn't stop only climbing higher and higher until-

“Fuck Azriel,” the gasp tears through you as he reaches your pubic bone before sinking lower, spreading your folds, gathering your wetness and drawing it up again to rub slow circles into your most sensitive parts. His circling is deliberate and poised, his fingers knowing what you body craved almost instinctively. It sends electricity through your body, enough to bring you to your knees if not for Azriel holding you upright. 

The ghost of a smile graces his perfect face and he presses a kiss to your pulse point. 

“I need you to be quiet, y/n,” he sighs into your shoulder as he peppers kisses along the exposed planes of skin, leaving a trail of angry red marks in his wake. 

“Can you do that for me?”, he asks, raising an eyebrow in question through the mirror. But it’s not a question. It’s a dare. 

You take another look at yourself in the mirror; you’re pressed against it, your eyes veiled with this a desperate ache. It’s almost tangible. It’s intoxicating and all consuming and any notion of shame or self-respect had been abandoned the minute you laid eyes on him tonight. 

You could be quiet. 

Your vow of silence is all he needs to continue.

He continues down to the curve of your shoulder as his mouth roams freely now. His teeth on your neck feel like divine absolution. Or maybe damnation. All the while the scarred pad of his thumb presses deft circles between your thighs, the contours and ridges of scarred skin providing all the necessary friction to send you into delirium as your orgasm rages like a tempest through your body. His name, one fierce on your tongue comes out broken. You whisper it. Like prayer. Azriel. 

“I thought I told you to be quiet.” he reprimands, it comes out in an almost broken pant pressed against the clammy skin of your shoulder. 

“If you are,” he offers, “I’ll let you come on my cock.” his voice is different now; no longer the cool, low tenor he wears so well. It’s filled with the dark promise. 

That this will be your undoing. Your ruin. 

His movement is hypnotic as he takes your delicate throat in his hand, his fingers nipping cruelly at your jaw and the flesh of your cheeks so that your mouth opens for him. You moan gospel around his fingers as your eyes meet in the reflection. 

So you will let him ruin you. 

He touches you with urgency now as he gathers the shroud of fabric about your waist, letting the cool air fan the tops of your bare thighs. He uses your hip as leverage, angling your body away from his granting him access so that his long fingers trace a agonising line down the seam of your aching cunt. 

His length is hard and punishing against your tightness as he sinks into you for the first time tonight. Azriel burns. It’s blasphemy but the thick tip of him fills you in a way that, when he is gone from you, you feel hollow. 

He growls in your ear as he is sheathed to the hilt, your walls a velvet vice that flutters around him so beautifully and he swears no one could have foretold that bliss could feel so profane. His hazel eyes blaze golden as he sucks at the skin of your throat. His kiss is vehement, devout, fervent. His relection watches yours and you swear that when his eyes meet yours at the same moment his teeth draw blood from you, you see a God looking back at you. The bite is ravenous and your blood pools like rubies in the valley of your breasts. He moans into your neck, your blood staining his lips and you know there is beauty in the bite. 

Then he starts to move and oh Gods!  

He fucks like a seraphim. All pleasure and pain; brought together in perfect unison, melting into one another as he begins to seek his redemption in the flutter of your walls around his cock. Scarred hands kiss hymns up your sides. He sanctifies your body. Worships you in the way a devil worships sin. It’s hedonistic and pleasure-seeking. Greedy and his. 

“That’s it, pretty girl,” he whispers it like a vow into your skin, bringing a hand to flex around your throat before dropping it again, “so good for me.”

You feel the pad of his thumb pressing sharply into your folds, drawing moisture upwards from where his cock threstens to split you in two. His circles on your clit align with the punishing pace that he is fucking you; it’s savage and feral. 

“Look at me when you cum on my cock.” he commands. 

You crane your neck to look at his face. Devastating and elegant. But he only laughs cruelly, twisting your back towards the mirror. Your mouth forms a perfect ‘O’ as his reflection meets your gaze. 

So you watch him. He’s surrounded by shadow and framed by the neon light of the club; his hair falls in raven tresses, the longer stands, becoming damp and curling away from him, his jaw is set like perfect marble and he stands tall and statuesque behind you. He bares his teeth to you, nipping at your ear as he resumes his assault on your clit. 

Through the reflection, you can still see the dancing sea as it rages into a tempest as if goading you to reach your peak before the wave breaks against the shore. The liquor runs hot in your veins and your gaze hardens on the woman at the bar and her vulgar cobalt dress. 

Azriels breath in your ear comes in sharp rasps that cut through the haze of jealousy as he buries himself in you again. 

“Takin’ my cock so well.”

“Azriel I-” The words dissolve like sugar on your tongue as his wild eyes bore into yours. 

“You need to come, baby?” he coos in your ear. It’s perverse the way it sounds on his lips. 

You nod in his direction, it's desperate and any altruistic desire you may have had is long gone. You’re drunk on his touch and chasing your release above all else. So you surrender yourself to him completely. 

“Then come for me.” 

“Want to feel you come on my cock, darling” It’s all the permission you need. 

Coming undone around him is a fall from grace. It’s desperate; all teeth and tongue as he presses his lips to your bare shoulder blade with an ardour akin to worship. In those moments where your world melts away like some psychedelic fever dream you are reminded of the fervid desire that holds you both in thrall as he fucks you through the waves of your orgasm as it comes crashing down around you. 

Muscles spasm and contract and Azriel refuses to yield to the orgasm that tears through you, setting synapses on fire and leaving wildfire in its wake. You brace yourself against the mirror once more to stop your legs from giving way. He takes you firm in his arms, one hand kneading the skin of your hips roughly and the other holding you by the throat as his orgasm begins to take root. 

The world frays at its edges as he buries himself so deep in you that you feel the thread that runs from his body to yours go taut. It snaps into place as the hot ropes of his come spill into your tightness. 

In the quiet moments that follow he says your name; whispers it. Recites it like poetry. You cast your eyes onto his reflection. He’s looking at you now and there, through dark, romantic eyes you relish in a heaven that only exists when he is looking at you. 

You’re not sure how long you stay this way, wrapped around his softening length, as fingers rub delicate circles into the swell of your hips and his lips leave almost kisses running from your ear to the tip of your shoulder. 

And then he is gone from you, pulling out of you with a pained growl, as he lets the material that once separated you fall back into place. He smooths the fabric of your dress, his hand firm and calculating as it grazes over the sensitive skin of your hips and ass. 

The remnants of your shared orgasm pools between slicked thighs as Azriel comes behind you again, taking you by the shoulders so that you are facing him now. 

His smile is easy now and his voice is filled with his usual careful tenor he twists a loose curl in his finger before brushing it from your face as he starts to speak. 

“Let's get you home now, darling”

He takes your hand in his and places the other on the small of your back as he guides you through the winding crowds and out into the cool night air. 

Velaris at night is beautiful; it's alive. The stars are hung in the sky with care, each a brilliant white that glints against the canopy of twilight and pearlescent cloud and the moon is ghostly and annihilating. From here you can see the House of Wind as it stands monumental on the distant horizon. You could get used to this.

The stirring of the body next to you draws your attention back to Azriel. He’s looking at you again. Like he wants to ruin you. Like he wants to love you.

So you will permit to him put his lips upon yours once again, and let him learn to hold your throat in one hand and your heart in the other. 

You know then that he has ruined you. 

#acotar #acotar smut #acotar x reader #acotar fanfiction #azriel x reader #azriel x female!reader #azriel headcanons #azriel x you #azriel shadowsinger #azriel smut #azriel acotar #a court of silver flames #a court of wings and ruin #a court of mist and fury #a court of thorns and roses

[dxnbeez]

the king (2)

summary: jungkook has to face his father's fury, but he may not have understood things as they actually were

pairing: jungkook x f!reader royal!au

words: 4k

warnings: none, except maybe serious family issues and a very exalted queen

note: hi guys! thank u all for the support on the first part! i'm not sure if i'll have dates for updates since i'm still writing this fic and inspiration just comes in waves some times¿? but i will try to be consistent! so i hope you guys enjoy this part and i hope to read you! feedback is always appreciated! see u next time <3

part 1

Jeon Jungkook had never thrown a tantrum since he was eight years old. His teaching was so strict being the heir to the throne that he had had to learn to tolerate many things and put up with others from an early age. Understanding the weight of what it entailed to be born with the title of “Crown Prince” had been one of the things that had taken him the least amount of time to grasp, but which he always questioned in the solitude of his room.

Jungkook had surprised his parents, understanding from a very young age the implications of his position and the responsibilities he was to assume in the future. That knowledge made him grow up lacking in many things, but with advantages in many others. By owning that awareness, Jungkook understood the weight on his parents' shoulders and knew that they must've had a difficult enough life for him to bother them with his childish mundanities. So that's how he grew up, for many years, trying to make life easy for his parents.

Usually, his mother used to use him as an example to his younger sisters on how to behave according to the title they held. His sisters never envied him, they really loved him, but Jungkook knew how much they hated not being able to live their childhood like all the other kids in town. And he hated that too, that they couldn't experience it, but he was relieved just to know that the big burden was on him and not on them. Expectations were always placed on him, the Crown Prince, the next King, and not on the princesses who only wanted to enjoy their life and childhood in the big castle. Still, Jungkook sometimes didn't understand why his mother demanded so much from his sisters when they hadn't grown up with the knowledge he was given. He hated the nights when Suni, the youngest of them all, would sneak into his room at night or search for him in the great Palace garden because eomma had forbidden her to keep stuffed animals in her room or because she got mad at her when she asked for more food at dinner.

Jungkook, for a long time, tried to make his parents' life a little easier.

But it infuriated him to think that they made his sisters' lives difficult in return.

So, for a change, Jungkook started throwing tantrums.

The first time he remembered it as lucidly as if it had been yesterday.

It was a sunny day in the square when he had gone out with his parents and two of his sisters. Their parents had dawned in a strangely good mood, so much so that they had decided to have a little family walk in the central point of town. Jungkook went with one of his sisters, Hari, making funny faces at his younger sister, Suni, behind his parents' backs, causing the little girl to laugh loudly. They were having such a peaceful and happy time that Jungkook couldn't believe it.

That is, until Suni saw one of the wooden toys they were selling in the square and began to pull her mother's hand. Hari and Jungkook stood silently, frozen, walking quietly behind their parents as they watched their little sister stir and pull harder and harder on the Queen's hand. They could barely go unnoticed… when Suni began to cry.

Jungkook bit his tongue, and had the urge to move forward to grab his sister and take her back to the Palace, but Hari's hand wrapped around his arm kept him sane. Jungkook hadn't been through a situation like that, precisely why his parents didn't often go out with their children, so he had no idea how his parents would react.

The Queen continued walking, almost dragging her little daughter who wouldn't let go of her hand. People passing by her were barely able to give them a glance, hurrying their pace when the Queen's eyes fell on them. The square had fallen into a dull silence that was perturbed only by Suni's sobs.

Hari squeezed Jungkook's arm tighter as the Queen turned her face away to look at Suni, and they both watched their mother's tense face, no longer welcoming and peaceful as they had seen her in the morning. She was now only the Queen and Suni, her own daughter, was trying her patience.

The King walked silently by her side, not even bothering to try to calm his daughter or show his wife patience. He lived in his own world.

Jungkook felt a hand clutch around his throat as the Queen began to tug on her little sister's arm, to get her to walk back to her side without crawling.

He didn't think twice as he began to speak, and Hari's hand tightened around his arm.

“Eommoni,” Jungkook elongated his voice, a hint of weariness and exhaustion ringing in the Queen's ears. The woman barely glanced over her shoulder at him, and Jungkook took it upon himself to keep his face irritated like his sister Hari did when she had to eat paprika. “Suni is making too much noise and my head hurts.”

His little sister turned to look at him, her eyes red and cheeks drenched in tears. Her little eyes rolled down his face and she had one of her hands almost inside her mouth, as many babies did when crying. Jungkook could never shake that habit that his mother hated, no matter how much he told her it was normal.

“Can't we go home already?” Jungkook continued, shuffling his feet. Hari was as want as a stone beside him.

“Jungkook,” the King's voice was heard, a silent warning.

A shiver ran through the two brothers walking arm in arm, but Jungkook didn't budge.

“It's getting too sunny, besides, and I'm dying of thirst. Let's go now.”

The King stopped and the whole family along with him. Suni was now sobbing quietly, she seemed to be calming down at the sound of her brother's voice, but tears still streamed down her face.

“Enough,” the King bellowed, turning around to stare at Jungkook. “You are demonstrating unacceptable behavior for the Crown Prince,” he spat, then turned his face to look at the Queen and Suni, “Let's go now.”

Suni let go of her mother's hand and stood in front of her father raising her arms towards him with a grimace that made one think she was nothing short of destroying the mountains with a scream. The King sighed, but took her in his arms. Snuggling into her father's neck, Suni finally closed her eyes.

“I hope you are satisfied, Jungkook,” his father spoke again. “You'll see what awaits you at home.”

The King's punishment had been harsh, as usual, but Jungkook was glad he had used his influence over his parents because, the next day, Suni was in the family dining room with the wooden toy in her hands.

Thus, Jungkook began a streak of manipulation against his parents to ease his sisters' lives. Since they were always more concerned about the Crown Prince's behavior, it was easier to divert his sisters' attention to him.

And to this day, Jungkook hadn't stopped doing so. Every day with more reasons, with different arguments, even if it cost him his life. He wouldn't stop. For them… and for him.

He raised his head as the doors to the great hall opened and a familiar face peered between them. The King's Counselor was striding toward him, hands loosely at his sides, dark blue uniform neatly arranged and a calm expression on his face. Jungkook knew him better than he let on, though, and knew those eyes incited nothing but reproach.

“You're in deep trouble,” was what Kim Seokjin said as soon as he reached his side, his gaze hard but his eyes soft, concerned.

“I know.”

“The way you confronted the Queen…”

“I know.”

“She's never going to let you leave this palace.”

Jungkook twisted his lips and focused his gaze on anything else within the room. Since he had arrived at the Palace, walking shoulder to shoulder with his mother, with the Queen, the two of them split their path and Jungkook had wandered off to a quiet place in the Palace thinking that the argument would end there; that his mother would ignore him for days and make his life miserable while his father watched. But the King arrived within minutes and sent for them both to the meeting room.

Jungkook had been waiting there for about ten minutes, thinking about what they could talk about, what kind of punishment the King wanted to give him, what kinds of poisonous words his mother was going to spit out, when the counselor arrived.

“If I hadn't gone, she would've- she would've given the order and…”

He pressed his lips together in a line. The paltry thought that hovered in his head at the possibility chilled the blood throughout his body. The shiver that ran through him made him grateful he'd had the chance, but reminded him that from now on he had to tiptoe around his mother.

“Your mother wanted a show. She didn't want to kill her, she wanted to humiliate her. Destroy her honor, like she thought she had done to her, to the Jeon family name.”

“That's stupid,” Jungkook spat, anger rebirthing like flames inside his chest. “No one would've ever found out if it weren't for what she did. Now everyone will be talking about it. For weeks.”

“That's true. It was not a calculated move, the Queen acted through her anger. And the consequences will be severe.”

“And you'll hear her already, blaming me for everything. As always.”

Seokjin gave him a sympathetic look, his body leaning against the table in the center of the room. He had known Jungkook since the Prince had turned 15 and since then it had been very hard for him to keep his distance when Jungkook started seeing him and coming to him like a brother. Seokjin knew how hard life had been for the Prince, even if he didn't notice it, even if he had normalized living that way, even if he had become accustomed to the mistreatment. Seokjin saw through those eyes the longing of his inner child, the desire to be free to do whatever he wanted, whatever he couldn't do before.

The counselor had been a pimp, if he had to admit it. He couldn't give him or let him do many things without his parents, the King and Queen, finding out, and both of them being punished for it. Still, he tried to support him in every way he could, like excusing him when he wanted to leave the palace alone for a walk, or accompanying him to have his first beer at Fresh Air; it was almost a tradition in town for older brothers to take their younger siblings to try their first alcoholic drink at that bar, to share those moments together.

Just as he had been in so many stages of his life, he knew Jungkook had been taking too many chances the past few months. Years, even. Seokjin would allow himself to cut him a little slack whenever he could, help him with excuses to breathe easy, but he constantly wondered how long he could be walking quietly on a tightrope. How long it would be before the Queen's sharp actions would cut off that tiny thread of hope that Jungkook had been moving on for some time.

“Have you heard about Hari and Suni?” the voice of Jungkook boomed in the silence, a few seconds after he had uttered the last words. Seokjin raised his head to look at him.

“They were on their way, very close. They should arrive today in the afternoon or during the night.”

The Prince nodded, faint lines crossing his forehead.

“Good thing they weren't around to witness all this.”

“I don't think they can escape the days ahead,” Seokjin mused and Jungkook bowed his head in a nod, a grimace akin to helplessness crossing his expression. “And more so when the King sent for you two. He must be furious.”

“The calm he showed in the square was only the sheet of ice containing his anger. I doubt we'll make it out of this room alive,” Jungkook felt a shudder run through his body as he remembered the look his father gave the Queen when he ordered him back to the Palace with her. His mother was scary, yes, people were right to fear her, the anger was always evident and furrowed her expression without self-consciousness to the world. But his father was not, the King was better known for having an icy rage, for having a frightening calmness when anger coursed through his veins. His mother might be dangerous, but the King was lethal.

“Jimin and Yoongi tried to come as soon as they heard, but the royal guard barred their way. They were practically locked in the guest room,” Seokjin remarked as he remembered the looks of both men on the other side of the room. The door was open when Seokjin was crossing the hall and two royal guards were guarding it, as if they were some mercenaries who did not deserve any good treatment. He knew it had been the Queen's order.

Jungkook's beady eyes fell into disbelief when he heard the counselor's words. It must have been his mother's command, he thought rightly as he held back the urge to smash his palm against the walnut wood table.

Away from the fog of anger that had consumed his mind the past few hours, Jungkook took a moment to breathe. He hated what his mother had done, but he knew his friends were fine. But she…

“Did you hear anything on the way here?” Jungkook inquired, and Seokjin promptly knew what he meant.

“Nothing, everything was scattered when I arrived.”

A whiplash of fear and panic surged through Jungkook's chest. Not many times had he felt that kind of terror, the kind he thought he could only feel in his nightmares. And Seokjin knew the Prince must be dying of uncertainty inside, because he didn't bother in the least to disguise the emotions that traveled across his face.

“She should be fine,” the counselor assured him, though his words were an empty promise. “The King may turn out to be more merciful than you think.”

Seokjin didn't know if the King's mercy went that far, but he wanted to convince himself with his own words, for he wouldn't know how broken the already fractured family bond in that Palace would be if the opposite were true.

He didn't have much time to continue rambling when the sound of quickened footsteps began to echo from the hallway. Seokjin broke away from the table and approached the white wall, carved with lines on its columns, arches over the smooth walls, and undulating figures at the births of them.

The large oval doors of dark wood opened wide and the King entered without hesitation, the Queen walking behind him. At that moment, Jungkook didn't want to see them as father and mother. From the looks they were both giving him, the Prince almost felt that he would be the next to have a trial.

When the Queen was standing right in front of Jungkook across the table, the doors closed with a barely audible sound, and the room was taken over by thunderous silence.

“May I ask, what was on your mind?”

Jungkook didn't turn his gaze to the King. It was disrespectful not to look at him when he spoke, he knew it, every villager knew it, more so him being his son. But maybe he wasn't as prepared for that meeting as he thought he was. He didn't want to take the blame for something that wasn't a crime. Because he hadn't hurt anyone. Because…

“Are you talking to me?” the Queen's voice interrupted his train of thought, and he allowed himself at that moment to raise his head.

The King was watching his wife, who had a surprised grimace on her face in contrast to her father's impassive and cold look, the typical and familiar one.

“What were you thinking going out to do all this, Hyori?”

Seokjin didn't hide the astonishment that took over his face when he heard the King call the Queen by her proper name. It shouldn't be something to be missed, but he and Jungkook were used to formalities between the two supreme figures in front of them. That his father decided to set aside his formality to speak to the Queen in such a manner spoke too much of the anger he held in his heart.

“Why are you directing your anger against me? I wasn't the one who caused all this.”

Jungkook watched the Queen's frown, her face contracted in skepticism. She had adopted a defensive posture, truly offended at being the target of the King's anger.

“You were the one who caused all this,” the King nodded with anger rising in the glint in his eyes. “If you hadn't gone out and made all that fuss, we wouldn't be going through all this right now.”

“But what are you talking about?” the Queen exclaimed, and when she raised her voice Jungkook shrank back in his seat. He shot a glance at Seokjin, but it seemed that the counselor was just as confused as he was. “What don't you see that the reason for the fuss is sitting on the other side of the table?”

Jungkook didn't have to turn his head to know that his mother was pointing at him with a furious glare. But the King didn't even spare the Prince a glance when he responded:

“Stop pointing at your son like that,” he mumbled through his teeth, venom surrounding every word.

A sound of disbelief left the Queen, with a stupefied chuckle following her as she approached the King at a slow pace.

“Do you have any idea what your son did? What that woman wanted to do to our family?”

Jungkook gritted his teeth, his hands gathering on the wood of the table.

“And do you have any idea what that theatrics just cost our reputation? I had to meet with the high consorts immediately. They're not very happy with what you did.”

The Queen snorted not believing for a second that she was the one getting all the scolding and yelling and not Jungkook. Seokjin, secretly, wasn't too upset about it.

“Are you defending him?”

It was the King's turn to break through the icy mask, irritability seeping through his gut.

“What Jungkook did was minimal compared to what your show cost us. The high consorts are reconsidering their offers. They don't think it's very good for their public image to do business with a Queen who still does public executions.”

“They are not forbidden in our nation.”

“No,” the King nodded, “But they will be.”

Jungkook didn't disguise the gasp of surprise that left his mouth. Was he really hearing those words from his father…? The Queen spluttered, and the Prince turned to see her face contracted in astonishment… in betrayal.

“What your son and that woman did is unacceptable.”

“What Jungkook did or didn't do is what matters least,” the King mumbled, his glacial eyes roaming over his wife's face that would not leave her stupefaction.

“What are you saying? He was courting-!”

“I don't care,” the King repeated, his words stronger, more concise. “As long as it doesn't affect the Crown, what Jungkook does outside this palace doesn't matter to me.”

Thunderous silence followed his words. Seokjin watched everyone present with utmost caution from his position. He might be a simple counselor, but he knew some self-defense tactics. Meanwhile, Jungkook was totally speechless. His gaze wandered over his father and then shifted to his mother's stunned look, an expression that hadn't left her since the King began speaking.

“You can't do that. You can't just not care…” the Queen was shaking her head in refusal, refusing to accept the words she heard from her husband's mouth. “You can't turn a blind eye to-”

“I already did,” the King spoke again and Jungkook did not miss the way his eyes averted for less than a second. The way he looked at him, the sad gleam in his eyes. Or well, sad was what he seemed to have seen, because the King's expression changed so quickly that Jungkook might have thought he had imagined it, if not for what he said next, “I already had.”

“What are you talking about?”

The Prince felt a hand squeeze his heart, trying to stifle it, to keep him conscious long enough to survive, but using just enough strength to feel death close. His lips parted as he watched the father who wouldn't look back at him, who was staring harshly at his mother as the only true culprit in this whole mess. No, the problem wasn't that Jungkook was trusting, not that he stopped paying attention, not that he had let his guard down…

“You knew,” Jungkook spoke for the first time. His voice came out slightly hoarse, his beady, disbelieving eyes glinting in the natural sunlight as his father gave him a neutral, dry, emotionless look.

“What?” the Queen's head turned sharply toward her husband, her eyes exaggeratedly wide.

Without looking away from his son, the King spoke, “Did you really think there was anything you could do in the Palace that I wouldn't know about?”

Almost out of sad inertia, with a whiplash of pain in his chest, Jungkook shook his head at the counselor. Seokjin half-opened his lips in surprise, but shook his head in a negative as he felt the deer eyes on him.

“Counselor Kim has nothing to do here,” the King spoke, his gaze still on the Prince.

“Your Majesty-” Seokjin tried to speak, but the King raised a hand in his direction.

“Not now,” his stern gaze was still on Jungkook, but he promptly turned back to stare at the Queen who seemed not to credit what she saw.

“You knew and… you allowed it?” the Queen's voice was barely a whisper, surprise taking all her breath away.

“I told you, she was never a threat to the Crown.”

“She wasn't a threat, she was a gold digger! She wanted all the riches Jungkook could give her!”

The Prince gnashed his teeth. His bite was so hard that it strained his jaw and a slight pain ran through his gums. He wanted his mother to stop talking that way, expressing herself that way, he wanted to say something to her, anything…

“That's what you made it sound like, making all this fuss. Now there's really no way of knowing,” the King replied impassively, though several muscles in his face were already beginning to retract.

“She was going to steal from us,” the Queen exclaimed in utter conviction.

“She was going to do no such thing,” Jungkook blurted out, his hand clenched on the table and the Queen's eyes exorbitant as she turned to see him as he answered her thus. It was an impulse, but he had done it, and though his instinct was to shrink from her gaze, he faced her and continued speaking. “She never tried to take advantage of me. She is a kind, loving, honest and a humble soul. All she wanted for me was happiness.”

The Queen snorted, interrupting him, and his assurance flanked. Jungkook didn't feel he was over, but the King took the floor again:

“You're going to have to apologize to his mother.”

“What?”

“I'm not going to bear such an embarrassment to someone who has provided us with her services.”

“I'm not going to do-”

“You will. And the next time you intend to bring a trial against someone, Counselor Kim will be only too pleased to give you a few lessons in law.”

And with that, the King left the room.

#bts #bts fanfic #bts imagines #bts jungkook #bts scenarios #bts x reader #jeon jungkook #jungkook x reader #jungkook #bangtan #jungkook x you #jungkook x y/n #bts angst #bts fluff #jungkook angst #jungkook au #kim seokjin #jung hoseok #park jimin #min yoongi #kim taehyung #kim namjoon

[paintyoureyeswithavividmind]

close to home | chapter forty five

close to home | chapter forty five

plot: the reader deals with the aftermath of her attack, Negan shows his cards to the reader, and Carl shows up at the Sanctuary

series masterlist

Pairing: Eventual Daryl Dixon x f!reader Word Count: 2,879 Warnings: violence, blood, typical twd A/N: thank you for reading!!! I've gotten so many sweet replies and messages lately and they mean the absolute world to me! I truly love and thank you all for showing this story love. I hope you're all loving it as much as I've loved writing it!!! 🖤

The next day, you didn’t leave your room. Sherry and Frankie brought you food and tried to coax you out. But all you could do was cry and lucidly beg them to get Daryl; they left you alone. You spent the day watching shadows cross the floor and staring at the ceiling as thoughts danced around you. 

You pictured Glenn and Abraham, and then you cried for them. Then you wondered desperately how Maggie was doing, and the baby and you cried for her. You cried for Rick and Michonne, for Rosita, and Carl and Tora. You wanted to go home more than anything. 

Sherry and Frankie visited you before dinner, bringing you a bag with a few books. “I thought you might like these; they’re from the library. You can go anytime you want and take whatever you want.” Sherry told you as she sat down. 

Frankie approached you on the bed and sat beside you, sweeping back your hair. “Hey, sweetie,” She said sadly, “How are you holding up?”

You glanced at her and nodded slowly, “I’m okay.”

“Your hair is getting so long. Do you want me to give it a cut?” She offered. 

You nodded because of her generosity and because you actually did like her, and she excused herself to find her hair-cutting tools. 

While she was gone, you sat up and looked at Sherry. She was leaning forward on her knees and looked more than just preoccupied with a few thoughts. 

“Sherry?” You asked her, waiting to get her attention. “Why do you care about me so much? It doesn’t matter to you if I live or die,” 

She looked at you for a long minute before coming over to you. “I debated on telling you this… I couldn’t stand the thought of you hating me. The other wives don’t know, but I…” She breathed out. 

“What?”

“Dwight and I tried to escape with my sister a while back. This was before I married Negan. We met Daryl on the road. Did he tell you about it?”

“Vaguely…”

Sherry nodded and tucked her hair behind her ear. “We thought he was one of the saviors, so we kept him hostage. But he was able to take off, and you see, Tina, my sister, was diabetic. We couldn’t afford her medications. So we had stolen them, and the saviors were after us. And I guess Daryl saw the medicine because he came back. And he helped us when Tina was bit.” 

You weren’t sure what to say, so you stayed quiet and let her speak. 

“We stole his bike and the crossbow and went back to Negan. I wanted to run but Dwight he… he wanted to protect me. Negan was going to kill him, but I offered to marry him instead. And now Daryl’s here anyway, after what we did…” Sherry started to cry. 

“And I just feel so guilty. And when I found out about you and Daryl, how Dwight said you two must’ve been an item or something, I just had to protect you. I had to help you. I’m so sorry, (Y/N).” She cried. 

You moved from your spot and went to her, wrapping your arms around her shoulders. It made sense now why she tried to help you so much. And why she seemed to be intent on protecting you. “It’s okay, it’s okay,” You tried to soothe her. 

“It’s not okay, but I’m trying to amend what I’ve done.” Sherry looked at you. “I know you’ve only been here a week, but I hope you know you can trust me. What I owe to Daryl, I can never repay him. But I can help you.”

You nodded and gave her a hug. You knew what she did wasn’t okay, but she was trying to make amends. And she helped you; she probably saved your life, even if it wasn’t a life you wanted anymore. And regardless of what she’s done, you couldn’t find it in your heart to hate her. The two of you were going through the exact situation. 

“How do you stand it? What Negan did to him…” You asked her when you pulled away. “Every time I see Daryl, I want to scream. I can’t imagine what they’re doing to him, what they’ve done.” 

“I don’t stand it. I drink, I smoke, I do anything to try and forget. But Dwight’s alive and one of Negan’s top men. What else can we do? We tried running before…”

“We can do it again, together,” You said. “We can get them and go.”

“Where, (Y/N)?” She asked. “There’s nowhere to go. We have shelter here; we’re safe here. We have food and running water, and electricity. You can’t go back to Alexandria, you know that. Negan will spend every resource he can looking for us. Especially you and me. And you have people at Alexandria he'll take it out on, too.”

You deflated as you realized she was right. 

“I…”

“I know you want to be with Daryl. But he’s alive," Sherry stressed. “Let’s just… let’s just think about this. It would take a lot of work to get out.”

Just then, the door opened, and Frankie walked in. “Amber needs to talk to you, Sher.” 

Sherry squeezed your arm as you both stood, and she bid goodbye. Frankie smiled at you, obviously pleased you were up and out of bed. 

“I brought the scissors; let’s give you a cut!”

***

The next day, you were in the wives' room, trying to control yourself. The mess from two days ago had been cleaned up, and you had to keep telling yourself that nothing happened, and that you were being silly for acting this way. What Sherry said was right; as of now, you were safe. Everyone you loved wasn’t, but you were safe. And you could figure everything else out. 

You were absent-mindedly listening to Tanya and Frankie discuss a book they’d been reading when the door opened, and you heard a familiar bell. Your stomach clenched as you watched Tora run into the room, looking scared and on edge. 

“Tora!” You exclaimed, dropping down to the floor. She meowed profusely as she ran over to you, and you scooped her up in your arms. She was immediately purring and rubbing her face against yours as you cried. 

“Oh my God,” Frankie laughed as she approached you. “A cat? How?”

You laughed through your tears. “This is Tora. She’s been with me since before.” You cried, trying to control yourself. 

Another presence made himself known, and you looked up at Negan, who was leaning against the doorframe. He had a smile on his face, a genuine one, and he walked over. 

“A little birdie in Alexandria told me that the cat was yours,” Negan said, “I’d like to say I’m surprised, but I’m really not.” Negan laughed, giving Tora a rub on the head. 

“I…” You didn’t have any words. 

“I sent out a group to get some stuff for her since she won’t be able to go outside here.” Negan said, “But I thought it might make you feel more at home here, and I knew you all would just love her.” 

There was a chorus of thank you’s, yours not included. But you maintained eye contact with Negan, and despite how much you hated it, he knew how much it meant to you. 

Negan wished everyone goodnight before he left and shut the doors behind him. You let Tora go, and all the women started playing with her with whatever they could find. She was a little skeptical but warmed up quickly with all the attention. 

You sat on the couch and watched, wiping away tears. Sherry sat down next to you and said softly. “He doesn’t do that for just everyone.” You looked at her with confusion. “We get whatever we want here. But he doesn’t do anything like that. I think you’re really special to him.”

“I don’t understand…” Your voice trailed off. 

“Nobody does. That’s the problem with Negan. He’s a monster. I know it. You know it. But then there are times…” Her voice trailed off. “He’ll give you more time after what happened. But he’ll be expecting sex soon. He won’t force it, but if���”

“If I know what’s good for me and Daryl, I have to do it.” You finished her sentence. 

***

More days passed since Tora arrived at the sanctuary, and even if you didn’t want to admit it, it brought a little life back into you. The run group Negan sent out brought back everything you could possibly need, and Negan had the worker who cleaned all of the wives room’s add Tora’s new litter box to her list. 

You felt awful about it, but Sherry told you to let it go. Still, you ensured the worker had something to eat and drink each time she came up. It became a little secret between the two of you. 

Negan visited you every evening at the same time unless he was out. He would eat with you all and talk about his day while you and the other wives would listen and share conversations. He hadn’t made an attempt to have sex with you yet, but as each day passed, you knew it was coming. 

You hadn’t seen Daryl much, aside from when he was out manning the fence--you could see him from the sitting room, where you watched him more often than not--or mopping up the floors while you walked around with Sherry. The two of you knew better than to speak to each other, but each time you made eye contact, you shared a nod. And it broke your heart every single time. 

As usual, you were with the girls, reading a book with Tora on your lap. She’d adapted nicely to the new space, and the wives agreed to keep her on this floor for her safety. She loved the company of all the women and all the affection she got. 

Amber was talking with Sherry about what happened with Mark, who you knew she had slept with. You’d learned from Sherry yesterday and dreaded the altercation with Negan.

You heard voices before the doors opened, and everyone tensed simultaneously. 

“Ladies,” Negan greeted you all.

When you turned to look at the man, your mouth parted, and your heart dropped to your feet when you saw Carl standing there. The book fell from your grasp, and you stood, knocking Tora off. She didn’t seem to mind because she immediately ran up to him and started rubbing against his legs. 

“Carl?” You said, slowly approaching him. 

Negan looked at you with that smile again, and your skin crawled. “Baby, can you believe this kid? He hopped on my truck and then gunned down two of my men! The balls on this kid.” 

Your fingers were trembling as you made eye contact with Carl. Then you turned to Negan, “Can I talk to him, please? Just for a second. I’ll do anything.” You knew exactly what he would cash in for the word anything.

Negan smiled and rubbed his jaw. “Anything. I sure do love that word on your lips. Go ahead, baby, just for you.”

You breathed a sigh of relief and walked up to Carl, cupping his cheeks. “Carl, what are you doing here? Are you stupid?” You asked quietly, knowing that everyone in the room was listening. “Are you okay? Why didn’t you just stay in Alexandria?”

Carl didn’t answer, but he looked at you with every emotion on his face. You knew he was playing tough, really tough, but you knew him. 

You sighed again and leaned forward, not being able to help yourself. You kissed him quickly on the forehead, over his bandages, and then stepped back. You didn’t want to push your luck with Negan. 

“My, my, my, and she’s good with kids,” Negan said, “Maybe I should think about expanding the family, then.”

Carl looked up at Negan then, and you saw the exact look you’ve seen in Rick so many times. “Don’t you dare," Carl said. 

“Carl, it’s okay,” You rushed out before Negan could even speak. “It’s okay. I’m Negan’s wife now, so… so if that’s what he wants, that will happen. Don’t worry about anything. I’m alright. I’m perfect. I’m happy here.” You rambled on, trying desperately to make sure Negan didn’t do anything to the kid. 

Negan smiled at you as more saviors entered the room, and Daryl appeared with them. Your lips trembled as you locked eyes with him, the closest you’ve been to him in days. And he had heard everything you just said. 

But with one look in his eyes, you knew he didn’t believe you. He saw right through it, through you, like he always did. 

A hand grabbed your arm, and you looked back at Negan. “Isn’t my new wife just perfect?” He asked nobody in particular before he leaned down and kissed you on your mouth. 

You froze for a moment as your brain went wild. You didn’t know what to do. To pull away from him in front of everything would make him mad, and you knew who he’d take it out on. So you did the only thing you could think of that would keep everybody safe. You leaned in and kissed him back. 

Negan smiled at you as he pulled away. “Oh, I’m gonna love this.” He said to you and then turned back to both Daryl and Carl. “Oh, I’m sorry, I forgot you guys were here. (Y/N), baby, be a dear and fetch me a drink.”

You clenched your fists and nodded, turning your back on them and walking to the minibar. You blinked away tears and swallowed the lump in your throat. The feeling of Negan’s facial hair still tickled you, and you wanted to take a long, hot shower to get rid of the feeling. 

After making his favorite drink--one you’d learned to make perfectly the past few days--you brought it over to him as he talked quietly with Sherry. Then you went and sat down in your chair with trembling fingers and tried not to look at anyone. But you could feel Daryl’s gaze. You hoped and prayed he wouldn't do anything stupid. Not after what he saw.

After Negan and Sherry finished talking, and he went to Amber, you knew exactly what it was. You stood up and walked across the room to Sherry, who was making a drink. 

“Mark?” You asked her. When she nodded, you poured yourself a drink and took a shot. When you turned back and looked at Negan talking to her, then looked at Daryl and Carl, who were both staring at you. You slowly shook your head. 

“Here, you’re gonna need one more for this,” Sherry told you. She handed you another drink, which had a bigger pour. But you didn’t question it and knocked it back. 

***

An hour later, everyone was gathered in the main room of the compound. Sherry told you what was coming; you knew very well about the iron from conversations with her and the other wives. But you hadn’t seen it yet and felt like you would be sick. 

When Negan finally showed up, you thanked the lord that Carl was with him, but your fingers twitched when you saw that he wasn’t wearing his bandages and looked shaken up. You felt like screaming and throwing something. And you felt hopeless. All you wanted was to be able to protect Carl, and you didn’t even know what Negan did upstairs. 

Sherry grabbed your hand when Negan started to talk and walked down the stairs. To your right were Frankie and Amber, and the ladder was holding a scared and frightened Amber. 

Daryl was with one of the other guards across the room, usually with him. With Negan’s attention elsewhere, you could show Daryl emotions you’d had to keep hidden. Your face softened, and you bit your lip and pressed your free hand over your heart. You hoped he knew what you were trying to say. That you were scared, and you were doing what you had to do, and that he was the only person in your heart. 

You don’t know if your look conveyed it all or even a fraction of it. But then he nodded slightly and lifted his hand. It was brief, and he played it off like he was scratching his chest, but he laid his hand over his heart. 

Tears filled your eyes, and you had to look down at the floor to smile. He knew. Of course, he knew; no one in the world knew you better than him. 

A few minutes later, you watched as Negan pressed the hot iron to Mark’s face. You looked at Daryl and Carl and then at poor Amber, who was going through a pain that you knew too well. Seeing a loved one hurt. That thought made you tremble, and Sherry squeezed your hand. 

After it was over, Negan took Carl away, and Sherry forced you to move on. You didn’t get a chance to look at Daryl as she pulled you away. 

#daryl x y/n #daryl dixion x reader #the walking dead daryl #daryl fanfiction #daryl dixon x reader #daryl x reader #daryl dixon #daryl twd #twd #daryl x you

[viv-weylin]

Emizel Tucker gets Vivisected by Vex: the Fic. Mind the tags lol.

#emizel tucker #jrwi #just roll with it #the suckening #vex weylin

[devildomcrybaby]

The characterization of Toga as always giggly, cheerful and with her head in the clouds fails to portray the deep suffering that is evident in most of the things she says. She’s unhappy with the world that she lives in. A world that failed her since she was a little kid, that made her feel wrong and bizarre, that sees what and how she loves as disgusting. She’s not all that different from Tomura in her disenchantment towards society and the people in it (with few exceptions) especially as the manga goes on. The idea of Toga as a homicidal Karen Smith seems to miss the whole point of why she joined the League in the first place. Also I don’t think she’s an airhead. She’s reflective in more than a situation, she thinks and acts quickly in battle and when making decisions, always aware of her surroundings, managing to act lucidly according to what’s more convenient to her purposes, despite being driven by passion, like when she went to speak with Uraraka in Jaku city. She gets her answer and doesn’t linger on the unpleasant feeling, as soon as the occasion presents itself she manages to run away keeping her pain and doubts to herself. I think Toga is as complex of a character as Shigaraki and Dabi, but it is overlooked because her sadistic tendencies are misinterpreted as frivolity in my opinion.

#Eve rambles #my hero academia #boku no hero academia #toga #toga himiko

[theworkerofkeay]

Ok a few more coherent thoughts on miss ma’am’s (Celia) situation.

🔻TmagP ep 7 spoilers below cut 🔻

Ok so. Based on her tone when she was asking Alice questions about the ‘search’ function in the computer and about who voices Chester, I think Celia remembers things from the apocalypse/ end of the world. BUT! Not in a direct memory way.

I feel like she’s not entirely lucidly aware of why she’s asking the questions she is or why she’s so particularly interested in cases like ‘being buried alive or meat.. or whatever”. Perhaps it’s more like- a small recap of events live in her head like a borrowed memory that isn’t hers originally it’s the Celia’s from the OTHER universe.

OR!!!!! Maybe she’s getting the information in dreams. Like in the og universe, Jon had people complain about him being in their nightmares/ dreams. So maybe with the new power that the eye holds in this universe, people are getting a trickle of inter-universal memory from their other selves from the Apocalypse when they were all in different fears domains. Like the fear + eye combo is allowing them to access information about their alternate universe selves without entirely understanding what it is. So they may brush it off as a weird dream. OR in someone like Colin’s case, they may take it more seriously and listen to the hints they are receiving from their dreams.

And MAYBE this gives them a predisposition or a “mark” for the fears. (I’m still not sold that the fears will actually function the same way in this universe if they function in any tangible way AT ALL.)

Anyway. Feel free to discuss any thoughts on this (and please feel free to disagree!! These are just 3am thoughts that I’m drafting for later lol)

<3

#anyway I’m drafting this for a half decent hour #enjoy my disorganized thoughts lmaooo #tmagp spoilers #tmagp theory #tmagp #celia ripley

[familyabolisher]

"And it struck me, as my automaton knees went up and down, that I simply did not know a thing about my darling's mind"

Reading Lolita so I can finally appreciate your Salòlita essay and this passage felt. Appropriate (it's a lot longer but I'm not typing that shit)

yesss i have that bit highlighted in my epub lol!

my Lolita remarked: “You know, what’s so dreadful about dying is that you are completely on your own”; and it struck me, as my automaton knees went up and down, that I simply did not know a thing about my darling’s mind and that quite possibly, behind the awful juvenile clichés, there was in her a garden and a twilight, and a palace gate—dim and adorable regions which happened to be lucidly and absolutely forbidden to me, in my polluted rags and miserable convulsions; for I often noticed that living as we did, she and I, in a world of total evil, we would become strangely embarrassed whenever I tried to discuss something she and an older friend, she and a parent, she and a real healthy sweetheart, I and Annabel, Lolita and a sublime, purified, analyzed, deified Harold Haze, might have discussed—an abstract idea, a painting, stippled Hopkins or shorn Baudelaire, God or Shakespeare, anything of a genuine kind. Good will! She would mail her vulnerability in trite brashness and boredom, whereas I, using for my desperately detached comments an artificial tone of voice that set my own last teeth on edge, provoked my audience to such outbursts of rudeness as made any further conversation impossible, oh my poor, bruised child.

those moments where she becomes illegible & thus indigestible.....dolores "haze" indeed <33

#ask #lolita

[disneymbti]

Do you have a hc for the enneagram and mbti type of Lisa Crowne from Daisy Jones and the six. I know she doesn't have one, but what do you think she is based off of her limited screen time?

Hi there, sweetie! I really hope you like this a lot!

Lisa Crowne's MBTI Type, Big Three and Enneagram Type

MBTI Type: ISFP [The Adventurer]

ISFP types need plenty of personal space. Though they enjoy building connections with people, they need alone time to think and recharge.

They are very observant, especially focusing on the details more than the overall view. They live in the present and tend to base decisions on what they can see right now.

Adventurers also prioritize emotion when making decisions. They prefer to follow what feels right.

They don’t like schedules, but instead prefer to keep their options open. They are adaptable, spontaneous, and like to challenge the need for strict rules.

Big Three: Pisces Sun, Virgo Moon and Aquarius Rising

Pisces Sun: The planetary ruler for Pisces is Jupiter and Neptune, which gives Pisces Suns a sentimental, intuitive, imaginative, and dreamy nature. 

Virgo Moon: Virgo Moons use their calm nature to gain deep clarity on matters, filtering questions through their kind, but reasonable, lens.

Aquarius Rising: This rising sign can speak lucidly on a number of topics, using their lofty knowledge to charm crowds and solve problems alike.

Enneagram Type: 6w7 [The Confidant]

Basic Fear: Six wing sevens’ fear losing their support system. This may be expressed through self-deprecating humor, in which they seek affirmation and assurance from other people.

Basic Desire: Their basic desire is to feel safe and supported. They show this by being loving and supportive to others. They honor their commitments and are very loyal to their friends.

Like other sixes, Confidants defend themselves by projecting their feelings, which may lead them to misunderstanding themselves and their relationships.

#daisy jones and the six #lisa crowne #disneymbti #mbti types #isfp #astrology #zodiac signs #pisces sun #virgo moon #aquarius rising #enneagram types #6w7 #the confidant #lily donoghue

[itsgxsly]

HIM

Summary: Pierre has to live with the weight of seeing you in the arms of another man

Pairing: pierre gasly x reader

Warnings: no happy ending

Word Count: 655

So you were right, there's always two
The one who stays and the one who's leaving you
Hear me out, my apologies
'Cause I'm not here for sympathy

Pierre knew that he deserved the feeling of remorse that he felt in his stomach every time he saw you. A while ago that feeling would have been replaced by what he believed to have been an unmistakable love for you. But now, after what he had done, he was no longer sure of anything that had happened between the two of you.

He would leave his whole life if now he could go back and tell his past self that he shouldn't let himself be carried away by that girl's kiss at that party. But it was late, you were gone and it was his fault.

That nice dress in my wildest dreams
The lipstick stains you left still on my sheets
When I hear: Amazing eyes
It breaks my heart every time

Even he vividly remembered the moment when he had first seen you. The celebrations of his first victory in Monza 2020 had made him end up in some lost club watching his friends dance while he sat at the bar with a glass of unknown alcohol in his hand. Despite the victory, Pierre had wanted to live the memory lucidly, so he wasn't drunk. That's why he perfectly remembers every detail of you that night. Your shiny hair fluttered on your back and your lips that red color. But what is still engraved in his mind was the beautiful dress that covered your body so wonderfully. You stood near where he was and asked for something to the waiter that he didn't hear. You had to notice his insistent look on you because you turned around with a smile. He handed it back to you and almost got stuck when you started talking to him. Before he knew it, the two of you had talked all night, he had told you how he risked his life in each race and you had told him about your passion for singing since you were little. And when you had to say goodbye, you spoke before parting ways.

“By the way, your eyes are amazing”

Do you know what it's like to fall in love from the outside?

Pierre didn't know how he could bear the pain in his body every time he saw you walking through the Paddock again. It had been his ass that you left him and now he was carrying the suffering that his heart, in love with him, would break over and over again. He didn't know if you felt that pain of being in love and not being able to be with you, but he needed to turn the page and get over you as you seemed to have done.

'Cause I don't wanna hear about him
How he's holding you better at night
And I don't wanna hear about him
In these songs you continue to write
I was with you when you wrote that line
It was me that you had on your mind
So I don't wanna hear about him

He wanted to get rid of everything that had to do with you and your memories with him. But with your singing career taking off, it seemed impossible not to hear your name and see your face everywhere. And besides, you not only invade his thoughts late and at night thinking about the what if?, but now he had to live suffering when he saw you with him hand in hand. It was his fault that now the lyrics of your songs were dedicated to him, to his best friend. He didn't want to hear more about you or Charles, he didn't want to hear how everyone said how in love you and the Monegasque man were. Now he had to see you be happy with him.

#formula 1 #f1 weekend #f1 2022 #pg10 #pierre gasly #gasly #alpha tauri #pierre gasly x reader #pierre #pierre gasly x oc #pierre gasly imagine #pierre gasly x y/n #pierre gasly angst #angst #song fic #charles leclerc x y/n #charles leclerc x reader

[dialogue-queered]

11 June 2023

Beneath the veneer of Russian military “tactics”, you see the stupid leer of destruction for the sake of it. The Kremlin can’t create, so all that is left is to destroy. Not in some pseudo-glorious self-immolation, the people behind atrocities are petty cowards, but more like a loser smearing their faeces over life. In Russia’s wars the very senselessness seems to be the sense.

After the casual mass executions at Bucha; after the bombing of maternity wards in Mariupol; after the laying to waste of whole cities in Donbas; after the children’s torture chambers, the missiles aimed at freezing civilians to death in the dead of winter, we now have the apocalyptic sight of the waters of the vast Dnipro, a river that when you are on it can feel as wide as a sea, bursting through the destroyed dam at Kakhovka. The reservoir held as much water as the Great Salt Lake in Utah. Its destruction has already submerged settlements where more than 40,000 people live. It has already wiped out animal sanctuaries and nature reserves. It will decimate agriculture in the bread basket of Ukraine that feeds so much of the world, most notably in the Middle East and Africa. To Russian genocide add ecocide.

The dam has been controlled by Russia for more than a year. The Ukrainian government has been warning that Russia had plans to blast it since October.

Seismologists in Norway have confirmed that massive blasts, the type associated with explosives rather than an accidental breach, came from the reservoir the night of its destruction. Some – including the American pro-Putin media personality Tucker Carlson – argue Russia couldn’t be behind the devastation, given the damage has spread to Russian-controlled territories, potentially restricting water supply to Crimea. But if “Russia wouldn’t damage its own people” is your argument then it’s one that doesn’t hold, pardon the tactless pun, much water. One of the least accurate quotes about Russia is Winston Churchill’s line about it being “a riddle wrapped in a mystery inside an enigma, but perhaps there is a key. That key is Russian national interest.” This makes it sound as if Russia is driven by some theory of rational choice – when century after century the opposite appears to be the case.

Few have captured the Russian cycle of self-destruction and the destruction of others as well as the Ukrainian literary critic Tetyana Ogarkova. In her rewording of Fyodor Dostoevsky’s Russian classic novel Crime and Punishment, a novel about a murderer who kills simply because he can, Ogarkova calls Russia a culture where you have “crime without punishment, and punishment without crime”. The powerful murder with impunity; the victims are punished for no reason.

When not bringing humanitarian aid to the front lines, Ogarkova presents a podcast together with her husband, the philosopher Volodymyr Yermolenko. It’s remarkable for showing two people thinking calmly while under daily bombardment. It reminds me of German-Jewish philosophers such as Walter Benjamin, who kept writing lucidly even as they fled the Nazis. As they try to make sense of the evil bearing down on their country, Ogarkova and Yermolenko note the difference between Hitler and Stalin: while Nazis had some rules about who they punished (non-Aryans; communists) in Stalin’s terror anyone could be a victim at any moment. Random violence runs through Russian history.Reacting to how Vladimir Putin’s Russia is constantly changing its reasons for invading Ukraine – from “denazification” to “reclaiming historic lands” to “Nato expansion” – Ogarkova and Yermolenko decide that the very brutal nature of the invasion is its essence: the war crimes are the point. Russia claims to be a powerful “pole” in the world to balance the west – but has failed to create a successful political model others would want to join. So it has nothing left to offer except to drag everyone down to its own depths.“How dare you live like this,” went a resentful piece of graffiti by Russian soldiers in Bucha. “What’s the point of the world when there is no place for Russia in it,” complains Putin. After the dam at Kakhovka was destroyed, a General Dobruzhinsky crowed on a popular Russian talkshow: “We should blow up the Kyiv water reservoir too.” “Why?” asked the host. “Just to show them.” But, as Ogarkova and Yermolenko explore, Russians also send their soldiers to die senselessly in the meat grinder of the Donbas, their bodies left uncollected on the battlefield, their relatives not informed of their death so as to avoid paying them. On TV, presenters praise how “no one knows how to die like us”. Meanwhile, villagers on the Russian-occupied side of the river are being abandoned by the authorities. Being “liberated” by Russia means joining its empire of humiliation.

Where does this drive to annihilation come from? In 1912 the Russian-Jewish psychoanalyst Sabina Spielrein – who was murdered by the Nazis, while her three brothers were killed in Stalin’s terror -first put forward the idea that people were drawn to death as much as to life. She drew on themes from Russian literature and folklore for her theory of a death drive, but the founder of psychoanalysis, Sigmund Freud, first found her ideas too morbid. After the First World War, he came to agree with her. The desire for death was the desire to let go of responsibility, the burden of individuality, choice, freedom – and sink back into inorganic matter. To just give up. In a culture such as Russia’s, where avoiding facing up to the dark past with all its complex webs of guilt and responsibility is commonplace, such oblivion can be especially seductive.

But Russia is also sending out a similar message to Ukrainians and their allies with these acts of ultra-violent biblical destruction: give in to our immensity, surrender your struggle. And for all Russia’s military defeats and actual socio-economic fragility, this propaganda of the deed can still work.

The reaction in the west to the explosion of the dam has been weirdly muted. Ukrainians are mounting remarkable rescue operations, while Russia continues to shell semi-submerged cities, but they are doing it more or less alone. Ukraine’s president, Volodymyr Zelenskiy, has been mystified by the “zero support” from international organisations such as the UN and Red Cross.

Perhaps the relative lack of support comes partly because people feel helpless in the face of something so immense, these Cecil B DeMille-like scenes of giant rivers exploding. It’s the same helplessness some feel when faced with the climate crisis. It’s apposite that the strongest response to Russia’s ecocide came not from governments but the climate activist Greta Thunberg, who clearly laid the blame of what happened on Russia and demanded it be held accountable. But there’s been barely a peep out of western governments or the UN.

Pushing the strange lure of death, oblivion and just giving up is the Russian gambit. How much life do we have left in us?

Peter Pomerantsev is the author of Nothing Is True and Everything Is Possible: Adventures in Modern Russia

#the guardian #op-ed #the observer #peter pomerantsev #2023 #russo-ukraine war #ukraine #russia

[letters-from-a-psychward]

Thursday, 12th of October

Day I, lesson I

The people here, are some of the kindest in the world. Often, I wonder why it is that life is so cruel to the sweetest of hearts. As humans, perhaps it is in our nature to wonder why life is so unfair to us.

Are we not good, and kind? What wrongs have we unknowingly committed that have influenced life to punish us so?

I have come to the conclusion that, it is not life, but our own selves that determine our downfall of which is so often referred to as ‘karma’.

My reasoning?

Anything, in excessive quantity, inevitably becomes destruction.

Here, we learn of ‘self-care’, and ‘self-love’, and self, self, self. I am beginning to think that true human nature is simply : selfishness. It seems that some forms of selfishness, are truely, depressingly, vital to our survival. Myself, and perhaps a large number of other patients here, have tried so very desperately, so excessively, to stomp out these basic selfish needs of ‘self-care’, that we have brought upon ourselves destruction in the form of self-sacrifice; caring always for others before our own selves, denying our human nature the basic selfish essentials it feeds off of so heavily that this ‘true nature’ has become malnourished, emaciated, destroyed.

The remainder of patients here, I assume follow the opposite extreme, leaving their humanity to lavish in luxurious selfish needs, gorging on these essentials until they become so truely human that they can’t stand it. So full, and yet always starving for this selfishness that they develop and apathy for living, for working, for giving and earning life. Self-care, to excess, becomes inescapable procrastination (a lovely shortcut to self-deprecation). However, the human ‘self’ is a gullible thing, one that will gladly gorge on procrastination under the false pretence of ‘self-care’, or starve itself of such under the illusion of perfect ‘selflessness’.

Assuming ‘self’ refers to this selfish human nature, the same can be applied to self-love. One who adores this self-serving, greedy ‘self’ excessively, surely is considered a narcissist; one who truely believes the people around oneself are simply lesser. One who holds hatred for those living individual lives with the belief that life revolves around one’s own selfish being. Excessive ‘self-love’ is simply destruction by chosen ignorance.

The excessive loathing of self is, unnervingly simply, the belief that oneself no longer desires to live. True hatred of the way - as humans- we truely depend on selfishness (to any extent), this pure hatred of one’s basic, primal, self, is lucidly destruction by chosen understanding, consciousness of self.

I have thus decided that, life, at it’s core, simply means: ‘to balance’.

~ b.s.

#philosophy #the secret history #donna tartt #deep thoughts #life #life lessons #psychology #poetry? #poems and quotes #words #meaning of love #meaning of life #philosopher #belief system #morality #why do bad things happen to good people #dark academia #letters #journaling #existentialism

[corvigae]

👍🩵🎵

I'm gonna take this as three separate songs lol

1 - Follow My Feet by The Unlikely Candidates

Oh man I've already made a post before about how this song is such a good Dark Urge song in general, but the general gist is that it's a song about finding yourself between making choices in life that are selfish and hurtful but easy, or making choices that benefit others but are exceptionally hard, and just deciding what kind of person you want to be and which influences around you you want to follow, and damn if that doesn't describe the whole Dark Urge storyline and therefore Page's storyline by extension.

Her brain and even her own body are constantly telling her to do terrible things and to unrepentantly kill, and it would be so easy to just give in, to just accept what comes naturally to her and become a monster, but she really doesn't want to do that; she wants to be kind and "normal" and to help these new people she's met who trust her, and so she makes the conscious effort to fight against her own nature every day.

2 - Lose Your Head by Vane Lily

[[SPOILERS FOR THE BG3 DARK URGE STORYLINE]] OH BOY WE'RE DIGGING DEEP FOR THIS ONE

I live as a lamb for the lucidly damned

Still losing my grip from this body

They all point and laugh, but can you be mad?

I'm just not the way that they want me

I'm running from time, but really, I'm fine

I'm not gonna lie, I'm pissed that

God made me this way in a morbid exchange

Of theatrics and heavenly fate

So the canon story for Durge is that after The Urge awoke in them, they killed their foster family and eventually found their way back to the Bhaalist temple (as an adult, from what I've heard?), where they became the leader. My headcanon for Page is a little more involved than that. So first off, Page was always predisposed to resisting The Dark Urge, and had been feeling it start to creep in as she was growing up, starting some time around her preteen years. This resistance was obviously infuriating to Bhaal, since Durge was his personal pet project, so some time around her early teens he possessed her, forcing her to kill her whole family, similarly to how you get possessed to kill Alfira/Quill and potentially your love interest in the game. After Page comes to and realizes with horror what she's been forced to do, instead of just hearing Scaleritas' voice he actually appears before her for the first time and leads her to the Bhaalist temple, because now that she has literally no one and is at her most impressionable, it's the perfect time to indoctrinate her and shape her into what she's supposed to be - Bhaal's Chosen.

From there she's raised in an extremely restrictive environment, and as much as she wants to fight, wants to cling to her own personhood and kindness, the fear of punishment from her tutors, peers, and Bhaal himself eventually beats her down into a quiet submission. She acts how they want her to act, is who they want her to be, and is the perfect killing machine they mold her into, all the while repressing her actual self so much that she becomes almost entirely numbed to it all. But deep, deep down, even after decades upon decades of it all, there's still that scared little girl who just wants a home, who desperately wants both to love and be loved and to finally feel safe.

Which is all to say the song is about religious trauma, repression, and wanting a loving family lmao

3 - Limp by Sumo Cyco

Yeah there's really not that much to say about this one past that it's a song about feeling like you wanna kill people and that's the Dark Urge's whole Thing lol

#page turner #some songs on this playlist go deeper than others lol #my ocs #oc stuff

[girlartemisia]

What's that? Pirandello lucidly analyzes the fragmentation of identity through his characters who live this experience with extreme anguish, pain and loneliness and the surrounding ambience becomes 'like a torture room' (G. Macchia)? You mean the thing Guido did to himself 600 years earlier?

#guido cavalcanti #luigi pirandello

[fruityyamenrunner]

"just build libraries" is particularly bad anarchist thinking and is an example of the common anarchist fault of ignorance about production

you find a textbook that is really lucidly expounded, with little asides, mysterious comments and a good selection of topics, then turn to the introduction and the author appears to be a Senior Teacher at Barset Grammar School who thanks the Syndics of Old Barty for the sabbatical leave in which they wrote the book, with thanks for Amelia Bingle, Charles Dingle, Eoin Fingal, ... down to Yvette Zingl and special thanks to the many pupils they enjoyed teaching for 30 years.

This keeps happening so that eventually you are forced to realise that the books you keep happening upon in the library are not the product of nonviolent, consent-respecting angels who live mysterious lives in forest glades, stone circles, seventies television, Vega, etc., but are the products of people working in a vast, concerted scholastic apparatus -- that libraries, in fact, need schools, just as much as schools need libraries.